The HRM Function usually reports the basic set of data to the organization, at least the number of employees, number of new hires and exits. The HR Reports are produced with a big delay and they are static, they do not mark the trends in the organization and they do not provide any analytical value added as it can be seen as dangerous for Human Resources.

The trends and their analysis is very important for the HR Reporting. Last year, many organization could monitor a quick and significant improvement in their recruitment measures and the significant decrease in their turnover and fluctuation. The interpretation was usually in the improved recruitment process and increased ability to find the talent on the tough job market. Wrong, the employees are smarter and they feel the changes on the market and the financial crisis before the company can feel it in its financial numbers.

The HRM Function has to provide the top management with the most accurate data for the following areas during the economic crisis:

• FTE Development, including Recruitment Data
• Monitoring of the external job market
• Compensation Development
• Retention (including turnover and fluctuation)

The HRM Function has to provide the data as quickly as possible as the quickest organization can win the war for the best talents during the recession and the top management has to feel comfortable and they have to trust to numbers provided.

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The job design and job analysis have different purposes. The job design is about designing or re-designing a new job profile and setting the correct organizational structure.  The job design is about using several theoretical approaches to bring the balance between creative and routine part of the job.

The job design uses several techniques and they are quite known to the HR Professionals:

1. Exploration of tasks and the tasks are sorted, evaluated and optimized.
2. Based on tasks, the right set of responsibilities is defined for the job as the employee can perform the job smoothly and the organization can still keep the control over the employee.
3. Based on the analysis of the tasks, the right order of the jobs is determined and the employees are asked to follow the right procedure as the organization runs at the minimum possible costs.
4. The job design is always accompanied but the job enlargement and job enrichment as the employees are not bored by the job and they have a chance to bring new ideas and innovations into their daily tasks.

The job design is done as the organization needs to keep the number of employees at the affordable level and the result of the job design can result in many savings in FTEs and costs. The correct job design can bring the elimination of many process steps and it can help the organization to react quicker to the requests of the customers.

The job analysis is about the analysis of the current jobs and it is can be used as the input to the job design. The job analysis is about sorting the jobs of the current employees and looking for the synergies.
The job analysis is used for the evaluation of the jobs, not for designing new job profiles. The job analysis can help to compare the jobs of employees and to bring a new systematic approach to the structure of the jobs in the organization.

The input to the job analysis should not be theoretic, it has to be based on the real employees and real duties conducted as the results are realistic and the team can compare real results.

So, the difference between job analysis and job design is quite simple, is not it?

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The compensation strategy is always about the grey zone of Human Resources. The compensation strategy is a part of the competitive advantage of the organization and it has to be precisely managed by a very limited group of employees who know all the details about its setting.

The compensation strategy is about the setting of the compensation components, including the base salary. The base salary is one of the most sensitive compensation components and the employees should not know the exact position of their base salary against the compensation policy and the external pay market.

The transparent and open compensation strategy is usually used by the aggressive organizations as they use the communication about their position on the pay market as the competitive advantage. As they need to build the corporate culture of their uniqueness they need to communicate their top position on the pay market.

The company living on the saturated market, which is focused on keeping its market share, cannot afford to have the exclusive compensation strategy. It has to be focused on keeping the market share and it has to manage personnel expenses strictly.

The employees cannot know the real position of their salary against the compensation strategy and the compensation policy as they would ask for the salary increase and the company would have no argument. The organization would refuse the salary increases and the employees would be de-motivated and confused.

Would you like to work for such a company?

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The managers take usually the organizational structure as the basis of the organizational unit, which should not be flexible. As the organizational structure defines their own kingdom, they have no interest to bring changes as their importance could decrease.

The HR Organizational Structure has to be flexible, as the initiatives of the organizational change will demand different kind of the service provided by Human Resources. The HR Organizational Structure should fit the needs of the internal and external clients and the managers should manage the processes, not the individual employees.

The managers have to think about the upcoming agendas, the enormous pressure for the cost efficiency and almost real time HR Reporting. They have to adjust the HR Organizational Structure and they have to re-evaluate the importance of the individual employees and agendas, even the importance of the individual managers in the team.

The organizations will push for the efficiency and risk management. The compensation and benefits will be more important and the talent management will be one of the strongest tools in the area of the risk management. The organization with no strong Human Resources function will be very vulnerable and the competitors will have a better position against it.

The HR Organizational Structure will change, as some function will get bigger with more responsibilities. The leadership development and compensation and benefits will be the most important parts of the HR Organizational Structure and other functions will support them.

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The market economy is based on the evolution of the new ideas and the innovative approach of the individuals and organizations. Even in the recession, the effort to bring a new service or a new product does not disappear, the entrepreneurs try to bring a new idea to the market, which will make them successful and rich.

The people believe they will not be successful in searching for the new job opportunity, but this is not fully true. The job market becomes just more selfish. The people, who are valued, usually have no trouble to find a new job. They can receive a new job offer very quickly.

The worst position on the job market goes to – long-term unemployed job applicants. These people have almost no chance to get a new job offer during the recession. Their skills and competencies were not requested during the economic growth, the demand is even lower during the recession.

The people tend to think, the recession makes things stop. It is not true, there is just a slowdown and the organization become very risk aware and they prolong their decision lines. But finally, they reach the decision and they have to continue in their operation as they can serve their clients, who have to serve their clients.

You should have the financial reserve to survive several weeks of being unemployed, but you should not worry about your future, there is always a company, which needs a lot of help. The recruitment agencies announce less job vacancies, but the main reason is that they co-operate with the stable and mature organizations, which suffer from the recession most.

When you lose your job, it is not the end of the world. You have to type your new excellent job resume and you have to research the job market smartly. When you know, what you exactly want, you have a chance to find even a better job offer.

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The HR Professionals try to describe everything in the HR Policies. They do not like to have many conflicts and issues with the managers and employees and they try to describe any potential exception in the HR Policies. Honestly, the HR Policies are about a lot of exceptions and the employees and managers are not able to find the regular process description in the policy then.

As the HRM Function is not sure about its position in the organization, the HR Policies are written and formalized the secure way. As they allow to have a short general process description, the aim of the policy and then a long description of all the exceptions, which can occur.

The simple HR Policies are the clear sign of the confident Human Resources. When the HRM Function does not need to have a policy behind and it is confident to provide a good explanation to managers and employees, which is accepted, then the HR Policy is not needed at all.

The HR Professionals should not worry about their negotiation and presentation skills. When the managers understand the principle behind the HR Policy, they can accept it and they can follow the HR Policy using a common sense. They have no memory to understand all the details of the policy, they need a basic guideline and when the exception occurs, they can negotiate with the HRM Function about it.

The HR Policy has to be simple. The employees need a basic navigation and they can always ask for the detail, when they need it. When their friends ask them about the practice in their company, they can explain a simple story, they are not able to speak about tons of conditions to be accomplished before they are taken into account.

The HRM Function has to keep in mind their employees and their managers, as they are the users of the HR Policy. The users are always a key to write and implement the simple HR Policy or the simple HR Procedure.

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The Human Resources has no easy life. The HRM Function monitors the organization, its health and it sees the signs of getting into unhealthy state during the economic growth. The recession raises the urgent need to put the patient into the healthy shape again, the company needs to lose some fat and to do some jogging to react to the external world quickly again. The recession is the opportunity for Human Resources to change and innovate the organization again.

The HRM Function monitors the numbers of the organization and usually the HR Professionals have the access to the external HR Benchmarks and they provide the top management with the comparative analysis in the field of the Human Resources.

As the economic growth generates a lot of the additional income and sales volumes to the company, no member of the top management desires to introduce the unpopular solutions leading to decreased growth of the sales and potential danger to the net income of the organization.
The recession will sort the HRM Functions. One group of the HRM Function was prepared for the recession and it is their opportunity and they are able to push new initiatives and changes. The second group is asked by the top management to make the analyses they are waiting for.

Even now, the HRM Function can prepare the proposal, which are provocative and revolutionary for the organization. The HRM Function has to co-operate closely with Finance to identify the gaps and the potential opportunities to fill the gaps and to put the organization back to healthy shape.

The recession increases the courage of the top management to implement the changes as they see clear benefits from the changes to be implemented. The employees are willing to accept the changes and the HRM Function has a unique opportunity to become one of the winners. The recession will not last forever.

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The goal setting process should be managed centrally to produce good results. When the managers are navigated freely and just the recommendations are given to the management, what goals should be given to employees, the organization cannot guarantee the common approach across different units in the organization.

The goals set to employees have to aligned with the overall business strategy and the best and efficient way to set the goals strategically aligned is to use top down way of setting the goals to the individual employees.

Most organizations use the top down methodology for setting the goals, but there is usually lack of effort at the top levels of the organization and the next management level sets the goals for itself and the goals are comfortable.
The recession can change the focus of the top management on the overall goal setting process. During the strong economic growth, the goal setting process is not important as the market growth makes the life of the company much easier. In the recession, the top management has to manage the whole goal setting process to make sure, the employees and management follow the strategic vision of the company.

The top management has to play an active role in the goal setting process and they have set the goals setting process as their priority for the beginning of the year. The top management has to discuss the goals of the company, they have to agree on the split of the goals among the members of the top management and the individual top managers have set goals properly for their managers. Additionally, they have to follow the setting process and they have to discuss the progress of the organization every week.

The HRM Function has to develop a new monitoring tool for the goal setting process as the top management can monitor the whole process and the good review of the goals can be done. It is not possible to check the goals per the individual employee and the monitoring tool should provide the possibility to see the goals per group of employees and to see the totals.

The HRM Function is not prepared for the monitoring of the goal setting process and monitoring the evaluation of the goals. The top management had no need to ask for the results and both top management and HRM Function have to co-operate on developing new goals setting process.

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The recession has a big advantage for the recruitment agency. It can offer really good job candidates to its clients as the people search for the new job. The recruitment agency does not have to invest a lot into the job market marketing as the people search for every potential job vacancy and they send their resumes to agencies just “to have a look in case of the suitable job vacancy.”

The starting recruitment agency can fully focus on its potential clients and it can study their needs. The clients are stressed in the recession and they have no many job vacancies, so it is the right moment to build a real business relationship and networking.

The building of the real business relationship can start with the transfer of the best practice among potential clients. They are usually open to discuss their own recruitment process and they usually like to share their best recruitment strategies. The HR Recruiters also need to adjust their own recruitment processes to the new job market conditions and it is the right moment for the new recruitment agency. The HR Recruiter tends to set new conditions and new processes with the new recruitment agency and it can be easily your own new recruitment agency.

The recruitment agencies are worried about the number of potential job vacancies delivered by their clients, but the recession does not mean, there are no job vacancies at the clients. The job vacancies still exists, but the number of job reduction increases. And the current employees have a different structure from the job vacancies.

You want to start your own recruitment agency – do it now. You believe you are better than the current competitors on the job market, you can prove it.

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As the management tries to hide the real status of the organization and the employees are worried to raise the questions, the organization can lose a lot of the creativity and the innovative effort of its own employees. The innovation has a big advantage, in a healthy organization it does not need an extra support from the management as the employees are innovative on their own. The organization does not have to invest any money and the employees do their own small improvements which can result in huge cost and time savings.

The management has to support the innovation in recession by the honest communication about the real situation in the organization. The management has to communicate main areas identified for the potential cost cuts and the employees can propose and implement many changes in a very limited period of time.

The honest communication can unblock the full potential of employees as they can see a clear goal of their innovation effort. They can help their own company to survive the recession and they can help the company to win the war with the competitors.

The organization with no communication about the recession has to invest a lot of money to support the employees to bring new ideas on the table. The employees can bring ideas, but they are not interested in their implementation as they do not understand the reasons to implement them and the management can be lost in many ideas proposed just for the cash.

The innovation cannot be driven by the compensation scheme, the innovation has to be driven by the attention of the management and the managerial support to employees to innovate their job every day.

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