Ch.

1 Intro to HR

What is HR?
- Process of managing human capital to achieve an organizations objectives
o Human capital: The economic value of employees knowledge, skills, and capabilities.
o People are assets
o Human capital is intangible: Employees, not the org. owns their own hc. If an employee
leaves the company, they take their knowledge with them.
HRM Responsibilities
- Some functions of HR
o HR Planning
o Recruitment/Selection
o Orientation/Training
o Performance Management
o Compensation and Benefits
- HR managers perform these functions in 4 ways:
o Advice and counsel (help out managers in labour and economic trends, policies,
decision-making)
o Services (recruiting, selecting, testing, etc)
o Policy making and implementation (Also monitor executives and employees to ensure
they are following policies)
o Employee advocacy (Listening to employees concerns and representing their needs to
the manager)

Competitive Challenges Top 7

1. Responding strategically to changes in the marketplace (must be aware of new trends)
a. Six Sigma Quality control and management (Understanding customer needs, and
doing things right the first time)
b. Re-engineering Increasing efficiencies by redesigning business processes
(improvements in cost, quality, speed, etc)
c. Downsizing Planned elimination of jobs: Firms need to reduce costs but may not
always be effective.
d. Outsourcing Contracting outside the org. to have the work done.
- Need to be effective at change management for proactive and reactive change.
o Employees are often resistant to change (so they must be engaged early on, and must
understand how the change will be beneficial)
o Reactive change: When external forces (ie. Competition, new laws) have already
affected an orgs performance.
o Proactive change: Initiated by managers to take adv. of opportunities.
2. Competing, recruiting, and staffing globally
- Language and cultural barriers (especially with outsourcing, operating overseas, and global
recruiting)
- Globalization: Opening up foreign markets to intl trade and investment.
3. Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Goals
- Fair working environments
- Globalization can lead to increased income inequality
- Sustainability: A companys ability to product a g/s without damaging the environment
4. Advancing HRM with Technology
- Big data enabled through cloud computing
- Collaborative software allows workers anywhere, anytime, to share, exchange, and collaborate
info.
- Internet and social media networking, ie. LinkedIn for recruiting, background checks.
- Advanced technology from touch labour to knowledge workers
o More people used to be involved with physical types of labour, but now there has been
a huge shift towards knowledge workers, because of the increase in technological
growth
- HR Information system (HRIS)
o ERP systems (Enterprise resource planning, ie. Peoplesoft, SAP, Oracle)
o Lowers admin. Costs, increases productivity, speed sup response times, improves
decision making.
o Operational, relational (connecting people), and transformational (redesigning HR
processes)
5. Containing Costs while Retaining Top Talent and Maximizing Productivity (Most of the time,
reducing costs by lowering headcount)
- Managing Benefits: ie. Cutting employee pensions, health insurance, etc
- Downsizing (sometimes lowers productivity of remaining employees, lower morale)
- Furloughing (Give employees the option to take a voluntary sabbatical/time off with reduced or
no pay Gives the firm time to ride out the rough patches, without completely letting go of
employees)
- Outsourcing: Contracting outside the org. to have the work done (often in another country
where labour and costs are cheaper)
o Offshoring: Shifting work to locations abroad (Can stay within the company, but just to
an offshore office
o Nearshoring (Moving jobs closer to our country ie. If labour costs are rising in China,
then a Canadian firm can move its work to Mexico)
o Homeshoring: Outsourcing to domestic independent contractors who work from their
homes (common for call-centres)
- Employee Leasing (PEOs): A larger company takes over management of a smaller firms HR
tasks and becomes a co-employer to its employees.
o Employees can get benefits that small firms may not be able to provide.
- Productivity Enhancements (output vs input)
o Increase prod. By decreasing inputs (for same output) or increase output (for same
input per unit) to improve, produce more, per unit of input)
6. Responding to Demographic and Workforce Diversity Challenges
- In Canada, our birth rate is pretty constant, so most of our pop. growth is from immigration
- Ethnic and racial diversity (cultures, visible minority, languages, etc)
- Age and generational differences
 o Right now, Baby Boomers are at the top of organizations, and starting to retireAll that
knowledge capital must be passed down
o Advantages to hiring older people: more dependable, mature, loyal to company,
experienced
o Advantages to hiring Millenials (Gen Y): Tech savvy, innovative, want to make a change
in the world
- Gender: Educational attainment of women is increasing in relation to men
- E.g. Stats Canada report Census or National Household Survey
7. Adapting to Educational and Cultural Shifts Affecting the Workforce
- Education of the workforce widening the skills gap
- More diversity in cultural values needs to be reflected in policies
- Increase in employee rights and privacy
- Changing nature of work; changing attitudes
- People value meaningful work, and a work-life balance.