The Current HR Management Challenge of Aligning The Employee Agenda With
The HR Department Agenda In Your Organization
Human resource department is facing unprecedented challenge in 21st century. The
diversity of staff in organization and stiff competition in the market have pressurized HR
department to be more effective and efficient. Due to these reasons, the agenda in HR
department must be closely and strategically aligned with the organization’s agenda. In
other words, the objectives and strategies of HR department must align and meet
organization’s objectives and strategies. The main difference between these two agenda
is the objectives and strategies of HR department are more focus on human resource
planning and development which is part of organization’s agenda. HR department
performs as a bridge to connect organization’s agenda with employees’ agenda. The
relationship of these three agenda can be described in the following Figure 1.0.
Organization
Agenda
HR
Agenda
Employees
Agenda
Figure 1.0: Relationship among Organization’s Agenda, HR agenda and Employees’
Agenda
HR department is facing at least four different generations of people. First generation is
categorized as Boomers II or Generation Jones according to William. This generation of
people was born in 1955-1965 and is 48-58 years old in 2013. This generation of people
has little knowledge about Information Technology. Normally, they are loyal to
organization and will be working in an organization until they retire. Second type of
generation is called Generation X. This type of people was born in 1966-1976, and is 3747 years old in 2013. This generation of people was characterized as non-IT generation as
well. In Malaysia context, this type of people is normally from double-income couples
where husband and wife are working.
Third type of generation is named as Generation Y. Generation Y was born in 1977-1994
and is 19-36 years old in 2013. This generation of people is well known for their savvy in
technology. The main reason is Malaysia launched Multimedia Super Corridor in 1996.
This group of people also likes to hop for better job because of many job opportunities
and convenient transportation. Loyal employees are hard to find from this generation.
Generation Z were born in 1995-2012 and are 1-18 years old now. This group of
generation are yet in the working market but is considered as next wave of challenge to
HR department.
In an organization, employees are normally formed by the first four groups of generations.
To understand employees’ agenda, HR department needs to understand the needs of
employees from these generations. The more complete HR department has their profiles,
the more efficient and effective HR department can allocate and utilize them. HR
department can conduct survey or organize workshops and trainings to understand them.
All these activities are not supposed to be done once but yearly because of fast change in
external as well as internal environment. HR department can refer to the Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs when surveying their needs and views. The Hierarchy of Needs is
illustrated in Figure 2.0.
Self-Actualisation
(Creativity,
Acceptance of
Facts etc)
Esteem (Confidence,
Achievement, Respect
of/by Others etc)
Love/Belonging (Friendship, Family
etc)
Safety (Security of: Body, Employment, Family,
Health, Property etc)
Physiological (Breathing, food, water etc)
Figure 2.0: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
By understanding their needs and views, HR department is well equipped with employees’
agenda as well as organization’s agenda. HR department can use balanced scorecard
(BSC) to assess every employee to link their agenda with HR agenda or organization’s
agenda. The four perspectives in BSC are finance, customer, internal business process,
and learning and growth. Depending on the job scope of every employee, BSC should be
adjusted accordingly to make sure that it really measures every employee fairly.
Financial perspective can measure the monetary return or sales generation from sales
staff or monetary saving from admin staff. Moreover, financial perspective can assess the
expenditure of stationery in department. Customer perspective can measure the
satisfaction level of customers towards employee or the numbers of customers brought in
by employee. Not only that, customer perspective can measure the numbers of customer
complaints. Internal business process refers to the efficiency of staff in completing their
works on time. Moreover, this perspective can measure the contribution of ideas from
employees that can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of organization. The last
perspective, “learning and growth” is to encourage staff to participate in training courses,
seminars, workshops as well as further their studies in Bachelor’s Degree, Master of
Business Administration (MBA) or Doctor of Business Administration (DBA).
By having properly planned BSC assessment for every employee, HR department can
ensure that every employee’s agenda is aligned with HR agenda which in return meeting
the organization’s agenda. It is impossible to say that BSC is not applicable to everyone
in an organization. It is up to the wisdom of HR department to devise and execute BSC
for everyone in organization.
References:
Abraham, M. Maslow Hierarchy of Needs.[Available Online:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs]
William J. Schroer. Generation X, Y, Z and Others. The Social Librarian. [Available
Online: http://www.socialmarketing.org/newsletter/features/generation2.htm].