Human resources and understanding employees’ interpretations of its function
Almost every day organisations worldwide come up with a new policy to hire, fire, promote, or pay their employees. If you think about your organisation, be it in Kowloon or Shenzhen, it is almost certainly the case.
But if you stop and think – have you ever asked why your manager has implemented such a new human resource (HR) practice? Did you interpret the implementation as thinking “they care and are concerned about your well-being”, or did you see it as a strategy to reduce costs?
For more than three decades researchers have tried to understand the relationship between Human Resource Management (HRM) and employee performance, like commitment, engagement, and innovative behaviour, and the firm’s performance, like return on investment, profit, and turnover.
The big question is, whether firms can enhance their performance by investing more money into training for employees, greater options to balance work and non-work activities, increased pay for performance, or foremost in the minds of many employees – a better performance appraisal system.
In the last 10 years, research has moved in other directions and researchers have tried to define the relationship between HRM and performance by focusing on employees’ perception, understanding and interpretation of HRM in their organisation. Only when employees perceive that their organisation even has a HRM system, can they can understand what is expected from them and why management has designed and implemented a HR practice in a positive way.
A Chinese employee’s perception of exploitation ... is not seen as management’s desire to control, but is perceived as management’s desire to help
They then become much more committed to the organisation, show positive work attitudes and perform better.