Which Scenario Should Be Preferred?

Hello Everyone,

This is my very first post in CiteHR. The question posted here has been buzzing through my head for a long time and I have been asking around in discussions locally, with some of my colleagues and other HR professionals outside my organization. I wanted to expose foreign HR professionals to this question to see any possible variation in response to this issue, thus increasing my own knowledge a bit further on this topic. So any response is welcome. Counter query, critic, positive, negative, any kind of feedback will be helpful. It will be highly appreciated.

Scenario 1

As an HR Manager, consider existing staff to remain in same salary year after year if that staff has no other place to go to or no other option of employment. To make sure of that, you don’t give enough opportunity to the staff to grow and advance in their career through more relevant work exposure or training. This will ensure the staffs’ incapacity to increase his/her skills’ demand in the market and your organization will have a constant, low-cost workforce which is secured from heavy turn-over.

Scenario 2

As an HR Manager, consider existing staff as organization’s most valuable resource based on their experience and expertise in their respective fields. You increase their capability through training and more on the job exposure to new learning so that they can perform better. But you know that this will increase their skills’ demand in the market thus, increasing their options for switching your organization. Therefore, to hold them, you give them competitive wages for which you incur heavy operating cost.

Which scenario would you prefer to apply in your organization and why? Please consider your answers for the following cases:

1. Staff who are at entry level performing regular, clerical, repetitive tasks

2. Staff who are at mid-level who may or may not be supervising some entry level staff and performing tasks more into reporting, analytically thinking and finding scopes for development

3. Staff who are at top level posts supervising a considerable number of workforce in a specific organizational Department or Division, making decisions that impact organizational goals and achievements

Thank you for reading.

Dear friend,

Though it is your very first post in the forum, it is really nice and certainly interesting to read and ponder over.Since you have expressed your openness to the flavour of the response, let me first take the liberty to describe the two scenarios in a comparitive note as Cost-orientation versus People-orientation.Of all the three factors of production viz., Land, Labour and Capital which can also be called as Materials, Men and Money, the most flexible yet the most unpredictable is Labour or Men. That's why the fourth factor viz., Management or Method emerges out as a natural corollary, if I were correct.In any organization, whether business or otherwise, management is a very important function only whose effectiveness can bring forth the harmony of the other three to achieve the organizational goals in the long run. Land and capital are effectively utilized because they are exhaustible whereas labour or people are to be "managed" because they are inexhustible in the sense that they are susceptible to motivation.With this back-drop let me answer your questions:

(1) Staffing is essentially a function dependent upon the job or work requirements. A work or a task or a specific function is divided into convenient parts and the fulfilment of the individual parts in the pre-determined sequential order brings out the work or task or function to accomlishment.It is like a concerted action of the army in a battlefield. Every one i.e the non-combatant personnel, combat soldiers, Second-Lieutenant and the Commander- is equally important.But all can not be elevated as commander other than the second lieutenant.Therefore, the services of others should be recognized in some other ways.To me, it appears that motivation to people engaged in basic but stagnant jobs should be in periodical monetary hikes.

(2) I think middle-level managers or middle-level management stand phased out now a days. Any way, like you said still some people are required in the middle in matters of communication in both ways, upward and downward, for giving a correct appraisal of the goings-on. Certainly they need career development commensurate with their personality development.

(3) I need not dwell much on this category of people. They are like advertisements --- advertisement pays for itself. If you fail to motivate them and keep in good humour, your competitors know well what to do. How ever one should remember that nobody is indispensable in the long run. Therefore, an effective succession plan should be in place.

Dear Mr. Umakanthan,
My sincere apologies if I couldn't address you properly in the beginning of this reply regarding spelling and choosing parts of your name. I just wanted to sincerely and very wholeheartedly Thank you for your kind response. Your words are absolutely in line and very realistically cited. I have gained mush insight about the subject matter and also found new areas to think about.
Thank you very much. Hope to discuss more about HR related topics in future.
- Khaled S. Nawaz