Human Resource procedures - Assignment Example

Responding to this phenomenon, the tutor who is responsible for the Human Resource Management course of Swinburne University has tried to teach students in regard to both the theoretical and practical aspects of HR activities and processes. A series of tasks has been developed within the classroom for helping the students to understand the nature of HR procedures and their contribution in practicing HR activities. The Classroom activities related to the above course are presented below. The literature published in this field has been also employed for explaining the value of HR procedures and the challenges that a person who aims to work in this area is expected to face.

Section A - HR procedures used in practicing HR activities HR procedures – overview HR procedures are partially standardized. This means that the forms of HR procedures used worldwide tend to be similar, based on frameworks and principles that have only minor differences. There is no specific definition in regard to HR processes. Rather, the role and the characteristics of these processes can be understood by checking their position in the context of HR management. The HR management, as a concept, has a series of functions, which are divided into categories, such as ‘political, environmental, social and so on’ (Mathis and Jackson 2010, p.6). .

Selection process The selection process has a vital role: it aims to identify the level at which a candidate is appropriate for a particular role, i.e. whether the candidate meets the requirements of a position, as these requirements have been already set using the Job Analysis Process (Armstrong 2012). The success of the selection process is depended on the effectiveness of the schemes chosen for developing the above process. Interviews are commonly used as a tool for selecting employees (Armstrong 2012).

Interviews have been related to a series of advantages: a) the interviewer has the chance for a face-to-face discussion with the candidate, a condition that it is necessary in order to check the candidate’s perceptions in regard to a series of issues and to understand his readiness to identify solutions for emergent problems, as these problems can be set, as examples, by the interviewer (Armstrong 2012); b) through the interview the interviewer is able to check whether the candidate would fit in the business environment and in the position to which the interview refers (Armstrong 2012), c) during the interview the candidate has the chance to set questions in regard to the organizational environment and the characteristics/ demands of the particular position (Armstrong 2012).

However, the interview has also certain disadvantages, such as the excessive dependency on the interviewer’s skills and the risk of developing false impression for the suitability of a candidate for a specific position (Armstrong 2012). The risks to which interviews are exposed could be minimized by using structured interviews, i.e. ‘interviews based on a defined framework’ (Armstrong 2012, p.230). It should be noted that in each