Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual advances in the workplace (2002). Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when:
- Submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment
- Submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual
- Such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating hostile, or offensive working environment ( 1999).
Quid pro quo Harassment
In this case, the harasser offers to exchange something of value for sexual favors. For example, a male supervisor might tell or imply to a female direct report that he will recommend her for promotion or provide her with salary increase in exchange for sexual favors (2002).
Hostile Work Environment
This is a more subtle type of sexual harassment that creates a hostile work environment. Foe example, a group of male employees who continually make off-color jokes and vulgar comments and perhaps decorate the work environment with inappropriate photographs may create a hostile work environment for a female colleague to the point where she is uncomfortable working in that job setting (2002).
Proving Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
1. Quid pro Quo
Protected Group – This element is easy to establish, requiring the claimant to do no more than simply stipulate her gender ( 1999).
Unwelcome Sexual Conduct – this element requires a showing that sexual consideration is being extorted in return of tangible job benefits, such as a promotion, a raise, or retention of employment (1999).
Employment Conditions affected by Victim’s Response – a claimant suing for quid pro quo sexual harassment must show that tangible job detriment or economic harm has been suffered as a result of her reaction to the sexual conduct to which she as subjected. Thus, terms or conditions of employment must have become affected. For example, she may have been fired, passed over for a well deserved promotion, denied a raise, demoted, or had a position eliminated because of her rejection of sexual advances (1999).
2. Hostile-Environment
Unwelcome Sexual Conduct – the sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that causes a hostile environment must be unwelcome. Factors that help establish unwelcomeness include outright rejection of sexual behavior or subsequent notification of unwelcomeness once a previously consensual relationship sours. The complainant’s conduct as relevant in determining unwelcomeness, including the complainant’s sexually provocative speech or dress and her objective, as opposed to subjective, reaction to the harassment (A1999).
Conduct must affect employment conditions – The unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature must have the purpose or effect of unreasonably affecting the victim’s job performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. It is a requirement to prove that the harassment is sufficiently severe or pervasive as to alter the victim’s conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment (Achampong, 1999).
The HR Scorecard
The HR scorecard is a measurement as well as an evaluation system for redefining the role of HR as a strategic partner. It is based on the Balanced Scorecard framework developed by Kaplan and Norton and is set to revolutionize the way business perceives HR ( 2003).
Balanced Scorecard and Balanced Performance Measurement
The Balanced scorecard helps leaders define the mission, vision, goals, and metrics for a company in key areas such as financial, customer, learning, and business process. In terms of change management, the balanced scorecard provides a sequential approach to developing and implementing company strategies so that stakeholders understand what the company is trying to achieve and how it will be measured. By developing targets at the leadership level, involving managers in the metrics, communicating the scorecard through team and individual performance management and using the resulting feedback, an organization develops cohesive direction that provides competitive advantage ( 2002). The balanced scorecard gives emphasis on the importance of measuring business performance form the perspective of strategic implementation rather than relying solely on financial results. There is a tendency for organizations to pay more attention on the financial dimensions of performance rather than the driving forces behind those results. Financial measures are lagging indicators. They are designed to repair past results. Performance drivers on the other hand are within the control of the management in the present. By specifying the important process measures, assessing them, and communicating the firm’s performance based on these criteria to the employees, the managers can guarantee that the whole participates actively in the strategy implementation process (2003).
7 Steps Creating a Strategy Oriented HR System
1. Defining Business Strategy – The focus should be given on the implementation strategy. It is important that the HR managers state the organization goals in such a way that the employees understand what exactly their role in the organization is and thus the organization knows how to measure success in achieving these goals ( 2003).
2. Building a case for HR as a Strategic Asset – Once a firm clarifies its strategies, HR professionals need to build a clear case for the strategic role of HR. The HR professionals must be able to explain how and why HR can support the strategy. It is important to look at as much of case histories and internal as well as external research while going through this stage (2003).
3. Creating a Strategy Map – The firm must have a clear understanding of its value chain. The value chain is the multifaceted collective set of interactions and combinatorial effects that create the customer value in products and service of the firm. It is necessary that the organization’s performance management system account for each of the links and dependencies in the value chain. Creating a strategy map should involve managers from all over the organization. The broad participation is required to improve the quality of the strategy map (2003).
4. Identifying HR deliverables within the Strategy Map – It is the responsibility of the HR personnel to identify deliverables including performance drivers as well as HR enablers in the strategy map of the firm. It is important to identify the HR deliverables that support the firm-level performance drivers on the strategy map. The focus should be on the kind of strategic behaviors that depend on competencies, rewards and work organization (2003).
5. Aligning the HR architecture with the HR deliverables – This step enhances the value creation aspect of the firm by aligning the HR system with the firm’s larger strategy implementation system. For this, internal alignment and external alignment are important. Internal alignment refers to the aligning of components within the HR system. External alignment refers to the alignment of the HR system with the other elements in the firm’s value creation process (2003).
6. Designing the Strategic HR measurement system – This step requires a new, modern perspective on measuring HR performance. It also requires HR to resolve several new technical issues that it might not be familiar with. To accurately measure the HR-firm performance relationship, it is imperative that the firm develops valid measures of HR deliverables. This task has two dimensions. Firstly, HR has to be confident that they have chosen the correct HR deliverables. This requires that HR have a clear understanding of the causality in the value chain for effective strategy implementation. Secondly, HR must choose the correct measures for those deliverables (2003).
7. Implementing the strategy by using the Measures – This step is about the use of the HR scorecard. The HR scorecard not only helps the firm measure HR’s impact on firm performance, but also helps HR professionals have new insights into what steps must be taken to maintain HR as a strategic asset. It helps the HR professionals to dig deeper into the causes of success and failure and helps them promote the former and avoid the latter (2003).
Career Development Process
Career development is an organized, planned effort comprised of structured activities or processes that result in a mutual career plotting effort between employees and the organization. Within this system, the employee is responsible for career planning and the organization is responsible for career management (1998). Career development is an ongoing, formalized effort by an organization that focuses on developing and enriching the organization’s human resources in light of both the employees’ and organization’s needs.
The Organization/Employer’s Role in Career Development
The organization has primary responsibility for instigating and ensuring that career development takes place. Specifically, the organization’s responsibilities are to develop and communicate career options within the organization to the employee. The organization must carefully advise an employee concerning possible career paths to achieve that employee’s career goal. The organization must supply information about its mission, policies, and plans and provide support for self-assessment, training, and development. Significant career growth can occur when individual initiative combines with organizational opportunity (2002).
The Manager’s Role
Although not expected to be a professional counselor, the manager can and should play a role in facilitating the development of a direct report’s career. First, and foremost, the manager should serve as a medium and sounding board. Managers should encourage employees to take responsibility for their own careers, offering continuing assistance in the form of feedback on individual performance and making information available about the organization, about the job, and about career opportunities that might be of interest. The manager should show an employee how to go about the process and then help the employee evaluate the conclusions (2002).
The Employee’s Role
In today’s dynamic work environment, individuals are increasingly responsible for initiating and managing their own career planning. Career planning is not something one individual can do for another; it has to come from the individual. Career planning requires a conscious effort on the part of the employee. Each employee must identify his or her own knowledge, skills, abilities, interests, and values and seek out information about career options in order to set goals and develop career plans. Before employees can engage in meaningful career planning, they must not only have an awareness of the organization’s philosophy but they must also have a good understanding of the organization’s more immediate goals (2002).
Job Evaluation Methods
Job Ranking
Job ranking, the simplest and oldest way to evaluate jobs, is used primarily in small organizations. In this method the raters simply rank the various jobs examined. No attempt is made to determine the critical factors in each job. Instead, an overall judgment is made of the relative worth of each job, and the job is ranked accordingly. Job ranking can be done by a single individual knowledgeable about all jobs or by a committee composed of management and employee representatives. The ranking method is simple, inexpensive, fast, and easy to understand. However, it is non-quantitative and rather subjective, for although jobs are compared with each other, there is no precise set of job-related factors used in this comparison (2002).
Job Classification
The job classification method is a non-quantitative job evaluation technique that compares the whole job with a predetermined standard. In this approach, jobs are assigned to predefined grades or classes. These descriptions of each grade feature degrees of job responsibility, skill and education required, and the like. Job descriptions for other jobs in the organization are then examined, and those jobs are classified into grades or levels that seem most appropriate. This method requires a decision at the outset on the number of pay grades, to be included in the wage and salary plan. While this system has the advantage of simplicity, it is less precise than the point and factor comparison methods (2002).
Point Method
The point-factor method breaks the job into components and evaluates each of these job elements against specially constructed scales. A quantitative approach, the point method is rather complex to design but relatively simple to understand and administer once it is in place. It is the most widely used method of job evaluation. The principal advantage of the point method is that it provides a more refined basis for making judgments than either the ranking or classification methods and thereby can produce results that are more valid and less easy to manipulate (2002).
Factor Comparison Method
The factor comparison method, like the point method, permits the job evaluation process to be accompanied on a factor-by-factor basis. It differs from the point, however, in that the compensable factors of the jobs to be evaluated are compared against the compensable factors of key jobs within the organization that serve as the job evaluation scale. Key jobs can be defined as those jobs that are important for wage-setting purposes and are widely known in the labor market. Key jobs are evaluated against five compensable factors – skill, mental effort, physical effort, responsibility, and working conditions – resulting in a rank of the different factors for each key job. Normally a committee is selected to rank the criteria across key jobs (2002).
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