Abstract
Employees within any organization are not considered to be of much effectiveness besides the job responsibilities assigned to them, organizations that follow this approach have always found it difficult to progress upwards at a much higher pace. Whereas the organizations that are well aware about the importance of human capital and engage their employees in effective decision making process have proven to reach their targets more appropriately. This fact should not be ignored by the management that there are always some changes in the trends of human capital management. Not keeping track of those changes may result in un-desired outcome by the organization. Table of Content
Introduction 3
Discussion 3
Global Human Capital Issues 4
No Performance Management 4
Lacking of Workforce Planning 4
Workforce analytics 5
Managing Organizational Change 5
Aligning Human Capital Management Strategy with Global Business Strategy 5
Future Human Capital Management Trends 7
Assessment of job and analytics: 7
Shortage of skilled talent: 7
Aging of workforce: 7
Future role of human capital manager: 7
Conclusion 8
References 9
Introduction
The characteristics of people within an organization are the most important quality, and traits of people are depicted as "human capital." This term, Human Capital is used to elaborate the worth of skills and knowledge that are being possessed by the employees of any particular organization (Bateman & Snell, 2009). Bateman and Snell also further stated that an employee within an organization and other assets cumulatively transforms an organization into more responsive and spirited workplace, and these workers helps in the accomplishment of the organizational goals (2009). An organization stands on the core pillars of its workforce that energetically takes part in customer services, product development and reliability. Every worker becomes an essential part of an organization with some unique set of skills. An effective management is said to be that management which utilizes these skills in the best interest of the organization.
Various researches have revealed the fact that in current business environment, engaging the employees of the organization helps in leading the business towards success. Therefore, it is equally important for the organizations to devise such policies that would help in raising the level of job satisfaction through engagement and motivation. In order to make certain of this, it is essential to implement these policies within every level that exists within the management structure of that organization (Nohria & Groysberg, 2008).
Discussion
Human capital is considered to be an important asset to the organization and having satisfied employees are equally important to the success of the organization. According to Gardner (2008) the basis of having a satisfaction of job relies on either tangible or intangible rewards. The core rewards for a satisfied employee is the benefits provided by the organization along with its salary. While on the other hand, intangible rewards are responsible for bringing more satisfaction on the workplace. These intangible rewards could be trust, respect, and appreciation of work, providing individual growth which can be increased by motivating the employee and by implementing various engagement strategies.
As elaborated by Soyars and Brusino (2009), engaging employees is defined as the act of being emotionally invested in their respective work and are well aware that their contribution would result in the success of their employer. According to Attridge’s (2009), those organizations which engage their employees more have a greater chance of having higher employee loyalty and productivity.
The important fundamentals that are essential for the employment engagement are the acknowledgement of the contribution made by the employee and in return to it, providing advancement and growth opportunities and access to the management. In order to gain employees trust, it is important to share organizations goals, financial statements and performance indicators with the employee on equal grounds. From employees end, if they are willing to be a successful contributor then they should realize the fact that their work has great significance for the success of the organization (Wallace & Trinka, 2009).
Global Human Capital Issues
Beside the fact that human capital has been now recognized as one of the important aspect in the success of any organization, still there are some issues faced by the corporate world to get their desired outcomes. These global human capital issues are not impossible to be overcome but organizations have to give more attention to the factors that are giving birth to these issues and are not being managed by the organization. Below are mentioned some of the most common issues faced by organizations internationally in respect of human capital.
No Performance Management
Most of the organizations strive along with performance management whereas organizations that are ranked as high-performance organizations are about 2.5 times more efficient as compared to the organizations that are ranked as low-performance organizations. The reason is so that high-performance organizations adopt a purpose driven approach which helps in merging their tactical and strategic approaches in order to manage the performance of the organization and also to make assurance of meeting their daily objectives that is linked to the overall goal of the organization. Therefore, for organizations that is running operations on small scale or is ranked as low-performance organizations, keeping performance management enacted is important to overcome the human capital issue.
Lacking of Workforce Planning
Another important factor that might give rise to the human capital issue is the improper or doing no workforce planning at all. Most of the successful organizations give priority to the operational workforce planning such as tracking of headcounts etc. This function is considered to be the most indefinable one but is also considered to be the most effective one on the market performance. The reason for this is because it purely focuses on what elements are required in order to make the business successful and also to make sure that the organization is well prepared predict and to adapt necessary changes if required. Therefore it is essential for lower performing organizations to devise their workforce planning in order to get desirable outcomes.
Workforce analytics
Even most of the Human Resource organizations are working immensely great but still many of them lack the ability to analyze, measure and draw meaningful insights from their data related to workforce and measuring the Return On Investment (ROI) of their human capital (Bontis & Fitz-Enz, 2002). Approximately about more than 50% of the groups which are engaged in HR voted in the favor of workforce analytics as an integral part of the organization but in actual, only 14% among those HR groups showed that they were effectively utilizing this method. The reason for this is measuring only HR activities that involves time to fill, turnover rate and headcount instead of focusing on the effectiveness such as quality of attrition and movement would not give your desired result for which having good grip on the workforce analytics is very important.
Managing Organizational Change
Organizations that are following the reactive strategy are also considered to have human capital issues as well. Any CEO of the organization would like its employees to go for a proactive approach and should also have the capability of anticipating any change and adapt to necessary strategies according to that. But this is not the case in many organizations and the reason behind this is lack of managing organizational change.
Aligning Human Capital Management Strategy with Global Business Strategy
The core element of human capital management strategy is to bring human capital strategies in coordination with the organizations goal, its mission, and its objectives through conducting various analyses, by making proper plans and making appropriate investments and managing the programs that are associated to human capital. Human capital planning is said to be such a process through which an organization layouts the rational framework of human capital programs, policies and practices in order to achieve a common target that is incorporated with the strategic plan of the organization. Implementing the strategic human capital plan is considered to be the most important step by the organization so as to create a highly efficient, performance based organization by acquiring, motivating, recruiting and rewarding those individuals or group of individuals who comes under the head of high performers and workforce of top quality. This strategic human capital plan in transformed in to the roadmap so as to achieve continuous level of improvement in the output and also becomes the essential framework for the purpose of transforming corporate operations and culture of the organization in its best interest (Bontis et al, 2000).
Even though the content of the strategic human capital plan along with its structure and format will vary from one organization to another organization, there are some core elements that are always included and should be included in the human capital strategic plan. This plan should consist:
• A clear and understandable strategic direction.
•Goals outcomes/goals of stakeholders and customers of human capital management.
• Pre-determined objective and strategies in order to achieve the goals.
• Implementation plan.
• A plan related to communication or change management (if required)
• A system of accountability.
Future Human Capital Management Trends
As the world is moving at a faster pace and is changing accordingly, there is always a rise and fall in the trends of human capital. That is why it is necessary to know these trends in order to be prepared or prevent the organization from any un-expected challenge. Some of the future human capital management trends are mentioned below:
Assessment of job and analytics:
With an increase in the demand of core competencies, the HR is required to understand these demands and the required skills and knowledge to handle these demands wisely. HR is not only responsible for hiring people but also has the responsibility to develop better understanding about each job and the skills required for them and to make sure that the employee is utilized to its full potential with respect to the job assigned to him/her.
Shortage of skilled talent:
It has also been observed that the level of skilled talent has been decreasing over the past year that is an alarming situation for most of the successfully operating companies. Therefore, it is essential for the organizations to develop various training programs for the new recruits so as to enhance their skills and level of knowledge up to the required level of their job post.
Aging of workforce:
As the recession and economic slowdown has affected many families, this might also affect some organizations as well. This can so happens when employees who are at the age of retirement still continues to work in order to cope up with the downfalls led by recession, this may hinder the way of those young people in moving upward within an organization who are talented and have the capability to give more fruitful results.
Future role of human capital manager:
The role of human capital manager in the coming days is to keep track of the latest trends in the human capital management and should re-evaluate the organizations human capital management strategy so that it could not be deviated from its business strategy and should be aligned with it accordingly. The manager should also keep reasonable alternatives in mind to cater any un-expected future trend that might not act in favor of the organization.
Conclusion
There is no doubt in the fact that human capital is an important asset for any organization. The high level management should consider engaging their employees in important decision making process so as to motivate them and give them value and also to give them liberty to work for the organization with more dedication by solely thinking in the best interest of the organization and not only themselves.
References
Attridge, M. (2009). Measuring and managing employee work engagement: A review of the research and business literature. Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health.
Bateman, T. S., & Snell, S. A. (2009). Management: Leading & Collaborating in a Competitive World (8th ed.). : McGraw-Hill.
Bontis, N., & Fitz-Enz, J. (2002). Intellectual capital ROI: a causal map of human capital antecedents and consequents. Journal of Intellectual Capital.
Bontis, N., Keow, W. C. C., & Richardson, S. (2000). Intellectual capital and business performance in Malaysian industries. Journal of intellectual capital.
Gardner, M. (2008). Seven things employees want most to be happy at work. The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print /content/view/print/219572
Nohria, N., Groysberg, B., Lee, L. (2008). Employee motivation. Harvard Business Review.
Soyars, M., & Brusino, J. (2009). Essentials of engagement. Training + Development.
Wallace, L., & Trinka, J. (2009). Leadership and employee engagement. Public Management.
