Job challenges are hindrances too: examining experiences of managers and employees in Finnish SMEs

PurposeThe study aims to explore job demands experienced by employees and managers in micro-enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on the job demands framework, the study discusses the experienced demands from the perspective of challenges that create opportunities for learning and achievement and hindrances that create obstacles for work. The study builds on the idea that the same demand can be perceived both as a challenge and a hindrance. That approach opens a path to responding to challenges by reformulating working practices and removing hindrances by designing, developing and crafting jobs and tasks.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyzed open-ended survey responses (N = 306) to study experienced job demands in 50 micro-enterprises and SMEs, how the perceived demands differ between employees and managers and whether they represent challenge or hindrance demands.FindingsThe authors identified 17 job demand categories most including both challenge and hindrance demands. Time management and prioritization was the most central challenge and hindrance category for both employees and managers. For employees, sales and stakeholder relationships represented the second largest challenge category and communication and information flow was the second largest hindrance category. For managers, the second largest challenge and hindrance categories were organization and management of activities and the fragmentation of work, respectively.Originality/valueBy focusing on employee experience, the achieve a more nuanced understanding of the SME context, which has been dominated by managerial evaluations. The study also advances the discussion on job demands by extending our knowledge of demands that may be experienced both as a challenge and a hindrance.

Digital Transformation Journey of HR

Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have changed how we live, how we work, and how we organize businesses. Thus, it is no surprise that it is also changing how we manage human resources (HR). For HR leaders, digital transformation is a very hot topic, having the potential to create high value for businesses. First, HR can transform all functions, processes, and systems by leveraging digital platforms and applications. Second, HR can lead business digitalization, enabling a compelling employee experience where a digital culture, a digital workplace, and digital management are welcomed. To provide a more pragmatic perspective, this chapter discusses digitalization of HR with big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and identifies key digital HR strategies and roles needed to sustain the digital transformation. Also, this chapter presents the advantages of digital HR and the basic pitfalls HR faces in the digital transformation of HR.

Impact of Design Thinking on Human Resources

Design thinking in the human resources area is still a recent issue little known and exploited even at an international level. It has only recently begun to be worked on and shared by organizations, and it is pointed out as being one of the most important competences of the 21st century. It refers to a style of thinking that combines the senses with the context of a problem, creativity in the creation of new points of view, and solutions and rationality in the analysis and search for solutions to the context. The present research used the Employee Experience DT Model, applied on a multinational company and developed within three long sessions of brainstorming and brainwriting. The main conclusions outlined that DT stimulates the process of continuous improvement, reinforces teamwork, as well as creativity and effort in solving problems. Furthermore, it sensitizes the administration for the current existing problems, compromising it in their resolution, and working in partnership with its stakeholders.

Augment Human Resource Proximity Plumbing Cybernation

The expeditious proliferation of artificial intelligence in the mainstream has rejigged the simplest processes of the various sectors in the most efficient way. With the advent of the era of cybernation, the work culture has been curbed with the timely developments and upgradation of the technology. Cybernation has propelled the growth of every respective sector of the vast corporate diaspora with time. The main aim of the cybernation being that of smoothening the complex, bulk tasks which exploit mass human energy, has seen much success in its purpose so far. But certain domains of the corporate diaspora still await the technological transformation of their respective processes. One such prominent domain and the real fuel of the corporate diaspora, the human resource has yet to expand its purview to imbibe and imbue cybernation in its certain processes. Human resource domain being the custodian of the corporate, wherein it is for the people and by the people though with the niche of Industry 4.0 beholds more space to expand the angle of understanding the term resource for the human, than human as an element of resource in itself. Multifarious human resource processes can be enhanced further with apt utility of digitization in order to optimize the user interface and user experience, boosting the overall employee experience amidst the corporate. Several certain customary functions of the human resources entail the adaptation of automation in more nuanced way to evolve parallel with the digitalization. Moreover, the millennial era further looks up to a transformed human resource with higher echelons of functions to be performed, digitally evolved jobs, an automated work environment, work culture well acquainted with the artificial intelligence. The effect of cybernation on the business acumen of futuristic human resource leaders, working in the rapid concurrent era of disruptions, without losing the human touch, will carve the future human resource structure. Therefore, the intent of this chapter is to study the detailed implications of automation, digitalization, and cybernation in the domain of human resources and to study and examine the dynamically changing HR functions with technological interventions and disruptions by proposing a literature review.

Artificial Intelligence in HRM

Artificial intelligence's ability to enhance the applicant and employee involvement by automating routine, low-value responsibilities, and freeing up time to concentrate on the more planned, innovative work that teams need and want to do has been a burning topic in the research world for years. The technology may lead to improved recruitment, performance evaluations, training, and career management approaches. This literature review looks at artificial intelligence in HRM in terms of recruitment, performance measurement, training and coaching, and career management operations. It allows HR departments to enhance the applicant and employee experience by automating low-value, routine activities, allowing resources to concentrate on more strategic, disruptive work.

“It's the work climate that keeps me here”: the interplay between the HRM process and emergent factors in the construction of employee experiences

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay between human resource management (HRM) and emergent factors in constructing a strong HRM climate. Specifically, the paper aims to shed light on how employee perceptions of the HRM process and emergent factors together construct a strong HRM climate, i.e. employees' shared perceptions of HRM.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses qualitative interview data (managers and employees) from two organisations operating in Finland. The data are analysed based on a systematic data analysis and gives an illustration of the interplay between high-performance work system and the emergent factors.FindingsThe findings illustrate the three types of interplay between HPWS and emergent factors – supplementation, substitution and suffocation – that construct employee experience.Originality/valueThe paper extends earlier discussions on the relationship between HRM and employee experience by empirically examining how the HRM process – together with emergent factors – constructs a strong HRM climate. The present study contributes to further theorising and increasing our understanding of the creation of employee experience.

Digital Employee Experience

Revolusi industry merupakan istilah yang digunakan untuk menggambarkan kemajuan dan perkembangan sebuah industry manufaktur di dunia. Transformasi yang terjadi seperti penggunaan mesin untuk menggantikan tenaga kerja di industry manufaktur dan produksi. Sampai saat ini dunia telah mengalami beberapa kali revolusi di bidang industry seperti saat ini dunia sudah mulai masuk ke revolusi industry 5.0. Di samping itu dunia sedang di landa dengan virus Covid-19, dimana kedaan yang memaksa bisnis harus bertahan dan bertumbuh di persaingan yang ketat. Pandemi ini berdampak di seluruh industry di dunia termasuk industry logistic yang utama dalam organisasi Pelabuhan. Gangguan pada industry logistic berdampak pada penurunan beban kargo dan peti kemas. Hal ini terjadi karena perusahaan harus menanggung beban jaminan Kesehatan yang lebih kepada para karyawannya. Mengakibatkan penurunan pada volume peti kemas di beberapa wilayah yang mengakibatkan rantai pasok terganggu.

AI-Powered HCM: The Analytics and Augmentations

Artificial intelligence (AI) is seemingly everywhere, red-hot right now, livewire and livelihood for everyone contributing $15 trillion to the World Economy and amplifying Society (Humans 2.O), auguring Service (Cyborg Concierge) and augmenting Management (C-Suite). The waning of ‘Enterprise Technologies’ (R/3 Legacy Systems) and waxing of ‘Dynamic Technologies’ viz., Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deep Learning (DL) and Machine Learning (ML) reshaped, redefined and rewrite the concept of ‘Human Capital Management (HCM)’. The ‘Human Capital’ has always been a top challenge and ‘Human Talents’ are ever scarce resources even today. The Human Capital Management (HCM) and Human Capital Intelligence (HCI) emerged as ‘Natural Intelligence Science’ for Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO). The HCM Functions have been augmenting, ‘app’ified (an application form) a nerve in a large, diagnosing and detecting problems, proposing the promising solutions. AI-powered HCM embedded into the workplace and transformed the workforce from doing digital to being digital, from centre driven to human-centric, from compliance and control to trust and empowerment. In dictum, AI and ML will be ‘Bright and Shiny Objects’ in the future reinventing Employee Workforce Analytics and redefining Employee Interface (EI) and refining Employee Experience (EX).

Digital Employee Experience

Di masa pandemi saat ini, penggunaan teknologi sangat penting dalam kehidupan dan aktivitas setiap orang. Dampak negatif virus Covid-19 tidak hanya membawa kesulitan bagi masyarakat, tetapi juga berdampak pada bisnis perusahaan. Perlu penyesuaian di dalam perusahaan, yaitu penggunaan teknologi secara keseluruhan di perusahaan, baik itu dalam proses administrasi maupun dalam tugas-tugas lainnya. Namun, tidak hanya teknologi yang dapat membantu perusahaan bertahan dari situasi saat ini, tetapi karyawan juga terlibat dalam membantu perusahaan bertahan dari pandemi saat ini. Pada dasarnya, setiap karyawan di perusahaan juga harus menggunakan teknologi untuk menyelesaikan pekerjaannya, baik di perusahaan maupun working from home (WFH).