HR PLAN!

The atmosphere in which all our companies must operate continues to be very competitive and in this context. It is important to recognise the importance of the people contribution.

People’s contribution is influenced by the way that they are managed and whether they perceive that they are valued for their individual contributions. To this extend it is vitally important that managers, at all levels, acquire and develop, expertise and knowledge in management skills. To achieve these aims means that you must:

• Take strategic view of management people.

• Involve people in the business

• Continue to invest in communication

• Manage people’s performance effectively

• Concentrate on employees as individuals.

If these things are done, then you are much more likely to develop enhanced employee commitment. In turn this will mean that individuals are encouraged to move beyond their basic contracted commitment and develop a strong series of loyalty to the organisation. Creating where people are prepared to give a more by going the extra mile will ensure that their contribution to the business is maximised. But by itself, this is not enough. You need to concentrate on certain key factors which can be summarised as follows:

Employee reward system:

Your basic reward system is primarily a combination of basic pay, performance or profit – oriented bonus (for some individual) and an optional pension benefit. If we want to motivate individual to deliver your dedicates business strategies, you must build on your current reward system so that it is capable of meeting individual employee aspirations. To achieve this, you need to ensure that you have a reward system that is both flexible and fair and that is perceived as such by employees.

Recruitment and Selection:

There are two major issues that you need to be concerned with; one is to ensure that the level of labour turnover in each part of the business is properly managed and kept within acceptable norms. The second is the need to attract enough numbers of high-calibre candidates for declared vacancies. Because of the labour market you need to consider what changes you need to make in your employment practices if you are to meet this objective.

Performance Management:

Reducing the incidence of poor performance, and improving organisational performance generally, will continue to be key priority. This is complex process with no easy solutions and there are number of steps that can be taken to enhance both individual and collective performance.

Career development:

If you are to retain competent employees within your workforce, you need to develop the process of career planning. While this will not be appropriate for everyone, it will be an important factor for some in deciding whether to remain in your employment. Added to this will be a continuing requirement to develop the skills of all your employees. Every business should have a training plan and appropriate budgets for this purpose which should be driven by the appraisal process. Beyond this, there is also a need to develop those individuals who might have the capability of taking on serious management roles in the future. Your annual succession planning exercise is crucial to meeting this objective, but you also need to provide a senior management development programme.

Employee Relations:

Developments in employment law will not slow down and during the lifetime of this plan further changes will be introduced that will have a direct impact on your businesses. There will be legislation on employee involvement and consultation, and equal opportunities. It is therefore important that you gain the commitment and trust of many of your employees. This can be achieved if you invest in techniques of employee involvement.

Overall, your human resources activities over the lifetime of this plan must meet the following objectives:

• To generate commitment of all employees to the success of the organisation

• T enable the business to better meet the needs of its customers and adopt to the changing market requirement.

• To help the business to improve performance and productivity and adapt to new methods of working.

• To improve the satisfaction that employees get from their work.

• To improve all employees with opportunity to influence and be involved in the decisions which are likely to affect their interest!

The importance of adopting an integrated approach above, confirms that companies which are achieving the best results in productivity, profitability and growth have people management strategies that make a real difference. As I quote “the most successful organisations were those that could sustain their performance over the long term and demonstrate a robust association between people management and performance”.

Hence, whatever means your organisation choose for formulating their strategy, either at corporate or business level, maximising the organisation’s competitive advantage has to be a major issue, overall strategies and policies on employee relation must be a direct relationship with your business strategy and must be imaginative, innovative and clear and action – oriented.