Flexibility And Human Resource Management example essay topic

Introduction What is the idea of flexibility? - 'A business needs to organise itself in such a way as to be able to adapt to change as quickly as possible in order to maintain its competitive advantage.? Nowadays, implement of flexibility of employment becomes more and more popular in many career fields due to the changing external and internal environment of company. In order to maximize the profit and minimize the risk, the managing change, it includes employee involvement in effecting change, greater customer orientation, and ensuring the skills of employees to the production of goods and the provision of services acceptable to the global market, so as to increase the ability to change to respond to the market needs and demands. The primary aim of this essay is to evaluate the role of flexibility of employment in the hospitality industry. It divided into four main parts.

The first part is going to define flexibility and human resource management. There are some special terms for flexibility to be introduced. It is then follow by the issues of flexibility and human resource management. In this part, it will be discussed about the skill, culture and policy are used in the company. Models of employee flexibility and their application are the next part.

Finally, it will come to the trends in using flexibility. Main Body Part 1: Definitions of Flexibility and Human Resource Management Definitions of Flexibility In the modern management, the concept of flexibility is often mentioned as a desirable characteristic of firms and employees. Flexible organizations display an ability to change in response to market changes. It should be clear, however, that a range of possibilities exist between "rigid" organizations and truly flexible ones. This range is discussed. Further, a firm's ability to demonstrate flexibility depends to a large degree on the flexibility exhibited by its employees.

Firms exhibiting different degrees of flexibility have different demands on the flexibility of their co-workers, which means that a matching between supply and demand exists. (The flexible firm and flexible labor, volume 12 No. 4 20000 P 165-170) In the discussion of labour flexibility the model of the "flexible firm" developed at the Institute of Manpower Studies (Atkinson, 1984; Atkinson and Gregory, 1986; Atkinson and Meager, 1986; IMS, 1986) has enjoyed widespread acceptance, despite its conceptual simplicity and lack of theoretical underpinnings (Pinch et al., 1991, p. 208; Pollert 1988). One approach to employment flexibility sees four broad categories: numerical flexibility, functional flexibility, distancing, and pay flexibility (Olmsted and Smith 1989, p. 51; Pinfield and Atkinson, 1988, p. 18). Firms use these types of employment flexibility in different dimensions depending on their specific competitive circumstances, the business strategy they develop to meet this competitive situation, and the constraints and opportunities they face as they attempt to adjust their employment policies (Pinfield and Atkinson 1988, p. 19). The ability of firms is to adjust and deploy the skills of workers over a broad range of tasks to match the changing tasks because of changes in the nature of demand, production methods or technology (IMS, 1986; Olmsted and Smith, 1989, p. 51). These different types of flexibility or management strategies have the effect of restructuring the labour market in firms into "core" and "peripheral" workers.

Simplified, the core group consists of multi skilled, permanent employees, who are also flexible in working time, in terms of adjusting more closely to production demands. The peripheral group provides numerical flexibility in the form of, for example, less job security, part-time work, working on temporary contracts, or being involved in sub-contracting (Atkinson 1984, p. 29; Bagguley, 1990, p. 737; NE DO, 1986). Definition of Human Resource Management Human Resource Management has been defined as 'a set of policies designed to maximize organizational integration, employee commitment, flexibility and the quality of work? (Guest, 1987). It has also been defined as 'the process of attracting, developing, and maintaining a talented and energetic workforce to support organizational mission, objectives, and strategies? (Schermerhorn, 2001).

This clearly demonstrates that human resource management is more focusing on employees nowadays than in 14 years ago. The world is keeping on changing and competitors are surrounding everywhere. In response to this competitive challenge, more industry firms tend to increase the range of tasks for employees to perform, raise their skills, and increase their involvement in the company. These strategies are broadly defines as Human Resource Management. The development of human resource management drew on industrial psychology theories of motivation, behavioral theories of job enlargement and enrichment, and organizational behavior theories of better communication and employee involvement (Applebaum and Batt, 1997).

Part 2: Issues of Flexibility and Human Resource Management In one organization, high users of flexibility are more likely to have a human resource presence on the main decision making body of organization, to have written corporate strategies and written human resource strategies. However, for the lower users who are more likely to carry out manpower planning. For example: the project worker and the temp typically work when there is work to do. It is not unusual for a member of a project team to put in very long hours at the end of a project and to take it easy when it is finished. Members of project groups and of self-managing teams often work with different applications of their skills in different settings and with different coworkers and with shifting tasks (A nell, 1996). The officer or the diplomat has to achieve more or less the same type of work in different cultures throughout their careers.

However, the demanding on adapting to the new culture of diplomat is much higher than on the officer. Besides this, the life-long learner acquires new skills throughout their working life. The ability to find new, solutions to problems that can distinguishes their improviser. The creative thinker also finds new solutions, but, in addition to that, they have the ability to reflect over what they are doing and to think of alternatives, including working together. Because of this, the emergence of a more strategic approach to human resource management in the service sector industries has been associated with the need to improve quality and efficiency of service provision continually within increasingly competitive conditions. In so doing, the sector has been proactive in targeting groups of workers for whom "atypical" employment may be preferable, including pre-career workers and secondary earners.

It is currently at the forefront in trying to respond to prospective demographic trends, with attempts to recognize the potential contribution of second- and post-career workers. With the most effective human resource management policies in corporate strategies and practices, organizations search to change an organization's culture. They are two senses for integration, they are, securing the acceptance and inclusion of a human resource management view in the decision of line manager and integrating human resource management issues into an organization's strategic plan. To reflect the organization's core values, the policies of the functions (e.g. recruitment, training, etc.) should be consistent with the business strategies. In addition, through the set of values (quality, service and innovation, etc.) that also can assume an identification of employee and employer interests. However, there can be tension between a strong organization culture and the need to adapt to change circumstances and to be flexible, particularly in the high competitive and rapidly changing environment in which employers have to operate today. (S.R. de Silva, 1998) Part 3: Models of Employee Flexibility and their application to the Hospitality Industry Since people are wanting beings, they always want more, and what they want depends on what they already have.

Based on the Maslow's hierarchy, he pointed out that there are five level needs of people. They included from lowest level, physiological needs (basic one), safety needs (security), love needs (social), esteem needs (self respect) until self-actualization needs (development) at the highest level. People will satisfy the basic needs first, then going to satisfy the higher level of needs. Based on this reason, the management level can depends on what their employees? need in order to motivate them. However, according to Cappelli and Rogovsky (1994), specialised jobs based on scientific management do not meet the psychological needs of workers. Opportunities to widen skill bases and increase worker participation in decision making will not only help improve employee satisfaction, but also help improve organisational productivity due to decreased absenteeism, improved flexibility, and overall employee ability to contribute to workplace improvement.

Although flexibility keep increasing at the workplace level, still there is some theory that can help to explain the patterns of flexibility, or to predict what is possible to occur in the future. Working on the work of Cooke et al. (1989), Blyton and Morris (1991) suggest that five broad trends are occurring in the re-organisation of industry that indicates forms of flexibility: 1. There is a tendency for vertically integrated organisations to use sub-contractors. 2. Internationalisation is occurring through the expansion into international markets to increase market share; and, through the forming of joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions with corporations outside of the domestic sphere.

3. There is an increase in investment in flexible automation machinery. 4. There is a new focus on satisfying customers through quality improvement and adapting products and services to customer demand using total quality management (TQM) and just-in-time (JIT) methods. 5. Unskilled, semi-skilled and professional workers are increasingly required to take on a broader range of tasks, and there appears to be a move toward increasing the proportion of professional workers compared to semi-skilled and unskilled workers.

Three influential frameworks that address flexibility at the organisational level include Pio re and Sabel's (1984) flexible specialisation; Atkinson's (1984) flexible firm model; and the lean production model developed in Toyota, Japan. Although these three models are not exhaustive, what is distinctive is that each trend identified by Blyton and Morris (1991) is central to one or more of these models. Flexible specialisation is the ability to reorganise the production processes through re organising the components of production and this is facilitated by new computerised technology. However, the extent of reorganisation is limited by conceptual and physical constraints forced by specialisation. Conceptual restraints arise from the community or industry's sense of shared product. Physical restraints arise because the associated organisations within an industry are geographically located within the community.

The commitment of individuals and firms to specialise in a component of the industry is thought to be possible when all resources are utilised with each reorganisation and where all member organisations and employees have a claim to be included within the community. Therefore, the community of firms must create "safety nets" to retain staff and resources during temporary displacement arising from reorganisation. Also, competition that promotes innovation is encouraged. Innovative firms are considered to gain favourable places within the industry hierarchy, although placement is guaranteed, fairness of placement is not. Competition between similar industries is also considered to help the innovative process. furthermore, limits to destructive competition are needed. Wages and working conditions are set within the industry to avoid competition based on cost cutting measures that could lead to "sweating".

That is, employment security and trust are required in order for organisations and industry to remain innovative and take advantage of new technology, and for the community to remain cohesive through periods of reorganisation. Furthermore, there is one more approach to employment flexibility by Atkinson (1984), he divided into three categorise, they are numerical flexibility, functional flexibility and pay flexibility. It depends on breaking internal hierarchical labour market by creating a core workforce. It is said to be made up of highly skilled workers who are able to participate in decision making and are directly employed by organization. Job security and high salaries are provided to workers that reflect their skill levels and their importance to the organization. In the Marriott Hotel, it introduced a six-month pilot scheme at three of its hotels in north-eastern USA, to help managers to strike a better balance between their home and working lives.

The scheme helped to identify several inefficient procedures. For example, front-desk managers's hits were scheduled to overlap by an hour, when only 15 minutes were needed to bring the next manager up to date. All managers at one hotel would meet monthly for a financial review, regardless of whether the substantive discussions concerned them directly. Also, managers highlighted new tools - such as Internet access - which would enable them to do their jobs more efficiently. They also felt that on-site IT support would be useful, instead of having to rely on help from corporate headquarters in Washington. (Marriott Hotels attempts to banish the long-hours culture, volume 10 No. 4 2002 P 13-15) Before the pilot, 77 percent of managers felt that their jobs were so demanding that they could not take adequate care of their personal and family responsibilities.

By the end of the pilot, that number had fallen to 36 percent. The proportion of managers who felt that the emphasis at Marriott was on hours worked and not on work accomplished fell from 43 percent to 15 percent. Managers also reported feeling lower stress levels. Marriott Hotels is now implementing the scheme in hotels across the western, south-central and mid-Atlantic regions, and plans to broaden this further in the future. (Marriott Hotels attempts to banish the long hours culture, volume 10 No. 4 2002 P 13-15) Part 4: Trends in Flexibility and Human Resource Management Nowadays, part-time work is on the increase and is playing an important role in Europe.

Across Europe, a significant percentage of employers have increased their use of part-timers with the northern countries of the EU (for example, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany and the UK) showing greater increases than their southern counterparts such as Spain and Turkey (Meulders et al., 1996; De Grip et al., 1997). Based on surveys of HR practices in some 14 European countries, Brewster et al. (1997, p. 119), suggest that almost "one in every seven people in the European Union is working part-time and part-time employment has been the major area of growth during the last decade". A number of explanations for the proliferation of atypical employees in the labour market has been suggested. Atkinson (1984) identifies mass redundancies; economic uncertainty; rapid technological change; ongoing reductions in working time; market stagnation and world depression as being among the most important external factors which have caused organizations to restructure their workforce.

Another important contributory factor may be increased competition from lower labour-cost countries such as China, Vietnam and Mexico. As Nollen and Gannon (1996, p. 284) put it: "To succeed in this business environment, companies must be able to change rapidly, and they must continuously reduce costs". One cost that many organizations feel should be curtailed is the labour cost (Van Hist and Jansen, 1994). Organizations need to "improve their productivity because producing goods and services in Europe is relatively expensive" and "a different competitive means may be required" (Sparrow, 1994, p. 23).

Brewster et al. (1994, p. 170) further note, "Since work rarely comes in neat seven and a half hour, more or less permanent, packages, to employ people in that way must have built in surplus costs and deficits". It is argued elsewhere that "workforce diversity", where today's worker differs increasingly from any other workers in any other time, is another factor which has led to the adoption of numerical flexibility strategies (Nollen and Gannon, 1996, pp. 284-5). It is argued that different aspirations and demographic trends mean that younger people appreciate the freedom that is associated with numerical flexibility (Handy, 1989; Spellman, 1992). In a study on part-time working in the UK, Naylor (1994) estimated that some 73 per cent of part-time employees work part-time because they do not want a full-time job, and only 13 per cent do so because they cannot find a full-time job.

This may be explained to some degree by increasing female participation in the labour force, and the need to balance work and domestic life (Brewster et al., 1994; Dine en, 1989; Gunnigle et al., 1994). In the European context, many of the countries which have high levels of part-time employment also have high female participation rates. Meulders et al. (1996, p. 579), note that "From 1992 to 1994, throughout Europe, the proportion of unemployed women taking a part-time post rose from 34 per cent to 39 per cent... In the case of women leaving education, the proportion was more stable, moving from 39 per cent to 40 per cent". A point worth noting is that this "may be further contributing to the marginalization of women at work, as quite often these jobs are in the lower paid categories" (Fines et al., 1996, p. 7).

The objectives of managements, the ways in which enterprises are managed to achieve these objectives and the human resource management and industrial relations initiatives in this regard, are affected by pressures, many of which are exerted by globalization. Changes in industrial relation practices (rather than in institutions and systems) such as increased collective bargaining at enterprise level, flexibility in relation to forms of employment as well as in relation to working time and job functions have occurred as a result of such factors as heightened competition, rapid changes in products and processes and the increasing importance of skills, quality and productivity. These factors have also had an impact on human resource management policies and practices. In managing change, the key elements include employee involvement in effecting change, greater customer orientation, and ensuring that the skills of employees are appropriate to the production of goods and the provision of services acceptable to the global market.

As such, managing people in a way so as to motivate them to be productive is one important objective of human resource management. The implications and consequences of globalization include the following: Countries are more economically interdependent than before, particularly in view of foreign direct investment interlocking economies, as well as increased free trade. The inability of economies to be 'self-sufficient' or 'self-reliant' or 'self-contained' has been accompanied by a breakdown of investment and trade barriers. 1.

Governments are increasingly less able to control the flow of capital, information and technology across borders. 2. There has been de-regulation of financial and other markets, and the integration of markets for goods, services and capital such as the European Community. 3. It has led to the de-nationalization of enterprises and the creation of global companies and global webs.

4. Production of goods and services acceptable to the global market, and the convergence, to a great extent, of customer tastes across borders determined by quality. 5. The need to achieve competitiveness and to remain competitive in respect of attracting investment, goods and services. This means, the necessity for high quality skills at all levels to attract high value-added activities, as distinct from cheap labour low value-added ones, and improvements in productivity. In effect, these environmental changes have forced employers to examine new ways of organizing labour.

"Employers are discovering that part-time working can increase working time flexibility and reduce costs". (Anon, 1994, p. 8). Conclusion Nowadays, all the employers want to use their workforces efficiently so that they can respond to the fluctuations in demands for goods and services and compete in global markets. Economies need high productivity workforce that can increase competitiveness and respond rapidly to global change.

Flexibility can mean minimum standards of work enforced through the law, and it means employers, in partnership with unions developing a highly motivated, adaptable and committed staff through investing in the skills of the workforce and guaranteeing security. It also mean increasing workers? choices, as well as promoting equal opportunities and promoting family friendly. Besides this, employers can attract and retain qualified employees by offering flexible benefit plans, these plans allow companies to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse labour pool. Flexible benefit plans also permit employers needs to take more control over benefit costs.

By creating and maintaining flexible benefit arrangement, employers can keep their workers in steps with a future system that is likely to provide them with choices of many benefit options. (Meyer, J.) To utilise of more flexible labour to be an organizational strategy, greater attention has to pay within the human resources management context revealing the different needs of employees and employers and then negotiating between them. Finally, so as to the addition to innovative services, flexible work arrangements can be the main point to increasing overall productivity. Since, the enterprises driven by market pressures need to include in their goals improved quality and productivity, greater flexibility, continuous innovation, and the ability to change to respond rapidly to market needs and demands.

Effective human resource management is vital for the attainment of these goals. Improved quality and productivity linked to motivation can be achieved through training, employee involvement and extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. The growing interest in pay systems geared to performance and skills reflects one aspect of the increasing significance of human resource management in realizing management goals and a gradual shift from collectivism to the individualization of pay. In such pay systems a critical attraction is the possibility of achieving these goals without increasing labour costs but at the same time increasing earnings. Realizing management goals and managing change need employee involvement, commitment and training, employee participation, cooperation and team-work - all important human resource management initiatives and activities. (Trends and emerging values in human resource management, Volume 22 No. 3 2001 P 261-268) Reference 1.

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