Recent Trends in Human Resources Term Paper

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Training is one of the critical areas that SEIIC needs to address in order to maintain its advantages in human capital. The company has experienced turnover in recent years, and this increases the need for it to improve the talent base of those who remain. There are a number of trends in training at present that SEIIC can adopt in order to improve the training of its employees. The first is with respect to new employee training and onboarding. The learning curve is steepest for new employees, but they need to know not only critical task skills but also about the organizational culture and the soft skills that are expected of them. Retention is also added through better onboarding, as the onboarding training relates to having better task clarity, which in turn allows employees to enjoy better performance.

The early stages of onboarding are said to be a critical point in the training process where the bond between the employee and the company is strengthened (Snell, 2006). Training at this stage, therefore, is not just about ensuring that employees know functional tasks, like how to use the proprietary computer system, but that they are trained on the culture of the company, and how they contribute to the overall success of the company is their role. Employees need to be reminded, as well, of their roles and their value to the company, and that can come through training that gives people the sorts of skills that they can use to advance their careers. Remember that one of the reasons people leave companies is because they feel that they do not have enough opportunity for advancement and success.

Technology is also affecting how training is conducted in the modern workforce. Training in classrooms is usually expensive and inefficient, as there are high costs and the employees are taken away from their work. Thus, many companies minimize this ongoing cost simply by not training much. However, with the right computer-based training, a company can actually deliver more training at a lower cost than would have been possible in the past. Employees today are much more comfortable with computer-based training than maybe was the case a decade ago, so there are few barriers to the use of computer-based training systems, as long as the content is directly applicable to the jobs that people perform -- training still needs to be relatable in order that employees lower their barriers (Bates et al., 2000).

A third major trend in training that can help the company to modernize its human resources systems is having people train each other. This informal training is facilitated by social media, YouTube, and other such technologies that allow for greater levels of interaction between employees; the entire manner in which human resources functions are performed is shifting with the evolutions in technology (Reynolds, et al., 2013). If employees are more engaged, willing and able to help each other, ultimately this lowers training costs, increases employee engagement with the company and each other, and delivers a higher skill level throughout the organization. The human resources department should endeavor to find out ways to facilitate this form of training, in order to leverage the institutional knowledge that exists within the company.

Performance Management

Performance management is a critical area for the company. The first best practice with respect to performance management is to set effective quantitative measures. It has been shown that when performance is effectively measured, this not only provides employees with effective feedback, but also increases the sense of fairness throughout the organization. Hvidman and Andersen (2014) note that it is important for the aspects of performance that are being measured to align with the strategic objectives of business, and the job descriptions that the company has. It is important for the human resources department to ensure that this alignment exists so that its management of performance helps the company to succeed.

Another modern take on performance management is that it can be subject to constant adjustments. This keeps the jobs aligned with the organization's strategic objectives. Over time, misalignment can emerge, so periodic reviews allow for the organization to maintain a high level of alignment (Pulakos et al., 2015). It is important for human resources to understand that it needs to continually review job requirements, job descriptions and performance measures in order that these things maintain their level of effectiveness with the passage of time.

This leads to one of the emerging areas of performance management, which is the issue of fit. Hiring for fit is something that relates to performance management -- when someone has a skill set that should be a good fit for a given role, the way that person is evaluated in the context of that role should be aligned with the issue of fit. This allows the company to make adjustments -- if the fit is not good enough, then people can be moved around into different roles where perhaps the fit is better (Melnyck, et al.

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, 2014).

Career Management

It is a known issue that good employees will leave a company if they feel that they do not have sufficient opportunity for advancement, which places considerable impetus on the human resources department to develop career pathways for top performers, to keep them from taking their knowledge elsewhere, and in this industry that almost always means a competing firm. Career management therefore is a competitive strategy in the insurance business.

The first issue is that the company needs to remember that employees are there for their own benefit -- they are going to look out for themselves even while they are looking out for the company. This is not a bad thing, but human resources needs to identify at risk performers -- top people whose careers have stagnated, and ensure that they have something to convince them to stay on (Thite, 2001). Recognition of this reality is a critical first step for the 21st century human resources department.

One area of career management that has become popular in recent years in mentoring. Mentorship rose to prominence as a strategy to enhance career management when it was realized that one of the major obstacles to talented people advancing in a company was a lack of connections and the soft knowledge that takes one from the ranks of a solid junior management to someone with high level leadership capabilities. Mentorship is one of the means by which this soft power is unlocked, and has become a staple of many successful companies, to the point where it can reasonably be considered a best practice for career management. In essence, career plateaus cause people to leave, and mentorship helps people to break through or avoid career plateaus, thereby addressing SEIIC's problem with retaining top people (Wang et al., 2014).

Career management best practice also requires that the human resources is able to identify top performers early in their careers, and to help them build the sorts of skills that will get them to a higher level. Basically, some people plateau when they are good at their job, but do not demonstrate the sorts of skills that will allow them to excel at the next level. This is a critical issue, because if those people are identified early enough, and the HR department undertakes a skills assessment, then these people can be given the training that they need to succeed. In particular, leadership skills assessment is important, because along with leadership mentoring it can take an employee with great functional ability to allow that person over the course of several years to improve his or her leadership capabilities (Solansky, 2010). Such individuals are thus better equipped to step into a position of leadership when the opportunity arises, and they have already been identified so have been put on that track. This is an alternative to simply posting positions and hoping for the best, which is how some companies seem to run their internal HR strategy -- a strategy with a career management focus is much better.

Conclusion

Probably the biggest issue for SEIIC right now is that it is losing good people. They are probably going to work for competitors. Given how important knowledge is in this business, the current situation is nothing short of disaster. SEIIC needs to focus on career management, on creating pathways for talented performers to grow within the company. This means not only things like training and mentoring to increase their skill level, but also creating openings and opportunities. Performance management ties into that, for example -- establishing a meritocracy rather than a system where people are promoted on the basis of tenure. The company therefore has to look at all of these different aspects of the business in order to modernize its approach to human resources.

If SEIIC is able to increase training capabilities, that is great, but ultimately if the company is acting as a talent development institution for the competition, training them better before they defect is only going to backfire. Thus, it….....

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