A Sample set of Jussi Leponiemi's teaching material.

1. Human resource management
Basics and emerging diversity
Jussi Leponiemi
Jussi.tapani.leponiemi@gmail.com
+358-44-2387860

2. Examples on literature
• Boxall, P. & Purcell, J. 2003. Strategy and Human
Resource Management. London.
• Harris, H., Brewster, C. & Sparrow, P. 2004.
International human resource management.
London.
• Dowling, P. & Welch, D. 2004. International
human resource management: managing people
in a multinational context. London.
• http://mams.rmit.edu.au/d4lhtsmk45c.pdf, by
Carol Gill

3. HRM
The integration of all processes, programs, and
systems in an organization that ensure staff
are acquired and used in an effective way

4. Strategic hrm
HR planning
Recruitment
Selection
Organizational and
work design
Training and
development
Performance review
Compensation
Labour relations

5. Strategic Importance of HRM
• Can establish an organization’s sustainable
competitive advantage
– Shortfall of hundreds of million workers globally
• Requires fundamental change in how managers think
about employees
– Partners and Investments
• Need to consider outsourcing certain HR transactions
– But then what does the HR dept. do?

6. Legal Environment of HRM
• Governments influenced HRM through laws and
regulations
– Huge increase in this since 1960’s
• Employers must ensure that managers understand
their obligations and comply
• Four primary areas of employment legislation

7. Human Rights Legislation
• Has the most impact on HR decisions
• Protects individuals and groups from
discrimination
• Protects employees from harassment - both
workplace and sexual
• Consider the time, (which translates to
money), that managers spend on HRL

8. Other Employment Legislation
• Employment standards
– Basic or minimum employment conditions in an
organization
• Minimum wage, hours of work, OT pay
• Health and safety
– Healthy and Safe work Environment
– On the Job Injuries
• Labour relations
– Relationship between union and employer
– Not all organizations are covered by Labour Relations

9. Global Laws and HRM
• Laws and regulations are not the same
throughout the world
– Working Conditions, Pay
• Important for manage to know the legislation
in the country in which they are working

10. Human Resource Planning
Assessing Future
Human Resource
Needs
Assessing Current
Human Resources
Developing a
Program to Meet
Needs

11. HR Planning
• We have found the gap, how do we fill this
void?
• How much time should we spend on
identifying the right person?
• Lets follow the trail of what it takes to hire a
new team member in an oganization.

12. Recruitment
• Process of locating,
identifying, and attracting
capable candidates
• Can be for current or future
needs
• Critical activity for some
corporations.
• What sources do we use for
recruitment

13. Recruitment
Sources
Internal
Searches
Employee
Referrals
Employee
Leasing
Temp
Services
Employment
Agencies Advertisements
School
Placement

14. Selection
• Prediction exercise
– Thus, Not Perfect
• Decision-making exercise
• Purpose is to hire the
person(s) best able to
meet the needs of the
organization
• Tied Back to Strategy

15. Selection
• Are there ways that managers can ensure that
the decision achieves the desired outcome?
(time and time again)
– Yes, use HR Tools which are Reliable & Valid

16. Reliability
• Degree to which selection tool measures the
same thing consistently
• Can be a test or an interview
• Same questions need to be asked.

17. Validity
• Relationship between selection tool and
appropriate criterion
• What a selection technique measures and
how well it measures
• Must be proven and relevant to job
– Eg: keyboarding skills for data entry clerk.

18. The Effectiveness of Interviews
• Prior knowledge about an applicant
• Attitude of the interviewer
• The order of the interview
• Negative information
• The first five minutes
• The content of the interview
• The validity of the interview
• Structured versus unstructured interviews

19. Common Types of Interviews
• Non-directive
– Most Latitude
– Questions are open ended
– This can get you into trouble
• Behavioural Description
– As about a situation you have experienced.
• Structured
– Panel
– Situational
• Why is a Situational Analysis Good.

20. Written Tests
• Intelligence
• General aptitude
• Ability
• Interest

21. Reference Checks
• Potential employer seeks to verify information
• Important to have well-constructed questions
• Can you Outsource This?
• How far can you dig?

22. Your Hired
• Now What?
• Most Important Stage

23. Familiarization to Organization and its Values
Improved Success On the Job
Minimizes Turnover
Orientation
• Process to introduce new employees to
organization
• Familiarize new employee to job and work
unit
• Help employee to understand values, beliefs,
and acceptable behaviours

24. Training and Development
• Learning experience that seeks relatively
permanent change
• Involves changing skills, knowledge, attitudes
or behaviours
• Training tends to be done for current job
• Develop usually means acquiring skills for
future work

25. Employee Training
What deficiencies, if any,
does job holder have in
terms of skills, knowledge,
abilities, and behaviours?
What behaviours are
necessary?
Is there a
need for
training?
What are
the strategic
goals of the
organization?
What tasks must
be completed
to achieve
goals?

26. Training
• Can you Train Someone out of a job?

27. Performance Management
• Integration of management practices that includes a
formal review of employee performance
– How often should this take place?
• Includes establishing performance standards and
reviewing the performance
• Means to ensure organizational goals are being met

28. Multiperson
Graphic
Rating Scales
Critical
Incidents
Written
Essay
BARS
Performance Review Methods
360-Degree
Review
MBO

29. If Performance Falls Short
• Train
• Discipline
• Coach
• Out the Door

30. Compensation Management
• Process of determining
cost-effective pay
structure
• Designed to attract and
retain
• Provide an incentive to
work hard
• Structured to ensure that
pay levels are perceived
as fair

31. Factors That Influence Compensation
Unionization
Level of
Compensation
and
Benefits
Employee’s
tenure and
performance
Kind of job
performedSize of
company
Management
philosophy
Kind of
businessGeographical
location
Labour- or
capital-intensive
Company
profitability
Robbins et al., Fundamentals of Management, 4th Canadian Edition
©2005 Pearson Education Canada, Inc.
Source: Management, Seventh Canadian Edition, by Stephen P. Robbins, Mary Coulter,
and Robin Stuart-Kotze, page 274. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission of
Pearson Education Canada Inc.

32. Employee Benefits
• Indirect financial rewards
• Designed to enrich employees’ lives
• Vary widely in scope
• Costs range from 30% to 40% of payroll costs

33. Health and Safety
• Employers are responsible for ensuring a
healthy and safe work environment
• Employees are required for follow instructions
and any legal requirements
• Workplace violence is a growing concern

34. Labour Relations
• Relationship between union and employer
• Union functions as the voice of employees
• Collective bargaining is a process to negotiate terms
and conditions of employment
• Bargaining produces a written document called a
collective agreement

35. Key HR challenges for today’s
managers
Environment
•Rapid change
•Workforce diversity
•Globalization
•Legislation
•Evolving work and
family structures
•Skill shortages
Organization
•Competitive position
•Decentralization
•Downsizing
•Organizational
restructuring
•Self-managed
work teams
•Technology
•Outsourcing
Individual
•Matching people and
organization
•Brain drain
•Productivity
•Empowerment
•Ethical dilemmas
•Social responsibility

36. Assignment
• Themes
– G1 – Recruitment in a context of diverse workforce
– G2 – Appraisal -”-
– G3 – Employee relations -”-
– G4 – Internal communications -”-
– G5 – Training and development -”-
– G6 – Compensation -”-
– G7 – Strategy aspect -”-
– G8 – HR-manager aspect -”- (competences etc.)
– G9 – Enlargement of HRM beyond traditional boundaries,
supporting employees further -”- AND Minority individual
aspect, encounter with HRM: key points, emphasis on
which ?

37. Group assignment
• Each group considers 1) the
implications of diversity on the given
HR-function or –aspect, and 2) what
must change?
• 0 % diversity -> 100 % diversity

38. Emerging workforce
diversity and HRM

39. • What is interesting?
– the causes, benefits, and challenges of cultural
diversity
– the impacts the diverse workforce has on the
HRM
• Focus on a situation where the level of
diversity is yet small but increases steadily vs a
situation where the level is high

40. Diverse workforce
• Different approaches (EO, DM)
• Definitions (deep- / surface-levels)
• Causes
– demographic developments, globalisation, potential benefits
• Benefits
– competitive advantage, reducing costs,
• Challenges
– communication, collaboration, processes

41. The role of HRM in diversity
• How to obtain the benefits and to deal with
the challenges?
• Traditionally HRM theories and models based
on homogeneity
• Abstract, ideal workers
• Similarity promoted, not diversity
• HRM & challenges

42. The role of HRM in diversity
• HRM as a holistic system
• Commitment to diversity and equality
• Culture of solidarity and equality
• Readiness for change and flexibility
• Seen as related to the benefits and the
challenges

43. Results – Causes, benefits & challenges
• Causes
– new recruitment potential, reduction of staff turnover (context),
potential benefits
• Benefits
– quality of customer service, recruitment potential, cultural
competence, innovativeness, working atmosphere
• Challenges
– communication, need for greater flexibility, different conceptions of
work, women as supervisors

44. Results - HRM
• HR-strategy
– Diversity typically not stated in HR-strategy
– still considered important for the competitiveness
• Recruitment
– new paths created (diversity promoting organisations)
– selection criteria not touched
• Training & development
– 50 % of the organisations have modified T&D

45. Results - HRM
• Rewarding
– generally untouched
• Performance appraisal
– typically done without any regard for diversity

46. Conclusion
• Challenges: emphasis on communication;
context-related challenges
• HRM changes: it seems that the strategy level
follows the functions; emphasis on
recruitment and T&D

47. • How global HRM is managed nowadays and
contemporary challenges?

48. Background (workf div)
• Workforce in most contexts develops to be
more diverse in several ways – particular
challenges for organisations operating
internationally – need for globally applied
workforce diversity management, also other
motives
• Need to ensure that activities and programs
are efficient and influencing at the meaningful
organisational levels based on right reasons

49. Findings
• Central discourses:
– Mixed blessing (workforce diversity has positive and negative
aspects – we should support it and then again..)
– Sledgehammer to crack a nut (topic not relevant in Finland, why
so much resources for promoting workforce diversity?)
– Free reign in implementation (local adaptation and variation in
implementation hinders the program’s objectives)
– Anticlimax of DM impacts (despite long and resourceful efforts,
only little concrete development seems to be achieved)
– DM tained by HRM brush (HR office working alone has too
weak role to really promote workforce diversity)
• All relevant for the theoretical discussion the paper bases
itself (what, how, why, antecedents and outcomes)

50. Example 1 – Mixed blessing
• Two-folded logic, on the one hand a positive and favourable
phenomenon – because it is socially and ethically required to think
like that?; on the other hand a burden, minority members require
more support and create another challenge for the team members,
still the efficiency is not quaranteed.
• Typically the first aspect was stated strongly and explicitly at the
beginning of the discussion, whereas the second aspect was more
hidden into the text and used e.g. in an implicitly given role that
hints towards challenges, difficulties and only poor ROI in relation
to everyday business.
• It appears that some elements of the global DM program’s desired
cognitive effects have been reached, whereas attitudes and values
still may remain partly unchanged.

51. Example 2 – Free reign in implementation
• Explanatory logic – why the implementation has
not been or will not be successful? Because local
line managers and lower level supervisors adapt
the standardised policy too much – DM standards
are likely to be interpreted in different ways –
causes inconsistency and hinders horisontal
cooperation
• Typically stated in the beginning of ”explanatory
sequence”, accusations were not made openly,
subjects were located in some of the cases in
development requirement descriptions later on,
still only carefully and not explicitly

52. • Organisational standpoints to HRM with mixed
workforce

53. Organizational approaches and their practical
implications
• Organization’s approach realizes in the actions
taken by the individuals sharing the values
and aims of that organization, and possibly in
company statements (implementation?)
• The selected (?) approach can be observed
• Workforce perceives the implications

54. Earlier aspects
• Discriminatory approach
– Certain identity group is openly preferred
– Legislation prevents this (by norming the strategies, policies,
statements and formally the behavior as well) typically nowadays,
cognition-related behaviors of individuals difficult to control
– Paradigm: by favoring openly a certain group
• Equality
– Legislation is followed and no one is favored: same behavior,
treatment
– Formally meets the criteria, but when there is no individual- or group-
based adjustment, org. may eventually lack the potential benefits
– Paradigm: by treating everybody the same

55. Two non-excluding principles
• Organizations have different philosophies to
diversity depending on the goals of the
organization
• Traditionally the division follows the principle
of whether the organization believes that it
will meet its goals by 1) understanding and
valuing the people (Moral case) or 2) seeing
the valuing of people and business goals as
integrated and others supporting (Business
case)

56. Two different traditional alternatives
to approach diversity
• Typically organizations have balanced
between two approaches
• It has been assumed that org. should
distinguish if it approaches the
personnel as thinking and reactive
mass that observes acts of prefers
(Equal opportunities) or if it
approaches the diversity as
manageable issue with strategic
dimension (Diversity management)

57. Do they interact?
Moral case approach → Equal
opportunities
-traditional approach of the
organization
-organizations try to offer equal
opportunities to be promoted and to
feel accepted in the workplace
-Legislation-based changes, only
obligatory changes are done,
no extras
-Paradigm: by offering all the same
possibilities

58. Practical implications
+employee centered HRM
+basically guides organizations towards positive treatment
(?)
+corporate social responsibility included through the
legislation
-organization is not committed to diversity (?)
-power relations inside an organization typically appear as
barriers
-a strategic approach needed (?)

59. 59
Two different alternatives to
approach diversity
Business case approach → Diversity
Management
-business goals are seeked to obtain
through better management of diverse
workforce
-healthy way if diversity management
is done with the respect of workforce
and human resources are not taken as
cold resources
-Paradigm: by integrating business
goals into the utilization of our
workforce

60. Practical implications
+planned change, top-down/down-top
+HRM seen as a central management tool
+external integration
-no structure or culture change (?)
-show-casing (?)
-internal integration in HRM missing (?)
-increases inequality (is it a negative aspect?)
-ethical or EO basis missing

61. New approach: learning diversity
• Tries to combine the benefits of moral and
business case
• Work is adjusted to individuals
• Supports the learning process
– Opens the possibility to circulate knowledge
and experiences that individuals with different
backgrounds have
Paradigm: by learning from differences (and
thus valuing them)

62. Practical implications
+employee centered HRM
+HRM seen as a central management tool
+basically guides organizations towards positive treatment
+corporate social responsibility included through the
legislation
+planned change, top-down/down-top
+external integration
-requires resources
-no guarantee still of the result

63. Emerging approach: capability-
based
• Give individuals possibilities to
develop their talents, skills and
abilities → organization gains more
innovative and motivated resources,
people stay in organization
• Paradigm: by supporting and
promoting our staff’s skills

64. Practical implications
+benefits of the diverse workforce is enabled and seeked
+motivation is supported by offering a change to develop
individual’s skills etc.
-how does it go along with the business goals if individuals’
personal growth is the main principle?
-how do we assure that the invested individuals do stay