Recruitment and Selection, and Human Resource Planning Processes - Assignment Example

Human Resource Management Human Resource Management provides a thorough understanding of the nature and role of organisations and the management of people at work. It places a great emphasis on the global viewpoint of leadership and management of human resources, along with the social plus the moral criteria which lead to preservation of entrepreneurship, organisational frameworks plus the procedures, cooperation, education and the innovation. In this global economy every country is turning towards HR practices. Because of the multinational businesses and mergers in different countries these practices are becoming more and more common. For the purpose of conducting a research we will refer to India and the HR practices being used. India is on the verge of becoming one of the most exciting and rising economies of this global economy. There have been traces of HRM can be found in the history and culture of India. Although there have been changes from time to time and they have incorporated many things especially as they have been involved in trading with other countries. In an article titled ‘Human resource management in India: 'where from' and 'where to?' (Spencer, Rajah, Narayan, Mohan & Latiri 2007) it was stated that a recent survey of CEO’s of Indian companies, suggested that “Indian managerial leaders were less dependent on their personal charisma, but they emphasised logical and step by step implementation processes.” The focus of the Indian leaders was also on ‘empowerment and accountability’ especially in the case of significant turnaround and pioneering challenges. I have an understanding of the role of HRM for organizational success and this enhances my knowledge about human resource practices in various organizational settings. From the first half of the module of Human Resource Management I am able to understand the role of Human Resource Management in any organization. In the following paragraphs I have discussed my understanding regarding the subject in question. Human resource management (HRM) is known as the regulations plus the activities which are concerned with carrying out the people or human resource features of a management situation – which includes the activities involving the recruitment, screening, education, rewarding, plus appraisals. The role of Human resource is to fit in or adapt to the company’s strategy. Here HR’s strategic role is to adapt individual HR practices to fit specific corporate and competitive strategies. As two strategic planning experts have argued, “the human resources management system must be tailored to the demands of business strategy.” Another view of HR management is that it is an equal partner in the strategic planning process. In this state the part that HR plays is not simply the adaptation of the activities to suit the tactics of the organization’s business, but also the everyday functional requirements, for instance the payment of the salaries of the workers. Instead, the need to forge the firm’s workforce into a competitive advantage means the HR management must be an equal partner in both the formulation and the implementation of the company’s strategies. Here, for instance, HR participates in and influences decisions like AOL’s decision to merge with Time Warner. Most of these managers were more intimately involved with the implementation of strategic plans and with the recruitment and development of key staff, notably managers, than with actually formulating the firm’s strategic plans. Personnel features regarding a manager’s work is the conduction of evaluations of job (which means finding out what the nature is of every worker’s task), deciding upon the labor requirements and the recruitment of job applicants, orienting and training the new workers, the management of payments and salaries (providing compensation to the workers), giving out incentives and other advantages, providing appraisals for the performance, having conversations (like interview, counsel, discipline), providing education and helping the managers to develop, constructing worker obligation within an organization. A line manager has the responsibility of authorizing the direction of work of the inferiors and has also the responsibility of fulfilling the works of an organization. Staff manager has the responsibility of assisting and advising line managers. The HR manager has the line function of directing the activities of the people in his particular department and the concerned facilities. The HR manager also has a coordinative function which is the coordination of personnel activities, and this responsibility is usually termed as functional control. The major part of the responsibility of the HR manager is providing assistance and advice to the line managers. Examples of human resource job duties include looking for good enough job candidates, investigation and resolution of EEO (Equal Employment opportunity) grievances, the examination of organizational practices for possible breaches, and submissions plus compilation of the EEO reports, collecting and examining data regarding the jobs for the preparation of job descriptions, developing compensation plans plus also handling the employee benefits program, planning, organizing, and directing training activities, advising the management on each feature regarding the union-management relations. Line managers have certain HRM duties which include the placement of the correct individual for the right work, initiating new workers in the A few of the responsibilities of a Line Manager includes “placing the right person on the right job, starting new employees in the organization (orientation), training employees for jobs new to them, improving the job performance of each person, gaining creative cooperation and developing smooth working relationships, interpreting the firm’s policies and procedures, controlling labor costs, developing the abilities of each person, creating and maintaining department morale, protecting employees’ health and physical condition.” Authority is the right to make decisions, direct others’ work, and give orders. The power exercised by the HR manager by the merit of others’ information is that they have access to senior management is called “implied authority”. The authority exerted by an HR manager by directing the activities of the people in his or her own department and in service areas is called line authority The HR responsibilities with reference to the cooperative line and staff management are to identify the credentials workers need to fill particular posts. There is then developed a complete source of applicants who qualify and then screening interviews are conducted. The next step is to monitor the tests that are required for the post and the best applicants are referred to the supervisor or line manager. They select or interview the one they find suitable. One of the benefits of these new applications used in Human Resource are “intranet-based employee portals through which employees can self-service HR transactions”. The long-term plan of any company is to consider how to keep a balance between the internal and external forces; the strengths and weaknesses with the opportunities and threats. This helps the company to gain or maintain its competitive advantage. Today the managers are involved to a greater extent in partnering with the senior management and help in making and effectively using the strategies. It is understandable that the top level management would be entirely interested in viewing how beneficial the plans from the HR managers are for their company. The HR manager is required to not only select the right candidate but to provide the new recruit with the details of the job, training for that post and additional factors that may involve in the management. They work through organized and systematic methods where they have outlined the training programmes and the routine procedures for selection. So far what I have understood from the management of HR point of view is that it has become critical in an organization to undertake the right kind of HR management procedures. Implementation of these policies and procedures is just as important and they need proper trained HR professionals for this. No company in today’s advancing and changing world can stay without a proper HR team. A Newspaper Article Job partners targets SMBs with online recruitment tool (Muncaster 2009) My Comments on this article In this article SaaS solution wants to provide a cost effective solution for the whole human resource management process. This process is very important for the success of every organization and is much time consuming and tough activity as well. However, due to the advancement of information technology, this process can become easy via a well programmed agenda. This is a very good approach for such a complicated HRM process of the organizations and it also saves a lot of organizational expenses; for instance, through Intranet-based employee portals, employees can self-service HR transactions. This leads to an availability of centralized call centers staffed with HR specialists. Due to this, efficiency of HR operations increases. The development of data warehouses of HR-related information and the capability to subcontract HR activities to expert service providers can be possible in this way and this is a very smart solution for any kind of an organization. Recruitment and selection, and HRP processes The primary purpose of the recruitment and selection process is to achieve one desire end: appointing the right person to the right job. This is a critical task for any manager, and one that is more difficult when there is a shortage of needed skills and experience in the labor market (Dale, 2003, p.1). The Recruitment and Selection Process 1. It helps in deciding the positions that require filling through planning and forecasting of the personnel. 2. Build a pool of candidates for these jobs by recruiting internal or external candidates. 3. The managers will get application forms completed from the candidates and also take and initial interview for screening purposes. 4. Feasible options for candidates are based on different techniques like background inquiry, tests and physical tests. 5. The last step is the decision as to who to select and that is based on the supervisor or any other member to interview them. A chapter “Personnel Planning and Recruitment” in the 10th edition of Human Resource Management (Dessler, 2005) explains h w certain external factors may affect recruitment. According to the author they are: the threatening shortage of workers, decrease in the trend for outsourcing employees, a decrease in the proper qualified candidates. As with the External factors there are some internal factors at play too. These include the steadiness of the firm’s staffing efforts with its planned aims, the resources that are available, selection of the methods and the types of jobs to be recruited, no HR staffing issues and policies, and lack of coordination and cooperation between line and staff management. Looking at the “advantages of centralizing recruitment” we find that it not only makes the employment brand stronger but gives an ease to apply calculated doctrine. It also reduces the replication of activities associated to HR and minimizes the cost for new technology. It not only develops teams of expert people but also gives improved measurement for its performance, and permits the sharing of candidate pools. Many applicants who were qualified were attracted from the recruitment sources because of the effectiveness of the recruiting measures. In which includes assessment of both the quantity and the quality of the applicants produced by a source. Next we look at the “High performance recruiting” which is to apply the best management techniques and practices for recruitment like using the approach of benchmarking. This helps in analyzing and gauging the usefulness of hiring efforts such as employee recommendations. Definition of Human Resource Planning The process of foreseeing and to carry out the flow of workers into, with or out of an organization is called Human Resource Planning. It is done to obtain teh maximum out of human resource and to know the type and count of the employees that are required to attain the goals of the organization. Human Resource Planning According to Geister (slideshare.net 2009, p.2), “Manpower planning is the process including forecasting, developing and controlling by which a firm ensures that it has. According to human resource planning, the right number of people, the right kind of people, at the right places, at the right time, doing work for which they are economically most useful”. Salient features of HRP 1. HRP is a systematic approach and ensures a continuous and proper staffing. It avoids or checks the hiring imbalances (shortage or surplus) that may occur in any of the department of the organization. 2. There is a visible continuity in the process. 3. There is a certain degree of flexibility. That is, it is subject to modifications according to the needs of the organization or the changing circumstances. Manpower plans can be done at micro or the macro levels depending upon various environment factors that are forecasting future manpower requirements, making an inventory of present manpower resources and assessing the extent to which these resources are employed optimally, anticipating manpower problems by projecting present resources into the future, planning the necessary programmes of requirement, selection, training, development, utilization etc. Objectives of human resource planning are, to ensure optimum use of existing HR, to forecast future requirement for HR, to provide control measures to ensure that necessary HR are available as and when required, to assess the surplus and shortage of HR. (Downsizing), to anticipate the impact of technology on jobs and HR, to determine the level of Recruitment and Training, to estimate the cost of HR and Housing needs of employees, to meet the needs of expansion and diversification programs. Uses of HRP are to improve the utilization of human resources; matching human resources related activities and future organization objectives efficiently, achieving economies in hiring new workers, coordination between various HR Programs such a employment equity plan and hiring needs. Human resource planning is important to ensure optimum use of man (woman, too nowadays?), forecast future requirements, help determine recruitment/induction levels, to anticipate training levels and works, know the cost of manpower if there is a new project is being taken up. Prof. Geisierout lined the responsibilities of Human Resource Department in respect of manpower planning thus the key elements of human resource planning process are to assist and counsel operating managers to plan and set objectives, collect and summaries manpower data keeping long-run objectives and broad organizational interests in mind, and monitor and measure performance against the plan and keep top management informed about it. Provide proper research base for effective manpower and organizational planning. Human Resource Development A definition of HRD is "organized learning activities arranged within an organization in order to improve performance and/or personal growth for the purpose of improving the job, the individual, and/or the organization". (alumnus.caltech.edu 2009, p. 1). In human resource development process, organization development, career development, training is included. Changes all ways take place within the society so that these changes also affect the global economy and technology, culture. So that in this way organizational culture also affects due to global changes. In this way, new knowledge about currently required skills and techniques must be present thus to modify the organization structure according to the requirement. These new coming changes do not only affects to some positions of the organization while all the persons of the organization affect from these changes and then they by themselves responsible for their modification in their work structure according to the present requirements therefore every one have need to acquire new knowledge according to their work demand. This is the responsibility of human resource development to maximize the efficiency of organizational workers and provides knowledge, skills, motivation, standards, work environment and incentives to the organizational people. Sometime, training is required for the organizational workers but this is not always necessary to conduct training for all the workers, mostly workers have the tendency to solve their own organizational problems. For better human resource development these methods can be used according to the situation of the organizational requirement such as assessment of needs, program design, development and evaluation, training and development, organization development, organization research and program evaluation, the human resource development profession and professional organizations. Managing and Rewarding Performance Performance management is the systematic process by which an agency involves its employees, as individuals and members of a group, in improving organizational effectiveness in the accomplishment of agency mission and goals (opm.gov 2009, p.1). To manage Performance management system all these processes must be involved planning, monitoring, developing, rating and rewarding. To run an organization in effective way these all steps should be followed. Planning is the setting of all work arrangements and employee task for achieving the organizational goal and then continuous monitoring of all organizational task should be manage such as assignments, projects and work feedback should also be provided. For the development of organization training, introduction about new tools technology or any knowledge should be provided to update the over all system of the organization and then for rewarding the employees according to their performance in the organization, their performance should be rated and then comparison of all employees become easy and this process is called rating thus on the bases of rating employees, groups or members of the groups are to be rewarded. If this process going on in the organization then this creates very healthy environment in the organization and then automatically all employees want to perform better than others and this is over all enhance the performance of organization. Nelarine describes (Nelarine 2001, p. 175) the challenge is to strike a balance between the immediate needs of the organization and those of the employees, so that employee performance objectives, development opportunities and rewards are not too narrowly focused on strategy to the point that long-term flexibility, goodwill and motivation are lost from the organization as a whole. Managing the Employment Relationship This is very complex task to develop employer-employee relationship. As we know, all the individuals have unique qualities therefore in an organization, all the person either they are employer or employee, they are a great diversity in them in their attitudes, behavior, skills etc. Therefore to manage this great diversity within organization is a complicated task. Human resource manager has a responsibility to develop skillful and competent workers and formulate and ensure fair the rules and policies for the organization. To run an organization in a smooth manner, firstly some rules and policies clearly defined and then on the bases of well defined organization structure and hierarchy all the workers clearly understand their roles and tasks within the organization and then by obeying organizational policies and rules their identity do not effects on another employee of the organization. So, employee relationship just can be grow in healthy direction if organization has full pre defined rules and policies for all employees of the organization. References Brannan Matthew 2002, Human Resource Management, Comelius Nelarine 2001, Human resource management: a managerial perspective, Thomas Learning, UK. Dale, Margaret 2003, A manager’s Guide to Recruitment & Selection, 2nd edn, Quicksilver Drive Sterling, USA. Dessler, G. (2005). Human Resource Management. Prentice Hall. Human resource planning, slideshare.net, viewed 29 October, 2009, Performance Management, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, viewed 28 October, 2009, Phil Muncaster ‘Job partners targets SMBs with online recruitment tool’, 26 October, viewed 29 October 2009, . Rouda, H, Robert, & Kusy, E, Mitchell, 1995, Development of human resources, Tappi Journal in 1995-96, Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper. Human Resource Development, alumnus.caltech.edu, viewed 29 October, 2009, . Read More