Significance of Recruitment Selection and Employee Turnover Functions in an Organisation - Case Study Example

Significance of recruitment, selection and employee turnover functions in an organisation Introduction Recruitment and selection processes are the most important functions of Human Resources in every organization. Without recruitment the organization will be without employees and regardless of how profitable the company may seem to be, it cannot achieve without people. On the other hand the outcome of an organization depends on the quality and efficiency of its people. According to Bernthal (1999), choosing the right people at the right place in today’s competitive world determines the functioning of an organization. When employees are selected and placed well they contribute to the running of an organization in an efficient way as well as provide a rating for replacement in future. Hiring of employees begin with planning of human resources which determines the number of people needed and the type of people needed for the tasks in the organization (De Cieri & Kramar 2008).The specification of task and duties of the person and qualifications are enabled by the job analysis and job design. Hiring however is not a one time thing but an ongoing process. Employees normally leave an organization for greener pastures, die or retire. Therefore hiring involves recruitment and selection. This paper will discuss the significance of recruitment, selection and employee turnover functions in an organization, and how perceived problems in these HR functions can be dealt with at a policy level and at an actual HR level. Recruitment and Selection and employee turnover Recruitment and selection are processes that run simultaneously and one is not complete without the other. Recruitment comes before selection in selecting a right applicant. According to Breaugh & Starke (2000), employees leave the company because of death, retirement or in search of greener pastures. This creates a need for an organisation to hire new employees. Recruitment functions never stops unless the organization stops its existence. The process of recruitment is searching to receive applications of a job from whom the right employees can be chosen or selected. It is also the process of searching and attracting applicants who are capable of handling the job. Recruitment begins when new applicants are searched for and ends at the submission of applications (Bernthal 1999). The result needed from the recruitment process is the pool of applicants from which an organization can select new employees. The main function or aim of recruitment is to provide a pool of potential candidates for the job. It looks at the organization’s present and future requirements inline with activities of job analysis and personnel planning (NSW 2002). Recruitment also plays a major role in increasing the pool of potential candidates at a lower cost. It determines the best cost effective method it can use to attract many applicants. By reducing the applicant number under job application or qualified candidate, it helps increase rate of success of the selection process. Recruitment also reduces the probability of job applicants leaving the organization as soon as they came in one they are selected. The process or enables the organization’s legal and social obligation to be met in the regard of composition of its human resource. By recruiting the right people it increases employee effectiveness in the organization both long and short term. It also evaluates the methods and techniques used in sourcing types of job applicants to ensure that it uses the best method. Selection process is where right individuals are picked out of the pool of applicants with competence skills and needed qualifications to fill the job vacancy in an organization. It is a process of differentiating applicants and identifies the best candidate for the job (De Cieri & Kramar 2008). The role of selection in an organization is to find the right people to perform better on the job. They therefore need to be qualified and competent, the identification which is made at the selection process. Employees can be demoralized if they realized they are in the wrong job and the de-motivation may extend to the rest of employees. Another role of selection is to ensure there is low cost incurred by the organization in recruiting and hiring employees. Huselid (1995) explains that if selection process isn’t effective then it may lead to employee turnover and thus frequent hiring which increases costs. The basic recruitment and selection principle is ‘right person for the right job’. The most important employees that an organization needs to give attention when selecting are the managers though employees at operations are also important to ensure the organization is running in an orderly manner. According to Breaugh and Starke (2000), employees are needed in every organization to carry out different tasks effectively and suitable candidates for this are found at the recruitment and selection. It becomes a failure for the Human Resource department if people recruited and selected are unsuitable. The organization is sure to get quality performance from its employees by selecting the best applicant for the job and this will also prevent employee turnover or absenteeism problems. An organization can also save time and money by selecting the best applicant. Time and money that would have been used to keep on hiring new employees due to high turnover can be used to do something constructive for the company. It is at the selection process that screening of applicants is done properly as all applicants are tested. Though selection and recruitment may seem to be the same, they are different in employment process. Recruitment attracts many applicants to apply for the job by creating a pool of them. Selection however rejects many applicants as it chooses the best person with the best knowledge, skills and knowledge for the job required. Selection and recruitment if not done effectively can lead to employee turnover. Employee turnover is the process where employees voluntarily leave an organization thus creating a need to be replaced. According to Huselid (1995), employees leave for greener pastures, retirement or if they die. In many organizations leaving for greener pastures by employees is the one that increase the turnover. Some employees leave for more money while others the money factor isn’t the reason (Peter & Rodger 1992). Lack of job satisfaction, feeling of being taken advantage of or undervalued, feeling helpless or unimportant may also be reasons that increase employee turnover. Higher turnover of women employees may take place when women opt to leave work instead of taking maternity leave or they may be overwhelmed with work and decide to concentrate on taking care of their families. Experienced employees may retire causing high rates of turnover and thus becoming a loss to the organization. Work stress can also cause turnover; child care workers, waiters, police officer, truck drivers work in stressing conditions and may quit their jobs (Harris & Joan 1999). Change in season also causes high turnover especially during school way when some employees have to resume classes. An organization can benefit from employee turnover in several ways. In the case where there is unproductively of employees lowering the performance of an organization, turnover of those employees may enable an organization to hire more productive people for the job. Sometimes it becomes costly for an organization when paying salaries to all employees in the case where the organization is not performing well financially, employee turnover may reduce the number of employees an organization can cater for. An organization can also benefit by getting rid of troublesome employees who bring unrest at the work place. However, high employee turnover can have adverse effects on the organization. Perceived problems and solutions of Recruitment, Selection and Employee Turnover Employee turnover is very expensive for any organization. The cost of hiring a new employee is always higher than the cost of retaining a current employee. It also causes brain drain for the organization (Harris & Joan 1999). Employees gain knowledge over time when working on their jobs and when they leave the knowledge leaves with them making it expensive for the organization to train new employees quickly and thus resources get drained. The trade secrets of the organization are likely to be past on to the new organizations these employees join. Turnover also looses potential clients for the organization. Sales people for example connect the company with the clients and the relationship of the sales people and the clients may be strong such that when they leave the organization the clients follows them to the new organization (Peter & Rodger 1992). To develop a capable and strong workforce requires an efficient recruitment and selection process. As a Human Resource Manager I would recommend evaluation of procedures, methods and strategies the organization uses to retain employees and select employees more often in order to improve their retention in the organization as well as attracting interview candidates of high quality. There are procedures that I can recommend in evaluating the recruitment and selection process. The first step is to create standard measurement. It is not easy to judge if a process is effective if it doesn’t have a measurement system to benchmark with. New employee turnover, metrics of employee satisfaction, surveys of employees, management qualitative assessments, or vacancy time of a position can be used as standards of measurement. The second step is to keep track of the measurement data. In order to know whether the recruitment and selection process is a failure or a success, tracking of measurement standards should be over time. It can be on a monthly basis or yearly basis, and so on. The time of tracking measurement data varies as per an organization or an industry. Compton (1998) explains that an organization with high employee turnover can consider tracking monthly while an organization with low employee turnover can consider tracking quarterly or yearly. If the data trending is positive then it shows how effective the recruitment and selection process are. If the trending is negative it shows problems that need to be addressed with more urgency. The third step is to review overall costs an organization incurs in recruitment and selection processes. Costs here are incurred when advertising for the job, time taken by human resources staff, reimbursement of costs used by employees and so on. The review of cost of each expenditure should ensure the money is spent on the candidate of quality. The fourth step is to make sure the image of the organization is promoted by the recruitment and selection process. According to Law Society of New South Wales (2001), potential employees, customers and investors can have a negative or positive perception towards the organization depending on the recruitment and selection process it conducts. When employees feel valued, they ensure there is a greater working relationship between them and the organization. The final step is to ensure that the selection and recruitment process agree with the legal and organization requirements. If labor law standards and equal treatment of employees is not kept, the organization can face charges of discrimination. Legal compliance within the organization should be ensured by conducting spot-checks and conducting interviews that are informal. There are perceived problems in recruitment and selection processes that may hinder effective hiring in an organization. Failure to weight interview question is one problem where the selection committee fails to determine the weighting for questions prior to the interviews (Pulakos & Schmitt 1995). This leads to poor rating of answered questions and thus poor choice of candidates. Poor setting for the interview prevents effective interview questions to be set. Insufficient follow-up questions during the interview prevent more facts to be clarified. Failing to check with former employers of applicants prevents an organization from determining the true work experience of applicants (Braun 2005). If openings of new vacancy positions are not posted then the recruitment process will fail to attract more potential candidates for the job. A selection criterion that is ambiguous and vague prevents effective selection of candidates. Inappropriate questions during the interview wastes time and may not find the right person for the job. If disabled applicants are not accommodated then the organization may loose from having a disabled expertise. When new employees are not substantially oriented on the job they may not be able to work well. Selection process that is rushed may cause biasness and wrong choice of person for the job. Among other authors, Dickie & Dickie (2010) explain that failure to give clear requirements of jobs may attract less applicants or wrong applicants for the job. In recruitment if the method used is cannot reach widely to attract a pool of applicants then it will fail the selection process. Following the above discussed problems, there are ways an organization can develop an effective recruitment and selection process. The job description should be updated to include information relating to specific duties and activities that the job require, and the abilities, skills and knowledge needed for effective performance of the job (NCETA 2005). An effective recruitment strategy should be development to provide appropriate recruitment sources like employment, agencies, advertisements, direct applications and personal referrals. The strategy should also include the appropriate people recruiting the new employees. There should also be a recruiting strategy evaluation to measure its efficiency. A cost-benefit analysis can be conducted by determining the number of referred applicants, interviewed people, the number of selected and hired people. The effectiveness of hired people for the job from different sources can be compared in order to know the most appropriate source of job applicants For effective selection process to take place I will recommend thorough reviewing of the curriculum vitae (CV) for information relating to the experience, skills and professional qualifications of the applicants (NCETA 2005). Verification of CV information can be done appropriately where applicants can be asked to explains the employment history gaps. According to Bernthal & Wellins (2001), when interviewing applicants structured interviews should be used in asking each applicant the same questions and assessing the way they respond basing it on the determined criteria. Assessment criteria and questions should be based on the job descriptions updated. The criteria could also be used to categorize responses like unsatisfactory, average, good, and excellent and so on. It can also be helpful to have two representatives interviewing the people. Situation questions usually ask candidates about their respond to a happening scenario that may occur in the work place. Experienced-based questions try to find the past work experiences of the applicants and their relevance on the job. Though references are important in recruitment and selection, checking them is normally ignored. Some applicants have past employment problems and that is why reference checks should be done to identify those who shouldn’t be recruited (Braun 1995). Accuracy of past job description, education and history of work can also be done through reference checks. However reference checks should be the only basis to different between applicants. Recruitment and selection processes problems can be solved by the use of policy creation and implementation. Policies concerning recruitment and selection process are the building blocks of workforce. Policies involve planning of applications creation, prequalification of applicants, movement of applicants to becoming candidates and employment procedures. Recruitment policy will help in diverse workforce selection for the organization. It will state the employees expertise, qualifications and skills needed to perform on the given job and should communicate the organization’s aims and values (NSW 2002). Job advertisements will be accompanies by a list of personal experience, skills and qualities needed to perform the job. Discrimination of recruitment advertisement will not be compromised and a system of equal opportunity monitoring will be put in place to create and maintain diversity of work force in the organization (EOWA 2010). There will be no failure of interview conduction and request of references to ensure the right candidate is selected. Candidate selection will be inducted to familiarize with the organization; the background of the organization, the organization structure, policy of trade union, health information and safety procedures. This will enable employees to feel part of the organization within a short period of time. Conclusion Recruitment and selection processes are part of hiring process. They both play a big role in ensuring that the organization’s needs have been met by hiring the right person for the job. Their activities have an impact on any organization both negative and positive. This makes it essential for right choice and placement of people at the right places. Recruitment and selection is the process of hiring employees which is the strategic function for Human Resources department. Recruitment is the process of generation qualified candidates for the job in the organization. In this process, the HR plans to attract applicants and screen them. Selection comes in during the recruitment process the best applicant from the screened applicants is selected. It is therefore important for every organization to have the right person doing the right job and this is a vital role played by recruitment and selection processes. The way these processes are handled will determine its impact on the organization. Otherwise it could lead to adverse employee turnover. When employees can’t perform better on the jobs because of being allocated to wrong jobs they may feel frustrated and leave the organization. All organizations should therefore learn that recruitment and selection is not just filling up a position but how the processes are done will affect the overall performance of those organizations. Referencing List Bernthal, P 1999. Recruitment and Selection. Development Dimension International. Bernthal, P, R & Wellins, R. S 2001. Retaining talent: A benchmarking study. Pittsburgh, PA: Development Dimensions International. Braun, S.A 1995 . Helping managers become effective job interviewers. Industrial Management, 37, 5-8. Breaugh, J.A & Starke M 2000. Research on employee recruitment: So many studies, so many remaining questions. Journal of Management, 26, 405-43 Compton, R., L 1998. Effective Recruitment & Selection Practices, 2ed. NSW : CCH Australia De Cieri, H & Kramar, R 2008. Human Resource Management in Australia- Strategy, People, Performance,3E, Mc Graw-Hill, Irwin, North Ryde, Sydney. Dickie, C., and Dickie, L 2010. Recruitment and selection processes in Australia and china: rewards from common sense and plain dealing. EOWA 2010. Employment Matter Kit: Recruitment and Selection. Harris, J & Joan, B1999. Finding & Keeping Great Employees. New York: AMACOM Huselid, M 1995. The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity and corporate financial performance. Academy of Management Journal, 38 (3), 635-672. NCETA 2005. Workforce Development ‘TIPS’: Theory Into Practice Strategies. Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation Ltd (AER) NSW Department of Industrial Relations 2002. Best Employment Practice – An Essential Guide to Recruitment and Termination Issues in NSW. Peter, H & Rodger, G 1992. Employee Turnover. Cincinnati: South-Western Publishing. Pulakos, E. D & Schmitt, N. 1995. Experiencebased and situational interview questions: Studies of validity. Personnel Psychology, 48, 289-30. The Law Society of New South Wales 2001. 2001 Equal Opportunity Handbook and Model Policies Read More