Benefits of Studying Human Resource Management

Why MBA in Human Resource Management - Benefits and Scope

Are you aware that, as per a recent corporate recruiters' survey, 18% of companies plan to hire recent MBA graduates in HR?

No? Then did you know that according to a report by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) approximately 23% of the graduating students in 2018 wanted to pursue higher studies in the genre of human resource management? The ecosphere of human is evolving and hence the banking sector is full of endless opportunities, especially for those who have an MBA degree.

Post-graduation degree in Human Resource Management develops in its pursuers exceptional communication, data analysis, time management, teamwork, critical thinking skills along with employee engagement, retention and hiring skills. The above-mentioned skills are highly required in the banking sector and hence MBA degree holders have promising career prospects in banking.

With the advancement of the finance world field and its related technologies more trained professionals in the field of banking, technologies are required to keep the business process running securely. So if you have an interest in employee engagement, retention and talent hunting then pursuing an MBA or PGDM in human resource management will be a great career move.
However, you must also be curious about the career scopes MBA provides you elaborately.

Following are some of the prominent career advantages that an MBA can offer you:
Ample job opportunities – Human resource management is an indispensable part of any organization, so there will always be a requirement for HR professionals. Upon completion of this postgraduate degree, you will be able to enjoy a fast track career, you can grab lucrative job offers like:

• Compensation Manger
• Manager of Employee Relations
• HR Generalist
• Technical Recruiter
• Director of Staff
• Placement Manager
• Training and Relations Manager
• Organizational Consultant

Accesses a dynamic Industry – HR functions will always be in business; it is dynamic too but it will never be out of business. Even if there is a recession or in times of ups and downs in an organization, there will always be a need for HR professionals. Furthermore, HR jobs profiles are well moderated which makes them a safe career choice.

Numerous job opportunities and Scope of further education - Human resource management provide you ample job opportunities some of which we have mentioned above, however, while completing the course you can explore your fields of interest and make a career in the respective field. This course additionally provides you a scope of further education or professional education if you are willing.

Lucrative Salaries - Completing this professional degree course makes you capable of earning jobs with lucrative salaries and excellent benefits. However, a lot will depend on the organization you choose to work with but be assured that you are already holding a poised position. In case you have prior experience, accomplishing this course will open to you more career-enhancing opportunities.

Performance Management

Performance management is a process that allows managers to monitor and evaluate the performance of their employees. The main aim of performance management is to provide a desirable work environment where all the employees can perform at their best and produce results that are a reflection of the highest-quality work. This style of corporate environment helps managers and their juniors have clear-cut clarity about their deliverables, expectations, goals, and career objectives, as well as how an employee’s job role should be in accordance with the company's overall vision.

There are five stages of performance management:

• Planning is the process of setting the expectations and goals of the employees in accordance with the organisation’s end objectives. In this stage, we understand what an employee wants, how that can be aligned with the organisation’s goals, what needs to be done to achieve those goals, etc.
• Monitoring: This is the stage where the managers constantly evaluate the performance of their team members and give them feedback to improve and rectify their shortfalls. This can be done through huddle meetings, periodic review sessions, etc.
• Developing: Consistent monitoring of the employees allows the management to understand what the employees’ deficiencies are and whether they can be corrected by empowering them with external support. Developing methods to improve the quality and capacity of the employees through training sessions, different assignments, and putting them in new groups for better co-ed learning
• Rating: Reviewing may not be enough; it is important to quantify the performance of the employees based on their performance. This can be in the form of a score or a grade that will help determine the performance outcome of the employees.
• Rewarding: Rewarding implies appreciating and acknowledging an individual's or a team’s contribution to the organisation’s objectives. Based on the performance delivered by the employees, the organisation can reward them for their hard work and commitment in the form of a promotion, hike, bonus, sponsored vacations, etc. This will motivate the employees and allow them to work even harder in the next financial quarter or year.

Diversity and Inclusion Management

As a recruiter or HR manager, it is very difficult to maintain diversity and inclusion among employees in multinational companies. Although small organisations are no different, it is comparatively easier to maintain the diverse range of employees working there. In big corporations, this has become an increasing challenge over the past few years, especially after the pandemic hit the world.

According to a leading hiring website, diversity and inclusion management can bring a lot of advantages to the organisation, such as better employee retention, greater returns to shareholders, and more revenue to the company.

What are the top challenges of diversity in the workplace?

• Language barriers: When you have people working from different parts of the country or world, you are bound to stumble across people from different linguistic backgrounds. It can often create a communication gap and lead to differences and misunderstandings.
• Misconceptions: Cultural and racial differences often lead to misconceptions or notions about each other’s beliefs and faiths. A type of ritual that is followed by one community may be a cultural shock to someone else. This can lead to many misunderstandings between colleagues and employees.
• Lack of trust: Trust is the basis of every relationship. Without proper management and education, a lack of trust stemming from diversity can result in disparity between local employees and immigrant employees, causing people to feel "less competent" or "left out."

How can you ensure diversity and inclusion among employees?

• Build trust and communicate with your employees so that you can make everyone feel comfortable and increase their productivity.
• Invest in language training so that you can eliminate the linguistic barriers.
• Educate your workforce and yourself about the cultural and racial differences so that feelings of inclusiveness can be implanted across the organisation.
• Extend resources and support to your employees so that the less privileged ones can perform on par with other employees of the organisation.
• Have team bonding meetings, as it will help you understand each other and build meaningful relationships.
• Review your organisation’s corporate communication process to eliminate bias and prejudice.
• Enable all of your employees to be active participants in all your conversations.

Strategic HR Planning

To manage anything requires strategic planning and the allocation of resources. This will help avert the adversities and enable you to propel further. Strategic HR planning is an important process of human resources management that helps identify current and future human resources to accomplish the end objectives of an organisation. This type of HR planning is a liaison between human resource management and the overall strategic plan of an organisation.

Stages of Strategic HR Planning:

• Assessing the current HR capacity: This allows you to assess the current skill and knowledge level of your employees and allocate responsibilities as deemed fit.
• Forecasting HR Requirements: This will help to predict the current and future requirements of the organisation so that you can assign the project responsibilities adequately amongst the employees based on their skills and domain knowledge.
• Gap Analysis: This is a crucial step that helps identify the gaps and differences so that the organisation can prepare itself to combat the shortcomings by recruiting or delegating the tasks accordingly.
• Developing HR Strategies: There could be several HR strategies to upscale the manpower requirements and skill levels in the organisations, such as,
• Recruitment Strategies
• Training and Development Strategies
• Outsourcing Strategies

The significance of strategic HR planning

It helps to realise the current condition of the organisation and identify the prevalent loopholes. It can help you answer burning questions such as ‘what are the budgetary constraints? ‘how can one overcome the stress of deadlines? Strategic HR planning also allows for the prediction of future requirements and prepares you to combat what comes next. Proper planning also equips you with adequate knowledge to understand market trends and other external factors that can impact the accomplishment of the organisation’s goals and objectives. Lastly, strategic HR planning helps you introduce new technology to automate the existing workflows of the HR processes for efficient and smoother functioning.

Employee benefits and Perks

Almost all top organisations will agree that employees are the real assets of the company. It is very easy to get equipment or technology of the highest quality because it is standardised. However, we cannot say the same for employees, as they will differ in skill, knowledge, and behavioural levels.

Employees who perform well should be appreciated enough for their expertise and what they bring to the table. In this aspect, salaries are not enough; what they need are rewards in the form of monetary benefits or any perks that will motivate them to push harder and give their 100%. These are known as employee benefits, and they can be either in cash or in kind. They are given along with their salaries or wages and are often referred to as ‘fringe benefits'. This leads to job satisfaction, higher employee retention, and more productivity at the workplace.

These are some of the most sought-after employee benefits and perks that every corporate employee looks for in a company:

• Health Insurance: As the cost of private healthcare and the frequency of getting every alternate lifestyle disease are increasing every day, many of us seek insurance to reimburse for all the healthcare expenses incurred.
• Paid Leaves/Vacation: Who doesn’t like some time off to chill with themselves, family, or friends? A study claims that many employees tend to go for companies that provide paid leaves or sponsored vacations. This rejuvenates the individuals and also increases their productivity by twofold. This can also include paid leaves taken when someone is not well, commonly known as ‘sick leaves.’
• Bonus: Everyone likes to be compensated monetarily, which is why performance bonuses work wonders to motivate high-performing employees who are responsible for increasing the revenue of the organisation.
• Retirement Plan/Pension: For corporate employees, financial security after retirement is a big deal. Employers can implement innovative financial plans by allocating a specific amount of their employees’ salaries as a pension once they retire.
• Flexible Working Pattern: After the pandemic, a lot of people are opting for a remote or hybrid working model as it saves a lot of time during travel, money spent on transportation, and most importantly, a lot of energy. Organisations that are willing to provide such flexible working patterns tend to retain their existing employees and also attract skilled professionals.
• Office Perks: Nowadays, we see a lot of multinationals or corporate institutions providing free meals or cab service for their employees. These kinds of office perks improve the quality of the working environment and lead to increased hiring and less attrition in the company.

Labor Laws and Regulations

The Central government of India has passed new laws on labour w.e.f. July 1st 2022. These new regulations will impose immense transformations in all the industries and sectors and will affect our way of working. These include changes in the rules governing working hours, pension, provident fund, gratuity, pay-out, etc. According to a report, 23 states, including Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur, Bihar, and UT of Jammu and Kashmir, have framed regulations under the new labour laws.
Labour laws govern not only the working conditions of industrial establishments but also industrial relations, wage payment, trade union registration, certification of standing orders, and so on. They also provide social security measures for workers. In India, there are four principles of labour law, as stated below:

• Principle of social justice
• Principle of social equity
• Principle of social security
• Principle of the national economy

So, what are the different components of labour laws in India? Let’s explore.

Talent Acquisition and Retention

For many people, the words ‘talent acquisition’ and talent retention’ may sound synonymous, but there is a huge difference between them. While recruitment is about hiring the right candidates, talent acquisition is a holistic process that encompasses identifying, attracting, hiring, and retaining top talents in the organisation.
With the world moving at a fast pace, it has become increasingly difficult to identify, hire, and retain the best talents for a particular industry. There is a shortage of skilled individuals, and therefore, talent acquisition plays a vital role in ensuring that an organisation is equipped with not just the right talent but the best talent needed for the role.

Here are some of the most implemented talent acquisition and retention strategies used worldwide:

• Focus on employer branding: Candidates are attracted by the brand value of an organization. Not just that, they apply for a new role or stay back when they can relate to the organisation’s values and mission. Therefore, one must upscale their marketing activities directed towards employer branding.
• Provide ‘never-experienced-before’ job experiences: Employees are retained when they feel that their existing working environment is something they can’t find somewhere else. This doesn’t mean just the monetary benefits alone, but everything associated with them that create a sense of belonging in the organisation.
• Create an employee referral bank: The best talents in the company can help refer their friends who may be equivalent to them in their skill set or knowledge. Referrals can work wonders, as these candidates are through your existing employees, so you can trust them and be assured of the quality they bring with them.
• Invest in learning and development initiatives: Employees can always be up-scaled and made the right fit over a period of time. Providing equal opportunities to learn and grow is one of the most effective ways to create a diverse pool of talent.

Employee Engagement Programs

Engaged employees tend to be more productive at their workplace. They feel motivated and can deliver top performances in their respective areas of expertise. That is why a lot of companies are focusing on employee engagement programmes to retain and motivate their top talent.

Here are some innovative employee engagement programmes that are famous across the world:

• Initiate and organise a smooth on-boarding process: A lot of employees are immediately attracted to an organisation when they witness a smooth, hassle-free on-boarding process that clarifies their doubts and gives them an understanding of the organisation and its policies in detail. You can make it innovative by sharing some employee-care packages that can contain some company merchandise or goodies like water bottles, tiffin carriers, diaries, assorted dry fruits, etc. as a warm welcome to the organisation.
• Offer mentorship training programmes: You can identify the top-performing employees or the individuals who hold great potential if given a chance to show their skills and talent. After you have identified this group of people, you can organise mentorship programmes to help them upscale and polish their expertise.
• Build Employee Resource Groups (ERGs): ERGs can be useful to bond the employees and provide them with the necessary tools to perform better in a conducive environment. These ERGs are formed based on characteristics like employee demographics (e.g., race, ability, sexual orientation, gender) or their job roles (e.g., sales representatives, business analysts).
• Organise fun games and challenges: You can hold some weekend quizzes, games, tournaments, or events that are fun to do and help engage people. These team-building activities can also encourage team spirit and improve communication among the employees.

Succession Planning

Succession planning is a critical strategy in human resource management that focuses on identifying the future leaders of the organisation. It is a comprehensive process of identifying the key stakeholders and developing action plans to delegate certain positions to them when the time comes.

Succession planning is an important step that every organisation, regardless of its size, should take today. This is because it identifies the key talents today who will take the business to the next level in the coming years with their competency, skill, talent, and loyalty towards the organisation. A succession plan identifies future staffing needs and the potential employees who will undertake crucial roles in the future. Let’s discuss the three phases of succession planning:

Conflict Resolution

Having conflicts in any workplace is very natural, and every organisation has to go through it, regardless of how big or small it is. However, rather than thinking negatively about it, it is important to handle and solve the conflicts rationally so that the working environment stays healthy and productive. Here are some curated conflict resolution strategies that every human resource professional must implement today!

• Accept that there is a conflict of opinions because the more you avoid it, the further it will expand like a rubber band. You cannot solve a conflict unless you face it, so be confident and get over it. This will clear up the misunderstandings on the spot and will not carry forward any negative impressions or thoughts in the future.
• Try to clarify your point of view because unless you speak up, the other person will not understand you. Having conflicting views and opinions is common in any organisation or team, for that matter, but it is equally important to address these conflicts and ensure that the people's sentiments are not hurt.
• If you are not a part of the conflict but witness one happening right under your nose, you can do your bit to resolve it. A lot of us shrug and move on in such situations, but little do we understand that we are all part of the same organisation. So, if you get a chance, try to bring the involved parties together and let them have a natural heart-to-heart discussion.
• Focus on finding a solution, because that is what matters in the end. Conflicts can be never-ending when each party has a lot to complain or express. What is important, however, is to find a mutual solution that benefits both parties as well as the organisation.
• Monitor, review, and retrospect the kinds of conflicts that have happened in the past so that you can ensure that they are not repeated again in the future or dealt with appropriately. Just because a solution has been identified and addressed doesn't mean it will just go away. As a manager, it's your responsibility to check in with both parties to ensure that the conflict has truly been dealt with and that the steps identified to reach a solution are being followed.

HR Analytics and Metrics

HR metrics are measurements that are used to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of HR policies. For example, if the number of employees who left last year was 5% and is now 7.5%, it means that employee attrition has increased by 50%. The former is the basic data, whereas the latter is the metrics.

Everything that we do in HR is to align the employees’ productivity and well-being with the organization's objectives. So where does analytics fit in? HR Analytics tracks the usefulness of the HR metrics for HR and the business as a whole. Let us understand how.

• How do continuous learning and development programmes help increase the productivity of the workforce?
• How have employee engagement programmes contributed to better employee retention?
• Has the use of promotions helped reduce employee attrition? And so on.

Therefore, while metrics measure the difference between two data figures, analytics is the quantification of these numbers and their impact on the organisation. To put it into simple words, analytics explain why something is happening and what its impact will be.

Conclusion

So, as you see there is a lot to learn and gain if you opt for MBA in Human resource management. This four-semester program will prepare you for a managerial and advisory position in business and organizations. This course aims to convert students to skillful HR professionals who can provide innovative employee engagement and talent management solutions by understanding the modernization needs and the evolving business and market needs. Human resource management pass-outs are trained to build talented resource pool through Recruitment and Selection, look after Labor Welfare and payment process of employee, implementing Training and Development and introduce labor legislation laws to create a positive workplace. A management degree is hence a good choice if you are looking for a professionally successful career.