Human Resource Management: Challenges and Practices

Human Resource Management

Human resource management refers to managing the activities related to the
human resources in an organization. It includes performance management, rewards
and recognition, conflict resolution and payroll management. HR managers have
different roles and responsibilities in an organization and they have to handle some
major issues as well. Three major challenges face by HR managers are-
 Balancing Work- Life- People have a very busy schedule in today’s life as both
husband and wife are working and they have to maintain their work- life
balance also. Effects of a working wife are more critical than the effect of
working husband and balancing this is a big challenge. It creates irritation
and distracts peace of mind of employees and they can’t work in an effective
way. It is very important to cope up with this issue so HR managers should
create a program by which they can able to create a balance between work
and life. There are some facilities that can be started at workplace like
childcare near workplace, job sharing, and sick- leave policies, dropping
children at schools and on site and care for sick children (Bebbington &
Özbilgin, 2013).
 Motivational Approaches- Motivation at workplace plays a very important role
because it is a major factor that influences employees in positive or negative
way. It is completely related to the achievement of organizational goals. If
there is an individual who is completely motivated then it becomes very easy
for them to complete the assigned task in the most effective and efficient
way. Every individual have different needs so there should be different types
of motivational tools used by the organization in order to motivate and
encourage the workforce. It helps in the productivity growth of the company.
It is important to maintain motivation among the employees in order to get
survival and success of the organization. There is a high market competition
and every organization has to keep a track on the employees motivational
factors like reward systems that can directly impact the job satisfaction
(Kirton, 2011).

 Employee Turnover- Employee turnover is a very major issue nowadays in the
organization because retention of employees depends upon different
criteria’s. Earlier people use to focus on economic survival but now the need
a proper balancing work life as well as family life. Career prospects and pay
are two important factors and due to that employees never want to stick to a
single company for the whole career life. It becomes difficult for HR manager
to focus on all the areas for management and find out the areas that leads in
employee turnover. Every manager has to be aware about the employees
and the reason of leaving the company. High employee turnover also leads
in high turnover rate as the recruitment process is very costly. There are
many kinds of indirect costs involved and it also decreases the productivity of
the company. One of the most important issues that companies are facing is
personal turnover. This refers to voluntary leaving the company. HRM plays a
very important role in finding out the issues related to employee turnover
and the methods to reduce the same. There are many developed countries
where new practices have been started to gain strategic advantage in the
market and to reduce employee turnover. But in case of developing
countries, the scenario is different as the focus in not given on personal
turnover and it results in inefficiencies and less productivity. It also hampers
the performance of the organization. In developing countries, they realize the
problem of personal turnover very late.
There are many human resource management practices that help in influencing
the decisions of the employees but such practices cannot create the same effect
on job satisfaction as well as employee turnover. In every country, employee
turnover differs from each other as in China (Korstanje, 2016), generally the
reason of employee turnover is assumed to be the less pay that results in
employee dissatisfaction and ultimately it leads to employee turnover. Qualified
employees never want to work in such organizations where there is a low pay
and they are not getting satisfactory appraisals. This is a very important
motivational factor (Perrewé, 2011).
Workplace diversity

Diversity in workplace refers to the differences between all the employees in terms
of culture, values, age, sex, ethnicity, professional experience, income values,
designation and knowledge. These parameters are related to the demographic,
socio- cultural and organizational factors that results in diversity. Demographic
factors refer to the age and sex, values, religion, ethnicity and culture,
organizational factors include work experience, income and educational
qualification. These sources of differences assist in the human resource
development of an organization.
This is the detailed classification that helps in creating an understanding,
appreciating as well as capitalizing all the benefits related to diversity. Due to the
same, there is a high improvement in maintaining the manager- subordinate
relationship and process of creating managerial decision, training, motivation,
recruitment and other management functions. The three strategic human resource
management approaches are-
 Individual control approach
 Group development approach
 Group management approach (Thacker, 2012)
Individual Control approach mainly focus on hiring people outside the organization
as well as control the performance with the help of strict adherence regarding
process, rules and procedures. The group development approach is totally related
to providing flexibility in order to making the decision to employees that are meant
for leadership roles. Group management approach is also known as middle-of-the-
ground approach in which there are many advantages for the group development
approach as well as individual control approach (Ivancevich & Konopaske, 2013).
In such cases, there is a high changes in diversity as per the expansion of the
companies. As it is known that domestic organizations are ethnocentric for
customer base and labor, multinational companies are of polycentric in nature and
they always focus on localize the workforce as well as the customer base as per the
host country. Global organizations are geocentric in nature because they acquire
the best talent from all over the world so that they can make up to serve all the