Human Resource Management in Context

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Part One Human resource management in context 16 Box 1.8 Research in focus ‘Bankco’ The organization that was affected most by the changes in working-time culture was ‘Bankco’. It had been traditionally organized around a standard Monday-to-Friday working week and regular opening hours. In the 1990s; the move to telephone banking involved staff working late nights and at weekends. Over time, the unsocial hours premiums paid for this work were eradicated as the new call centres came online and were eventually harmonized across the company at below the traditional levels. However, the impact of these changes was felt not only in relation to the employment relationship but also on the personal and private lives of the employees. Staff experienced less private time at work in relation to meals and other breaks and they were expected to adjust family time in order to fi t in with company demands for availability. Changes in working hours were also being accompanied in many cases by organizational restructuring with implications for workforce numbers. As the headcount reduced, work volumes were increasing, whilst material rewards from working time such as unsocial hours payments, shift payments, and so on were being reduced. Source: Beynon et al. (2002). commitment-oriented approach towards people management seen in the HRM models. However, it is important to note that, whilst Beynon et al. (2002) emphasize the erosion of established norms as a means of delivering greater fl exibility and greater worker intensifi cation, later evidence paints a somewhat diff erent picture. For example, Kersley et al. (2006: 92) found that, where multi-skilling and functional fl exibility were concerned, fewer workplaces were training substantial proportions of their core employees in this way and that such a trend had been declining over the past decade. Where multi-skilling and job rotation were more prevalent was in production work and fi nancial services—especially where the workplace produced multiple services or goods. Finally, as issues of work–life integration increasingly come to the fore, the debate is shifting and is concerned with seeing how temporal fl exibility can best be used to suit the employees and their circumstances. 1.6.7 Organizational restructuring One of the ways in which organizations seek to improve profi tability is through changing company structures and reducing staff . The 1990s saw many companies ‘rationalizing’ their businesses through initiatives such as ‘downsizing’ (cutting staff numbers) and ‘delayering’ (removing whole tiers of management or supervisory roles). Many companies rationalized their businesses through tools such as business process re-engineering (Hammer and Champy 1993), or the importation of new manufacturing methods such as lean manufacturing (Womack, Jones, and Roos 1990). This was often accompanied by the kinds of changes to employee terms and conditions of employment outlined above. For those who became committed to such strategies, the impact on workplace performance and morale was often poor, as Box 1.9 illustrates. Box 1.9 Research in focus The serial downsizers Research concerning the serial use of downsizing in New Zealand found that repeated downsizing led to repeatedly negative consequences in terms of employee satisfaction, workplace confl ict, and workplace performance. The organizations they sampled over a fi ve-year period did not seem able to shake off the trauma of repeated downsizing, leading the authors to speculate that those serial downsizing organizations were not adjusting future practices to refl ect past experiences. Rather than seeing a form of organizational learning taking place, they seemed to witness simple, instrumental responses to poor fi nancial performance with a negative impact being an outcome of this strategy. Source: Gilson, Hurd, and Wagar (2004).
1.6.8 Structural change and the public sector These kinds of structural changes have not been restricted to the private sector. Tight budgetary controls, new measurements of ‘output’, and the generalized introduction of what has been termed ‘the new public management’ (Dunleavy and Hood 1994) have radically changed many public-sector organizations. This public/private sector divide has consequently become blurred, and the ways in which people are managed have involved the increased use of fl exible employment contracts, reduced opportunities for collective voice among workers, and a potential decline in public service ethos (Corby and White 1999: 15–20). However, privatization did not occur across the whole of the public sector and even at the end of the 1990s public-sector employment in the UK still stood at over fi ve million. But most of these workers saw their jobs and conditions of work subject to radical change, especially with regard to increases in workload and centrally imposed targets for service delivery. Summary and further reading • Organizations have responded to changes in their business environments in a number of ways. These include the widespread use of IT and an accompaniment of its use with a swing away from semi-skilled work to managerial and professional jobs. Other responses involved changing patterns of working time and changes to contracts. The growth of fl exible working has also been accompanied by techniques such as business process re-engineering, downsizing, and delayering. Although some commentators argue that Britain has survived this period of heightened competition in good shape, there is also evidence of heightened worker insecurity. • Such evidence questions the extent to which softer, commitment-based approaches towards HRM are utilized, as well as the formation and maintenance of the kinds of corporate culture advocated in the ‘excellence’ companies and early models. It also raises questions as to the nature of the strategy–performance relationship and the kinds of HR activities that underpin it. Whilst approaches based on the adoption of more sophisticated and reconfi gured HR practices were advocated, it seems that the organizational preference was for more ‘low-road’ methods of leveraging fl exibility and strategic advantage in the market with little evidence of personnel specialists being the drivers of change. Beynon et al.’s case studies (2002) provide an insight into the ways in which organizations have responded to heightened competitive pressures, whilst the work of Atkinson (1984) has also been infl uential with regard to understanding how organizations use fl exible working practices to secure competitive advantage. 1.7 Reinventing the personnel function At this juncture it is pertinent to assess the developments occurring in relation to the HR function, while considering the impact of HRM philosophies and practices on the practitioner role. Since the arrival of HRM, there has been no shortage of advice being provided to HR practitioners as to how to gain access to the higher echelons of strategic decision-making. One of the most infl uential fi gures has been American academic David Ulrich (Ulrich 1997; Ulrich and Brockbank 2005). He shows how the HRM agenda provides opportunities for the HR function to demonstrate ‘added value’ through a focus on what HR delivers rather than on what it does. In a recent revision of his model (Ulrich and Brockbank 2005), he argues that gaining added value is achieved via the fulfi lment of fi ve key roles, as outlined in Box 1.10. Whilst the strategic partner role has caught the imagination of the HR workforce and bodies representing HR practitioners, like the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the lack of quantifi able measures of HR performance remains a problem (Bartlett and Ghoshal 2002; Caldwell 2004). This is despite the signifi cant increase in the number of management specialists with ‘human resources’ in their job title (Millward, Bryson, and Forth 2000), and the correlation that exists between HR-titled specialists, the attainment of formal qualifi cations, and the engagement in strategic-planning activities. Although this evidence could indicate that the uptake of HRM is associated with a sophisticated conception of HR practice and a shift of emphasis towards the strategic, other UK research suggests that chief executives Chapter 1 Introducing human resource management 17
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