Human resource policies
Introduction
No formal organisation can exist and function well without formal ‘rules of engage-
ment’ in managing people. These are general guidelines that express how the manage-
ment intends to manage people and what is expected of employees in the workplace
(Cuming 1985; Armstrong 2006). Such guidelines include human resource policies.
Other guidelines could be in the form of memos, circulars, codes of ethics and conduct
and standing orders. Policies could be implicitly embodied in the organisation’s vision
and mission statements or explicitly established in its strategic plan and/or human re-
source strategic plan. Policies define philosophies and values that the organisations at-
tach to employees. They will express how employees are valued or not valued as a re-
source, management position with regards to decision making in staffing matters and
roles to be played by each stakeholder in the employment relationship. Without policies
that are explicit and known to both the management and staff, there are dangers of arbi-
trary decision-making that can de-motivate both managers and staff and hinder the
whole organisation’s performance. This chapter dwells on the human resource policy as
a separate topic in human resource management in order to give it the weight it deserves
as a tool in guiding human resource decisions in an organisation. The chapter will cover
a number of important areas in understanding why managers and employees need poli-
cies, key human resource management functions that require explicit policies, and how
policies are developed and implemented. The chapter emphasises the fact that having a
policy, which cannot be effectively implemented or used effectively, is as good as hav-
ing none; thus it is even better not to have any policy all together.
Therefore, at the end of the chapter the learner should be able to:
- Explain the role of human resource policies in human resource management
functions. - Describe the human resource policy-making process.
- Develop effective human resource policy for an organization.
- Examine challenges of introducing human resource policy in an organisation.