Human Resource Management is a system that is aimed to value, control, develop, and manage human resources or people who work in organizations. As a process, Human Resource Management comprises three stages: recruitment and selection, performance, and development. All employees must obtain the right position in a company since only in this case they can become the effective part of the work team. They should receive the feedback for their work and an opportunity to contribute to the working process in order to be fully engaged in the workflow of a company. Effective Human Resource Management requires the certain style of leadership and feedback between the employer and its subordinates. These two components provide the favorable environment in which people are encouraged to participate in the decision-making process.
Benefits of Increasing Employee Engagement
The main advantage of increasing the employee engagement is the reduction of employee turnover rates. The high rates of employee turnover cause significant expenses that lead to major problems in company’s operation: the constant need for new personnel, its recruitment and training require huge time and money expenditures. Given the fact that the employee turnover is a dynamic process that only progresses with time if no measures to stop it are taken, the expenditures become more and more significant. On the contrary, when the organization applies the methods of employee engagement in the working process, rates of employee turnover decline and the quality of work increases. Recent studies have shown that when employees are engaged in the workflow and decision-making process, they associate themselves with the company in which they work and sincerely commit themselves to the achievement of its objectives.
Ways to Engage Employees in Decision Making
Among the variety of ways to engage employees in the decision-making process Harrods uses five the most effective ones: keeping an internal magazine for employees, holding morning briefings, maintaining the local communications network or Intranet, holding a quarterly forum, and performing the “Bright Ideas” scheme that encourages employees to share their ideas for the development of the company. The use of internal magazine Your Harrods and Intranet helps to keep all the employees informed of the recent events relating to the company. Moreover, Intranet allows for selection of relevant information for each member of the work team. Morning briefings and quarterly forums as a means of direct communication help to set a direction for the work by announcing the daily agenda and recent statistics as well as present urgent tasks and issues that can be immediately discussed among the members of the work team. All these methods contribute to the employee’s engagement in the organizational workflow and decision-making process. However, I think that it is direct communication in the form of briefings and forums that promotes the most effective decision-making process because it involves the immediate reaction and feedback on the suggested topic for the discussion.
Democratic Leadership Style
Harrods prefers the democratic type of leadership to the autocratic one because it encourages the employees to participate in the decision-making process, cultivates their input to the company’s workflow, and allows for talent spotting as well as the development of managerial skills of employees by charging them to mentor and coach the new or less experienced employees. It should be mentioned, though, that Harrods’ executives do not refuse the autocratic type of leadership and resort to it when certain force majeure situations occur.