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This paper aims to illustrate a simple, holistic overview of contingent workforce management.

This paper’s viewpoint outlines benefits and challenges that employers and employees encounter with contingent work arrangements and highlights relevant human resource (HR) practices to effectively manage contingent workforce.

Benefits to employers are cost-effective hiring solutions, filling-up skill requirements, increasing numerical flexibility and diversity and broadened talent pool. Challenges include legal ramifications, hidden costs, confidentiality and security issues, low organisational commitment and productivity. For employees, benefits are working flexibility and financial gain and gaining work experience. Challenges include dependence on economy, irregular work hours, health risks and exploitation and differential treatment by employers. “Value-adding” practices of holistic hiring, onboarding, performance management, workplace training and developing resilient organisational culture can effectively manage contingent workforce.

This paper provides a broader outline of benefits and challenges, both from employers’ and employees’ perspectives, linked with precarious employment. Further investigations on employers’ and employee’s perspectives based on specific types of contingent work arrangements (e.g. temporary agency workers and gig workers) can give in-depth insights.

This paper provides a simplified framework of pros and cons of contingent employment, along with practical HR remedies to manage contingent workforce.

Human resource (HR) practices are increasingly concerned with adding value through increased skills, autonomy and contribution. Whilst useful in some cultural and industry contexts, there is potential for incompatibility with other norms, especially those outside western culture or the manufacturing industry mainstream. Australian construction companies in Malaysia use the language of normative HR, but they are challenged by the differing cultural norms of Asia. It is concluded that HR policies and corporate culture are used as marketing devices not solely as management strategy.

More than 40 percent of organizations don’t see human capital measurement as a priority for their business and a fifth of large firms never expect to report on it within their annual reports.

The objective of this research is to conduct an exploratory study that will gain consensus among restaurant industry professionals, academics and outside industry experts on the set of work practice dimensions in a high performance management systems (HPMS) for restaurant managers in the US casual restaurant sector.

An exploratory case study method was employed that used a combination of data collection techniques: interviews for the pilot study, the Delphi method and secondary data collection. Restaurant experts were chosen to consider the components of an HPMS construct for unit management in the US casual restaurant business. Assumptions were made based on a review of strategic human resource management literature, then experts were interviewed and a Delphi was conducted to gain consensus.

The authors find thirteen dimensions of an HPMS, which are common to unit management in US casual restaurants. Three work practices that were not considered relevant dimensions to the casual restaurant industry were removed from the Delphi. This translates into a difference of seven work practices between a manufacturing work system and a restaurant work system, which are either excluded or included in a restaurant work system.

Previous strategic human resource management research has dubbed HR work practices “high performance work practices”. With few exceptions these studies have been conducted in contextual settings that do not possess similar operational characteristics to the restaurant service industry. That there are differences in the business models between these industries and hence in the work practices between them is apparent from the results. Additionally, this study was targeted to management in the restaurant industry, not overall employment as the other studies.

This paper aims to estimate whether human resource (HR) practices influence labour demand dynamics behaviour.

Groups practices in terms of employees satisfaction and work organisation, financial incentives and individual's career perspectives, and explains how they may influence labour productivity and cost. Considering five HR variables, estimates two specifications of labour demand dynamics, under production constrained by demand or monopolistic competition regimes. Applies the two‐step GMM estimator proposed by Blundell and Bond to a balanced panel of 452 Belgian firms observed during the period 1998‐2002.

In the complete monopolistic competition specification, estimates a positive one lag relation explaining labour demand by average training hours combined with an indicator of well‐being of workers, the fact that they are engaged in long term contracts and stay in firms. Some evidence therefore seems to show that some combined HR practices can improve labour demand.

Provides information on whether HR practices influence labour demand dynamics in a Belgian context.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and share the specific factors that cause senior human resource (HR) leaders to lose their jobs. The paper will also provide readers with key lessons to help them improve their senior HR leadership talents and acumen while at the same time providing them with a checklist of specific questions that address the causes of termination.

In this paper, the authors will describe a leadership development process that they use to help senior HR leaders identify the causes of senior HR leadership failure. A focus group methodology is used so that senior leaders are able to share their experience and input in response to the question, “Based on your experience, what are the primary factors that will cause a senior HR leader to be terminated from their position?” In this paper, the authors will share what they have learned from these HR leaders having gone to this process with hundreds of senior HR leaders. The authors will also provide the readers with lessons based on their input.

Senior HR leader focus groups revealed a set of “failure factors” that included a lack of understanding of the core business model, inability to fashion an effective value-added HR strategy, poor working relationships with members of the senior leadership team, a marked lack of emotional intelligence, political factors and an inability to create best HR practices and leverage technology, among others. Participant leaders provided rich dialogue and discussion points that provide the readers with a better understanding of why senior HR leaders fail, and equally important, how to avoid HR leadership failure.

The basis for the findings stated in this paper is based on the content analysis of a convenience sample which may limit the generalizability of these findings. Having said that, the findings will provide the readers with a rich context for better understanding of the nature of senior HR leaders’ terminations.

The practical implications of this project provide the readers with any number of important lessons requiring application. From a senior HR leader’s perspective, the key lessons from this research provide them with a checklist of factors that need attention and forging and implementing an effective HR strategy and set of best practices. At the organizational level, these findings can serve as a needs assessment that can be used in senior HR leader selection, orientation and development.

Any time a paper provides guidelines that can help prevent senior leadership failure, there is a positive social effect for both organizations and individuals operating in these environments. The authors believe that the findings will provide the readers with effective guidelines to improve the overall effectiveness of senior HR leaders when properly implemented. Previous research makes it clear that when organizations have great HR practices, the quality of work life for organizational members moves in the right direction.

As a general rule, there is limited research on the subject matter of why leaders fail while antidotal information and literature abound. It is the authors purpose to provide the readers of Strategic HR Review, the relevant information based on the input of their fellow members of the C-suite so as to improve their performance and provide their organizations with the template for organizational HR success.

The purpose of this exploratory research paper is to present a product‐process matrix that assists FM organizations and their stakeholders to map their value added position in their organizations. Using this matrix, FM practitioners are able to assess the existing value added delivering, how it is formulated and identify actions for improvement.

The paper develops the FM value added product‐process matrix to allow comparisons between different FM products with their FM processes and illustrates their degree of value delivery. The building blocks of the matrix are an FM product structure and an FM process structure. The supporting empirical data were collected through semi‐structured interviews from selected FM organizations supplemented by relevant documents.

Based on a product‐process matrix, a typology of FM value added positions is introduced, namely, support, enable, ensure and enhance. Each position has merits and requirements under specific circumstances for its client's core business. Matching a given type of FM value added position with the appropriate FM product and process under the specific conditions is likely to create greater values to the client's core business. Meanwhile, misaligning dilutes the value delivery.

This normative matrix can be used as a decision‐making tool for a client to assess its FM performances and activities, and to determine the needs of FM provision and services. On the other hand, an FM organization can use it as a self‐evaluation tool for evaluating its FM service/provision performances and aligning its offering with core business needs. However, the matrix needs to be validated and verified from various types of organizations.

This paper presents a typology of FM value added position and substantiates its applicability with empirical evidences. Although a proposed typology is formulated in a context of FM, its applications can be applied into other organizational support functions, for instance human resource (HR), information technology (IT) and finance services.

This paper aims to examine the implications of high performance work system (HPWS) strength from a managerial perspective and the impact of economic, cultural, political, legal and technological factors on the operationalization of HPWSs in the banking industry in Sri Lanka.

The data for this study were collected from three licensed commercial banks in Sri Lanka. This research used a case study approach for data collection with archival analysis of records and semi-structured interviews with the CEO, head of HR, two board members and three focus groups (top, middle and lower level managers across various functional areas) in each bank which altogether covers 66 key informants.

The findings supported the research proposition that to gain positive outcomes on organizational effectiveness, there should be a strong HPWS, resulting in a positive attitudinal climate among employees. Further, the findings provide evidence of the global applicability of HPWSs, although more research is needed to clearly specify the contextual boundaries of HPWS effectiveness.

Contemporary research provides ample evidence to endorse the contribution of high performance work systems toward organizational effectiveness. However, there is a dearth of literature on how high performance work systems are operationalized across the management hierarchy and support the achievement of organizational effectiveness. Few studies have been conducted on high performance work system strength and organizational effectiveness in emerging economies.

Human resource (HR) philosophy and an organization’s commitment to employees (OCE) are important components of a human resource management (HRM) system, yet the influences of these variables on the effectiveness of HRM implementation has been less evident. Similarly, few studies have examined the effect of intended and implemented HR practices on line managers’ perceptions of HR department effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to examine how these factors could result in a positive evaluation of HR department effectiveness in Vietnam.

Study 1 consisted of 405 line managers and the authors used this sample to test the proposed research model. Study 2, comprising 192 line managers, was used to validate the findings from Study 1.

The authors found empirical evidence of how HR managers should leverage their relationships with line managers to enhance HR department effectiveness in a developing economy such as Vietnam.

As data were from line managers in one point in time, this study could be affected by common method bias. However, the authors conducted three common method variance checks and the analyses showed that this issue was not a major concern. Future studies could extend the sample of respondents by collecting information from CEOs, employees, and HR managers.

This study contributes to the extant literature empirical evidence of determinants of HR department effectiveness. First, the study shows the simultaneous impacts of HR philosophy and OCE on the actual implementation of HR practices. Second, the authors provide an understanding of line managers’ evaluation of HR department effectiveness through their experience with implemented HR practices.

Using the “Powerful Connections” method, HR can significantly increase its impact on the organization and veer away from non value‐adding processes, says Robert Bolton, associate partner at Atos Consulting.