Role and Purpose of Human Resource Management - Essay Example

Role and purpose of Human Resource Management By Human Resources Management Department 21st January Analyse the role and purpose of Human resource Management in a selected service industry (Hotel, Restaurant…) HR has three main roles in a hotel namely; 1. Administrative transactions and services which involves handling of administrative tasks like hiring, compensation: quality commitment and efficiency. 2. Business partner which involves effective developments of set of goals to attract, keep and skill development within the organizations. 3. Strategic partner involves adding value to a company by having a competitive advantage over the competitors, having a clear business understanding and its industry (Raymond A. Noe, 2011). HR Strategies As the Hotel HR manager my strategies will have an object 1. Provide directions 2. Priorities for the business in relation to people’s work to the company. It consists of creating a departmental mission statement of goals in achieving the desired workforce and HR work within the hotel. Hiring/ recruitment process and selection. Every hospitality company needs to hire to talent in order to establish the best employee brand. There are to main core concepts involved in a hiring top and the best talents. First, the position being filled must be designed in a fashion that fits how top candidates hunt for jobs and accept job offers. Secondly, a systematic fashion must be integrated with the following steps to be followed. The HR manager must write a compelling job descriptions that meets set out skills and qualifications as described by the line manager in the department with further details of the job needs. To attract top performance, design the aspects to include where to place the ad of the fallen job vacancy with appetizing job descriptions, design methodologies of referrals, with the help of IT department design an appealing career web page portal and make time line when to give the candidates calls. Schedule and organize interviews to evaluate competency, skills and creating opportunity. In creating effective referrals programmes as the HR manager should use both employee referrals programs and internship models as the recruitment process is an all year event. This will create unlimited referral program in which the employees will assist continually in identifying of the best strong candidates for the job for future and current opportunities. No maximum cap should be placed for referrals submission and to create an effective program, tagging of a referral should be done and in-case hired an incentive fees (LuisR.Gómez-Mejía, 2012). Performance and Appraisals This is an essential component of strategy in the hotel organization in that it helps the management to evaluate if the set out performance meets the business objectives. Performance managements links the behaviour of each individual employee to that of the hotel and with definition of expectation from each of the employees. This will help the hotels to determine the expectations met and those are not meet and take necessary actions which includes training, incentives or even disciplining of individual employees. To achieve this strategic goal a measurements are applied to the hotel goals and the feedback is timely communicated to the employees in the respective departments and the line managers advised to take appropriate actions. The strategic administrative purpose of the system helps the hotel to make use of the information generated on daily basis to aid in decision making in salary, benefits, hiring and in training programs recognition. This mode of management helps in retaining the best employees and discard weak, poor behaviour by laying them off, thus the information obtain from this appraisals affects future of each employee (Raymond A. Noe, 2011). Effective performance driven management aid in developmental purposes in that it identifies the strengths and weakness, and the area of improvements. Discussion and feedback should be design to improve the performance of each individual 2 Justify a human resource plan based on an analysis for supply and demand for a selected service industry business. According to Office of National Statistics tourism accounts for 9.3% of the total employment in the U.K. thus the third largest sector in employment. In 2013 the sector employed a total of 3.1 jobs becoming one of the fastest growing sector in the UK. In UK there is a total of 249,000 tourism related business (Tourism Alliance, 2015). Thus there is a relatively a big demand of people with tourism professional to fill in the fast growing sector. This has been compounded further by various recruiting agencies to fill in the gap for assisting in recruiting. This brings in the complexity of getting the best talent difficulty thus, the business needs to innovate new ways of attracting the best employment brand. There various external factors affecting tourism sector in 21st century include the terrorism, fuel and banking crisis. Terrorism limits the number of visitors from outside UK and further recruitment from foreign countries in fear of employing terrorist. Banking crisis affects the sector in a view of the exchange rates subjected to pound. Example in 2009 the exchange rate of Euro vs Pound was equal to one, thus France and Eurozone countries become very expensive and in the same page the Dollar was weak making USA attractive for holiday makers (onlinegeography, 2014). Fuel affects the fare of the tourists thus slowing down the growth of the industry. HR Plan The InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) HR management plan is to ensure that both strategic goals and operations plans are meet thus having right people at right time with exceptional right skills will give the IHG the right employee brand. |The group will improve on technological trends in the market that directly affects the human resources, in the same breath the department will always be up-to-date with social, economic, and legislative factors. Thus the new terrorism laws comes in place when recruiting employees outside of the UK. Create most flexible environment that can be able to manage the future. 2.1 Assess the current state of employment relations in a selected service industry The philosophy that covers employee relations include the industrial relations in terms of industrial action and strikes; this is brought by the trade unions which engage the employer in a collective bargaining agreements. This is further complicated as workplace distrust increases due to the high peaks paid leaders in the sector; this complexity is further growing scandals from services sectors companies like Enron, Tyco, Lehman Brothers and others as business ethics degenerates to crime and whistle-blowers engage on what they know most (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development , 2014). The industrial relations draws its foundations in a number of social sciences disciplines that include law, history, politics, economics and sociology among others. The liberalization by most governments and deregulation of the markets has brought in state privatizing there agencies and organization. The advancement in Information Technology has brought in a faster financial transactions and more companies changing their production polices to manufacture in different parts of the world (Macdonald, 1997). With a population of 63.7 Million in UK, the Office of National Statistics Estimates that the about half of the population comprise the UK workforce. The labour market dynamics in the UK, depends on two main factors; household provide supply of labour and firms provide the demand for work. With globalization and change of legislation in EU, UK has experience an influx of migrants from all over EU and world, this has a direct impact in UK labour market. Most migrants are of productive age thus they have a direct proportional effect on the labour supply and this tend to lower the wage rate as most of the migrants come from low wage economies. Most organization service firms are more of profit oriented, thus they embrace the skill migrants to work for them to bring down there wage bill. This has been compound much that technological advancement that companies tend to embrace more to bring the number of employees down and increase the profits more (Economics Online, 2015). A new legal move to reduce the number of claims to be arbitrated by employment tribunal was introduced in 2013, mainly in two areas that the claimant and the employer engage in conciliation in advance; second an introduction of claimant fees. There have been more legislative changes in UK labour laws in the recent past. The number of years an employee can claim for unfair dismissal was increased to two, and parental leave was altered to an additional of one more month to four months with flexi-time working rights after that. There was an increase in adoption, maternity and paternity pay (Gamwell, 2014). 2.2 Discuss how employment Law affects the management of human resources in a hospitality organization of your choice. Laws have a direct impact on HR management in Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG). Some of the laws that affect the business include benefit acts like mileage reimbursements, which sometimes turn to be un-economical to the organization, other laws include non-discrimination, equal opportunity act, right to form and join unions, right to privacy and terms and conditions of employment act. As most facilities are located in different geographic locations, employment laws mutate according to federal, states or even local municipals and even differ with size of the unit operated. Thus the HR staffs must acquaint themselves with this peculiar dynamism facing the HR department and with skilful knowhow in order to mitigate legal hurdles that may arise. Medical Leave Act allows the employee to take unpaid leave of up to 12 weeks once in 12 months for a number of reasons ranging from employee health issue, employee bonding with a new baby or spouse. The burden is transferred to the employer (Hotel) to get a temporary employee to replace the one on leave. And as the tourism season has a low and high, this subjects the hotel to a low quality service as the new temporary staff may have not attained or gone through the necessary in-house training to serve the industry. HR staffs must come with a strategy to mitigate this unique factors as the employees on leave have job protection and there medical cover continues to work, thus the company has to incur extra health cover for the temporary staff. Minimum wage differ with geographical location of the business unit in IHG setup. The wage is periodically revised by the state often to incorporate the current economic situations affecting the local citizens. Thus HR professionals must ensure that the wage disbursed and paid to employees meet the state threshold continuously.HR manager in each business unit should classify each employee in the right job groups as state makes few exemptions on the job groups to be paid over time. 3.1 Explain job description and person specification through examples from a hospitality organisation. The hotel InterContinental London Park Lane is recruiting on the following jobs. 1. Spa Manager 2. Guest Relations Associate 3. Senior Housekeeping Porter (InterContinetal Hotel Group, 2015) To attract the best candidates IHG have detailed each job and what it entails on each page. Spa Manager The description entails an introduction of IHG brand and the location of the hotel. The page describes day-to-day activities and on-the-job operations of the Spa manager. The preferred candidate needs to have excellent customer care skills and overall knowledge of the operations of a Spa. Above that the position comes with various benefits including pension scheme, free meals when on duty, uniform and hotel discounts worldwide among others (Intercontinetal Hotel Group, 2015).-The following skills are required for the best candidate that’s fits the position. A general excellent educational qualifications with at least a GCSE or A’ level or similar achivements. The applicant must have a similar experience in management. Other general qualifications include reading, oral and writing proficiency in English and another language, with applicants able to work in shifts (Intercontinetal Hotel Group, 2015). The work qualification include NVQ level 2 and above beauty qualification, people management, Elemis knowledge of product, treatment and philosophy. And above all the candidate must have a previous experience in a spa environment (Intercontinetal Hotel Group, 2015). HR theories focus on selection and recruitment methods, this include the job advertising, description and application process with mostly is done online in IHG example. The selection process is internal then if no candidate is suitable for the position it goes external. The jobs are advertised in IHG online portal and the candidates are required to use the same portal to apply for the job. Through talent management process, forms the heart of HR management, which include the following; Recruitment and staffing, involving defining the position to be filled through effective job analysis and forecast. Then building a pool of qualified candidate, both from internal and external. Conducting necessary tests and interviews to determine the best suited candidate for the job and deciding the best top candidate to make the offer (Dessler, 2013). There is a need to conduct an induction after recruiting externally and further offer train them to give them ultimate competencies and improve the in-house skills and needs to do their jobs. To improve the performance always appraise, reward and compensate the employees accordingly (Dessler, 2013). 3.2 Compare the selection process of different service industries businesses. Selection process differ depending on service sector an individual is being recruited for. In financial sector selection process the recruiter focuses on specific skills, such as financial skills and qualifications. Other sectors may focus on general abilities, such as strong communication skills, honesty, work ethics, minimum motivation and supervision or even flexibility. The measure of ability defers depending on the section and services sector. A customer care representative in a hotel industry require different general skills compared to the same in financial sector. The process of selecting is determined by effective job performance and subjecting them to the applicants characteristics needed for the job. This performance are determined by the previous services sector performance. Different software packages are needed to different sections and sectors thus in financial sector more accounting and statistical software are need compared to tourism where the applicant selected needs to know more of customer relationship management software. Different tests are done on applicants and the impressions given during the interviews, determines the managers decision who to give the job. This process known as oncut scores mostly is applied in financial sectors as they are looking for a particular skill. Some HR specialists have developed a common database system to share candidate’s information and history. This has been further compounded with terrorism activities and criminal records of candidate applying for the job. Public sector share information to private sector for a candidate portfolio in order to minimize the employment risk and reduce criminal activities. Further different HR managers in same sector share referrals in order to assist the other to recruit the best in the industry, this method is known as job networking. External HR agencies help further in decision making and link the preferred candidates in their databases to the HR, which proper documentation and usually they have pre-screen and checked the criminal records of the candidates prior submitting the names to the other sector recruiting. Works Cited Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development , 2014. Employee Relations. [Online] Available at: http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-topics/employee-relations.aspx [Accessed 21 January 2015]. Dessler, G., 2013. Human Resources Management. 13th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson. Economics Online, 2015. The Labour market. [Online] Available at: http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Competitive_markets/The_labour_market.html [Accessed 21 January 2015]. Gamwell, S., 2014. United Kingdom: Industrial relations profile. [Online] Available at: http://eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/comparative-information/national-contributions/united-kingdom/united-kingdom-industrial-relations-profile [Accessed 21 January 2015]. InterContinetal Hotel Group, 2015. Jobs in London at IHG. [Online] Available at: http://ihg.jobs.net/search/?keyword=&location=london [Accessed 20 January 2015]. Intercontinetal Hotel Group, 2015. Spa Manager-InterContinental London Park Lane. [Online] Available at: http://ihg.jobs.net/job/Spa-Manager-InterContinental-London-Park-Lane/J3K4CN5WYGX2BCFF04X/ [Accessed 20 January 2015]. LuisR.Gómez-Mejía, D. R., 2012. MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCES. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson. Macdonald, D., 1997. INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND GLOBALIZATION: CHALLENGES FOR EMPLOYERS AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS. Bangkok, INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION . onlinegeography, 2014. T - Managing Tourism in the UK. [Online] Available at: https://onlinegeography.wikispaces.com/T+-+Managing+Tourism+in+the+UK [Accessed 20 January 2015]. Raymond A. Noe, J. R. H. B. G. M. W., 2011. Fundamentals of Human Resource Management. 5th ed. New York: Mcgraw Hill - Irwin. Tourism Alliance, 2015. Voice of tourism. UK TOURISM STATISTICS 2014, 1(1), p. 8. Zeuch, M., 2015. Dos and Don’ts in Human Resources Management. 1st ed. Beijing: Springer . Read More