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Creating Quality through Culture:Role of Human Resource Management

in a UniversityWaqar Akbar Khan

M.Phil. (Human Resource Management) 1st Semester, PIQC Institute of Quality, Lahore.

In the present era, the importance of the Human Resources Management (HRM) in the success of any university cannot be overstated. As a liaison between the individual employee and the institute as a whole, Human Resources practitioners are relied upon by different stakeholders like admin personals, faculty members and students as well. The importance of HRM can be realized from the Oregon State University (OSU), a public research university located the United States, which has over 70 human resource professionals serving OSU campus community.

The HR department in universities can focus on providing quality human resource services that allows faculty and staff to achieve their potential and reduce obstacles to full engagement and a greater sense of job satisfaction.

As HR professionals must recognize that we are living in a complex environment; however, HR professionals should strive to reduce that complexity in their services and increase quality oriented service to allow all employees to focus on most important resource of any university and country - their students. (David M. Blake, PhD, SPHR)

Presently, many universities are applying a proactive and strategic HR tools to gain a competitive advantage. Such practices are more common in Private Universities but most public sector university are neglecting the importance of HR department in universities, considering Pakistan. Universities can no longer simply use traditional administration methods and academic procedures to deal with quality oriented demands of the students and parents. In universities, operational efficiencies require long term strategic and sustainable human resource approaches.

There is a good deal of evidence that, as technological transfer becomes increasingly rapid, the source of competitive advantage for many institutes now lies within their human resource of the institute as universities are hubs of research initiatives and can provide development oriented results by adjusting with the latest technology and technological developments. However, the issue of how to sustain and promote this type of competitive advantage may be more problematic than one based on keeping up-to-date with changing machinery and techniques.

For some universities, investment in people and in the appropriate human resource practices foster development and commitment in the field of research and

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producing requires a consideration of the ways in which they have usually tackled such matters. For the human resource function this represents the opportunity to become involved in major change initiatives, but it may require a rethinking of administrative and university faculties’ traditional roles.

In well-structured universities where HRM and quality practices are implemented, a healthy culture and a competitive working environment develops, which creates motivation a commitment among employees for providing quality administrative, academic and research services to students. This paper identifies human resource (HR) factors such as top management support, training & development, employee empowerment, teamwork, and rewards systems etc. as key elements of developing a quality focused culture in a university which can be used to achieve the concept of building career development of the students and developing university environment in order to cope with the latest global development in research and development.

During the last 50 years the study of quality management as a subject or as an organizational change initiative was pictured in different ways but the soul of this concept “prevention rather than inspection” focuses on customer satisfaction remains unchanged. By customer we mean students and research scholars. Providing quality services to attract, retain and win the customer loyalty are the objectives of every universities either it is from service or industrial sector. According to Gursoy and Swanger, the goal to win the customer loyalty and satisfaction can be achieved by providing quality services to their customers timely and effectively.

Success of any university depends on its valuable human resource. Achieving service quality through valuable human resource strongly depends upon the university culture and working environment. To deal with the attitude and behavior of the human resource, HRM best practices and quality principles play an important role to motivate, train, develop, retain and satisfy their valuable human resource. According to Philip Worsfold, a number of studies show that there is a positive relationship between HRM practices and service quality and it is assumed that competitive advantages can be achieved through superior service quality.

This study is conducted in order to show the importance of strong and healthy cultural practices that HRM can perform to develop a quality oriented culture in a university. Employees’ attitude and behavior for superior services to the students strongly depends upon the supportive working environment of the university and its aspiration for providing superior quality services. HRM can play a very vital role to provide a satisfied and motivated working environment and culture for the employees. Positive relation between employee’s satisfaction and students’ satisfaction has been explored in a number of studies.

HRM creates healthy university culture can be a source of tackling or resolving conflict among the employees. HRM people interact with all the personal in an university and tell people that these are their working boundaries and can develop relationship in certain ways so there can be less chances of conflict and can contribute towards the implementation of quality programs.

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The primary role of Human Resources in a university is to support the achievement of universities Strategic Plans. Strategic HR plans can help universities to provide education which offers high quality transformative experiences to everyone suitably qualified, whatever their stage of life and irrespective of their origins. Quality HR services can create and environment to engage faculty and students in research and creative practice which are of high quality and aim to make an early and important difference to the world around us. By implementing quality human resource services, university can build just, prosperous and sustainable communities which are respectful of their Indigenous past and committed to redressing disadvantages like lake of quality research and administrative services to the students and employees.

HR strategic plans are bold vision with some ambitious objectives to coincide with the mission, vision and values of the university considering the dramatic changes in the recent era. These objectives are for universities to become even more competitive within the Higher Education sector so that the universities can be a truly international university and to achieve a world ranking.

HR has a fundamental role to play in the achievement of these objectives and therefore in ensuring that we contribute to a work environment that attracts and retains the high quality staff who will turn universities ambitions into reality.

HRM helps universities to develop strong culture. Such universities can go a long way and universities with weak culture don’t progress. Strong culture means that where the employees respond positively to the university quality values and weak culture is where there is little attachment with values of the university and so the top management control the employees with authority. Which in return is not favorable for the implementation of quality research programs in a university.

Culture is one of the important element in the TQM implementation process. Some authors has described culture as an effective element in the process of implementing TQM in an organization. Culture also helps us in determining that how an employee is working either he is fit for our working environment or not. And if not than how come we should use him in the organization for the best interest of the organization to achieve organization working quality.

Quality HR culture helps academic and administrative staff development and the crucial role it should play in the process of institutional change is still a rather unexplored area. Human resource development concepts and their systematic implementation are the exception rather than the rule in higher education institutions.

The need for further work in this field, however, is vital for a range of reasons:

In many countries an ageing cohort of academic staff requires more systematic succession planning and talent development within the institution;

Increased national and international competition for high quality staff; More competitive funding, project management and inter-institutional

collaboration require greater managerial and personal skills; More autonomy and more proactive strategic profiling of the institution require

improved leadership competence.

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CONCLUSION

The quality HR culture addresses the following questions:

How to match academic and administrative staff profile with the institutional strategy?

How to identify needs and gaps in knowledge and competence profiles across the institution?

Can these be integrated in a coherent institutional development scheme for administrative and academic staff?

What is the role of HR professionals in a institute? What tools and techniques are available and how can these be adapted for use in

the Higher Education context?

HR supports university workforce through a variety of programs and services designed to inspire performance and achievement at the highest level on behalf of the university’s mission.  HR people are directly work with individual employees as well as with supervisors, managers, and senior leaders on all aspects of human resources management. HR people provide easy access to more detailed information about their roles and the services that they provide.

REFERENCES

Creating a Useful and Reliable Organization: The Quality Professional’s Role by Philip B. Crosby

Achieving sustainability through attention to human resource factors in environmental management by Bonnie F. Daily, Su-chun Huang.

Achieving Service Quality Through its Valuable Human Resources: An Empirical Study of Banking Sector of Pakistan by Syed Muhammad Irfan, Muhammad Mohsin and Irfan Yousaf.

The Role of Organizational Culture on Effectiveness by Bulent Aydin, Adnan Ceylan. Organizational Culture and Determinant Factors in Professional Organization: An

Exploratory Case Study of Cultural-Fit at Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts, Silpakorn University, Thailand by Chanida Jittaruttha

The Role of Human Resource Management in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by Coro Strandberg.

Gaining Competitive Advantage through a Quality Culture: The Role of Human Resource Management by Dr. Kathy Monks.

HR as a Strategic Partner: What does it take to make it Happen? By Edward E. Lawler III, Susan A. Mohrman.

Leadership Development - Past, Present & Future by Gina Hernez-Broome, Richard L. Hughes.

Creating Quality through Culture: Role of HRM in a University