Human Resources

Lecture 4
Leading and managing people
Managing the human resources function
 Leading and managing people

you should be able to:

- Describe and compare the features of management and leadership;
- Identify the competencies required for effective management and leadership;
- Discusses the nature of authority and its use in the managing people
 Management theory quiz.

All employees should have the same working condition. True/false

Leaders are born, not made. True/false
Even the best staff sometimes have bad days. True/false
Money is the best motivator. True/false
Planning is essential in business. True/false
You can’t plan for the unexpected situations. True/false
Quality inputs result in quality outputs. True/false
A manager just bosses other people around. True/false
A lack of discipline means productivity will be low. True/false
Manager should have a good knowledge about everything in True/false
the business.
 Management and leadership

Organisation and structure are different. So are management and leadership.

The crucial difference between managers and leaders is in their respective
commitments. A manager is concerned with how decisions get made and how
communication flows; a leader is concerned with what decisions get made and what he
or she communicates.

Kotter (1990) notes, that successful organisations need both good managers who can
control complexity and effective leaders to bring about worthwhile change. Leadership
might be different from management, but it cannot be its replacement.

Leaders set direction and align and motivate people to support that direction. Managers
plan, solve problems, organise and control activities. (John Kotter)

Managers tend to adopt impersonal, if not passive, attitudes towards goals. Managerial
goals arise out of necessities rather than desires, and, therefore, are deeply embedded in
the history and culture of the organisation.
Leaders are active instead of reactive, sharing ideas instead of responding to them.
Leaders adopt a personal active attitude toward goals. The influence a leader exerts in
altering moods, in evoking images and expectations, and in establishing specific
desires and objectives determines the direction a business takes. The net result is to
change the way people think about what is desirable, possible and necessary.

Conceptions of work
Managers view work as an enabling process involving the combination of people and
ideas to establish strategies and make decisions within existing norms and values.
Leaders seek to develop fresh approaches to long-standing problems and to open issues
for new options.

Relations with others

Managers prefer to work with people, but maintain a low level of emotional
involvement in those relationships, seeing people as role players in the management
process. Leaders, who are concerned with ideas, relate in more intuitive and empathetic
ways, concerned less with how things are done than with what they mean to the people
involved.
 Senses of self
Managers see themselves as the protectors and regulators of an existing order with
which they personally identify and from which they gain rewards. Leaders feel
separate from their environment: they may work in organisations, but never belong to
them, and look elsewhere for their social identity.

Leadership can be felt throughout an organisation. It gives pace and energy to the work
and empowers the workforce. Empowerment is the collective effect of leadership. In
organisations with effective leaders, empowerment is most evident in four themes –
people feel significant, learning and competence matter, people are part of community,
and work is exciting.

What do managers do?

Agenda setting – establishing a broad range of goals and plans to address their short-,
medium- and long-term responsibilities.
Network building – creating co-operative relationships among all the people needed to
achieve the objectives.
Execution – getting the networks to implement the agendas.
 Formal The Manager’s Roles
authority and
status

Decisional
Interpersonal Informational
Entrepreneur,
Figurehead, Leader Monitor,
Disturbance
Disseminator,
Liaison handler, Resource
Spokesperson
allocator, Negotiator

Each manager starting in a new job will have a distinctive view of what needs doing.
He or she will focus attention on particular problems and not notice others, Further,
managers differ in what they enjoy doing and in what they are good at, and these
factors also will influence how they spend their time.
 What great managers do

Select people – great managers select for talent, not simple experience, intelligence or
determination.
Set expectations – they define the right outcomes, not the right steps.
Motivate people – they focus on strengths, not on weaknesses.
Develop people – they help them find the right fit, not simply the next rung on the
organisational ladder.

Effective managers share these characteristics:

-Self-management;

-Individual decision making;

-Group decision making

-Relations with peers and superiors;

-Management of subordinates;

-Attitudes to change;

-Social skills;

-Communication;

-Specialist skills/ knowledge.

What do supervisors and managers do?
-Implementing company policy and procedures; Managers and
-Talking with employees;

-Allocating jobs and tasks;

supervisors are also
-Writing letters and reports; involved in:
-Checking departmental and individual
-advising and liaising with
performances against goals; others on new projects and
-Financial reporting; promotions;
-Talking to other supervisors and managers;
Interviewing and selecting
-Reading mail and reports;
staff;
-Attending meetings;

-Organising and scheduling workloads and outputs;

Presenting staff’s ideas to
upper management;
-Setting priorities.
Counselling employees;
Manager’s skills Handing conflict and
Technical skills grievances.
Human skills

Conceptual skills
Future managers would need to:
- Be aware of the economic, social and political environment, and able to relate to it:
- Be able to manage in a turbulent environment;
- Be innovative and initiate change;
- Manage and utilise increasingly sophisticated information systems;
- Manage people with widely different and changing values and expectations.

POWER

Formal authority or power is that which the organisation gives to the individual. It
is the power held by a manager or a supervisor, the power the person has to ask
others to do things. The person with this power is said to have authority over
others.
- Reward power
- Coercive power
- Legitimate power.
Informal power or personal power is another type of power or authority which
comes from within the individual – it is not bestowed on the person by the
organisation.
- Expert power
- Referent power
Five cluster competencies for senior managers of modern organisations:
-The ability to manage and relate to people;

-The ability to get things done;

-The ability to see the big picture;

-The ability to think clearly;

-Personal maturity.

Managers are often appointed because of their technical superiority and then fail in the
management role because they lack the all-important ‘people’ and other ‘soft’ skills.

Leadership
Leadership is a process, not a position.
Leadership is much more of an art, a belief, a condition of heart, than a set of things to
do.
Leader behaviour

Democratic
Laissez-faire (hands off)
Autocratic
Permissive
Today’s manager is more likely to deal with employees who resent being treated as
subordinates, who may be highly critical of any organisational system, who expect to
be consulted and to exert influence, and who often stand on the edge of alienation from
the institution that needs their loyalty and commitment.

Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid

Country Club Team Management
Management

Concern for people

Middle of the road

Impoverished Task
Management Management

Concern for output

 Situational leadership

Delegating
Participating
Selling
Telling

Transformational leadership

Charismatic
Inspirational
Intellectually stimulating
Individually considerable
 Managing the human resources function

You should able able to:

- Set out options for organising and managing the HR function;

- Show the importance of deciding on clear roles and objectives for the HR function;
- Describe the structure and staffing of HR departments;
- Discuss the relationship between HR specialists and other managers;
- Outline how to assess the effectiveness of the HR function.
The decision about hot to organise an HR function will be influenced by a number of
factors including:
-Organisation size;

-Role (authority? or assistance?);

-Relationships (is it going to take part in day-to-day decisions?);

-Technology (huge factories need more safety and occupational health specialists);

-External trends.

General Manager

The HR department

Human Resources
Financial Controller Marketing manager Sales manager Production manager
Manager

Employee
Payroll Services Human Resources Training Safety
Relations
Officer Officer Officer Officer
Officer
 Types of departments:
-Integrated department where a range of HR activities are responsibility of a single

executive who reports to a high-level manager.

-The extended department where the activities of an integrated department are extended

to include other functions, e.g. public relations.

-The staff coordinated department where an extended system of specialists report to a

central staff services manager rather than a line manager.

-The split function where various HR activities report separately to a line manager.

Flexible or functional?
-Functional – organised on the basis of activity areas (e.g. benefits, recruitment,

training);
-Flexible – organised on the basis of the work to be done (e.g. issues, projects).

How many specialists?

Usually in NZ 1 HR specialist for each 100 – 150 employees.
 Delivering HR services
Whatever role the organisation choose for its HR function, it must then make decisions
about how that role will be played. Again, there are several factors to consider,
including:
-The organisation’s size and structure;

-The number of people employed and the kind of work they do;

-The industry or sectors in which in it involved;

-The style of its management and the culture of the organisations.

Manager or executive
Initiator or formulator
Implementor and service provider
Controller and auditor
Adviser
Managing people is part of every manager’s responsibilities. The role of human
resources practitioners is to provide professional knowledge, advice and support to
their employer on the most effective use of the organisation’s human resources.

HR managers need the support of top management to ensure that appropriate HR

policies and programmes are agreed on and implemented consistently across the
organisation – but they cannot achieve this without the willing from all parts of the
organisation, not just from the chief executives – although that is crucial – nor just
from operating line managers.

Making the new relationship work

If the new relationship between HR and line managers is to work and line managers are
to take on greater responsibility for HR activities, then organisations should:
- Clarify the role of HR function;
- Decide what support line managers need from the HR and training function, as well
as top management;
- Assess what skills and competencies are required of HR staff in order to perform their

new roles;
- Decide how to implement the change strategy;

- Involve line managers in the development and implementation process;

- Evaluate and review.

 The HR departments’ aim and activities
Strategic HR management
-Environment scans
-Labour market forecasts
-HR management trends
-HR management strategies
and policies
Training and development
-Employee induction;
-Needs analysis;
-On-job training;
-Off-job training;
-Management development;
-Performance management;
-Career development.
HR Planning and staffing
-HR needs forecasts;
-Work organisations, job design and
job analysis;
-Recruitment planning, advertising,
interviewing, selection, candidate
testing, reference checking, placement;
-Employment agreement and other
documentation;
-Succession planning;
-Promotion;
-Equal employment opportunities;
-Terminations;
-Retirement planning.
Employee and labour
relations
Remuneration and benefits
-Legislative compliance; -Job evaluation and classification;
-Corporate culture and climate; -Market remuneration surveys;
-Employee relations policies -Incentive programmes;
and practices;
-Employee benefits;
-Discipline and grievances;
-Payroll management;
-Employee communications; -Superannuation schemes
-Employment agreement
negotiations; HR data and systems
-Union relations. -Employee records and data;
-Manuals;
Safety, health and welfare -Policies and procedures;
- Legislative compliance; -HR audits;
- Hazard management; -Attitude surveys.
- Accident investigation;
- Medial and health facilities;
- Employee health and welfare
HR department’s objectives
-Cohesive – providing a common thread linking business mission with subsequent HR

strategies;
-Specific enough to provide direction, yet general enough to accommodate short-term

changes;
-Long term in its aims and relevance;

-Simple;

-Able to articulate the core values, beliefs, and principles of the organisation;

-A yardstick by which to judge future performance.

HR objectives and plans

-The strategic HR objectives and plans of the organisation, which are formulated and

agreed on as part of its overall business strategies and plans;

-The human resources-related provision which will be found in the plans and budgets of

each business unit, including, for example, wages and salaries for employees, the costs
of any planned recruitment, and the amounts that it is proposed to spend on training;
-The HR department’s plans and budgets.
 Policies, programmes and procedures
Once the organisation has decided on its HR strategies and objectives, the HR
department will usually be responsible for developing the policies and programmes
which will be used to implement them.

-Set out parameters or limits within which managers may act, and help them make
decisions which are appropriate to particular circumstances;
-Be broad enough to allow managers reasonable flexibility, yet no so broad that

managers in different parts of the organisation, or different managers in the same

circumstances, make inconsistent decisions;
-Ensure that employees throughout the organisation are treated fairly.

Assessing human resources effectiveness

How effective is the organisation’s HR management? There are three aspects to this
question:
-How effective is HR management of the HR function overall?

-How effective are particular HR strategies, policies or practices?

-How effective is the performance and contribution of the HR department and its

specialists?
 Why assess HR effectiveness?

All strategies, policies and practices should be kept under review so that the
organisation is well equipped to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing
environment.

Marketing the HR function (reminding managers of the importance of people

management and development);
Ensuring accountability (all managers should be accountable for effective use of HR
policies and programmes);
Promotion change (if HR policies and practices have their intended effected, then the
organisation and its people should be changing and developing. As a result, those HR
policies and practices will become outmoded and need review and renewal).
Assessing financial costs and benefits.
Comparing programmes.
Due diligence.
 What should be assessed
Assessing the HR department
-Are the manager and key staff expert and knowledgeable?

-Is the department’s advisory role interpersonal positively?

-Are the department’s initiatives relevant?

-Are policies properly monitored?

-Is the department willing to delegate?

-Does the HR function understand and support operational objectives?

Assessing HR activities

Counting HR costs

Evaluating economic impact

 Benchmarking and best practice

Benchmarking is a process for measuring your company's method, process and

procedure, product and service performance against those companies that consistently
distinguish themselves in that same category of performance. This benchmarking is a
customer-driven commitments to continuous process improvement.

Broad measures of performance

HR practices
HR competencies

Four types of benchmarking

Internal benchmarking – where the comparison is with other internal operations.
Competitive benchmarking – where the comparison is with the products or services of
direct competitors.
Industry or functional benchmarking – where the comparison is with external
organisations which are considered to be best-practice organisations in a specific
product, service or functional group.
Generic or process benchmarking – where the comparison is with the processes used in
other organisations generally.