Human Resource Planning & Development - Essay Example

?Crystal Waters Winery – Human Resource Planning & Development Executive Summary Crystal Waters Winery, like most companies around the world is facing competitive pressure from larger corporations. Hence, they need to increase the work force size and make the operations more standardized to stay competitive. The most important steps include hiring more people with specialized training and education in the fields of HR, marketing, etc. This can only be done if there is a structured recruitment and selection process. They will have to set down a proper procedure that will be followed every time new employees will have to be hired. Most experts say that making proper job descriptions is a good starting point for companies like Crystal Waters Winery. The second phase revolves around effective retention, which involves adequate training where the employees are given room for personal growth and development. Training also has to follow a proper procedure otherwise training may become redundant and the company may not benefit from the training program (Fink, 1992). Crystal Water Winery has to understand that in order to remain competitive in the industry it will have to make a significant investment into its human capital. However, Jacques Terblanche has to ensure that investment is made in the right things. Introduction Crystal Waters Winery is expanding its operations and it wants to be able handle the additional workload that comes with this increase. To effectively manage all this, Crystal Waters Winery will have to hire more people in the HR, management, marketing and viticulture departments. However, they will have to go through various steps before actually hiring individuals. This process is known as Human Resource Planning. A human resource plan is a systematic process of matching the interests, skills and talents of individual community members with the long-term goals and economic opportunities in the community. The human resource plan brings out the long term strategic perspective of the organization and how it wishes to expand upon its repertoire within the relevant thick of things. It takes a keen look at the ways and means through which hiring mechanisms could be established and the numerous ways through which the organizational charter is manifested by the employees themselves. Among the various aspects that are covered by human resource planning the most important ones are: Determining the numbers to be employed at the new department/location Determining the functions of the current workforce Retention/promotion of current staff Removing any redundant functions / employees Future outlook Human Resource Planning is important for every company when they want to be proactive and want to manage their human resources to take advantage of any opportunity in the future. The companies understand the organizational fluidity around skills held by the people. One of the major limitations of HRP is that it requires extensive information of the external labor market, data about current employees and how resources work in the organization. Crystal Waters Winery needs to understand the exact duties need that to be incorporated into the company’s operations and where it will get the human capital from. Through HRP Jacques Terblanche wants to find out how he can improve the performance of his company in the long run without drastically impacting profitability or sales. Demand planning is an integral starting point where the company must anticipate future demand for their product (Bertucci, 2006). Only if the demand is sustainable then it should start hiring new employees, if however the demand is declining then the management must focus on improvement and streamlining of the business processes. Job Analysis A good starting point for Jacques Terblanche would be to create an effective Job Analysis for all the positions for which he will be hiring. Job analysis is the study of competencies, and the emerging emphasis on considering other work-related about the work itself, the worker, the organization, and the work environment. Many experts argue over the way a job analysis should be carried out. There are various methods of carrying out job analyses, these include observing the job, interviewing individuals or groups of individuals performing or supervising the job, collecting and interpreting critical incidents, administering open-ended and structured questionnaires, and reviewing various kinds of information or records relevant to the job (Cronshaw, 1999). There is no single best way for performing job analysis. Choice of a method depends to a large extent on the purpose for which a job analysis is being performed. As mentioned earlier, this is an important step as Crystal Waters Winery has to match the needs of the job with the qualifications of the candidates. Most companies overlook this and end up with the business suffering. The second step is translating this job analysis into a job description. An example job description has been made below. JOB DESCRIPTION Job Description: Crystal Waters Winery Title: Marketing Manager Department: Marketing Division - Margaret River District, Western Australia Reports to: Vice President and Company CEO Job Objective: Responsible for developing and maintaining marketing strategies to meet Crystal Waters Winery’s long term objectives (Rothwell, 2005). Evaluates customer research, market conditions, competitor data and implements marketing plan changes as needed. Oversees all marketing, advertising and promotional staff and activities. Responsibilities: Responsible for the marketing of professional online recruiting services tailored exclusively to the sales and marketing industry Develops annual marketing plan in conjunction with sales department To manage the Marketing Department Budget. Delivery of all marketing activity within agreed budget. Direction of marketing staff where budgets are devolved To manage all aspects of print production, receipt and distribution The achievement of frequent, timely and positive media coverage for Sales careers Online and its programs across all available media (Taylor, 1999) Managing the entire product line life cycle from strategic planning to tactical activities Specifying market requirements for current and future products by conducting market research supported by on-going visits to customers and non-customers Driving a solution set across development teams (primarily Development / Engineering, and Marketing Communications) through market requirements, product contract, and positioning Developing and implementing a company-wide go-to-market plan, working with all departments to execute Relationships and Roles: Internal / External Cooperation Demonstrate ability to interact and cooperate with all company employees Build trust, value others, communicate effectively, drive execution, foster innovation, focus on the customer, collaborate with others, solve problems creatively and demonstrate high integrity Maintain professional internal and external relationships that meet company core values Proactively establish and maintain effective working team relationships with all support departments Job Specifications: 3-5 years of sales experience in the marketing industry Extensive experience in all aspects of developing and maintaining marketing strategies to meet organizational objectives (Sims, 2002) Strong understanding of customer and market dynamics and requirements Willingness to travel and work in a global team of professionals Recruitment and Selection Process After the identification of all the needs of the job then the company has to start attractive prospective candidates for the job. This process is known as recruitment and selection. Recruitment and selection have moved far beyond the time when a manager could look over a few resumes, talk to one or two applicants (who were mostly friends of current employees), and make a hiring decision. Using best practices in recruitment and selection adds value to the organization and contributes to the success – including positive financial outcomes – of the company (Nelson, 1997). Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting qualified people for a job at an organization or firm. Selection is the action or the tact of carefully choosing someone or something as being the best or most suitable one. It can be merged into being a complete process; however both must be carried out with extreme scrutiny. For Crystal Waters Winery, the recruitment and selection process would involve reviewing potential candidates. The first step would be gathering resumes from all the sources. The candidates that match the profile must be called in for an aptitude test. This test will judge all the mental capabilities of the candidates (Cappelli, 1999). Those who successfully score above the minimum requirement will be asked to come in for an interview with supervisors and peers. There should be a series of interviews which would look at specific traits such as leadership, creative thinking, team work, etc. The last stage would be a realistic job preview where the candidate would be given a situation similar to that faced by Crystal Water Winery. If the candidate solves the problem with the same integrity level as Jacques Terblanche then they can be offered a job which in normal circumstances would be subject to negotiations. Training Process The next most important process in having a competitive organization is continuous training of the employees. Before talking about how training can improve Crystal Waters Winery, we will discuss the processes involved in setting up a systematic training process. In order to achieve its overall goal of performance improvement, training must lead to the enhancement of professional knowledge and skills both at individual and collective levels. It clearly implies that the role of training is to improve the overall performance of the organization. The term 'performance' is, therefore, interwoven with training (Kraiger, 2002). The first thing to do is to carry out a Training Need Analysis.The output of this step would be a training requirements matrix which is diagrammatic representation of which people need what kind of training. Then based on the needs, a training program has to be designed. The company may need to set up a separate space where all the training can be carried out without disrupting the operations of the company. The company has to set up a training calendar, which will outline the timings of the trainings. The training program will include all the various kinds of trainings that will take place at the company. It is important that the company outline clear objectives for the training programs, i.e. what kind of development will take place. Once the objectives are mapped out, then it is easier to find out what kind of employees will benefit from the training program. It is important to keep in mind that training should be relevant to each employee as this will ensure that the training will transfer back to the organization. Crystal Waters Winery will definitely have to overview the kinds of training that will benefit its employees in the long run. This is an important phase in the company’s development and growth. Currently, a lot of people will be conducting operations the way the feel comfortable without considering the impact it will have on the profitability. Through training, the company can set up standardized operating procedures that can be used to increase the efficiency. Conclusion To remain competitive in the industry and to fight off all the competition, Jacques Terblanche will have to make significant investment into the company. The important thing to consider will be return on investment. The best possible investment will be into developing a proper standard operating procedure where first a clear job analysis is done, then a relevant job description is mapped out which identifies all the job relevant details that will have to be carried out by the employee (Smith, 1993). Once this is done, then there should a structured recruitment and selection process that would induct the best pool of employees for the company. This method of selection should be the extremely transparent and should follow a certain set of code and ethics. Lastly, the company should a clear and definite training program that will improve the qualifications and enhance the qualities of the employees. Again the employees of Crystal Waters Winery should feel that they are being taken care off and only then will they be willing to contribute back to the company, i.e. to help improve the bottom-line in the long run. Bibliography Bertucci, G., 2006. Unlocking the Human Potential for Public Sector Performance. Public Personnel Management, 35 Cappelli, P., 1999. Employment Practices and Business Strategy. Oxford University Press Cronshaw, S., 1999. Functional Job Analysis: A Foundation for Human Resources Management. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Fink, S., 1992. High Commitment Workplaces. Quorum Books Kraiger, K., 2002. Creating, Implementing, and Managing Effective Training and Development: State-Of-The-Art Lessons for Practice. Jossey-Bass Nelson, J., 1997. The Boundaryless Organization: Implications for Job Analysis, Recruitment, and Selection. Human Resource Planning, 20 Rothwell, W., 2005. Career Planning and Succession Management: Developing Your Organization’s Talent for Today and Tomorrow. Praeger Sims, R., 2002. Organizational Success through Effective Human Resources Management. Quorum Books Smith, M., 1993. Theory and Practice of Systematic Personnel Selection, 2nd ed. Macmillan Press Taylor, P., 1999. Effects of Introducing a Performance Management System on Employees' Subsequent Attitudes and Effort. Public Personnel Management, 28 Read More