【原创首发】The Development of Human Resource Management In China

30090101

Introduction
With the advent of the 21st century, Human Resource Management, as a relatively new management subject, is playing a more and more important role in today’s business activities. This report mainly discusses 3 questions about today’s human resource management. The first section discusses the changing function of human resource management in terms of 3 aspects which are staff-company relations, HR model development and HR strategies. The second section describes the exploring stage of HRM in China. System building, recruitment and motivation are the three aspects to support the opinion. The third section discusses the new challenges that HR managers in China may face. In this part, challenges from the changing business age, HR managers’ abilities to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity and solitary to collective activity are discussed.

Question 1
Human resource management, as the quickly developing subject, without doubt, has changed a lot in its function in many fields. This section will mainly discuss the HRM’s change and expansion in the aspect of staff-company relations, HR model development and HR strategies as the following.

In the aspect of the staff-company relations, the changing functions will be discussed from 3 aspects which are power factors, employees and motivational method. First, in terms of the power factors, 10 years ago the relationship between employees and the company was regarded as ‘Labor and Enterprise’ while nowadays more companies show understanding and respect for the human spirit. For example, Google China places a piano in the hall of the company and even set a kitchen and the washing machine for their employees (Jim Westcott, 2005). Second, in terms of the employees, employees are considered as thinking and rational beings around 10 years ago. The reason why they chose this company was the satisfactory salary. But today, staffs are considered as fully evolved, completely satisfied, mature human beings. Third, in the motivational methods aspect, the change is really huge. A decade ago, companies often drove employees through basic needs such as a big bonus. While the role seems to highlight people’s social and intellectual needs.

In the aspect of HR model development, some human resource management functions have expanded during the past decade. One of the new products of human resource management is the HR outsourcing which support the core HR activities and business processes associated with HR administration. Outsourcing HR functions or processes is a viable decision for businesses, particularly those whose internal HR department has reached the limit of its effectiveness; businesses that want to access new programs or services (but don't want to incur the required investment), or those that want to focus on core competencies. The advantage of HR outsourcing is obvious: Obtaining access to (internally) unavailable expertise, skills, technologies; increased flexibility; reducing costs/reduce investment. This way has achieved great success in some countries, for example, Canada. Spending on HR outsourcing in Canada, is forecast to increase by more than 13%, on average, every year between 2005 and 2009 (Jim Westcott, 2005).

The majority of HR strategies have been developed over the last decade. Twenty per cent of respondents indicate that an HR strategy has been in place at their institution for less than three years, 60% report that the HR strategy was developed in the past three to seven years and 20% indicate that the strategy is ten or more years old. These data reinforce the notion that HR management has taken on a much more strategic role within the past decade. The HR strategy in recruitment and retention can be discussed in long-term goals as well as shorter-term operational procedures. In terms of recruitment and retention some institutions are primarily concerned with short-term objectives. For example, one Canadian respondent stated that their HR strategy involves ‘an annual recruitment and retention plan that governs academic staff hiring and retention for the following academic year’ (Ronold G Ehrenbdeg, 2005). Other responses highlight long-term objectives and broader issues relating to staff development and performance as well as policy and strategic planning for future institutional growth. For example, one Australian institution states that their HR strategy is concerned with ‘workforce planning, age profiling, attraction and retention issues, and reengineering the recruitment process’. The general focus of this strategy is on strategic planning for successive generations.



Question 2
With China's entering the WTO, modern enterprise management concept has been gradually accepted by Chinese enterprises and, human resources management has been developed and promoted in the majority of enterprises. However, as a management skill that gets access to China less than 30 years and faced with the cultural conflict, HRM in China still stays in the exploring stage.

In the aspect of system building, human resources management system in China is imperfect still. According to the recent report of HR in China, less than forty percent of the enterprises have established the business development strategy combining with human resources management system. Furthermore, only 12.9% of them can really implement this strategy. What is more, employees’ career development planning, staff representation system, and the staff Rationalized suggestion are the 3 strategies that are not completed enough. Only 9% of the researched enterprises establish and implement the employees’ career development planning (Zhao Yin, 2007).

In terms of the recruitment, the forms of recruitment in Chinese enterprises are not diversified enough. Although the modern enterprises can recruit through more and more channels such as networks, an executive search firm, job fairs, campus recruitment, advertising media and so many ways that can provide companies with human resources information, the majority of the companies still choose form as job fairs. However, according to the ‘2007 Human Resource Report’, the percentage of the surveyed companies which have been tried to recruit through network was 35%, which was 12% higher than that of the year 2006. Secondly, the technologies during the recruitment that the companies use are still in a growing stage. Only half of the enterprises plan to use professional test tool to find suitable staff. Ways like knowledge test, psychological test and presentation are introduced in China recently and are welcomed.

The motivation in China is at a developing stage. Most Chinese companies have motivation strategies. Quite a few of them prefer to choose short-term and direct motivating strategies like paying. At present, China has 70% of the enterprises in accordance with different types of personnel to set different pay scales (Zhao Yin, 2007). Paying is a common kind of economic motivation. Paying incentives for executives directly show in their steady growth of income - wages, which is very intuitive. However, with the raise of executives’ social status and overall ability, material and money are no longer the key point of motivation. Research from China Database, one of the most authority databases, show that 19.6% of the surveyed enterprises use virtual equity of the company as the long-term motivation methods and 18.9% of them use the form of giving share options as the long-term motivation, while 78.2% of the enterprises have not implemented the long-term motivation. As one of the ways to motivate staff, long-term also includes creating a platform for employees which may attract employees since they can exert their abilities fully.

Question 3
As the functions of human resource have changed since the 21st century, challenges are coming to the human resource managers in China. For China is still in the exploring stage mentioned in question 2, the challenges should be more than those in developed human resource management countries. In the information era, the economic era and the knowledge, the challenges for Chinese HRM managers are mainly from these three fields.

The first challenges for HRM is the changing role of organizations from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Work performed in factories by machines is being replaced by work in offices or at computer terminals. And instead of working with things, people increasingly work with ideas and concepts. Information and knowledge have replaced manufacturing as the source of most new jobs. Thus, taking charge of thousands of workers in a factory is not the typical functions of modern human resource managers. Although the numbers of employees may decrease, but the extent of difficulty will not decrease since employees are more knowledgeable and informative.  

Like the popular saying nowadays ’The only thing that doesn’t change is change’, with the development of the technologies, tools that human being use speed up the pace of people’s life. Thus the second challenge which may face the human resource manager is the abilities to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity. Static, permanent organizations designed for a stable and predictable world are giving way to flexible, adaptive organizations more suited for a new world of change and transformation. Emphasis on permanence, tradition and the past is giving way to creativity and innovation in the search for new solutions, new processes, and new products and services. Maintaining the status is less important than a vision of the future and the organization's destiny. We are used to dealing with certainty and predictability. We need to become accustomed to dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity.

The next challenges will be the ability of HR managers to adapt from muscular to mental work (Alexandria, 1997). Repetitive physical labor that doesn't add value is increasingly being replaced by mental creativity. Routine and monotony are giving way to innovation and a break with tradition. In the past, people were considered to be merely workers, an old concept that associated people with things. Now people are considered purveyors of activities and knowledge whose most important contributions are their intelligence and individual talents. We are used to dealing with physical, repetitive manual labor; we need to become accustomed to dealing with mental, creative, and innovative work.

What is more, another problem that may challenge HR managers in China is to organize employee to finish projects from solitary to collective activity (FangCai, 2005). With the rising difficulty of complex and technology, it is almost impossible for only one person to finish a project. Thus teamwork is supplanting individual activity. The old emphasis on individual efficiency (on which the total efficiency of the organization depended) is being replaced by group synergy. It's a matter of multiplying efforts, rather than simply adding them. We are used to individualized, isolated work; we need to change to high-performance teamwork. Thus the function of human resource managers is to offer the company the suitable person and coordinate the relationship among the team, especially in China, a country that highlights relationship and harmony very much.

Conclusion
This article first analyses the changed functions of human resource management nowadays. In terms of the staff-company relations, a trend of closer and humane relationship between staff and companies emerges. The model of HR outsourcing is showing its strong competitiveness and may become one of the main way that HR management to use. Secondly, this article states that China today still stays in the exploring stage of human resource management. The uncompleted HRM system building, the single form of recruitment, the growing interview technologies and the lack of long- term motivation in Chinese enterprises, all these facts shows that China has a long way to go in the development of HRM. Thirdly, Challenges for HRM managers in China are tough and numerous. Changes from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, stability to change, muscular to mental work lead the challenges for Chinese HRM managers. To sum up, it is a long way to go for the development of human resource management in China.