HR Map as a Self-Assessment Instrument and the Overall Activities of the HR Consultancy - Case Study Example

HR Map of the of the ACTIVITY A: (940 words) INTRODUCTION: The HR map is a self-assessment instrument to evaluate the capability against the activities, knowledge and behavior in the HR map and give suggestions for development and improvements. The Map is specially designed to facilitate HR practitioners at each stage of their professional career. The following image shows the professional HR map: Professional areas: 1. Insight strategy and solutions: The actionable insights and solutions are developed by the successful HR professionals. The HR management customized a deep understanding of organization behavior. The resulting insights and deep understandings of organization allow the HR to make a best situational strategy for the organization. 2. Leading HR: The owning, shaping and driving the organizational behavior is the key element of successful HR management. The development of three key areas of leadership is treated by the HR in this area – personal leadership, leading the others and leading issues of the organization. 3. Organization design: The professionals that are concerned with organizational design ensure that the organization is properly designed to achieve organization goals. 4. Organization development: Organization Development is concerning to ensure the organization has dedicated and fit for the future employees required to deliver its strategic goals. 5. Resourcing and talent planning: HR professionals ensure that the organization is capable to attract employees that have the capability to create competitive advantage and manage them to get the advantages in the long term. 6. Learning and talent development: The HR professionalsthat are functioning in this region ensure that groups at all levels of the organization contain and build up the abilities, knowledge and experiences to complete the short and long-term goals of the organization. 7. Performance and reward: In this area the HR professionals deliver programs that recognize and reward the critical skills to build a high-performance culture. 8. Employee engagement: In this area the HR management analyzes the emotional attachment of the employees with their work, colleagues and with the organization. 9. Employee relation: The professionals that are working in this domain of HR, ensure that the relationship among the organization and its employees is running properly within an obvious and clear structure underpinned by association practices and policies and finally by appropriate law of employment. 10. Service delivery and information: In this are the HR management ensures that the delivery of HR services and information to mangers, leaders and employees in the organization is correct, competent, timely and cost-effective. Behaviors: 1 Curious: Is future-focused, inquiring and activist; searches out growing and innovative traditions to put in value to the association. 2 Decision thinker: Demonstrate the skills to examine and understand information quickly. Uses information, and use the information in the process of decision making. 3 Skilled influencer: Demonstrates the skills to manipulate to get the essential commitment and help from various stakeholders in search of organization worth. 4 Driven to deliver: Demonstrates willpower, ingenuity and aim to give the best outcomes for the organization. 5 Collaborative: Works successfully and inclusively with a variety of people having different behaviors, both inside and outside of the company. 6 Personally credible: makes and delivers professionalism by joining commercial and HR proficiency to give worth to the company and shareholders. 7 Courage to challenge: demonstrate guts and self-assurance to speak out competently, challenging others even when faced with resistance or unusual situations. 8 Role model: constantly directs by role model. Proceeds with honesty, neutrality and freedom. Bands: Band 1: Help colleagues with management and procedure. Efficiently direct information and is customer oriented. Band 2: Give recommendations and deals with HR related concerns relating to single personality and team. Has an obvious understanding of assessment method and solutions accessible. Band 3: Deal with main HR challenges for medium and long term at the organization level. Band 4: Responsible for formulating and implementing the HR strategy. Service delivery and information in Band 1: The services of HR have a very critical role in the organization success. This lies in the category of Band 1 in which the assessment of information takes place that the information is accurate, competent and time & cost effective which is provided to the leaders, managers and the staff of the organization. Human resource data is important in driving the growth of employees. HR evaluates performances of employees through the data and makes improvements. EXAMPLE: The Band 1 of HR map is about communicating the objectives set by the management and discuss the importance of a customer oriented behavior. The colleagues must ensure that their fellow workers are aware of the organizational norm and policies. In Banks the newly hired employees are handed an induction pack which includes all the relevant details of management and the procedures which are followed within the organization. This ensures a customer oriented behavior. The team leaders or personnel of the management ensure that the message is properly delivered. All the Banks and Insurance companies actively rotate policies and regulation on a continuous basis within the organization to ensure that the organizational objectives have been accurately communicated. HSBC Bank Plc. has a handbook designed specifically to deliver the policies and procedure which are used by the organization to ensure that a customer oriented behavior of the employees is developed. This behavior in the long run benefits the organization in achieving the objectives which have been set by the management (HSBC, n.d.). Amongst several policies and procedures of Barclays Bank Plc has a privacy policy which is delivered to the staff of the organization to ensure a customer oriented behavior. HR is responsible to find ways of prescribing solutions to problems and ensure that the compliance of the policies and procedures is being done by the employees (Barclays, n.d.). ACTIVITY B: (915 words) Three Needs of customers: 1 Inefficiency in labor productivity: Large organizations face a lot of problems with inefficiency of labor. The organizations like Tesco frequently face such problems. These problems lead to dissatisfaction of the customers. The service oriented businesses like Tesco ensure that the problem and issues are solved at the earliest. According to an article in the daily mail Tesco was accused by the customers for hiring slave labor excessively. The customers were of the view that the underpaid staff was lazy and the customer needs were not catered. The management and the HR department took notice of this issue as soon as it was brought to light and offered a program which offered employment to the employees who worked in the organization for a certain time. This practice was an initiative to align the workforce and motivate them to deliver their best. Most of the competitor firms backed out from offering such job employment but Tesco continued to do so (Martin, 2012). 2 Facing high cost need to lay-off some less productive employees: In the time of recession the banks are planning to lay-off less productive employees to enhance their performance. The HR department of the organization assesses the performance of the employees and prescribes the names of the employees which are comparatively less productive for the organization. The organizations are forced to lay-off employees to cut the cost and lose the excess weight which the organization has bagged. According to an article in the Huffington Post, JP Morgan Chase and Co which is a renowned bank has planned to let go of its unproductive employees. This will help it navigate the bank through the hard times of recession. The HR department of the organization will play an active step in this action as it will gather the database and prescribe the names of the inefficient employees which are part of the organization (Reuters, 2013). 3 Training and development needs: Training and development is essential for the organizations. This is because the time changes and so do the business practices. The organizations require that their workforce is efficient and can cater the needs of the customers. For this purpose the HR department of the organizations ensures that the required training is provided to the employees. The employees of the organization are its asset and investing on them with proper training and development is very necessary for the organization. Tesco which is a leading chain of retail store identifies the need for training and development of the employees. This strengthens the workforce of the organization and aligns them with the organizational objectives of ensuring satisfaction of the customers. Training organizes the employees and its makes them more organized to overcome the challenges which the organization is facing (Business Case Studies, 2013). Method of Effective communication: Three methods will be discussed which could be considered as most effective communication methods in HR consultancy with their clients. The communication plays a very important role in every business. The effective communication let the company to make the right decisions at the right time. The methods are discussed below: 1 Written communication It is the most formal way of communication in the business standards. HR consultancy firms use this medium of communication with its customers when the company has complete information about their problem. The consultancy report by HR firm can be conducted by its client on the daily basis. But this method has a problem of HR firm cannot observe and analyze the problem itself from the written message. 2 Oral communication: This method of communication has a very great advantage of immediate response by the client. It’s a real time action communication which saves a lot of time of the HR consultancy firm and the client company. The immediate solutions of the problems can be presented through this way of communication to the clients on the daily basis. But the HR consultancy firm cannot identify the problem or cannot make assessments by itself because of not observing the situation by its analysts. 3 Face to Face communication: This is the best way of communication if the problem is not analyzed by the client. By this method the HR consultants visits the Clients Company and conduct a research to identify and analyze the roots of problem. Once the problem gets identified the HR consultants gives the solution by face to face communication to the client. This method let the client to make better understanding of problem and solution. Effective service delivery: The effective service delivery means the service should be given at the most beneficial time to the client.The prioritywould be given in the sequence of delivery on time, service delivery in budget, dealing with different customers and handling and resolving complaints.Prioritizing effective service delivery would be the most important factor. By identifying the objectives and then formulating strategies to achieve these objectives properly along with the cost and time involved would help in ensuring effective service delivery within the time and budget. The effective service delivery includes some factors that are discussed below: 1 Service delivery on time: The service should be given in the required time this is the most important factor in service delivering. HR consultancy firms need to deliver the services in the best time when the client needs assistance for solving the problem in a specific time period. 2 Delivering service on budget: The solution given to the client by the HR consultancy firm should meet the budget of the client’s company. The solution will be designed by HR consultancy in consideration of the budget of the company to solve the problem. 3 Dealing with different customers: The HR consultants should have a much diversified knowledge of different cultures and environment to analyze the issues of different industries and HR professionals manage these cases according to the industry and type of business. 4 Handling and resolving complaints: The HR consultants at some stages require connecting with the client for a longer period because the client needs assistance from time to time and prefer to discuss with the same company. The HR consultants need to handle the long term clients to retain them and resolve all of its issues with perfect solutions. ACTIVITY C: (535 words) Continually development process: It is the development process in which members make a commitment to continually update their skills and knowledge in order to stay professionally competent and reach their true potential. CIPD membership associate criteria: To become an associate member of CIPD the applicant are required to fulfill the following requirements: 1 Study a CIPD qualification and upgrade: The CIPD qualification and upgrade level benefited the HR professionals in the following areas. 1 It opens doors to approach new career opportunities and raise your profile. 2 Raise the potential of earning. 3 It gives a support in continuing professional development. 4 The future of HR is accessing and influencing by innovative thinking. 2 Experience assessment: This part of CIPD allows the professionals to use their present and previous work experience to show that they have the knowledge and expertise necessary to become an associate member of CIPD. 3 Free transfer to Associate for Graduates The Graduates who are not up till now prepared to apply to upgrade to Chartered Member, can ask for a free of charge automatic shift to the Associate professional level of membership. The improvement in the area of Experience assessment is required: Applicant required practical work experience from any organization or any business activity to become applicable for the program. Two development options for meeting needs: 1 Employment offer: By utilizing the opportunity of job the HR applicant would be able to meet the criteria of CIPD by having a work experience in the organization. 2 Implementation of idea to perform business activities: the exploitation of idea in to business activities give the working conditions or work experience to the applicant and make him qualified to meet the CIPD criteria. Plan to meet the development needs: There are different personal areas that need to be developed to be successful. Some of the main areas that require development that I need to develop within 6 months are: Presentation skills Interviewing skills Communication skills Research skills Writing skills The time period of the plan is six months. First three months is based in getting the job experience from any organization and last three months is based on the implementation of idea to perform some business activity to gain the work experience. In order to gain these skills, the learning style would be social, physical as well as verbal. Social would be through other people in the society. Physical learning would be as I will be involved in different activities that require use of body, sense and hands. Verbal learning would be through lectures and what others would communicate. There can be number of learning interventions that could hurt the process of learning and developing these skills. Behavior skills can be learning interventions that can hurt the process of developing these skills. Moreover, difficulties in understanding what has been taught can also intervene in the learning process. CIPD LIFE LONG LEARNING CIPD is very essential for learning. It impacts on the individual as it provides a unique framework for learning. This is essential because CIPD is about Work based learning. The experiences which the individuals get contribute directly to their learning experience. CIPD is for the lifelong learning as it fulfills the needs of the employer and helps develop the employees to address the organizational goals directly. The learning methods which are adopted are very effective. The CIPD ensures that the continuous professional development takes placed and he employers get what they desire from their employees. The learning that is offered to the individuals is to provide them experience of the work environment and train them regarding the organizational behavior. Key dates What will you do? Why? What will you learn from this? How have/will you use this? Any further action? Success Criteria In first 3 months period. Plan for (January, February and March) Utilize the job opportunity and work for 3 months period. To gain the practical work experience in the organization level. Organizational behavior, working conditions in different situations and how to implement the skills and expertise while working. This learning experience will make the applicant capable to apply for CIPD program. All these can only become successful if the employees are aligned to the organizational objectives. In the last three months period. Plan for (April, May and June) Exploitation of idea to perform a business activity for three months period. To gain the work experience by business activities. Decision making at different stages, analysis of business environment and formulation of strategies. This experience of performing business activities will make the applicant capable to apply for CIPD program. The individual must take this activity as an opportunity and they must take appropriate decisions which are essential for the firms. Stakeholder Feedback It is important to take feedback from others as it helps in identifying areas of improvements that have been missed or overlooked. Moreover, at times others are better able to analyze than the person himself therefore taking feedback from the shareholders is important. In order to be successful, feedback would be taken from different stakeholders. The feedback of the stakeholders is essential to analyze the necessary action which are required to be taken. The stakeholders are the risk takers for the organization and their assessment of the organizational performance is very important for the organization. Manager or direct supervisor is the person who is monitoring the performance every day throughout the year. Therefore the role of manager in performance evaluation is critical as he is aware of the performance throughout the year. Appropriate feedback from the managers is essential to motivate the employees. Besides this the managers must take notice of the performance of the employees so that the strengths and weaknesses of the workforce can be assessed. The managers play a vital role in motivating the employees and aligning them to work for the betterment of the organization. Therefore to be successful, feedbacks from stakeholders would be taken and then analyzed. Necessary actions would be taken in order to overcome the weaknesses and further strengthen the strengths as identified by the stakeholders. CONCLUSION In the first section of the report the HR professional map discussed the overall activities of the HR consultancy. In the second section of the report, the role and characteristics of HR consultants associated with the needs of customer have been discussed. Third section of the report discusses CIPD program for continual development of HR employees plus areas of improvement for applicants for meeting the criteria of CIPD program. References Martin, D. (2012). Tesco makes dramatic U-turn over slave labour scheme offering paid placements and jobs after Twitter outrage. Daily Mail, 27 August, 2013 from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104392/Tesco-makes-dramatic-U-turn-slave-labour-scheme-Twitter-outrage.html Reuters. (2013). JPMorgan Chase Job Cuts: Bank Announces Plans To Slash Up To 4,000 Jobs/ Huffington Post, 27 August, 2013 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/jpmorgan-chase-job-cuts_n_2764819.html Business Case Studies. (2013). How training and development supports business growth: A Tesco case study. 27 August, 2013 from http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/tesco/how-training-and-development-supports-business-growth/training.html#axzz2dA4mJgZK Barclays. (n.d.) Privacy Policy. Retrieved 27 August, 2013 from http://www.barclays.co.uk/ImportantInformation/Privacypolicy/P1242557966945 HSBC. (n.d.). About the Handbook. 27 August, 2013 from http://www.jobs.hsbc.co.uk/SIP_STORAGE/files/2/462.pdf Read More