HR's Role in a Strategic Acquisition of Wordsmit Retail Booksellers - Assignment Example

? Case Study Essay- HR’s Role in a Strategic Acquisition Table of Contents Question 3 Question 2 6 Question 3 7 Question 4 8 Bibliography 11 Question 1 Wordsmith is one of the leading Australia based retail booksellers. The organization has its strong presence in Australia market. Wordsmith operates in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. The organization is operating across the country with 32 stores. This retail chain bookseller acquired another retail chain book store named Mainly Books. This organization also has a strong presence across the country. The organization has 18 bookstores in different parts of the country, such as Tasmania, Western Australia and the entire Northern Territory. Wordsmith made acquisition of Mainly Books in order to enhance its strong presence in Australia. In addition to this, the organization made acquisition of the mainly Books in order to penetrate entire Australian market. Mainly Books faced several issues and business losses over the last years due to inadequate human resource management practices. Overstaff and inadequate recruitment process affected the overall business operation process of the organization. In addition to this, Wordsmith retail chain book seller does not implemented aggressive human resource management strategy in the business processes. However, the recent human resource manager of Wordsmith named Gemma is trying to implement strategic function in the human resource process in order to meet the developed business goals and corporate objectives. The human resource manager is trying to design a redundancy process in the human resource management of the newly acquired firm. It is clear from the case study that the organization faced high business losses over the past few years. The implementation of redundancy process can create several legal issues for the organization that need to be considered by Gemma. It is true that the global economic environment is getting affected due to the strong effects of recent financial crisis and economic recession. Each and every organization has to maintain developed employment laws of the organization. In addition to this, government of Australia developed several strict employment rules for the business organizations. Redundancy and staff cutting can create several legal issues. The employees have their basic right to make complaint against the employers and the management of the organization against this period1. Gemma is trying to recruit more number of employees despite the issues of overstaffing. In addition to this, the human resource manager of the organization is trying to cut the number of existing employees or change their status from full time employees to part time employees. It is true that an organization has to sign an employment contract with the employee during the recruitment and selection process. Therefore, cutting down of number of staffs can significantly affect the reputation and image of Wordsmith. Inadequate redundancy can force the government or several public agencies to restrict the business operation of the organization. It is true that redundancy has nothing to deal with the performance of employees or the profitability of the firm. Redundancy is unethical. According to the employment law, the employers have to give proper notification and justify the reason behind the termination. Redundancy can be considered as unethical termination or terminating employees without valid reason or justification2. Therefore, it can be stated that the redundancy processes can create several legal issues that can hamper the business performance of Wordsmith and newly acquired company named Mainly Books. The suggestion of Alan of targeting the people closer to retirement age in order to implement the redundancy process can hamper the overall workplace performance. It is true that employees are considered as the major business growth drivers. Old and experienced employees are considered as strongest assets of an organization. Termination of old employees can affect the motivation level of the newly recruited and young employees. Social needs and job security of employees in workplace is important think to consider as it helps the employees to motivate for effective workplace performance3. This redundancy process for the old and experienced employees can create job insecurity among the employees. It is important for the organization to consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory as the motivation of the employees to perform effective is important thing for an organization. In addition to this, it is clear from above discussion that the implementation of redundancy process in workplace and targeting the old employees will force the governmental bodies to interfere in the human resource operational process of Wordsmith4. It is important for the organization to consider different approaches in the human resource management strategy development to overcome the possible future challenges and issues that can hamper the entire business performance and organizational image of the Wordsmith retail chain booksellers. Question 2 In this case, Wordsmith has a stable HRIMS. This means that all the data and information regarding the various trends of human resources like the attrition rates, the turnover, and the salary of the employees at the different levels of hierarchy as well as the number of employees whether full time or part time is accounted and registered in the system. This provides a timely access to the HR data to the managers of Wordsmith as and when required. In contrast, Mainly books does not have any standardized HR information management systems. This lack of organization of the information often leads to confusion in the recruitment policy or the other human resource management policies of the company5. On the verge of the strategic alliance of Mainly Books with Wordsmith, the management who are entrusted with the duty of making a successful human resources strength has to integrate the HRIMS of the two organizations. This would provide the senior management with efficient data that would help them in the planning process for the future merged entity6. The reports would also be available to the management on the integration of the systems. Earlier this is implemented the better it would be for the newly formed organization to conduct its business. Since Mainly Books is a young organization, there would be less historical HR data in the company. This would help in the speedy integration of the two systems. Gemma should configure the system in such a way that exhaustive resources and reports are available to the management when they try to measure various kinds of strategic alternatives. These reports should be related to the allocation of the workforce in the various locations of the bookstore. The number of part time and the full time employees and their locations along with the hours of work should be there7. This would help Gemma in the budgeting. The productivity of the employees can also be judged from the hours of work that they would perform. Thus the hiring and the attrition rate are also very important for Gemma because with the hiring the company has to incur a huge cost of training and developing the employees. Another important aspect of the HR data is the pay that the company would provide to the part-time as well as the full time employees. This would help Gemma to identify which are the areas where there is excess of staff and where they need to be repositioned in order to have an optimal allocation of the human resources throughout the various branches of the company. Question 3 The Human Resource Planning is a process through which the human resources department of an organization would plan the number of employees that would be working in the company in the next fiscal year. Along with that the number of new hires or the people to be downsized and the salary that the company would be able to offer to the employees are planned. Gemma has to take the responsibility of the human resource planning for the merged entity. Since Mainly Books has an excess number of staffs, Gemma has to make a plan for the downsizing of the staffs in Mainly Books. She can also transfer some of the employees of mainly books to the outlets of the Wordsmith. This would result in the retention of some of the employees in the newly merged organization. In this process of human resource planning a combination of the qualitative as well as quantitative process would take place. First of all the human resources department would have to make a proper estimate of the number of people that are required in the process. Along with that Gemma is interested in the recruitment of the employees who are at the verge of their retirement. Thus a cross sectional analysis of the employees based on the age and other demographics have to be made. For doing this the approach of the human resource planning has to be quantitative since the employees have to be grouped as per the ages and the numbers have to be estimated for further downsizing of the employees. On top of this the CEO of the company wants the functions of the HRM process to be scheduled on a day to day basis8. This would require the tasks of the employees to be quantified in order to make a proper estimate of the required human strength for the proper running of the organization. Apart from this a qualitative approach also has to be taken by the company this is because Gemma wants the organization to be a young one with a lot of young ideas. The organization in the present scenario is facing a lot of issues and challenges. These have to be incorporated in the new model of the human resource planning process. Therefore there is a necessity for the recruitment of the young people in the organization. Hence a balance has to be ensured in the entire human resource planning between a qualitative as well as a quantitative perspective. Question 4 A large number of organizations are into the practice of outsourcing the job of human resources management to any external manpower planning organization. The operational and the human resources functions are essential for running the organization in an effective manner. Wordsmith may have several advantages as well as disadvantages of outsourcing the operations and the HR and staffing functions. First of all the advantage that the organization would have is that the amalgamation of Wordsmith and Mainly Books would require an integration of the employees which may be difficult due to the disparities in the salaries of the two set of employees. The external agency would be able to integrate these salaries in a successful manner9. Secondly the organization is reliant on the part time as well as the full time employees. There is a problem in the company in the management of these two groups. If the employees are hired through any agency which is external to the company then there would be an advantage on part of the employees to get hired somewhere else when Wordsmith would not require people. Again in case of an excess requirement of people the company would be able to provide man power resources at the different branches of the new company. Thirdly the company faces various issues relating to the payroll of the employees. If they are provided by the external agency then the employees would work on the payroll of the agency and it would be easier for Wordsmith to negotiate on the salary. If would be easier to keep a track of the salaries and the emoluments of the employees. The outsourcing of the employees would pose a problem for the employees who are currently working in the organization. Some of them would lose their jobs and the others would come under peer pressure of the new recruits due to the salary differentials or their experience in working in the organization. Gemma has a very enthusiastic team who works in order to make a very efficient and successful HR department in the organization10. The involvement of the external agency would have a negative effect on the motivation level of the managers and the employees of the HR department. This would happen because the HR employees would lose their autonomy in choosing the right candidates for the organization. Gemma should recommend a stable integrated HRIMS along with a new strategy of HR planning that would ensure that the employees are contributing to the company in the most productive manner and remain motivated in the work. Bibliography Koubek, John. “Human resource management in turbulent times.” Journal of Human Resource Management 12, no. 2 (1995): 16-19. Armstrong, Michael. “A handbook of human resource management practice.” Journal of Human Resource Management 32, no.1 (2003): 12. Wright, Paul. “Desegregating HRM: A review and synthesis of micro and macro human resource management research.” Journal of management 87, no. 3 (2002): 9. Dyer, Luke. “Human resource strategies and firm performance: what do we know and where do we need to go?” Journal of Human Resource management 65, no. 1 (1995): 11-17. Bratton, John and Jeff Gold. Human Resource Management: Theory and Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan. 2003. Burnes, Bernard. Managing Change: A Strategic Approach to Organizational Dynamics. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall. 2004. Dessler, Gary. Human Resource Management. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. 2005. Davenport, Thomas. O. Human Capital. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. 1999. Kezar, Adrianna. Understanding and Facilitating Organizational Change in the 21st Century. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2001. Maier,Christian, Sven Laumer, Andreas Eckhardt and Tim Weitzel. “Analyzing the impact of HRIS implementations on HR personnel’s job satisfaction and turnover intention.” The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 22 (3) (2013): 193–207. Read More