The success of an organization and its competitiveness is a multiple of the employees it possesses. The process of attracting the most qualified employees is the very beginning of the most significant job which ends with matching those employees to the jobs for which they are best suited. This requires cohesion between the top management and the employees. However, with a number of enterprises becoming larger entities maintaining a close contact between top management and employees is no longer possible. The chain which joins the top management and the employees is now formed with established human resources department with HR, training, and labor relations managers in its ranks being supported by other specialists for various auxiliary roles (U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [USBLS], 2006). These HR personals have been a part of the corporate culture since the beginning of economic globalization but their actual work had associated more with administrative function of the organization like recruitment and hiring and tackling and finding solutions to questions related to employee benefits while maintaining the tempo of the process in accordance with policies and requirements long established in close proximity with top management. But today’s human resources workers have got their scope expanded from managing above tasks to more of a consultant providing inputs to top executives on matters related to strategic planning. With rise in the importance of employee relationship the HR professionals have moved from the previously crafted behind-the-scenes roles to a staff that actually leads the company on issues that suggests various policies which are meant for the betterment of the relation between the company and its employee with sole objective being the company’s overall success from financial front to that of employee benefits. The job ranges from drafting new policies to the changing of the older ones. The rise in knowledge based economy and its effects on manufacturing sector have made the senior management to recognize the significance of the human resources department (USBLS, 2006).
The most important part of HR section of a firm is to deal with the people. It is these people who form the company’s workforce and an important reason behind its overall success. Their job has now expanded to a number of platforms including morale enhancing and increasing productivity and limit job turnover. The overall output of this HR division is to help organizations in increasing the performance as a whole and improving business results. Their scope of contribution undertakes the development of plans through which firms could effectively use employee skills including the provision of training as well as development opportunities. The purpose of all these modalities is to improve the above mentioned skills and at the same time increasing satisfaction level of employee with their jobs and working conditions. Dealing with the people or better to say the workforce of the company is the most important part of the HR department but still there are many jobs in the human resources field which actually require only limited contact with people outside the office (Free Management Library [FML], 2007).
In organizations which are smaller in size, the job of a human resources specialist has to handle each and every aspects of human resources work and they are expected to have an extensive range of ideas and knowledge with responsibilities varying widely while considering the employer’s needs. But in a large corporation, the condition is a bit different with the top human resources executive plays the role of a developer and manager of human resources programs and policies and is supported by a battery of junior executives of the HR division with inputs being provided from a number of sources including various sections of inventory. The implementation of these policies is usually done by a director or manager of human resources and or sometimes also requires the involvement of the director of industrial relations (USBLS, 2006).
The director of human resources has to supervise several departments with help being provided by other experienced manager who are heading a particular section with specialization in one of the many human resources activity with example being employment, compensation, benefits, training and development, or employee relations. The managers for Employment and placement division are supposed to supervise the hiring process followed by separation of employees (Employee Relation Consulting). They supervise various workers including the provision of equal employment opportunity with the help of specialists and recruitment specialists. The above mentioned work list gets expanded into other subsections requiring Recruiters, EEO officers and Employer Relations representatives. The Recruitment Employment section with its recruitment and placement specialists has the charge of recruiting and placing workers. The Recruiters have to maintain contacts within the community from where it can hire employees for the company. This process requires extensive traveling as well as collaborations with college campuses so that the search for promising job applicants would give fruitful results. The applicants are screened, interviewed, and have undergo various other modalities generally executed by the company recruiters. The recruiters also check into the references and have to extend job offers. So the sensitiveness of the job of a recruiter has underscored the need for the officials to be thoroughly familiar with the organization, its setup and its policies related to human resources (USBLS, 2006).
The policies include wages, working conditions, equal employment opportunities as well as promotional opportunities with prospective employees with proper knowledge of laws for affirmative actions guidelines. The equal employment opportunity is perhaps the most important policy as one post recruitment. The faith and respect for the company among the employees is very much dependent on this factor and hence it’s the EEO officers, representatives, or affirmative action coordinators that are supposed to handle matters related to Equal Employment Opportunity. Their job stretches form maintaining the EEO policy to the investigation and resolving of EEO grievances if any. They have to examine those corporate practices with a possibility of EEO violations, and then compile and submit the EEO statistical reports (USBLS, 2006).
It’s not that only corporations have the practices of HR but government firms also work in this direction with their Employer relations representatives promoting public employment programs and services and have to matters that are necessary to maintain working relationships with local employers. Hence the employee relationship begins with employment interviewers and is further consolidated through the Compensation, benefits, and job analysis specialists who conduct programs for employers like position classifications or pensions (FML, 2007). The training and other corporate duties are being provided to the employees through Job analysts and Position classifiers who prepare job descriptions with information they have collected and related to job duties. The Occupational analysts have to conduct research with sole purpose to study the effects of industry and occupational trends. They are concerned with occupational classification systems and work upon employee relationship. It’s their shoulder where the most important pillar of employee relation rests and that too in form of some technical liaison between the firm and other firms, top management and labor unions and the government. The pay system is being established and maintained by the compensation manager who is further assisted by staff specialists, compensation managers who devise ways that will further extend the philosophy of EEO in form of fair and equitable pay rates. Their job process includes surveys and comparison of firm’s rates with other firms with purpose to employee confidence in the company (USBLS, 2006).
Employee benefits programs like health insurance and pension plans are again a very important issue with possible influence over long term association of employees with the firm. These programs and activities are maintained by Employee benefits managers and specialists. Their expertise on issues related to designing and administering benefits programs helps the employer in providing benefits account for a growing proportion of overall compensation costs as well as the benefit plans to increase in number and complexity (Employment Relations Advisors Ltd, 2005). The compensation plans as well as employee benefit plans have been extended from health insurance and pension coverage to various other plans that include employee life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance and disability insurance. The other new and revolutionary benefits have also been designed so that the requirement of a changing workforce could be met. This includes parental leave, child and elder care. Flexibility factor have also been introduced so that the employees will have options like long-term nursing home care insurance, employee assistance and wellness programs. Employee assistance plan managers also cover another wide array of programs that ranges from occupational safety, health standards and practices, health promotion and physical fitness to counseling the employees to deal with emotional disorders on both personal and professional issues (Pacific Lutheran University [PLU], 2002).
Training is also a very important ingredient of employee relation. The managers for Training and Development conduct various programs that are meant for better training and development opportunities for employees. The employee training has also helped the management in recognizing the capabilities of each and every employee which at some later stage helps in ensuring enhanced productivity and quality of work. The employees can be given space according to their capabilities and hence are motivated to work more for the benefit of the company. This also builds worker loyalty to the firm, and later translates to increased level of individual and organizational performance with higher gain in form of business as well as financial results (FML, 2007).
Training managers have the responsibility of the entire learning process while maintaining the environment to ensure that the training course module could meets the very objective of its purpose and is indexed according to some parameter to understand how this learning process impacts business results. The training activities are planned and organized according the specialization of training specialists plan organize. Trainers are expected to respond to the requests of corporate workers and are also supported with supervisors tackling onsite problems with result being the performance improvement. Their services include the conduction of orientation sessions and arrangement of various training sessions of new employees thereby helping all employees to maintain and improve their job skills (FML, 2007).
All the programs described above have been designed to develop leaders among employees so that they could replace those who will leave the organization and will form an integrated part of the company’s succession plan. The human resources administration and human resources development has the ability to work with individuals as well as a commitment to organizational goals.
References
U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2006) Human Resources, Training, and Labor Relations
Managers and Specialists, Retrieved form WWW on 10 June 2007 from:
http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos021.htm
Employee Relation Consulting. Human Resource, Retrieved form WWW on 10 June
2007 from: http://www.nyu.edu/hr/relations/emrcons.html
Employment Relations Advisors, Ltd (2005) Employment and Labor Relations, Retrieved
from WWW on 10 June 2007 from: http://www.betteremployeerelations.com/era/ about_era.htm
Free Management Library (2007) Human Resource Management, Retrieved
from WWW on 10 June 2007 from: http://www.managementhelp.org/hr_mgmnt/hr_mgmnt.htm
University of South Carolina (2006) Employee Relation Office, Retrieved
from WWW on 10 June 2007 from: http://hr.sc.edu/er.html
Pacific Lutheran University (2002). Employment and employee Relations, Retrieved
from WWW on 10 June 2007 from http://www.plu.edu/~humr/personnel-manual/employment-employee.html
