Resource Management

Challenges: External or Internal

Thus, every organization, whether business or nonprofit, needs to be effective and efficient in managing resources if it is to successfully achieve its mission or have a competitive advantage in its market. Similarly, any initiative or task planned or undertaken by organizations in the form of a project or a task cannot be deemed successful unless serious consideration for sustainable, timely, relevant, cost-efficient, targeted, and appropriate use of resources has been made. Resource estimation, supply, and project human resource management are critical to organizations’ operations. Yet it is also true that even the best planned and rehearsed project may abruptly face crisis and falter at the first hurdle, triggered by system failures. Contingency plans, though extremely important, may not always provide the desired outcome, as these are normally developed with certain assumptions. As a result, projects or organizations facing crisis in resource management may descend into an undesirable set of events that may prove financially catastrophic and damage an organization's reputation. The discussion below identifies some of the tools for resource management and also gives the rationale for utilizing these tools and techniques. Effective resource management can assist managers, planners, and crisis management teams to minimize the possibilities of underperformance by maximizing efficiency, even at difficult times, to achieve the organization's objectives.

Human Resources and Crisis

Research has shown that one of the most critical resources for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations is their employees. In fact, one of the biggest expenditures of an organization is that of salaries and related expenditures in efforts to keep employees in an organization or project. This may explain why reputable companies such as Google place much effort on this by the provision of a workplace culture that promotes effective employer-employee relations. In addition to employees, volunteers constitute part of human resources and are of equal importance to employees within charitable organizations. Indeed, the effective use of human resources is the lifeblood of an organization or business. Employees are effectively the public face of an organization. Effective resource management will not end at the recruitment of persons into an organization or business but, more importantly, it will work for creating an environment for enabling synergetic interactions that are likely to yield effective decision capabilities in a crisis situation within the organization. Thus, effective human resources management in a crisis entails assessing, planning, training and professional development, and an oversight of employees’ work-life balance needs.

...