The psychological contract is certainly an important aspect of the employment relationship as it invisibly binds the employer and the employee through a set of expectations. For the individual in an organisation, the psychological contract is mostly relevant as it directly affects the level of motivation, commitment and morale of that person. Moreover, a positive psychological contract helps to boost the productivity and performance of an employee. Thus, to gain the commitment and loyalty of individual employees, it becomes essential that organisations put in place appropriate systems to foster the identification of employee expectations and ways to fulfill them. However, expectations are not easily identified, both on the employers and employees side. These often give rise to breaches on behalf of either one or both parties. The maintaining of a positive psychological contract with all members of an organisation thus becomes a primary focus of the HR practitioner and HR Continue reading
Human Resource Management
Human Resource Management (HRM) is branch of management that deals with people at work, it is concerned with the human dimensions of management of the organization. As organization consists of people, therefore acquiring them, developing their skills, providing them motivation in order to attain higher goal and ensuring that the level of commitment is maintained are the important activities.
Workplace Diversity – Meaning and Impacts
Today’s workforce is made up of many types of people. Organisations can no longer assume that every employee has similar beliefs or expectations. Organizations exist to serve human needs. An organisation is only effective as the people who operate it. People are considered the most important resource in any organisation. They are the basic foundation of an organization and the basic unit of change within organisation. The human resource approach focuses on the interaction between people and the organization. If communication between employees is poor, organization will suffer. When coordination and interaction within the organization is good, both employees and business will benefit. Workplace diversity refers to the division of the working force into separate categories that have a apparent unity or harmony within a given cultural context and that impact potentially beneficial or harmful outcomes of employments such as job opportunities, workplace treatment prospects of promotion of employees, irrespective Continue reading
Employee Assistance Programs in Organizations – Employee Counseling
Counseling has been practiced in one form or other since the evolution of mankind. In every field which requires dealing with people, counseling is essential. Counseling is a dyadic relationship between two persons; a manager who is offering help (counselor) and an employee whom such help is given (counselee). It may be formal or informal. Formal counseling is a planned and systematic way of offering help to subordinates by expert counselors. Informal counseling is concerned with day to day relationship between the manager and his subordinates where help is readily offered without any formal plan. Every manager has a responsibility to counsel his subordinates. When individual managers are unable to deal with specific problems, the counseling services of a professional body is required. An organization can either offer the services of a full-time in-house counselor or refer the employee to a community counseling service. Counseling occasionally is necessary for employees Continue reading
Conflicts in Workplaces – Definition, Causes, Impacts, and Handling
Organizations comprise people from different cultural, professional, racial, age, and other demographic backgrounds. Where people are segregated along these diversity differences, cultural conflicts arise. This suggests that managers and leaders within organizations encounter immense challenges in seeking effective strategies for recruitment, training, developing, and retaining the most talented personnel in an organization characterized by immense workforce diversities. Conflicts often produce a negative implication on the performance of an organization. Since the principal goal of organizational leadership is to look for mechanisms of resolving challenges, which may hinder the performance of an organization so that it delivers value to its owners (shareholders), conflict avoidance constitutes a risky approach to conflict management. These challenges become even more pronounced as many organizations endeavor to engage in global businesses as a measure of increasing their competitive advantage. The more diverse the workforce is, the higher the risks of workplace conflicts associated with diversity differences. Continue reading
Benefits of Career Management
Career is a general course of action, an individual chooses to pursue, all through his or her employment life. It may be represented as occupational positions a person has hold over so many years. Many people feel satisfied by achieving their career goals. At the same time, others have a strong feeling that, their careers, their lives and their potential has undergone unfulfilled. Employers too have a profound effect on employees’ careers. Some organisations have very formal career management processes, while others are very little concern about it. Career management is defined as ongoing process of preparing, implementing and monitoring career plans. It can be undertaken either by the individual alone or can be a concerted activity along with the organisation’s career systems. Career management is a process that enables the employees to better understand their career skills, develop and give direction to it and to use those skills and Continue reading
Integration of Payroll System with HRIS
Computerization began in the human resource area via the payroll system. Payrolls are large masses of detailed information which need to be accurately and quickly updated. This is a fundamental accounting activity, so organizations had little hesitation in introducing such systems. Early systems were computer bureaus where data was processed outside the organization. Initially, it seemed that the promised benefits of computerization had finally arrived. The army of pay clerks was substantially reduced. However, new issues relating to input errors and processing delays soon arose. It is important for HR managers to understand this history because it explains why many early (and even some contemporary) HRIS have a bias towards payroll activities. Payroll processors first attempted to introduce Human Resource Information System (HRIS) in the mid-1970s when a major vendor offered a HR system with some additional fields of information that could be manipulated. Although a crude attempt Continue reading