Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management

Human resource department is one of the most important departments of all. This is for a very simple but a core reason that is, the human resource or the labor force a company has is its most important asset of all. Without labor, the company would not be able to do what it does (Mercer, 2005).

For example, a sole proprietor may first start as a single person running the whole business, for instance running a small retail shop or a general store, but as the size of the business grows, he may find a need to hire more people to attend to an increasing number of customer, to deal with the suppliers, to take the counter when the owner is away, to maintain the shop and for other, even menial jobs. For big companies where real skills are being applied, the Human Resource manager is perhaps the most highly invested department because companies wants to retain their excellent workers and probably attract new one that can enhance their business manifolds (Robbins & Judge, 2007).

Nationwide Insurance

The Human Resource department at the Nationwide Insurance Company is just almost the same where they strive to give their employees the best. They believe in giving a helping hand to the employees in their growth and development of their skills, personalities and their talents and also to oversee what they are best in doing and help them do that even better. When they select their employees there are various criteria that managers consider and in general one of it is the match between the skill and job. Anything in excess will malfunction. For example, if a Nationwide Insurance hires someone with lesser skills than is required by the job, the company will see very low productivity and at many places failure to even complete the job; thus no effectiveness and no efficiency (Grossman & Parkinson, 2001).

On the other hand, if the Nationwide Insurance hired someone with too many sills than is required by the job, then they maybe able to see effectiveness but the efficiency will degrade with time due to lack of skill used, monotony and thus lost motivation.

Nationwide Insurance promises its employees a safe haven where they can work, enjoy and utilize their abilities. According to the website that they have, www.natiowide.com, they keep the best people with them, they help people to develop their own ideas to help the company secure a better position in the market, help people to interact with the higher authority or with regulators, provide a proper training (as is discussed later), help people to plan out their own payment and compensation plan and bonuses and most importantly help keeping people at bay when in dispute.

It is important to consider the various types of management structure present in the organization. Nationwide Insurance has a less rigid structure of management. However a proper communication channel (vertically upwards) is developed for upper managers to talk to the lower manager and for lower workers to talk to their heads and administration (Grossman & Parkinson, 2001).

Thus in such a case, people like the internal relationship managers (not usually used for dealing with the customers), the Human resource department and other specialists help pave the way for communication. Even in many of the other insurance companies, that operate more like a bank (in their managerial structures) are likely to follow a mix structure that has most of the element of what we were discussing here.

Human Resource department had ceased to being just a back-the-stage entity. Now it is one of the important cogs of a machine. Nationwide Insurance has realized their importance and has taken into consideration, their point of views, their ideas and probably also take their suggestions for many of the strategic planning (Dessler, 2007). It has been realized that whatever decision the company makes, it will in return affect itself, meaning effect the employees.

They will in turn give something to the company as a return. So for the Nationwide Insurance Company itself to benefit, it is important that the employees are also involved in the decision making process.

Therefore it takes special measure to improve their motivation, morality and thus the output, productivity, organization citizenship behavior and job satisfaction and reduce absenteeism, turnover and deviant workplace behavior,  of the employees in every way possible (Robbins & Judge, 2007).

The basic responsibilities

The basic and the most fundamental responsibility of the Human Resource (HR) department of Nationwide Insurance is to hire people. This may come under the employment and the placement section within the department. After employment, the employees are assigned a particular department (for example sales, customer relationship, help desk, credit, marketing, in the company). Many of the Nationwide Insurance Company’s HR managers travel around the metropolitan city, universities and many exhibitions collecting filled forms of potential and interested people who would like to join the company (Mercer, 2005).

Many of them go around actually offering jobs and conducting on-the-spot interviews with candidates who are interested. Many of the freshmen are seen filling up forms and appearing for entrance tests conducted at their own campuses and applying for jobs and internships. Nationwide Insurance is open to internships since they want more skilled people to join them (Grossman & Parkinson, 2001).

Compensation and other benefits

            The other important function that Nationwide Insurance’s HR performs is to see how much and at how many intervals should employee receive benefits which may include compensations, perks, pensions or even promotions. This job analysis is very important on the part of the HR department and is necessary to uphold the motivation level of the employees, where they would feel that their organization cares for them. Some of the people within the HR department known as the occupational analysts usually are concerned about the changes (predominately pertaining to the HR) taking place in the industry and what are the cause and effect of such a change within and outside their respective companies (Robbins & Judge, 2007).

In insurance industry, many employees are attracted away from your company due to many reasons for example your compensation levels are lower than what is being provided in the industry. They usually are a source of information from the governments the unions within the Nationwide Insurance Company (DiLorenzo & London, 2006).

The other department may be specializing in providing the perks and benefits to the employees (Swart, Mann, Brown, & Price, 2005). They first of all ensure that the employees receive their dues and most importantly they ensure that they receive equitable shares according to the set laws of the country (and industry) according to the industry averages and according to their job levels. Some of the benefits that are often provided in Nationwide insurance maybe giving employees the different types of insurances and plans for their future, and also for their retirements, which may include health and pension insurances.

Pay rates that benefit employees

Nationwide Insurance may find it useful to have different types of payment programs for their benefits and according to what the managers deem feasible. This may include some variable pay programs which may vary according to per piece sale (that is selling as many insurance policies as possible) (Dessler, 2007).

Senior people higher in merit maybe considered for higher payment because they are more experienced and can be helpful in training the juniors. Then the managers could think of different types of bonuses, like paying extra for different events (like on Christmas or Thanksgiving holidays) or for selling over the mark, e.g. selling more than anyone else in the company (DiLorenzo & London, 2006).

There could also be a plan to share the over all success of the Nationwide Insurance Company and the best way to do that is by sharing the gains and profits (Grossman & Parkinson, 2001). It is very important that the team effort of all the employees should be acknowledged and sharing the monetary benefit is the least a Human Resource Department can do for the employees. Then they can offer their employees the share to their companies allowing them to have an opportunity to take a step forward to make decision in the best interest of the company (Mercer, 2005).

Rules and Regulations

Besides the motivational task and other tasks that they are involved in, it is also very important that the HR at the Nationwide Insurance develops some rules and regulations concerning the employees. It is also the responsibility of the same to look after that these rules are being followed, without exceptions, regardless of the seniority or for any other excuse (DiLorenzo & London, 2006). Many of the rules and regulations within the Nationwide Insurance Company are made with practice or what has been the norm for quite some time. Many times the labor issues that usually arise due to any reason within the Nationwide Insurance Company can be sort out using these rules and regulations.

Through rules and regulations managers are able to deal with people on equality and fair basis and even employees realize where they stand correct and where they are wrong and worth a punishment (Grossman & Parkinson, 2001). The HR department distributes the rules and regulation sheets to everyone, place it on their desk or on the bulletin board so that they are all reminded of the rules. It is worth noticing that rules about normal ethics and conduct of behavior is mandatory but Nationwide insurance allows their employees to practice their own ways in dealing with the customer. By this it is noted that there are more innovative ideas to attract more customers and to deal with them in a much open, candid and a fun way, so that even the customer feel secure.

Training and Development

Businesses have seen that training and development is one of the most important parts of the HR department responsibilities to ensure that employees have a chance to develop their skills and polish up their talents.

It has been seen that for insurance companies, like Nationwide Insurance and banks, if employees find their jobs too monotonous without job rotation, skill variety, job enrichment or enlargement, they are likely to leave their job and join a new one where there are more learning and growth opportunities (Swart, Mann, Brown, & Price, 2005).

Development in the carrier at the Nationwide Insurance is now considered a part of every employee where they are allowed to help their co employees in every way possible. Nationwide Insurance’s HR department’s career development section ensures that they provide all the necessary materials for it. This may just not include helping people with their everyday operations, but to enhance their working capacities with networking, increase in the social circle, searching for better ways to develop a solution to the problems and also perhaps developing attractive CVs and resumes (Mercer, 2005).

The orientation section of the HR department is responsible to give a proper introduction to the employees about their new environments or act as help desk to answer employee’s queries. Developing the leadership qualities in people is also very important. It is important to identify the born leaders and those who have a desire to excel in their respective fields (Dessler, 2007). But some people like to jump on the bandwagon and follow only what they are asked to do. The various Leadership training and development program at Nationwide Insurance enables people to be expressive. Hence, people are involved in many of the decision making processes where during their practice sessions they are presented with a real problem at hand and asked to brainstorm over it.

This allows people to be candid, more open and innovative in their ideas and the managers maybe amazed with the variety and dynamism of the ideas being presented. Any of the ideas can be selected as the best alternative and designed for real implementation.

Conducting basic surveys

The HR department at Nationwide is also involved in conducting some of the basic surveys of the employees that help the former to analyze how much are workers really satisfied with everything relating to the company and may also take suggestion of how to improve them. Some of the surveys that are taken from the employees could be attitude surveys, job satisfaction surveys, motivation potential surveys, emotional intelligence surveys, IQ surveys and other sorts of feedback (Swart, Mann, Brown, & Price, 2005).

Each of these help the managers identify where the main problem lies. They might be able to understand if certain working conditions for example darkness in the room, lack of proper air conditioning and ventilation thus causing suffocation, lack of computers may be the reason for high absenteeism or simply low productivity. Since nowadays with the advent of the new generation (Generation Y)  employees may like flexible working hours in their jobs or as to extend the client base of the Nationwide Insurance Company, they might like to have telecommuting and advanced technologies within their reach (provided by the Nationwide Insurance Company).

The changing behavior of the employees can also be analyzed, since anyone having difficulty in balancing their work and family life might need a vacation. People may also give their inputs about a job description, what is lacking and what is just beyond the scope (Swart, Mann, Brown, & Price, 2005). The ability of the person concerned with the job (as also has been described above as the skill-job fit) can also be noticed.

Thus there are a broad range of responsibilities that the Human Resource department in Natinwide Insurance company has to perform and some of the important ones may include hiring through a screening process, conducting surveys and devising different ways to keep the employees motivated (Dessler, 2007). Without a high level of motivation the employees loose interest and thus would not be able to perform their duties. In Natiowide Insurance, employees are not only selling insurance policies to customer but there are people in other departments (e.g. IT, accounts and finance, HR etc.) in the company which the HR department has to cater to.

References

Dessler, G. (2007). Human Resource Management . Prentice Hall.
DiLorenzo, L.P., & London, S.I. (2006). Federal Labor and Employment Laws.WME Books.
Grossman, J.H., & Parkinson, J.R. (2001). Becoming a Successful Manager : How to Make a Smooth Transition from Managing Yourself to Managing Others. McGraw-Hill.
Mercer, M. (2005). Turning Your Human Resources Department Into A Profit Center. Castlegate Publishers.
Robbins , S.P., & Judge, T.A. (2007). Organizational Behavior.Prentice Hall.
Swart, J., Mann, C., Brown , S., & Price, A. (2005). Human Resource Development:      Strategy and tactics. Butterworth-Heinemann.