Job Description and Qualification for New Positions at Kudler Fine Foods Ltd - Report Example

Human resource management – Kudler Fine Foods Ltd Job and qualification for five new positions Kudler Fine Foods stores require hiring ofskilled people suitable for specific jobs and responsibilities. Hiring the wrong kind of people leads to attrition, inefficiency and other related problems like spoiling of labor relations. A successful human resource team is essential to deal with these issues and ascertain that decisions taken about hiring, training and other activities involving the employees are taken in the right direction. The Kudler stores do have any separate purchasing department and the departmental managers look after purchasing activities. (Kudler Fine Foods, 2009) I would like to suggest upgradation of the Human Resource Team of our organization and make the implementation of Human Resource policies effective. For this purpose the following positions may be considered: Departmental Manager (first level manager) – Hiring a departmental manager strong in human resource related skills is extremely essential for the proper implementation of HRM (Human Resource Management) practices at the operational level. This is something this staff would look after. (Riemsdijk, Looise, Nehles, and Kok, 2006) The desired degree or qualification would be a post-graduate degree in human resource management. Apart from this academic qualification the following qualities and requirements would be essential: 1. Possession of interpersonal skills enabling the establishment of proper relationships among the managers and subordinate employees, demonstration of rightful empathy and maintenance of confidentiality is essential. This might be proved via prior experience of at least 4 years in the related field. 2. Possession of good communication skills, which will in turn ensure suitable communication even within a culturally diverse environment 3. Commitment to the ideals of Equal Employment Opportunity, Ethical conduct, customer service and relations and management of quality and risk (Human Resource Recruitment Pool – Selection Criteria, n.d.) Apart from the departmental manager I would like to have 4 human resource executives for respective functions. An example may be taken from Wal-Mart, which hires specialized HR personnel for its different responsibilities (Walmart, n.d.). This would help in better organization, discipline and motivation. Human Resource executive (for recruitment)- Human resource executive to look after solely the recruitment affairs would help in carrying out the recruitment activities exclusively and separately from the other human resource activities. The hired person should have some kind of experience (at least 6 months) in recruitment activities apart from human resource diploma or some professional training course. The responsibility of this person would be recruitment within the store and shall also include campus recruitment. He or she should have proper ability to judge the credentials of candidates to be hired suitably for specific jobs. The person should be prepared to visit the campuses of different colleges and institutes to pick up fresher students for further responsibilities in different sections of the store. Human resource executive (for training) – This executive would be responsible for training of personnel from different divisions within store with the help of the departmental manager responsible for implementation of HR practices. Experience of at least 6 months in similar field of work would be preferred. This person would also be responsible for ensuring that the people hired get proper job specific training from their managers. Human resource executive (labor relations) – This executive should exclusively look after the labor relations and promotion of diversity within the work structure. Interpersonal and negotiation skills would be essential to solve the disputes among the employees especially when the clash is between higher and lower hierarchy. In such cases this person might take help from the departmental manager whose job specification is described above. Qualification would be same as the other executives with at least 6 months experience in related activities. Human resource executive (compensation) – This executive will be responsible for structure the compensation including rewards and incentives. This should be upgraded on a 6-months basis. This should be done with proper justification according to skills and duties of different personnel. The feedbacks and justification should be provided to the human resource manager regarding. All the executives and the departmental manager should report to the human resource manager. The departmental manager should send regular feedbacks to the human resource manager regarding the performance and statistics related to different activities. Training program to introduce and enhance the skills and qualifications of new and current employees An initial 15 days’ training program would be undertaken to address the following: The job responsibilities of the new employees would be explained in detail along with the challenges they have to deal with. They would need to know what is expected from them and on what basis their promotion would be undertaken. For instance a recruitment executive would require having good psychological insights and judging a candidate via certain physical movements and approaching which interviewing. Situations would be provided to them hypothetically and their decisions should be evaluated likewise. Forms containing questions regarding their personal abilities and disabilities should be distributed to them in order to gain an overall idea about their self-assessments. A team spirit needs to be generated through this training process and the personnel should realize their share of contribution to the whole. Coordination is important and this needs to be realized. The training for first seven days would be a general one to update the people newly hired about the basic principles of the company and the ethical codes of the organization. The growth and statistics relevant to the company should be conveyed to them in order to generate a familiar feeling within them. The next eight days would be devoted to job specific training. A time-to-time upgradation of training program should be undertaken for the current employees. This may be undertaken on a six monthly basis. Based on the feedbacks and assessments by their departmental managers, the specific issues will be addressed. Different employee should be pointed out their specific lapses and areas of improvement. Personnel showing a consistent and continuous lapse in their duties should be warned and their loopholes properly explained. Human resource management lessons should be delivered from time to time in order to upgrade their academic qualifications. Managers should be given tips regarding improvement of employee performance and dealing with them fairly. Basic job related questions might be asked through distributed questionnaires in order to assess their improvements and gaps to be filled by further training. Methods for evaluating employee and team performance, including a progressive discipline process Evaluation of employees and assessment of team performance is ensured by regular feedbacks and appraisal process. Weekly activity sheets should be filled up and sent by each employee and the supervisors or first line managers would compile them into the monthly activity sheet and provide feedback to the middle level managers. A six monthly appraisal is done for every member by asking him or her to fill up evaluation forms. Feedbacks are taken from every team member about their colleagues and their level of coordination achieved among them. Two aspects need to be evaluated – team’s performance as a whole and an employee’s contribution to the team. Seminars need to be held where every team member should speak on a given issue concerning the company and each of them will comment on their colleague’s views. For team evaluation the matrix for team performance assessment, designed by United States Office of Personnel Management may be followed. This is represented as follows: Behaviors/Process Measures Results Measures Individual Level: An employee’s contribution to the team Whether or how well the employee: cooperates with team members, shares ideas during meetings and takes part in the decision-making processes of the team. The quality of the written report, the turnaround time for the individual’s product, the accuracy of the advice supplied to the team, the status of the employee’s case backlog. Team Level: The team’s performance Whether or how well the team: conducts effective meetings, coordinates within the group; hears all opinions, comes to common agreement on decisions. The rate of customer satisfaction with the team’s product, the percent decline of the case backlog, the cycle time for the team’s entire work process. United States Office of Personnel Management, 1998 Above all a progressive discipline process needs to be planned and implemented as follows: A progressive discipline process looks into two kinds of problems – misconduct and incompetence. Incompetence occurs when an employee lacks skills required for a particular job. To deal with this problem, one needs to explain to the concerned person, the duties and expectations of the company from his or her job. The employee should be given a fair chance of improvement. The idea of progressive discipline process is to avoid straight dismissal and achieve a progressive improvement process to achieve the goals related to productivity of each employee. This process is ensured through periodic meetings and seminars apart form the training sessions explained above. The following flowcharts may deal with the two categories of problems – misconduct and incompetence (Human Resources and Skills Development Canada 2008) In order evaluate misconduct one needs to understand whether the misconduct is severe or considerable. This may be judged on the basis of the employees’ performance till date, the severity of the problem or its frequency of occurrence and the impact the misconduct has on the organization. One may also judge whether the misconduct is intentional and who is directly responsible for this. The following flowchart illustrates how the issue may be dealt with: (Human Resources and Skills Development Canada 2008) Certain points need to be ensured before this action is taken. All the duties of the employees, team responsibilities, expectations from each of them and the possible consequences should be explained in written version and distributed to them. It needs to be ensured that there is no miscommunication and confusion regarding the mechanism and that training is foolproof and beneficial. Challenges of Team Performance evaluation Difficulties to evaluate team performance: The main challenge in evaluating team performance lies in the necessities of a team person. Meeting the criterion by having adequate capacity for negotiation, communication skills and other aspects is a challenge for the individual employee and it is problematic to single out their contribution from the team because they will tend to overlap with team’s performance. Thus, the team appraisal system is unique and different from normal employee appraisal because it needs to take into consideration two components for the analysis. A single individual’s incompetence might push the team performance far behind the expected level, especially if that individual holds a key role in the team. Frequent attrition from a particular team might affect its results. The most important aspect is that sometimes a single individual might be responsible for good performance of the team and usually managers do not tend to bother as long as the team is giving results. So it is unlikely that in such circumstances the team evaluation will extend up to specific employee assessment and contribution. In such case the risk lies in the fact that if this key employee takes a long leave or quits the job then the entire team suffers in performance. Since social loafing or playing the idle player in team is a common challenge it might be useful to declare special incentives and rewards based on performance of individuals even though they are performing within a group. This might help discourage social loafing or idleness. There should be proper division and allocation of roles amongst the team members. Each of them should understand their individual responsibilities well. The compensation plan for the team should be justifiable and according to skill requirement and involvement expected. Promotional and educational opportunities based on the evaluation done at the meetings should be declared to the team and appreciation should be done in public to encourage the individual team member. Again the major challenge here is that this might generate an unhealthy competition where every member will try to compete against one another instead of looking into the team benefits and performance. This may be dealt by proper allocation of roles, which do not overlap or correlate too with one another. This will help the members perform independently and the team leader’s role should be rotated such that each might get a chance of coordinating group behavior and actions. References 1. Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (2008) Progressive Discipline, Labour, available at: http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/labour/publications/employment_standards/discipline.shtml (accessed on November 30, 2009) 2. Kudler Fine Foods, (2009) Operations: Supply Chain overview 3. Riemsdijk, M.V., Looise, J.K., Nehles, A.C. and I. Kok, (2006). Implementing Human Resource Management Successfully: A First-Line Management Challenge, Management Revue, Encyclopedia Britannica, available at: http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/22043708/Implementing-Human-Resource-Management-Successfully-A-FirstLine-Management-Challenge (accessed on November 30, 2009) 4. Walmart (n..d) People/Human Resources, available at: http://walmartstores.com/Careers/7684.aspx (accessed on November 30, 2009) 5. Human Resource Recruitment Pool – Selection Criteria. (n.d.). Available at: http://www.dtei.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/41422/HR_Recruitment_Pool_-_Selection_Criteria.pdf (accessed on November 30, 2009) 6. United States Office of Personnel Management, (1998) Performance Appraisal for Teams, available at: http://www.opm.gov/perform/wppdf/teams2.pdf (accessed on November 30, 2009) Read More