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The term human resources began to be used in management science in the mid-sixties. The model is directed at improving the deployment of the available manpower and leads to improved decision-making and control, while a bi-product is greater satisfaction on the part of the employees.
Since the early eighties human resources management has been developing into a science. The emphasis is primarily on the links between the strategy of an organisation (strategic planning, strategic management, strategic policy implementation) and the manner in which the personnel is employed as an implement of strategy. The awareness is growing gradually that human resources management is a perfect tool for realising company goals. The most well-developed part of the theory of human resource management is the construction of mutually-influential and mutually-reinforcing personnel instruments related to a strategic development plan. One can, for example, distinguish the following components: selection, placement and promotion, motivation of employees through rewards, training and development and evaluation. All these components can reinforce each other in a sort of master plan, in which the tasks are designed, the organisation is structured and the products and services are planned in order to respond to threats and opportunities in the (future) environment. HRM offers a clear point of departure, but little guidance when it comes to "ordinary" management skills. The management of an organisation thinking of applying human resources management may find the following pages useful.
The quality of employees is much like the quality of all collections: some are better than others and some are worse than the rest. If you have ten Rolls Royces, one still has to be the best and one the worst. This may be a generalisation, but it's one which management should reflect on occasionally. Because, when management is examining the potential of the organisation, one or more employees, one or more members of middle management, one or more senior executives will always catch their eye because he or she is not as good as the others. But if these less good employees were to be replaced by perfect ones, there would still be one or more employees about whom management would think: they're not as good as the others.
The constant replacement of the least good employees by better ones will result in an improvement in the average quality of the whole organisation, but it does not lead to satisfaction. It creates an unsafe atmosphere. Repeatedly sawing away the bottom step will eventually make a ladder unusable.
Just as the danger of absolute judgement threatens the least good employees, absolute judgement can also have unpleasant consequences for the best members of the team. The problem here is the well-known Peter Principle: each person is promoted to its level of incompetence. Those who are best at implementation are made supervisors, the best trainers become policy makers for training courses, the best financial workers are expected to lead a team of colleagues.
The mistakes made in promoting people have already caused enormous suffering, especially since any reversal of the decision is seen as loss of face by all concerned.
The practice of promotion is often based on the idea that it ensures talent remains available to the organisation. But there are other ways of ensuring this: creating challenging work in consultation with the parties involved, setting up temporary projects in which those involved can experiment with talents as yet untapped, task rotation, loaning employees to other organisations, etc.
Management should know which people are to be the core of the organisation in the near future. A decision of this kind must not be taken half-heartedly like: Okay I'll try it with X then, but if it doesn't work I'll find a way to get rid of X. Under those conditions X wont stand a chance to display his or her real talents. Because even X's can tell perfectly well when their bosses don't really appreciate them. An X who is taken along by the management against their better judgement in a process of change is a self-fulfilling prophecy with regard to poor quality work.
"Trained incompetence" is the phenomenon that turns perfectly competent people into incapable ones. The cause of trained incompetence can be the set of regulations which in the long term discourages people from independent thinking and problem solving. Apart from the straightjacket of regulations, codes and procedures, also disbelief in the abilities of the employee can create this kind of incompetence. Sometimes belittling comments can render an entire team completely clumsy and incompetent.
Now it's time to take a look at the members of the team who genuinely don't function all that wonderfully. Not because of trained incompetence or because of the Peter Principle, but simply because they just aren't that wonderful. The manager who has decided sincerely to keep someone of this kind, must ensure that management and human resources management are implemented just the same in this case. Developing someone's strengths and protecting the organisation against their weaknesses.
That calls for concentrated attention from management for the weaker figures. Management will have to force itself to analyse and possibly revise its own hierarchy of attention, in order, in matching tasks and people, to offer opportunities for the development of the strong points of the weaker brother or sister.
Often the problem with a poorly-functioning employee is that it has never actually been determined, together with the person involved, what he or she would be good at. There is a certain reticence about doing so afterwards, particularly when someone has been with the organisation for a number of years. Instead of approaching him or her, a new attempt is simply launched, in other words management thinks up a position in which the employee might have better prospects and then effects the transfer. This won´t work, because the implicit message overshadows the new opportunity: you are not satisfactory where you are now. The person involved could even think that the new job may well be its last chance. A two-way discussion is therefore preferable. Even better if discussions of this kind are held regularly with all employees. Best of all would be if management themselves would occasionally have a performance discussion with senior management or the board. There are a surprising number of people at all levels of organisations who simply do not known whether or not they are functioning satisfactorily.