Working with a Leading People - Assignment Example

 Bellerbys Diploma in business and management Working With and Leading People Assignment Table of contents: Task 1.................................................................................................................3 Task 2.................................................................................................................6 Task 3.................................................................................................................8 Task 4.................................................................................................................11 Appendices ........................................................................................................14 Bibliography.......................................................................................................15 Task 1- Recruitment, selection and retention 1a) In response to a substantial amount of investment received, the Board of Directors of Fast Track which is a 24 hour postal company have underscored to recruit five new employees, three drivers and two administrators in a bid to promote growth of the organisation by offering overseas deliveries. In order to suggest a suitable recruitment and selection process for the above mentioned company, it is imperative to begin by defining recruitment. Basically, recruitment can be defined as the process which involves selecting suitably qualified candidates to occupy different positions in an organisation (Carrell, R. et al 1995). This process allows the organisation to choose the rightful candidates to occupy the job positions. Thus, careful selection of the candidates often increases the chances of attracting the workers to continue working for the organisation once they have been hired. Recruitment attempts to fulfil the needs of both the employees and the management towards so as to attain the set organisational goals. Pfeffer (1989) posits that organisations which are determined about achieving its goals should select the right candidates in the first place. Different factors are taken into consideration when selecting candidates to fill vacant positions in an organisation. Some of the factors that are widely used include the following: academic and professional qualifications, skills as well as experience. In most cases, qualifications including both academic and professional are commonly used as popular methods of selecting the candidates. It should also be noted that a job analysis is very useful in selecting the rightful candidates. It is imperative that every candidate ought to have some form of formal education to be eligible to occupy any post in a given organisation. In this case of Fast Track, educational qualifications as well as experience should be used as the most significant methods of selecting the right candidates for the organisation. As for the above mentioned posts at Fast Track is also very important for the responsible authorities in the Human Resources Department to attempt to establish if the chosen people would have the right qualities to be able to do the job. In some cases, some people may have high educational qualifications but with little knowledge or experience of the job. It is therefore important to establish if the chosen workers have experience in the job. It follows from this argument that the potential candidates ought to show that they have the basic knowledge about the job positions in order to select the right candidates at the beginning. Therefore, whenever a company decides to recruit new employees, it must take into consideration the qualification levels as the primary stage of screening potential candidates for the post that would be available. (Appendix 1 attempts to highlight main stages in recruitment and selection) 1b) In most cases, planning is regarded as a very important function in any process of doing business (Bates et al 2006). In this particular case, succession planning for Fast Track posits to the effect that there has to be a clearly outlined map that would be used for successive periods in the future regardless of change of employees. In other words, determining in advance what Fast Track wants to achieve will greatly help to build a vision of the goals and methods going to be employed to achieve those goals. Therefore, it can be noted that planning is the process which involves careful selection of the objectives of the organisation as well as putting in place the methods of attaining them. Thus, succession planning is very important because it gives especially the management a clear path to follow in doing business and it gives them an opportunity to identify and groom future leaders. c) There are certainly ethical and legal considerations that need to be observed by Fast Track when recruiting the employees. Ethically, the company ought to establish and maintain a culture that is accommodative to different cultural values of different people. Failure to observe the values of different people in the areas where the company is targeting to penetrate is dangerous as this may result in loss of business. The concept of culture is very important to be observed by any organisation since undermining other people’s values and norms would give negative consequences on the operations of the organisation. The current legislation position in UK relates to the following issues such as discrimination and the need to treat candidates fairly, asylum and immigration rules, data protection, and employing those with criminal records and anyone who will be working with children or vulnerable adults. These basic legal requirements ought to be given due prominence (http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/recruitmen/general/recruitmt.htm). For instance, the Disability Discrimination Act is another piece of legislation that guides the organisations in their selection and recruitment process. Task 2 – Building winning teams 2a) Group culture defines the way people in an organisation behave and operate. It is constructed through allowing employees to learn to share their ideas with the people around them in a given organisation (Brewster et al 2003). Thus, open communication between members of Fast Track should be promoted where they are given the opportunity to access all the information that is believed to be important in the organisation. It can thus be noted that the success of the above mentioned organisation can be attributed to the concept of group culture which is important in creating a platform for mutual understanding among the members of the organisation. 2b) Teamwork basically refers to a situation where individuals in an organisation work together, share their ideas and participate in all the activities that are directed at achieving the goals in an organisation (Robbins et al 2001). Learning in this case is very important since it would give the employees the opportunity to improve their skills through sharing their ideas, acquiring new knowledge on the basis of learning from their mistakes and achievements in order for Fast Track to obtain its endeavor to grow. It can be noted that the most important thing that characterises teamwork is sharing of ideas and the willingness to learn from other employees. Members of Fast Track can effectively share their ideas in a bid to create a conducive learning environment so as to generate knowledge and mutual understanding among the employees. 2c) There are different types of teams which include the following: problem solving teams, self managed teams, cross functional teams and virtual teams (cited in Robbins et al 2001). According to Belbin’s team roles, there are different behaviours that are required in order for the team to be successful. In most cases, positive team building is influenced by various factors that are going to be illustrated in the table below. Each and every individual person has a role to play in a team and there are eight distinct roles that can be played by each and every member of the team. Belbin roles Description Implementer Takes basic ideas and make them work Finisher Irons out any unwanted things that can disturb the proper function of the team Plant Someone who decides the ideas to pursue Monitor/evaluator One who is responsible for monitoring progress. Specialist. One with specialist knowledge Coordinator One who coordinates the team activities Team worker One who works to resolve social problems Investigator One who explores new ideas Source http://changingminds.org/explanations/preferences/belbin.htm In this case, it can be noted that every member of Fast Track has a role to play depending with the position and post occupied. Task 3 – Leadership 3a) The overseas deliveries require the Board of Directors to employ a manager and this person ought to have leadership traits than management. Basically, the concepts of management and leadership are often confused in several ways. Thus, according to Kleynhans et al (2006), management is about coping with complexity to achieve organisational goals. In this particular case, managers ought to be good at planning, organising and making decisions and they should be able to analyse situations and find solutions to the problems that may exist. According to Robins S.P., Odendaal A.& Roodt G. (2001), leadership is defined as the process of attempting to positively influence employees in an organisation to pull their resources towards the achievement of organisational goals. Leadership is concerned with the attainment of the vision of the organisation. In this case of Fast Track, a leader should initiate change and should take a leading role in influencing the team members in order to achieve the vision of the organisation which has underscored to expand its operations to overseas regions. It should be noted that a leader should always be at the forefront of developing and inspiring staff hence the need for the Board of Directors at Fast Track to recruit someone with leadership traits than management. 3b) The leadership style that can promote positive performance of the employees in an organisation is democratic, participatory style where the employees are empowered to make participate in the making of decisions. The leaders must be open when communicating the vision and objectives of the organisation and put in place measures that can encourage the employees to solve the problems they may encounter. Leaders who give the individuals the power to make decisions as well as solve problems while at the same time offering them the much needed support have better chances of improving better performance results than those who use coercion. In the case of Fast Track, this leadership style is more ideal since it would give the employees the opportunity to be part of the decision making process. 3c) Motivation is loosely defined as the incentive or motivator given to employees to improve their performance as a way of encouraging productivity and ultimately growth of the company. In order to boost morale in the organisation, there is need to prioritise the needs of the employees by the management. The needs theory was promulgated by Maslow in his hierarchy of needs. Thus, according to Maslow, when a need occurs, it ought to be satisfied in order to positively influence the workers (cited in Carrell 1995). The hierarchy comprises of five levels of needs namely physiological, security, social, self esteem and self actualisation needs. These needs build from grassroots levels up to the point where some skilled workers feel that they should be rewarded on the basis of their importance, coupled with their performance to the company. As far as company growth is concerned, there is need for the workers to feel that they are part of it through engaging them to participate directly especially in decisions that affect its operations. The ability to create a sense of belonging among the employees is very important as far as growth of the company is concerned. For Fast Track’s initiative to be real, there is need to give priority to the needs of the employees ranging from lower level structures since there would be different levels of employees in the company. On the other hand, another equally important technique that can be employed in motivating the workers is giving them the autonomy to make decisions. This can be attributed to Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory of motivation. He identified factors which cause dissatisfaction as hygiene and those which cause satisfaction as motivators. However, he argues that while poor working conditions result in dissatisfaction, ideal working conditions do not necessarily lead to motivation or satisfaction (Carrell et al 1995). All the same, pay increases alone may not be adequate to motivate the employees. Motivators in this case reflect that individuals are ought to be given some form of responsibility where they are given the task of accomplishing a challenging job. They are concerned with a sense of responsibility, achievement and recognition among others. To a larger extent, senior management employees are influenced by the need of having responsibility tasks to perform such as decision making that creates a sense of belonging thereby motivating them than material or financial gains alone. In the case of Fast Track, overseas managers ought to have the autonomy to make decisions since this will give them a sense of belonging and responsibility to the organisation as a whole. Task 4 – Work and development needs 4a) There are different learning styles found in an organisation. Behaviourally, human beings are believed to be influenced by external factors to learn or acquire knowledge which means that all human learning could therefore be understood in terms of cause and effect analysis (Eloff & Ebersohn 2004). In this regard, it can be suggested that learning is mainly influenced by a combination of factors such as motivation, the learner’s ambitions and aspirations towards gaining knowledge (Vygotsky 1978). In most cases, every individual person is aware of the objective of learning and how he will use the knowledge acquired in transforming his or her life. In an organisation like Fast track, it is generally agreed that every individual is there for a particular purpose since he would have personally applied for that particular job. Given that situation, it can be said that individuals in an organisation are motivated to follow their career through learning which can be attributed to the fact that they know their personal aspirations and needs to be satisfied. In this particular case, the learner will come face to face with a learning system that can be used in an organisation for instance sharing ideas. First and fore most, it has to be assumed that an employee who on the other hand is also a learner in an organisation is knows the reason why he is part of the organisation and learning. Thus, a close analysis of learning shows that there are likely chances of development of a positive behaviour towards the organisation which can be achieved through sharing of ideas and this influences behaviour change in the individuals. Thus, an external response to behaviour is seen where a learner is exposed to a situation where he can benefit from learning in an organisation while at the same time he is using his own mind to respond to the call of learning. Assuming that all the employees secured their positions on merit, Fast Track can easily role out learning activities by virtue of the fact that the members are part of the organisation. 4b) In an attempt to allocate work at Fast Track, the major technique that can be used is to make reference to job description. Each employee is expected to perform a different task in the organisation according to his or her job description. In this case, a driver is expected to perform delivery tasks while the administrators are expected to do other tasks related to administration. It is easier to allocate work if the management follows the job description of each employee. Thus, allocation of duties is primarily done on the basis of identifying the tasks to be performed by every individual so as to avoid duplication of duties as well as minimizing the chances of crossing the functional lines. 4c) Performance of the new staff at Fast Track can be measured by direct observation of how the workers perform their tasks when at work in cases where they work from one point such as office. Direct observation can give a clue on how the workers are performing. Another effective method of monitoring progress on the key success factors would involve a constant check on the statistics of postal deliveries. One easy and simple method of monitoring progress at Fast Track would involve an analysis of the delivery statistics in comparison with the previous records. If ever there is an increase in the number of deliveries as well as positive feedback from consumers, then it would mean that there is positive development as far as performance appraisal is concerned. In most cases, the number of deliveries is the simple method that is used to determine the extent to which the organisation would be developing positively. A decline in the number of postal deliveries compared to the same period during the previous year would mean that the company is badly performing during the stipulated period of implementing the strategic changes that would have been initiated to penetrate overseas markets. Bibliography Bates B. et al (2005), Business Management, fresh perspectives, Pearson SA Belbin’s team roles (n.d) Available at: http://changingminds.org/explanations/preferences/belbin.htm Accessed 23 Mar. 10 Boxall, P. (1995). The challenge of human resource management. Longman Publishing group, London Bratton et al, (2007), Work and Organisational Behaviour. CT. Pearson Education. Brewster, C. et al (2003). Contemporary Issues in Human Resources Management: gaining a competitive advantage. 2nd Edition. Cape Town. Oxford University Press. Carrell, R. et al (1995). Human Resources Management: Global Strategies for managing a diverse workforce. 5th Edition. NY. Prentice Hall. Eloff I. Ebersohn L. (2004)., Keys To Educational Psychology, UCT. Cape Town. Jackson, S.E. & Schuler R. (2000). Managing Human Resources: A Partnership Perspective. NY. South Western College Publishing. Kleynhans R. et al (2007), Human Resource Management: fresh perspectives. Cape Town. Prentice Hall. Pfeffer J. (1998). The Human equation: Building profits by putting people first. Boston MA: Harvard Business School Press. Robinson W. (1997). Strategic Management and Information Systems, 2nd Edition. London. Prentice Hall. Robins S.P., Odendaal A.& Roodt G. (2001), Organisational Behaviour. Cape Town. Pearson Education Susan EJ & Randal S (2000), Managing Human Resources: A Partnership Perspective, South Western College Publishing. Vygotsky, LS (1978). Mind in Society: The development of higher Psychological processes. Boston. University Press. Recruitment and selection process: (revised September 2008) http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/recruitmen/general/recruitmt.htm:Accessed 08 March 2010 Appendix 1 Source http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/recruitmen/general/recruitmt.htm Read More