Exploring the Key Practices of E-HRM in Place of Traditional HRM: A Study on Private Industry of Bangladesh ()
1. Introduction
In our country, private industries have shown a tremendous growth over the last decade with a huge demand of efficient, competent, knowledgeable, energetic and enthusiastic for teach personnel (Islam, 2015). In the field of private industry, application of e-HRM is a relatively very new (Ahmed, 2019). Therefore, it is actually the application of different online electronic system software to run HRM functions. It is defined as a computer based application for assembling, processing, analyzing data related to the human resources management through infusion of online integration. According to (Masum et al., 2015), E-HRM provides competitive advantages for supporting human resource management processes. It ensures easier, faster, and cheaper human resource activity accomplishment and helps in all types of operational, functional and strategic human resource management processes. It helps to take more effective and strategic decision to solve human resource problems. In the words of (Masum et al., 2016) with the development of internet technology the world has become a global village on continuous innovation to make work life easier and faster. As a result, HRM department is no more rely on manual task; rather the invention of computer based information systems, advancement of electronic tools made the job sound and more efficient to manage the activities of the department. Moreover, in many private industries, indubitably, the key practices of e-HRM in lieu of traditional HRM have become more potential, acceptable, and integrated web-based approach. The e-HRM is called a web-based tool, used to automate and support human resource processes (Bondarouk et al., 2017). Therefore, it is the use of technology or intranet to perform HR activities with a view to achieving the goal of firm in a smooth way (Karim et al., 2015). Moreover, Masum et al. (2016) further argued that, it is an integrated information system that comprises supply and demand forecast, staffing information, recruitment and selection, training and development, pay increase, compensation forecast, promotion-related information, employee relations etc. Then, logically, this new phenomenon hints the practice of advanced digitalization in workplaces for modifying the time and space of work (Islam, 2015). Therefore, with the advent of E-HRM, profound changes of traditional HRM practices have been witnessed globally. In this case, Ahmed & Ogalo (2019) argued that, the current organizations have to carry acute challenges through digital transformation of the traditional HR practices into the swift development of electronic HR systems. It additionally enhances human resource services, improves strategic orientation and reduces organizational costs as well (Findikli & Bayarcelik, 2015). For instance, Masum (2015) considered that, HRM is directly linked with organizational success. In the same way, Stone & Dulebohn (2013) informed that, internet technology has brought a dramatic change on human resource planning, recruitment, selection, appraisal, training and compensation all over the world. As a result, many organizations of our country have started to adopt web based recruitment practices and web based training system for their employees. In addition, Ahmed and Ogalo (2019) have further found that, some human resource professionals in our country have started to practice the functions of e-HRM though it is still new of them. Overall, E-HRM is an umbrella term covering all possible integrations, mechanisms and contents between HRM and information technology aiming at creating value within the firms for targeted employees and management.
2. Background and Importance of the Problem
In Bangladesh, large private companies have started to implement e-HRM in last 5 years (Jahan, 2014). But during this research, it has been found that some of the reputed private firms as well as HR professional in our country are still rely on some traditional HRM practices for acquiring their strategic goals. As a result, the effective application of HRM functions (human resource policy, human resource planning, recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisal, compensation and benefits) has become difficult for the managers due to having no digital linkage of present HRM with the e-HRM. Hence, the current HRM can be mostly transferred to the virtual world with the help of setting up e-HRM. In this regard, Hosain (2017) argued that, the adaptation of e-HRM might be a boon for the HR professionals to accelerate the organization ultimately. Moreover, Martin and Reddington (2010) concluded that, E-HRM is a relatively new and wide-ranging domain in which HR systems meet web-based technology which offers both advantages and challenges to the organizations. The e-HRM is a manner of executing HR strategy, policy and practice as a guide the company on HR requirements of the establishment throughout web technology channels. Thus, e-HRM knowledge offers thresholds which enable managers, workers as well as HR experts to outlook, pull out, or modify sequence which is essential for overseeing the HR of an organization. Hence it is recommended that e-HRM has characteristics that place a means of providing detailed HR performances. With help of e-HRM, executives can contact applicable sequence and figures, make decision, and correspond with others.
3. Objective of This Research
The main objective of this research is to identify the most important practices of e-HRM functions in place of the traditional HRM functions in the private industry of Bangladesh.
4. Research Question
To address the above stated objective, the following research question has been given priority throughout this study:
• Which functions of e-HRM are the most important functions used by the recent private industry as their key practices in Bangladesh?
5. Related Literature Reviews and Theories
In line with the changes of global economy along with the technological changes, globalization, information and communication technologies especially the Internet and the development of administrative thought, human resource management is undergoing a radical change in its concepts, policies, strategies and practices (Nivlouei, 2014). In this case, e-HRM has become a new dimension based on the comprehension and conscious use of information and communication technologies in the exercise of basic functions of human resources management and development (Nagendrababu & Girisha, 2018). It is a new type of management thought and practice that embraces the fast-changing era, adapts its renewable technologies, Information and communication in the performance of its functions, where human resources management relates to the set of policies and practices required to implement the various human resources management activities needed by an organization to operate in the changing environment of organizations and businesses (Al-kasasbeh et al., 2016).
In recent years, some private organizations of Bangladesh have made a noticeable shift in the execution of traditional HR system from labor-intensive to a technology-intensive approach (Rahman & Aydin, 2020). In line with this new approach of e-HRM, most of the transactional activities are executed by using web-based-software rather than by human resource administrators (Rahman et al., 2018). Moreover, e-HRM has become an integration of human resource activities, internet and human resource information systems which helps in delivering Human resource services smoothly. In this regard, Strohmeier and Kabst, (2014) defined e-HRM as a way of implementing human resource strategies, policies, and practices in organizations through a conscious and directed support of and/or with the full use of web technology-based channels. This definition is relevant to the integration of various activities within the organization, which includes the planning, implementation and application of information technology with a view to achieving organizational objectives (Sinha & Mishra, 2014). It can facilitate direct employment relationships using, for instance, on-line recruitment practices and intranet systems. Therefore, e-HRM is a web-based solution that takes advantage of the latest web application technology to deliver an online real-time human resource management solution the main goal e-HRM is to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness within the human resource department, and allow human to become a strategic partner in achieving organizational goals.
According to Rohi (2017), e-HRM is composed of e-functions such as e-training, e-learning, e-recruitment, e selection, e-staffing, e-appraisal and e-salary and compensation management, provides benefits inside and outside of the organization. In this regard Hosain (2017) indicates the thirteen E-HRM functions in his study are e-advertising, e-application tracking, e-recruitment, e-selection, e-learning, classical & virtual training, e-performance management system, e-compensation & benefit, HRIS & e-communication, e-personal profile, e-grievance tracking & handling, green HRM and e-leave etc. The e-HRM consists of 9 important systems (Choochote & Chochiang, 2015) described as recruitment system, employee system, basic organizational information management system, salary management system, learning and training system, idea and creativity exchange system, assessment system, welfare system, career development system etc. Swaroop (2012) define e-recruitment as the use of the website of the company as a recruiting tool via attracting candidates and receiving e-applications, e-training as the use of the company’s website to carry out learning or training, where e-devices, applications and processes are employed for the creation of knowledge, management and transfer, e-compensation as the use of the website of the company for planning employees’ compensation, e-performance appraisal as the use of the company’s website to conduct an evaluation online of the employees’ skills, knowledge and performance online, e-leave helps to reduce the cost by defining the work force in advance and to review the past data records of the employee leave etc, e-communication uses the internet and website such as receiving and sending e-mail from inside or outside of organizations. Again Khashman & Al-Ryalat (2015) define the selection as the use of the website of the company to facilitate the selection of staff, particularly in long distances. Using video conference over the internet; for instance, when used in the early stages of the selection process, it can bring about cost reduction and time saving, e-communication as the use of the company’s website to bring about communication through e-mails—e-mails has become the communication medium of choice in firms. In the e-recruitment and e-selection process, organizations advertise different job vacancies on World Wide Web to stimulate and attract large number of candidates (Samaduzzaman & Zaman 2012). It involves conducting online tests, conducting preliminary and final interview through audio and video conferencing. The e-training helps the distant learners to attend the training and learning programs when it is not possible for the trainee to present physically. It assures online lectures, online field training, or physically training videos with the use of internet. In addition, in the time of online payroll, benefits and compensation management employees can able to verify their salary, perks, bonuses, any deductions easily on their device. Then some organizations follow a web-based leave management system where an employee can apply for leave via online (internet/intranet). It helps to keep all employees’ leave records, entitlements, balances.
Still E-HRM practice in our country is the inception stage for having some challenges such as internet and technology backwardness. Here, the potential of E-HRM is still under-utilized in our many private organizations (Ahmed, 2019). Moreover, the most common challenge is the internet literacy and technology adaptability by the employees in the organization. However, all organization can overcome the challenges such as cost, technology, IT savvy manpower, top management support, change management adaptation etc through E-HRM implementation (Ruel & Bondarouk, 2014). Therefore, our organization needs to understand and accept e-HRM as an asset rather than a system introduced to replace the work force. Some prospective technological application like cognitive software, intelligent self-service system, Hi-tech wireless technologies, communication through vibrant network etc can be the main source of overcome the today’s challenges. Furthermore, organizations need technology set-ups, internet and telecommunication systems considering some limitations like software, hardware, skills of the workforce and financial capacity of the company (Ma & Ye, 2015). Backdated technology can make the workforce less motivated due to slow connectivity with the functions of e-HRM (Umar et al., 2020). Therefore, E-HRM can encourage a computer based record-keeping irrespective of traditional activities by adding value in the organization functions like recruitment and selection process, further training, compensation related work or other performance management related activities.
6. Methodology
6.1. Research Design
The research design is a principle plan that specifies the methods and processes for gathering and analyzing the needed information (Quinlan, Zikmund, Babbin, Carr, & Griffin, 2015). As the main objective of the study is to find out the key practices of e-HRM functions in the private industry of Bangladesh, the whole study has been designed to achieve its objective through the questionnaire survey method as well as Garrett ranking method among the respondents.
6.2. Population and Sample of the Study
The population is known as a complete set of individuals or objects that share some common characteristic (Quinlan et al., 2015). The population is needed to identify the sample size. Since this study focuses on finding of key practice of E-HRM on the private industry in Bangladesh, our population of this study is all the HR Professionals from all private industry inside the Bangladesh.
The sample is known as a subset or some part of a larger population that is used to measure characteristics of the entire population (Quinlan et al., 2015). The simple random sampling method has been used to reach the respondents such as all HR officers, senior officers, trainers/professionals of the private originations of our country. The sample of the study consists of 108 HR employees working in the various private industries inside our country.
6.3. Data Collection and Analysis
The primary data has been collected from the total number of 108 respondents consisted of all HR officers, HR senior officers and HR professionals by using a close-ended structured questionnaire survey from January to April, 2022. Then, a five point Likert scale (whereas 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = undecided, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree) has been used to design the survey questionnaire emphasizing the respond from the respondents of the key e-HRM practices such as e-recruitment, e-selection, e-training, e-performance appraisal, e-compensation, e-communication, e-advertising, e-application tracking, e-personal profile, e-grievance tracking and handling system, e-leave etc.
Moreover, the collected data has been analyzed though Garrett ranking technique in this study to find out the research result. Garret ranking technique has been used to identify the e-HRM practices in place of traditional HRM practices through ranking. In accordance to this method, the respondents were requested to assign the ranks for all the e-HRM practices and the outcomes of such ranking have been converted into score values using the following formula:
where, Rij = Rank given for the ith e-HRM practices by jth respondents;
Nj = Number of e-HRM practices ranked by jth respondents.
According to Pia et al. (2019), the calculated % position was converted into scores by the Garret Tablevalue. The score were multiplied by each statement, the multiplied scores of each statement were added together and then divided the by total number of respondents to get the average Garret score. Then the mean score value were placed in ascending order and the least score acquired the highest e-HRM practices among the all practices.
6.4. Limitations of the Study
The major limitations we had to face in time of data collection from the private organizations are the respondents were limited to their sample size and composition, some respondents were reluctant to fill up the questionnaires properly, and entry restriction was also found among the human resource trainers and professionals in some of the organizations.
7. Findings of the Study
7.1. Demographic Findings of the Respondents
In the questionnaires, respondents’ profile was developed to get an idea about the respondents’ gender, age groups, marital status, education level, professional status (Table 1).
Table 1 depicts that the number of 73 of respondents (n = 73) are male and 35 of respondents (n = 35) are female among the total 108 respondents. Out of total respondents, 53.70 percent of the respondents were between 20 and 30 years where 25.00 percent of respondents were between 30 and 40 years and 21.29 percent of respondents were over 40 years range. Similarly, 67.59 percent of respondents were single while married accounted for 32.40 percent. In the estimation of education level, Diploma in HRM were 27.00 percent, Bachelor’s of HRM were 29.62 percent, Master’s in HRM were 32.40 percent and Doctorate in HRM was only 12.96 percent. Finally, in the time of professional status, HR officers were 25.00 percent, HR senior officers were 62.03 percent and HR trainers and professionals were 12.96 percent. Finally among six private firms the highest response rate was telecommunication (27.77%) and the lowest response rate was transportation (4.62%) and other firms were a satisfactory response rate.
7.2. E-HRM Practices in Place of Traditional HRM
After studying several research studies in the literature review part, the researchers
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Table 1. Demographic findings of the respondents.
Source: Questionnaire survey.
have been identified mainly 11 practices of e-HRM functions that were used to design the questionnaire. The respondents were requested to put their opinion in Likert scale regarding which e-HRM practices they encounter most.
From Table 2 it is seen that, most of the respondents were strongly agree (37.03%) in the statement of e-communication but only (1.85%) were strongly agree in the statement of e-leave. As a result, the Garrett ranking method displays e-communication is the Rank I and e-leave is the Rank XI in the next Table 3.
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Table 2. Percentage distribution of e-HRM practices in place of traditional HRM.
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Table 3. Rank orders of e-HRM practices in place of traditional HRM using Garrett ranking techniques.
Source: Questionnaire survey.
7.3. The Key Practices of E-HRM of the Private Industry in Place of Their Traditional HRM
Today many burgeoning private firms (bank, insurance, pharmaceutical, transportation, university and telecommunication) in our country are transforming their traditional HR activities into E-HRM practices. Because most of private firms have understood that the adoption e-HRM for IT infrastructure curtails their time and cost, improves the quality and brings the flexibility with innovation. Moreover, the private firms are going ahead with innovative and dynamic HR activities through practicing the functions of e-HRM such as e-recruitment, e-selection, e-training, e-performance appraisal, e-compensation, e-communication, e-advertising, e-application tracking, e-personal profile, e-grievance tracking and handling system, e-leave etc.
In the above table (Table 3) all the key practices of e-HRM have been ranked according to the Garret raking method in order to find out the most important practices of e-HRM that are recently practicing by the private industry in our country.
The lowest average Garret score indicates the highest rank among the above practices of e-HRM functions. However, using the Garret ranking method, it has been found the sequence of key practices of e-HRM functions in our private industry are e-communication (62.26%); e-personal profile (64.44%), e-training (64.53%), e-application tracking (66.36%), e-recruitment (66.57%), e-compensation (67.57%), e-selection (67.68%), e-performance appraisal (67.70%), e-advertising (67.98%), e-grievance tracking and handling system (69.86%) and e-leave (70.62%).
In Figure 1 that, the major five practices of e-HRM have been shown according Garret ranking method means that the lowest average Garret score indicates the highest rank among the e-HRM practices. The five key e-HRM practices are e-communication (rank 1); e-personal profile (rank 2), e-training (rank 3), e-application tracking (rank 4), e-recruitment (rank 5).
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Figure 1. Five major practices of e-HRM in the private industry of Bangladesh found from Garret ranking method (Table 3).
8. Recommendations
The main objective of this study is to find out the key practices of e-HRM in place of traditional HRM in the private industry of Bangladesh. For this purpose, based on above findings of this study, the following recommendations can be taken to ponder over:
1) Since, most of the private industry of Bangladesh is using “e-communication process” for saving their time and cost, they need to more active on it.
2) Since, our existing private industry is currently using “e-personal profile” to record the employees’ file and documents; they should keep it up for a long time.
3) It is obviously a good aspect of our current private industry for using “e-training method” to enhance skills of their current employees throughout the organization; they must need to continue this method more and more for a long time effect on employees.
4) As “e-application tracking” can help to scrutinize a pool of talent candidates for final selection process, they should practice this process more on a regular basis.
5) As “e-selection process” has become an integral part of final employment in many private industries in Bangladesh, this process should be carried out more meticulously for choosing right person in the right job.
9. Conclusion
E-HRM costs money, but ignoring e-HRM costs a fortune (Nagendrababu et al., 2018). The private industry of our country has to understand and utilize the innovation of e-HRM. It is a concept of Web-based technologies for providing the services regarding the human resource management in the organization for creating a strategic HRM-policy, reducing costs, higher productivity, increasing quality of labor force and more responsibility of managers and employees in the execution of HRM-tasks. Therefore, the key practices of E-HRM, for instance, e-communication, e-personal profile, e-training, e-application tracking, e-recruitment, e-compensation, e-selection, e-performance appraisal, e-advertising, e-grievance tracking and handling system and e-leave etc are the boon in the context of our private industry when they think about the application of HRM practices as a whole. The finding of this research is simple but needs to rethink about the adoption and practice of E-HRM in place of our traditional HRM practices in most of the growing private industries of our country.
Survey Questionnaire
Dear Sir/Madam,
This is to inform you that, we, the teachers of Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University (JKKNIU), Bangladesh, are requesting to you for completing the questionnaire on “Exploring The Key Practices of E-HRM in place of Traditional HRM: A Study on Private Industry of Bangladesh”. We are announcing that your answer of the following parts will be used only for academic purpose.
PART-I: Personal Information, Please (√) into the following information.
1). Gender:
• Male • Female
2) Age:
• Between 20 - 30 years • Between 30 - 40 years • Over 40 years
3) Marital Status:
• Single • Married
4) Education Level:
• Diploma in HRM • Bachelor’s in HRM
• Master’s in HRM • Doctorate in HRM
5) Position/Title:
• HR officers • HR Senior Officer • HR Trainers/professionals
6) Types of private originations:
• Banking • Insurance • Pharmaceutical
• Education • Transportation • Telecommunication
PART-II: Please give your opinion (√) to the following practices of e-HRM functions in your current industry.
Thanks for your co-operation. We wish for your good health. We would like to inform you that your personal information will never be disclosed to outsiders.