Managing human resource part 2
“Every company needs workers. Regardless of the size, large or small, the company’s success or failure depends on the performance of its workers. Many years ago, companies have a “personnel department” to manage the hiring, firing, and paying workers. This function is limited and often separate from the daily activities so it no longer effective. You must understand that today the assets of company change from capitals and equipments, which belong to the owner of the company, to knowledge and skills, which belong to the workers. To ensure that these assets are maximized to meet the company’s goals, a new way of management must be created to hiring, developing, and retaining workers called human resource management. This new function does not belong to personnel administration anymore but it is part of the management system.
He said: “I agree that we must focus on hiring skilled workers according to a well-defined process for consistency. What else do we need?”
I explained: “You need to establish proper pay and benefits that match a worker’s contribution to your company. You must monitor the job markets and keep your workers’ salary current with the market. Payment needs to be perceived as fair. Many companies give good salary in the first year to attract workers then keep their raise to a minimum and hope that their workers do not change jobs. If you do not value the workers then there is no reason that they value your company. If you treat them with fairness, they know how to return your consideration. Today company assets belong to the workers and they can leave anytime they want, so you need to protect these assets by being fair with your workers.”
He agreed: “I understand that. I have to be more careful to protect these assets. What else should I do after hiring them?”
I told him: “Your workers need a good work environment so they can be productive. Many software companies do not pay attention to the work environment. An office that is too noisy creates unnecessary distraction and often interfere with workers’ productivity. Some workers cannot concentrate so they just doing the minimum work instead. Software work is an intellectual activity which require minimum distractions. To have a efficient and effective workforce, you need to support your workers with a good working environment without distraction. Another issue is some companies have too many meetings. Morning meeting, afternoon meeting, early meeting, late meetings but most are not properly organized or focus. Meetings take away time to do productive work. Top companies have minimum numbers of meeting so their workers can focus more on their work. Meeting is only called when necessary, it should have clear agenda and kept no more than an hour.”
He laughed: “I agree with your suggestion about meeting, I understand that many managers like to have meeting so they feel important but it waste time and unnecessary. However to keep a less distract work environment requires a major investment and I am not sure about this.”
I explained: “The best investment is to invest in your own people. By having a nice work environment you can see an increase in workers’ productivity. You need to follow top software companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook. In these companies, all developers have separate offices so they can focus on their work with minimum distraction. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner are available inside the company so workers do not have to leave the work environment. Drinking water is available at every floor corner so workers do not have to go very far. Why are these companies doing that? Because they want their workers to stay and work. If they have to leave for lunch, they lose their precious time. If they have to go to a restaurant they may lose their concentration on their works. These companies know something about intellectual work and how things distract their workers.”
He seemed convinced: “That is interesting, I did not know work environment relates to human resource management. Please continue on this interesting topic.”
I continued: “Many companies focus on external communication to insure that customers receive important information on a timely basis but not on internal communication. Communication within an organization is essential and needs to be managed. Today with email, voice mail it is so easy to communicate with workers frequently but many managers are too busy to do that. Lacking of information, without knowing what happened often create false rumors. I have seen places where the rumor is the only means of internal communication. Such a situation is certainly not very good to a work environment, especially if the rumor is not correct. It is important for manager to share information with workers on a frequent basis.”
He agreed: “We need to pay more attention to internal communication. Is there anything else?”
I continued: “What I mentioned are some fundamentals of human resource management such as establishing policies, standards and process to manage hiring, selecting, paying and provide a good working environment. The most important is to establish a performance evaluation of workers. Performance evaluation helps you to establish objectives and measure the work performed against those objectives. This is a key activity of your managers. First they must define the job duties and responsibilities for each workers and for each job. They must describe the performance goals that can be measured for each worker. For example, Write code in C++ for Project X. Conduct unit test to check for defects and fix those defects before the software is released to customers. Performance goals can be measured such as not to have more than 5 defects per thousand lines of code after release software to customers. If the software still have defects that means the worker does not test the code and therefore not do the job. Manager needs to have feedback meeting with workers about their performance on a regular basis and keep a record of their performance for analysis as input to their annual compensation. The best workers should be recognized based on their achievements and meet the objectives. By compensate them accordingly, you can protect “your assets”. By sharing information frequently, you build a trust with your workers so they feel that they are part of your company and this is the essence of human resource management. Of course, you can use performance measurement to help improve the performance of some workers too. A good company must have a training program to improve the capabilities of their workers. Many companies consider training as a cost rather than an investment. That is wrong. Training helps improve workers’ productivity and support them to achieve the company goals. Performance evaluation can also be used to identify non-performers. You may decide that some workers cannot successfully perform well in your company.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
