Sample Research Paper On The Role Of Human Resource Management In Effective Team Building

First Author1, Second Author2

1Department of first author.
2Department of second author.
1email address for first author, 2 email address for second author
ABSTRACT
A team is group of people working on a common goal. A high performance team has high degree of coherence, cooperation, shared vision, mutual trust and has utmost clarity of its roles and responsibilities.HR Manager plays a crucial role in building high performance team, in many cases the HR manager acts as a catalyst in building team. This paper discusses the role played by the HR manager to build high yielding teams which is being built on shared responsibilities and mutual trust and cooperation. The means of effective team building by different team building exercises such as games, fun exercises and group activities also discussed.

Keywords—human resource manager, team, team building, team activities

I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, globalization has seen some of its highest peaks. Numerous international companies have been on the rise and are still continuing to grow. Even non-profit multi-national organizations are increasing in effectiveness, visibility, and over-all productivity (Liu, Combs, Ketchen, and Ireland 2007). However, behind the billion-dollar corporations and the life-changing charitable organizations are countless teams who all work together towards a common goal. Without effective teams, there wouldn’t be effective organizations. The people, after all, are the backbone of every organization. In this regard, what they need is a human resource manager who knows how to build quality teams and maintain those teams (Odell 2013).
Teams always vary, considering that there is no such thing as one perfect team. A few examples of teams are functional work teams, project teams, intact work teams, employee participation teams, problem-solving teams, management teams, and maintenance or support teams (Al-Khaled 2013). The only similarities that all effective teams have are that they know their common goal, they understand the role that they play within the organization, and they have the proper skills to be successful (Anyim 2012). But there is one more thing that is crucial for all teams to have if they wish to perform at their optimal best: a good human resource manager.
Human resource managers are the people in charge of interviewing, recruiting, training, motivating, rewarding, sanctioning, and terminating employees (Millmore 2007). One of their most important tasks is to build effective teams for organizations (Mott Community College 2012). There is no single way for creating a team, but there is a specific framework that human resource managers need to abide by in order to ensure a high performance team. In particular, this team would consist of individuals with specific sets of skills and who play different important roles in order to keep an organization functioning. But more than that, high performance teams have members who share the same vision and a mutual trust with each another (Kornbluh 1984). These two things are extremely important because they lead to cooperation. In order for a team to even accomplish a single thing, they need to be able to cooperate because each member is important (NL 2013). Cooperation is when every piece of the machinery—or every member of the team—is doing what it is supposed to do. And the battery that keeps the whole thing going is the human resource manager.
II. BUILDING A TEAM
Great human resource managers know that building an effective team starts in recruitment. This is the phase where human resource managers select the people that would comprise a team (Hutchings 2011). For HR managers, this is not as easy as selecting the people based on who the most intelligent, the bravest, the most hardworking, or most punctual is. Instead, what great HR managers do is that they don’t treat individual members as isolated pieces (Porter 2008). They look at members and see them as a piece of a puzzle. Not all of them need to be the best at what they do; they just need to be extremely compatible with one another in order to create a beautiful bigger picture (Gray 2014).
A huge aspect of this is chemistry. HR managers deal with a lot of searching for chemistry in their job. They do not simply assess a potential member based on their own qualifications. They also assess how well a potential member would work with other members of the team (Odina 2013). If there is chemistry then the person would be recruited. The reason behind this is that even if an HR manager chooses to recruit all the best people in the available pool to form one team, if their attitudes or work ethics are not compatible with each other then it wouldn’t be an effective team (Boxall and Purcell 2011). This is why chemistry is essential in the performance of a team.
What chemistry does is that it allows people to play on each other’s energies and skills. Teams with the right chemistry have members who may not have started as the best but will surely bring out the best in each other along the way (Dewhurst, Hancock and Ellsworth 2013). It is then up to the HR manager to detect if there is potential for chemistry when recruiting team members. It is also up to the HR manager to ensure that the potential of the members and the over-all team would not be put to waste. How a manager does this is by pointing the team in the right direction.
In other words, the HR manager is responsible for being able to establish a feeling of shared responsibilities and mutual trust within the group (Avar, Magos and Salamon 2012). This is one of the top priorities of HR managers because shared responsibilities create such a strong bond among people. If a group of people fully know and fully understand what their purpose is both within and outside the team, then they would have a much better idea on how to go about with life (Nohria, Groysberg and Linda-Eling 2008). Teams with a heightened awareness of shared responsibilities bond over what is needed of them by the organization and by the society (International Civil Service Commission 2001). It is then up to the HR manager to help the team establish clear cut shared responsibilities.
III. TEAM ACTIVITIES
IV. OBSTACLE COURSE
One type of team-building activity that HR managers use is the obstacle course. Obstacle courses usually include climbing walls, crossing ropes, crawling under nets, and many other difficult tasks (Armstrong and Baron 2002). The main point of these challenging courses is that they build the character of the members as a whole team. They create a feeling of shared responsibility and cooperation. The responsibility that they all share is that they must finish the obstacle course within a certain amount of time. As such, they are encouraged to cooperate with each other in order to overcome any obstacle that come their way—literally and figuratively.
V. TEAM NIGHT
Team nights are scheduled nights where the team would go out and have fun together. The activities in these team nights could vary from watching movies, having dinner out, going swimming, and others. Organizing a team night once in a while not only promotes team building but also serves as the members’ break from all the hard work they’re doing everyday. It establishes stronger bonds among the team members and makes going to work all the more fun. This is because they get to spend time with people whose company they actually enjoy.
VI. TRUST FALL
Trust fall is a team building game that has been tried and tested for years. It involves two people; one who will fall back and one who will catch the other person. It is as simple as the second person trying to catch the first person who is falling. The key here is that the first person should not hesitate or should not look back to make sure that the second person is actually there to catch them. The point of this exercise is to build trust among team members. A member should trust the other member enough to believe that the other member will catch their fall.

REFERENCES

[1] Al-Khaled, A., 2013. The Effects of Human Resource Management Practices on Employees’ Motivation and Retention. Malaysia: Victoria University-Elite College. Print.
[2] Anyim, F.,2012. ‘The role of human resource planning in recruitment and selection process’, British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 6(2), pp. 35-48.
[3] Avar, E., Magos, A., and Salamon, J., 2012. Best HR practices of international large companies. [online] Available at:<http://www.talentcentrebudapest.eu/sites/default/files/Best%20HR%20Practices%20of%20International%20Large%20Companies.pdf> [Accessed 8 March 2015]
[4] Armstrong, M. and Baron, A., 2002. Strategic HRM: The key to improved business performance. London: Chartered Inst. of Personnel and Development. Print.
[5] Boudreau, J. and Ramstad, P.M., 2007. Beyond HR. Harvard Business School, pp. 81-89.
[6] Boxall, P. and Purcell, J., 2011. Strategy and human resource management. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Print.
[7] Dewhurst M., Hancock B., and Ellsworth D., 2013. Redesigning knowledge work: How to free up high-end experts to do what they do best. [online] Available at: <http://www.qualimet.ca/pdfs/HBR-Article.pdf>[Accessed 8 March 2015]
[8] Gray, R., 2014. How to get the most out of global mobility. [online] Available at: <http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hr/features/1141637/global-mobility>[Accessed 8 March 2015]
[9] Hutchings, K., 2011. Strategies and challenges for attraction and retention of employees. [online] Available at:<http://www98.griffith.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/handle/10072/41303/71077_1.pdf?sequence=1> [Accessed 8 March 2015]
[10] International Civil Service Commission, 2001. A framework for human resources management. [online] Available at:<http://icsc.un.org/resources/hrpd/hrm/ICSC_hrm_eng.pdf> [Accessed 8 March 2015]
[11] Kornbluh, H., 1984. ‘Work place democracy and quality of work life: Problems and prospects’, Annals, AAPSS, 433(1), pp.1-20. [online] Available at: <http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/66769/10.1177_000271628447300109.pdf?sequence=2>[Accessed 8 March 2015]
[12] Liu, Y., Combs, J., Ketchen, D., and Ireland, D., 2007. The value of human resource management for organizational performance. Business Horizons, 50.
[13] Millmore, M., 2007. Strategic human resource management: Contemporary issues. New York: Financial Times Prentice Hall. Print.
[14] Mott Community College, 2012. Human resources: job description and job evaluation procedures. [online] Available at: <https://www.mcc.edu/hr_protected/pdf/Job_Evaluation_Procedure_For_Supervisors.pdf> [Accessed 8 March 2015]
[15] NL, 2013. Human resource planning. [online] Available at: <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7b8b350e-ee3d-11e2-816e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2wdNoj0Yt>[Accessed 8 March 2015]
[16] Nohria N, Groysberg B., and Linda-Eling L., 2008. Employee motivation: The powerful new model. [online] Available at: <http://www.stanford.edu/group/designx_lab/wikiupload/b/bb/HBR_Employee_Motivation.pdf>[Accessed 8 March 2015]
[17] Odell, M., 2013. Downbeat Maersk Line chief warns of new era in shipping. [online] Available at: <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7b8b350e-ee3d-11e2-816e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2wdNoj0Yt>[Accessed 8 March 2015]
[18] Odina, R., 2013. Legal regulatory requirements on the human resource process. [online] Available at: <http://smallbusiness.chron.com/legal-regulatory-requirements-human-resource-process-20590.html>[Accessed 8 March 2015]
[19] Porter, M. E., 2008. The five competitive forces that shape the industry. [online] Available at: <http://www.washington.edu/research/rapid/resources/toolsTemplates/SWOT_analysis.pdf>[Accessed 8 March 2015]
[20] Sims, R., 2007. Human resource management: Contemporary issues, challenges, and opportunities. Greenwich, UK: Information Age Publishing. Print.