This topic explains..
01. Introduction
02. Individual Development
03. Gerneric Competence
04. Personnel Policies
05. Motivational Factors
06. Stake holder perspective
07. Accountability
08. HR Responsibility
[Provided by B. Sudhgar, Chennai, Tamilnadu (12.06.09)]
IntroductionNot only are human resources gaining increasing importance for the company, but simultaneously several dilemmas or paradoxes seem to be emerging. Therefore, both top managers and HR professionals must be able to identify ways of balancing, live with paradoxes, and join contrasts of strategic, ethical, and practical nature. The value of universal solutions is decreasing, and the need for situational methods and interventions is growing.
01. The Employee is His or Her Own Project – Not the Property of the Company
- the two parties are changing sides
When evaluating working life, employees increasingly base their assessments on their own demands and expectations. The question is not how I will fit into the company, but how the company will fit into my project. What challenges will it offer me, and how are my career possibilities? For the employee it is no longer a questions of fitting into the existing organization culture and choose among available tasks as was earlier the case. If there is a mismatch between person and company, the person may drop the company rather than trying to improve his or her conditions or merely put up with the situation. The loyalty of the narcissistic personality toward the company is rather volatile. He or she will continuously look out for career possibilities and will often be migrating from one firm to the next. This creates not only restlessness in the organization, but it also makes it difficult to share knowledge when there is no one to share it with due to high personnel turnover.
For the company the dilemma is how to make itself attractive to new young zappers, at the same time as the rest of the organization shapes up – and feels respected? Having fancy recruitment material is of no avail if the organization is unable to keep the promises. Then it is better to admit that the organization probably does not appeal to the young storm troopers, and recruit potential applicants from a different segment.
Even though the problem is increasingly being recognized, our knowledge about the restless, narcissistic personality is still limited. Certain descriptions of the youth culture seem to indicate that the young generation desires a working life of high entertainment value, but at the same time it tends to renounce responsibility for the very same working life. However, we know too little in general about the career zapper, even though this profile is increasingly being emphasized as the employee type of the future. But when the future becomes the present, the zappers will also have grown older and will perhaps – like previous generations – be buried in family, mortage debt and- how are both needs satisfied?
Growing emphasis on flexibility and individualization leads to the serious challenge of how to ensure the spirit of community, platforms for social relations and networks. If the single employee in a department is increasingly undertaking individual tasks, receives individual salary, and sees career possibilities as determined by his or her individual talents, how will it then be possible to create a spirit of solidarity in the department and think of it as an entity? This situation is further aggravated by the growing need for people to work across organizational/professional boundaries. Solving tasks is becoming increasingly complex and requires input from very different competence profiles and often teams yield the best outcome. But the pressure for competence communities, physical or virtual, emerges in a time when the preconditions for such communities are deteriorating. In this respect information technology plays the role of both villain and hero in that it has led to categorization and individualization of human resource concurrently with creating unprecedented technological possibilities for tying people together. Hot telephone and data lines are increasingly replacing the face-to-face contact that has been the fundamental aspect of the employer-manager relation. The 'closest employees' can be spread all over the world, and the everyday close contact consists in e-mails rather than meeting over a cup of coffee.
It is a challenge both to researchers and practitioners to point to platforms for communities in working life that contribute to close relations among people. If we fail to meet this challenge, working life will not only become increasingly atomized, but it will also be void of human empathy and the spirit of community. Much seems to indicate that the spirit of community will be the sustainable factor in creating the conditions for human activities, whereas the job contents – the potential for personal self-realization – constitutes the actual motivational factor.
What are the implications of this development for the unions? Today, the traditional role of unions as watchdogs of rules, agreements, and collective agreements has certainly diminished. The employees neither expect nor wish to draw on the traditional support offered by unions. Employees want more direct influence on the contents of their work and working conditions. Instead the unions may come to play a much more central role as dialogue partners with company management, as catalysts of competence development, of new personnel policies, and as the forerunners in creating good conditions for the development of human resources. This change in identity might prove a tough one, but those unions that have faced the situation and made the transition have gained a stronger position in the modern labor market.\
From Qualifications to Generic Competence
- from what I can to what I do
Matching qualifications and demands for qualifications has always been the foundation of personnel policy. Gradually the concept of competence has replaced that of qualifications, and focus has been directed toward future competence requirements. Why this change from qualifications to competence? The concept of qualification contains the knowledge, the skills, and the attitudes that the person possesses, regardless of how these have been acquired, whether or not or how they are applied, and whether or not they are attractive to the company. The concept of competence, on the other hand, relates the personal 'equipment' to the requirements and possibilities of working life. Competence is developed through interaction between the individual person and the company or between the company and society. And competence expresses the preparedness of the person or the company toward external demands. Consequently, competence refers to the survivability of the person or the organization. At the personal level this is often referred to as employability, that is, whether or not the person is re-employable in the labor market. At the company level, competence refers to whether the company is able to match external competitive conditions and demands.
Starting from these definitions of competence one could ask whether the type of competence in demand is generic in that it does not comprise specific professional qualifications or, for that matter, specific personal properties. Generic competence represents the basic, non-situational demands in working life. And it represents the fundamental skills for managing jobs in general and thus supplements specific professional and personal competence. But what does generic competences entail?
It is for example the pressure on people to adapt quickly to the job situation and the organizational context. In other words, the shorter one stays in the organization, the more important it is that one adapts fast. There are numerous examples of companies having hired employees without expecting them to work at 'full speed' in the first couple of years. This is legitimate if the company expects to keep the person for many years. But if the person exits after four or six years, this type of initial investment becomes a problem.
Another example is the ability to not only acquire knowledge but also sharing it. Traditionally, an employee could strengthen his or her position in the company by monopolizing knowledge and information. Today, however, it is increasingly perceived as problematic to hold one's cards close to one's chest. One is obliged to disseminate and pass on information for the benefit of others, and being unwilling to comply may, in the worst case, mean losing the job.
The third area within generic competence is the ability to collaborate with others of different education, experience, age, attitude, values, and interests. Being simultaneously a unique resource and an octopus stretching out its tentacles in different directions and collaborating with highly different people requires flexible mentality and personality.
The forth example of generic competence in the modern organization is entrepreneurship. Earlier, people of entrepreneurial spirit would establish their own firm. Today, even large and well-established companies need the fuel of entrepreneurs. However, many companies find it difficult to create the context that will encourage entrepreneurial thinking. If they fail in their attempts, the chances are that many of the entrepreneurs will disappear and hence increase the risk that they start their own businesses and become competitors.
The final example is IT competence. Today, intimate knowledge of IT tools is not a competence required only of a few employees; it saturates all trades and industries. Without knowledge of IT one will be cut off communication and unable to have any influence on one's job. In addition, e-business is developing concurrently with internationalization, mergers, and new sales channels. This changes not only the premises for operations, but also creates an A- and a B-team at personal and company level. Competitive strength on the labor market and the market for goods and services depends on the ability of the individual/company to manage knowledge and information and assume a key position in the virtual network that is established among people and among companies.
Developing new competence tools rather than – as was previously the case – just changing the terminology is a great challenge to the HR profession. It will not suffice to talk about competence instead of qualifications if administrative HR systems are not also changed. If only the terminology – and not the contents - is renovated the desired effect will fail to materialize.
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