Understanding employee resourcing in construction organizations

In recent years the literature on employee resourcing has consistently advocated the importance of adopting a holistic, strategic approach to employee deployment decision making rather than adopting a reactive needs-based approach. This is particularly problematic in construction where the multi-project environment leads to constantly changing resource requirements and to changing demands over a project's life cycle. This can lead to inappropriate decisions, which fail to meet the longer-term needs of both construction organizations and their employees. A structured and comprehensive understanding of the current project team deployment practices within large construction organizations was developed. Project deployment practices were examined within seven case study contracting firms. The emergent themes that shaped the decision-making processes were grouped into five broad clusters comprising human resource planning, performance/career management, team deployment, employee involvement and training and development. The research confirms that a reactive and ad hoc approach to the function prevails within the firms investigated. This suggests a weak relationship between the deployment process and human resource planning, team deployment, performance management, employee involvement and training and development activities. It is suggested that strategic HR-business partnering could engender more transparent and productive relationships in this crucial area

Automated Resource Assignment in BPMN Models Using RACI Matrices

Organizations need to manage the responsibility of their employees with respect to all the activities that are daily carried out within them. Process-oriented organizations need to do it, in addition, in accordance to the business processes their members participate in. However, powerful mechanisms to manage responsibility in combination with business processes are missing in current modelling notations, usually limited to indicating who is in charge of undertaking the activities. RACI matrices, on the contrary, were specifically conceived to provide responsibility management information. They enable the specification of the level of responsibility each human resource has with regard to each activity carried out in a company, ranging from the performer of the work to the resource that must approve it or receive certain notifications. in this paper, we propose the use of RACI matrices together with business process models to manage human resource responsibilities in processes. Focused on a concrete type of RACI matrices, called RASCI, we introduce a novel approach to automatically generate a BPMN model with RASCI information given a BPMN model that does not handle resources, and a RASCI matrix. The resulting model is BPMN-compliant and, thus, it is ready to be executed in existing business process management systems. With this approach, the assignment of responsibilities and the management of processes can be designed separately, while being executed together

Priority-Based Human Resource Allocation in Business Processes

In Business Process Management Systems, human resource management typically covers two steps: resource assignment at design time and resource allocation at run time. Although concepts like rolebased assignment often yield several potential performers for an activity, there is a lack of mechanisms for prioritizing them, e.g., according to their skills or current workload. in this paper, we address this research gap. More specifically, we introduce an approach to define resource preferences grounded on a validated, generic user preference model initially developed for semantic web services. Furthermore, we show an implementation of the approach demonstrating its feasibility. Keywords: preference modeling, preference resolution, priority-based allocation, priority ranking, RAL, resource allocation, SOUP

THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: THE NECESSITY OF FACING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 4.0

The management of human resources in today's organizations presents a challenge from a strategic perspective. In order to successfully usher in the era of the Industrial Revolution 4.0, it is essential to realign the new business culture with the empowerment of behavior and performance that is required as part of the individual and organizational learning process. The purpose of this study is to investigate how human resource management has developed in response to Industry 4.0. This research is qualitative, and it employs a qualitative approach in conjunction with a descriptive methodology. The findings of the study indicate that human resource management is a strategic partner for organizations, which in turn generates optimism within those organizations in light of the fourth industrial revolution and VUCA. This study investigates the various epochs in the development of HRM, beginning with personnel management and moving on to human resource management and finally human capital management

A meta-model based approach to the description of resources and skills

The management of intra- and inter-organizational business processes is a significant issue that influences company’s success. Many business processes are not fully automated and require human interaction. Therefore, responsibilities for tasks have to be assigned by workflow management systems. Common resource models allow the selection of resources according to their roles, thus neglecting competences and skills. In this article we present an extensible resource meta-model that allows the modeling of resources including their competences, skills and knowledge. Furthermore we propose the usage of these criteria to enable a more flexible assignment of resources to tasks. In particular our approach fosters the alignment of business process modeling and human resource planning. This combination facilitates several opportunities on both sides and offers potential for enhanced scheduling of adequate resources in comparison to pure role based decisions

Effective application of process improvement patterns to business processes

Improving the operational effectiveness and efficiency of processes is a fundamental task of business process management (BPM). There exist many proposals of process improvement patterns (PIPs) as practices that aim at supporting this goal. Selecting and implementing relevant PIPs are therefore an important prerequisite for establishing process-aware information systems in enterprises. Nevertheless, there is still a gap regarding the validation of PIPs with respect to their actual business value for a specific application scenario before implementation investments are incurred. Based on empirical research as well as experiences from BPM projects, this paper proposes a method to tackle this challenge. Our approach toward the assessment of process improvement patterns considers real-world constraints such as the role of senior stakeholders or the cost of adapting available IT systems. In addition, it outlines process improvement potentials that arise from the information technology infrastructure available to organizations, particularly regarding the combination of enterprise resource planning with business process intelligence. Our approach is illustrated along a real-world business process from human resource management. The latter covers a transactional volume of about 29,000 process instances over a period of 1 year. Overall, our approach enables both practitioners and researchers to reasonably assess PIPs before taking any process implementation decision

Business Intelligence for Human Capital Management

This article presents the results of an exploratory study of the use of business intelligence (BI) tools to help to make decisions about human resources management in Portuguese organizations. The purpose of this article is to analyze the effective use of BI tools in integrating reports, analytics, dashboards, and metrics, which impacts on the decision making the process of human resource managers. The methodology approach was quantitative based on the results of a survey to 43 human resource managers and technicians. The data analysis technique was correlation coefficient and regression analysis performed by IBM SPSS software. It was also applied qualitative analysis based on a focus group to identify the impacts of business intelligence on the human resources strategies of Portuguese companies. The findings of this study are that: business intelligence is positively associated with HRM decision-making, and business intelligence will significantly predict HRM decision making. The research also examines the process of the information gathered with BI tools from the human resources information system on the decisions of the human resources managers and that impacts the performance of the organizations. The study also gives indications about the practices and gaps, both in terms of human resources management and in processes related to business intelligence (BI) tools. It points out the different factors that must work together to facilitate effective decision-making. The article is structured as follows: a literature review concerning the use of the business intelligence concept and tools and the link between BI and human resources management, methodology, and the main findings and conclusions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An evaluation of the perceived value and effectiveness of the Continuous Professional Development Journal for postgraduate Human Resource Management Diploma students and their employers

Report describing one of a number of learning and teaching projects undertaken in 2004/05Research undertaken with groups of first and second year Postgraduate Human Resource Management Diploma students at the University of Wolverhampton Business School. As part of their assessment in the first year students are required to undertake a work based project and accompanying reflective journal in order to develop a holistic approach to using their theoretical learning in practice. In the second year they are required to continue the process of maintaining a development journal to meet professional requirements and to build on their reflective practice. A pilot study of 19 postgraduate students indicated that there was little enthusiasm or genuine engagement with the process of maintaining a learning journal and it appeared that students were missing a valuable learning opportunity

BPR and ERP: A Chinese Case

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is defined as the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes. BPR is also known as a major approach widely used in facilitating Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems implementation. In addition it has been suggested that an awareness of cultural differences is critical to ERP success. In this paper we examine the impact of human and management organizational subsystems on business process change and performance. We use a comparative study of four Chinese organizations with and without ERP systems. The findings of this study prove the importance of soft aspects in business process change through implementation of ERP systems

Principles in selecting human capital measurements and metrics

Orientation: Physical and natural resources have been surpassed by human capital as aresource of wealth creation. As a result, senior management relies increasingly on appropriatepeople information to drive strategic change. Yet, measurement within the human resourcefunction predominantly informs decisions in support of efficiency and effectiveness. Consequently, dissimilar understanding of measurement expectations between these partieslargely continues. Research purpose: The study explored principles in selecting human capital measurements,drawing on the views and recommendations of human resource management professionals,all experts in human capital measurement. Motivation for the study: The motivation was to advance the understanding of selectingappropriate and strategic valid measurements, in order for human resource practitioners tocontribute to creating value and driving strategic change. Research design, approach and method: A qualitative approach, with purposively selectedcases from a selected panel of human capital measurement experts, generated a datasetthrough unstructured interviews, which were analysed thematically. Main findings: Nineteen themes were found. They represent a process that considers thecentrality of the business strategy and a systemic integration across multiple value chains inthe organisation through business partnering, in order to select measurements and generatemanagement level-appropriate information. Practical/managerial implications: Measurement practitioners, in partnership withmanagement from other functions, should integrate the business strategy across multiplevalue chains in order to select measurements. Analytics becomes critical in discoveringrelationships and formulating hypotheses to understand value creation. Higher educationinstitutions should produce graduates able to deal with systems thinking and to operatewithin complexity. Contribution: This study identified principles to select measurements and metrics. Noticeableis the move away from the interrelated scorecard perspectives to a systemic view of theorganisation in order to understand value creation. In addition, the findings may help toposition the human resource management function as a strategic asset