Human Resource

Human resources are the people that staff and operate an organisation. It applies to the workforce managed by any employer. A business of any size needs employees in order for it to run. As the most important asset of any organization, employees need to be properly managed in order for optimal efficacy to be achieved.

People are hired to use their use their talents for particular purposes and to take specific responsibility within the organization. An organization would employ people because they have the skills, knowledge, energy, initiative and the capacity to learn and develop. This being the case therefore, the manager should aim to attract and retain the number of people required with the appropriate skills, expertise and competence.

Thus human resource cannot be measured by the number of people in the organisation because its true strength lies in the skills and talents available which enhance organisational efficiency.

The manager has no control of the employee skills and talents. The employee can and do control and limit their effort levels. When the employee is hired what the manager get is their productive potential. The manager has to ensure that the worker productive potential is converted into desired levels of actual productive effort.

It is essential therefore to achieve a good fit between the worker and the job. Managers should see to it that the employees working in the jobs are suitable for them and their jobs are designed with due regard to their abilities and limitations.

The manager needs to offer positive incentives to ensure that the worker cooperate with management and use their job knowledge and initiatives to maintain and improve efficiency.

The manager should aim to obtain the intangibles from the employees through specialised interventions.

The manager should obtain the commitment from the employees. The employees should show loyalty to the organisation, have personal and liking for the work. This will consist of having the employee identify with the goals and values of the organisation, a desire to belong to the organisation and a willingness to display effort on behalf of the organisation.

The interest of the organisation and that of the employees do not coincide. The employees would have objectives they want to achieve at the workplace and also the organisation has its own objectives which it needs to achieve. It is therefore important that the management have defined goals and values that both the employee and the organisation would benefit.

Management by can create commitment by:

v Enhancing communication. Effective communication is important for effective running of the organization and conveying the organisation's mission, vision and objectives. This can be achieved by the use of different and complementary channels of communication such as newsletters, briefing groups, notice board etc.

v Educational programmes can also be designed to increase both knowledge and understanding e.g. total quality management. The aim will be to influence behaviour and thereby progressively change attitudes of the worker.

v Managers should also create a sense of ownership among employees i.e. believe that they are genuinely accepted by management as a key part of the organisation. The manager can achieve this by having the employees participate in decision on new developments and changes in working practices which affect the individual concerned.

The employees should be involved in making those decisions so that they can feel that their ideas have been listened to and that they have contributed to the outcome. This way they will be more likely to accept the decision or change because it is owned by them rather than being imposed by management.

The manager also needs to obtain congruence. The management and the workers should share same vision of the organisational goals and work together to obtain them. The manager therefore needs to link the human resource objectives with the organisational goals,

It is important for the manager to carry out job analysis. This will determine activities, skills, and knowledge required of an employee for a specific job. Job analyses are "performed on three occasions: when the organization is first started, when a new job is created, and when a job is changed as a result of new methods, new procedures, or new technology" (Cherrington, 1995).

Jobs can be analyzed through the use of questionnaires, observations, interviews, employee recordings, or a combination of any of these