Human Resource Manager - a Job Analysis - Coursework Example

Running Head: HUMАN RЕSОURСЕ MАNАGЕMЕNT Human Resource (HR) Manager: A Job Report Student Name: Professor Name: Submission Date: Human Resource (HR) Manager: A Job Report 1. Job Description: Job Title: HR Manager Key Duties (SHRM Learning System, 2009): (a) recruiting, full-lifecycle on boarding, and orientation; (b) benefits and compensation analysis, design, structure, and support; (c) employment and labor law mandates and compliance; (d) employee relations; (e) training and development; (f) employment practices for terminations and related discharge actions; (g) payroll; (h) contract portfolios; and (i) documentation of personnel actions. 2. Workforce Analysis: In today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing online environment, Human Resource (HR) managers is an in-demand job. The HR field has grown in the last 200 years from supervision of workers and/or an administrative paper processor to one of being a strategic member in the corporate executive offices (C-suite) involved in policy and strategic planning (Blancero, Boroski, & Dyer, 2006). Theorists focused initially on the practice of HR from an economic, psychological, or a strictly business perspective. With the growing recognition of HR managers as a vital partner in company growth and business development, there is a growing consideration of perceived value as the career niche of human resources management turns into a respected source and center of business cost-savings due to its impact on idea generation and product development as a function of new hires and retraining. The Department of Labor documents statistical facts about Human Resources Managers (2010) provides guidance for determining subject matter experts: (a) median pay was about $99,180 annually ($47.68 hourly), (b) the position requires a Bachelor’s degree, (c) one to five years experience were required, (d) approximately 71,800 jobs were available in 2010, with a 13% growth since 2009, and (e) future growth projections between 2010 and 2020 predicted an additional 9,300 jobs (BLS, 2012). HRMs need an understanding of HR-related tasks and responsibilities relative to administrative support for their employer, company, and organization. Job descriptions for HR positions differ based on the company’s needs - revolving around employee numbers, benefits and compensation package management, or whether it has a union shop. HR-related tasks may include general tasks, specialty tasks, and a varying range of HR administrative responsibilities and support tasks within the HR department. In the labor market, HR workers typically start in clerical, administrative support, or as entry-level interns. As experience is gained, they may advance in career via promotions to supervision, middle management, or specialized positions within an HR department. Advanced and specialty HR career positions include: (a) benefits managers, (b) payroll specialists, (c) occupational or classification analysts, (d) training and development specialists, (e) recruiters, or (f) labor and employee relation's managers (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010). 3. Recruitment & Selection Organizations have been using different methods to select HR managers for more than a thousand years, but I choose the two methods discussed below to recruit and select HR managers. Assessment Centers This is a popular recruitment and selection tool for HR managerial jobs is assessment centers. They are not a place but a method. It is a comprehensive method that brings together many techniques and instruments. Examples of some commonly used assessment center simulation exercises are role-play, presentations, and in-baskets. Assessment centers can be used for selection, promotion, and development planning. The advantages for using this method is that assessment centers are a valid predictor of future job performance. They linked personality factors and assessment center domains by scrutinizing the notes of assessors for personality descriptors and by classifying them according to Five Factor Model. Results revealed that assessors, as a group, use descriptors referring to all five personality domains. The distribution of the Big Five categories varied across assessors and exercises. For instance, the in-basket elicited the conscientiousness domain most frequently, whereas the group discussion elicited extroversion descriptors most often. Assessment center ratings can be affected by many factors. The way to design a good assessment center is an important task for I/O psychologists. Also some researchers believe that better validity can be obtained by combining several personnel selection methods together. Its disadvantages includes the fact that, assessment centers can be more time consuming, more expensive, and harder to use. Raters need more training to know how to use assessment centers. All these factors need to be considered for the development of assessment centers in the future. Interviews For most organizations, the interview was reported as being the most important component in determining final selection decisions (Keenan, 1995). The interview can be structured or unstructured. The unstructured interview is similar to an informal discussion where interviewers ask whatever questions come to mind and follow up the interviewee's answers with additional questions (Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2010). The structured interview is pre-planned to ensure every candidate receives exactly the same questions in the same order for judgment (Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2010). The narrative review on the other hand, is a popular way to study the relationship between interview performance and job performance. A disadvantage of using Interview is its reliability. It has been argued that the interview method has low reliability; this is especially true with unstructured interviews. However, Conway, Jako and Goodman (1995) found that the reliability of the interview actually depends on the situation. The results also showed the standardization of questions was more strongly related to reliability when coefficients were based on separate interviews and did not find evidence that job analysis directly increased reliability. They recommended that some form of interviewer training should be used because reliabilities in this study were higher when interviewers were trained. According to this study, we can say that individual interviews are just moderately reliable. Also unstructured interviews are much more likely to be used than structured, even though structured interviews are more reliable than unstructured. If a measure has reliability, it does not mean it has validity. Because of this principle, more research has been devoted to studying the validity of interviews instead of trying to prove whether interviews are reliable or not. Even though the interview has been treated as a low validity method, some researchers have been challenging this point of view. McDaniel, Whetzel, Schmidt, and Maurer (1994) found that interview validity depends on the interview content, how the interview is conducted, and the nature of the criterion. Situational interviews had higher validity (.50) than job-related interviews (.39) and psychological based interviews (.29). Structured interviews had higher validity (.44) than unstructured interviews (.33). According to McDaniel, Whetzel, Schmidt, and Maurer's (1994) research, structured interviews have higher validity than unstructured interviews. However, things might be different if we combined structured interviews with other methods. For example, Schmidt and Hunter (1998) found that the combination of a structured interview plus a general mental ability (GMA) test has a high validity (mean validity of .63), which makes it useful. Maybe because it is so widely used, researchers never stop trying to prove the interview is a good method. Thus, an interview is still widely used in human resource practice as more sophisticated if the company trains its interviewers and if it develops a way to score interview answers on job related dimensions. 4. Performance Appraisal: Two methods that could be used to conduct a performance appraisal of a human resource manager are Management by objectives (MBO) and behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS). The next paragraph detail their advantages and disadvantages. Management by Objectives (MBO) is the more popular evaluation technique performance appraisal of a human resource manager. This is what Gliddon (2004) terms a results-based approach to performance appraisal. Its main goal is to maintain congruency between the objectives of the organization and the goals of the manager as an employee. One of the advantages of MBO is that it is helping managers operationalize their goals. By operationalizing goals, one can be specific and clear as to what needs to be accomplished. Doing so will result in a better focus for accomplishing these goals as well as reducing uncertainty. When used correctly, MBO can assist managers with their communication skills with their subordinates. As stated above, the right types of goals need to be set for success to occur. Goals need to be long term and short term, measurable, and specific to name a few (Strauss, 1992). Several disadvantages to the MBO type of performance appraisal were identified. First, the objectives of the organization may sometimes conflict with the objectives of the individual. Second, the focus can be on short-term results, and it has been criticized for discouraging team building with a preoccupation with personal goals (Hughes, 1982). Hughes remarks, "The job performance of very few people indeed is determined solely by their own individual efforts. If it were, then organization as we know it would no longer be needed" (p. 406). Third, Murphy and Cleveland (1995) claim that the process is not as objective as it appears, since the goals are often negotiated between subordinate and supervisor. They use an example such as "if a good-performing subordinate fails to meet his or her objectives, it is not unusual for the supervisor to renegotiate objectives" (p. 8). When this happens, it basically assures the supervisor that the good performer will reach his or her "objective" making him or her a "good performer." This type of fudging with objectives makes the employee look good on paper, but in actuality reduces the difficulty of the goal, resulting in less motivation. Fourth, Hughes sees MBOs as providing objectives that are innocently created between the supervisor and the subordinate, but later may be used as blackmail. He feels these objectives become a threat, not an incentive. He writes that "achieving them becomes more a matter of avoiding punishment (or censure for failure) than of receiving a reward (i.e., praise)" (p. 408). The top management would be the most appropriate to conduct the appraisal. As with any appraisal system, the manner in which the top management gives the evaluation is critical to the success of the program. If the HR manager does not meet their goals, the top management cannot become overly punitive, or it will defeat the purpose of creating those goals. The HR manager will be less likely to take risks next time. The manager needs to see failure as an opportunity to discuss improvements (Strauss). At the beginning of the rating period the HR manager and the top management decide together using the job description what should be accomplished prior to the next evaluation (Morriss, 1999). MBO also requires objective feedback by the CEO or top management regarding progress toward goal achievement. According to Phillips-Carson and Carson (1993), there is evidence that MBO can contribute to increases in organizational productivity, but the effectiveness of this type of appraisal is dependent on the degree of commitment by top management. The second method that could be used to conduct a performance appraisal of an HR manager is Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS), on which according to Maiorca (1997), are a combination of both a critical incident and rating scale methods. Essentially, employee performance is rated on a scale, but the scale has critical incidents assigned to it. The advantages of this performance appraisal according to Maiorca is that, BARS increases the reliability of personnel assessment and improves communication between HR managers and top management. He further identifies that BARS assesses performance in terms of specific behaviors relative to the job versus general traits or abstract concepts. It also eliminates the use of what Maiorca terms as "misleading" numerical measures that are difficult to interpret. Furthermore, BARS reduces rater bias by anchoring the rating to specific behaviors based on job analysis, and it minimizes evaluator's failure to identify important job functions (Maiorca). Since the inception of the BARS technique, there have been several variations to this type of appraisal. Tziner, Joanis, and Murphy (2000) identify the behavior observation scales (BOS) as one of those adaptations. In their study, they evaluated 96 police officers using simple graphic scales, BARS and BOS, to see with which type of review ratees were most satisfied. In addition to overall satisfaction with the appraisal, these authors were specifically interested in "the characteristics of goals that are developed in response to performance appraisal and feedback" (Tziner, Joanis & Murphy, p. 176). Behaviorally observed rating scales (BOS) ask raters to report back the frequency of specific job-related behaviors while BARS uses behavioral statements to identify rating levels. Graphic rating scales ask raters to give general evaluations of subordinates' performance in specified areas. Ratee satisfaction with the appraisal system will result in a more positive attitude approaching appraisal time and a higher chance of acceptance of the results of the appraisal. In their literary research, Tziner et al. (2000) found evidence that revealed the use of behaviorally based scales can increase rater and ratee comfort levels and ultimate acceptance of the performance appraisal feedback. Behaviorally based rating scales appear less subjective since they focus on specific behaviors rather than a rater's subjective evaluation of those behaviors (Tziner et al.). Interestingly, the disadvantages when it came to performance feedback and goal setting is that, BARS did not fair well as a developmental tool. According to Tziner et al. (2000), in order for feedback and development to be successful, the ratee must accept the feedback he or she receives. Data suggest that ratees were less satisfied with BARS than either BOS or GRS. The Tziner et al. study measured satisfaction with the appraisal system itself, not the results of the appraisal. This dissatisfaction could have been the result of the fact that behavioral anchors can be inaccurate and biased. Raters tend to focus on the specific behaviors in the rating scale and disregard behaviors that are more representative of the individual's level of performance. Although the specificity of goals is highest with BARS and BOS versus GRS, the overall ratee satisfaction is compromised in the process (Tziner et al.). Schweiger and Sumners (1994) suggest that the most commonly used performance appraisals are those that combine MBO and some form of rating scale. The advantage is that the MBO portion can be used to address long-term goals whereas a rating scale can be used to evaluate and track performance over a shorter period of time. This allows quick feedback for impatient administrations. The authors further state that once-a-year evaluations are less effective than ongoing evaluations throughout the year. References Blancero, D., Boroski, J., & Dyer, L. (2006). Key competencies for a transformed human resource organization: Results of a field study. Human Resource Management, 35(3), 383-403. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2012). Human resource managers. Retrieved from http://www. bls.gov/ooh/management/home.htm Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2012). What compensation and benefits managers do. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/compensation-and-benefits-managers. htm#tab-2 Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2010). The Psychology of Personnel Selection. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Conway, J. M., Jako, R. A., & Goodman, D. F. (1995). A meta-analysis of interrater and internal consistency reliability of selection interviews. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80(5), 565-579. Gibson, C. L. 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