Issues and Recommendations for Effective Human Resource Management

This article discusses the common issues faced by Human Resource Management and provides recommendations to avoid them and enhance employee and organizational performance. The issues include recruitment and outsourcing, compliance with laws and regulations, changes in management, development of leadership, workforce development and training, adapting to innovation, compensation, understanding various benefits package, recruiting and retaining talented employees, and diversity at the workplace.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
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Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Introduction
Human resource is a specific term that was being used in the 1900s; it was used widely in
1960s. It was introduced for people that work for numerous organizations in aggregate. Human
Resource management can be defined as employee management as well. In this management the
employees are considered as assets of that particular business. In the context of Human Resource
Management, employees can be referred to as human capital (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). The
management of human resources aim in making effective use of its employees maximizes the
return from investment and reducing the number of risks faced by the organization.
Traditional human resource management was very different from modern human
resource management. In the modern days, the term modern HR technology called Human
Capital Management (HCM) is more frequently used that HRM. The later mentioned term is
more widely adopted by small, medium and large companies as well as different organizations
related to software in order to manage numerous functions belonging to HR. Human Resource
Management consists of numerous functions, the areas include recruitment of employees,
retention as well as on boarding, talent management as well as workforce management,
assignment on various job roles, compliance of labor law, compensation, training and learning,
performance management, planning regarding succession, employee recognition and engagement
and many more (Brewster, Chung & Sparrow, 2016). These functions should be followed in a
proper manner, in case they are not carried out appropriately the department of HRM faces
numerous problems and the problems in turn affects the performance of employees.
The assignment discusses regarding various issues faced by Human Resource
Management in details. It also provides some recommendations that can be utilized by the

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organizations in order to avoid the issues and enhance the performance of employees and
organization in whole.
Discussion
Issues
Employees are considered a company’s asset. Businesses that invest in the teams that
they have would enjoy great growth, it would also outpace the competition. Effective Human
Resource Management is very important for any organization, this is because it creates a unique
culture in the workplace, and it emphasizes expectations, rules as well as standards for the
workplace (Chelladurai & Kerwin, 2017). Good HRM can help everyone to understand work
diversity, facilitate effective communication between employees and HR, it strengthens the value
of training as well as development and it eliminates the uncertainty of employees.
It is important to know the common HR problems that persist in an organization. this
would help the organization to put right policies as well as procedures in proper place. The
organization should understand the complexities in employee benefits, leadership development,
employment laws and many more areas would help the organization to stay ahead of the
competition as well as meet their business goals in future (Brewster, Houldsworth & Sparrow,
2016). There are numerous human resource issues that are significant. These issues are faced by
employers as well as employees. As the small and large scale businesses, the requirement of
human resource management and the ability to prevent the problems which accompany it is also
growing. Various issues faced by Human Resource Management are as follows
Recruitment and outsourcing: managing a workforce can be managed by knowing the
best ways to recruit the workforce. Recruitment has turned to be a marketing exercise in recent

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times. In order to recruit appropriate candidates, knowledge regarding ways to generate interest
in an organization or a certain job placement should be acquired (Wilton, 2016). Usually people
look for jobs that would address their requirements of a good family, home and work balance. A
good department of HR is not usually aware of this. The company also does not consider the
prospect of their security in a job in most of the times. Companies mostly concentrate on their
stability, employment and health benefits in the economic conditions that are unstable than
before.
Outsourcing is also considered as one of the major parts in the role of Human Resource
Management. Usually numerous organizations tend to hire freelancers in order to carry out their
extra tasks instead of recruiting salaried employees (Reiche, Stahl & Mendenhall, 2016).
Outsourcing creates problems for organizations because they are not aware of the policies
followed by the organization and there is not certain discipline followed by employees.
Compliance with laws and regulation: the laws related to employment keep changing
as the organizations develop and they try to improve the working principles of the company.
Coping up with the continuously changing employment laws is very difficult for the business
owners. Many organizations chose to ignore the laws of employment. They believe that these
laws do not apply to their organizations (Helmreich & Merritt, 2017). This might result in
lawsuits and audits. If this is done to the extreme point, the company might also get demised by
the company. This proves to be an issue for organizations.
Changes in management: the strategies utilized by an organization and its structure
changes when the organization grows its business. The internal processes change as well. The
growth of organizations produces new and innovative strategies, methods and structure. The

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HRM as well as employees need to cope up with the changes. Sometimes it is difficult for the
employees to cope up with these changes that have been brought about because with these
changes, the working principles of the organization change as well (Bailey, Mankin & Kelliher,
2018. A huge number of companies experiences a huge amount of decrease in their productivity
as well as morale while the changes are taking place. This instead of improving the state of
operations, many companies fall during the period of change.
Development of leadership: most of the companies do not perform well in the field of
developing leadership. They do not even bother to implement leadership development programs.
As per a survey that has been carried out, 36% of organizations found out that the leadership
development programs are not well developed and perform very poorly (Bell, Bryman & Harley,
2018). Lack of leadership development programs would make a company lose its focus from the
main objectives. This also makes causes interruption in its disciplinary, decorum and many more
policies usually,
Workforce, development and training: investing a certain amount of revenue as well as
time in the process of providing training and development of the employees who belong to a low
level is a very common HR problem (Blaikie, 2016). Usually businesses find it difficult to
arrange resources in providing training. Employees who are present in the front lines are some of
the organization’s hardest workers. These workers usually stay busy with their busy schedule of
work and are unavailable to provide training and people who belong to different organization or
not from similar background would not be able to provide training to the employees. This is
because they would hardly know anything regarding the organization and its operations.

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Adapting to innovation: Technology has been changing continuously, with these
changes organizations tend to update to these technologies. They try to update their working
principles by adapting the newer technologies. Usually businesses are quite quick in adapting
them and this leaves a chance for the competitors to leave a dust in this attempt.
Compensation: numerous companies struggle with the process by which they can apply
effective ways to structure employee compensation. Usually small businesses need to compete
with businesses that are small in size as well as the businesses that have bugger payroll budgets
(Benn, Edwards & Williams, 2014). Along with this, the organizations need to factor in the cost
of training, benefits, taxes and many more expenses that might range from 2 to 3 times the salary
of employees.
Understanding various benefits package: the Affordable Care Act is a pain point for
various organizations. The rise in healthcare costs meant that the companies must pass the costs
on the employers or take a hit to the bottom line (Bolman & Deal, 2017). Since better benefit
packages might be a factor that needs to be decided for the various potential hires, understanding
these hires is very important for the organization.
Recruiting talented employees: recruitment of employees in the organization might be a
very long process because just recruiting the employees is not the work, the actual work is to
recruit talented employees who can actually contribute their maximum to the business and help
in increasing the revenue of the company. Attracting employees who are talented is a great
investment of money as well as time. It usually proves very difficult for various entrepreneurs to
balance between hiring the appropriate people in the appropriate time and keep the business
ongoing (Tietenberg & Lewis, 2016). Along with these difficulties it is very difficult for a

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recruiter to know if an individual is really capable to do his job. It is very tough to know if the
person who is participating in the process of recruitment would be a good fit for the job. This is
unpredictable until the person works for the company for a few months.
Retaining talented employees: there has been a very fierce competition for talented
employees. Startups as well as very small companies usually do not have enough budgets to
implement retirement plans, insurance plans and many more employee benefits program which
are naturally provided by bug companies (Shields, Brown & Kaine, 2015). With this it is difficult
for small organizations to hire talented employees or employees with great knowledge. Along
with these, the employee turnover rate is more and this creates a great problem for the
organization in the field of operation as well as in terms of revenue.
Diversity at the workplace: usually an organization consists of employees belonging to
multiple generations. People belonging to elder generations have different cultural as well as
ethnic differences. These are few among a wide range of factors that make the workplace
diversity a continual change for various small businesses (Taylor, Doherty & McGraw, 2015).
These risks of the lawsuits of failure to protect the employees from harassment are real.
Recommendations
Creation of a culture of team work as well as respect would help the organization to
maintain a positive and productive working environment. Employees would stay motivated and
dedicated to contributing their hard work for the betterment of the organization (Ross, 2017).
Along with these practices, a diversity training program should also be implemented. Employees
are responsible for setting the specific standard of certain behavior in the working environment.

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Standard as well as system regarding accountability must be set up as early as possible, it would
help the organization to keep its employees happy, as a result increase their productivity.
On boarding is very effective for various employees (Jackson, Schuler & Jiang, 2014).
According to numerous researches that have been carried out, implementing an on boarding
process that is structured is very helpful for an organization; it increases the chance of employees
to stay in the company for three years or even more by 58 percent.
A staffing company can also be used by an organization. Staffing company is proved to
be one of the best ways to look for the right people for any business. They usually provide
solutions of temp to hire, this solution helps an organization to try and recruit new employees.
This provides hardly any risk or no risk in recruiting and trying new employees. This would save
money, time as well as decrease frustration of the organization (Head & Alford, 2015).
Sometimes this process also provides a business partner or a future executive to the organization.
Hence a staffing company can be used by an organization; it might be beneficial for the
organization.
An organization should ensure that they are in compliance with the local, federal labor
laws as well as the state. This should be ensured by every organization, weather it is a start up,
small organization or a multinational organization. There are numerous regulations for various
processes. The process might be anything, hiring practices, workforce safety, wage payment and
many more (Banfield, Kay & Royles, 2018). The organization should go through the Department
of Labor’s Employment Law Guide. This would help the organization, to follow the rules and
work accordingly.

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In every organization irrespective of their field and size, business owners must focus on
communicating various benefits of change for everyone. This can be started with regular
meetings among staffs. When a team understands what, how, when and why of change, there are
more chances that they would agree to get on board (Marchington, Wilkinson & Donnelly,
2016). Any decision regarding going on board should be taken with the consent of employees not
only from the consent of professionals from higher management.
Leadership development is very critical in keeping the management team busy as well as
motivated. They are also involved in preparing them to take up more responsibilities in the
future. They try their best to make it a part of their culture. Leadership development also helps an
organization to create various opportunities for employees for using their strengths on regular
basis. Leadership helps them to work in a cooperative manner in order to fulfill the objectives of
an organization (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). It also helps them to fulfill their personal objectives.
This way they are motivated and they are provided a chance to improve their skills that are
required for improving their performance in a workplace.
Organizations can arrange training and development program for every employee. Just
hiring employees is not enough for any organization; it would not give success or boost the
performance of the organization. Organization of training and development programs for low
level employees is a must, but this usually is a problem for every organization. This problem can
be mitigated easily because training and development do not really take a lot of money or time.
The company must recruit senior leadership and managers for mentoring the subordinate
employees (Brewster, Mayrhofer & Morley, 2016). Employees who do not have time to attend
training and development courses differently due to huge pressure, the organization can arrange
online training classes for them. This would help the employees to attend the training classes

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while they are at home. The organization must invest in their workforce which would help them
to have a productive and loyal team. A productive team would help the organization to be
productive as a whole.
Communication might be a serious problem for any organization, usually people
belonging to a higher authority does not find it important to communicate with the employees
belonging to lower posts. This leads to the problem. When any change is taken place in an
organization, every employee belonging to every department should be informed as well as
explained regarding the change that has taken place (Bryson, 2018). The employees should also
be informed why, how and when the change has taken place. Clear goals should be set in order to
adopt the initiatives as well as provide various employees with the training that they would
require for getting accustomed to the new change.
Salary is definitely the important factor for employees but it is not always the factor of
most importance for the job candidates. A system should be introduced that would be responsible
for rewarding the employees for their excellent performance. This factor can be introduced in
order to make up the low salary of the employees. Incentive programs can also be introduced
with the help of which the employees would be motivated and encouraged to work hard despite
their low salary (Deresky, 2017). The incentive programs can be bonuses provided to the
employees or profit sharing.
In the case of small businesses that have very few employees, may be lesser than 50
employees, they have numerous options for providing health care benefits. The company can
purchase a specific plan from different institutes like Small Business health Options Program
(SHOP). Following this would help the organization to take the specific tax credit. This tax

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credit would help them in reducing offset costs. The organization can also provide various
benefits like unlimited vacation time, free snacks, flexible shift timings, commuter benefits and
numerous wellness programs (Brewster, Chung & Sparrow, 2016). These benefits are quite
affordable for small businesses as well and it would also offer extra benefits to the employees
which would keep them motivated and encouraged to work for the organization. This would also
help the organization to be popular among the new generation of workforce.
Conclusion
From the above essay it can be concluded that, the human resource department faces
various challenges because their responsibilities become more strategic as well as broader in the
early 21st century. Human resource is described as more than just a basic function where the
department hires employees provides training and development programs for the improvement of
their performance. It can be described as a key element where the work force is developed which
aligns with the vision and mission of the company. With the increase in relevance obstacles
increase as well. The capacity of the nation to face various challenges of industrialization and
globalization of business depends greatly on the human capital and human resources available in
the organization. Firms have human resources, technology and capital but the human resource is
the factor that helps an organization to deal with various challenges faced by the business from
business globalization. Capital can be generated properly with appropriate steps than by the
organization. Technology can be generated as well. Unlike technology and capital human
resource cannot be generated, it has to be driven. This is done with the help of approaching
challenges with motivation as well as encouragement.

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Human resource management usually focuses on fulfilling the needs of businesses along
with the development and needs of employees. every organization depends on their employees
because the skills of employees contribute to achieving their business objectives. This essay
describes regarding various issues faced by any organization in the process of human resource
management. The issues area describes in details. Along with the issues the essay also discusses
some recommendations that can be implemented by organizations in order to improve their
human resource development strategy and improve the performance of the organization as a
whole.

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