HR frame
...e resisted using contractors. According to Paul Meehan, the managing partner of Bain in Australia, it is unusual to work with contractors, because people have to be trained in technology and toolkit, and that is not something companies can easily contract in. It is vital that managers are very careful when recruiting future workers, otherwise company can suffer significant loss. For example, Bain Ltd experienced crisis, because management consultants hired too many people lowering their hiring standards during the tech boom (Roberts 2004). They had to invest a lot of money in training and development of new workers. 3. Maximizing personnel potential Employee training and development is an attempt to improve employee performance by changing the employee’s attitudes or increasing his or her skills and knowledge (Schein 1977). HR director of Anderson ZurMuehlen & Co Linda Graham says that:”If we are going to continue to grow, we need to make sure we have our staff in the right places so that we have people who aspire to be mangers getting the right training.” Under new system introduced by her, each employee works with a coach to set one goal every three months. Each goal is broken into specific tasks with completion dates. This system enables to use each employee’s potential, but most importantly it makes employees learn new tasks quickly (Behind The Scenes At … 2004, p.5). Marilyn Blackwood, director of global HRMS for CAE, shares Linda Graham’s opinion. She states that in order to meet changing demands, employees have to be retrained. This will enable the organization to move ahead with many different projects but with the same staff (Brown 2004). Training process enables companies to create knowledge and skills to foster growth. However, it is crucial to retain already qualified and experienced workers within the organization. Many companies have noticed the difficulties that could arise if too many older workers retire too quickly, but few have realized what will happen when all the knowledge, experience and expertise is not transferred to the next generation of managers. In the article “Older, Wiser, and Retiring”, the Chief Executive of ANZ Bank, John McFarlane says that ANZ Bank needs to recruit young people and advance them as its future, but retaining the knowledge of mature workers will be vitally important in shaping Australia’s economy. Therefore older workers should be mentoring, training and teaching younger workers (Thomson 2004). Furthermore, Monica Barron, senior workforce management strategist at AMR Research contended that HR tends to spend too much time measuring turnover and not enough time identifying stars and retaining them, and making sure critical knowledge is kept in organization (2004). The issue of retaining qualified workers is also mentioned in the article: “When Top Staff Are Head-Hunted”. In case experienced employees want to leave or are head-hunted, the leader must assess the effect of the person leaving the organization to gauge the potential effects of them working for competitor. Michael Swinsberg, a partner at Hamilton Partners recommends sitting down with the employee and discussing career development, looking at the alternatives within the organization and what resources might be available to create a future for them in the company (Juniper 2004, p.67). Similar approach should be undertaken by managers when convincing young employees to stay in the company. That is because training and development are expensive and firms attain little benefit if graduate employees leave after two or three years. An employment consultant at Trevor Associates, Edwin Trevor, stresses: “When people are employing young employees, they need to realize that employees are going to want to stretch their wings fairly early on.” The role of manager in this situation is to challenge young workers with new tasks and give them the opportunity to learn (Heathcote 2004, p.80). 4. Personnel effectiveness Today company’s performance depends not only on cash or plant and equipment, but also on vision, various types of knowledge and employee loyalty (James 2004a). Employee performance can be identified in terms of outcomes that people accomplish on the job and what they do that affects those results. Performance is always tied to results, employee behavior, compensation and training (Schuler 1981). Angela Baron, advisor in Charted Institute of Personnel and Development, expresses her opinion on high performance companies by saying: “It is easy to assume that most of organizations are carrying so-called high performance personnel practices, but the reality is that many of them do not even have basic tools in place to bring about the alignment of people management and business performance.” Baron believes the secret of effective performance management system is about giving line managers the tools to do their jobs properly, making sure people know what is expected of them to meet business goals (Falconer 2004, p.6). A problem with unsatisfactory performance in the company can also be disorganized staff. In this case Peter Stephenson, the executive director of Stephenson Partnership, recommends determining the activities that are wasting too much time, such as too many meetings, e-mails and time spent on other irrelevant activities. It is important to focus on the few tasks that will contribute most to achieving business objectives (Ross 2004). 5. Appraising and compensating employees The compensation payments can significantly affect employee performance. The survey from Towers Perrin Consulting revealed that competitive base pay and healthcare benefits were the top factors that influenced performance. In addition what attracted employees to the companies were: the importance placed on learning and competitive retirement package (Simson 2004). Part of company’s reward system can be indirect compensation. It provides benefits to employees for their membership in the organization (Schuler 1981). Claridge Hotel introduced new financial incentive scheme based on indirect compensation to cope with its employee turnover problems. Claridges’s HR director Sara Edwards created an instant rewards program. Once a month em...