Free Custom «Maintenance and Development» Essay Paper

In many organizations, the use of information technology for maintenance and development purposes is not well implemented. Unlike in the recruitment sector, technology use in this sector is immature. This can be associated with high level of ignorance among employees and also lack of sufficient training to handle newly developed technologies (Othman & Teh 2003 p56). Information technology offers the best means to maintain and develop human resource. This function is essential to the existence of an effective human resource team in the organisation. Development of human resource is achieved through training of employees among other means. Use of technology enables the management team in speedy and efficient training. The teaching tools make use of information technologies such as distance learning, e-learning among others. It becomes easier to train a big number of employees spread over many places. Maintaining human resource involves the organisation in keeping inventories on workers turnover and absenteeism, performance assessment.

Planning and Control

The number of activities falling under control and planning is considerably large compared to other sectors of human resource management. This calls for frequent data recordings and documentation.  Furthermore, most of the activities carried out in this sector are harmonized in terms of volume of its production and the quality. For an effective planning and control, sufficient report has to be filed and thoroughly analysed (Walker, 1982, p365).  Almost all activities falling under this category require standardization and the only effective means to achieve this aim is through use of computers. Private organisations make use of information technology in maintaining employees’ files, and expertise inventory duties.  Computers are used to maintain classified information in well documented   files.

Opportunities

As a result of extensive use of information technologies in human resource management, and advancement in e-HR, organization has grown to be more competitive by reducing their costs and increasing productivity. It has also made it possible to improve both the quality of products and services. Profit margins have also tremendously increased. Modern organisations are taking recommendable steps for the execution of information technology application in the human resource management sector. This paves way for the employees to make their finest contribution to the achievement of a completive benefit.

The use of technology in the organization has led to generation of new products and services. The technology behind production of any good or service requires an expert mind to run (Shrivatsava & Shaw. 2003 p.221). This has promoted employment of many techno-savvy personnel. The organizations invest in the new skill required as it opens up to new employment opportunities of the technicians. The new products and services require salesmen to market it to the public. This is a second employment opportunity to other group of people.  The use of technology increases the quality and quantity of production, resukting to a rise in demand. Increase in demand calls for more distribution channels to the customers, and this must require more employees in distribution channel. The new technology does not always perform according to the claim of their manufacturers. They are faced with technical limitations and in order to efficiently run these systems maintenance technicians are needed. These experts will be required to work alongside the usual employees who run the system.  The adoption of new technology involves risk. Some risks are so enormous that the organization cannot contain them by their own. This will call for the involvement of insurance companies.  When many organizations make of technology in their human resource sector, there will be high demand of insurance services and the insurance companies will have to employ more workers.

Challenges of Information Technology on Human Resource Management

Information technology has not only affected its specialists but also those employees that make use of the technology for their work on habitual basis. Managers need to keep themselves informed of these challenges, try to detect them in advance and find means of containing them in advance (Szewczak & Khlsrowpour, 1996 p432). One of the major challenges is the issue of employee-motivation. The first duty of a human resource manager is to encourage their employees. Mangers should awaken the organization needs in employees and guide them in achieving these needs so as to achieve organization goals. However, if the basic concept does not change, the changes will surely occur in the employee’s principles, and as a result of that they will shift their attention to satisfaction of their needs. Research was conducted on some of the organizations that make extensive use of information technology to a level of allowing their employees to work from home, and it was found that the employees who work from home enjoy high job satisfaction than those who work from defined premises.  However it was found that employees who work from home tend to identify themselves much lesser with the organizations values and goals compared to those who work from the offices. In addition, it is very hard to efficiently enumerate, compute and analyze intellectual work of employees who work from home. These are crucial challenges.

Employee- control is an important human resource managerial tool. The new technology will enhance individualization of workers that will give rise to an increased level of autonomy in their duties. Incessant control will de-motivate them. When employees are distributed over a wide range of countries or even different continents it becomes impossible for the management to exercise objective control over them. It becomes difficult to monitor employee’s activities. In some cases, employees waste a lot of time in matters that don’t involve achievement of organization goals. A good example is when a teleworker spends a lot of time in internet enjoying social sites. This wastes of organization resources. Another challenge is in information management and exploitation of knowledge. Some of the information within the organization are highly classified and securely kept from outsiders. The techno- savvy people might hack into the organization information system and access the confidential files. These people might blackmail the organization or even deliver the information to other competitors in the industry. This is major threat and a challenge to the organization. Use of technology can also lead to sabotage of organizations strategic plans where employees secretly share information with competitors by use of internet.

Some of the employees in an organization choose to remain ignorant to the new technology. These individuals are slow in learning and even after extensive training; they are still not able to perform to keep pace with the new technology. This becomes a major challenge to the organizations. The use of information technology in an organization automates many functions that were initially conducted manually. This will lead to reduction in number of employee. Retrenchment of labour might raise alarm for the workers union. The organization might be forced to retain employees that have been made malfunctioned automation. Extensive application of information technology might increase work complexity, the size of sub-problems might also increase. These systems also create a routine which to some extent might turn out to be deadly monotonous. The management should be aware of these challenges and find effective means before they create rigidities within the organization.

Conclusions

Information technology has largely transformed the life and usual business of man. Use of information technology has lead to in exponential development in human resource management. There are new trends that come to existence each an everyday and it is the sole responsibility of management to be aware of these trends and properly understand them. Use of information technology in human resource has a lot of potential advantage which no organization should afford to lose. Adaptation of this technology offers a whole range of capabilities for better performance and structuring human resource management. Organizations have no option but to embrace the coming changes as a result of information technology. The human resource management should also be aware of many challenges that come with technology and find ways to overcome it. In summary, information technology has made a great impact in human resource management