Human Resources and High Performance Work System (HPWS)

03 Mar Human Resources and High Performance Work System (HPWS)

Human resources (HR) are the most valuable assets of an organisation. No organisation can exist and grow without appropriate HR capabilities and competence. In the past few years, most of the organisations have adopted the HR practices such as recruitment and selection, training and development to encourage, motivate and boost employees’ morale to achieve the organisational objectives (Huselid, 1995). Globalisation, privatisation/deregulation, competition and technological advancement have resulted in dramatic change in HR practices. These environmental changes have forced the organisations to adopt HPWS (Gurbuz, 2009). HPWS comprises bundle of HR practices like ability enhancing practices (training and skill development), motivation enhancing practices (high pay, career development and information sharing) and opportunity enhancing practices (employee involvement and teamwork) (Appelbaum, Bailey, Berg, & Kalleberg, 2000), which helps in providing sustainable competitive advantage to the organisation (Pereira, Fontinha, Budhwar, & Arora, 2018). HPWS focuses on productivity and efficiency that leads to higher job demands, which in turn, enhances job strain (Gulzar, Moon, Attiq, & Azam, 2014; Ramsay, Scholarios, & Harley, 2000). In order to reduce the negative effects of HPWS like burnout, ITL, and anxiety, management motivate employees by developing their knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs), as well as empower them through delegation of authority/job control (Combs, Liu, Hall, & Ketchen, 2006). In addition to this, training provided to the employees enhance their capabilities and power to perform particular work at a particular time, which reduces the work conflict, fatigue, and mental pressure (Jyoti, Rani, & Gandotra, 2015). In this context, mentoring plays a significant role in reducing the negative outcomes as well as increasing the positive outcomes of HPWS. The benefits of mentoring are not only work-related, mentoring can provide individuals with opportunities to enhance cultural awareness, aesthetic appreciation and the potential to lead meaningful lives. Mentoring helps the organisation to see their employees more personally and obtain knowledge about their personal and work-related needs (Christa, 2011).

It has been empirically established that HPWS results into better performance and considered as a vital contributor to organisational success (Batt, 2002; Huselid, 1995).

Reference

• Huselid, M. A. (1995). The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity, and corporate financial performance. Academy of Management Journal, 38(3), 635–672.
• Gulzar, S., Moon, M. A., Attiq, S., & Azam, R. I. (2014). The darker side of high performance work systems: Examining employee psychological outcomes and counterproductive work behaviour. Pakistan Journal of Commerce and Social Sciences, 8(3), 715–732.
• Gurbuz, S. (2009). The effect of high performance HR practices on employees’ job satisfaction. Journal of the School of Business Administration, 38(2), 110–123.
• Appelbaum, E., Bailey, T., Berg, P., & Kalleberg, A. L. (2000). Manufacturing advantage: Why high-performance work systems pay off. Ithaca: ILR Press.
• Pereira, V. E., Fontinha, R., Budhwar, P., & Arora, B. (2018). Human resource management and performance at the Indian railways. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 31(1), 47–61.