A GUEST LECTURE ON

TECHNOLOGY
IMPACT ON HRM P.B.S. KUMAR
B.Sc.MA(PM),MA(Ind.Eco.),MBA(HR),BGL,DLL,PGDIRPM

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INTRODUCTION :

There are number of critical trends affecting the employment relationship that further affect how
organizations need to manage their employees. Some of these trends pertain to changes taking place
in the external environment of the organization, others pertain to some of the ways organizations are
responding internally to such trends. The term ‘Technology impact of HRM’ refers to the aggregate
of conditions, events and influences that surround and affect it.

External and Internal Factors influencing the Personnel Function

EXTERNAL FACTORS INTERNAL FACTORS

Technological factors
Mission

Economic challenges
Policies

Political Factors
Organisational culture

Social Factors
Organisation Structure

Local and Government issues
HR systems

Unions

Employers’ demands

Workforce diversity

The external environment consists of those factors which affect an organisation’s human resources
form outside the organization. Each of these external factors separately or in combination can
influence the HR function of any organization. The job of a HR Manager is to balance the demands
and expectations of the external groups with internal requirements and achieve the assigned goals in
an efficient and effective manner.

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES :

An organisation’s Technology is the process by which inputs from an organisation’s environment are
transformed into outputs. Technology includes tools, machinery, equipment, work procedures, and
employee knowledge and skills. In the present competitive world, technological breakthroughs can
dramatically influence and organisation’s service markets, suppliers, distributors, competitors,
customers, manufacturing processes, marketing practices and competitive position. Technological
advances can open up new markets, result in a proliferation of new and improved products, change
the relative cost position in an industry and render existing products and services obsolete.
Technological advancements can create new competitive advantages that are more powerful than
existing ones. Recent technological advances, as we all know, in computers, lasers, robots, satellite
networks, fibreoptics, biometrics, cloning and other related areas have paved the way for significant
operational improvements.

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IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON HRM

New skills required : As new technologies are developed and implemented, there is an
urgent need to upgrade existing employee skills and knowledge if the organization wants to
survive and flourish in a competitive world. Additionally there will be growing demand for
workers with more sophisticated training and skills especially in emerging ‘hot’ sectors like
telecommunications, hospitality, retailing, banking, insurance, biotechnology and financial
services. For example, services. For example, service sector employee require different
skills than those utilized in manufacturing. They need strong interpersonal and
communication skills as well as the ability to handle customer complaints in a flexible way.

Downsizing : New Technologies have decimated many lower end jobs with frustrating
regularity. Increased automation has reduced employee head counts everywhere. The
pressure to remain cost effective has also compelled many a firm to go lean, cutting down
extra fat at each managerial level. The wave of merger and acquisition activity, in recent
times has often left the new, combined companies to downsize operations ruthlessly. The
positions that have been filled up with workers possessing superior technical skills and
knowledge has also tilted the poser base ( in many emerging industries) from management
to technical workers. It is not uncommon today for managers to have limited understanding
of the technical aspects of their subordinates’ work. Managing the expectations of
knowledge workers is going be major area of concern for all HR Managers in the years
ahead.

Why ? Consequences? Managing Survivors of downsizing

 Automation.  Cuts payroll expenses  Bitterness, anger disbelief and shock
need to be handled properly
 Restructuring  Eliminates extra layers  Give information as to why the action had to
be taken.
 Mergers.  Improves functioning  Tell how it is going to help the firm
if firm’s product and and employees in the long run.
service profiles is good

 Acquisitions  Shocks those left out

 Competitive  Shattering impact on

Pressures employee motivation
and morale if not
managed properly

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Collaborative work : Technological change has resulted in hierarchical distinctions being
blurred and more collaborative teamwork where managers, technicians and analysts work
together on projects. Team based incentive plans have also made it necessary for all classes of
employees to work in close coordination with each other.

Telecommuting : The rapid advance in technology have led to the relocation of work from the
office to the home. Telecommuting has become the order of the day where employees work at
home, usually with computers and use phoned and the Internet to transmit letters, data and
completed work to the home office. Companies have been able to increase their applicant pool
through this mode and employees have also been able to live further away from cities and
gain considerably due to savings in rents, transportation etc.

Internet and intranet revolution: Internet and information technology have enabled
companies to become more competitive by cutting costs. Manufacturers, bank, retailers, and
you name anything have successfully harnessed computer technology to reduce their costs
and deliver want satisfying goods and services to customers at an amazing speed. Even in HR,
internets and intranets are being used to handle training, benefit administration, performance
management and out placement functions, in recent times. The cumulative impact of new
technology is so dramatic that at a broader level, organizations are changing the way they do
business. Use of the internet to transact business has become so commonplace for both large
and small companies that e-commerce is rapidly becoming the organizational challenge of the
new millennium. Managing virtual corporations and virtual workers in this technology driven
world is going to pose tough challenges for HR Managers in the years ahead.

Role of HR in a virtual organization : A virtual organization is network of companies or

employees connected by computers. Virtual workers work from home, hostel, their cars, or
wherever their work takes them. The human resources function plays a unique role in a virtual
organization :

i. Psychological fit : The lack of face-to-face interaction in virtual organization, virtually

compels HR professionals to determine the psychological fit between
different units initially.
ii. System alignment : Given the lack of physical proximity, it becomes even more
critical that the organization’s mission, vision and measures be
aligned and that all parties are familiar with these issues, the HR
function can play an important role in this task.
iii. Reconsider rewards: In a virtual unit. Very few permanent exit. In many cases, the
organization will be staffed with workers having different
motivational forces. So rewarding each entity in an effective
way becomes an important job.
iv. Reconsider staffing needs: In a virtual organization, most employees work on a
contractual basis. Finding people with requisite skills,
knowledge and motivation levels becomes an important
activity.

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 v. Build partnerships : Virtual, teams have to be built from scratch paying attention to
their unique requirements. The concept of employment needs to be
replaced by the concept of ‘partnership’ especially when most tend
to work independently away from the permanent employees or
owners of the organization.
vi. Develop leaders : Leaders become the major forces for building trust, creating a
mission and instilling a sense of belonging to the organisation HR
can play a major role in ensuring that leaders assume these
responsibilities and meet them in an effective away.

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM)

Until a few years ago, Indian industry was roundly criticized for paying insufficient attention to the
quality of goods and services. Today, things have com full circle and the quality movement is at a
feverish pitch. Companies such a BPL, Wipro, Carrier Aircon, Maruti, Thermax, Bata, Philips, Titan
etc, trumpet their steadfast devotion to quality in their advertisements. Quality has become the most
important word in the corporate lexicon and companies have realized the importance of investing in
process that contribute to better quality and customer relationships. The term ‘quality’ refers to a
sense of appreciation that something is better than something else. It means doing things right the
first time, rather than making and correcting mistakes. According to Edward Deming, TQM is a way
of creating an organizational culture committed to the continuous improvement of skills, teamwork,
processes, product and service quality and customer satisfaction. TQM is anchored to organizational
culture because successful TQM is deeply embedded in virtually every aspect of organizational life.

TQM : THE MAIN IDEAS

TQM is built around four main ideas; Do it right the first time, be customer centered, make
continuous improvement a way of life and build teamwork and empowerment. Let’s examine these in
detail :

A. Do it right the first time : Managers have been interested in the quality of their products, at
least as an afterthought, since the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to the sustained efforts of
quality gurus like Deming and Kaoru Ishikawa, product / service quality has become both a
forethought and a deriving force in effective organizations of all kinds now a days. Today’s
corporate agencies are as interested in improving product / services quality as are
manufacturing organizations. In its most basic form the emphasis on quality has come through
four distinct phases-from ‘fix it in’ to ‘inspect in’ to ‘build it in’ to ‘design it in’. Present day
managers are moving away from the first two approaches and towards the ‘build it in’ and
‘design it in’ approaches. Let’s look into the differences in these approaches;

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 • The ‘fix it in’ approach to quality : Rework any defective products identified by
quality inspectors at the end of the production process.

• The ‘inspect it in’ approach to quality : Here, quality inspectors sample work in
process and prescribe machine adjustments to avoid substandard output.
• The ‘build it in’ approach to quality : Make everyone who touches the product
responsible for spotting and correcting defects. Emphasis is on identifying and
eliminating causes of quality problems.
• The ‘design it in’ approach to quality : Intense customer and employee involvement
drives the entire design production cycle. Emphasis is on continuous improvement of
personnel, processes and product.

Each stage of this evolution has broadened the responsibility for quality, literally turning quality
improvement into a true team effort. Today’s quality leaders strive to exceed, not just meet, the
customer’s expectations. Putting quality first is the new slogan.

B. Be customer-centered : Organizations have to meet the expectations of both the internal and
external customers. Internal customers are other members of the organization who depend on
your work to get their job done. TQM demands all employees who deal directly with
outsiders to be customer – centered. Being customer – centered means ;

• Anticipating the customer’s needs;

• Listening to the customer;
• Learning how to satisfy the customer; and
• Responding appropriately to the customer;

C. Make continuous improvement a way of life : The Japanese word for continuous
improvement is Kaizen, which means improving the overall system by constantly improving
the little details. Kaizen practitioners look at quality as an endless journey, not a final
destination. In order to improve things, they experiment, measure, adjust continuously. There
are four ways of achieving improvements ;

• Improved and more consistent product and service quality.

• Faster cycle times (in cycles ranging from product development to order processing to
payroll processing).
• Lower costs and less waste (for example, eliminating needless steps, scrap rework and
non-value adding activities).

The TQM advocates emphasise the importance of achieving greater quality, speed and flexibility
at lower cost and waste.

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D. Build teamwork and empowerment : The TQM is built around employees their needs,
aspirations and expectations. It is employee – driven. It allows employees to exploit their full
potential. Empowerment takes place when employees are properly trained, provided with all
relevant information and the best possible tools, fully involved in key decisions and fairly
rewarded for results. In order to carry out work effectively and efficiently, teams have to be
created, drawing talent from various departments in a cooperative way.

TRADITIONAL AND TOTAL QUALITY HRM APPROACHES

HR – Manager can facilitate the introduction and implementation of TQM in several ways :

 identify uses of TQM techniques.

 Develop communication systems for introducing TQM and improve quality awareness.
 Select and train people carefully so that they possess requisite skills for implementing
TQM.
 Match appraisals to TQM philosophy.
 Institute reward schemes for scaling new heights through TQM.
 Carry out employee attitude and organizational climate surveys that highlight weak spots
point attention toward rectification efforts.
 Conduct quality and ethics audits.
 Benchmark TQM applications with the best players in competing units and find ways to get
ahead continually.
 Treat TQM as a systematic and continuous way of doing business.
 Top management must adopt the principles and language of quality, follow the processes,
set examples and guide others.

In the Total Quality HRM approach, all employees participate in the quality improvement
processes diligently and wholeheartedly. There is always a conscious effort to find employees’
requirements to design benefits and rewards. Company’s employees are treated as customers. 360
– degree appraisals are used before picking up best performing teams whereby each employee is
assessed by himself, his superiors and his peers as well as his juniors. Decisions based on facts
are encouraged. Importance is given to continuous improvement through ‘small ideas’ advanced
by people working at, various levels. Cooperation among all employees is encouraged.
Suggestions are welcome from all quarters. Total Quality HRM is all about caring for people
sincerely. “To get people to care about quality, you have to care about them”.

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BENCHMARKING

Benchmarking is the first requirement of effective TQM. It is comparatively new to Indian

companies. The essence of benchmarking is the striving to be the best of the best in one’s area of
operations (dontootsu). It is a continuous process of measuring products, services and practices
against the toughest competitors or industry leaders with the aim of mutual improvement.

• Benchmarking is a continuous process. It is not a one-shot deal because industry

practices change constantly. Complacency may be suicidal.
• Benchmarking implies measurement of the gap between the practices of two
companies so as to uncover significant differences.
• Benchmarking can be applied to products, services, practices, processes and
methods.

The Benchmarking process involves twelve steps ; identifying Benchmarking candidates,

identifying best competitor, collecting data, finding the gap, projecting the future performance,
communicating Benchmark findings, establishing functional goals, developing action plans,
implementing plans, recalibrating Benchmarks, and integrating into processes, and attaining
leadership position.

REENGINEERING

The primary focus of TQM is on continuous improvement or ongoing incremental change. There is
a constant search for achieving in a better way. However, many organizations operate in a dynamic
environment characterized by rapid and constant change. The problem with continuous process
improvements is that it may create a false sense of security. Managers may begin to think that what
they are doing is positive. This may be true in a majority of cases. But where an organization
requires a drastic, quantum change in order to survive in a fiercely competitive market, managers
have to search for solutions elsewhere. The term reengineering referring to radical, quantum change
in an organization. According to Michael Hammer and James Champy, reengineering involves
significant reassessment of what a particular organization is all about. They urge managers to ask a
very fundamental question about what they do: “if I were recreating this company today, given
what I know and given current technology, what would it look like ?” In other words, managers
should imagine that they are starting with a clean piece of paper”.

HR ROLE IN REENGINEERING PROCESSES

Reengineering it must be remembered would yield fruitful results only when the company tunes its
HR practices in line with its radically transformed business process. HR can contribute to
reengineering processes by its effect on building commitment to reengineering, team building,
changing the nature of work, and empowering jobs.

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HR can plan a great role improving commitment of employees by hiring competent people, offering
the right incentives and installing effective two way communication practices. HR can hire people
who can work in process – oriented teams sharing their skills and expertise freely. It can also offer
additional training to employees so as to improve their ‘team-related’ skills and make them capable
of handling multiple, cross functional, enriched tasks in a competent way.

FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

The term ‘Flexible Manufacturing’ refers to the ability of computerized machine to perform a
variety of programmed functions. The implications of flexible manufacturing are fairly obvious.
Employees require more training and higher skills. Since there are fewer employees, each one has
to be able to do a greater variety of tasks. Additionally, they are supposed to keep away from
interdepartmental competition, conflict and politics and get along with other members as
teammates. Cross functional team work is essential in factories of the future where, for example,
engineers may have to design products by working hand in hand with market research and
manufacturing specialists.

The impact of technology on the HR function, thus, is quite profound. Hazardous and risky jobs
could be turned over to robots increasingly in the days ahead. Repetitive jobs could also be handed
over to sophisticated robots. As organizations turn to computerization and full scale automation, the
demand for people with multi-skill will grow. One negative impact of technology would be the
growing worker paying factory work for skilled and unskilled categories may become scarce as
organizations begin to use lighter, faster, stronger and more intelligent robots in the years ahead.

ECONOMIC CHALLENGES

Nowadays the world is shrinking in all major respects. People, goods, capital and information are
moving around the globe as never before. Companies are trying to become global players just to
survive, let alone prosper. They have also been sending key management members to attend global
seminars, workshops, training sessions regularly. India has become a sourcing centre for many
global giants are utilizing the services of skilled labour here in order to create distinct cost
advantages for their products. Agility pays rich dividends and HR managers have an important role
in creating a favourable work climate to initiate and implement changes quickly. Falling sales and
high labour costs stared at Volkswagen, Germany, in early 90s. Massive layoffs were expected. To
avoid this, the company introduced 4 days week, the labour hours per day were enhanced, the base
pay was cut. This ultimately prevented laying off nearly one-third of its workforce. At this juncture
HR managers have an important role to play here – weather reducing hours of work, laying off
workers, making unions and workers agree for a wage cut etc. To remain competitive, most HR
managers nowadays anticipate such cyclical chages in advance and initiate proactive steps that are
less painful. In the long run, how effectively a company uses it human resources can have a
dramatic impact on its ability to compete or survive in an increasingly competitive environment.

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 What HR Manager can do ?
• Use workforce skills and abilities in order to exploit environmental opportunities and
neutralize threats.
• Employ innovative reward plans that recognize employee contributions and grant
enhancements.
• Indulge in continuous quality improvement through TQM and HR contributions (training,
development, counseling coaching etc.)
• Utilise people with distinctive capabilities to create unsurpassed competence in an area.
• Decentralize operations and rely on self managed teams to deliver goods in difficult times.
• Lay off workers in a smooth way, explaining facts to unions, workers and other affected
groups. HR generally plays a key role, these days in planning and implementing corporate
downsizings, and then in maintaining the morale of the remaining employees.
• Another challenge is to faced by the HR professionals during this time is political factors,
social factors, local and Governmental factors and unions.



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TEST YOUR UNDERSTANDING :

Name of the Institution:_______________________________________________________

Name of the Student / Employee / Trainer :________________________________________

(Male / Female)

A. Multiple Choice Questions – Select  the most appropriate one

1. In the final analysis, every society’s wealth and well being is dependent on
 Organisations
 Size of population
 Luck
 Trade policy
 National resources

2. The common feature in every organization is :

 People
 A formal hierarchy
 Offices
 A bureaucratic set up
 High salaries for top personnel.

3. Human Resource departments are :

 Line departments
 Authority departments
 Service departments
 Functional departments
 Highly redundant departments

4. Which of the following is not an environmental challenge facing human resources :

 Competition for scarce inputs
 Governmental rules and regulations
 Global competition
 Changing workers
 Environmental activities.

5. Which of the following is not a step that the HR department should follow to deal
with environmental challenges ? :
 Take proactive measures
 Evaluate potential costs and benefits.
 Obtain and examine feedback.
 Stay informed
 Proceed carefully until the impact is clear.

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6. Human Resource professionals :
 Should follow a business – like approach
 Realize that line managers share their point of view
 Insist on the primacy of HR policies
 Try to get more authority over line managers
 Should concentrate on developing expertise in the filed of HRM

7. During a recession, organizations should not :

 Lay off workers immediately
 Consult the HR department.
 Consider cutting wages.
 Cut managerial perquisites
 Change their strategy and lose sight of their objectives.

8. Managers do not apply for international assignments for all but the following reason :
 Career concerns and interests
 Cultural considerations
 Family issues
 Glamour
 Opportunities to go to less developed countries.

9. Senior positions in foreign branches are generally filled up by :

 Failures from headquarters
 Expatriates
 Those with the best technical ability
 Foreign nationals
 Local with political clout

10. Which area of the HR function is least affected by internationalization ? :

 Compensation
 Hiring
 Training
 Succession planning
 Equal employment opportunities

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B. Activity Exercise (If the space is insufficient please attach some more papers)

Identify and discuss the significant trends related to technology and diversity that impact
on organistion in the (a) FMCG business (b) Telecommunications and (c0 Information
technology field. What challenges do these trends represent ? What initiatives have been
established so far to meet these challenges ?

ANS:

KEY FOR OBJECTIVE QUESTIONS (The Lecturer should keep this

confidentially)

A. Multiple Choice Questions

1-a, 2.a, 3. c, 4.a, 5. e, 6. a, 7. a, 8.d, 9. b, 10.e

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