HR Professionals' Knowledge of Firms' Quality Requirements: An Exploratory Study

All employees should have knowledge about the impact of their activities on the company's product and process quality, including financial impact, as many decisions in these organizations are based on such considerations. Human Resource (HR) department employees, in particular, require knowledge of the firm's quality approach. Because the role of HR employees is to identify and hire candidates meeting quality competence requirements, awareness of the quality function, including the costs of quality management, can be important. Whether HR professionals possess knowledge related to their firm's quality approach is an unanswered question in the literature. Consequently, the state of this knowledge was examined in enterprises in Poland. Most are large international companies. In order to assess quality knowledge, a survey was conducted during cyclical workshops organized for HR employees. The survey covered basic knowledge regarding the quality management system and basic groups of quality costs. The results are surprising. The study found that many employees of the surveyed enterprises do not have basic knowledge about the economic aspects of quality in their companies. In this situation, there is a risk that they will not see the relationship between their work and the level of quality. In particular, one of their important tasks is the selection, training, and knowledge sharing of employees who contribute to quality objectives and processes. If HR work is isolated from quality considerations, then problems with the quality of work from new hires can be substantial. These results should inspire top management to think more carefully about the scope of quality management and employee training programs, including the link between HR and quality practices. The results also show the need for more training for HR employees in areas aimed at improving quality knowledge management in companies. They indicate an interesting direction for broader research, a direction worth continuing by obtaining more in-depth data from a larger number of companies in future studies.