HR strategic contribution in an organization

Human resource management approaches have been widely embraced in the 21st century as a result of the evolution of organizational management. This is because the demand for efficacy has increased and the business environment is becoming more intelligent. Every time the executive leadership of enterprises acknowledges the function and significance of human capital, it has greatly influenced the decision to vote for the inclusion of HR inside the C-levels leadership. Incorporating human resources into organizational management entails that all of the company’s important departments will be fully involved in decision-making at the organizational level. Human resource management provides enormous significance for firms looking to shift their focus to their people. HR has emerged as a prominent view of the role played by the different organization branches in developing a strong and successful organization.

Keywords: Life Balance, Training and Development, Managing Performance, Human resource (HR)

Introduction

Human resource has become one of the major referred to development in every organization today. Different organization has over the recent decades adopted the HR strategies in an effort to improve the organization performance. A human resources department in organization manages a range of issues related to workers and their relationships with the employers. These include; recruiting and hiring, compensation and employee development, workplace challenges, discrimination issues. More so, different organizations have adopted the human resource department in their management, which despite being a challenge has evolved to become one of the positive developments in such organizations (Wilson, 1999). Different organizations have adopted the human resource practices in an effort to improve their operations and employee relations and productivity.

One of the successful organizations with reference to the adoption of human resource towards making a strategic contribution to the organization’s operations is the FedEx Corporation. FedEx is an organization that has had a track record of being successful. According to (), FedEx believes that the successful organization has enjoyed in recent times have its foundation in the efficiency of its employee performance (Leopold and Harris, 2009). By well-treating their employee, the organizations discovered that, it contributes to the improvement of results from the employee productivity, which in turn was translated overall organizational growth. Since 1973, FedEx has developed and adopted “people-Service-Profit” which is a company philosophy denoting excellent care of its employee (Mijeong et al, 2014, P.90). FedEx is known to track its worker satisfaction with its yearly feedback platform/program, and once the data have been collected, the managers and the employee meet to discuss the obtained results, address any issues realized and in turn decipher how to resolve them. This has in turn elevated the organization to the levels whereby every employee dreams of working in such an organization, whereby his/her welfare is well taken care of, his/his opinion counts as well as an organization is focused on improving the relationship between the managers/organizes and the employees.

Human resource development has had a different impact to existing organization new coming small and big organizations as well. This has in turn led to massive adoption of HR towards strategic growth of organizations. Despite being a late cameo in the field of strategic management, there has been varying contributions of human resource towards organizational functioning. There are different HR issues addressed by the adoption of human resource practices in an organization with reference to this report, it will address the life-work balance that is brought long via adoption of HR practices (Dowling, Festing and Engle, 2013). Other issues that the report will address include; training and development, as well as performance management with reference to FedEx Corporation as the identified organization of this report.

Training and development

One of the ways in which human resource practices make a strategic contribution to an organization is through development of employee training and development platforms in accordance with organization demand. According to Thang Ngoc et al (2011, P. 106), training and development are referred to as any attempt by an organization to improve its current and future employee performance by increasing their ability to perform through learning. This is done through changing employee’s attitude or even increasing the employee knowledge and skills. Through the adoption of human resource practices, different training programs have been devised in accordance with organizational demands. Employee training and development have become one of the basis undertaking for organizations to maintain its cultural identity as well as help transfer from one generation to another (Gayeski, D 1981, P.60). Employee training and development comes with different gains not only for the organization, but also to the employee. Not only does it elevate an organization in terms of overall performance, training and development helps effectively running of an organization.

With reference to FedEx, the organization is well known for its attribute to success to its well-known and working ‘People-First Philosophy’. ”The People-Service-Profit philosophy (P-S-P) is based on the belief that by creating a positive working environment for employees, they will provide better service quality to customers, which would then lead to customers using FedEx products and services” (Mijeong et al, 2014, P 92). With reference to the creation of positive working environment for the employee, training and development of employees much be the integral part of the organization’s agenda in an effort to make the new and veteran employee, feel part of the larger FedEx community.

In addition to maintain the organization culture, employee training and development practices help in reduction of employee turnover and absenteeism, not forgetting the fact that it helps in addressing employee weaknesses. Employees in an organization are not always a complete package as they have different strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses hinder the employees from giving the best output towards the realization of organizational goals and objectives. Training and developments, helps in eliminating the weaknesses of the process of strengthening the employees’ skills and also by helping them dissolve their inner barrier (Kohl et al 2004, P. 340). A perfectly developed and adopted training program helps organizational employees in gaining analogous knowledge and skills, which in the end brings all the employee in an organization into a uniform level. In summary, employee training increases their reliability levels, and in turn an organization does not have to depend on specific employees for service and objective delivery. In addition to keeping the employees at par with other, training and development helps in reducing employee turnover. Training helps in creating a sense of confidence among the employees, gives them a sense of security, and in turn labor turnover and absenteeism and greatly reduced (Irwin & McClay, 2008). With reference to FedEx organization employee training helps in establishing a harmonious working relationship, making a newly employed worker feel part of the entire FedEx team. This not only increases her confidence, but also makes the employee feel to be part of the team, hence low levels of absenteeism and higher levels of productivity.

On the other hand, employee training helps towards reduction of accidents and errors, by the workers, creating talent pool as well as unearthing employee potential. By creating the talent pool, FedEx is focused on bridging the gap whenever an employee unexpectedly leaves the company. On the other hand, employee training and development acts as a catalytic platform in which employees share ideas with the management team. This allows to support employees with special talents such as leadership, which in turn can be utilized later within and for the organizations benefit. Finally, training of the employee increases their confidence and productivity. Errors and accidents occur due to lack of desired knowledge and precise skills that are required to perform their tasks (Buckley & Caple, 2009). Organizational training and development program ensures employees gets the right skills and at the right skills. By adopting and investing in the ‘People-First Philosophy’ FedEx organization invests in improving skills and knowledge of the employees, the investment is gained in terms of increased employee productivity and effective employee relations, team performance. In summary, training and development programs in organizations are crucial for organizational sustainability and the success is fruitful to both employers and employees of an organization. This in turn becomes an integral strategic human resource issue not only for organizations but for individual employees.

Managing performance

Cokins (2009) in his article identified FedEx is one of the best places for employees to work in. The People-First Philosophy also referred as ”People-Service-Profit” which has in turn been the basis of performance management within the organization, as well as focusing to develop the best working environment. Performance management in organizations is the process in which company management team ensures that, organizational resources are being best utilized with reference to pursuit of company goals. This concept performance management is usually directed towards employee development. Today, every organization is focused toward improved employee performance and effectiveness (Abdolvand, Albadvi & Aghdasi 2015, P 5475). However, performance management is a continuous process, whereby leaders/manager works together in planning, monitoring and reviewing of an employee contribution and overall performance towards the set goals and objectives.

Fig 1.1 (Dos Santos Bortolocci Espejo et al 2017, P.54)

Human resource implementation in an organization helps in identifying key monitoring programs for employee in an effort to make decisive employee performance. With the increasing changes in the workplace and business environments, companies like FedEx have benefited from the increased feedback, as more organizations has focused on transforming their performance management structure (Hall 2017, P. 50). Despite the need for change in business environment, HR plays an integral role towards encouraging organizational managers toward facilitation of effective performance management strategies.

One way in which HR facilitates the performance management initiative is through development and adoption of key training programs. The adoption of HR strategies within an organization helps in identifying the effective training programs for the employees (Akella & Waqif 2017, P. 9). With reference to the case by FedEx, the organization a strong developed HR program which in turn enables the managers to identify key approach towards employee monitoring and evaluating process. This in turn enables the leaders to adopt a collective or an individualized measure in which to improve an employee performance. HR helps in developing a successful performance procedure which entails a combination of; goal setting, personal development plan interim performance appraisal and finally the talent management and succession planning.

In addition to development of facilitating training programs the HR facilitates performance management through communication of benefits by the leaders to the employees. As an organization like FedEx becomes adapted to more frequent and ongoing performance management process one essential undertaking by the managers is to communicate to the employees the required aspects with reference to performance management (Bititci, Cocca & Ates 2016, P. 1580). With reference to this human resource implementation is that it helps in identifying factors affecting employee performance within an organization. This in turn helps in identifying the best ways to appraise motivate and maintain employee performance levels at the top. This in turn helps to have a smooth transition between the performance management process and stages which entail planning, monitoring and lastly review and evaluation.

Borrowing into the rich human resource field, FedEx has managed to make the performance management transparent consistent and clear across the organization. Employee evaluation would be an impossible undertaking without the HR processes. This is because it helps in making the process easy entailing data collection, processing and analyzing in relating to employee performance. HR helps in establishing a perfect, well-structured as well as an effective performance management system. A successful performance management strategy was varying benefits to the organization management team as well as the employee (Sadler-Smith, 2006). FedEx with its strong human resource and performance management strategy enjoys different benefits. These include; establishment of both group and individual objectives to make sure that, their performance is aligned to organizational operational and strategic objectives. It also helps in linking performance evaluation with employee development, rewards to motivate them. HR also helps towards improving efficiency and employee productivity. Other benefits entail improved communication between managers and workers, improved salary administration, and improved guidance in developing capabilities. In summary, performance management remains an integral aspect with reference to modern day management of organizations (Leopold, Harris and Watson, 2005). FedEx on its part has excelled due to the development of a strong human resource program that helps in implementing observation, analysis, feedback provision and overall employee appraisal with regard to employee performance. Each element aligned with performance management is key towards successful realization of its goals and objectives. These are; planning, coaching, and appraisal.

Work, Life Balance

Today, the diversity and changes in organizational management, has led to the increased demand and adoption of work/life balance for individuals so as to have the maximum impact not only for their life, but also in their work/professions. According to Kim & Ryu (2017, P. 262), work life balance is regarded as the state of equilibrium that is released between an employee primary objective of the workplace objectives with their private lifestyle. It also refers to the level of priority that emerges between an individual’s personal and professional activity. At FedEx, ”people help” benefits provide the team members with ample resources to deal with numerous difficult times in life (Kaliannan et al 2016, P. 346). More so, the organization’s nature of work permits the workers to have a great and choice in reference to arranging their work schedules so as to accommodate family commitments education needs among other personal issues.

Human resource professionals, the managers and organizational leaders should always care for their employees whether they are doing well or no. workers who are dissatisfied in an organization may have poor work balance, hence being stressed out, and can in turn result in making mistakes, which in the end is a downside with reference to organizational productivity. When organizational workers manage to find fulfillment with their personal, physical, professional and psychological priorities, they in turn enjoy a healthy work-life balance (Rama Devi & Nagini 2013, P.51). Healthy balance of work and rest given to employees ensures a sense of security and control of their lives, which in turn enables them to have successful careers, contribute to their community, and have healthy personal relationships with their family.

One of the ways in which HR has enabled organizations to establish and enhance balance between work and life is communication. By developing and enacting successful communication channels within an organization, HR helps in ensuring employee always notifies their managers and leaders of any personal issue that may come up (Kazmi & Singh 2015, P. 1245). More so, it enables the organization and workplace environment support individual’s life aspects such as career development, birthdays, hospital visits, and an aspect that makes the employee feel more indebted to their organization (Dave & Purohit 2016, P. 101). With the desire of HR being to make employees feel at their best in terms of service to the organization and vice versa, effective human resource implementation ensures successful implementation of communication channels, and understanding of every employee personal life and requirements. HR ensures, employees are offered personalized treatment in cases of sickness and other personal related cases.

Additionally, Human resource allows the managers to develop a more inclusive review in terms of employee productivity, and instead of focusing on hours worked, they focus on outcomes and productivity. Additionally, the managers ought to give information to the employees on how to realize positive work/life balance in order to have self-arranged schedules between work and personal life (Padma & Reddy, 2014, P. 54). Not only does this motivate the employee to take control of their work and personal life, they also feel motivated that, the employer is mindful of their personal life. This increases employee retention rate. Other ways in which human resources helps the employees and managers to develop employee care benefits, offering the wellness program as well as offering flexible working hours.

Conclusion

The massive adoption of human resource management in the organization management today has led to massive development in terms of performance, employee relations and overall employee productivity. Human resource has in turn become an integral part of every organization that is focused on success as well as the wellness of their employee. Different organization has had different levels of success with regard to human resource adoption and implementation. FedEx Corporation has been one of the success stories with reference to the application of human resource. Human resource can strategically contribute to the development of an organization through different applications.

With reference to this paper. Training and development is one of the integral issues of HR which can be utilized for the success of an organization. Training and development helps an organization to drill its employees, both new and old into hat the organization demands in terms of skills and knowledge. More so, training helps an organization improve employee productivity and as well reduce employee turnover. Additionally, contemporary HR issue of management of employee performance. Organization need to ensure top level performance and in turn key evaluation strategies are implemented to ensure top level employee performance with time to time evaluation. Finally, there is a need to establish key balance between life and work. Not only does sit allow for employee personal development, but also permits for successful team and relations between managers and employees.

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