Human resource management Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Human resource management - Assignment Example The HR manager might view flexible working schedules to maximize productivity throughout an 18 hour cycle. Thus, scheduling labour to meet goals sees the exploitation of talent in the same way that tangible resources are exploited. The soft model of HRM is more people-centred and deals with creating motivational strategies, coaching, or mentoring to achieve high levels of employee commitment and trust. Soft HRM policies consider employees emotional capacity and psycho-social needs and then integrates policy formation objectives with these principles in mind. In soft thinking, the employee is a method to achieve competitive advantage through commitment-building (Armstrong 2008). IR is primarily concerned with the relationship between union bargaining and employees (Elvander 1998). Storey (1992) recognises fundamental shifts from IR to HRM based on key dimensions of practice, policy and specific business goals. Whilst HRM often includes strategies that are people-centred, IR is more tr ansactional in nature, delivering rewards that are highly contingent on performance. The HR school of thought is more unitarist in nature, whilst IR is more pluralist. Storey (1992) sees negotiation as a primary aspect of line management activity in IR with HRM more of a facilitating role. Specific norms demand compliance in IR theory whilst HRM focuses on building policies and practices around vision and mission. In personal experience, the strategic role of line management is to recognize contingencies where the organisation must have practices aligned with needs for organisational performance. Strategic HRM for line management is to identify a best practice model and continue to create strategies aligned with efficiency. Strategic HRM views all organisational divisions and practices to be an amalgamation to achieve best practice, productivity and profit. The implications to employees are diverse training to recognise inter-dependencies and higher demands for performance to achiev e long-term goals related to business strategy. Flexibility in the workplace Personal experience describes a flexible model that involves changing contracted hours and periodic placement to perform job responsibilities in order to provide childcare. Under this model, the employee required 30 weeks of employment and must have had no negative assessments associated with periodic performance reviews. This model provided opportunities to replace the traditional Monday-Friday schedule with Saturday working in exchange for a weekly day off and also implementing telecommuting resources for those in service roles. Flexible models provide opportunities for building employee satisfaction and can be implemented according to business needs, such as customer service output expectations or when the business intends to expand its service to include weekend consultation for clients. Thus, it has competitive advantage capabilities and also the ability to create a more productive workforce. Armstrong (2008) identifies that flexible working concepts provide the ability to create a better skilled employee population, such as what occurs in job sharing. When employees are able to experience other divisional roles, they become more fluent in practices and procedures that can, in the long-term give the business more competitive advantage. A disadvantage to flexible working is the ability to determine whether pay is competitive to the labour