Assessing Theories and Practices in Recruitment, Selection and Diversity Management - Essay Example

Assessing Theories and Practices in Recruitment, Selection and Diversity Management Introduction Thegoal of any business enterprise is productivity and profit and this achieved through efficient and effective management of resources: "man, machine, money and moment". (Elven n.d.) Considered most valuable of these resources is "man", the human resource. The goal of human resource management is to help the business enterprise to meet its goals by attracting and maintaining employees. (McNamara 1997) Because people change through time, the development aspect in human resource management is provided central focus. Every human resource department desires to be able to hire the best fitting person for the job in terms of skills, attitude and personality. Thus companies find ways to develop and benchmark among various "good practices" in their recruitment and selection processes. This paper lays down some good practices and analyses underlying processes and theories focusing on the management of recruitment and selection programs. The paper also discusses diversity management and its effects on the program's outcomes. Strategic Workforce Planning Companies continuously strategise to determine their competitive edge in the business world. Likewise, they need to continuously analyse the strength of their workforce including the gaps between supply and demand of available workers. Planning is a proactive move and a strategic activity that enables company to identify the needed critical skills and forecast the activities that will generate these needed critical skills. (Revelle 1995) Through the strategic workforce planning, companies will be armed with the information: what the company needs and what people will be available to meet those needs. Recruitment Processes "Garbage in - garbage out." (Armstrong 2006) Many problems in the workplace may be traced from poor workforce planning and poor implementation of the recruitment and selection programs. Many businesses, particularly those without properly installed human resource departments are guilty of these and they realize it too late when they already have unproductive and troublesome employees in their midst. Recruitment is one major function of the human resource department. It is the process of "finding the right people for the right job". (McNamara 1997) The Selection process is usually tagged along with the recruitment process together because of the interrelatedness of the functions. The recruitment aspect focuses on locating and inviting the prospective applicants. Dr. Paul R. Bernthal of Development Dimensions International gave the definition of recruitment as "the process of identifying and attracting a group of potential candidates from within and outside the organization to evaluate for employment." (2002) Once these candidates are identified then employment selection process begins. A research conducted in 2002 by Dr. Bernthal on 573 member companies of the Electronic Recruiting Exchange made important findings on best practices and trends in recruitment as well as in selection. (2002) Among the findings were that companies tend to hire external than internal candidates. This is true to mid or senior level positions. It is understandable for companies to prefer external candidates because many companies need additional skills and new breeds in their workforce. After thorough inventory of employees' skills, most companies find need for additional skills into the company thus they most often prefer to hire new employees than fill vacant positions with those from the ranks. Another finding from the DDI research was that most organizations are agreeable to increase their funds for human resource development particularly in their recruitment and selection programs. About 33% of human resource funds is allocated for recruitment and about 18% for selection processes. (Bernthal 2002) Many companies are already conscious of the importance of proper recruitment processes and the "more choices, the better". Many companies also find recruitment processes now to be easier than years ago. This was possibly due to advancement in communications technologies. The dot.com era has extended the reach of companies. Costs in advertisements have significantly reduced because most companies utilize the internet in publishing their positions to be filled up. Dr. Bernthal's research also found that the internet was most popular and considered effective methods for advertising recruitment. Internet through bulletin or job boards for example, was preferred by 90% of the companies followed by publications in local newspapers, trade publications and magazines, national newspapers. (2002) Direct mail which used to be the most favoured now least preferred along with publications in TV, radio and movie screens. (Bernthal 2002) This shows that many companies get responses of their recruitment ads most from the internet. Agreeably, the internet has features that enable applicants to respond immediately to these recruitment ads, which is advantageous both to the companies and the applicants. For internal resources, still, employee referrals were most favoured by 90% of the companies in the research as compared to internal job postings, walk-ins and unsolicited resumes. (Bernthal 2002) Large companies that hire in batches and by volume prefer to contract "recruiters" or employment agencies to handle the recruitment for them. These agencies have wider customer base and have ample resource to process applications in bulk. Most human resource departments maintain conservative staffing therefore the specialized task of recruitment are most of the time contracted out. Critical to recruitment is advertising. This is done either through online, newspapers, through professional publications, through job centres or job fairs. The use of information technology and the Internet conveniently allows companies to source their applicants even from overseas. Although there are more modern technologies applied in the recruitment processes, the traditional methods such as the face-to-face methods are still proven effective and complementing. Smaller companies, on the other hand retain the traditional and cheaper methods of recruiting applicants, where job vacancies are posted in newspaper classified ads or college and university campuses or simply advertised by word of mouth. Smaller companies, especially those with no trained HR practitioners rely more on the interviews as basis for assessing applicants. It is worthy to discuss the economic aspects that affect the recruitment processes. Personnel Economics, the specific branch that deals with human resource covers these aspects of costs and economy in recruitment and selection. There are varying reasons why companies would choose to contract their recruitment to employment agencies or recruiters; why they would prefer IT means of disseminating their job vacancies or would prefer to "pass the word around"; or why they would recruit specific groups like the disabled or the differently-abled; or even, why they would rather not subject their applicants to standardized personality and ability tests. (Weber 2004) The Transaction Cost Theory explains that cost plays vital role in the companies' to decide what interventions and processes to apply in their human resource programs, particularly on the recruitment and selection processes. (Weber 2004) The Human Resource Department is the usual priority target in slashing budgets should companies decide to cut on overhead expenses. Many do not realize the criticality of the recruitment and selection processes since these have no direct and immediate impact on profits, unlike sales and production departments. They would realize sooner or later that ineffective human resource management and poor implementation of recruitment and selection programs will have slow but heavy impact on the company's over-all performance. Selection Processes Part of the research of Dr. Bernthal of Development Dimensions International (DDI) in 2002 was a thorough discussion on the selection practices in 573 participating companies from Electronics Recruiting Exchange. Many findings were significant and worth discussing in this report. Almost all companies still use the resume and applications as part of their selection process. They prefer these traditional methods than reference checks and biographical data. As practiced, the submission of application and resume' is the first step in selection process. As soon as the applicant recognized the publication for the vacant position, the applicant responds by sending an application letter and documents and the resume. These documents are reliable bases of the candidates' qualifications but these are not enough. The research also found that behaviour-based interviews are most widely used by companies. Behaviour-based interviews or experience-based interviews specifically focus on interviewers asking candidates to describe specific examples of their skills "were found to predict subsequent job performance better than other interviewing techniques". (Pulakos & Schmitt, 1995 cited in Bernthal 2002) This method was much preferred by the companies than situational interviews, where candidates were asked to respond to hypothetical situations, and computer assisted interviews where candidates' responses were screened through computer programs. Bernthal's research found four (4) practices used by organizations with highly effective selection systems. These were the use of behaviour-based interview systems, the use of job fit inventories, the use of computerized resume screening and evaluation systems on training and experience. Behaviour-based interviews enhanced the effectiveness of the selection process. Companies were able to focus on job-related behaviours; they obtained accurate behavioural data; and using past behaviour to predict future behaviour. (Bernthal 2002) These experiences relayed by the applicants during the interview revealed more valuable information used by companies in choosing the best candidate for their vacant positions. Many organizations focus on assessing the job skills necessary to perform the job but these are not the only factors that should be considered. Job motivation and organizational fit must also be considered. (Byham 1989 cited in Bernthal 2002) A candidate must have the skills but his personal values, principles or habits do not fit in the organization's values and principles. It is important that the future employee has the "can do" as well as the "will do" aspects of the job. It is time to apply modern technology in recruitment and this is widely practiced by companies with effective recruitment programs. Now, because of computer software programs, resumes can be processed using standardized forms. Human Resource Departments prefer to use standardized resumes that can be fed in the computer programs to scan database and easily find the potential matches for the vacant positions. Training and experience evaluation is valuable because it assesses the abilities, skills as well as the motivation of the potential employees. It is assumed that individuals who have performed the required skills and abilities in the past will be successful in performing these skills and abilities in the future. These are relevant information which are popularly used references of companies in determining their potential employees. Companies will always look for highly skilled people with proper values and work attitudes to be part of their "team". Individuals who responded to the invitation go through a selection process that will determine the best fit to the job being offered. These processes include standard psychological and medical examinations, personal interviews including background validations. Many companies opt to follow this process of selection where the applicant submits his resume, goes through ability tests, series of interviews and even background checks. Even with all these in the process, considering the uniqueness of every person's individuality, HR practitioners will only be able to gather a profile and cannot provide a hundred percent assurance that they have selected the best applicant in the line. Most popular among the standardized tests used by companies are personality tests. They cannot rely on interviews alone since these are subjective and results may be influenced by many factors. Aside from the objectivity of tests, it is easily accessed, considering that there are many options to choose from in the market, there are also packaged tests using cyber technology, for Internet or online use. Personality tests are very useful particularly for rank-and-file level positions. HR practitioners expressed that personality tests "knock out the extremes", meaning the applicants who were clearly not fit for the jobs were identified through these tests. (Price 2007) Although experts would advise that the personality tests should not be the only basis for making hiring decisions, specially for positions in the managerial level, where more in depth assessments would have to be used, the tests helped companies expand coverage of their recruitment, simplify their moves so that the limited staffing for the HR departments were able to facilitate the hiring speedily. The companies are also saved from unexpected revelations of unwanted personalities, example, drunkenness, insubordination, perennial absenteeism and tardiness, laziness, dishonesty, irresponsibility. There were lower turnovers, fewer accidents and lesser administrative cases processed in the HR department. (Price 2007) The uniqueness of one's personality can never be perfectly measured by any top calibre personality test. Only a small percentage will be measured and the results of these measured attributes are not a stand alone basis for determining the best applicant for a job position. Interviews, hands on observations, demonstrations and other means of supplementing the results of the personality tests would help HR practitioners find the best fitting applicant to be hired. A combination of an efficient measurement system paired with properly controlled job interviews and other methods will give the much needed help. Diversity Management "Every human being's individuality contributes to diversity" (Ring 2007). This is a principle that the University of Vienna used to understand diversity and in order for them to effectively implement and manage its programs. The main categories that comprise diversity are gender, nationality and ethnicity, social class background, sexual orientation, age, mental and physical capability and religion. (Ring 2007) Company policies that are discriminate human individual differences based on the above-stated categories of diversity domino to the many programs of the human resource department. Most affected is the recruitment and selection that will bear lapses in over-all process. There will be special arrangements for salaries and work assignments. Even the interview processes are affected. Susan Trentham and Laurie Larwood tackled these issues and studied the impact of these situations and claim that "individuals who do not themselves hold negative prejudices may nonetheless rationally choose to discriminate as a consequence of particular attributional and instrumental conditions." (1998) An individual may have the tendency discriminate especially when the environment of discrimination is already built in the workplace environment. Thus the rational bias theory as discussed by Trentham and Larwood, is when "engaging in discrimination seems justified to an employee, even though he or she may be aware of regulations prohibiting bias and may personally prefer to treat others equally" (1998) It usually follows that superiors have the tendencies to make bias decisions if doing so would enhance and their develop their careers; in other words, if their own bosses preferred them to do so. Thus rational bias may either be intentional or instrumental and those who practice discrimination may simply be victims of their own desire to enhance their careers. It is therefore management decision to eliminate the rational bias and culture of discrimination in the workplace through implementation of anti-discriminatory policies and diversity programs. Many companies are not aware of the advantages of implementing diversity programs and equality policies since these practices are fairly new. Recent studies made by the European Commission highlighted positive results in these areas. (The Business Case for Diversity, Good Practices in the Workplace n.d.) Majority of the respondent companies expressed that their diversity programs enabled them to access a new labour pool; it has increased the likelihood of attracting and retaining high quality employees. Other benefits included better community relations and enhanced corporate image and reputation. (The Business Case for Diversity, Good Practices in the Workplace n.d.) Programs in diversity management includes anti-discriminatory policies on gender, nationality and ethnicity, social class background, sexual orientation, age, mental and physical capability and religion. Some countries apply legal sanctions requiring companies to recruit a certain percentage of their workforce from the disabled groups. Discrimination of women and homosexuals are also vital issues. The study also noted that many companies do not have monitoring and feedback mechanisms to measure the effectiveness of their diversity programs, especially on the recruitment and selection processes. There are a number of models already developed that set indicators for measuring diversity performance but these have not been widely applied. The study also made special mention of the value of employers' associations or industry associations that play a key role in the dissemination of good practice among companies. Results of better working environments where individual differences are respected and protected resulted to better productivity among employees. (The Business Case for Diversity, Good Practices in the Workplace n.d.) It is therefore the challenge of employers' associations and individual companies to integrate diversity policies particularly in their recruitment and selection programs and experience better productivity among employees as well as generate a wider and bigger population of potential best-fitting aspirants for their available jobs. Works Cited 1. Academy of Human Resource Development Strategic Planning Process 2002-2003. Retrieved 26 November 2007 from 2. Anderson, N., Ones, D. S., Sinangil, H. K., & Viswesvaran, C. (Eds.). . Handbook of industrial, work and organizational psychology, Volume 2: Organizational psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Ltd. (2002) 3. Armstrong, Michael. A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 10th edition, London: Kogan Page. (2006) 4. Bernthal, Paul R. "Recruitment and Selection" Pittsburgh, PA. Development Dimensions International. (2002) 5. Borman, W. C., Ilgen, D., R., & Klimoski, R., J. (Eds.). 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