HR Knowledge

Hr Knowledge: Topic 1: Strategic HR Management – Ethical Leadership

Strategic HR resource stewardship allows HR professionals to fulfill a more substantial role in providing their organization’s success by developing new systems and policies that are aligned with their company’s values. Due to the economic climate, many business professionals believe that the human resources team should be additionally responsible for enacting ethical stewardship in order to benefit the organization. Professionals believe that if human resource departments adopt this framework in addition to acquiring management professionals that follow the “transformative” category of management, they will be better able to serve the ethical duties of their organization and create better work conditions for employees overall.

This application is useful to businesses because it directs the responsibility of ethical stewardship towards a specific department; it is intuitive that this department would be the human resources staff because they more readily have the manpower and other resources available that will help the company ensure that company and employee practices are legitimate. If the human resources team is able to do this properly and address all employee concerns on the matter, employees will be more productive because they will feel safer in their environment. The disadvantage of the centralization of ethical management is that other departments will be less focused on workplace ethics and the human resources department needs to ensure that knowledge of this policy is up to date throughout the company.

Hr Knowledge: Topic 2: The Organization of the HR Department – Outsourcing

A major organizational suggestion that has been made by business professionals in the past few years is that certain functions of the human resources department should be outsourced, while others suggest outsourcing the department as a whole. By doing so, they believe that businesses can transform their practices into a high performing workforce. To implement a human resources department that is fully or partially outsourced, the company will require several adaptations and new procedures. It is mainly essential for the business to determine ways to enhance communication between the business’s main facility and the outsourced components of human resources.

Some business professionals have considered the outsourcing of the entire human resources department. Although the outsourcing the whole human resources department may be difficult or not ideal for all business types, it could be useful for a business that has human resources functions could be outsourced to and better delivered by third-party suppliers cheaply and more efficiently (Brown, 2004).

This trend will allow businesses to grow more quickly, become more productive, and obtain greater profits. In the interest of protecting local jobs, however, a full HR outsource model should not be adopted; rather, redundant and simple functions should be outsourced to other companies so that local HR representatives will have more time to focus on important aspects of the business.

Hr Knowledge: Topic 3: Management of Temporary and Contract Employees

Many business professionals believe that a major problem with some companies is that they fail to place the same care in managing temporary and contract employees as they do on permanent ones. This is a dramatic problem because statistics have shown that as businesses are growing, need for these types of employees are growing as well. In addition, temporary and contract workers have been appearing at every level of the organization; from a receptionist to CEO. It is therefore important for businesses to invest the same kinds of resources in temporary and contract workers as they do for more permanent employees. Overall, this will benefit the company because temporary workers often provide primary communication with the customers and contractors; in order for the business to be represented well by their temporary and contract employees, these people should be well-trained (Drucker, 2002).

As companies grow, it becomes more and more important for them to hire temporary and contract workers; in fact, outsourcing work has become a recent trend to increase company productivity and focus employee workload. An example of this operating at high-level business functions involves hiring PEO’s to detract from the responsibilities that the manager has. Overall, hiring casual workers and contract employees is useful for the business because it allows full-time, permanent employees to focus on more specific job functions. The downside is that these people are usually not well-trained; it is important to create better training programs for these people for the purpose of increasing their work performance.

Hr Knowledge: References

1. Brown, P. (2010). The power of HR outsourcing. Strategic HR Review, 9(6). 27–32. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1108/14754391011078090
2. Caldwell, C., Truong, D., Linh, P., & Tuan, A. (2011). Strategic human resource management as ethical stewardship. Journal of Business Ethics, 98(1), 171–182.
3. Truong DX, Linh TP, Tuan T. (2011). Strategic Human Resource Management as Ethical Stewardship. Journal of Business Ethics, 98, 1.
4. Drucker, P. F. (2002). They’re not employees, they’re people. Harvard Business Review, 80(2), 70–77. Retrieved from:
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