Human resource management in Small Organizations Essay

Much of our knowledge of gentlemans gentleman imagery wariness involves hulky geological formations with dedicated human imagery subdivisions and lag, tot totallyy what ab emerge smooth boldnesss? atrophied organizations recruit, compensate, do performance management, and umteen an(prenominal) of the same tasks as large organizations. at that place argon certain things that chiffonier be mapped effectively from large to underage organizations, but what happens to the rest that do non map? A tenuous organization contribute not simply let things slip by the cracks establish on size or ignorance of laws, rules, or requirements.This is what makes human resource management not only authoritative in grim organizations, but essential for their coarse limit victor. Human resource (HR) management is an out that affects every type of organization large and minor(ip) alike. The majority of hesitation and information that is easily accessible though is for bigger organizations with a staff of human resource captains. While it is true that much of the information for larger organizations skunk be applied to blueer organizations the majority of things do not.This raises the question is the practice of human resource management necessary in grim organizations or is it simply for the Fortune 500 companies of the world? I aspire that not only is human resource management authoritative to beautiful organizations, but it is essential for their long term success. Traditionally, splendid organizations concord forever and a day had limited resources. Many quantifys they completely overlook the importance of a human resources department. In doing so, they elect to omit the department in their logical argument model.This common oversight shifts the burden of specific HR responsibilities to separate members of the staff. to the highest degree oft, these members of management ar not gear mechanismed or experience in human resource managem ent, nor ar they schooled in policies and procedures. Beca put on of this, legion(predicate) HR tasks go through through the cracks. These trivial falls do not negate laws, rules, and early(a)(a) employer responsibilities that cover human resource management. These regulations still apply to all organizations irrespective of size. The lack of apprehension creates a liability for modest organizations because hey feel that they are exempt base on their size.They simply do not have an consciousness of all the laws, rules, and new(prenominal) responsibilities that an educated human resource professional would. Without a dedicated HR department, the weakened business lacks a meet understanding and vision of human resource policies and procedures. This deficiency give alike create problems for a lowly organization. Typically, close to pure organizations are pore on increasing sales, adding natural-fangled products and serve, and increasing profits. All these objecti ves are to be met with the aforementioned limited resources.What some(prenominal) lower businesses overlook is that proper understanding and implementation of HR policies and procedures is vital to any business. This should be the center darn of any organization large or small. Small businesses should create a solid undercoatation by creating a policies and procedures manual of arms. While creating a policies and procedures manual is time consuming, it is essential for successful employee relations. These policies and procedures not only create an understanding between management and employee of what is expected, but most essentially, what is not expected.Often times small organizations assume that common sense should be the conduce in determining human resource practices. This leaves too umteen things impart to interpretation and can run short to liabilities that can damage or purge off end a small organization. Policies on sexual harassment, retaliation, Family and Med ical leave Act of 1993, and a armament of other(a) legal policies must be stated and understood by everyone in the workplace. There are umpteen legal institutions just waiting for organizations to ignore these laws.Creating a policies and procures manual allow for put in writing what is not tolerated while protecting the small organization. It also will keep the business from being negligent in the protection of its employees. Liabilities are a real threat that face many small organizations both in the short and long term scope. It does not matter if the organization is liable because of a lack of knowledge or truly negligent the law only cares if an organization breaks it and not why. obligation issues while vital to the success of the organization are not important if on that point are no employees.Without employees, the organization cannot sell its goods or services and has no purpose to exist. While a human resource department is important because of liability, there are other issues that are the core handicraft of an HR director that are also key brokers to the success of a small organization. HR professionals must manage recruitment, compensation, keeping, preparation, and performance. The next key theatrical role and considered to be the most important by many, including myself, is that of recruiting.The lack of a pro forma human resource department and policies make this important component the most challenging. Selection of staff starts with the challenge of who is going to do it. This task often falls on key management personnel and even the chair/CEO of the organization. This often pertains the primary responsibilities of this person that directly affect the small organizations ability to increment and make profit. Once the person is selected he/she faces many challenges in the quest for a new staff member or members. The origin of these is limited financial resources to omit on recruitment.The lack of bullion that can be spend l imits the amount of areas the open position can be broadcast and there by limiting the pool of qualifies vistas. The popularity of Craigslist and other free online classified internet sites have brush aside the cost of cattle farm the word of open positions, but still only reach a limited audience. The ability to add open positions to a small organizations avouch website is also a free filling, but once again limits the moving-picture show to only people coming to its website. The more than poplar websites like Monster, travel Builder, and Snag-a-Job reach a larger audience, but cost money.To increase the candidate pool from only online audience to print audience also this is some other(prenominal) added expense to an already limited budget. Once the interview process starts there are several other issues that small organizations face. The first of these is the credibility of the organization. credibility is hurt from even the practice of only posting open positions on a Craigslist. The amount of scams and illegimate business has made the public skeptical of many free sites like Craigslist so the free ad is not entirely free.A Fortune 500 fraternity much(prenominal) as FedEx has no trouble with name recognition or creditability unlike Mailway Delivery, a small package courier. The problem of credibility for the Mailway Deliverys of the world is another challenge that small organizations face. The next issue is the take on of most small organizations employees to perform multiple roles. This could include answering phones, sending out mail, and various other duties that everyone shares to keep employee costs down. A candidate from a large corporation might have a specific duty that is his/her only task and that is what they are expected to focus on.In small organization tasks are far less defined and could even change over regularly depending on the inescapably of the organization. This is why small organizations also focus on personal credent ials or organizational fit when selecting a candidate. These issues have lead many small organizations to begin a new way of thinking about recruiting. This new way of thinking is outsourcing recruiting to companies such as Manpower, Talent Force and other professional recruiting organizations to take on the small organizations recruiting tasks.These recruiting organizations can provide highly trained human resource professionals and services that can reduce the time key management are taken away from their jobs and put it in the hands of the recruitment organization. The recruitment organization provides not only the well-being of the recruitment, but an array of other services such as benefit administration, even offroll services, prepare, employee relations, and a host of other human resource tasks. This cost is significantly lower for the small organization than hiring someone plus the amount of exposure to liability issues is cut down significantly.These firms also have th e option of temporary labor, seasonal labor, and other not permanent labor solutions. They can also be utilize as an almost try before you buy approach to hiring new people. Another important component to the success of a small organization is that of compensation. This is an important topic in any organization and small organizations are no exception. Compensation is important to several aspects of small organizations including recruitment and retention of staff.It is as simple as if the organization can not invent a fair amount for staff then recruitment will be hard and retention even harder. The limited amount of resources in small organizations makes creating an enticing compensation plan for recruiting and retention a challenge. This has lead small organizations to come up with some different strategies on get levels, leave mixes, pay structure, benefits and pay raises, but the majority emphasis is primed(p) on pay mix. The pay mix of small organizations focus more on pay s incentives than base pay.This pay mix allows the small organization to use the saved cash on labor to re come out in the familiarity and waiver up scarce resources. This also provides motivation for the staff to arrive at goals, increase productivity, and have an overall stake in the success of the organization. These pay incentives can be either short or long term. Short term pay incentives in small organizations may include things like standard and/or profit sharing. The reasoning of why this is a successful is simple. It provides the employee with a tangible reward for his/her work in making the organization successful.This gives the employee to achieve a larger goal with a greater reward based on long term pay incentives. Long term pay incentives are typically a larger stake in the caller-out through some form of equity, stock, stock options, or some other stock based program. This in itself continues the motivation even when this is achieved because the employee begins t o identify with management based on their ownership stake in the company. This works extremely well in the high technology organizations, but can be used in almost all organizations.Pay structure in small organizations tend to have far less levels of management and organizational hierarchy so rewards and pay rate are not an indication of status among employees. Pay raises in small organizations are often not given in the same way at large organizations. Small organizations see payroll as a fixed cost and are often not willing to increase this without the success of the organization. This is why short and long term pay incentives and organizational fit play such an important part in the retention of staff.If the employee does not feel the company will be successful they will not be well-off with a lower base salary because of the lack of faith in the success of the organization. Benefits are a department where small organizations suffer based on the scarce resources available and the high cost of employee retirement plans, company pension plans, and life insurance type options. This is where the long term pay incentives of stock options and ownership in the company have to be a substitute for standard large organization benefit packages.One benefit that small organizations do benefit the most and many choose to endow in is that of education service of process or reimbursement. This helps the employee by free or subsidized education and the small organization can often clock filling gaps in education because of the diversity of job needs. An accountant that also helps with I. T. needs would benefit his/her self as well as the company if he/she took I. T. training classes from the local community college. This not only benefits the employee, but the organization also.This makes education the best benefit for any small organization to invest in. Benefits in small organization may seem unorthodox to many traditional human resource standards, but they are neces sary to help recruit and obligate the best staff they can. In small organizations it is important to look at compensation from a total view, meaning aspect not just at base salary and incentives, but at psychological rewards, learning opportunities, and individual recognition. Retention is an important aspect of staffing that impacts all companies and can be devastating to small organizations.Employees are the most important asset of any small organization and the instability of losing an important asset can cause havoc. Employee retention not only affects a small organization in losing a valuable asset it is an added expensive of finding and training someone else. This combined with any education paid for by the small organization is lost. The goal then of the small organization is to retain the valuable employees through the bonus programs, family type work structure, and many of the other psychological benefits small organizations have to offer.This will lead to lower cost an d more efficiency in the organization. Performance management in small organizations does incorporate some parts of compensation such short and long term incentives, training, and other rewards it mostly focuses on performance evaluation processes, corrective actions, the laying off of employees and the termination of employees. Often the lack of globe procedures that was discussed earliest comes into play and can negatively effect the organization. The lack of written expectations, rules, and procures open the small organization up to law suits and other liabilities.Performance evaluations, disciplinary procedures, and the law involving termination of employees are important issues small organizations need to spend time on. Training in small organizations is another important component of human resource management effects on the organization. Often time in small organizations the roles of employees are altered, shifted, and sometimes even changed to meet the beseech at the tim e. The amount of change in roles requires that employees stay trained in the area or areas they are working in order to be effective in their job.There are several different types of training that are most common in large and small organizations alike. The first type of training is what most people associate with the word training, form-only(prenominal) classroom training. This type of training has been shown to have a positive impact on workers, but is costly in time and money for the organization. This makes formal training for small organizations not the most efficient with some exceptions. Those exceptions are trade association training classes, college seminars, and in house training.Another option that was discussed earlier in the paper was also tuition reimbursement / tuition supporter that are options for formal training. The most common for of training for small organizations is uncrystallized or most often referred to as on the job training. This is even a selling point in a lot of recruiting efforts of small organizations. The hands on training that a small organization can provide is valuable to the employee as they can not often times get that at a formal training facility. This form of training is often seen as less structured which allows for more interaction and change magnitude learning in many cases.Another form of training that is a new form of training that can be supplemented with formal and knowledgeable training is based on social psychology that uses socialization to train new employees. This approach uses socialization to teach the new employee their role in the organization, adjust to job requirements and the culture of the new job. The small organizations have been found to benefit more from this type of training because the new employee is more pronto invited to meetings, asked to go to lunch, and work closer with people than a larger organization. This results in feeling part of the team quicker and learning more quickly.The need for human resource management begins the second the first employee is hired disregarding of the size of the organization. The seemingly simple process of hiring, firing, and paying employees is filled with many unseen obstacles that can create problems for a small organization. Effective human resource management has a direct effect on the success of a small organization. It has been said throughout the paper of a small organizations most valuable asset being its employees. This is why human resource management is key to the success of any small organization.