Edinburg International Festival - Book Report/Review Example

Human Resource Strategy TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 1. Introduction: 2 2. Staffing Requirements for EIBF: 2 3. Recommendations: 4 4. Conclusions: 10 Reference List 11 Bibliography: 13 1. Introduction: Using Edinburg International Book Festival (EIBF) as a case study, this particular report focuses on analysing human resource strategy in the festival staff including the importance of recruitment, selection, motivation and engagement strategy. Commenced in 1983, EIBF is one of the largest book festivals worldwide (Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2013). The festival is held every year during the last 3 weeks of August in the centre of Scotland’s capital city, Edinburg. According to Lundy (2008), effective planning and efficient human resource strategies are essential for success of an event or festival. Human resource management and development is a very complex system that includes recruitment, selection, motivation, training and engagement. However, before that, it is necessary to determine staff requirement for the festival through identification of different terms of employment that may be offered. The aim of the paper is to present a series of human resource strategy for the people who works or will work in the event to improve skills and work experience to handle an event effectively. How to implement human resource strategy and use it optimally, thus, becomes an important issue for the event managers. This paper has attempted to provide a clear description on the significance of human resource strategy to indicate future development of events and festivals. 2. Staffing Requirements for EIBF: Allen (2011, pp-218) opined, “Staffing is the main strategic decision area for the event managers in the area of human resources, because without staff there is nothing really to strategies about”. The role of human resource managers in staffing requirements covers the aspect of selecting, hiring, motivating and engaging employees. Before starting an event, the event managers need to determine the staff requirements and the specific competencies that should be implemented for motivation. According to official website of EIBF, in each year they recruit near about one hundred temporary employees. The short-term staffs only work during the event and long-term staffs work from April to September. The human resource management (HRM) team of the event expects that staffs should be hard working, interested in arts and literature and contain enthusiastic attitude (Helen et al. 2009). Furthermore, relevant experience in this field is required. Staff in EIBF will have Corporate Officer for development, Administrative Director, Personal Assistant to a Director, Sponsorship and Development, Children and Child Education Program Developer, Book Sales and Retail Director and Marketing and Personal Relationship Managers where every person will be delegated specific duties, tasks and responsibilities. Thus, selection of the employees needs to be done according to the knowledge, skills and abilities required by these positions. For instance, staffs in EIBF are responsible to offer a warm reception and good quality service to the guests in that event. Various duties of these staffs includes welcoming their visitors, ensuring enough food, drinks & tableware, keeping in touch with social media, keeping the visiting place always clean and managing telecommunication and administrative activities. Thus, staffing requirement in EIBF includes a number of skills, including ability to offer high quality service, communication skills to deal with the various issues from guests and maintaining positive attitude towards work/responsibilities. In addition to that, sometime skills regarding first-aid will also be necessary. However, the analysis of job description and personal specifications helps to identify what type of skills are actually needed to carry out a specific job (Dessler and Williams, 2009). Apart from that, effective recruitment and selection strategies can also be implemented to evaluate what type of skills a candidate already has and the weak areas where further developments are needed to perform their job responsibility efficiently. 3. Recommendations: In reviewing a robust organizational framework and staffing requirements that facilitates appropriate event management, some recommendations are given to the mangers of EIBF. The managers are recommended to hire a responsive human resource team, who would go beyond their threshold to establish a strong performance based workforce. Human resource strategy is a plan contributing inputs in satisfying staffing requirement to a company. It ensures adequate human recourses to meet strategic and operational plan of an organization. Range of recommendation for a well-developed human resource management for EIBF are summarised in below: 3.1 Recruitment and selection: Recruitment is a process of attracting skilled and knowledgeable people that the organization needs to employ. At the present time, it is challenging for a recruiter to select right staff for an event and festival. However, use of appropriate methods can eliminate the issue and helps to improve the chance of selecting right people to fulfil a vacancy. Breaugh and Starke (2006) have explained that, recruitment mainly consists of two segments. In the first segment, it looks at meeting human resource needs and in second it analyse potentiality of the applicant to meet the job requirements. The managers of the concerned event need to recruit employees based on their abilities including relevant skills, knowledge and abilities, higher social mortality and professional ethics etc. Apart from that, it is also necessary to conduct recruitment procedure carefully to satisfy needs of each of the position as well as realise needs of the employees carefully. In this context, financial recourse is also an important factor that needs to be taken into consideration. EIBF generally use their own official website to publish information about their staffing requirements, with clear explanation of application form, job description, staff roles etc. In order to expand their popularity, EIBF share these links with the Facebook, Twitter and some other social networking sites. In addition to that, some other form of recruitment method also needs to be build that will help them to make the event perceived by good job applicant. In order to attract highly qualified applicant, EIBF can adopt publishing the recruitment news on the local newspapers, can use public service announcement strategy on radio or television, keeping updated news on different job search engines, attracting event management students to be volunteer and enrolling prospectus in the press conference just before the festival. After recruitment, the next step deals with selection of the most appropriate candidate. The selection process includes application, interview and induction. The application stage involves taking decisions according to the job requirement, the number of expected employees and resource requirement for organizing the festival (Boxall and Purcell, 2007). EIBF office receives large number of applicants every year, thus, it is very difficult for them to choose the most applicable ones. In order to judge capabilities of the employees, they can ask some key questions over phone. For instance, “do you have any previous experience of working in a festival management event?” or “why do you want this job” etc. This will give deep clarification about the future plan of the candidates. Although, application form of the candidates provides key information regarding educational qualification, aims of their career, previous employment etc. Event mangers can utilize this information to eliminate unqualified candidates. In the process of interview, the interviewer should use structural method that relates all information about the candidate for better judgement. The interviewer should be aware about the issues regarding job requirement and selection criteria. They need to implement appropriate method of interview and include interview question based on the selection criteria. The interviewer needs to strictly avoid very personal question to the candidate. At the end of the interview session, whether candidates are enrolled or not, they should sent them a confirmation message. The process of induction deals with implementation of a range of strategies. At first, welcome the newcomer and give a brief introduction about the festival including its mission, vision and objectives. After that, allow them to get accustomed with the environment and introduce them with other staff members and make a contact list. Finally, introduce them with the background of the event and the working arrangements related to the event and provide them appropriate training. Figure 1: Recruitment and Selection Process (Source: Boxall and Purcell, 2007, pp- 324) 3.2 Training: Duggan (2014) illustrates that, training program is basically concerned with improving behaviour and job performance of the employees. Before implementing training program, it is very important to understand training needs, mission and vision. EIBF is an excellent festival that requires a bridal-wise staff with high patience and positive attitude. The employees in EIBF are mixed of new as well as the older ones. Thus, training should be arranged based on different situation. The training session should offer position specific skill and knowledge to its staffs. After completing the training session, staff will be allocated into their jobs in order to familiarise them with their responsibilities with respect to the event. The training session must be consistent with the organisational objectives. Need based training will help to improve efficiency of the employees. During the training session, evaluator and supervisor play an important role in measuring performance of the employees. Feedbacks should be provided with the training mechanism to judge staff’s knowledge via interaction. 3.3 Motivation: Motivation is another challenging responsibility of HRM. It is employee’s intrinsic enthusiasm to accomplish their work related to their job (Elizabeth and Adelina, 2007). Generally, most effective procedures to motivate employee’s intrinsic performance are high salary, position promotion, good welfare benefits etc. In this context, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been summarised in the following figure: Figure 2: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory (Source: Elizabeth and Adelina, 2007, pp-43) The stage of psychological need requires providing good lunch and store of water properly. Safety needs claims to ensure safe work circumstances. The process of social need entitles a friendly working environment that let the staffs to ask for help when needed and avoids mistakes in their job. Designing a uniform T-shirt can keep the staffs informed about the event performance and satisfy self-esteem needs of the staffs. Lastly, self-actualization needs require holding meetings to do event summary, including sharing of the news and existing problems, praising the outstanding staffs, setting up new goals and use their abilities to achieve ultimate goal of the event. 3.4 Engagement: In the workplace, employee engagement has been designed to ensure employee’s engagement towards the business values. The performance of such kind of event is directly related to the employee engagement. According to Currie and Kerrin (2010), employee engagement is all about stimulating a sense of energy, commitment; personal attachment and potential of the employees so that they are willingly perform their task. The HR managers should appreciate contribution from their employee which should make them motivated towards their work. Further, let the employee to join the decision making process so that they can also share suggestions towards solving a common problem. In short, guide the employees in such a way that they perform their jobs sincerely . 4. Conclusions: The paper focuses on analysing staffing requirements and then, provides a range of strategies to improve staffing process including recruitment, selection, training, motivation and engagement with respect to the EIBF. According to the analysis, HR managers play a significant role to satisfy staffing requirement. They are responsible for recruiting and selecting right candidates and providing necessary training and motivation. In this process, it is very important to have skilled and knowledgeable interviewer to put appropriate candidate in right position. In order to organize a successful festival and attract customers from different segments, staff training is crucial. Monetary and non-monetary rewards are always an effective way to motivate employees. Employee engagement is also positively correlated with the motivation. In short, failure or success of the event is highly related with the HRM team and thereby the event mangers need to adopt HRM strategies carefully to ensure long-term growth. Reference List Boxall, P., and Purcell, J., 2007. Strategic human resource management: where have we come from and where should we be going?. International Journal of Management Reviews, 2(2).pp.183–203. Breaugh, J. A., and Starke, M., 2006. Research on Employee Recruitment: So Many Studies, So Many Remaining Questions, Journal of Management, 26(3).pp.405-434. Dessler, G., and Williams, A., 2009. Human Resource Management. 4th ed. Melbourne: Prentice Hall. Duggan, T. 2014. Developing & Training Human Resources in Organizations, Available at: < http://smallbusiness.chron.com/developing-training-human-resources-organizations-697.html> [Accessed 10th October, 2014] Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2013. Annual Review. Edinburgh International Book Festival. [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 10th October, 2014] Elizabeth, P., and Adelina, B., 2007. Job motivation and satisfaction: Unpacking the key factors for charity shop managers. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 13(1), pp.121–131. Allen, J. (2011). Festival &Special Event Management.5thedn. Milton. JohnWiley &Sons Australia,Ltd. Guest, D., 2011. Human Resource Management: When research confronts theory', International Journal of Human Resource Management, 12(7), pp. 92-106. Helen, S., Nathan, B., Sarah, B., Tracy, H. and Hugh, R., 2009. Models of motivation in software engineering, Information and Software Technology, 12(5),pp.219–233. Bibliography: Currie, G. and Kerrin, M. 2010. Human Resource Management and Knowledge management: Enhancing knowledge sharing in a pharmaceutical company, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 14(6). pp. 27-45. Ellingeic, A. D., Ellinger, A. F., and Keller, S. B., 2007. Supervisory Coaching Behaviour, Employee Satisfaction, and Warehouse Employee Performance: A Dyadic Perspective in the Distribution Industry. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 14(4), pp. 435-458. Laird, D., and Naquin, S. S., 2008. Approaches To Training And Development, 4th ed. New York: Nova Publication. Heneman, H.G., Judge, T.A., and Heneman, R.L., 2011 Staffing Organisations, 6th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Lundy, O., 2008. Strategic Human Resource management. 4th ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Terpstra, D.E., and Rozell, E.J., 2009. The Relationship of Staffing practices to Organisational Level Measures of Performance, Personnel Psychology, 46, pp.27-48. Read More