Human Resource Management in Public Sector Case Study Solution
After the Economic downturn, the whole industry of US faced a decline in employment rate; many individuals faced the worst conditions because of lack of opportunities. But after 2012, the Economic condition of US market started to improve which gave rise to the industries again, which in turn gave rise to the employment capacity and thus more opportunities for individuals to select an organization.
However, the story turned from other side as well. The rise in opportunities forced and changed the role of Human resource management too particularly in public organizations, w here the practices of human resource are not very strong and well-structured leading to severe issues like High-turnover, skills flight and talent scarcity. These issues ledto shaping the Human resource in order to establish the strategies that can help overcoming the issues.
Before digging the root causes of Human resource practices, dilemma and issues, first of all, the understanding of the Human resource practices is important. Among Recruitment, selection and talent retention are the key roles of the Human resource.
Recruitment is a positive process of searching for potential prospective employees and stimulating them to apply for the job in the organization. The main aim of recruitment drive is gathering a sufficient amount of applicants to establish a pool of talent. According to Dale yonder “Recruitment is a process to discover the sources of manpower to meet the requirement of the staffing schedule and to employ effective measures for attracting that manpower in adequate numbers to facilitate effective selection of an efficient working force”(Chand).
Selection of employee is the process which puts the right person on the right jib.It is a procedure of matching organizational requirement with the skills and talent of people. The role of Human resource management is to perform the effective selection through careful matching Job role .Through effective selection, the organizations ensure that the employees are giving the best performance of an individual with less absentees and high motivation. Effective selection also guarantees the long-termretentions of the individual with the company, which nowadays is rising and integral issue of organizations.(MSG, 2014)
The integral part of today’s human resource management is the retention of the employees. Every organization takes a lot of time, money, and training in nurturing the employee to deal in the professional world with same par as the other older employs. The loss occurs when these newly hired employees leave the organization after getting trained .The challenge here is to retain such employees in order to smoothen the flow of work and operations and also maintaining the key skills with the organization which serve a competitive advantage of the organization.
Human Resource Management
The recent time has put much emphasis on effectiveness of human Resource management. Human Resource management is basically managing people within the employer-employee relationship and involves Marshalling the productivity of individuals working in an organization. According to the researches, the domain of Human resource management covers the human skill development, acquisition and motivation maintenance& Departure of employees. The typical area of HR involves planning and capability Audits, career development, strategic succession planning and above all recruiting selecting and Retaining. The effective human resource management is in which all three elements are integrated and synchronized and are supported by strong appraisal and benefit system which fulfills the basic need of the individuals.
Similarly, Wright and Ferris add to the statement by commenting that Human resource management is concerned with understanding and interpreting the legal frame work and context regarding the processes of employment and its relationship.(Wrigh, 2010).
However, the emerging role of Human resource management argues to establish and deliver competitive advantage to the firm.(walker 1992). It is argued that the ability of Human resource management is to achieve the competitive advantage in rapidly changing dynamic environment. Moreover another theory/school of thought suggests that HRM involves developing the organizational capacity to adapt to their changing dynamics of the market and environmental contingencies.(Wright and Snell 1998).Through this approach the Human resource management can effectively manage and develop the individuals that can prove to be a powerful tool to deal with turbulent situations within the organization.
The applicability of HRM in public sector organization is completely established through these approaches discussed above. In public sector organizations need to hire, develop and train employees, set employment environment and develop coherent set of employee policies that align with the business strategy of the organization and guarantees the efficient productivity.
However, the particularity of the public sectors to focus on the interest of the public rather than private interests adds layer of complexity that hinders the functionality of the human resource management in achieving organizational competitiveness and effective business outcomes.
Human Resource Management and Public Sector- Traditional Model
In Public sector, the application of HRM displays the traditional model of Personnel Management .The term Human resource management was introduced in the public sector after a shift from Role-bound culture to a performance based culture. The adopting of human resource management changed the dynamic of Public sectors and restructured the strategy pertaining in the public sector. In the public sector, the managerial objectives are argued to be achieved effectively through careful integration of HRM into the functions and processes of the organization.
The public sector has been exposed to numerous opportunities with the implementation of new public management which have opened a gateway for new possibilities for managers to acquire and develop sophisticated Human resource techniques. The principle of new public management allows great flexibility and responsive approach to achieve the effective recruitment, selection, and retention and training nod development techniques for public sector employees.
The public sector developed a distinctive approach to human resource management over the period of time and established many developments and innovations that delivered significant rights and entitlements to employees. The public sector has always been perceived as the benchmark of Human resource practices that could be descended to the private sectors, in term of employment, join security, increments, pensions, leaves and medical .In traditional public sector, the bureaucratic employment system was followed to make sure that the decisions are consistent, formalized, unbiased and systematic which address the activities through a pre-defined application of rules and policies.
In public sector, the responsibility of HRM prevents arbitrary dismissals, career development and selection on favoritism.In doing so, the system of public sectors are highly centralized, lying the authority to the top management run by powerful central agencies who takes the major decisions of hiring and formulating rules. However, in public sector, the promotions to higher level of position is restricted or takes longer time and requires new set of skills which takes a lot of years.
In traditional public sector, the role of HR involved the restricted movement of employees from one position to another (horizontal movement), payments were based on the tile of the position rather on skills, and the job descriptions were narrow and highly routinized, leading to stagnant learning graph.
Challenges in Public Sector for Human Resource Management
The public sector organizations are facing enormous challenges internationally ;such as includes the uncertainty of political systems and economic environments, ageing of baby boomers and cost-conscious governments leading to complexity in practicing the proper Human resource policies.
Human resource management in the public sector is challenged in the areas of recruitment and retention of top candidates. Recruitment determines the quality and caliber of human resources within an organization, while retaining employees is a function of institutional culture and management style (Nwekeaku, 2013).
Retaining the top performers is integral in public or private sector, as it guarantees that the organization has good amount of talent to counter the challenges and exploit the opportunities. It also ensures that the workload, if increased can be handled, and the workforce has potential and capability to shift to another working style which is the demand of certain time.
However, recruiting the high caliber personnel is one thing but retaining them is another thing. Today the biggest challenges of public sector are the retention of high caliber individuals, because with modernization, money cannot be the only driver that could retain the employee. There are some other factors that are the key drivers of retaining the employees. Some of them are acknowledgment, leadership, authority and freedom to speech and question. Unfortunately, in the US, the public sectors still face discrimination in hiring and retaining the individuals.
Public sector organizations often are at a disadvantage when compared to the private sector in recruitment and retention. The public sector does not have many perks and compensation packages available to the private sector such as bonus structure, promotions, career growth and stock options. The recruitment systems of the private sectors are very strict and expensive, which require the HR to correctly identify the potential employees, thus losing them is very costly. However, the dilemma of nowadays is that Private sectors are trying to hire the right people with the wrong job placement or description.
Human Resource Management in Public Sector Harvard Case Solution & Analysis
Identifying and attracting the right employees is perhaps more crucial with a declining pool of candidates and the overarching constraints of the public-sector’s environment. Survey finding from the 2015 state and local government workforce reports have ranked “Recruiting and retaining qualified personnel with requires skills to public service as the most important workforce issues in their organization” (Workforce Trends 2014, 2015).
The following paragraphs highlight the major underlining issues that contribute to recruitment and retention challenges within the public sector…...............
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