Human Resources Unit 1

BHR 3352, Human Resource Management 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit I Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Compare and contrast effective human resource management strategies.

Reading Assignment Chapter 1: Creating Value Through Human Resources Chapter 2: Making Human Resource Management Strategic Chapter 14: Aligning Strategy with Practice

Unit Lesson Every professional discipline has its own set of vernacular. Basketball players will talk about pick and rolls, football players will talk about the B-gap, accountants will talk about profit and loss statements, and quality assurance professionals will talk about Six Sigma. Human resource (HR) professionals are no different. One purpose of this unit is to introduce you to this vernacular. Learning the HR language will serve as a foundation for future units to help you connect the HR dots. Overall, Unit I may best be described as a dump truck of large rocks. There are many concepts here that you will be introduced to, and it may seem overwhelming at first. Remember that each successive unit will go deeper on what is introduced here. Twenty-first century businesses rely on four fundamental resources known as the factors of production. Those four resources include natural resources, capital, human resources, and entrepreneurship (Kelly & Williams, 2015, p. 7). Unit I is about putting the foundational building blocks in place to create a common philosophy and language for exploration of human resource strategy and practice over the seven remaining units. Kelly and Williams (2015) give us a simple definition of human resource management when they share that it is “the management function focused on maximizing the effectiveness of the workforce by recruiting world- class talent, promoting career development, and determining workforce strategies to boost organizational effectiveness” (p. 242). Apart from the textbook and reading/viewing material, there are four truths to think about when working in (and then teaching) human resource management. Truth #1—Human Resource Management is a Support Function On average, people tend to see their world as the center of the universe, and HR people are no exception. For an HR professional, every move in a company is seen through HR lenses. For example, when there is a promotion, they think about equal employment opportunities, training, salary adjustments, retaining talent, management development, organizational development for those who were not promoted, and the list goes on. Over time, they can tend to make decisions based on risk avoidance that may be best for HR, but not necessarily best for the business. People who are interested in the HR field need to hear this clearly; the business will go on without you, and you exist to support the business. HR people have incredible potential to

UNIT I STUDY GUIDE

Strategic Human Resource

Management in a Global Environment

BHR 3352, Human Resource Management 2

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enhance the business or become HR cops; the latter produces little or no value for the firm. An HR person is a servant and support mechanism first. Truth #2—The Ripple Effect Sometime on a calm spring morning, find a pond, and throw a rock into the middle. What you will see is the waves of that rock going away from the point of impact and, while diminishing, if you can follow them, touching every piece of the shoreline. What you cannot see (but physicists will tell you), is that the rock- moving water molecules affected every part of the pond, even if ever so slightly. This is the tough reality of human resource management. When a policy is formed or a procedure is changed, there is a ripple effect to the entire firm. For example, let’s say I, as a manager, realize I am not offering a high enough entry-level wage to college graduating engineers in my firm, and thus, I increase the starting offers from $60,000 per year to $70,000 per year. Maybe I can better acquire and retain good engineering talent? It seems like a good decision. What else is likely to happen? First, the engineers I hired in the last three years will be disgruntled over wage compression, and I am likely to see turnover in this group, more complaints in my office, more counteroffers to deal with, and perhaps this was just enough to push the disgruntled types over the edge of a union certification campaign. There are many other issues to be concerned with, but you can now see that by making a “wise” decision in order to increase recruiting of new engineers, I have demotivated a major part of my workforce, increased my workload, massively increased labor costs as replacement costs of leaving one-to-three-year engineers will be higher, and now I have a union knocking on my door. Nothing in HR is done in a vacuum, and HR professionals constantly have to think about the ripple effect and long-term unintended consequences. Truth #3—Globalization is Not “Out There” Often, people think knowing about globalization is important if your business is global, meaning operations outside of the United States. What they do not realize, is that about 99% of the time employees and customers are global by perspective, culture, and experience. Picture this: An HR manager’s first assignment outside of HR was with a large Fortune 500 manufacturing firm. As a general practice, he held Monday morning stand-up meetings to make sure everything was going to plan and everyone was supported. When the manager took the role, he had a Vietnamese lead engineer whom, no matter how many times he asked how it was going, it was always “going great boss, thank you.” Over time, the HR manager could see things were not going great, and he began to question both his ability and integrity. About this time, a Chinese coworker of the manager (whom he was complaining to) told him that due to cultural effects of power, distance, and saving face, his lead engineer would never be so rude as to change his answer in public. In order to test this, after his Monday standups he began to walk with his lead engineer back to his office and occasionally take him out to lunch. In three weeks, the manager and engineer had a new, honest, and transparent relationship. A clash of cultures almost led the manager to firing one of his best engineers. Globalization is real, here, and right now. A large university is no different from any other global organization in today’s world. Students attend classes electronically from all over the globe. Even a residential campus may have students from countries such as Japan, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Mongolia, Ukraine, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Great Britain. The residential university may be home for employees who originated from some of these same countries. The online faculty could be from all over the world. Therefore, the university has a global presence. As a result, the HR efforts must be aware of the wealth of things these cultures have in common while at the same time being sensitive to the differences. Truth #4—HR is Not for the Emotionally Unstable or Mono-Task Person

 What is there to love about HR? No day is ever the same.

 What is there to hate about HR? No day is ever the same. People often say they want to work in HR. When asked why, they inevitably respond, “because I like people.” If this is the response, it probably means that they should “pick a different profession.” Yes, giving jobs to new college graduates is fun, promoting people is fun, and passing out stock options is fun. However, you cannot wear your heart on your sleeve when you lay off the single mom with 20 years of service due to economic cuts. You cannot be too scared to do your job when you have to fire the alcoholic soldier just returning from war, who is violent with his manager and suffering from PTSD. These are hard days, and they do happen.

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On any given day, you may have to build a training program for new managers, conduct sexual harassment training, review and authorize a new supplier of HR services, conduct salary analysis, fix someone’s inaccurate paycheck, break up a fight in the parking lot, or build a succession plan for your CEO. In HR, you are not dealing with static technology and processes; you are dealing with dynamic people who can be heroes and boneheads in the same shift. It is an awesome field, but the seasoned professionals will have thick skin, keen judgment, and will understand the second and third tier consequences of their choices.

Reference Kelly, M., & Williams, C. (2015). BUSN: Introduction to business (7th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage

Learning.

Learning Activities (Non-Graded) For additional information regarding the topics discussed in this unit, please see the following videos. These videos visually demonstrate the concepts discussed in the unit lesson and readings. Chapter 01: Seeing People As a Strategic Resource Chapter 14: Aligning Strategy With Practice Non-graded Learning Activities are provided to aid students in their course of study. You do not have to submit them. If you have questions, contact your instructor for further guidance and information.