The Role of HRIMS in Resolving the Present Predicament in CGMS - Essay Example

Crisis Control Student Name Course Name Tutor Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 Role of HR function 3 Developing Human resource plan 4 The Role HRIMS in Resolving the Present Predicament in CGMS 6 Legal issues would need to be addressed 8 Conclusion 11 References 12 Introduction In the dynamic contemporary business environment, the occurrence of a crisis is quite common. A case in point is the recent financial crisis which greatly subjected many organizations to various challenges that required good managerial skills and decisions. A crisis can be described as an unanticipated and sudden occurrence that may result to unrest amongst stakeholder within an organization. A crisis normally causes a sense of instability within the organization. This is because it may affect departments within the organization, employees, project teams and even the management. As a result there is need for the management of an organization to control the crisis immediately. This particular paper presents a case study analysis of crisis control within the GMS Company. Role of HR function In all corporate governance, HR functions have developed from simple to crucial activities. HR functions are categorized into two, which are staff functions and line functions. Line functions relates to management of HR department while staff functions refers to assistance given to other managers in undertaking their responsibilities without affecting employees. Generally, Human resource functions refer to activities undertaken in organizations to support and coordinate human resources (Kleynhans 2006, 73). They include planning, selection, recruitment, human resource development and training, compensation and benefits, safety and health and employee relations (Sharma, 2009, 58). In developing a medium and long term strategy to attain the conflicting goals of minimizing costs and maintaining the required human capital, it is essential for Human resource department to effectively plan, compensate and create good employee relations. In order to achieve the short and long term strategy of attaining the conflicting goals of minimizing costs and maintaining the required human capital, human resource department should reduce salaries and wages of some employees in the short run. Salaries of some employees should be reduced until the financial crisis is over. This will assist in minimizing the costs incurred by Global mining services (GMS). The human resource department should not employ downsizing or retrenchment as this will not maintain the required human capital in the long run. In the long run, when the global economy is favourable, human resources should enhance the salaries of all employees affected by salary reduction. This will assist in preventing the employees from moving to other competitors, thus maintain the required number of capital. Human resources department should effectively plan its employees. It should ensure that the employees are evenly distributed in all departments. Human resource department should redistribute employees from areas experiencing excess workers to areas with few workers. Redistributing employees will assist the company in utilizing its human resources, thus minimizing costs. HR department has a duty of planning future goals of the company. Therefore, it is essential for HR department to clarify the company’s future goals to staffs. This will assist in attaining the long term goal of maintaining the required human capital. It is believed that clarifying the future goals of the company to staffs normally gives employees general direction in which they work towards. Companies with clear direction are always more effective. HR should plan its employees in such a way that they are result oriented. This will not only minimize the costs but also make employees enjoy their responsibility, thus maintain them in the organization. HR depart should also set daily objectives so as to streamline activities in the company. This will assist in ensuring work is effectively done by all employees. Developing Human resource plan Human resource planning is defined as a process of ensuring that the requirements of human resources in an organization are identified and plans are made for meeting those needs. It is usually based on the notion that human resources are the most essential strategic resource in any organization. Even though human resource planning might at times address short term needs, it generally concerns with linking resources to business requirements in the long run. Human resource planning looks at the requirements of human resource both in qualitative and quantitative terms. It also looks at wider issues that relates to the manner in which individuals are employed and developed so as to enhance effectiveness of the company. Therefore human resource planning plays an important role in strategic human resource management (Armstrong 2006, 388). It is essential in expansionary surroundings where the main problem is attracting suitable employees. In CGMS situation, human resource should be planned in such a way that it considers the current situation while building a basis for future growth. In order to attain this, human resource plan can be developed by first reviewing the company’s HR strategic plans. The next step in developing human resource plan is evaluation of internal and external workforce. At this stage it is essential to identify the number and types of new employees required to staff the enlarged services, facilities and locations. It is also essential to evaluate the abilities of employees who are currently employed by the company. The company’s needs should then be compared by labour supply available within and outside the company. After evaluating internal and external workforce, the next step will be to identify the supply of human resources and the demand for human resources. The demand for labour will be calculated for the whole organization. Forecasting the workforce demand will be undertaken by considering particular openings that might easily occur. The openings or demand for labour can arise through creation of new jobs or when employees leave their current positions due to promotions, terminations and turnovers. Once the demand for labour is forecasted, the availability or supply of labour will be forecasted. When forecasting the supply of labour it will be essential to consider both internal and external supplies. The last step in developing human resource plan will be to develop HR staffing plans and actions. In this stage both short-term and long-term imbalances will be addressed. Developing and measuring HR planning will be undertaken through utilization of team of subject matter experts (SMEs) in enhancing HR planning outcomes’ validity and reliability (Mathis and Jackson 2010,589). The diagram below shows steps that will be followed in developing human resource plan. The Role HRIMS in Resolving the Present Predicament in CGMS A Human Resource Information Management System (HRIMS) will definitely resolve the existing predicaments at GMS. As indicated by the case, the company does not have an effect system by which the human resource department can identify who works where and does what. An additional problem is that the company has more people than they require in some areas while in other areas there are no adequate staff. This implies therefore that certain departments are not functioning effectively due inadequate workforce. A HRIMS will definitely resolve this particular problem. As highlighted by Sims (2010, 137) HRIMS can effectively store information about every employee and also their data reference. These include information such as the department in which they work and what roles they play in those departments. Consequently, serious implementing of the HRIMS will be helpful to GMS in the sense that the HR department will be able to identity the departments that require restructuring in terms of the number of employees and also the departments that require additional employees. Using the HRIMS to identify and restructure the number of employees in each department will provide a basis of making the decision of whether the excessive employees should be deployed to other departments. In addition the departments with inadequate staff will be well equipped. Also HRIMS will provide a solution to the dilemma of whether or not to take the option of redundancies and layoffs to downsize, yet the company does not want to lose its human capital, based on the fact that a lot of time was used to develop them. The integration of an effective HRIMS will work towards enhancing workforce planning, which is basically a solution to this particular problem. According to Bal et al (2012, 55) the HRIMS can support a wide range of information planning. These include labour force planning which can be undertaken through forecasting on demand and supply of the workforce. As indicated by the case, operations of GMS Company have declined essentially due to the implications of the financial crisis. This can be attested by the fact keeping project staff occupied was becoming problematic. There is therefore need for the company to forecast on the issue of demand and supply of the workforce especially after the crisis is over (Bal, et al, 2012, 55). A study conducted by Shibly (2011,158) revealed that HRIMS are effective in supply and demand forecasting essentially during the harsh economic times such as the recent financial crisis. Thus HRIMS will assist in identify the labour demands of the company in future, this enable the management to evaluate whether downsizing is a better option or whether all employees in the organization will be useful to the organization even after the financial crisis. The GMS Company also has the objective of tying to position itself in the market in order to take advantage of the inevitable upswing in the economy. Shibly (2011, 158) highlights that the changing business environment and also increased market competition is putting immense pressure on managers to come up with better and faster business decisions. Investing in information’s systems management will enhance the HR decision making process which may have positive implications of cost reduction and enhancing quality production (Broderick and Boudreau 1992, 5). This will enable the company to deal with the inevitable upswing in the economy. Legal issues would need to be addressed If GMS decides to reduce the size of the workforce or change employment arrangements in order to reduce labour size, various legal issue have to be addressed. One of the legal issues that should be addressed by the organization is the consideration of the fact that the decision to reduce the workface would be considered as unfair dismissal. When the Fair Work Act 2009 was introduced in Australia, it greatly transformed many concepts of the laws within the workplace. One of the crucial changes was grounded on unfair dismissal in the workplace essentially due to redundancy. Generally, based on the requirements of the Fair Work Act, the move by GMS do reduce its workforce would basically be perceived as discriminatory. Consequently, the employees are liable to press legal charges on the organization (Dastlik 2009,1 ). Also according to the Fair Work Act 2009, it is recommended that instead of reducing the number of employees, the HR should consider developing other strategies such as creation of flexible working arrangements for the employees. These include adopting part time working hours which would lead to reduced remuneration costs. Another strategy may also include consulting with the workforce in order to evaluate whether they can provide suggestions concerning ways of averting the proposed downsizing (Dastlik 2009, 1). Stacy is not correct by suggesting redundancies and layoffs as a justiciable strategy of dealing with the challenges that are currently facing the organization. Although a study conducted by Ozlem and Bumin (2006,143) revealed that layoffs can lead to positive outcomes to an organization which include reduced expenses, improved cash flows, increased competitive advantage and increased production. As indicated in the figure 1. 0. In despite of the benefits presented above, what is evident is that reducing the size of the employees is basically just a short team solution that may resolve the immediate challenges that GMS is currently facing, however negative implications may arise in the long run. As indicated by the case the management of the organization is optimistic that international financial crisis the is bound to come to an end and the operations of the business will get back to normalcy, implying that in the long run the services provided by employees will be required. In the event that the employees downsized, the organization will incur more costs in terms of recruitment and training of employees to fill the missing positions. The suggestion of redundancies and layoffs is also not justifiable based on the fact that it will result to loss human capital. As indicated by the case, GMS has invested a lot on developing and training its employees. Consequently, the option of layoff is will not be beneficial because the employee are bound to go to and work to other competing firms which may bring more challenges for the business. Conclusion In developing a medium and long term strategy to attain the conflicting goals of minimizing costs and maintaining the required human capital, it is essential for Human resource department to effectively plan, compensate and create good employee relations. In order to attain this, human resource plan can be developed by reviewing the company’s HR strategic plans, evaluating internal and external forces, compiling HR planning forecasts and developing HR staffing plans and actions. A Human Resource Information Management System (HRIMS) will definitely resolve the existing predicaments at GMS. Legal issues such as employees’ unfair dismissal should be addressed. References Armstrong, M. 2006. A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. London: Kogan Page Publishers Bal, Y, Bozkurt, S and Esin, E. 2012. ‘’The importance of using Human Resource Information Systems (HIRS) and research on determining success factors of HRIS’’. Management Knowledge and Learning International conference. Broderick, R and Boudreau, J. 1992.‘’Human resource management, information technology, and the competitive edge’’. Journal of Academy Management 6 (2): p5-17. Dastlik, J. 2009. Redundancies under the Fair Work Act and Modern Awards.HIA. Kleynhans, R. 2006. Human Resource Management. Pearson South Africa. Mathis, R and Jackson, J. H. 2010. Human Resource Management. Cengage Learning Sims, R. 2010. Reforming (Transforming?) a Public Human Resource Management Agency: opportunities. IAP; p137. Sharma, S. K. (2009). Human Resource Management: A Strategic Approach to Employment. Global India Publications Shibly, H. (2011). Human Resources Information Systems success Assessment: An integrative model. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences. 5(5), p 157-169. Ozlem, O and Bumin, M. 2006. Relationship between Downsizing and Financial Performance. Banking Systems1(3): p143. Read More