In the conduct of performance of any business, it has often been regarded that the employees constitute the most important part of the organization. The employees are the backbone and foundation of the business because they make its operation possible. They are part of every success story, as well as the unfortunate failure of the organizations. Employees are the most valuable asset of the business. Overtime, the proper management of the company’s workforce has been called upon by concerned groups and even by the management itself. Various programs and practices have been designed and geared towards improving them and developing their skills so that they can be better assets in the operation of the organization. Successful human management skills have been called upon in order to improve the workforce. Effective employee recruitment and staff selection, improving the performance of the workforce, and reduction of staff turn-over are some of the immediate concerns of human resource departments in today’s modern working environment. It is of paramount concern that organizations should be able to maintain a dynamic labor force in order to achieve better performance. With this, employee resourcing has been a primary concern among organizations which are concerned about managing their people.
Introduction to Employee Resourcing
Employee resourcing has been defined as ensuring that the organization obtains and retains the human capital it needs and employs them productively. It is also about those aspects of employment practice that are concerned with welcoming people to the organization and, if there is no alternative, releasing them. This definition holds that the concept of human resourcing entails not only managing people when they are kept within the context of the organizational operations but also when there is a need to release them especially if their performance on their job does not at all seem to be satisfactory and productive. Employee resourcing answer questions which include the kind of people that the organization needs to compete effectively at present and in the near future and the things that the company needs to do to be able to attract and keep their most valuable asset as they influence a better performance of the business. This concept operates on the notion which puts paramount importance to the employee in the function of any business. It regards that the employees are indispensable to success and they should be therefore properly and effectively manage. They should be given continuous education and training so that they will also perpetually help in the improvement and growth of the business. Most importantly, organizations must be concerned on how to keep these employees which are considered investment in the business.
Employee resourcing is defined as the ability of the management or nay concerned group to be able to identify the suitable people which should be working in the organization and to be able to allocate the tasks and jobs which they have to work on while being employed in the said business. Moreover, the author also mentioned in his book that employee resourcing entails the presence and other practice related to management including: strategy and planning in which the management attempts to determine what will the human resource require in the near future like the number of employees, the skills that they need, and other relevant matters; research which is primarily concerned with identifying the competencies which are essential in the performance of tasks; recruitment which entails getting the best people from inside and outside the organization to work and help in establishing a better business; and selection which entails choosing the best among the crop to be working in the company. These functions associated with employee resourcing are very important among human resource practitioners and are often emphasized when choosing the work force of the business. A careful employee resourcing strategy will be a big help for the business to be bale to identify and to choose the best employees who will be working with them.
The Objectives of Employee Resourcing
The primary objective of an employee resourcing strategy would be to obtain the right basic material in the form of a workforce endowed with the appropriate qualities, skills, knowledge, and potential for future training. The selection and recruitment of workers best suited to meeting the needs of the organization ought to form a core activity upon which most other HRM policies geared towards development and motivation could be built. This major objective of employee resourcing necessitates that organizations are being called upon investing in their employees through proper recruitment and selection and adequate training which will provide them continuity in improvement in their various organizational functions. A sound employee resourcing strategy will result in a workplace of competent individuals who are geared towards performing at their best.
Aside from the above-mentioned there are also other objectives which are associated to employee resourcing and they are identified in the succeeding statements. The objectives of employee resourcing in today’s contemporary organizations also include determining the number of people required to meet business needs. This aspect must be evaluated carefully. The business exists in order to profit, therefore it must consider the number of people it employs to be assured that their compensation is within the business reach. With employee resourcing, there is a potential to properly identify how many are exactly needed to get the job done with the best results possible. Hiring too many people or too few employees can both generate problem in the business. It is also the objective of employee resourcing is to identify and manage the skills which are essential for business performance. It is an acknowledged fact that it is not enough that there is a presence of the right number of employees within the organization. There is a great need that these employees are the right people for the job and for the business. Prior to hiring these employees, there is a need to identify their respective skills which will be helpful in the business. These skills will be regarded as the assets of the employees and will be their edge against other during the recruitment phase of employee resourcing. Once hired, there is also a growing concern for management to manage these skills. This means that there is a need for the management to establish various programs which are geared towards improving the skills which were already present in the workforce. Workshops and training activities, for instance, are some of the avenues in which these skills can be better improved. Furthermore, another objective of human resourcing would be changing the organizational culture. The employees are the entities which show the major significance in forming a corporate culture. To be able to establish a sound organizational culture, there is a need to establish a sound labor force as well. With that, it is important for management to properly manage its people to be assured that only a sound culture will be practices within business performance. The attitudes, beliefs, and personal characteristics of the employees should be properly managed through employee resourcing in order to establish a better workplace. It is the duty of human resourcing to ensure that the above-mentioned objectives are being met by the strategies which were stipulated by the company towards managing its people.
Employee Resourcing Practices in Modern Organizations
As mentioned, the benefits that employee resourcing entails are quite significant in the operations of a business. The objectives which were earlier mentioned were also common among organizational practice. With that, organizations of today do not discount the importance of employee resourcing in its operations. The human resource managers and the company management are always concerned about this concept and on how such concept will be brought about inside the organizations. These reflect the practices which are aimed towards ensuring that the business is able to obtain and retain the human resource that it actually needs and employ them both effectively and efficiently. The human resource planning is composed of various steps and processes among organizations. Presented below are the processes and how they are practiced among selected organizations or industries.
The first process in employee resourcing is human resource planning. This process, human resource planning determines the people needed to meet the strategic objectives of the organization. It assures that the organization has the right number of people, in the right place, at the right time, with the aim of delivering the strategic plan of the organization. This concept holds and put an importance in determining the right people in the organization to carry out their functions and to be of help to the management is establishing their goals and objectives as they go on with business operation. Being viewed as a significant organizational process, this attempts to look at the future of the operation of the organization and takes a look at the future of business and environmental demands of the organization with emphasis on hiring the right and qualified employees to carry out such functions. For instance, Barclays is one of the leading banks in the United Kingdom with branches in different parts of the world. The employees who are involved in the operation of the bank are quite big in number as its operation extends fro its home country to different regions in the world. With the organization’s globally dispersed operation, it is paramount among management concern to put an emphasis on human resource planning to be assured that they are hiring only people which are fit in the banking and financial industry and those employees who are equipped with the necessary knowledge. The company will not employ people whom they deem are not worthy in the industry and who they thought can no longer be improved even with thorough training. In the year 2007, the company employs and estimated number of 134,900 employees. These employees were carefully selected by concerned individuals and groups and are believed to be contributing factors to the future of the company and helping the business achieve its goals. Along with hiring the right people, human resource planning in Barclays Bank will also entail questions such as what new technologies will affect the working system and what is the employee turn-over rate and how much can be avoided. Being concerned with managing the right people, human resource planning is also concerned with technological advancements which might change the perspective of human resource management in the future that is why there is also a significant emphasis undertaken on such issue. Furthermore, the employee turn-over rate and how to avoid it is also critical of all the concerns in human resource planning. Employee resourcing should take people as being assets and big investments that are why there is a need for management to properly take care of them and do their best to be ensured that they are kept within the business. Employee turn-over rate should be at a minimum and such will only be possible if the business will establish a working environment and corporate culture which will address all the significant needs of its labor force.
The next process in employee resourcing is talent management. This process is basically concerned with establishing an organization which is talent-powered wherein the employees have distinct set of talents which are considered to be one of the company’s biggest investment and source of innovation and success in the marketplace. Among contemporary organizations, management was able to realize that there is a paramount need to be bale to invest and identify with essential and significant talents which can provide the business a landscape of success, opportunities, and growth. This leads the management to be very particular when it comes to defining talent needs, discovering diverse sources of talent, developing both individual and collective talent in the organization, and deploying such talent in a way that it can help the company achieve its organizational goals. One example of organizations with particular focus on talent management would be Best Buy, a consumer electronics retailer which transformed its business strategy into being customer-centric through the organization’s talent management of its workforce. The management of the company recognizes that what is most significant in the success of business nowadays is not investing in capital rather it is investing in the employees. Such is actually true especially considering the fact that these employees are the backbone of the business, they develop, create, and they deliver. It is the employees who are supposed to deliver superior value and quality more than the product itself. It is important to have excellent customer service to reap business performance success. For instance, at Best Buy they develop the talents of their employees to be able to end up with extraordinary value for the company. This is a good perspective of looking at business strategies by recognizing the need to talent management in the workforce as they become front liners to the success of the company.
Another important process in employee resourcing would be recruitment and selection. There is one common and paramount objective of every organization’s recruitment and selection process: to appoint the right person in the right job. It is very critical in all organizations to hire only those who are fit ad qualified in certain positions and those who are anticipated to perform well in their jobs with the objective of helping the business achieve its goals. The process of recruitment and selection is very critical because it affects the capability of the business to achieve targets, the quality of the products and services which are offered to the consuming public, and the well-being of the entire team working towards the goal of establishing a better business. The practices of recruitment and selection vary per company depending on the preferences of the management and what they deem is most effective in helping them achieve their objectives. Google, for instance, demonstrates one very effective strategy. They sponsor local events where participants are given time to shine in their respective skills and then they are referred for interview in the company. They held Code Jam, a contest open for math and computer specialists where the participants tried their bests in an almost four hours coding competition. They also sponsor essay writing contests to see the competitiveness of the writers. The top contestants are invited for interview and if they passed, will be offered a job at Google. This practice of the company is a very good measure and will also prove to be effective as well. Sponsoring such contests enables the company to see the best of the crop and they were able to see actual works from the participants. For instance, during the coding contest, the management was able to see how the specialists work on different codes and solve them. Moreover, same thing is true with the essay writing contest where the management saw actual written works. These things provide the management with a closer look and actual perspectives on the quality of potentials works from the participants who will be recruited and selected.
After a careful recruitment and selection practice within organizations, the next process would entail introduction to the organization. This next process entails employee orientation where the individual is made aware of their tasks, their supervisors, and their colleagues providing them a favorable initial experience and giving them the reasons on why they should stay within the organization for a long time. Since the employee orientation program technically provides the employees with their very first experience in the company, such should be a dynamic practice which the individual should enjoy. It should be able to deliver a thought-fully planned program which should be focused in building a harmonious relationship within the company. Such should be viewed as a process, and not an event. Starbucks, for instance, takes introduction of employees in the organization seriously because they believed that one never gets the second chance to establish a good first impression and such process is helpful in order to establish culture and reduce employee turn-over rate. During the first days of employees at Starbucks they are introduced to the organization with a video from Howard Schultz, their CEO, via video educating them about the history and culture of the company which should also form part of their perspectives as they work for the business. The CEO compared their introduction process to young children. During the early years of these children people would be very much interested in raising an impression which creates self-esteem and confidence. After they are though of this, you let them go out and make their own decisions with basis and foundation from what they have previously learned about. At the company, the employees are introduced by saying how much the management cares about what they do. This is a good company practice because it establishes a perspective which is positive for employees as they are being given the trust of their employers. The video of the CEO greeting the newly hires is also helpful because it will create a more confident working environment for the new members of the company.
The last process in employee resourcing would be releasing of employees. It must be acknowledged that no matter how the company tries its best to retain everyone and to establish a sustainable organizational culture, it is inevitable that employees will leave the organization and companies are left with no option but to just release them and let them go. Releasing is also based on deliberate company rules especially against violation of disciplinary standards and work regulations or unsatisfactory performance in their jobs. Releasing can be based on redundancy. This mans that technological advancements have been providing the tasks carried out by the employee that is why there is no more need for human effort and it is already dependent on machines. Setting higher standards with regards to performance is another factor on why companies release employees. This is true in cases where the performance of the employee is not doing the company any good at all. Furthermore, releasing can also be voluntary. Under this, employee voluntarily leaves the company in search for better opportunities and for other personal reasons. Microsoft released a number of its employee’s last year in order to reduce cost. This process of releasing is deliberate to the organization. Microsoft has no intention of leaving thousands of their employees jobless; it is just that they have to cut-down on costs to be able to survive in the corporate world. Such step must have had received criticism by unions, but then it must be realized that Microsoft just did what it thought would be best for cost-reduction and to maintain a sustainable performance despite a business which is actually not doing so good in the global market. The sluggish company of the present has been forcing many companies to release employees within the organization. Such a strategy should be done carefully in order not to ruin lives of employees and should include incentives and provide alternatives once employees are released from the company.
With the above discussion, it can be deemed that indeed employee resourcing is a very important dimension in the field of human resource management. The importance of this practice is significant to both the management and the employees for it is beneficial for both parties which are concerned. The programs, procedures, and processes for managing the employees is very important for all organizations to be assured that they are employing the right people in the right job. The employee resourcing process must be bale to address all important concerns regarding the people in organizations because such will entail a long term benefit for the business once it is properly executed. The employee resourcing process must be able to illustrate the company’s undertaking towards hiring the people who would be able to compete effectively, today and in the future. More importantly, such will be concerned on how the business could be able to retain its greatest asset and investment: the employees.