Hiring and Firing Staff - Essay Example

Human Resource Professionals should hire and fire staff in order to serve the needs of the business Table of Contents Page Introduction 2 Definition of Hire and Fire from HR Perspective 2 The ethics of hiring and firing and their implications 5 Good and bad examples of hiring and firing 7 Overall conduction and approach 9 Conclusion 11 Recommendation 11 Introduction Hiring and firing staffs are important job descriptions of the Human Resource (HR). HR staffs must do the right corresponding decisions in trying to regulate staffs through hiring and firing them. These activities require right procedures prior to their implementation. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss some underlying issues on the function of HR staffs in hiring and firing staffs as needed. This paper discusses about hiring and firing staffs and how they actually contribute to the benefits of the company. Included in this paper is the discussion of the implications of the statement that HR professionals should hire and fire staff in order to serve the needs of the business Thus, corresponding potential impacts that such philosophy brings on the HR staffs are included. Definition of Hire and Fire from HR Perspective Companies need to hire staffs for expansion program or simply to fill vacancies. In line with this activity, employers try to define corporate standards in order to perform successfully and achieve its goals. Hiring qualified applicants to perform the job is one. The applicants in order to perform the task need to pass the standard. It is therefore thought that the search criteria set by employers is the essence of hiring standards (Outtz, 2005, p.201-336). In a very dynamic job like sales, in hiring an agent for instance, it is important to understand the skills, attitudes, interests and motivations of the applicant (Butler, 2004). Applicants with desirable qualities suited to company standard have the chance of getting hired and to sign a contract. Within this contract a certain relationship is developed between employer and employee as further enhanced by obligations and economic aspects (Holland and Burnett, 2007, p. 17-50). There are different ways involved in hiring the best and qualified employee for the job. Thus, it is important to know the process involved in it. Zoltners et al. (2001, p.160-190) discussed six steps involved in the hiring process especially on a very dynamic group. Hiring process especially on sales force requires the job definition as the first step, then candidates profile, applicant pool, selection, attraction and evaluation and improvement. The whole steps involved in this hiring process according to Zoltners et al. (2001, p.160-190) affect the quality of the hired employees. It is a common practice in an organization or company to hire employee when there are vacancies. In fact, as a common approach of those who are job hunting, most of them incorporate in their letter of application the “vacancies” they would like themselves to fill. It is because of this that Ollek (2009, p. 1-189) defined hiring as a way to eliminate vacancies by any possible means. This implies that it is important to fill vacancies through hiring for the organisation to continuously operate. Hiring is just an integral part of recruiting (Ollek, 2009, p. 1-189). Company must not discriminate an employment on the basis of ethnic background, gender, age and other factors (Gorman, 2003, p.1-50). An existing system in the human resource influences on who to hire based on human resource management choice (Bretz and Judge, 1994). Contrary to hiring staffs, one of the most difficult decisions of a Human Resource staffs is to fire an employee. This activity is about termination of employment with the company that must be subjected to the right legal procedures and prevailing company standards. This means firing is open to legal actions once an employee even if non-performing or those fall short from company standards are not properly evaluated based on their performance (Milgram et al., 1999). Firing an employee needs to be undertaken for “good cause” (DelPo and Guerin, 2010, p.385-398). This is subjective if one tries to see it from the point of view of an employee. However, from the point of view of an employer, the “good cause” must emphasise things beneficial to the company but not harmful to the employee. This makes the creation of contract between employees and employer legal and binding. Due to this contract employee abides by the rules and standards implemented by the company and vice versa. From an HR perspective, firing an employee is never easy even if there are sound policies, guidelines, procedures and excellent working system. It is difficult for HR to inform an employee that he or she is about to loose a job. However, according to Smith and Mazin (2004, p.194-206) continuing to employ an employee who is not working out well is hazardous to the company. Thus, there must be careful termination process in order to prevent any legal actions in the future. This includes some considerations. The first consideration is to determine enough ground on the employee’s termination. Then adequate documentations on employee’s proposed termination are necessary. Next, it takes responsibility in conducting the termination process. Finally, follow-up matters must be essentially handled. The ethics of hiring and firing and their implications Hiring and firing can affect the business’ rate of growth (Baumol et al., 2007, p. 97). This is due to the fact that the human resource is the best resource that every company could have. That is why hiring and firing must start with the employee or applicant since the governing ethics of hiring and firing lies on their dignity (Garret and Klonoski, 1986, p. 25-37). The good thing about hiring and firing is that they are covered by law for workers’ and company’s welfare. Companies learned to impose in the HR to abide by by the law for workers’ welfare. This mandate also ensures that both the employer and worker are protected from any possible circumstances that may arise. It is clear that employers are given prerogative to impose their own hiring standards but not to the extent to discriminate. Once the standard of the company is never met by an employee as a result from an evaluation, companies have the right to terminate or fire employee as it may follow on the legal basis. Thus, it is clear that even if companies have the prerogative to set their own standard upon hiring and firing employees, it does not mean that they can easily fire employees. It has to undergo due process as mandated by the labour law. It is also clear from this act that companies are given privilege to improve further as a result of allowing their own standard to prevail as long as its point is not to discriminate, rather for the benefit of both the company and the employees. In fact, it is in this point that problems existed considering the actual conduction of approach in hiring and firing which will be discussed later. There are some cases where fired employees ran and presented his or her right after the court. This is a common scenario, but the common approach done by most companies is to present to the court their legal basis on firing the employee. Companies would present the fact that upon the signing of contract in the hiring stage, the employee agreed to abide by the company’s standard and policies. This contract will serve as the legal basis that will make sure companies and employees will meet half way. Another point that can possibly be substantiated is the right of the company to evaluate employees’ performance. Failed performance may be subjected to termination of employment. This cannot harm the company provided that everything was substantiated and understood by the employee upon signing of contract of employment. Another point is to simply state the major faults of employee which can stand as major ground for termination of contract of employment. Many companies try to present this in to justify their act on employee’s termination of contract. It turned out that it would be now easy for every company to justify their actions towards hiring and termination of employees. What seems obvious is the level of protection that may be much more with the company. After all, every employee needs to fully sustain the level of standard required in the corporate world. Following such standard by the company is a must that it became part of employee’s obligation to abide by it. This level of understanding is allowed by the law and the only protection an employee can have from any sort of exploitation is to free him or her from discrimination and maltreatment as stated in the labour law. What seems clear in here is to protect the dignity of an employee while ensuring that the company’s standard, policies and procedures are sufficiently meet. This is not always the case since the corporate world tends to maximise its resources. The corporate world can always justify its actions. Part of this is to constantly evaluate performance of employees, which the bottom line is to ensure maximum performance of the company. At some point, it is in this part that the labour law should be expounded so as to also give maximum protection for the employee from possible false justifications in the corporate world. Good and bad examples of hiring and firing The following are common practices about hiring and firing in the industry that clearly suggest profit optimisation and ensuring further protection of company’s welfare. Many employers are continuing to suppress employees from their legal rights to the extent that hiring and firing them would just be easy even without basis under the legal framework. This is a case common to employment that is totally maneuvered by the management without enough consideration on the legal framework. According to Head and Lucas (2004) the increasing number of cases filed against the companies by an employee is a clear indication of subjective management practices, which the most hurting part is that even if there is a continuing effort to give employees their total right for employment, many employers and management staffs continue to exercise what they have been used to. This is not only the case. There are more of these in the industry. Large corporations fire employees both in its level of challenging times and improve times all for the goal to optimise profit (Shepp and Shiryaev, 1996). Another thing, search cost is associated with hiring and firing (Brencic, 2009). And here comes the most common practice. The interaction between applicant’s sex and position has corresponding influence on hiring decisions (Cohen and Bunker, 1975). High educated workers found to be given more opportunity for job reallocation than those with low educational level during the big downturn in Swedish economy (Gartell et al., 2010). To complete the list of bad hiring and firing examples, negligent hiring and firing are most observed cases (Paetkau, 2007, p.28). This negligence may be in a form of lack of proper evaluation of applicant and lack of consideration of necessary evaluation process when firing resulting to lawsuits and other related legal processes. Perhaps the clearest evidence of good practice in hiring and firing is when they are done on the basis not covering any issue about discrimination or even a one-sided approach of looking at things for the company’s benefits. The other thing is when a company tries to win loyalty of the employees. The fact that the human resource is busy entertaining new employees as a result of the decision of those employees moving out is a clear indication that loyalty in the company becomes a very important idea at the company’s management perspective (Stringer, 2008). At some point, there is a certain perspective that leasing of employee may be actually better than hiring them because of its beneficial advantage for both the employed and the employer (Murthy and Murrmann, 1993). This is a clear evidence to support the fact that companies are most likely to go for alternative actions to combine both efforts prior to optimising company benefits that along the process may also substantially benefit employees. Overall conduction and approach The need for quality human resource in the information age is an important element in managing human resources to create an organisation which is competent and properly enhanced and equipped with intelligence (Atak and Erturgut, 2010). In order to do this one approach of the human resource has evolved from record-keeping function until having a place for strategic function in the organisation (Ferris et al., 2007). Human Resource groups try to document their data on hiring and turn over rate. This can help them in relation to how they would manage their human resources. Research shows that companies that are growing continue to lose workers while those companies that are spiraling down in performance continue to hire (Burgess et al., 2001). Thus, HR staffs are trained to be more systematic especially on preserving data for future references. There is corresponding cost in hiring. In order to maximise profit, it is also important to make some changes in the hiring system (Abowd and Kramarz, 2003). Hiring on short-term contracts entails zero cost (Kramarz and Michaud, 2010). Because of firing costs, it was found out that employers learned to increase hiring standard and expected productivity of employees (Canziani and Petrongolo, 2001). There is a possibility that firing cost can be responsible for firm trying not to go on with lay-offs and temporary hiring (Friesen, 2005). Another study found out that winning not focusing on efficiency is most likely given some focus in hiring employees especially on managerial positions (Fizel and D’Itri, 1999). It was found out that nationality is a good predictor of who are going to be fired implying challenging standardisation of career management policy (Segalla et al., 2001). Conclusion Hiring and firing are essential parts of the HR functions. These processes need to be carefully considered for the benefit of both applicants or employees and the company. There are two important points that need to be understood. With hiring and firing company is protected and employees dignity is considered. When it comes to employee’s dignity as the bottom line of hiring and firing ethics, it is important that rules, procedures and contracts must be clearly implemented. Prone to justify their actions towards hiring and firing, companies must consider abiding by the law as specifically mandated in the labour law. Hiring and firing are crucial since they must not only focus on the benefits of the other party but the decision must be based on the working system and procedures of the law. However, it is clear that HR professionals hire and fire staffs in order to serve the needs of the business. After all, it is bad for the company to continue hiring employees who are not working out. Recommendation With respect to the information obtained from the study it is very important to conduct more investigations regarding how exactly workers are protected by the labour law. As also found out, HR staffs are trained by the management to be more profit oriented and such value is incorporated at their hiring system. HR staffs become more systematic and such is a good way for the company to protect its interest. With respect to these findings, it is highly recommended that more studies in line with the perspective of workers about hiring and firing shall be implemented. For the entire discussion, it was well pointed out that much of the perspective about hiring and firing originated from the employees. In order to complete the entire view of hiring and firing activities, it is recommended to have rich information coming from workers’ perspective. References Abowd, J. M. and Kramarz (2003) “The costs of hiring and separations.” Labour Economics, Vol. 10(5): 499-530. Atak, M. and Erturgut, R. 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