Contemporary Issues in Human Resource Management

Stephen Taylor

• Publisher: CIPD - Kogan Page
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780749482527
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Contemporary Issues in Human Resource Management is uniquely holistic in its approach to advanced HRM and takes the reader logically through a wide variety of practical issues and functions that affect HR practitioners. Topics addressed include competition and choice, people and skills, regulation and public policy, social trends, engaging people, managing an international workforce, and developing and implementing HR strategies. It is an essential one-stop resource that clearly evaluates the issues surrounding the way people are managed, offers insight into the future development of HRM, and provides the theoretical framework that will enable success in practice. Contemporary Issues in Human Resource Management is packed full of engaging features, such as chapter-by-chapter learning outcomes, case studies, critical reflections, questions and activities designed to actively engage you with the material addressed and summaries of key points to aid learning. Taking you step-by-step through the aspects of HR management so vital for the practice of HR within an organisation, Stephen Taylor's innovative textbook is ideal for students taking an HRM module at undergraduate or Master's level, as well as students taking other modules that explore people management in relation to the wider business context. Online resources are offered to complement the material and include annotated web links, for a wealth of useful sources and information to develop your understanding, multiple choice questionnaires, PowerPoint slides for tutors to design their programmes, along with Lecturer's guides.

01

Introduction

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During the first decade of the twenty-first century, human resource management (HRM) thinking and practice have evolved in significant new directions. Issues and approaches that were previously seen in many organisations as being peripheral have moved to centre stage as HR agendas have been adjusted to take account of developments in the business environment. Hence we have seen much more interest in work–life balance issues, in HR ethics, partnership agreements and in the formal evaluation and measurement of HR practices. Ideas developed in the 1990s have moved from ‘fringe’ or ‘fad’ status to occupying a pivotal role in many organisations’ HR strategies. This is true of employer branding, the use of balanced scorecards, the fostering of positive psychological contracts, the provision of flexible benefits and the range of activities collectively comprising ‘e-HR’. Older, more-established approaches have been reconfigured and often relabelled to make them fit for purpose in the contemporary world. Workforce planning has thus been reinvented as talent management, pay administration has metamorphosed into total reward management, equal opportunities has become diversity management, while terms such as coaching, mentoring, competencies and business partnering have been accorded specific definitions in our professional vocabulary. We have also seen the emergence of some genuinely new areas of research and practice, such as strengths- based performance management, formal strategies aimed at fostering well-being and happiness at work and the evolving employee engagement agenda. At the same time we have seen a substantial increase in the amount of regulation to which the employment relationship is subject, the emergence of skills shortages across a range of occupations and additional pressure both to intensify work and to increase levels of employee commitment. Last, but not least, we have seen the development of a situation in which the need to adapt, evolve and restructure is a constant presence in many organisations. Whereas change used to be episodic in nature, it has for many become endemic, with major implications for the way we carry out HRM.

There are two major purposes behind this book. The first is to focus on these major contemporary issues and ideas in HRM, to explain their significance, assess some of the research that has been carried out into them, debate their advantages and disadvantages and seek to understand their implications for HR practice. In addition, the book aims to explore why this apparently diverse range of unconnected ideas and practices have come to prominence in recent years. While the bulk of the later chapters are focused on the key recent developments and emerging issues themselves, the early part seeks to put forward a coherent explanation for their rise rooted in an analysis of key, longer-term trends in the HR business environment. Not only does an analysis of this kind enable us to explain why the HR agenda has evolved in recent years in the way that it has, but it also provides a good basis for thinking usefully about its likely future direction. It is this feature which makes the book distinct from others. By focusing on the future as well as the present, it aims to help prepare you for a future career in HRM. In short, an attempt will be made to answer the following question:

• What will be the major issues and problems that are likely to shape HR work during the coming 20 years?

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The objectives of this chapter are to:

• place contemporary developments in HRM in historical context
• explain how current HR priorities differ from those that prevailed 20 or 30 years ago
• put the case in favour of the proposition that we are seeing the emergence of a distinct new era in the evolution of people management practice
• discuss the major environmental constraints that increasingly influence HR practice in organisations
• assess the likely future direction of HRM practice
• set out the key questions that are likely to dominate HR thinking and debate over the next 20 years.

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key article

workforce wake-up call

2006 saw the publication of a book of articles by a variety of writers, consultants and researchers working in the field of HRM called Workforce Wake-Up Call: Your workforce is changing, are you? Addressed to a senior management audience, the book looks at key trends in the contemporary business environment and makes judgements about how the world of work and people management is likely to evolve and change in the coming decades in Western industrialised countries. In their introduction the editors sum up the key messages. Their conclusion begins as follows:

The workforce is in the midst of an unstoppable and dramatic transformation. In the coming years, organizations will confront challenges related to demographic trends, global mobility, diversity, work/life issues, technology changes and a virtual workforce. Competition will be global; capital will be abundant; leaders will be developed swiftly; and talented people will be keen to change jobs frequently. These changes will influence how work is performed, where it is performed and what skills are required. While other resources will be abundant, the most important resource of all – talent – will become increasingly scarce. Organizations must ask themselves: Are we prepared for this global workforce revolution? Do we have the right strategies in place? (Gandossy et al 2006: xxiii).

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Questions

1. How far do you agree with the view that in the future all the resources that organisations draw on will be ‘abundant’ with the exception of talent? What arguments could be advanced against this point of view?
2. Why should leaders be developed any more swiftly in the future than they are now?
3. Why should people be any keener to switch jobs in the future than they are now?
4. Thinking about your own organisation, how relevant are these points? What might be ‘the right strategies’ to adopt in order to prepare for the future?

contemporary trends: towards a new hr?

Throughout its history the profession or management function – now commonly titled ‘human resource management’ (HRM) and previously known as ‘personnel management’ – has evolved in definable new directions every 20 or 30 years (see Torrington et al 2011: 10–14). In its earliest incarnation more than 100 years ago, it was focused primarily on improving the welfare of workers in factories, down mines and on docks and shipyards. Some employers began to realise that they could secure greater loyalty, commitment and productivity if they looked after the interests of their workforce by providing a healthy, safe workplace and by providing paid holiday, sick pay and even subsidised housing. Between the two World Wars – as professional, white-collar work became more common and as the state welfare system started to develop – the focus shifted to improving efficiency with the application of scientific management and organisation design principles of the kind advanced by F.W. Taylor and Henri Fayol. Organisations became more bureaucratic and mechanistic, with clearly defined grading structures and a preference for recruiting people at a relatively young age with a view to promoting them over time. Workforce planning, occupational pensions and extensive staff rulebooks were introduced, as management became less personal. The profession then shifted gear again after the Second World War, as the trade union movement grew in strength, requiring personnel managers to negotiate new initiatives and to manage often difficult industrial relations disputes.

The last major change occurred in the 1980s with the emergence of the term human resource management signalling not just new rhetoric, but also significant new thinking on the part of managers. At the time much effort was expended debating what exactly ‘HRM’ was and how it differed from ‘personnel management’ – a debate that was never really satisfactorily concluded before the mainstream research agenda moved on to focus on establishing how and to what extent HR practices contribute to the achievement of organisational performance (see Guest 1987, Legge 1995, Sisson and Storey 2000). In retrospect, however, it is possible to see the evolution of HRM in the 1980s and 1990s very much as a response on the part of management to the sharp decline in trade union membership and influence that occurred at that time as a result of regulatory changes, increased individualism, the decline of traditional industries and the growth of the service sector. Over quite a short period of time managers found themselves firmly in the driving seat and in control of the direction of people management in their organisations. Particularly important was the demolition during the 1980s, at least in the private sector, of the established national-level collective bargaining system. Terms and conditions were no longer set for employers by a body negotiating with unions on their behalf for a whole industry. Bargaining was decentralised, and in many cases gave way altogether to a situation in which pay and conditions were determined by management without any need to negotiate with anyone at all. Power thus shifted sharply in many organisations towards management, high levels of unemployment and low levels of employment security reducing both the ability and willingness of employees to resist. Donkin (2001) neatly sums up the result as follows:

Like an improved soap powder with a biological ingredient, HRM, equipped with something called strategy, promised a new set of tools and measures to reward, motivate and organise employees in the re-engineered workplace.

For a generation managers had been seriously constrained in terms of how they approached the people-related aspects of their activities. Now they had an opportunity to take control and shape approaches that were appropriate for their own organisations’ particular circumstances. HR strategies were developed, new individualised pay arrangements introduced, formal performance appraisal systems established and competency frameworks defined. Employers also seized the opportunity to employ people more flexibly, establishing more part-time and temporary jobs, outsourcing ‘non-core’ activities to external providers and abolishing long-established lines of demarcation which determined where one group of workers’ duties ended and another’s began. At the same time new methods of relating to workers had to be established to replace union consultation and negotiation arrangements, so we saw the spread of a range of new involvement and communication initiatives along with a preference for single-table or single-union bargaining in circumstances where trade unions retained an influence. In short, HRM can largely be explained as a response on the part of organisations to a newfound freedom to manage their workforces in the way that they wanted to. Fewer compromises had to be made, allowing decisions to be mad...

Table of contents

• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
• WALKTHROUGH OF TEXTBOOK FEATURES AND ONLINE RESOURCES
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Competition and choice
• Chapter 3 People and skills
• Chapter 4 Regulation and public policy
• Chapter 5 Social trends
• Chapter 6 Flexibility and change
• Chapter 7 Competing for people
• Chapter 8 Managing expectations
• Chapter 9 Engaging people
• Chapter 10 Managing knowledge and learning
• Chapter 11 Managing an international workforce
• Chapter 12 Managing ethically
• Chapter 13 Developing HR strategies
• Chapter 14 Managing the HR function
• INDEX