Human Resource Management: A Reflective Journal Essay

Discuss about the Human Resource Management Structured Process.

Human resource management is the structured process of managing employees to get better output from them (Alfes et al. 2013). This study is a reflective journal on different chapters of HRM, Strategic HRM, recruitment and diversity management and work-life-balance. The study will describe the human resource management of Australia. Apart from that, strategic human resource management will also be described in this study. The study will describe some legal contexts of human resource management, which have been implemented in different organizations of Australia. On the other hand, the study will describe the concept of recruitment through the example of the organization, Telstra.  Apart from that, the concept of diversity management and work-life-balance will also be analyzed in this study.

Human resource management is the formal system, which is devised for managing employees in an organization (Jiang et al. 2012). In my class, I have gained a clear understanding of what human resource management is actually meant for. Every time I attended the class of human resource management class, I learned different aspects of this concept. Human resource management is a structured system of recruiting, selecting, providing compensation, managing, training and developing the employees of organization. It is the proper utilization of limited and available workforce in the organization for gaining maximum output from them (Kehoe and Wright 2013). In the classes, I have also discussed this concept with my class mates to explore more knowledge and experience regarding the application of it.  Effective human resource management lies upon collection relationship between employees and management. This approach is focused with the notion of enabling employees to work in a motivated mind towards organizational goals.

I can explain the human resource management of Australian organizations through the experience, which I have gained from my classes. Employees are the most important assets of Australian Organizations. These organizations provide best employee experience for achieving organizational goals and greater customer satisfaction. The HR managers of Australian organizations rely on best recruitment, best hire and providing best place to work for the employees (Tang and Tang 2012). The commitment to the employees simply shapes the fact that, the organizations in Australia highly value their employees, their growth and their contribution. A mix process of internal and external recruitment policy can be seen in these organizations. For example, Coca Cola Amatil in Australia uses the facility of job fair and external recruitment agency for recruiting best employees for their organization (Shaw, Park and Kim 2013). The organization delegates the responsibility of recruitment process to a third party organization, which sources the best candidate, suited for the vacant position of the organization. The organization also uses effective interview and written test examination for selecting right candidates among all possible candidates. It assists the HR managers to hire best employees, who will be able to meet the organizational goal perfectly.

Strategic Human Resource Management

Another aspect of human resource management, which I have learned in my classes, is employee training. I have realized that employee training is the systematic procedure for developing the skills and talent of the employees necessary for the accomplishment of organizational goal. The experience, which I have gathered from this aspect of HR management, will help me in being an effective leader of organization. The evidence of effective employee training can best be seen in Woolworths, Australia. The organization provides both on-the-job and off-the-job training to the employees for enhancing their skills (Campbell, Coff and Kryscynski 2012). The HR manager mostly applies coaching and mentoring method for enhancing the job skills of the employees. Both these methods are a one-to-one session provided by a senior manager to its followers. Organizational standards are clearly defined to the employees and according, the learning theories are provided to them. Apart from that, the organization also uses vestibule training method for providing work experience to the employees in a prototype environment (Koç, Cavus and Saraçoglu 2014).

In my learning session, I have learned that HR manager should communicate the organization goals and standards to the employees so that they can actually value it. They also need to have the capability to handle employee confliction before it decreases the employee morale. It will keep the employees to remain persistent towards meeting the organizational goals. Apart from that, various lecturers have given their different views upon the particular concept of human resource management. We had to aggregate those views and sum up the actual meaning of the concept. Different views explored my knowledge regarding the subject area and its application to real scenario. Performance management is one such aspect, which is extremely beneficial for a successful human resource management. From the gathered knowledge, I can say that performance management is the systematic process through which employers and employees together plan, monitor and review the objectives of the employees and their contribution to organizational success. For example IGA supermarket, performs performance appraisal of its employees in 6 months interval (Vaiman, Scullion and Collings 2012). It keeps the HR manager updated about the individual employee performance and overall organizational goals. The organization also provides incentives and recognition to the employees upon achievement of their individual goals towards organizational success. It keeps the employees motivated towards increasing productivity (Campbell, Coff and Kryscynski 2012). We have not gotten enough learning theories regarding this specific concept of HR management due to time constraints. However, I have adequately experienced the concept and understand how it is applied in organization.

Legal Contexts of Human Resource Management

Strategic human resource management is an effective approach of managing employees for achieving long term strategic goals of organization within strategic framework (Jackson, Schuler and Jiang 2014). From the learning session, I have learned that strategic human resource management is a comprehensive, unified and integrated plan, which is related to strategic advantage of the organization in extent to competitive environment. Legal context of human resource management assists organizations in maintaining fair and justified work environment in the workplace (Griffith and Macartney 2014). It creates a feeling of fair value in the mind of employees, which leads them towards greater productivity. Australian organizations bind themselves with all such legal context of HRM for maintaining suitable industrial relation (Banker, Byzalov and Chen 2013). The knowledge regarding the legal context of HRM has enhanced my ability to identify the factors of fair workplace in organization.

One such legal context of human resource management is Fair Work Act 2009 of Australia. This legal context provides an opportunity to the employees to express their objectives to the organization (Wright 2012). I realized that it regulates terms of hiring employees and future treatment with the employees. It controls any unfair treatment with the employees in their workplace. Fair work Act also stipulates that the employers must take reasonable step for execution of agreement set in the collective bargaining process of organization. I can draw the example of IGA Supermarket Australia that has adopted this act. According to this act, the organization allows its employees to set an agent for their collective bargaining process. It gives the employees a scope for raising their interest to the management with an intension to fulfill them (Izzo 2016). Therefore, I can say that this legal context is extremely beneficial for providing justified value to the employees in their workplace.

Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 is another legal context of HRM, which is applied to the organizations of Australia. It defined the mandated employer compliance in regards to employee right in their workplace (Reich 2015). The inferences that I have concluded from this concept is that the employees get fair wage and working hours through implementation of this act. The employers of Australian organizations are also restricted from employing any child labor in their organization. The most effective implementation of this act can be seen in Coca Cola Amatil. The organization proficiently takes care of overtime provision of the employees and set 8 hour of working for the employees (Clinton 2012). Apart from that, I have also learned that the HR manager of this organization provides all the safety measures to the employees for keeping them safe in the workplace.

Employee Training

Equal Opportunity Act is another aspect of framing legal context in the human resource management in Australian organizations. From the collected experience of this learning session, I can say that the employees are free from any kind of harassment and discrimination in their workplace. As per this act, all the employees should get equal employment opportunity and employee benefits regardless of their age, sex, religion, social origin and marital status (Kawaguchi 2013). I can provide the name of Wesfarmers Australia as an example, which has effectively applied this act for fair behavior with their employees. All the employees regardless of their gender get equal salary, which motivates the employees towards increasing productivity (Czubkowski 2013). The organization also provides equal promotional opportunity to the employees, which represent fair treatment with the employees (Chrobot-Mason and Aramovich 2013). However, there are some more legal contexts associated with HRM, but we could not reach them due to lack of time.

Throughout the learning session in my classes, I have learned about the recruitment and selection process necessary for making a strong employee base within organizations. It was a vast chapter and thereby, it took enough time for me to understand it properly. However, I got enough assistance in understanding each aspect of recruitment and selection process. The human resource department of organizations has enough support of efficient employment specialist, who provides information about organizational job vacancies to the hiring managers (Bangerter Roulin and König 2012). Depending upon the job vacancies, the hiring manager posts the job in order to attract potential talented employees towards the vacant job.

I can effectively explain the whole recruitment and selection process through the example of Telstra Australia. The hiring manager of the organization advertises about the vacancy on the internet, newspaper, online media, trade magazines and various job fairs (Uggerslev, Fassina and Kraichy 2012). In order to make the vacant job position more attractive, the organization highlights all the strengths of the organizations in those job advertisements. The job characteristic should be presented in a simplified way so that the candidates can easily understand the job criteria and become interested to apply for the job. I have learned about various job sources from which the suitable candidate can be selected. During the assessment of Telstra organization, I have found that the HR managers use candidate tracking system. It helps them in identifying best CVs submitted for the vacant job position (Chrobot-Mason and Aramovich 2013).

Performance Management

The organization sources candidates from various sources like job sites, external agencies, internet recruitment, employee referrals and college campus. The organization mostly uses the help of external agencies, who recruit best candidate on behalf of the organization Bangerter, A., (Roulin and König 2012). Apart from that, the organization also uses internet recruitment for quickly sourcing suitable job candidates. The lecturers have clearly taught us the role of recruiter in recruitment process in terms of functional areas. The recruiter is to filter out suitable candidate for the vacant job position. It has been found that the HR managers of Telstra sell the job opportunity to the prospective job candidates for making them interested in the organization (Uggerslev, Fassina and Kraichy 2012). Another functional area of recruiter is interview panel. The recruiter of the organization demonstrates positive warmth for making the candidate easy in the interview process. The recruiter also provides all accurate information of the vacant job position regarding its attractive and unattractive aspects (Shaw, Park and Kim 2013).

I have come to understand that selection is the process of choosing the right candidate for right position and weeding out unsuitable candidate. The organization uses selection process in regards to receiving application, employment test, reference check, written test, interview and medical examination (Tang and Tang 2012). Written tests are conducted for checking the in-depth knowledge of the candidate regarding the particular area of the job. During the interview session, the hiring managers check the educational qualification, interpersonal relationship, work experience, teamwork skills and knowledge about the industry (Campbell, Coff and Kryscynski 2012). After being shortlisted, the candidates are to give various employment tests as selection methods to get chance in vacant position. The organization uses cognitive ability test for assessing the mental capability of the candidates. I have understood that, in this test, the employees are assessed based on their ability quickly learn, logical reasoning and reading comprehension. The organization also uses integrity test for assessing the candidate’s honesty, trustworthiness, reliability, dependability and pro-social behavior (Kehoe and Wright 2013).

Another important aspect, which I have learned in my learning session, is the five standards to be used in selection of employees. The reliability standards yield the result of interview, test and selection procedures over a period. This standard compares the result of two tests for ensuring its authenticity (Bangerter, Roulin and König 2012). The organization also uses validity standard for drawing an empirical relationship between the candidate’s test score and his actual performance on the job. On the other hand, Generalisability is the generalization of validity standard. The validity test in one context is extended to another context in the degree. Utility is the standard used by the organization in which information provided from selection procedure enhances the effectiveness of employee selection. Lastly, my lecturers described the concept of legality as the standard of selection procedure. Legality on the other hand describes the degree to which the organization maintains actual laws for selecting candidates (Chrobot-Mason and Aramovich 2013).

Diversity management is the process of managing organizational employees having differences in culture, ethics, values, age, race and sex (Choi and Rainey 2014).  It is built on set of values, which recognizes the dissimilarities among the employees. It is the process of identifying and supporting multiple lifestyle and employee characteristics within a specific group. It also creates an organizational environment where all employees get opportunity to share their views in organizational success. On the other hand, Equal employment opportunity enforces federal laws, which make it illegal to discriminate employees in employment in terms of their race, sex, region and national origin (Janssens and Zanoni 2014). The federal body of Australia is responsible for enforcing women participation in workplace, Government and in senior management. The difference between the two processes that I have drawn is the driven force of implementation. Equal opportunity is initiated and driven legislation and Governmental rules, while diversity management is initiated and driven by organizational management for business needs (Choi and Rainey 2014).

Role of diversity management can be seen in increasing productivity of organization. Employees from different background and cultures may share different types of suggestions for organizational success. Diversity management leads to creative ideas within the organization, which improve performance level of business (Kehoe and Wright 2013). My lecturers have given transparent ideas about managing diversity in organization. From the experience of learning session, I can say that diversity management leads to different viewpoint and solution upon one particular organizational problem. It enhances the problem solving capability of organization. It has been found that Lion Beverage Organization effective manages employee diversity for dealing with international business (Griffith and Macartney 2014).

I have also learned about effective initiatives to be taken for efficiently managing workforce diversity in organization. Three types of organizational initiatives can be taken for managing organizational diversity namely strategic initiative, managerial initiative and operational initiative. In strategic initiative, the organization should delineate the nature of existing culture and establish the dimension of desired organizational culture. On the other hand, in managerial initiative, the managers of organization should incorporate effective performance management system. The managers should provide equal rewards to the employees as per their contribution in organizational success regardless of their race, gender and culture (Janssens and Zanoni 2014). In case of operational initiative, the organization should provide effective diversity training to the employees so that they can learn to value the culture of each other.

Through the learning session, I have come across various types of challenges, which managers are to face in taking initiatives for diversity management. In every organization, there are certain employees who resist in accommodating with diverse workplace. The negative attitude of these employees may lead to low employee morale and reduced productivity (Choi and Rainey 2014). Moreover, managing contradictory evidence is quite tough for organizational managers. One of the prime challenges, which I have identified in diversity management, is poor communication among the employees. It is quite frequent to misunderstand the employees, who communicate differently. It has been found that most of managers of Eagle Boy Australia frequently face attitudinal issues of employees in diversity management (Janssens and Zanoni 2014).

Work-life-balance includes the concept of proper prioritizing between work and lifestyle. I attended so many classes of this concept, as it was so interesting chapter to me. I have learned different aspects of this concept. Work-life-balance is the ability of the employees to properly access employment opportunity, while at the same time keeping aside enough time for family purpose (Burg-Brown 2013). The key features of work-life-balance programs can be defined through various ways. Work-life-balance programs create environment in which employees get adequate time to handle personal, family and community matters. It promotes positive environment for providing scope to the employees in handling their personal issues. These programs also acknowledge among work, family and other interest and thereby, it reduces the work tension of the employees (Direnzo, Greenhaus and Weer 2015). It also identifies that different types of employees may have different types of needs towards maintaining work-life-balance. It has been found that Coca Cola Amatil has initiated job sharing, flexible work hours and relocation service for providing high level of work-life-balance to the employees (Jiang et al. 2012).

I have learned about the benefits of Work-life-balance programs in organization. These programs increases the level of employee morale and job satisfaction, as they effectively balance personal life and work life. Through work-life-balance programs, organizations can enhance employee commitment and get improved customer service. Organization can also enhance the retention of desired employees and increases overall productivity though proper work-life-balance programs (Burg-Brown 2013). On the other hand, I have also learned that work-life-balance program has some organizational costs. Employees may face discomfort with the changing culture of organization devised for work-life-balance (Direnzo, Greenhaus and Weer 2015). Apart from that, managers and employees need to learn additional decision-making skill and communication for understanding rationality of this approach.

Conclusion

While concluding the study, it can be said that Australian organization properly manage human resource activities through effective recruitment, selection, training, development and appraising the performance level of employees. The legal context of human resource management ensures fair treatment of employees in their employment and workplace. The organizations of Australia implement Fair Labor Act, Fair Labor Standard Act and Equal Opportunity Act. It has been found that Wesfarmers in Australia has effectively implemented Equal Opportunity Act for providing equal opportunity to the employee in employment and promotional extent regardless of their race and gender. The recruitment concept is explained through the example of Telstra Australia. It has been found that the organization sources candidates from online job sites and internet sources. It effectively maintains standard in selection process through the method of reliability, validity, Generalisability, utility and legality. Diversity management is related to managing different kinds of employee in the workplace.

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