Why line manager is increasing important essay

In contemporary society, every company is meeting resources shortage, and then a new conception “ human resource” proposed by economists. They suggest that if a corporation wants to be outstanding in the future, he must pay more attention to Human Resource Management (HRM). Recently, a large number of researches have indicated that using HR practices, such as training and development, performance appraisal, information sharing or participation, in HRM will in a certain term improve HRM outcomes (Connie Zheng, Mark Morrison & Grant O’Neill, 2006: 50). However, with the development of Human Resource Management, HR practices are no longer just be used by HR managers, increasing line managers are required to execute HR practices at the same time. Thus this article will focus on why growing line managers involved in HRM. Specifically, it states the importance of the line managers in the organization firstly and then explains the benefits that adopting new management approach brings to, although some obstacles exist.

Finally, the conclusion will be there. Firstly, it is critical to know about the importance of the line manager in the organization. Line managers directly contact with employees (Cantrell & Miele, 2007). Thus, they are clearest about how their employee work and what problems frequently appear in their working place, such as absence rate or turnover rate that are needed by HR managers should ask to line managers. Peter Ducker once said: “ The first secret to effectiveness is to understand the people you work with and depend on so that you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values. (Cantrell & Miele, 2007: 2), therefore, outstanding line managers unquestionable will enhance the firm’s effectiveness.

Besides that, line managers are most sensitive to the change of the external environment. Especially in modern society this skill is more essential because it can improve customer satisfaction effectively. According to Cantrell and Miele (2007: 2), just thanks to the sensitive of line manager to their local environment, it makes them become the most important element in improving employee performance. At last, line managers are the critical power in executing organization’s strategies. Because line managers in the middle level of the organization, so they just as a bridge joining the top managers and employees, on the other word, whether organization’s goals will be achieved all depends on whether line managers can carry on well ( Guo Hanyao, 2007). Above all, it is evident that line managers play significant role in the organization. Thus, devolving HR responsibilities to lime managers will undoubted bring numerous benefits to the organization. At first, line managers can deal with employee issues efficiently.

Previously, if primary problems such as high turnover rate or absence rate appeared in every a department, it would take two or three weeks for HR managers to solve because they are not acknowledge what happened exactly so they waste time on researching (McGuire, 2008). And now, according to McGuire (2008), he states that moving HR responsibilities to line managers enable speedier resolution of conflicts and greater levels of employee retention. Another advantage is that sharing partial responsibilities of HR managers such as designing training activities, conducting employees and HR department activities, coaching and mentoring employees and ensuring comfortable working environment (Walton, 1999; Watson & Maxwell, 2007 cited in McGuire, 2008) let them more freedom and then focus on establishing reasonable HR strategies (McGuire, 2008). Apart from that, line managers’ involvement in HR encourages the collaboration in the organization.

Ulrich (2005) points out those line managers are partners of HR expertise, and they reach their goals via drafting strategies to maximize productivity through alignment of corporate resources. Furthermore, long- standing criticism leveled at HR department will be improved as well, because the most of people cite their potential cannot be explored fully as a reason for leaving their jobs so this new management approach support gifted managers opportunities to satisfy themselves (Hary, 2002 cited in McGuire, 2008) to ensure they will stay longer in the organization. Although the trend of developing new management style is unavoidable, there are some obstacles. Line managers are reluctant to new responsibilities. Traditionally, line managers mainly focus on short term requirement (deJong et al. 1999) in terms of expanding sales and cost efficient and so forth (Harrison, 2002 cited in McGuire, 2008), consequently, line managers are unlikely to spend time on exploring how to coach employees which is unrelated to job (Harrison, 2002: pp 83).

What’s more, HRM is a relative fresh knowledge for them, thus they need be trained, nevertheless, line anagers resistant it via rejecting to attend training courses and non-implementation of punitive sanctions (Cunningham & James, 2001). In addition, how to deal with the relationship with HR managers is another problem that line managers should face. Huang Wu (2008) states that according to some line managers, HR managers should only be responsible for trivial business such as signing contract with employees, applying for a leave or clearing wage and so forth, while under the majority situations, line managers should pay more attention to financial, market, quality and security problems and then ignore the worthiest resources—human resources. Huang Wu, 2008)They usually regard themselves as a senior employee instead of a departmental manager with right of human resource management. However, by contrast, increasing importance of line managers in the organization let HR managers sense the menace. According to McGuire (2008), greater involvement of line managers in HR practice devalues the importance of HR and takes insufficient account of the specialist nature of the discipline. Nevertheless, since the trend is unavoidable so that line managers must to improve themselves by training to acquire professional HR knowledge, otherwise, they will become unemployment.

As for the second problem, enhancing education for them and let them understand their roles and tasks in the organization clearly is a good way for top managers to adopt. In conclusion, as for why increasing line managers involved in HRM is that line managers are the core employees in an organization, what’s more, the quality of HRM decide the destiny of the firm, thus devolving HR responsibilities to line managers is and unavoidable trend, although there may be some obstacles such as line managers are reluctant to accept those responsibilities or some conflicts exist between line managers and HR managers because of divergent conceptions. References: Chow, I. & Liu, S. S. : ‘ Business Strategy, Organizational Culture and Performance Outcomes in China’s Technology Industry’, Journal of Human Resource Planning.

Huang Wu (2008): ‘ New understand of HR Manager vs. Line Manager’s Role’, http://cio. it168. com/e/2008-02-21/200802211334942.

shtml McGuire, D. , Stoner, L. & Mylona, S. (2008): ‘ The Role of Line Managers as Human Resource Agents in Fostering Organisational Change in Public Services’, Journal of Change Management, Vol. , No. 1, p. 73–84.

Cantrell, S. & Miele, S. (2007): ‘ Workforce of One: The Role of the Line Manager’, research note. Zheng, C. , Morrison, M. & O’Neill, G.

(2006): ‘ An empirical study of high performance HRM practices in Chinese SMEs’, int. J. of Human Resource Management, 1772-1803. http://tieba. baidu. com/f? kz= 287101931 http://www. china-b. com/jyzy/tdzz/20090220/251085_1.

html