Leadership Styles and Human Capital Management

Human capital management is a common method of developing relationships with employees as a resource and managing the resource. The method focuses on the provision and arrangement of information related to labor acquisition, workforce management, and results optimization. Leadership styles include democratic, autocratic, coaching, coercive, and laissez-faire leadership. The leadership style used by organizational leaders impacts human capital management and employee performance.

John, the CEO of Atlantis Global Company (AGC), shows an autocratic leadership style. Autocratic leadership is task-oriented and does not value employee input. The leadership type concentrates on how to get the job done by defining the employees’ roles, putting structures in place, planning and organizing work, and creating performance standards which must be strictly adhered to. John’s style of leadership is good since it ensures time management and meeting deadlines (Global Human Capital Trends, 2015). It is also important to employees who are in constant need of close supervision. However, this style puts less concern for employees and do not consider motivation and retention of employees, which can lead to a very high employee turnover. Creative employees who perform well in group activities do not prefer the autocratic style of leadership.

On the other hand, Shawn, the vice president of AGC employs a democratic style of leadership. Democratic leadership is participative in nature. It values employee input and teamwork (Johnson, 2015). However, the responsibility of creating final decisions lies with the team leader. This type of leadership helps boost workforce morale since employees can contribute effectively to decision-making processes. Shawn’s style of leadership is good because it will promote transformative change in the company. Shawn sees the need for positive change by demonstrating the interest to motivate and encourage employees to increase their productivity. Democratic leadership enables employees to easily accept and accommodate changes in the organization because they have a role to play in the decision-making and change process. This method leads to stability and uniformity in all areas of the organization, which leads to a higher level of performance. However, this leadership style is not very effective when an organization needs to make short-term decisions that may not require the input and contributions of employees

Considering John and Shawn’s leadership styles within AGC, I recommend Shawn’s style of leadership. However, I focus much of my attention to transformative leadership. I choose this form of leadership because it is mainly focused on initiating personal, team, group, and organizational change. In this form of leadership, management and employee communication, and visibility levels are very high. Transformational leaders empower their followers and motivate them to work and achieve more outcome than intended and even more than they possibly thought (Birasnav, 2011). Transformational leadership creates more commitment among the employees. This leadership style encourages human capital management by inspiring the workforce by making them feel important. This leads to a high level of productivity for both employees and the company in general. However, the leader’s enthusiasm should be supported by detail people in order for it to be successfully passed onto and accepted by the workers.

During the meeting, I intend to recommend the following strategies for human capital management to John and the board of directors, which should be used in order to ensure a higher employee performance and company productivity.

Provision of a Positive Workplace Setting

Providing employees with a progressive and positive work environment is a key strategy that will reduce the turnover rates. Supervisors and managers should be trained on how well to handle employees under their supervision. Thus, a positive and friendly working environment can be provided through manager training. This is because they can be able to perform effective recruitment and employee retention. The retention plans should also be able to accommodate employee engagement within the organization.

Rewarding the Right Conduct

When managers recognize, reinforce and reward good behavior and improved performance of the employees, the employees are motivated to stay and work more because they feel appreciated.

Engagement

When people are engaged and allowed to contribute their suggestions and ideas, they become more productive because they gain a sense of ownership.

Developing Skills and Promoting Talent

Encouraging the people’s career development and providing them with reliable career opportunities and better challenges motivates them and improves their productivity.

Evaluation and Measurement

Continuous evaluation of employee performance helps to measure their progress and determine their satisfying and de-satisfying factors (Johnson, 2015). This can be done through measurement of morale, attitudes, engagement level, and turnover.

Examples of human capital management can be illustrated from Deloitte which is known to be among the top 100 best employer organizations. Deloitte uses its intranet-based career known as the Deloitte Career Connections to motivate its employees through career development. Sony Corporation is also another very useful example of company which is keen on human capital management. They encourage innovative sponsorship programs such as Idea Exposition where employees have a chance to participate in creative innovation.

References

Birasnav, M., Rangnekar, S., & Dalpati, A. (2011). Transformational leadership and human capital benefits: The role of knowledge management. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 32(2), 106-126.

Global Human Capital Trends (2015) Retrieved from http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/at/Documents/human-capital/hc-trends-2015.pdf

Johnson, Rose. (2015). 5 Different Types of Leadership Styles. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/5-different-types-leadership-styles-17584.html.