Introduction
The University of Kentucky is the largest university in Kentucky, with 26, 682 students enrolled² they are the top employer in Lexington³ with over 10,600 employees and they are the ninth largest economic company in Kentucky, with an annual budget of over $1.4 billion.¹ The Human Resource department at UK has approximately 110 employees.4 I decided to interview the top two HR Specialists: Kimberly P. Wilson, Associate Vice President of HR and Mary Ferlan, Operations Director of HR. These two women put aside some time with me to go over the University of Kentucky's Human Resource Department, the Organizational Chart of HR, and answered some questions I had regarding their positions.
Background
Kimberly P. Wilson, the Associate Vice President of HR, has been with the University of Kentucky since 2002. She started her career at UK as the Human Resource Development Manager. She was in charge of three training groups: the Employee Development, Technology Training and Operation Educate. In August of 2003, she became the Chief of Staff to the Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration, performing special projects and assignments as instructed. Then in March of 2004, Mrs. Wilson became the Acting Director of Human Resources, which is responsible for all aspects of the HR operations, university wide.
Mrs. Wilson has an extensive background in human resource management. Between 1994 and 2001 she worked for Reuters Group, PLC, holding various HR positions. Her position was working as the VP of HR. She went on to becoming the Deputy Director of HR, based in London and then the Director of HR for the global sales and operations division, based in Switzerland. Before leaving Reuters, she was the Deputy Director and Director of HR Strategy and Development in London. Mrs. Wilson was also the Director of Human Resources and the Vice President of Human Resources for Knight-Ridder, Inc (Which owned the Lexington Herald Leader and currently owns the Bradenton Herald in Bradenton, FL.). She holds an MBA from Rockhurst College in Kansas City, MO and a BA from the University of Kentucky.
Mary Ferlan, the Operations Director for Human Resources, has been with the University of Kentucky since 1990. She started working as a Wellness Specialist, serving as an assistant manager and manager for the Wellness Program. Mary then served as a HR generalist and as the manager for employee relations and unemployment within the UK HR department. She then moved on to become the Operations Director of Human Resources.
Bohlander, George, and Scott Snell. Managing Human Resources. 15th. Mason, OH: South-Western Pub, 2009. 98-147. Print.
The Department of Human Resources is involved with many important aspects of a business, like staffing, compensation, benefits, and much more. As the new Director of Human Resources for a 150-room, full service hotel in downtown Sheboygan, I am in charge of turning around the hotel. Some urgent tasks include hiring and training new candidates for two open positions, revising the training and incentive programs, and finally, improving the overall morale of the employees.
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2014). Fundamentals of human resource management (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Mathis, R. L., & Jackson, J. H. (2010). Human resource management (13th ed.). Mason, OH: Thomas/South-western
The Human Resources department is dedicated to hire and build an excellent team with a great teamwork and leadership. As one of the most important strategies of the business is the innovation of their products, it is needed people who can add value to the company through its diversity, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, in a competitive and fun environment.
REI’s HR department description leads one to believe that HR has a larger role than just traditional functions.
Whether an organization consists of five or 25,000 employees, human resources management is vital to the success of the organization. HR is important to all managers because it provides managers with the resources – the employees – necessary to produce the work for the managers and the organization. Beyond this role, HR is capable of becoming a strong strategic partner when it comes to “establishing the overall direction and objectives of key areas of human resource management in order to ensure that they not only are consistent with but also support the achievement of business goals.” (Massey, 1994, p. 27)
The topic under review is strategic alliances. This particular form of non-equity alliance between firms in the same industry (competitors) is becoming an increasingly popular way of conducting business in the global environment. Many different reasons of why such alliances are occurring have been recognized. These include: the increasing globalization of the world's economy resulting in intensified global competition, the proliferation and disbursement of technology, and the shortening of product life-cycles. This critique will use Kenichi Ohmae's viewpoint on strategic alliances as a benchmark for comparison. Firstly, a summary of Ohmae's article will be provided. Secondly, in order to critique Ohmae's opinion, it will be necessary to review other literature on the topic. Thirdly, a discussion of the various viewpoints and studies, that have hence arisen, will be discussed in detail. Finally, conclusions will be drawn with implications for companies operating in today's global environment, together with suggestions for future research on strategic alliances.
Changing Roles. Traditionally, HR has been an administrative position-processing paperwork, benefits, hiring and firing, and compensation. However, recently HRM has moved from a traditional to a strategic role, the emphasis is on catering to the needs of consumers and workers. Before, HR was seen as the enemy and employees believed that HR’s main purpose was to protect management. Now, the position requires HRM to be more people oriented and protect their human capitol, the staff. In addition, human resource management has to be business savvy and think of themselves as strategic partners in the 21st century.
In an effort to gain a working understanding of the Human Resources field, I chose to interview the Director of Human Resources for an organization in Miami, Florida. What I learned goes far beyond any classroom or textbook instruction. It is clear; the field of Human Resources will never be static, as society, technology, and legal environments change, so will the field of Human Resources.
Knouse, S. B. (2005). The Future of Human Resource Management: 64 Leaders Explore the Critical HR Issues of Today and Tomorrow. 58(4), 1089-1092.
An organizational human resources department utilizes the hiring and firing process to meet the organization’s personnel needs. Organizational human resource departments are charged with the oversight of an organizations administration department. The practice of hiring and firing people is a process employer’s conducts on a daily basis. This process has to be done in a proper manner and not in haste. The implication that can occur from the improper hiring and firing process could and can have a positive or negative impact on an organization. Therefore, employers must carefully evaluate their decision to hire/fire individuals and its impact on the organizations’ workplace environment and others employees. Human Resource Management is important for an effective organization. In today’s organization, HRM is valuable to the organization because of increase legal complexities and its known for improvement in productivity. However, management should realize that poor human resource management could result in an outburst of hiring process followed by firing or layoffs. According to (Satterlee 2013, p. 194), “Hiring the best candidate who is also a good fit for the organization is crucial for the success of an organization, because a poor hiring decision will have repercussions across the entire organization”. Satterlee made a valid point because poor hiring could have an impact on the bottom line performance of the firm. In other words, HRM is the contributing factor to the success of the organization including motivating and maintain the staffs. The purpose to the motivation is to ensure that all employees grow to a full potential. According to (Sims 2006, p. 5), “HRM efforts are planned, systematic approaches to increasing organizati...
One of the most important resources of any organization is its employees, the human resource. This makes it very important that these resources are properly managed; so that they thrive and grow along with the organization. People stream defines performance management as “A process for establishing a shared workforce understanding about what is to be achieved at an organizational level. It is about aligning the organizational objectives with the employees’ agreed skills, competency requirements, development plans and the delivery of results. The emphasis is on improvement, learning and development in order to achieve the overall business strategy and to create a high performance work force”. The performance management process involves various stages such as goal setting, skills development, performance measuring against the set goals, mentoring/coaching to enable employees to focus and achieve their goals followed by assessment of performance and any further development plans as required. Let us look at these steps one by one.
4) Tokesky, George C; Kornides, Joanne : ‘Strategic HR Management is vital’( Personal journal, December 1994 v 73 n 12 p 115.
Human resource is the most valuable and unique asset of an organization. The successful management of an organization’s human resource is an exciting, dynamic and challenging task , especially at a time when the world has become a global village and economies are in a state of flux. The lack of talented resource and the growing expectation of the modern day employee has further increased the difficulty of the human resource function.