Methods of Employee Recruitment - Essay Example

Section In order to increase the business and reap better profits during the music festival, the company decided to focus on recruiting new employees. Acquiring and retaining employees seemed challenging for the company and the process of recruiting employees was divided into two main parts by the management – discovering the potential employees that match as per the requirements of the job and secondly, the pull the right candidates for the selection. There exist a plethora of methods and techniques for recruitment purposes. In the wake of growing interest of the people in the world wide web or the internet, the company’s HR managements suggested number of methods of Employee Recruitment. In order to select the best practice for recruiting new employees, the company gave an insight to all possible options and the costs involved. With the advent of the internet, and its deep impact on the human resourcing, companies have already been relying upon the computers to access and utilize a number of advantages, recruitment being one of them. Tracking of resumes, job applications, new job postings etc., has all been made much easier than before with the help of online recruitment methods. In spite of a number of employers using the traditional methods of newspaper ads, referencing within the industry, search agencies and personal recommendations, e-recruitment can easily integrate with all these HR services and offer much better results. E-recruitment can be described as a process that is undertaken by a company with the help of web based services and methods like job sites, company’s own website or intranet to recruit employees. E-recruitment is also known as online / internet recruitment. It helps the potential employees top get in touch with the company through net and avoids the hassles of visiting the office personally. The viability offered by the process increases the interest of both the parties (employees and the company management) involved, (Taylor, 2000). Sending and receiving applications by email has proved to be much more beneficial than contacting by phone, or in person and sending applications through fax or post. The extensive use of internet these days has made the advertising cheaper and appealing to the wider audience. The method of E-Recruiting includes a number of methods which can be described as follows – ● Job sites – These are community forums where the companies can post jobs as per their requirements and search for suitable candidates. The candidates can also search for various vacancies based upon their skill and expertise, however, being generic in nature, it does not allow distinguishing or differentiating between general candidates and field expert candidates. ●Company web sites – in case, the companies own their official website, vacancies can also be posted on them along with the nature of the job, the experience required, salary etc. An official e- mail address is posted for the candidates to get in touch with the management or send in their portfolios / cv. Posting job vacancies on the company websites does not costs anything to the company, however it might be a possibility that not many candidates view the company websites on a regular basis. ● Professional job portals – these are professional websites like monster.com which engage in advertising job vacancies only for companies. Jobs are divided as per categories and sectors, based on skills and expertise. These professional job portals do not advertise any jobs that are general in nature. In Addition, these job sites charge the companies for advertising their jobs on the internet space. These job portals have a high visibility on the internet and a number of candidates regularly visit these professional websites which increases the number of applicants to each jobs, so that companies can get to interview a number of candidates and select the best out of them. Also, E-recruitment can easily be blended with other recruitment strategies like online skill and behavioral assessment of the candidates, online interviewing and personal identification of the candidate. This saves both time and money for the organizations as the internet offers then speed and reliability, (Galanaki, 2002). Apart from companies, a number of governments have implemented e-recruiting methods to employ personals in their government agencies. Many software have been developed to integrate e-recruitment methods with other requirements of the human resource departments of the companies. These soft wares are able to integrate employee management utilities for the Human resource departments. This may include employee reporting, work schedule management, performance management among many other concerns. The various advantages of E-recruitment are – The e-recruitment has a much better cost efficiency. The cost of advertising through the internet is much cheaper than other advertising options available like newspaper, magazines, and job consultants. Also, this method is time efficient as the time required to communicate, and the response time is much minimal than in the case of sending posts, or faxes which facilitate a higher level of resume management, (Chaskelson, 2000). E-recruitment also offers a global reach and avoids the limitation of geographical access and is able to create a large pool of candidates. The –advertising of jobs through the internet is devoid of any limitation of the word length unlike to the case of newspapers, magazines where a limited space of word length is provided to the company for displaying their job vacancy advertisement. This at times posses a little difficulty in clearly explaining the job requirements and may lead to misinterpretations or confusions in the minds of candidates. In this case, complete information details without any limitation can be easily provided. Also, the information (portfolio, pictures, CV etc,/) sent by the candidate can be collected in a suitable format which helps the HR management to easily manage the incoming applications, due to digital paper work involved. These applications can also be saved for future references by the company management. In case, they need to carry on additional recruitment for the same profile, they can always search the past databases for employees and avoid the costs of advertising online. However, there are certain disadvantages of E-recruitment which may be an hindrance in some cases. It requires using special keywords related to job titles, or requirements, screening of websites, searching and other tasks which are required for both the candidates and companies, (Cook, 2001). Application of e-recruitment requires this knowledge of computers and internet which might restrict some non savvy candidates from applying to jobs or companies to select other advertising options, (Galanaki, 2000). Other disadvantage of E-recruitment is that it attracts a large pool of applicants which may be unmanageable by some companies and their departments. Also, the huge number of applications restricts the ability to perform a deep analysis of each application. Further, e-recruitment also attracts a large number of non serious applicants who just apply in order to get acquainted with the system or assess their market value. E-recruitment has also led to some information disclosure problems, as the personal information of candidates like phone number, email id, contact address etc are easily accessible on the job portals, (Chaskelson, 2000). In order to successfully implement and utilize the E-recruitment program, it is important that the company under study MW Camper vans – should lay stress on various factors like calculating the rate of return on the selected methodology for recruitment. The costs and risks of the e-recruitment should be evaluated by the department in order to facilitate benefits and the estimated profits. Moreover, the recruitment policy developed by the MW Camper management should be flexible in nature so that it is easier to adapt to varying conditions both of the candidate and the company. Also, the company should be able to draft a genuine recruitment policy devoid of issues like gender age and religion based discriminations, (Cullen, 2000). The next section will discuss the issue of absenteeism in the company and how can the issue be managed effectively. Section 2 This section will explore the various methods that can be utilized by the company in order to reduce the absence of employees. Absenteeism can be defined as the unscheduled absence of employee / employees from work and the cause of absence may range from personal to professional reasons – like illness, family issues, problems at office etc. managing employee absence has become one of the most challenging tasks for the companies across the globe. Absenteeism results in business loss and work disruption to the company and often cannot be managed with a single approach or program. Absence management can be a real tough task for the management, the benefits of successfully managing the task are quite substantial for any company, (Cunningham and James, 2000). Most often other issues occupy the interest of the management and the hidden costs of ineffective employee leave management goes unnoticed. The control of employee absence has been indeed a topic of interest to many authors. The increasing costs due to increasing employee absence and the increasing pressure of competitors and markets have fuelled the subject in recent times. In the case of MW camper Vans company, the management is looking to operate at its maximum efficiency particularly during the music festival, in order to gain higher profits, however, the complexities in its operations arising from the employee absenteeism result in limiting the business strategies. There are some methods and strategies that are being recommended to the MW Camper Vans company in order to effectively deal with the high level of absenteeism in the company. A well develop strategy that focus on the rise in productivity levels and also integrates the best administrative practices will provide for higher returns, increased employee and employer satisfaction, customer satisfaction and boosted employee morale for the employees of MW Camper Vans, (Edward and Whitston, 2002). Being a multi location employer – MW Camper vans often have to deal with a dispersed set of employees and they need to develop a centralized approach for managing employee absence. HR departments in various office locations or sire locations of the company develop their own methods to tackle the issue which results in failure. To tackle this, it is important to maintain a centralized management of absence claims of employees and optimize the reporting capabilities of the managers regarding each employee absence. Also, facilitating the absence of an employee with proper workforce adjustments reduces the ill effect of employee absence. Proper absence tracking and managing software should be installed and the managers should be given proper training to use these methods to their benefits.   Intermittent leaves by the employees are caused due to the variability of the over load or extra utilization of the workers and role challenges – like ensuring nonstop production lines. These types of leaves are difficult to manage and result in the highest number of work disruptions to the company management, (McHugh, 2002). The morale of the employees should be continuously boosted who put in extra hours as compared to the colleagues. Offering promotions or rewards to the employees with good track record maintenance can be helpful. The management should also pay attention towards the costs that are linked to the delays that are caused to due to the mismanagement of employee absence claims. Very often the HR management inefficiently manages the absence claims of employees and they do not lay importance to managing the account of each employee. Frequent management of leaves will help them in assessing each employee performance and subsequently allotting these employees with rewards or penalties, in case. Further, the management should also make the leave management program an essential program of the employee training program. This could also be taught with the help of video tutorials, email reminders, and meetings. Also, the management should regularly update its employees with any policy changes in the employee leave program, (Lever and Kliener, 2000). While there exists no particular approach for absenteeism management, the managers are required to address the issues and causes, and subsequently suggest solutions to employees to reduce their leaves and also increase work efficiency. Among a number of methods used by companies to reduce absenteeism among its workforce, counseling is the best method possible, (Dunn and Wilkinson, 2002). Also, allowing the employee to work in flexible hours and looking after the work related requirements can assist the employee in decreasing the work load and increasing his efficiency. in order to boost the drive, incentive screeches is also an option for those employees who maintain a good track record, (Sargent, 2000). Health and fitness programs which ensure healthy lifestyle for employees, better working conditions, clear communication between the management and employees regarding the leave policy are some of the other methods to curb absenteeism in the long run. Absenteeism Management can be effectively managed by carefully drafting a plan which may involve three stages as explained below - 1. It is important that the manager or the concerned superior discuss the problem with the employee regarding the high rate of absenteeism of that particular employee. 2. Next step involves the identification of the reasons behind the problems being faced by the employee. 3. Discussing and suggesting some solutions for the problems and asking the employee to use those recommendations and reduce the cause of absenteeism. ‘ Among other ways that can be the part of the approach are – 4. The management should clearly define the list of legal holidays, statutory holidays , sickness leaves bereavement leaves etc. 5. The company management should be able to define a specific leave policy which clearly states the definite statement, applicable procedures related to submission of papers, leave certificates etc. 6. Also, the maximum number of delays that an employee will take before any kind of action is taken by the management should be clearly specified 7. In case, the employees face a number of work related problems like stress or bullying, the manager must explore the problems and resolve them as soon as possible 8. In case, the manager feels that there is an acceptable cause of the leave, then the employees should inform the management about their leave and send a record or conformation for the same. 9. Every uninformed leave should be followed by a discussion or an interview with the manager in charge to note the absence, cause and any other issue the employee is facing. Lastly, the company should pay more attention towards the cost factor behind excessive employee absenteeism. Taking easier steps to employ the basic employee self service methods to control the leaves and other kind of absence, (James, et.al, 2002). The HR management can employ time recording methods that are based on employee self service, that consists of leave reporting and management and future analysis with the help of sophisticated information technology services like data warehousing, OLAP cubes etc. these IT based management systems store employee data which can be studied by the managers at the click of the mouse, (Evans and Walters, 2002). Short consolidation times helps the managers to save time and enhance productivity as well. Also, attendance tools and work schedule optimization software’s can be implemented to optimally distribute workloads. Proper implementation of these software’s and methods will significantly reduce employee absences. References Taylor, S. (2005) People Resourcing, 3rd Edition, London UK, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, pp. 313 – 337 Chaskelson, P. 2000, ‘The pros & cons of online recruitment’, Accountancy SA, April Cullen, B. 2001, ‘e-Recruiting Is Driving HR Systems Integration’, Strategic Finance. 83(1): 23-27 Cunningham, I. and James, P. (2000) „Absence and return to work: towards a research agenda‟, Personnel Review. Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 33 – 47 Galanaki, E. 2002, ‘The decision to recruit online: a descriptive study’, Career Development International, vol. 7, no.4, pp. 243-251 Cook, S. 2001, ‘Search and ye shall find online’, Australian CPA, vol. 71, no.1, pp. 54-55 McHugh, M. (2002) „The absence bug: a treatable viral infection?‟, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 7/8, pp. 722 - 738 Evans, A. and Walters, M. (2002) From Absence to Attendance, 2nd Edtion, London UK, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Developmen James, P., Cunningham, I. and Dibben, P. (2002) Absence management and the issues of job retention and return to work, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 82 – 95 Dunn, C. and Wilkinson, A. (2002) „Wish you were here: managing absence‟, Personnel Review, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 228 – 246 Read More