Human resources management and organizational sustainability in first bank nigeria plc branches in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
The success of any business organization depends on the ability of the management to effectively and efficiently utilize the organization’s resources and environmental factors. These resources include human resources, physical resources, information resources, and technological resources. Human resources have been adjudged to be the most important (Cole & Kelly, 2017). This is because structures, policies, programs, decision-making, and strategies required to attain the organization’s goals and objectives can only be possible through human efforts. Even in the current breakthroughs in organizations through the deployment of artificial intelligence and robotics, humans remain at the helm of affairs to plan, lead, coordinate, and control the accomplishment of organization targets of profit maximization, wealth maximization, and social responsibility. This makes human resources paramount in the organization, hence the inevitability of human resources management in various organizations.
Human resources management entails the entire process that involves the determination of job vacancies, recruitment and selection, induction, placement, training and development, motivation, and performance appraisal (Sharma, 2019). This process encapsulates identifying the organization’s workforce needs, filling these needs, and ensuring that those employed perform optimally in the organization. This makes human resources management in organizations support the economic objectives of such organizations (Sharma, 2019). These economic objectives are mainly the maximization of profit and wealth of the organization’s shareholders (Ehnert, 2018). This implies that the management of the human resources in the organization is mainly aimed at ensuring that those employed in the organization contribute towards the attainment of increased productivity, profitability, market share, and improved overall performance. This indicates that when human resources seek the most qualified persons to fill vacant positions in the organization, their purpose at first is to ensure that these personnel contribute to the profitability and growth of the organization. At the same time, human resources managers design various ways to motivate the personnel in the organization, and they aim to make those who are motivated [employees] contribute more to the organization’s success.
However, performance and profitability have been altered with the changing dynamics of the business environment and the call for many organizations to become part and parcel of the society where they operate. Organizations seek to perform optimally from economic, social, environmental, and governance perspectives. This has led to the emergence of the sustainability concept in business. As such, many businesses now consider their sustainability as being paramount in the determination of their performance periodically (Morgan, 2014). These include economic, social, environmental, and governance sustainability. This has increasingly become very important given the emerging corporate governance and climate issues associated with businesses globally. Within the sustainability of organizations, managers now focus on making business decisions for human resources strategies, human resources management, human resources development, personnel deployment, and issues on work-life balance on how they would contribute to economic, social, environmental, and governance sustainability. In many cases, many organizations now adopt the practice of sustainable human resources management (Adams et al., 2017).
Regardless of the emergence of organizational sustainability as one of the objectives of the organization in recent times, many questions still surround how human resources management (HRM) is an essential factor in ensuring or achieving it, albeit in some sectors or industries like the banking industry (Daigavane, 2019). As such, the emerging debate on the importance of human resources management in the organization still rages on. This makes an empirical examination of human resources management and organizational sustainability in First Bank Plc Uyo necessary.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Human resources management (HRM) in organizations aims to ensure that the organizations engage the best qualified, skilled workers and that their behaviour is directed towards accomplishing the set goals. This indicates that human resources management activities are associated with contributions to the economic goals of the organization, with emphasis on minimization of costs per employee associated with employee motivation and attitudes. As such, human resources management practices are targeted at achieving the organization’s objectives, mainly defined in terms of financial performance. This indicates that conventionally, human resources management is always associated practically and theoretically with the financial performance of the organizations.
However, the emergence of the sustainability perspective has altered the evaluation of the organization’s performance beyond financial or profitability. Organizations in the current business world are continually evaluated based on their application and adoption of proper corporate governance, alignment with environmental issues, especially climate action, and identification with the social needs of society. This has eroded the attention paid to only financial performance, with a focus on economic, social, environmental, and governance sustainability. This creates a gap in the literature, with most of the existing literature on the relationship between human resources management and organizational performance having focused more on financial performance in the past. Establishing how human resources contribute to organizational sustainability has become even more paramount.
In Nigeria, where many organizations, including banks, are expectedly focused on profit-making and wealth maximization, few studies have focused on establishing the relationship or influence of human resources management on organizational sustainability. Even to the best of this researcher’s knowledge, no known studies have focused on First Bank Nigeria Plc, Uyo. Hence, this study examined human resources management and organizational sustainability in First Bank Nigeria Plc branches in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The main objective of this study is to examine the relationship between human resources management and organizational sustainability in First Bank Plc branches in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. The specific objectives of this study include the following:
- To examine the relationship between human resources recruitment and sustainability in First Bank Plc Uyo Akwa Ibom State branches.
- To assess the relationship between human resources motivation and sustainability in First Bank Plc Uyo Akwa Ibom State branches.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
To serve as a guide in this study, the following research questions were developed in line with the research objectives:
- What is the relationship between human resources recruitment and sustainability in branches of First Bank Plc Uyo Akwa Ibom State?
- How significant is the relationship between human resources motivation and sustainability in branches of First Bank Plc Uyo Akwa Ibom State?
1.5 RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
The following null hypotheses were developed in this study:
- HO: There is no significant relationship between human resources recruitment and sustainability in First Bank Plc Uyo branches, Akwa Ibom State.
- HO: There is no significant relationship between human resources motivation and sustainability in First Bank Plc Uyo, Akwa Ibom State branches.
1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This study contributes to existing knowledge in the field of human resources management; hence, managers of First Bank Plc branches in Uyo would, through this study, understand the extent to which recruitment and motivation of employees can contribute to the sustainability of the bank. Furthermore, the findings in this study would elucidate the influence of human resources management on organizational sustainability; hence, there is a possibility that the top-level management of First Bank of Nigeria Plc will pay adequate and deserving attention to sustainability-compliant human resources management in the organization.
Similarly, this study would benefit human resources experts since the findings could be incorporated into standard human resources practices offered or suggested to organizations that target economic, social, governance, and environmental sustainability, a function of proper recruitment and motivation of employees. To researchers, this study adds to existing literature and, through the suggestions for further studies, could elicit further empirical studies in this area. Finally, to business management students, this study is a good reading piece of literature that explains the relationship between human resources management and organizational sustainability in banks in particular and other organizations in general.
1.7 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
This study examined human resources management and organizational sustainability in First Bank Plc Uyo, Akwa Ibom State branches. The study covered only the branches of First Bank Plc Uyo and was focused on establishing the relationship between human resources recruitment, human resources motivation, and organizational sustainability.
The limitations of this study are few. First, this study is limited to only First Bank Plc Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. As such, only the existing branches of the bank were covered in this study. Second, this study is limited only to two proxies of human resources management. These are human resources recruitment and human resources motivation. This study limited organizational sustainability to economic, social, environmental, and governance sustainability. Finally, this study is limited to the number of respondents that formed the study sample, as determined by the study population. Data collection using the structured questionnaire research instrument was constrained to only the sample of this study.
1.8 PROJECT ORGANISATION
This work is organized thus, a review of relevant and related literature on Human Resource Management and organizational sustainability is presented in chapter two. Conceptual, theoretical, and empirical frameworks are presented in this chapter. The Research Methodology is presented in chapter three with a detailed description of the sub-sections, which include research design, population of the study, sampling design, data collection technique, instrumentation, validity, and reliability consideration. Chapter four is concerned with the presentation of data, analysis, and discussion of the findings. In chapter five, the conclusion is drawn, and recommendations of the research project for further research are made.
1.9 DEFINITION OF TERMS AS USED IN THE STUDY
Human Resources: This refers to the entirety of the workforce in an organization that is involved in the day-to-day running of the organization at managerial and functional levels.
Human Resources Management: This is the process of identifying the employment needs of the organization, conducting recruitment, selection, and placement to fill these needs, and developing and implementing policies on training, compensation, retention, and performance evaluation of the employees in the organization.
Human Resources Recruitment: This involves identifying, attracting, interviewing, selecting, hiring, and assigning the hired to tasks and positions in the organization.
Human Resources Motivation refers to directing the employee’s behaviours based on identified motives towards individual satisfaction and organizational performance.
Organizational Sustainability: This refers to an organization’s capacity to continue operating and accomplishing or meeting its economic, social, environmental, and corporate governance objectives in the present and future.
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