Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Introduction
Any business is only as good as the people who comprise the organization. Therefore, an
excellent employee is a pearl of great price. However, instead of recognizing the value of
their employees, many companies still squander these precious human resources in a
number of ways. This review explores some of the problems in human resource
management and suggests possible solutions.
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‘‘ A mis-match between an individual and their position within a
company may, be due to factors other than poor recruitment
practices. Employees can be promoted into positions that no
longer match their skills and organizational reward structures
can encourage people to take jobs for the wrong reasons. ’’
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Job internships
One area of intrinsic motivation seems to be an employee’s perception that they are using
their skills effectively and working to their capability. Using highly paid employees to do
routine tasks can be de-motivating and frustrating. A specialist professional library in
Australia recognized that using highly skilled staff to do jobs such as stacking shelves was
not cost effective. Not only were such routine tasks repetitive and boring, they took time away
from more complex and rewarding activities such as research or project work. The solution
was to employ library students on short term contracts to take over the day to day
administrative work such as filing, photocopying, dealing with the post and answering
telephone and email requests. There were some unexpected rewards for both the library
staff and for the student interns. The library staff increased their mentoring skills, while the
students helped them to keep up to date with new information. The students gained the
opportunity to experience the reality of working in a specialist professional library and
acquired skills that they could add to their CVs when applying for initial posts following
graduation. The librarians were able to provide realistic references based on knowledge of
the students’ capabilities in the working environment.
Internships are not only useful for students. They can be used within organizations to allow
employees to try out different roles. Sometimes human resources are wasted because
employees are stereotyped based on current roles or responsibilities. Helping people to
learn new skills and try out different jobs within an organization can be a form of intrinsic
motivation and may aid in retention of staff who might otherwise leave to seek new
challenges elsewhere.
Conclusion
In the twenty-first century the business environment has become extremely competitive and
continuous improvement is no longer an option; it has become a necessity. One area where
organizations of any size can create changes is in their utilization of human resources.
People are a company’s greatest asset. Changing outdated structures and even more
archaic attitudes can help to attract, motivate and retain the employees who have the vision,
skills and determination to adapt to a constantly changing world. Assessing potential when
appointing or promoting staff; creating flexible organizational structures which will help all
employees to achieve a better work-life balance; recognition of women’s different career
trajectories and developing intrinsic motivation in employees are all ways in which
organizations can find and hold onto the treasure of human resources.
Comment:
All three articles listed under references were interesting and informative. The article by
David Straker was the first in a series of three articles about the nine dimensions of human
resource wastage. It explored the first three of these, all which involved waste at the
organizational level. These were: misuse of capability, mis-design of the organization and
mis-motivation of people. The article illustrated the problem and then provided solutions, set
out in little solution boxes. This article would be useful as part of a training course for
managers. Elizabeth Cabrera focused on the career needs of highly educated
businesswomen. In her empirical research, she interviewed women who had taken career
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‘‘ Altering the rate of career progression could be a big boon to
female employees who often have different career patterns
from men due to family responsibilities. In some companies
employees who do not progress to senior management at the
anticipated point in their careers (based on a masculine norm)
fail to achieve senior positions at all.‘‘
breaks due to family responsibilities. This provided some valuable insights about women’s
Keywords: career trajectories and their needs when returning to work after a career break. Alyson
Human resource Dalby’s (2009) article was the odd one out of the three. It was an interesting description of an
management, initiative taken by a specialist library to introduce student internships in order to reduce the
Retention, amount of routine administrative tasks undertaken by the library staff. However, the topic was
Fexible labour, quite different from that of the other two articles as it focused on one very specific initiative
Women and its impact on both staff and the students who were employed as interns.
References
Cabrera, E.F. (2009), ‘‘Protean organizations: reshaping work and careers to retain female talent’’,
Career Development international, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 186-92.
Dalby, A. (2009), ‘‘Nurturing new talent: running a corporate internship programme’’, Library
Management, Vol. 30 Nos 8-9, pp. 583-93.
Straker, D. (2009), ‘‘Waste not want not (waste of people assets)’’, Quality World, May, pp. 40-6.
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