Should an employee who has misbehaved be dismissed immediately?

Not every one of your employees will behave as expected. What will you do in the event an employee breaks the rule or commits a serious misconduct?

Even when you exercise due care in recruiting a person, there is no assurance that everyone has a clean slate. There will always be a black sheep.

Some organizations categorise misconducts into minor misconducts and major misconducts. But even a non-serious (minor) misconduct may amount to serious misconduct due to its frequency. For example, if an employee is late for work once, that may be a non-serious or minor misconduct depending on the circumstances, such as in the case of a non-hazardous installation.

If that employee continues to be late reporting for work, this will amount to serious misconduct that warrant disciplinary action that may lead to dismissal.

Disciplinary Rules and Regulations
Organizations need to have disciplinary policies and procedures, rules and regulations governing employees behaviour at the workplace.

These need to spell out the types of serious misconduct that warrant dismissal. However, listing misconducts poses problems since not every misconduct can be listed. It is impractical.

The employee handbook may provide procedure in dealing with employees who commit a minor misconduct for the first time. This usually takes the form of counselling whereby the employee is informed about his behaviour and told not to repeat it. The organization needs to have this done immediately. If not, this can amount to condoning the misconduct.

If the employee fails to change the way he behaves, then disciplinary action with a view to dismissal is initiated.

Serious or gross misconducts are always dealt with a view to dismissal.

In every case of disciplinary action, a show cause letter is issued first. This gives the employee to provide reason or reasons why he has acted so.

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Running HR as Business Partner

You may have heard it being said that in order to be effective and relevant, those in the HR need to run the HR department like a business. What does this mean? In what kind of business HR is involved?

Running HR like a business concern inevitably brings to mind profit or loss. Being in HR, you are confused because HR normally do not deal with profit and loss. Someone may have even told you that HR is an overhead. It is all about spending and spending. You may never have seen a single dollar coming in.

Running HR like a business does not mean that you must ensure that HR make money in real time. What it actually mean is that HR helps the organization achieve its corporate objectives. If the objective is to make profit, then HR need to help the organization generate revenue. In this way, HR is run as a strategic business partner.

HR can play this particular role in the following areas of corporate concern:

1. Recruiting people who have the right qualities, qualifications, skills and competence;
2. Identifying the training needs that employees need in order to perform their jobs more effectively as well as the training needs of the organization;
3. Motivating employees by way of an effective reward and benefits system;
4. Preparing career development programme for each employee.

To play its role as strategic business partner, HR needs to align what it is doing to what the organization needs to do in accomplishing its business objectives. Doing this will make HR more relevant and may even get invited to sit at the top management planning team.

The future of Human Resource Management

What is the future of human resource management?

Even if the usage of the principles of human resource management will not become widely used in the immediate future, it is not going to go away any time soon. Organizations will not cease being managed or manned by people.

Smart robots may help but these will still be controlled by human minds. In the terminator movies, robots can think almost like human but these have no conscience, no souls.

If things were to happen as in these movies, then organizations will cease to exist. It may be the end of the human race. Science fiction!

Well, it would appear that many of the inventions that you see today were first portrayed in science fiction stories. What does the future hold? Who knows? Who want to know?

In the meantime, organizations of various kinds will still be looked after by people who think and act as only human can. It is because of this that the future of human resource management is assured. 

Human inventions will make work easier and make the pace of doing work faster. Still, people are needed to ensure these inventions work as intended. After all, things will go wrong when they go wrong.

The human mind enabled people to travel to space and explore the deep seas. People made discoveries in various fields that are benefiting the human race today. These are real people who worked for organizations managed by real people, not robots.

Thousands of new things are being created in the minds of people each day. These may result in new inventions or in new ways of doing or managing things and handling events. What can limit the human mind? But possibility exists that some of these new things will not truly benefit mankind.

So for those who look forward to the early demise of human resource management, they may be in for a surprise.

Human resource management is not going to fade away. Its implementation will become widespread as time passes. Rest assured of this.

One indication of this is that more large corporations are placing importance on HR policies to help drive their success, Some of these companies, such as Google, Nissan and Twitter, are among the best places to work.

Who can hire and fire?

In an organization, who has the power to hire and fire?

A sole proprietor will recruit people and also terminate their service. A person who runs an enterprise all by himself will not have the problem faced by big organizations.

In a large organization where there are hundreds and even thousands of workers, issues such as recruitment and dismissal will come up from time to time. Clear company policies are needed to guide executives.

Staffing activities
Where recruitment is centralized, the recruitment section of the human resource department - the administration department in some organization - will carry out every activity connected with advertising job vacancies, shifting through the applications, informing shortlisted applicants, arranging for the interviews, preparing offer and appointment letters, and arranging for induction training, and so on.

The HR department does not have the power to hire people. The decision to appoint someone to a vacant position rests with senior executives, most often the chief executive officer. The higher the level of the position to be filled, the more senior the appointing executive will be.

The power to appoint people to top positions such as chief executive officers, executive directors, etc are the area of concern of the Board of Directors. They have the power to hire and fire.

Decentralized Recruitment
Recruitment of junior workers may be delegated to line managers. This arrangement is necessary where staff turnover is fairly high due to the nature of work. In this case, the line managers can also terminate workers.

In cases like this, the power to hire workers may be limited to the appointment of junior workers such as machine operators and drivers. A senior HR Executives may have the power to appoint senior support staff in such circumstances.

In the absence of any policy giving the power to hire, only the chief executive has the power. Appointment by any other officer is open to scrutiny. Confirmation of such appointment may face problem. Ensure that corporate policy on recruitment is followed. If not, the appointment is not in order.

The power to recruit and terminate
The general rule is that the party that has the power or has been the power to recruit people also has the power to terminate the service of such workers. It follows that chief executive officers are fired by directors.

The power to fire is an onerous power. No one wants to have it.

However, someone must have such power and must exercise it for the good of the organization and for the good of other workers.

What Human Resource Management is Not

You may have heard or read something about human resource management (HRM). If you are not in HR or at least in Personnel, you may not be too familiar with this terminology. Even some of those in HR may not know what human resource management is. For example, there was this clerk in the HR department in a company where I had worked previously who admitted that she did not really know what HR was all about.

The terminology started to become popular more than two decades ago. Even now the terminology "Personnel" is still very much in use, such as in the United Kingdom. There, some personnel managers are wary of it and try to prevent its use.

The strange thing is that although a lot had been said about HR, the number of organizations who had implemented HR management is still very low. Indeed, some large corporations had adopted human resource management. Some HR proponents lament the slow acceptance of HR principles.

But what is human resource management?
Some are of the opinion that the former system under personnel management leans too much on maintenance and very little on aligning what employees do to achieve the objectives of the organization. Some make fun of personnel management, stating that the personnel department only performs administrative things and looks after staff recreation. Of course, this is not really true. Personnel departments also do other things that are important for the well-being of employees.

In England,  the term 'personnel management' is still preferred. But it does not mean that there are no HR practitioners there. But there is a certain wariness about human resource management by some. It may turn out that it is just a matter of "terminology" at the end of the day.

Proponents of HR management insist that the new way of managing the workforce uses strategies. Administrative tasks still form part of the responsibilities but less time and effort are spent doing these. The business success of the organization becomes the main focus. It is mainly due to this that the terminology "Strategic Human Resource Management" (SHRM) came into use.

Is Human Resource development part of HR?
In some organizations, HR development is put under HR management. Here, the human resource development manager reports to the HR Manager.

However, there are organizations that separate HR development from HR management. Some other organizations concentrate on HR development (HRD) and less on HRM. They put emphasis on soft HR which focus on employees' skills and abilities. They believe that it is easier to change employee behaviour through training.

Difficult to say what HRM is NOT
It is misleading to say that HRM is not this or is not that. It can involve a long list of duties and responsibilities. It can include tasks which personnel management practitioners say fall under personnel.

At the end of the day, these are only words. What is important are the actual tasks carried out by department entrusted with the tasks of effectively managing people. You can give the department any name as long as what people do there helps the organization to successfully achieve its overall corporate objectives.

Organizations cannot do without HR

Can this phrase "Organizations cannot do without HR" be true?

HR refers to the human resource department. But it also refers to HR people, to the people who work in the organization, HR practices and processes.

Even a sole proprietor is an "HR man" since he will have to perform HR-related activities such as looking for capable workers. As his business becomes larger, he cannot run everything all by himself. So he looks for someone who can help him find people who will help run most areas of his enterprise. This man will be the HR person, whatever his position or title be.

When dealing with important matters like wages and allowances, working hours, working extra hours, absenteeism, and so on, the owner needs someone with an HR background.

Organizations need skilled workers. Organizations need people with the right knowledge and the right set of skills. When things change such as laws, technology, and so on, workers' skills can get outdated. Someone need to ensure that these people are sent for the right training programs.

The list can go on and on. So can any organization say that they can do without HR? The thing speaks for itself. No man is an island. An organization cannot run itself. Some human person has to switch on a robot or a machine. The proprietor cannot be the manager, the HR person, the safety man, the cleaner and the maintenance man. He has to have people to help him. If not, his business will suffer. It cannot compete. It cannot survive for long.

A business owner needs HR people who can help him find the best people to make his organization become more successful. He cannot do without people. Organizations cannot do without HR. And that's a fact. 

Align human resource management to business objectives

Why must you align human resource management to the business objectives of your organization?

You recruit people to help you run your organization. Unless, of course, you are a sole proprietor, just starting out on your business venture. Even charitable organizations employ people.

The number of people needed depends on the extent of your activities. The more extensive your business the more people you need. These are people who have the right qualification, personality, competence, and experience which are critical to the success of your organization. Not everyone who asks for a job or interviewed will get employed.

You need people to help you look after recruitment and also to attend to many of the needs of employees such as salaries and allowances, training, medical needs, benefits, and so on. Many refer to these workers as HR people.

Organizations may or may not have a human resource management department. Many large corporate bodies have HR departments manned by people of various abilities, skills and competencies. Many of these organizations place great importance on managing their people well. They know that their success depends on their employees.

What HR Does
HR is more than merely performing administrative jobs. This is one of the accusations made against people in HR. In many cases, they are the people who get retrenched first.

However, people in HR play crucial role in looking for the right talents, in helping to engage them, to further develop their skills and competence, to develop policies in order to motivate and retain them, and so on.

Align HR objectives to Corporate objectives
In order to ensure that HR play an important role, you need to align HR objectives to the overall objectives of the organization. In non-charitable organizations the objectives are none other than financial in nature. In other words in profit-oriented organizations, you need to align HR objectives to business objectives.

To do this HR people need to know the core business of the organizations and what are required to achieve these objectives. After determining this, HR can make the necessary interventions in order to help the organization attain the overall objectives.

For example, HR can make arrangement for the right training for people who are directly involved in generating revenue for the organization, such as people in production, operations and marketing.

In this way, you add value to HR and make it play relevant role on a continuous basis. As long as people in HR do this, they will never become redundant or irrelevant.

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