Common Problems Faced By Organizations

Discuss about the Common Problems Faced by Organizations.
 
 
Annswer:

Introduction
Globalization has resulted in accumulating pool of candidates from different background and diversified culture to work under the same umbrella. Talent management and employee retention has become the greatest challenges in this competitive environment as according to Festing and Schafer (2014), expectation of associates is not limited to fringe benefits. However, there has been some common problems such as managing current assets, poor operational cash flow and poor debt management due to which organizations are not able to invest more on human resource development.
This essay will primarily focus on the common current problems that organization is facing, which impacts on its performance and profitability. Later, strategic roles that the HR can play in developing human resource base will be discussed. This will comprise of recruitment and selection complexities, employee training and development, performance management system and succession planning.
Common Problems faced by Organizations, their impacts and possible recommendations
According to Collings (2014), recruitment and selection is considered as one of the toughest challenges faced by the organizations as finding candidates who are having the right blend of personality, attitude, attire, behavior and talent are quite hard to filter. It has been found that getting candidates of right qualification is not an issue at present, however diffusion of correct personality traits that would be suitable for organizational culture is extremely hard. Moreover, Cappelli and Keller (2014) pointed out that market competition has been the major cause of selecting the most suitable candidates as their expectation is beyond salary and monetary benefits, which organizations might not be able to bear.
While considering the viewpoint of Stone and Deadrick (2015), it can be said that training and development is required in continuous basis for employees when working in this competitive environment. Due to the change in operational procedure to meet customer demand, organizations change their service delivery pattern but for that adequate training is often not provided to associates. The common reasons for the organization are lack of adequate fund and capital for continuous training and development and unavailability of required number of trainers. Such reasons are the common cause for poor performance and profitability of organizations.
 
Aruna and Anitha (2015) pointed out that employee retention is the toughest challenge for businesses in the 21st Century as HR needs to create the right balance between remuneration, incentives and company culture. Remuneration fulfils the basic requirement of employees, whereas incentives create a sense of motivation due to lucrative additional benefits that they might get while outperforming. However, Nolan and Garavan (2016) highlighted that companies fail to create the right balance between remuneration and incentives as compared to their competitors. Eventually, employees of the organization who are getting better remuneration and other fringe benefits are switching their existing employer. This has resulted in poor talent management as employers of the organization are failing to retain experienced candidates.
The above-mentioned reasons are the most common challenges faced by the organization, however some other problems are managing workplace diversity, lack of performance management system and proper career planning. O’Reilly et al. (2014) pointed out organization culture creates the comfortable place for employees to perform with satisfaction and mutual cooperation. However, often the employers are found to disrespect common objectives and organizational values, due to which prevailing culture gets affected. Donnelly (2015) argued that managing workforce diversity is the most impactful challenge as associates with different behavior, attitude, class and background can never be expected to be driven towards common organizational objectives. Moreover, Men (2014) opined that lack of satisfaction among employees due to poor incentives, bonus and allowances is one of the main reasons for poor productivity. Finally, Spurk et al. (2015) argued that organizations fail to develop career planning for employees, which would otherwise help in long-term employee retention. Furthermore, poor succession planning is the challenge as newly recruited employees from different background find it hard to accustom with organization culture.
Strategic roles that HR needs to play must start right from the starting of employee recruitment. Considering the common challenges that are discussed earlier, it has been evident that HR needs to focus on strategic role right from the time of recruitment and selection. In order to reduce the complexities considering workforce diversity at the time of recruitment and selection, Burt (2015) pointed out that HR considers talent to be the prime theme for selection. This is because for selecting diversified workforce behavioral and psychological parameters will be variable from candidate to candidate, whereas qualification and talent will be constant. On the other hand, Nabi et al. (2015) brought forward different recruitment process such as ways through which biasness can be reduced irrespective of various diversity. In such process, HR asks for past achievements and experiences, which helps in creating idea of the candidates’ skills. Moreover, HR focus on the specific credential such as degree, diploma or degree. Finally, through the type of discussion with candidates the HR is able to get idea of communication skill, decision making ability and confidence among candidates through which selection process is followed. Therefore, it can be said that in order to reduce the recruitment challenges HR try to focus on talent and skill among candidates specifically and candidate background is given the least concern.
 
Strategic importance of careful selection indicates right talent management and long-term retention. Collings (2014) pointed that 51.22% of newly recruited employees are found to resign within first 3 months of employment. Therefore, great amount of capital is wasted for both hiring process and training and development course. Therefore, careful selection is extremely important for employee retention. With the series of selection screening process, the best suitable candidates are recruited, for which considerable amount of capital is consumed. Strategic importance is to recruit the best suitable candidate who does match with organizational culture and required talent for business sustainability.
Stone and Deadrick (2015) opined that organizational workforce is the primary key for delivering products and services and getting the optimum productivity depends on how well the employees perform. Therefore, careful selection indicates recruiting such employees who are well experienced and have the urge to deliver according to target. Moreover, Burt (2015) pointed out that candidates must be recruited on the basis of psychological and behavioral attributes that guide him towards positive productivity. Careful selection ensures selecting candidates through psychological tests, aptitude tests and emotional tests, which help in getting ideas of decision making ability, working under stress and judgements of candidates.
Importance of Training and Development indicates employee growth and progress with course of time. While considering the viewpoint of Sung and Choi (2014), it can be said that training and development is one of the most effective ways through which employees can be retained for longer period because they are able to gather knowledge and skills as per organizational procedures, which eventually helps them perform better. Ultimately, employees become satisfied and gain confidence to outperform in future. On the other hand, Dhar (2015) highlighted that through training sessions employees are groomed for career planning, which makes them understand the importance and significance for serving longer term.
According to Barker, Lencucha and Anderson (2016), considering Kolb’s learning cycle, a learner can get the best knowledge of either a new situation or an existing experience through the four stages, which are concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. The need for such learning cycle is that the learner is given knowledge of how to handle a situation prior to which he had negligible idea (refer to appendix 1). After that the learner is given time to self-access whether there has been any gap between new experience and understanding. Finally, the learner is able to reduce the gap through training process and apply new experience in job role.
 
On the other hand, Rumson (2017) argued that Honey and Mumford Learning Styles determined some specific categories of learners over Kolb’s learning cycle, which are Activist, Pragmatist, Reflector and Theorist (refer to appendix 1). Based on the type of specific learner category the employees are given learning sessions. This helps in developing the individual learner in more directive and actualized manner. Therefore, it can be said that through the learning theories a trainee is able to gather concrete knowledge and experience in stepwise manner that helps in better execution of performance.
One of the best approaches for training and development is coaching as Huang and Hsieh (2015) pointed out that the assigned supervisor directly communicates with the trainees through which instructions, knowledge and skills are spontaneously shared. On the other hand, Barrett et al. (2015) pointed out that providing lectures and tutorials help in training group of candidates within short time and in less budget. Furthermore, Dhar (2015) highlighted that practical based training approaches such as role plaining and management games create enthusiasm among candidates through which they learn faster. Therefore, the different approaches to training and development can be listed as coaching, tutorials, on-job-training, role playing, technology-based training and group discussion.
Effective Performance Management System ensures both employee satisfaction and retention. After analyzing the issues and strategic roles that HR plays in common, it required to understand and recommend the requirement of effective performance management system. Even though HR tries to filter the best talent for a business, however managing diversity, reducing attrition and employee motivation are the three biggest challenges that they are facing (Tatoglu, Glaister and Demirbag 2016). For making the performance management system to be effective, Buckingham and Goodall (2015) pointed out that the process must be made systematic, which will comprise of planning work and setting expectations among employees and continuously monitor associates’ performance so that the best can be recognized. Such strategies will be helpful because employees will feel that managers respect their decision and make them as the part of decision making. On the other hand, by recognizing the best performer, it will create a sense of competition driven by motivation among employees. On the other hand, Ishizaka and Pereira (2016) pointed out that developing performance-oriented capacity, periodical performance rating and reward and recognition and the best ways that strategically establish effective performance system. 
 
Considering the viewpoints of authors, it can be said that an organization need to assign roles to the authorities who directly supervise the employees or workers. The team leader can create a performance report where the customer satisfaction percentage, review ratings and direct appreciations from different internal levels are recorded. It will be the best if an organization has a dedicated operational portal that will record each employee performance, productivity, rating, customer satisfaction (CSAT), appreciation and feedback. In this way, the management will be able to record individual employees’ historical performance and award the best associate. Moreover, since such dedicated portal will be completely based on real-time data feed directly from clients or from top level managers, hence the possibility of biasness from management side can also be reduced. In this way employees can be recognized and the top performer can be awarded.
Career Planning and Succession Planning are the two ways through which employees can be valued for long term. While considering the viewpoint of Hall-Ellis (2015), it can be said that internal recruitment is one such procedure that not only creates motivation among employees in terms of promotion but also reduces the cost of recruitment and selection. On the other hand, Ok and Vandenberghe (2016) pointed out that internal recruitment creates a sense of biasness among potential candidates as not all get the opportunity to be promoted. However, whatever may be the process of promotion, career planning of an individual helps oneself to gather more potential for different roles and responsibilities. Through career planning programs, an employee understands the scope of exposure that he might be getting in future. An employee is groomed to perform in different roles, which makes him fit for getting assigned in higher designation within the organization. Therefore, at the time of internal job posting, the most suitable employees are given the opportunity to get succeeded in higher level. HR needs to assign career planning programs for suitable candidates based on their performance and potentiality. Considering succession planning, HR needs to assign short-term periodic responsibilities to existing tenured employees through which they can be justified for higher job roles. All such activities will help an organization to reduce attrition and create motivation among employees.
Conclusion
The critical discussion gave various views from different scholars. It has been identified that at present the HR faces issues related to right employee recruitment, talent management due to poor training and development, managing workforce diversity and poor performance management system. Since there is lack of talent management, the overall productivity is found to have a huge gap from its optimum output. On the other hand, since training and development activities are not adequate, hence retaining newly recruited employees has become quite challenging. Finally, due to lack of strategy for career planning, experienced employees are trying to switch their existing employer. It has been recommended that the strategic role of HR must be improvised so that the performance management system becomes more effective. HR needs to observe, identify and recognize potentiality among best candidates through dedicated portal where individual employee performance-oriented parameters will be highlighted. Based on performance reward and recognition will be processed. On the other hand, by following the learning theories, training and development activities can be strengthened so that not only succession planning is ensured but also employees can be retained for longer period. Finally, it can be said that with the help of technology-based learning talent management can be made more effective in future. 
 
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