July 15, 2002	Monday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 4, 1423

The revolutionary change in the concept of human resources that they are not means to an end but ends in themselves, are no longer applied as a measurable component of process of organisational activity.

The people in an organisation are a dynamic force but at the same time they differ in age, gender, religion, social background and education, as such bring a range of motives and commitment to their work. This very fact combined with accelerated growth in technology and its application in varying combinations with human resources as a component of management have rendered process of human resource management, a phenomenon, involving a complex of socio-economic problems.

As such management of human resources need to be related to all aspects of human psychology including personal beliefs, outlook, ethics and morality standards, aspirations and growth which entails supportive as well as system approach instead of “traditional management approach” which involves authoritative and controlling strategy.

The supportive approach helps people grow in self-control and responsibility and creates an ideal organisational culture where all employees are eager to put in their best efforts to achieve organisational mission. This in turn results in developing a situation of job satisfaction at all levels, whereas “ system approach “ implies that any action of management in relation to human resources always has repercussions on other variables in organisation. As such, it should be sincere concern of a manager that his policies in relation to motivating and actuating manpower should have favourable impact on entire organisational system.

Here the question arises as to what are the limits and boundaries for exercising policy of motivation and drive in an organisation regarding its people. It is the human psychology. The psychologists relate the following three basic assumptions to human behaviour:

a) All human behaviour has a cause, which it self is the result of interaction of heredity and environmental conditions.

b) It is actually the set of human wants and needs which

determines human behaviour in given circumstances.

c) And on account of these needs, human behaviour is goal seeking. This necessitates action and efforts on the part of human beings and which consequently results in satisfaction and fulfilment of human needs, which have been classified as physiological security, affection, ego and self-actualisation needs, duly incorporated in the hierarchy of needs propounded by A.H.Maslow.

The human needs combined with heredity and environment determine a set of human behaviour which need to be managed and monitored through the process of actuation and motivation to achieve organisational goals and at the same time maximum satisfaction on the part of people at all counts. Hence strategy of effective human resource management involves :

1) recruitment of people in the Organisation to do the jobs defined by division of labour; 2) monitoring the performance and; 3) rewarding them to further improve their performance/productivity.

The factors determining strategy for effective management of human resources to be undertaken in an organisation are :

Management philosophy: It is the management philosophy that develops a peculiar culture of the organisation concerned. The organisational culture in turn determines the strategy to be undertaken regarding management of human resources.

An organisation typically specifies the nature of contract or agreement it enters with its employees. This may range from policy of “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay (which is in vogue in majority of the American business and industrial organisations with regard to blue collar jobs) to a policy which stresses challenging and meaningful work in return for a loyal. committed and self-motivated employee”, commonly prevalent in Japan.

In the words of Ryutaro Nohmura, who owns a tent making firm in Osaka: “Employees in Japan view their company as an extension of their family life. Many of them equate the importance of their company with that of their own lives”.

On the other hand, in case of firms exercising autocratic policies, their selections, appraisal and rewarding decisions are centralised. Whereas in a firm having a culture of participating management, people running it develop a sense of responsibility, self-discipline, teamwork and aspirations of achieving very best and thus make maximum contribution towards organisational goal.

Regarding importance of putting in place organisational culture conducive to welfare of its human resources, Gulrick Luther in his notes on theory of organisation has rightly said that “get human beings to put their body and soul with the programme and then see that human potential has no limit”. While commenting on Japanese organisational behaviour, Naboru Yushi, the then chief of the Sony Corporation, remarked: “we do not call our employees workers or labourer but Associates instead. One reason everyone at Sony wears the same blue - grey jacket is that we are saying it is a working company, a blue collar company, all the way from the top to the bottom”.

The strategy of human resource management also depends on extent of weightage given to quality of selection and development.

The organisation practising quality selection, training and subsequent career building programme of the employee would develop a team of high performers having aspirations and desire to grow in line of their profession. Another factor stimulating the strategic management of human resources is company’s ability to gear human resources system towards collective and group based performance. When the emphasis is on group performance rather than individual performance, then selection must take into account social compatibility.

Similarly, the appraisal system must be group focussed and accordingly rewards must provide incentive for the work group. Further, in order to have goal oriented performance from employees following ideal situations should exist in the Organisation:- The employees have clear understanding of the work assigned to them. The foremost requirement for getting excellent performance of employees is to provide them clear and concise knowledge of their assignments or in other words an idea as to what is expected of them.

To determine standard of expectation, is both formal and informal process. The standard can be inferred through Organisation’s performance appraisal system which is a formal method, whereas informal development of standard is helped through on going activities of; assigning work, consultation, monitoring of work, critique or reviewing the progress and giving feed back. The job expectations have direct impact on performance when, (1) expectations are concise and delegated in consultation with subordinates. (2) assignments are challenging but achievable and compatible to specialised field of employee concerned.

The job expectations have direct bearing on selection process, which in turn ensures selection of competent people, which is one of the requisites of managing performance of human resources. Similarly, competency of employees can be judged only on the basis of well defined job expectations.

The clarity of goal or job expectation is co-related to development of congenial working environments, which include elements like feedback, consultation, critique and problem solving. These emerge only when the job and goal is clearly defined.

Finally, it is the clarity of goal and job expectation which determines the degree of motivation developed in an employee.

Competency: It is the second important determinant of the standard of performance of an employee. The competency implies to one’s ability to perform, which in turn depends on educational and professional qualifications, natural aptitude, confidence, skill and job experience.

The competency of work force has direct impact on the quality of service or product offered by the Organisation. The main reason of the success of business organisations in Japan is their consistency regarding total quality control, which of course is possible only due to selection of right man for the right job.

Lack of competency or no competency found in an employee denotes wrong selection. In such cases even training and development activities are found ineffective.

The fast-changing socio-economic and political scenario over the globe and incredibly fast advancement in science and technology continue to demand diversity in job competency and sophistication in process of production and quality of service offered. As such Organisations desiring excellent performance from their manpower must carry on training and development process for their employees of all level, on continuous basis.

The development of competency also depends on job structure. A well structured job would entail enthusiasm and desire to learn on the part of the employee and he / she in turn would compel the management to look after their career development and training needs effectively.

Congenial work environment: The environment of the job or external conditions which if found negative like, a) having procedural bottlenecks; b) lack of two way horizontal and vertical communication, c) organisational culture d)inadequate feed back from the management, e) failure to give personal support to employees by the management f)failure to make timely decisions and, g) inaccessible management having authoritative style of management, discourage employees from putting in their best efforts. The continuous feedback from management is the most needed element to reinforce performance and also to adjust the performance, which is irrelevant or not required. Hence negative and positive feedback are of utmost importance to improve performance.

The synergetic and consultative approach of the management at all level, during the entire process right from decision making through implementation stage to completion of job infuse enthusiasm and initiative among workers which is a pre-requisite for obtaining outstanding performance from the workers.

The participative management as depicted from idea of “Management by objectives”, and “9,9 Management style of Management Grid “ devised by Blake and Miss Mouton is being practised in all economically developed and to some extent in third world countries, but it is not being followed in letter and spirit. They have failed to uphold the element of consensus and consultation at all level, as such unilateral decisions and actions are common phenomena in these countries.

One of the most important characteristics of Japanese culture is to achieve consensus by compromising and thus conflict is automatically avoided and accordingly in running the affairs of the country everyone contributes right from grass root level to the largest multinational organisations. The Japanese call it “memawashi” (root binding). Just as a gardener wraps all the roots of a tree together before he transplants it, Japanese leaders also, in all spheres of trade and industry and social welfare organisations bring all members of organisation together before an important decision is made.

Similarly, dialogue and trust, being the most important ingredients of participative management, when injected, give miraculous results with regard to production and performance.

Compliance to ethical and moral standards. Ethics and morality are one’s own personal traits, related to individuals’ social creditability, but ethics and morality need to exist in working environment also. This presupposes that man will rise above personal gains and ulterior motives and will not be oblivion of group ethics, which is the most important ingredient of team management philosophy. It is unfortunate that in Pakistan’s scenario, despite it being a Muslim country, group ethics are totally ignored in business life and resultantly amassing of ill acquired wealth and rampant corruption have become the part of our business and social culture.

The fifth and the most important factor leading to charismatic performance of human resources is Process of rewarding. The rewards and incentives in practice with commercial organisations are usually:

* Pay with fringe benefits; promotions: management concern for career progression of employees; assignment of challenging and responsible jobs in recognition of one’s performance; job and financial security; opportunity to improve one’s knowledge and skill through in-house and ex-house training programmes; personal sense of well being; appreciation from the clients of the organisation.

The proper management of rewarding system is most essential to motivate the employees to perform well. Almost everywhere, whether it is a developed country or a developing one, it is under utilised or rather mishandled by management, and as a result employees are not prompted to perform best to their ability.

The periodical performance appraisal / evaluation and goal oriented performance form the very basis of determining extent or nature of reward to an employee. The appraisal system may range from subjective personal evaluation to impersonal criteria based on profitability, quality of production, return on investment and other quantitative measures. It depends on the ability of appraising manager to determine the extent to which subjective and objective approach to be given while appraising the performance of an employee.

Secondly, the nature of reward to be determined should promise both long term and immediate goals/benefits/advantages to be achieved by the organisation as well as employee concerned. It is also necessary that a due balance is maintained between rewards entailing short and long term benefits to employees and Organisation itself.

In Pakistan’s scenario where ad hocism has upper hand in all aspects of economic life, the organisations usually look towards short term goals like rewarding managers by giving rise in pay and promotion for achieving higher profitability and increase in business.

The long term goals are usually ignored. It is essential that good performers along with immediate benefit be motivated to strive for long term goals by assigning to them challenging and responsible position in the hierarchy of management. Hence ideal approach towards rewarding must result in balanced support to short and long term strategic goals both from organisational and employee’s point of view.