HUMAN RESOURCE: A TOOL FOR SUCCESS AND GROWTH FOR ANY FIRM AND ORGANIZATION

HUMAN RESOURCE: A TOOL FOR SUCCESS AND GROWTH FOR ANY FIRM AND ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER ONE

1.0     INTRODUCTION

          This research study is carried out to ascertain the concept of human resource management and organizational performance in Nigeria banking Industry.

It is worthy of note, that the success and growth of any bank, organization or institution depends largely on the effectiveness and management of the human resources under its control. Therefore, the role of human resources management as well as manpower training and development for position and greater performance in Nigeria banking sector or industry can never be over emphasized. There will be no success if people are not there to drive the bank corporate goals and objective. Thus desire can be achieve through planning.

Human resources management exist in all organizations, irrespective of their business orientation polices, visions and missions. It is an activity that involves people, and since no bank or system can survive without the presence/involvement of persons, it is therefore imperative to be concerned about the management of people’s well-being and comfort in the banking sector.

Thus, the human resources are men and women who are working in an organization. They constitute the active agents who harness and combine other resources toward the accomplishment of corporate goals. Consequently, the banks must have competent staff who will be able to carryout assigned task for purpose of attaining organizational goals. Mustapha Muktar, Achieves.

In order to bring out the effective performance of employee, human resource management’s function is designed to maximize employee performance in service of their employer’s strategic objectives. Also, human resource management or human resources development entails: planning, implementation, and managing recruitment, as well as selection, training career, and organizational development initiatives within an organization. The goal is to maximize the productivity of the bank by optimizing the effectiveness of its employees while simultaneously improving the work life of employees and treating employees as valuable resources. Consequently, Human Resource Management encompasses effort to promote personal development, employee’s satisfaction and compliance with employment related laws.

To achieve equilibrium between employer and employee’s goal and needs, human resources management department focus on these three general function or activities; planning, implementation, and evaluation. The planning function refers to the development of human resource policies and regulations. Human resource’s management attempts to determine future human resource manager’s activities and planning for the implementation of human resources management procedure to help banks realize their goals.

Implementation of Human Resources Management planning involves four primary activities; acquisition, development, compensation, and maintenance. Acquisition entails the employment of workers that will help the bank attain it goals. The development function encompasses the training of workers to perform their task in accordance with bank’s strategies. There activity also involves managers effort to control and change employees behvaiour via reviews, appraisals, incentives and discipline. Compensation covers the payment of employee for their services. Maintenance requires structuring labour relations between the bank management and its unionized employees and at the end ensuring compliance with federal and state employment laws; finally, the evaluation function includes the assessment of a banks human resources management policies to determine whether they are effective. The department and units are responsible for a number of activities including, employee’s recruitment, training, development, performance appraisal, and reward (e.g. managing pay and benefit system). Human resources is also concerned with industrial relations that is, the balancing of organizational practices with regulations arising from collective bargaining and governmental laws.

In the context of organizational performance like the bank, it comprises the actual output or results of the bank as measured against its intended outputs (goals and objectives). According to Richard et al, 2009), organizational performance encompasses three specific areas of firm outcomes such as:

• Financial performance (profit, return on assets, return on investment etc).
• Product market performance (sales, market, share etc).
• Shareholder return (total shareholder, return economic value added etc).

Specialists in many fields are concerned with organizational performance including strategic planning, operations, finance, legal, and organizational development. In recent years, many organizations have attempted to manage organizational performances using the balance score card methodology where performance is tracked and measured in multiple dimensions such as:

• Financial performance (e.g. shareholder return).
• Customer service
• Social responsibility (e.g. corporate citizenship community outreach)
• Employee stewardship

1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Historically, key principles and practiced associated with human resource management dated back to the beginning of mankind. Mechanisms were developed for the selection of tribal leaders, for examples, and knowledge was recorded and passed on to youth about safety, health, hunting, and gathering. More, advanced human resource management functions were developed as early as 1000 and 2000BC. Employee screening tests have been tracked back to 1115 B.C. in China, for instance. And the earliest form of industrial education, the apprentice system was started in ancient Greek and Babylonian civilizations before gaining prominence during medieval times.

Since the inception of modern management theory, the terminology used to describe the role and function of workers has evolved from “Personnel” to “industrial relations” to “employee relations” to “human resources”. While all of these terms remain in use, “human resources” most accurately represents the view of workers by contemporary management theory: as valuable resources managed in the same manner as other valuable resources, according to the authors of human resources management.

The need for an organized form of human resource management emerged during the industrial revolution, as the manufacturing process evolved from a cottage system to factory productions. As the United States shifted from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy, banks were forced to develop and implement effective’s ways of recruiting and keeping skilled workers. In addition, industrialization helped spur immigration, as the country opened its border to fill industrial positions. Filling these jobs with immigrants, however, created an even greater need for adequate management of employees.

Between the 1880s and the 1940s, immigration rose significantly and remained robust until World War II. Advertisements circulated throughout the world depicting the United State as the land of opportunity where good paying industrial jobs were plentiful. As a result, the country had a steady stream of law skill, low-cost immigrant workers who occupied manufacturing, construction, and machinery operation positions. Even though these employees performed largely routine tasks, managers faced serious obstacles when trying to manage them since they spoke different language.

Early human resource management technique included social welfare approaches aimed at helping immigrants adjust to their Jobs and to life in the United States. These programme assisted immigrants in learning English and obtaining housing and medical care. In addition, these techniques promoted supervisory training in order to increase productivity. While some companies paid attention to the “human” side of employments, however, other did not. Therefore, other factors such as hazardous working conditions and pressure from labor unions also increased the importance of effective management of human resources. Along with the manufacturing efficiencies brought about by industrialization came several shortcomings related to working conditions. These problems included; hazardous tasks, long hours, and unhealthy work environments. The direct cause of employers seeking better human resources managements was not poor working conditions, but rather the protects and pressures generated by workers and organized labor unions. Indeed, labour unions, which had existed as early as 1790 in the United States, because much more powerful during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

There were two other important contributing factors to the origination of modern human resource management during that period. The first was the industrial welfare movement, which represented shift in the way that managers viewed employees from non-human resources to human beings. That movement resulted in the creation of medical care and educational facilities. The second factor was Frederick W. Taylor’s (1856-1915) scientific management a landmark book that outlined management methods for attaining greater productivity from low-level production workers.

The first corporate employment department designed to address employee concerns was created by the B. F. Goodrich Company in 1900. In 1902 National Cash Register formed a similar department to handle worker grievances, wage administration, record keeping, and many other function that would later be relegated to human resources management departments at most large United State companies. Human resource management as a professional discipline was especially bolstered by the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 9also known as the National Labor Relations Act), which remained the basic U.S. Labour law through the 1990s. It augmented the power of labour unions and increased the role and importance of personnel managers. During the 1930s and 1940s the general focus of human resources management changes from a focus on worker efficiency and skills to employee satisfaction. That shift became especially pronounced after World War II, when a shortage of skilled labor forced companies to pay more attention to worker’s needs. Employers, influenced by the famous Hawthorne productivity studies and similar research began to emphasize personal development and improved working conditions as a means of motivating employees.

In the 1960s and 1970s the Federal government furthered the human resource management with a battery of regulations created to enforce fair treatment of workers such as the Equal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and the occupational safety and health Act of 1970. Because of these acts, banks began placing greater emphasis on human resource management in order to avoid lawsuits for violating this legislation. These regulations created an entirely new legal role of human resource management professionals. Furthermore, during the 1970s, human resource gained status of human resources programmes in colleges. By the end of the 1970s, virtually all medium-sized and large companies and institutions had some type of human resource management programme in place to handle recruitment, training, regulatory compliance, dismissal, and other related issues. Human Resources management importance continued to grow during the 1980s for several reasons. Changing workforce values, for example, required the skills of Human resource management professionals to adept organizational structures to a new generation of workers with different attitudes about authority and conformity. Shifting demographics forced changed in the way workers were hired, fired and managed other factors contributing to the importance of human resource management during the 1980s and 1990s were increasing education levels, growth of service and white-collar job corporate restructuring (including reduction in middle management), more women in the workforce, slower domestic market growth, greater international competition and new federal and state regulation.

The antecedent theoretical development of human resource spawned in the early 20th century and was influenced by Frederick Taylor (1856-1915). Taylor explored what he termed the “Scientific Management” (later referred to by others as “Taylorism”), striving to improve economic efficiency in manufacturing jobs. He eventually keyed in one of the principal inputs into the manufacturing process-labor-sparking inquire into work force productivity.

The human relations movement grew from the arch of Elton Mayo and others, whose Hawthorns studies (1924-1932) serendipitously documented how stimuli unrelated to financial compensation and working conditions, yielded more productive workers. Contemporaneous work by Abraham Maslow, Kurt Lewin, Max Weber (1864-1920), Frederick Herzberg, and David McCllelland (1977-1998) formed the basis for studies in industrial and organizational psychology, organizational behaviour and organizational theory, giving room for an applied discipline.

Birth and evolution of the discipline: By the time enough theoretical evidence existed to make a business case for strategic workforce management, changes in the business Landscape (a. La. Andrew Carnegie John Rockefeller) and in public policy (a. La Sidney and Beatric Webb, Francklin D. Roosevelt and the new Deal) had transformed the employer employee relationship, and the discipline was formalized as industrial and labor relations”. In 1913, one of the oldest known professional Human resource association – the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development – was founded in England as the Welfare Workers Association, then changed it name a decade later to the institute of industrial welfare workers, and again the next decade to Institute of Labour management before settling upon its current name. As such History of it, is unanimous.

In Nigeria, the role of human resources management and the performance of staff/employee in the banking sector can not be over look. The liberalization of the banking sector has altered the patterns of competitive advantage in the industry. In fact, new banks have emerged that have either sent older ones out of business or made them a mere shadow of their former selves. Consequently, the banking structure and system of commercial banks has send many of the older banks to re-engineer their operations and trained or develop the manpower/human resource personnel department in order to be able to improve their performance and compete effectively with the new banks. The first Bank of Nigeria Limited, the oldest bank in Nigeria which represent one of the commercial banks in this research work had to go through this line as it strengthen it human resources in its operation in order to survive and remained competitive in the industry.

1.2     STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Banks generally owe their operations in financial intermediation activities. Historically, the goldsmiths that pioneered the realm of banking business evolved the operation by accepting valuables such as bullions, money and ornaments for safekeeping. For the care of the valuable the goldsmiths started charging some fees for the safekeeping of the money and the bullions. In the process of safekeeping of those items, the goldsmiths started lending the money to other people for fees.

In modern system of today the activities are undertaken by human being – men and women who are formally called the personnel staff group to form the human resources of the banking sectors. Therefore, the issues of the following arise:

(a)     How can the banks integrate this individuals and personnel in order to attain effective performance of the corporate goals?

(b)     What are the knowledge, capability, skill, and potentialities needed of this personality in attaining and achieving employees goals, including job satisfaction and the corporate goals?

(c)      How will this personnel or employees be managed to attain a high performance of the corporate goal of bank?

(d)     The banks involved depositing and handling of money and valuable. What type of behavior morality, ethic and strategies will be embedded by the personnel to produce a standard and goodwill of the bank to the general public?

(e)      What basically is the area of function and department they are to operate in the bank?

1.3     RESEARCH QUESTIONS

          The uniqueness and operation of human resources management and organizations performance in the banking sector particularly the First bank of Nigeria Limited has probe the following question.

• The philosophy and policies of human resource management can it really be integrated into the management function of the bank and is firm management function?
• What is the operative function of human resource management and their performance outcome in the bank?
• What are the practices and procedure of performance appraisals that the banks use to score their employee effort in the work place or the task given to them?

1.4     OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The objective of the study is to examine.

• The need of human resource management in the banking sector and it performance.
• To know the operative and management function of human resource management and performance
• To understand the models of human resource management and performance appraisal to be applied in the bank for effectiveness.
• This research work will also help to know the performance management system to be applied in the bank in order to keep standard and continues goal achievement.
• The research help to identify and satisfy individual and group needs by providing adequate and equitable wages, incentives, employee benefits and social securities and measures for challenging work, prestige, recognition. Security and status to the work force of the bank.
• To maintain high employee morale and sound human relations by sustaining and improving the various conditions and facilities in the bank.
• To strengthen and appreciate the human assets continuously by providing training and development programmes to staff and worker of First Bank.