Human Resource Management Essays: Training, Appraisals, and Motivation

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Running Head: ESSAYS IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOPICS
ESSAYS IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOPICS

ESSAYS IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOPICS
Table of Contents
2. Many organizations fail to evaluate training and therefore cannot prove that it is a worthwhile
business investment. How might they go about an evaluation process?.........................................3
Essay 1 – Significance of training and evaluation process for an organization...........................3
4. Identify the positive and negative aspects of appraisals and the impact of them on the
psychological contract.....................................................................................................................5
Essay 2 – Positive and negative aspects of appraisals and their impact on psychological
contract.........................................................................................................................................5
6. How can an organization’s reward package be enhanced to improve motivation without
increasing and employee’s salary?..................................................................................................8
Essay 3 – Improving an employee’s motivation through reward package without increasing the
salary............................................................................................................................................8
Reference List................................................................................................................................11
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2. Many organizations fail to evaluate training and therefore cannot prove
that it is a worthwhile business investment. How might they go about an
evaluation process?
Essay 1 – Significance of training and evaluation process for an organization
The training and development of employees in an organization form a significant part of the
entire job process and company operation. It is very important that the employees are highly
skilled and adequately trained according to the roles that they need to perform within an
organization. The skills are required at personal levels so that the organization can perform
significantly well at an organizational level. The growth of competition at a tremendous rate in
the market has catapulted the role and importance of training. Moreover, the constantly changing
demands and necessities of customers are giving rise to a need of continuous development
introduction of the services from an organization (Jabbour, 2015). Hence, it becomes essential
for the employees working for that organization to stay updated according to the existing
scenario of business in the market. Many organizations avoid investing a huge amount in training
and development of the employees. However, it is important to understand by the management
and decision making authorities of the company that investing in training of the employees is
beneficial for long-term business. Hence, the company management must ensure that an
adequate amount of fund is invested for training and development purposes. The evaluation of
skills possessed by the employees is also very important because it gives an idea about the
potential of employees according to the requirements of existing market (Hughes et al. 2016).
Any organization can go for the evaluation process by following some important steps as per the
company operations’ requirements. The first step required is to conduct an evaluation process for
training and development of a group of employees is to identify the areas that are required to be
improved. The process of identification can be completed by looking at the opportunities
available in the market and how they can be used in order to develop for improve the existing
products and services delivered by the company in the market. The next step requires the
identification of scopes and feasibility of implementing some evaluation procedures in the
training module. The management authorities and Human Resource Department needs to identify
the potential areas where training can be implemented and prove to be useful for the company
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employees. It is also very important to ensure that the company does not invests resources for
training and development related activities without any calculation or finding out the right
proportion. A cost analysis is very important to be done by the Human Resource Department and
administrative department of an organization where the total cost and time there is to be invested
in training and development of the employees can be calculated accurately (Patterson et al.
2016). The scope of training can be chosen accordingly so that the company does not have to
carry the extra burden of training the employees while putting a potential halt on its profit margin
and active services. The market analysis give a brief idea regarding what should be the training
all about and how the people can benefit from improve services of the company. A well
organized and balanced set of syllabus is to be designed by the senior level management based
on which training is to be provided to the Employees. The duration of training is to be kept short
enough so that the company can use its human resources within a short duration. However, the
entire training session must also be long enough for the trainees to how to get adequate
knowledge about the company operations as well as market scenario. The senior level
management also needs to identify the different departments functioning within the company and
how the overall development and progress can benefit the same (Clair and Milliman, 2017). The
training curriculum is to be designed according to the roles and responsibilities held by different
people working for different departments of the company. Moreover, the structure of training
should also be designed as per the designation of the employees. The training structure and
curriculum must include all the basic knowledge about the organization and the market for the
trainees that have newly joined the company. However, in order to provide training to the
already existing employees, there has to be an entirely different set of activities to be conducted
in the training sessions. The decision making authorities of an organization must be aware of the
chances and possibilities of making changes in any existing curriculum of the training. The
flexibility of any training session ensures that the employees can adapt to the rapidly changing
scenarios in the market. The training and development authority which is usually a part of the
Human Resource Department must ensure that the employees are learning about the training
related activities properly. This can be confirmed by conducting necessary tests and assessment
techniques for the trainees (Jabbour and de Sousa Jabbour, 2016).
The primary objective of any training and development session is to increase the productivity of
an organization at personal and organizational levels. Therefore, it is important to know that the
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cost invested during training and development of employees can be retrieved back once the
adequately trained employees start working more efficiently for the company. An organization
that invests necessary resources for training the employees is more likely to expect better service
delivery from the workers. Considering the research and development department of an
organization, it can be said that a company that is investing adequate amount of resources in
order to train the workers will give more opportunities to those workers to show their potential
(Bergsmann et al. 2015). Moreover, it is also important to ensure that the workers operational in
the production line of an organization are highly skilled in doing the task that require a high level
of expertise. This can be achieved only by constant training and practice. This will ultimately
reduce the chances of error resulting into a better form of product or service to the customers.
Hence, it can be said that the company will receive better profit returns due to its investment in
training session. Moreover, and the reputation of the company is also very likely to go high
establishing a better brand image among the customers for the company (McCrory et al. 2017).
4. Identify the positive and negative aspects of appraisals and the impact of
them on the psychological contract.
Essay 2 – Positive and negative aspects of appraisals and their impact on
psychological contract
Performance-based appraisals are very important for the employees because it motivates then to
work for the company in a much better way. Appraisals are basically the feedback provided by
any senior management level authority to the performance of an employee. This is done after
evaluating the entire performance shown by any individual employee over a specific time period.
The psychological impact of an appraisal on an employee entirely depends on the type of
appraisal that employee has received. A positive appraisal feedback by the team leader or senior
manager to the employee is more likely to boost his or her morale and make that person put in
even better efforts. On the other hand, it might also result into a higher level of confidence often
resulting into overconfidence among the employees (Lomas and Ivtzan, 2016). As a result of
this, the performance of an employee might go down in the next year. Another major impact of
appraisal is the price of competitive spirit among the employees. The employees working within
the same team or group can develop a sense of competitiveness among each other which will
further motivate them to perform even better in every sense. However, this can also work in a
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reverse way where the employees can get involved into a better conflict or a psychological cold
war. There might be chances that the employees might not cooperate with each other during
teamwork and focus on individual development. This is likely to cause the entire team in the
form of financial losses in the future and a potential bad reputation to the company in long-term
business (Barford et al. 2018).
However, a negative feedback mention in an appraisal can also result in to both positive and
negative consequences for the employee at a psychological level. There are employees that can
take the matter seriously and get depressed due to their negative feedbacks. However, there are
other employees that can learn from their mistakes and implement their better technique and
improve on their areas of improvements. There are several positive and negative impacts of
appraisals in general towards an organization. Some of the positive impacts of appraisals include
proper structuring of the company, providing feedback to the employees in time, clarifying the
expectations, annual planning, and proper documentation. The delivery of appraisals to the
Employees result into a well organized system of documentation based on which the company
can decide on its future course of action (Virick et al. 2015). The employees are finally able to
get their well awaited feedback from their managers. This is also very important to provide
promotions and increment to the employees. Another prominent advantage of appraisal is that
the company can form a particular structure of work based on the performance delivered by the
employees. Depending on the performance of the employees on different parameters, the senior
level management and Human Resource Department can easily decide upon the next
responsibility that is to be provided to an individual employee. The outcomes of the appraisals
are also very beneficial for the company management in order to identify the areas where
improvement is required for some specific employees. Delivery of feedback through appraisals
also clarifies the doubts among the employees. Moreover, it provides them an overview of the
necessary areas that are going well according to the organization’s perspective. Moreover, the
areas that need to be further worked upon by the company employees can also be identified and
clarified (Nicholls et al. 2016). In case an organization wants to expand its business by
establishing a new office at different location, the choice of employees to provide with the
responsibilities can be easily done by looking at their performances delivered by the workers. In
addition to this, opening a new dimension of business within the organization or starting a new
department can also be done with the help of appraisals. However, there are some negative
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impacts and aspects of appraisals. The most prominent negative aspect is that it is very time
consuming and also requires a huge amount of resources. It is also likely to create some natural
biases among the employees. There have been cases when it has been found that appraisals have
resulted into some negative experiences among the employees as well as the managers. This
usually reflects on the performance shown by the individuals on later stages. Conducting the
feedback analysis regarding performance appraisals is also one of the most stressful task that the
company management has to perform. There are certain moments where the managers have to
think very critically about providing feedback to an employee and have to take some difficult
decision due to the minor differences shown in the performance of the employees (Iqbal et al.
2015).
The senior level management often has to take a critical and difficult decision why providing
feedback and appraisal to any particular individual employee. This mainly happens whenever the
company needs to decide about the promotion of an employee and providing that person with
some new responsibilities. However, from the overall perspective, it can be said that the
companies need to perform their activities related to appraisals in order to conduct a smooth
business and also to encourage their employees. This is very helpful for the organization to meet
their business objectives and goals both in short term and long term businesses. The strategic
plans for future also decided on the specific performances of the employees displayed during any
particular time frame (Kim and Holzer, 2016). It is very important to implement the most
appropriate comparison techniques and analysis methods in order to carry out the appraisal
providing related activities for employees. Proper execution of feedback processes and delivery
of appraisals result into corrected deficiencies of people. The promotions and growth can also be
provided to the Employees fairly on the basis of merit without any unfair or biased practice. The
practices can also go wrong sometimes because of the choice of wrong methods of sampling.
Moreover, generalization can also occur resulting into some significant error in the techniques
that can psychological impact on employees. Hence, it becomes the responsibilities of Human
Resource Department officers to ensure proper execution of process of feedback delivery and
providing appraisals (Lloyd et al. 2016).
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6. How can an organization’s reward package be enhanced to improve
motivation without increasing and employee’s salary?
Essay 3 – Improving an employee’s motivation through reward package without
increasing the salary
Developing a sense of motivation among the employees is very important from the perspective
of individual development as well as an organizational growth. This can be done by providing
different types of opportunities and rewards to the Employees. The most important and popular
reward is salary hike for the employees. This practice of increasing the regular salary of the
employees is conducted in many organizations to keep the employees motivated. However, there
are several other methods of motivating the employees apart from increasing the regular salary
provided to them every month (Nyberg et al. 2016). The best way to keep them motivated is to
provide those incentives and extra bonus on the basis of their performance shown during work.
Rewarding the Employees with promotions and other facilities is also equivalent to increasing
their salary. Hence, the senior management can think about giving vocational benefits to the
employees in the form of monetary bonus. In addition to this, providing them with other similar
goodies and benefits are also very popular and important techniques of motivating the
employees. There are many organizations that make proper use of events and activities that go
around in the nearby vicinity of the offices. Providing the good performing employees with
movie ticket and free passes to some sports or music events is a great idea of motivating them it
to make them put in their best efforts while working for the organization (Kuvaas et al. 2016).
The senior management can also provide positive feedback to the Employees along with
appraisals so that at the employees can realize their strength and feel motivated. However, the
management also needs to be very careful about the negative aspects of providing appraisals that
are not often taken positively by the employees. The employees that do not manage to receive
positive feedback are more likely to find faults in the appraisal system of the company.
Moreover, they can also think about some personal differences and issues between them and
other employees regardless of its actual existence. The entire appraisal process is likely to be a
waste of time if it is not done appropriately by the management level authorities. This is because
any error in providing feedback can result into negative consequences to the company because
the employee will not be able to find out the areas of improvement (Kuvaas et al. 2018). The
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management and also organized several events within the organization and allow as well as
increase the employees to participate in those events. This might include some events associated
with the actual work for some extra curricular activity within the company premises. The
management can decide about short term goals that require some special efforts to be put in by
the company employees. There are many organizations where the team leaders and managers
decide about some weekly goals for which the highest performers are awarded with adequate
rewards. In addition to this, the managers of an decide about the rewards in the form of company
outings and picnics. Providing with a purpose of work is also very important it in an organization
to keep the employees motivated. This is because the employees are more likely to find their
interest in any activity that is quite challenging and at least on their skill sets. Therefore, some
innovative projects are initiated by the managers of an organization so that the employees can
make full use of their potential and creativity (Kumar and Patel, 2017). The implementation of
creative ideas by the employees of an result into some new technique of working that can benefit
the organization. Hence, the employees can be provided with a promotion for their creativity as
reward. The managers and team leaders often provide recognition to an employee with different
temporary designations and titles like “employee of the month”, “best performer of the quarter”,
and even “highest performance grade holder”. Apart from providing titles to the employees, the
senior level management authorities can also deliver verbal phrases to the employees and help
them perform even better in the future. This is very helpful because the employees can grow
their personal skills as well as contribute towards the better operations of the organization. The
organization also needs to maintain a balance between tangible and intangible bonuses or awards
that are delivered to the employees. The provision of one specific type of reward should not
overshadow the other type of reward (De Gieter and Hofmans, 2015).
It is the responsibility of the company management to ensure that at the rewards are provided to
the employees according to the work done by them and also as per the appropriate outcome. The
company managers need to decide about the best way to deliver their awards so that it works
positively for the employees. There are some employees who prefer to receive verbal praises and
recognition for their work whereas there are other types of employees who referred to receive
monetary benefits as rewards. The senior level management of those organizations must
therefore ensure that the right type of reward is needed for a specific work (Bénabou and Tirole,
2016). Providing with different responsibilities in several departments is also an effective
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technique of rewarding and employee. There are many employees that work very hard in order to
get it better grades in their appraisals so that they can receive an opportunity to switch to a
different department. Hence, the organization must regulate the workings of an employee as well
as the opportunities available for switching to different department. The successful provision of
better grades and an opportunity to sign up for a different department is exclusively beneficial
for the organization as well as the company. This is because an employee willing to switch to
different department is more likely to perform better if he or she switches to the department of
his or her interest. The companies can also decide about expansion of business or investing into a
new domain of work consisting of the best performing employees. This is also likely to be a
reward for the workers who have performed exceptionally well because they will be selected and
handpicked by the administration with new responsibilities to perform (Prouska et al. 2016).
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