Higher National Diploma In

Business Management

Human Resource Management

ASSIGNMENT TWO

MAXWELL-COLE, Alexander

22 November 2013

By

ROUDI Salehalmahdi

ID: 924073

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Content page

Subject page

Introduction 3

Human resource planning (a) 3

Human resource planning (b) 4

Recruitment (a) 4

Recruitment (b) 5

Selection (a) 6

Selection (b) 7

Selection (C) 8

Conclusion 8

Bibliography 9

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Introduction

Nowadays, Human resource management (HRM) procedures, especially in terms of planning, recruiting and selection have become major approaches for organizations. By increasing the population and the level of businesses it is the time for HRM department to bring new ideas and new solvation in order to make better and easier approaches for organizations to get their objectives. To bring the updated information and match them into the companies, here are two construction industrial companies. One is Bricks and Sticks (Company A) and the other is Bob the Builder (Company B). In terms of Human resource planning, recruitment and selection, here is some method and idea in order to improve the particular process of these two companies.

1-Human Resource Planning

a) Human Resource Planning (HRP) is a strategy of acquisition, utilization, retention and improvement of the employees in the heart of any organization to pursuit its objective. (BPP, 2010). According to the main objective of organizations, HRP department is responsible to illustrate the particular competences and productivity of its labours and demands within the organization. It is very important to assess the demands and supplies so in case of growth find suitable skilled labours and if there is a decline reduce or deploy their labours. The HRP within these two construction companies could help effectively but the process and stages should be recognized. Company A (bricks and Sticks) which mainly operates in London, carries out job analysis every time a vacancy comes up. Company B (Bob the Builder) operates in Scotland and has not carry out job analysis and updated job description within the previous five years. Kane and Santon (1994) suggest there are three approaches that respond these uncertainties for Company A. the first one is, the staff replacement approaches which mainly explains that with little formal planning it is possible to fill the vacancies within the organization by its own labours. (BPP, 2010)On the other hand, being updated by the whole roles and social environment is another key that Company B has not mentioned. In terms of external demands such as technological, the changing nature of work, governmental policies and demand in relevant markets they have not been updated. So Company B needs to follow the market and correspondingly improve its labours capability and skills. These four options can have effect on any organizations individually. For instance, changes in Governmental policies mean those relevant factors have changed, such as national minimum wage which is directly relevant to the satisfactory of employees. Regulations have change as well as work time, health and safety roles recruitment policies maternity leaves and so on. These are all the factors that HRP department can help effectively. (BPP, 2010)

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b) Totally the process of HRP process has been divided into three major parts which are forecasting demands, forecasting supply and closing the gap between these two. Forecasting demand and supply both have internally and externally sides and the third stage illustrates shortfalls and surpluses. (BPP, 2010). According to these two construction company situation HRP department needs to have some information in order to complete the HRP process. Organizational objectives in long and short terms for both companies are the first internal information the HRP needs. Staff utilization and characteristics of labours is another key which follows the factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, abilities and skills. The last internal factor for the HRP is the cost of labour within the company; it can be included training, overtime, and benefits. The external factors the HRP needs are those Company B needs to follow in order to complete the HRP process as well, like demand in the relevant labour market, government policy, the changing nature of work and technological development. These external factors are important for the HRP to evaluate and complete its process. In the other main stage (Forecasting supply) in both internally and externally factors, informations HRP needs summaries into the competences of current productivity and skills of labours. Wage and salary rates, changes in skills availability and demographic changes which is relevant to area of population growth and decline. The last stage of HRP process is closing the gap between demands and supplies. This stage may met by some shortfalls and surpluses of labour/skills and productivity which emerge may be dealt with in various ways, in accordance with the organization’s specific HR and business objectives and policies. After all these, Company A and B in order to complete the HRP process both need to follow the stage one, because both of them have some shortfalls in assessing particular labour demands, the difference is Company A needs to follow internal factors especially the cost of labour, so they can anticipate the cost of training and other benefits for job sharing and their job analysis so there is no need to carry it out when a vacancy arises. Company B needs to pursue external factors to find out the changes in terms of government policy and technological development and especially updates its job analysis. (BPP, 2010)

2- Recruitment

a) The methods and media have used by these two companies in terms of recruitment are a limited amount. It means that in a number of different recruitment methods and media such as External recruitment, E-recruitment, Advertising and internal recruitment Company A has used advertising and Company B only is using internal methods and media. Company A always prefers using flexible and practiced labours instead of recruiting a new labour into the organization when a vacancy comes up by advertising in a minimum of 3 media, which has some advantages and disadvantages. On the other hand Company B recruits new person into the same position in case of vacancy by advertising internally only.

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Company A has chosen advertising method which is very strong strategy to find new skilled labours to recruit but the point is they prefer to share the works with practiced labours within the organization. They pay the cost of advertising in minimum of three media but they change their own labour position within the company. The most important advantage of filling the vacancies with local employees and who are working within the organization is the duty of training decreases, work behavior and attributes are all known for employees. Employees are experienced enough to arrange the job and finally the cost of recruiting has been avoided. Otherwise this act has some disadvantages for Company A which is, by always using employees internally, the expectation of change from labours decrease. Bad habits from labours do not change and they just change their position. The time that the labour before vacancy used to spend for that work now is half or less because it is job sharing so the cost for organization goes up. In fact, organization is making harder job by sharing the vacancy and filling empty places with their current employees which can be led to unsatisfactory labours expectancy of working within the organization. Not recruiting a new person into Company means not ‘injecting’ new idea into the organization and stability of thoughts and objectives for a period of time for its labours. (Armstrong, 2006) On the other hand, however, Company B recruits a new person into the same role in case of vacancy by advertising only internally. In fact also this strategy has some advantages as well as disadvantages. They can choose a person with especial skills contribute to the direct position and fill the necessary needs by finding particular labour but the point is they advertise only inside their construction company. It becomes harder to find specific person into a small society such as a company. The person they find might not have enough knowledge and skills to fill the special demands. So they just recruit a person instead of others for a same position and the demands do not get answer because of lack of skills. Here is some method to face with recruiting labours. (BPP, 2010)

b) A number of methods are available to organizations especially Bricks and Stick-Bob the Builder to contact potential candidates are different. According to Company A and B (Bricks and Stick)(Bob the Builder) which operate in a wide area and the number of skilled people with suitable qualifications are a lot, here are three major methods have picked up to help. E-recruitment or online recruitment is one of the best strategy to find qualified people to fill the competences and vacancies. “E-recruitment not only saves costs but also enables organizations to provide much more information to applicants, which can easily be updated” (Armstrong, 2006)The cost of advertising is cheap, the information changeable and the number of applicants increase dramatically. On the other hand a competitive recruitment creates which cause a lot of problem for HRM department to recruit the particular labour. (BPP, 2010)

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The other method that is available and useful for these two companies is External recruitment which has been divided into several parts such as Job center, existing contacts, direct to source and careers services. These are the different methods that these construction companies can use to recruit new labours from the labour market. In some cases they can make request to job agencies like job center. In this case the employees introduced are local and national and the qualification are the same as companies demands, in the other part of this method companies can get along with careers services which is contributes to graduated schools and institutions but in both options the applicants might be unexperienced. Direct to sources can be a recruitment way to find labours from a higher education like universities graduated. Again the qualification and skills can be met but lack of experience can be disadvantage. (BPP, 2010)The other major method that these two companies have already used is internal recruitment. Although construction companies both using their advertising and recruiting methods internally but it can be more professional than it is now, these steps come with four methods. Advertising for self-applicants. Soliciting recommendation from supervisors/managers and training officers. Soliciting referrals by existing employees to family or friends and contacts and finally, formal succession, promotion and transfer planning. These are all the steps to advertise and recruit inside the company but the effect of recruiting internally still can have cost for training and replacing labours. (BPP, 2010)

3) Selection

a) Selection involves identifying the most suitable of the candidates attracted by recruitment efforts. (BPP, 2010). This process of selection is dealt with a number of methods and the most widely technique of this is interviewing. The process of interviewing is very common for organization to assess and evaluate the most attractive and productive applicants. Interviewing has different types. Individual or one-to-one, panel interview and selection boards. Company B is using individual as its only method of selection and interview. The advantages of this type are direct face-to-face communication and opportunity to establish rapport between the candidates and interviewer. Also there are some disadvantages for this type of interview. The candidates may be to disguise lack of knowledge in a specialist area of which the interviewer himself knows little. The interviewer’s perception may be selective or distorted and lack of objectivity may go unnoticed and unchecked. And finally the greater opportunity for personal rapport with the candidate may cause a weakening of the interviewer’s objective judgment. (BPP, 2010). Nonetheless, in addition, using interview as the only method for Company B causes some drawbacks. Limitation of interviews makes some shortfalls for Company B because interviews are criticized; they fail to provide accurate prediction of how a person will perform in the job. The main reasons might be so

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are as follow. Limited scope, an interview is too brief to predict how much a candidate is able to fulfill the position will be given within the company. Limited relevance, the lacks in structure of interview may fail to evaluate the compatibility between candidates and company. Artificially, an interview is an artificial situation; the candidates may be on the best behavior or conversely, so the reflection that interviewer gets from candidates may not be real. Lack of skill and experience by interviewers, for instance, a reluctance to probe into facts and challenging the candidates where necessary and inability to control the length and atmosphere of interview. These disadvantages might be the drawbacks for Company B to use interview as the only method. (BPP, 2010). (Armstrong, 2006)

b) These two companies are using different practices in terms of selection methods. Company A is using panel interviews and Company B is using interview one-to-one. To compare these two companies’ methods against best practice, it is important to demonstrably evaluate the best practice of each these methods. In Panel interview which is used by Company A, designed of two or three people who together interview a single candidate, it is common that one of interviewer is HR manager and the other one is the future boss of the candidate. In the main structure of interview there are some roles and regulations that should be upheld to make the interview professional and fair for applicants, they have been divided into different part, one is legal methods or governmental policies, the other one related to the main structure and question that given to the applicants and finally the process of collecting information from the interview make a best practice of these methods. The legal framework of selection explains that there should not be any discriminatory questions such as non-related question to the job; this means questions such as age, sex and marital status. Medical references should not be asked from applicants. The other procedure in the structure of question in Panel interview which Company A follows is having a set type of question for all candidates. All the questions should be the same so the answers of applicants could be comparable. And decision making would be fair. The last process is all the information has been collected from the applicants should be saved and protected. Besides all the processes and procedures of interviewing, using other methods of selection could help to the best practice, such as, evaluating of education and experience, selection testing or handwriting analysis. On the other hand Company B is using individual method and does not ask the same question from the candidates which to compare with Company A and best practice is very different. The interviews for Company B tends to be unstructured, it means that the information that arrives from applicants and collect the special skills that Company is looking for, HR department has problem because they are failed to classify and monitored all the useful documentations. The other procedure that

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Company B has not used is other method of selection. In fact Company has not done the selection method completely and has some shortfalls in case of best practice and Company A. (BPP, 2010)

c) There are various Alternative techniques that available to Company B to improve the selection process. Besides interview there are further options to analysis and select the particular skills and capable applicants. Armstrong, .says” the main selection methods are the interview, assessment centers and tests”, 2006. The other formula is Graphology or handwriting analysis. In addition there are more alternative methods such as selecting test, background and reference checks and Biographical data. Each of these methods can have positive effect on Company B selection process. For instance, by using selecting test Company B can make written test included all the information that they do not ask from everyone such as work sample tests which simulate job related activity and examination of portfolio of work. Backgrounds and reference checks can be used in order to verify application claims as to qualification, previous employment record and reasons for leaving. Finally the biographic data method which gathered by multiple choices can help Company B in terms of family background, life experience and so on. Assessment center as Armstrong believes is a more comprehensive approach to selection that has provided. This method provides to what extent candidates are match the culture of the organization. this procedure is getting done by doing a range of tests and structured interviews that are part of proceeding. It also helps candidates to find out if the like working within the organization or not. The last introduced method is Graphology which is used by few firms in the UK and more extensively in the rest of Europe and can be defined as the study of the social structure of a human being through his or her writing. This method is used in selection to draw conclusion about a candidate’s personality from his or her hand writing, which can help Company B to predict the suitable candidates and recruit them. (BPP, 2010)(Armstrong, 2006)

ConclusionIn conclusion, the process of recruiting and selection has shown that Company A has done the procedures more succeed than Company B. it is obvious that there are some shortfalls in terms of recruitment for Company A as well, but in selection method they are using a range of methods which is good and help them to find and recruit their especial labours. Company B need to follow the particular scheme of work and get help from HRM managers to improve its process as well as Company A.

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Bibliography(n.d.).

Armstrong, M. (2006). Human Resource Management. London.

BPP. (2010). Human Resource Management. London.

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