Human Resources Management – Term Paper

Introduction

It is hard to find any successful company without a good human resource department. The human resources department plays a role in recruiting people. First of all they come up with strategies that ensure a company has qualified personnel (Mathis and Jackson, 2003). Secondly, the human resources department provides training of the personnel to ensure they are well acquainted with the duties and obligations they are to provide to the company. Thirdly, it encourages the company’s personnel through performance appraisal. Finally, the department helps to maintain a good working atmosphere and managing disputes between employees this is just to mention a few. It is, therefore, important for a company to have a good human resources department for it to be successful.;

Background and Context

Clothes R Us has existed for over a decade now and grown to be one of the major supplier chains internationally.; At its onset, the pioneers and CEOs were in charge of selling and also controlling various operations of the company. The clothes came with increased benefits which resulted in more customers coming to the store. The increased number of customers led to rapid growth of the company. In turn, this resulted in a tremendous growth regarding the annual sales and income of the company. The customers spent less time in searching for the right clothes, and they were affordable. Most of the customers left the store happy and satisfied.;

The customized loose human resource strategy has remained to be a wonder to many. The company lacks a centralized human resource department. It also appears that the managers are comfortable with how things are. There is very little interest among the managers to restructure the human resource department and supervise the performance workers especially when it comes to permanent workers. Decentralization in Clothes R Us and the freewill way of operation among the managers has them to behave in a kingly manner. Hence, they treat their employees has their subjects that they can control their recruitment and performance as they see fit.;

Even though the majority of the permanent employees have a good education the company still hires casual laborers to save on costs. This is a problem that has existed since the company started. The reliance on casual laborers has been a source of demoralization among the permanent employees. Only recently did the company open its eyes on the significance of a motivated workforce. Thus, the company has come to realize that for the permanent employees to perform highly, they must be motivated despite the various strategies that set to ensure the company does not run out of the workforce.;;

Defining the Problem

The challenges that such a company is now experiencing include inadequate flexibility among the permanent employees mostly leading to a dull workforce. In turn this leads to lack of independence among the employees since casual employees take up duties that require creative management and skills. Flexibility is not only in terms of duty, something that most managers fail to comprehend but it also regards the working hours and setting (Jeffs, 2008). Change is as good as a rest meaning if the employees have a variety of shifts, desks and talents chances of demotivation are minimum because change makes the job seem new and reduces high turnover of the employees.;

Confidence is a significant tool in any employed person; it sets the basis of their motivation. Individuals can build their confidence and the environment in which they are in. Such undertakings give the individuals the power to exercise their talents, skills, and the power to face any challenge at work (Jeffs, 2008). However, Clothes R Us does not help to build confidence their employees since it keeps on hiring casual workers to do simple tasks. Thus causing low confidence among other workers, hence inability to perform well.;;

The majority of Clothes R Us are facing lowered self-esteem, which is exhibited in how they behave. The company is planning to expand, and employees do not want to leave their cocoons to volunteer to the new project. Due to low self-esteem, most of the employees are unable to put their skills and talents to maximum use. Forming positive work relationship is difficult among the employees themselves and also with the employers. Therefore, causing disloyalty among the employees, and some seek employment elsewhere even if they are paid less. Excuses among Clothes R Us is the order of the day. They will find excuses for almost everything for instance why the company is stagnating, excuses for poor performance. Currently, the company is full of permanent employees who are suffering from low self-esteem.;

Expectations of a company sometimes dictates the performance of a company. For instance, low expectations lead to low performance, whereas high expectations lead to high performance among employees (David, 2005). Depending on permanent and casual workers has been a major challenge in Clothes R Us, they tend to lower the expectations and success of the company. Permanent employees do not push themselves diligently or give themselves wholly to the job. They only do what is expected of them to meet their needs and the rest they leave to the casual workers. The low company expectations have played a significant role to kill the morale of permanent employees to performance at their duties.;

Casual workers are advantageous to the company since they provide cheap labor for the company. Clothes R Us had taken this advantage from way back when it was started and even at its expansion. Some of the benefits of casual labors are that they do not expect benefits, they are paid less, and they save a company great use of money especially concerning challenging tasks that will require permanent employees to go for training. Despite the fact, they are advantageous to the company they also bring some great negative effect on the company. Casual workers cause unrest among the permanent employees. They create the environment that life outside the company could be better and some of the permanent desire to have such a life leading to wishful thinking thus, poor performance. Casual workers lack commitment to the company due to them do not have stability and security. They love their independent and are greatly appreciated for small and simple tasks. Leading to conflict and strain among the permanent employees and with time they lack the interest in specific tasks which they also feel they should be rewarded and appreciated.;

Effective Employment Relationships

One of the roles of human resource department is to oversee needs such as good relationships among employees, one thing that Clothes R Us has completely ignored when taking the move of expanding. Expansion causes feelings of anxiety and nervousness, and this feeling may cause demoralization in some instances. If not properly dealt with conflict may arise among employees. Therefore it is advisable to have strategies that can be emulated to ensure a healthy relationship with a company. Some of the ways to ensure this include:;

There should be a good flow of communication between the employees and the top managers. Clothes R Us should embrace this strategy since the employees have always been in the dark. Some are not aware of what is happening in the company since the managers have always depended on casual laborers. A proper communication channel helps the top managers to know the challenges facing the company and together with the employees they can look out for a way to eliminate such a problem. Communication also creates room for the top managers to get to know more about their employees and can discover talents and skills that they have and can be of great benefit to the company.

Empowering of the employees this solves the issues of demotivation and poor performance. For Clothes R Us the moving period is ideal for empowering their permanent employees. Empowering can be simple as providing unique tasks from the employees own training and set of skills this fosters a commitment to the project. Also, Mathis and Jackson (2003) state that empowerment will make the managers focus on bigger tasks rather than sweating on their daily duties. Through the training and workshops, the employees can be free to exercise their abilities and creativity hence leading to a highly motivated workforce increasing the performance.

Groups and teams also play a great role in promoting an effective employment relationship. Within the groups, members are expected to work as a team regarding communication, exchanging ideas, and correcting one another mistakes. According to Jeffs (2008), to make the groups more efficient, managers should ensure the composition of the team has members with complementary knowledge, skills, and characters. To encourage more positive forms of challenging one another since the amount of conflict that could be experienced is minimized. Also, the managers should avoid supervising the groups to increase the autonomy of the group to make decisions.