Evaluating HRM Objectives, Functions & Change Management Theories

This report provides a detailed analysis of Human Resource Management (HRM) objectives and the role of HR functions in contemporary organizations. It covers key areas such as recruitment, training, compensation, and ethical considerations. The report also summarizes different ways HR objectives can be delivered, referencing Ulrich's model, and analyzes how the HR function varies across organizations of different sectors and sizes. Furthermore, it explains major theories of change management, illustrating their application and evaluation. The report also includes a discussion on evaluating the contribution of the HR function to the business using methods like balanced scorecards and benchmarking. Finally, it identifies and evaluates research evidence linking HR practices with positive organizational outcomes, emphasizing the importance of high-performance work practices. Desklib provides access to this and similar solved assignments for students.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
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Table of Contents
Question 1: Main organizational objectives that the HR function is responsible for delivering
....................................................................................................................................................2
The main functions of human resource department...............................................................3
Hiring and recruiting..............................................................................................................3
Training and development......................................................................................................4
Handling compensation..........................................................................................................4
Question 2: Give a brief summary of two different ways HR objectives can be delivered in
organisations. Analyse how the HR function varies between organisations in different sectors
and of different sizes..................................................................................................................6
Ways of delivering HR objectives:........................................................................................6
Change agent:.........................................................................................................................6
Employee Campion:...............................................................................................................7
Administrative expert.............................................................................................................7
Question 3: Theories of change management............................................................................8
Step 1: Create Urgency:.........................................................................................................9
Step 2: Form a powerful coalition:.........................................................................................9
Step 3: Create vision for change:.........................................................................................10
Step 4: Communicate the vision:.........................................................................................10
Step 5: Overcoming obstacles..............................................................................................10
Step 6: Create short term wins:............................................................................................10

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Step 7: Build on change:.....................................................................................................10
Step 8: Anchor change in corporate culture:........................................................................11
Question 4: Contribution of HR function in organization.......................................................11
Balanced scorecard...............................................................................................................11
Benchmarking......................................................................................................................12
Question 5: Identify and evaluate the human resource management with positive
organizational outcomes...........................................................................................................13
References................................................................................................................................17

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Question 1: Main organizational objectives that the HR function is responsible for
delivering
Human resource management is a function and a part of an organization which mainly
focuses on the recruitment of employees, managing the employee and providing direction to
the employees and the people engaged in the organization (Ulrich et al. 2013). The major role
that is played by the human resource management is to recruit the required skills in the
company and coordinate it with the company. The human resource management is executed
by the superiors, the human resource department along with the line managers. It is also the
function of the human resource management is to deal with the issues related to
compensation, hiring, management, development, performance, safety, and wellness,
motivation of the employees, communication, training and administration. Human resource
management can be defined as “The people that staff and operate an organization”. The
human resource department of an organization form to organize the people and the
employees of the organization, reporting relationships and they work in a way that helps to
best support the accomplishment of the goals and objectives of the organization. The human
resource department of an organization contributes the organizational effectiveness by
helping the organization attain its goals and objectives, employs the abilities and skills of the
people in the workforce in an efficient and effective way. They ensures the organization with
well motivated staffs and trained employees, which in turn helps the organization to attain the
desired objectives, the human resource department functions to ensure that the employees
work efficiently and gain job satisfaction. They develop and maintain the quality of work life
of the employee in the workforce and make employment desirable in the organization
(Vernon and Brewster 2013). Moreover, they help the organization to maintain the ethical
policies and promote socially responsible behavior in the workplace. The functions of the

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human resource management and the profession of human resource department have
undergone major changes over the 10-20 year. Previously the large organizations consider the
personnel department which mostly managed the paperwork and perform the function of
hiring the employee and paring to them. In the recent years, the large organization have
considered HR department which plays a vital role in staffing, training and developing the
employees, managing the employees and enabling them to perform to utilize their talent
effectively.
The main functions of human resource department
Hiring and recruiting
One of the primary functions of human resource department is to hiring and attract the right
talent for the required position in the organization. The human resource management teams
are engaged in actively recruiting employees, screening, taking interviews and hires the
qualified candidates for the open position (Bratton and Gold 2017). The processes of
recruitment and hiring have evolved has evolved with the emergence of several trends of
recruitment. The first trend is recruitment marketing which includes the process of nurturing
as well as attracting talented candidates to the company using marketing methods as well as
tactics.

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The next trend is the emergence of inbound recruiting. This is a marketing strategy for
recruiting whereby the organizations proactively as well as continually attract the candidates
with the goal of making them select the next employer. The last evolution is the emergence of
the employer brand. This implies the development of the organizational reputation as an
employer. In order to attract the potential candidates, the organizations seem to expand their
employee value proposition in context to the development of their image as a general
corporate brand.
Training and development
The human resource department contributes to positive organizational change by
providing them training and development opportunity to enhance the skills and abilities of the
employees to perform better in an organization. It creates training programs and conducts
training for the new recruits and the existing employees in an organization. Enhancement as
well as development of the processes of training and development have vital implications
towards any organization in terms of fulfilling its aim of progressing. Firstly, the modern
methodologies of training and development help in addressing the weaknesses of the
employees. Identification of the areas of weaknesses also helps in elevation of the workers’

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performance. Other outcomes of the training processes faceted towards the organization are
the ensuring of workers’ satisfaction which helps to increase productivity in the long run.
Increase of employees’ efficiency also implies that there will be a reduction of cost of
operations as well as reduction of the supervisions needs since the surveillance needs of the
organisation will reduce.
Handling compensation
Another main function of human resource department is to take the responsibility of
various aspects of employee compensation. The department handles and manages the payroll
of the employees and pay to them accurately on time. They manage the compensation
programs including pensions and other fringe benefit to the employees that is offered by the
employer(Bratton and Gold 2017). They are also responsible for managing all aspects of
employee benefits such as health and wellness programs.
In today’s context, HR professionals are highly responsible for adding value to the
organizations they are serving for and they contribute to the ethical success of the
organization. They must be managed in an ethical, professional and just manner. They are
responsible for the professional behavior, decisions and actions of the employees in an
organization. They must be engaged in activities which enhance the credibility and value of
the organization. They are to be engaged in professional development, in other words, as HR
professionals they must strive to meet the standards of competence and commit to strengthen
the competencies of the employees on a continuous and regular basis (Brewster 2017).The
HR professional is expected to be an ethical leadership, in other words, they are expected to
exhibit individual leadership. It is important for maintaining the highest standards of ethical
conduct. It is helpful for the organization to carry out its activities in an ethical professional
and in a just manner.

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Keeping the salaries and benefits competitive, the organization prompts the employees to
loyal to the company and prevents their urge for turnover. Factors like lack of opportunity for
growth, stress as well as overwork and so on are the factors that the organizations need to
take care of in order to ascertain that they are able to retain their best employees.
Question 2: Give a brief summary of two different ways HR objectives can be delivered
in organisations. Analyse how the HR function varies between organisations in different
sectors and of different sizes
According to Ulrich model, developed by David Ulrich suggest that is large scale
business and organizations, the functions of Human Resource should be compartmentalized
into four segments that is strategic partner, change agent, administrative expert and employee
champion. He further stated that shared service and activities along with a supportive
technology which can provide basic support to the business (Ulrich et al. 2013). It suggests
ways to deliver the human resource objectives in its basic principle of creating a unified
structure which helps to deliver value and have a clear distinction and role for the human
resource professions. It creates a competitive edge for the company and is able to measure the
performance of the company as per the metrics. It provides a benchmark for the organization.
Ways of delivering HR objectives:
Strategic partner: the human resource management is currently viewed as a strategic partner
where they perform the function of aligning with the organization. Strategic human resource
considers employees to be an asset for the company that provides competitive advantage to
the organization and leverage the success of the organization (Pollack and Pollack 2015).
This is a new way that is adopted by the companies for handling the employees and making
them prime drivers of corporate success. The organizations considered adopting this way, as
there is high probability for positive results or outcome.

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Change agent:
It is also the responsibility of the department of human resource management to anticipate the
future changes that are most likely to occur in the business environment and it operates, takes
decision to overcome the challenges.
Employee Campion:
The human resource must be the voice of the employees and provide feedback to them.
Implementing this particular model happens by incorporating the objectives of the company
along the various opportunity and challenges that are faced by the company.
Administrative expert
it is the responsibility of the human resource department to implement the procedures and
policies of the HR department and relate to the strategic plan of HR.
The human resource department and the functions of the human resources have
evolved into more strategic contributor for the success of the organization. As compared to
the functions of human resource back in 20 years. In today’s context, the firms have
customized its functions to suit the needs of the company (Pollack and Pollack 2015). Human
resource management is conducted in variety of ways due to the constraints and the strategic
decisions that is taken by the organization to meet the goals and objectives. The functions of
human resource department in specific organizations are unique in most aspects. Every
business organization has a unique functional structure in the staffing role. Some business
organizations combine the responsibilities and roles of the employees with reducing the
wages. Other organizations create unique department which are unique to the production and
service delivery program (Neumeier 2013).The organizations of different sectors and size
determine the roles and functions of the human resource department. Large size organizations

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have a hierarchical structure and the human resource managers oversee the line mangers
below them. On the other hand, the small size organizations, have human resource manager
and the department to perform functions of recruiting, interviewing and the overall
professional and ethical conduct of the staff and the employees of the organizations (Pollack
and Pollack 2015).It has been analysed that as the organizations grow and expand, it becomes
increasingly complex and increasingly difficult to coordinate the employees and workers
involved in an organization. Therefore, it can be said that the organizations structure
themselves as per the sector in which it operates. Generally, the sophistication and the
importance of human resource department is larger and greater in large organizations. In
divisional organizations, they are able to react to the environmental changes faster as they are
small companies. The divisions encourage team spirit and therefore the human resource
managers develop broad skills as they have control of all the basic functions (Neumeier
2013). In private sector companies, the human resource functions are very powerful.
Recently, the companies are highly strategic in its orientation and are focused on the long
term decision making. The HR professionals having open door policies might see the same
grievances coming from the number of employees and relay that data to their managers,
implying that they change the way in which things are done in which things are done so that
the workers are happier.
Question 3: Theories of change management
Change management is considered as a systematic approach of dealing with the
transformation of the organization’s objectives, goals and change in the technologies. The
main aim and purpose of the change management is to implement policies and strategies for
controlling change and effecting change along with helping the staff and employees of the
organization to adapt to the changes(Vernon and Brewster 2013). Change management helps

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to implement change powerfully and in a successful manner. There are new initiatives taken
by the business organization, the changes in the technological developments and
improvements. These are some of the changes that are necessary to be implemented by the
companies to stay ahead of the competition. These developments and improvements come
together to drive the ongoing changes in the organizations practices and way of work.
Usually a sudden change in the business environment is intimidated by the scale of challenge
considering the small change or a system wide change to an organization. However, there are
various theories are can be adopted and implemented by the business organizations to adopt
to the changes.
Kotter, a professor at the Harvard Business School and World renowned change
expert introduced eight steps and process of change management in her book “Leading
Change’ in 1995. The steps are:
Step 1: Create Urgency:
it implies that the idea of change is quite powerful. An environment must be created within
an organization where the individuals are aware of the ongoing and existing problem and is
aware of a possible solution, it is more likely that the change in the organization with rise. It
is suggested to create a forum in the organization and generate a conversation over the arising
situation or the problem and communicate about the direction in which the organization
would go which will help them achieve it. The step of creating an urgency in the organization
is all about preparation and it is suggested by Kotter that around 75% of the management in
an organization is behind a successful change(Neumeier 2013). In other words, it is
important to take preparation for the change before taking steps to implement it. This step
creates the need for change.
Step 2: Form a powerful coalition:

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it is important to build a coalition to lead the entire change process to help the management to
direct others in the organization. In order to maximize its effectiveness, coalition must be
build up with a range of skills, experience and people of different areas of the business. It
step is important to spread the messages in all levels of the organization, delegate tasks and
ensure support for the change in the organization wide. Change is more likely to be
successful if the team members complement each other and drive every other member to
work harder(Pollack and Pollack 2015).
Step 3: Create vision for change:
At times it is harder to understand change particularly at the lower level employees of the
hierarchy. Therefore, create a vision for change makes it easier to understand the overall aim
in a useful manner and generating support from the whole organization. The vision for
change must be simple and understandable.
Step 4: Communicate the vision:
The vision that is created in the organization needs to be communicated throughout the
organization. It is important to communicate the message in all the levels of the organization.
Step 5: Overcoming obstacles
The next step is important to build strength of the change initiative and overcome the
obstacles, difficulties and challenges which is likely to reduce the chances for success
(Neumeier 2013). The barriers must be identified and it needs to rely on the available
resources to overcome them without disrupting the other areas of the business.
Step 6: Create short term wins:

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short term targets are some of the important tools for directing and motivating the employees.
Utilizing the wins to justify investment and effort will help the employees to continue
backing with the change.
Step 7: Build on change:
It is argued by Kotter, that it is important to sustain the change for the long after the
accomplishment of the change in the organization. It needs to keep setting goals and analyze
the areas and ways to perform better for continuous improvement.
Step 8: Anchor change in corporate culture:
It was mentioned by Kotter that change not only implies changing the habits and processes of
the employees but it should be a part of the core of the organization in order to have a lasting
effect on keeping the stakeholders (Neumeier2013). It needs to encourage the new employees
to adopt the changes and promote change in the organization.
Question 4: Contribution of HR function in organization
There are several approaches to HR evaluation, the most prominent among the HR
evaluation approaches includes: Balanced scorecard perspective, Benchmarking and KPI’s.
Two of them are described below:
Balanced scorecard
Balanced scorecard developed by Robot Kaplan and David Norton helps to evaluate
effectiveness of the human resource management. It contains four dimensions including
financial performance of the organization, the customer services offered by the company, the
internal business process and the organization’s capability to learn and achieve growth in the
organization. The managers of the organization need to identify the key performance

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indicators within the mentioned four dimensions (Akkermans and Van Oorschot 2018). The
financial aspect of the business reflects the concern of the activities performed by the
organization which contributes towards improving the short term and long term financial
performance of the organization.
The customer service perspective measures the view and the perspective of the
customers towards the organization along with customer retention and customer satisfaction.
This indicator focuses primarily on the production and the operating statistics of the business
such as the cost per order, order fulfillment. The final component relates to the potential of
human resource to learn and grow(Akkermans and Van Oorschot 2018). This seeks to focus
on the efficiency and effectiveness in the process of managing the resources and the human
capital of the organization for its benefits. The balanced scorecard helps to provide a
balanced picture of the present performance of the business and it also indicates the future
performance of the organization. It helps the managers of the organization to align its
business units along with the financial, physical and human resources to the overall strategy
of the firm.
Benchmarking
Benchmarking is another approach for evaluating the performance of the
organization. It involves employee learning and adopting the best practices comparing it with
the practices of human resource management with those of the organizations. Essentially,
Benchmarking involves studying the practices of the competing firm and evaluate the
employees own practices. It enables the Human resource professionals to evaluate their own
practices, further, benchmarking enables the managers to learn the practices of the competing
firms and adopt effective human resource strategies. Additionally, it helps to create and
initiate the need and purpose of change as it identifies the ways that is to be adopted by the

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organization to improve in relation to the human resource strategy in excellent organizations
(Church and Rotolo 2013).
Benchmarking includes the following process:
1. Identifying the human resource practices of an organization for benchmarking. The
critical practices of the organization’s perspective are needed to be identified for
benchmarking.
2. The next step includes constituting the core or the project team in order to handle the
process of benchmarking.
3. The third step includes identifying the benchmarking partners or organizations from
the same or different firms, the competitors and non-competitors or the multinational
organizations which have tried the best practices in a successful way.
4. The fourth step needs to collect data from various benchmarking partners such as A,
B and C firms.
5. After the data is collected, the data must be analyzed and interpreted correctly.
6. After proper analysis and interpretation of the data, a comprehensive report needs to
be prepared based on the data analysis and interpretation.
7. The last stage needs to develop action plans to improve the strategies and practices of
human resource management.
Question 5: Identify and evaluate the human resource management with positive
organizational outcomes
It has been observed according to Noe et al. (2017) that there are positive relationship
between the human resource department and organizational performance as per the literature.
The performance management program has impact on the relationship. The study of Ulrich et
al. (2013) suggests low level of performance management programs results in low employee

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development which in turn decreases the organizational performance. The development of
employees depends on two important measures that is training, development and promotion.
Thus it can be said that the there is a significant relationship between the investment in
employee development and the organizational performance. Numerous authors including
Bratton and Gold (2017) have suggested that it is required to better understand the process of
the human resource practices which highly impact the performance of the organization. It has
been researched that the that the performance of an organization can be broken down into
four categories: the first category is most proximal to the human resource practices , the
outcome of the employees performance deals with the consequences of the practices of
employees including their attitude and behavior such as absenteeism and employee
turnover(Brewster 2017). The less proximal includes the organizational outcomes which
focus on the operational measures of performance including productivity and quality of
performance. These are precursors to profitability. The financial performance measures
include the profitability, expenses and revenues. Finally the more distal to the human
resource practices includes the market based outcomes which reflects the financial market
value of the firm particularly stock price variations. Various researches suggests that the
human resource practices impacts the employee outcome and the performance of the
organization, thereby affecting the financial outcomes and resulting in the market based
outcomes (Brewster 2017).
Therefore, it can be concluded that the human resources practices implements the
organizations in various other ways and the principles are to be followed, such as the
responsibilities of the senior management for incorporating a strong supportive culture in the
company, the policies and practices of the people management in the organization must be
consistently followed and applied effective, the objectives and the goals of the organization
should be clear and achievable with the practices of high performance. Several studies

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suggest that the human resource practices play an important role in the organization to set the
employee experience in a way which drives the organizational outcomes. It has been argued
by Church and Rotolo(2013), that the human resource management practices must be
consistent with the organizational factors in order to be effective. The human resource
management and its practices create conditions for the employees in the workplace to achieve
the desired goals of the organization and influence the employee attribution. The practices of
the human resources are intended to achieve the objectives such as encouraging innovation
and the process deals with how the human resource practices are designed and administered
to send signals to the employees and allow the employees to create a shared meaning about
the desired response and collective sense of the organization’s expectations. Effective human
resource practices must consider flexible job assignment, performance management and high
selectivity (Noe et al. 2017)
These practices of human resource department of an organization contributes towards
increasing employee performance and organizational performance by enhance and positively
influencing the level of productivity in the organization and the financial performance of the
organization. The human resource management practices have a positive effect of motivating
the employees of the organization to adopt the required and the desired behavior in the
reorganization, the practices of human resource department must be linked to the
organizational climate, service environment and attain customer satisfaction(Ulrich et al.
2013). The findings of the study provides evidence that the outcome and performance of the
employees are stronger when the organizational provides them the opportunity for involving
in the decision making of the organization and enable them to organize the work in such a
way that allows the employees a high level of discretionary efforts in the process of doing the
work. The practices of human resource are based on the concept and idea that the closer a

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firm’s human resource practices resembling the correct prototypical system, the greater is the
performance gain of the organizations(Bratton and Gold 2017)
It has been researched that the human resource department such as the use of selective
recruiting, the manner of training and development and the active participation of the
employee in the decision making process of the organization were considered conductive to
the organizational learning. Whereas, the group performance based compensation did not
have must significance for the organizational learning and development. Therefore it can be
concluded that the human resource practices of an organizations positive impacts the
organizational performance.

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References
Akkermans, H.A. and Van Oorschot, K.E., 2018. Relevance assumed: a case study of
balanced scorecard development using system dynamics. In System Dynamics (pp. 107-132).
Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017. Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.
Brewster, C., 2017. The integration of human resource management and corporate strategy.
In Policy and practice in European human resource management (pp. 22-35). Routledge.
Church, A.H. and Rotolo, C.T., 2013. How are top companies assessing their high-potentials
and senior executives? A talent management benchmark study. Consulting Psychology
Journal: Practice and Research, 65(3), p.199.
Neumeier, M., 2013. Using Kotter’s change management theory and innovation diffusion
theory in implementing an electronic medical record. Canadian Journal of Nursing
Informatics, 8(1), pp.1-9.
Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B. and Wright, P.M., 2017. Human resource
management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Pollack, J. and Pollack, R., 2015. Using Kotter’s eight stage process to manage an
organisational change program: Presentation and practice. Systemic Practice and Action
Research, 28(1), pp.51-66.
Ulrich, D., Younger, J., Brockbank, W. and Ulrich, M.D., 2013. The state of the HR
profession. Human Resource Management, 52(3), pp.457-471.
Vernon, G. and Brewster, C., 2013. Structural spoilers or structural supports? Unions and the
strategic integration of HR functions. The International Journal of Human Resource
Management, 24(6), pp.1113-1129.