BMATWT 353 - Business of Building

BMATWT Home
BMATWT Courses

Lecture Outline - Managing Human Resources

I. The foundations of human resource management

A. Human Resources Management - The set of organizational activities directed at: attracting, developing and maintaining an effective workforce.

B. Human resource planning

i. Job analysis - Consists of two components

Job Description - What the duties, responsibilities and work environment for the position.

Job Specification - What are teh skills, abilities and credentials of the ideal candidate for the job.

ii. Forecasting HR demand and supply

1. Forecast Demand for Labor
2. a. assess internal supply, b. assess external supply
3. develop plan to match demand = supply

iii. Replacement Charts - Typically used to track management positions: Who is in a position?, How long have they been there?, Who is qualified to replace them?

iv. Skills Inventories - Database of employee skills, education, work experiences, career goals.

II. Staffing the organization

A. Recruiting human resources

Recruiting - The process of attracting qualified persons to apply for the job.

i. Internal recruiting - are present employees available (qualified)
ii. External recruiting (persons outside the organization)

B. Selecting human resources

Validation - Is the selection technique that you use to hire effective at predicting the future peformance of new hires?

Tools to validate:

• Tests
• Interviews
• Physical exams, credit checks

III. Developing the workforce

A. Training - On the job training or off the job.
B. Performance appraisal - Evaluating an employee's job performance in order to determine their effectiveness.

Manager must first define performance standards.

IV. Compensation and benefits

Compensation system - the set of rewards and org. uses in exchange for the employees willingness to perform work.

A. Wages and salaries

Wage - Money paid for time worked.

Salary - Money paid for discharging the responsibilities of a job.

B. Incentive programs - designed to motivate high performance

Bonus - special payment, over and above normal salary

Merit pay - Links increases in individual compensation to individual performance.

Pay for performance - Middle manager incentive for unusually productive company, business-unit, and or individual peformance.

Companywide incentives:

• Profit-sharing - based on company profits
• Gainsharing - based on greater efficiencies
• Pay-for-knowledge - based on training

C. Benefits programs

UMASS - Benefits Page

• Insurance - health, dental, life, long-term disability
• Paid-time-off and Leaves - Holiday, vacation, sick-days, personal time, leaves
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Retirement
• Workers Compensation
• Others

Workers Compensation Insurance - Required insurance for compensating workers injured on the job.

Retirement Plans

Cafeteria Benefit Plan - Total limit on benefit, allows employee to choose where to spend from a variety of benefits.

V. The legal context of HR management

A. Equal employment opportunity - Mandated nondiscrimination in employment based on race, religion, sex or national origin.

Protected class - Can be defined by race, religion, gender, age, national origin, disability or military status. Laws designed to combat discrimination.

Affirmative Action - practice of recruiting qualified employees from specific groups that might be under-represented in an organization.

B. Contemporary legal issues in HR management

i. Employee safety and health - OSHA
ii. Emerging areas of discrimination law

AIDS in the workplace, sexual harassment, hostile work environment

Employment-at-will - Principle that an organization can retain or dismiss employees at their discretion.

VI. New challenges in the changing workplace

A. Managing workforce diversity
B. Managing knowledge workers
C. Contingent and temporary workers

VII. Dealing with organized labor

Labor union - Group of individuals working together to achieve shared job-related goals (higher pay, benefits, job safety...)

Collective Bargaining - Process where labor and management negotiate conditions of employment for union-represented workers.

 

A. Unionism today

i. Trends in union membership - Downward, most union members are in the Public Sector.

VIII. Collective bargaining

A. Reaching agreement on contract terms - Chart of Max, min, expected value and bargaining zone for Union and management

B. Contract issues - Compensation, benefits, job security, management rights

COLA - Cost of Living Adjustment - Annual percentage salary increase tied to Consumer Price (CPI) or some other index.

C. When bargaining fails

i. Union tactics

• Strike
• Sympathy strike
• Wildcat strike
• Picketing
• Boycott
• Slowdown

ii. Management tactics

• Lockout
• Strikebreaker (scab)
• 
  Mediation - Resolving disputes using a third party who suggests, not imposes, a solution
• Voluntary arbitration - Resolving disputes using a third party that both parties agree to abide by their decision.
• Compulsory (binding) arbitration - same as above but both parties are legally required to abide by the decision.

Produced and maintained by David T. Damery
Building Materials and Wood Technology
Department of Natural Resources Conservation
College of Natural Resources and the Environment
University of Massachusetts, Amherst.