Overlooked aspect of development: Human resource management
When companies and public organizations fail to satisfactorily deliver goods and services to its intended recipients, it is rarely attributed to deficiencies in the human resource management (HRM) policy of that organization...
When companies and public organizations fail to satisfactorily deliver goods and services to its intended recipients, it is rarely attributed to deficiencies in the human resource management (HRM) policy of that organization.
As HRM has to do with a wide array of functions in an organization, including recruitment, staffing, training, defining and designing work, and employee compensations and benefits, it is directly linked to an organization’s most precious resource, the people it employs. And such the success or effectiveness of an organization is heavily reliant on a sound HRM policy, which is often overlooked or rarely considered when making important decisions by executives and heads of departments.
HRM is a relatively new and trending topic in Mongolia, but concepts of HRM have been applied in Mongolia long before the terminology entered the forefront of organizations concerned about optimizing their productivity. Indeed that is the key; to increase productivity by optimizing the efficiency of human resources.
HRM is also an overlooked aspect in the public service sector.
There’s hardly anyone in Mongolia that hasn’t experiences some sort of bureaucracy in public services. We go to a hospital for treatment and the doctors and hospital staff requires all sorts of documents and we line up for hours outside the doctors’ office only to be told to go to some other doctor or hospital. We go to the police to report a crime and the inspector treats us like criminals and blames the victim. There are countless other examples of deficiencies and inappropriate responses to those the public sector must serve.
These issues have often been looked at as a failure of professional ethics and systematic bureaucracy, but rarely, if ever, is it looked at as a HRM failure. With efficient HRM these problems can be addressed at the root. Good HRM would weed out irate and rude individuals from service industries, inexperienced individuals would not be allowed to manage teams, and human resource departments would conduct training to improve communication of staff, thereby facilitating the productivity of the whole organization.
One of the most prominent problems in HRM in Mongolia is finding qualified people for job vacancies and brain drain at organizations. The few candidates who meet the job criteria are dissatisfied with the salaries offered, and capable professionals leave the job to work at other organizations. Many view this as mainly as a financial issue saying that if these organizations had offered better salaries, these problems will go away. And that is partly true, but the satisfaction of an employee and the quality of new recruits have far wider variables than finance alone. The reputation of an organization, the internal culture, how an organization views its staff and the issues concerning them, opportunity for personal growth, and opportunities to climb the corporate ladder are also big considerations for workers.
These problems are directly linked to HRM, but the vast majority of executives and heads of Mongolian organizations rarely look to human resource managers to find solutions.
Most organizations, especially the public sector of Mongolia, utilize HRM at the basic administrative level, with clerical works like keeping records of employees, allocating employee benefits, and basic performance evaluation such as attendance. But HRM has a much wider implications for the public sector, which is mainly service oriented. The health and education sectors are examples of this, which is in dire need of reform due to increasing demand placed on them.
At the moment, Mongolia is going through a time of recovery, economically at least. But the general consensus is that with the ongoing trade war between the two greatest economies of the world, the USA and China, there will be far reaching economic and social consequences. With a period of turbulence and change ahead, Mongolia as a small nation amidst giant players must improve its economic resilience and strengthen its most precious capital, human resources, if it is to ride out the onslaught of negative external forces on the horizon safely.
For Mongolia to reach its next stage of development, we have to take a broader and more long-term approach to our development. To this, we can look at the good practices of other nations, but adopting others’ policies without understanding the underlying variables has proven detrimental. So I suggest looking back to our own history and reintroduce what worked before.
Towards the end of the socialist times in Mongolia, which lasted around 70 years to become quite a mature and efficient system, the government’s Ministry of Labor partially served as one giant HRM department on the national level. Under this system, the education system produced just the right amount of laborers, engineers, managers, doctors and other critical human resources, and all were given appropriate roles in society. Now all that is supposed to be taken care by the market rule of supply and demand, but the abrupt shift to free market from a centrally planned economy didn’t give Mongolia’s economy enough time efficiently adjust allocate its human resources in the right industries to optimize economic and social development. As a result chaos ensued, and we were left with various social and economic problems. People who worked their entire lives suddenly found that their jobs were nolonger in demand, while jobs in the commercial sector bloomed.
Bringing back some elements of the socialist system for labor and HRM would only serve to benefit the nation’s development
Faced with another wave of shocks, Mongolia must take preventive measure, which means that the economy, which hinges on the public and private sectors, must increase productivity and competition capacity. Much has been said about fiscal and monetary discipline, inflation rate, bolstering infrastructure, and developing megaprojects, but the thing policy makers and the leaders the country have been ignoring is the management of people who will drive the economic engine.