Managing Resourcing Strategy - Case Study Example

Human Resource Planning and Recruitment Strategies Introduction Since there is a tight competition in the global markets today, human resource managers carefully plan and offer flexibility at work to avoid serious financial difficulty on the part of the business establishments. In line with this matter, the human resource management is considered to have a significant role to play within each business organization. Human resource managers usually have the authority to keep employees aligned with the organization’s overall business objectives, strategies, and goals. In line with this, having a competitive human resource management increases a company’s competitive advantages within the global markets as compared with other similar businesses that failed to establish a reliable HR department. Considering the importance of human resources, this study will discuss strategies related to HR planning, flexibility, and recruitment. As part of going through the main discussion, cases of UK and international companies will be used as an example on how HR strategies are applied when controlling organizational behavior in times of economic recession. HR Planning Considering that the significant role human resources in a business organization, the importance of HR planning increases especially in times of economic recession. In line with this, HR managers should carefully plan on how to build organizational behavior and culture that is open to change. By doing so, HR manager can easily control the possibility of internal conflicts caused by resistance-to-change (Sweringa and Wierdsma 1992, p. 9). In line with this, offering work flexibility during economic recession is a good HR strategy since the use of competitive HR approach can save the company a large sum of unnecessary operational expenses. By choosing the best work flexibility options, HR managers can maximize the work performance of its full-time and part-time employees. Recruiting a wrong person to do a particular task within a business organization can be very costly. For this reason, a careful HR planning should also be applied when the HR manager needs to recruit additional manpower. One of the prerequisite of having a group of highly competitive employees is to analyze a particular job description such as the skills and personal traits the needs to be fulfilled by the applicants (Nelson 1997, p, 40). Likewise, HR manager should carefully assess the applicant’s skills and past experiences in performing the demands of the available job position. The importance of equal opportunity in UK is highly recognized by employees. In order to stay focus on selecting qualified applicants to join the team, HR managers should refrain from discussing any information concerning equal opportunity during the employee selection process. This strategy will enable the HR manager to control the development of any forms of gossip or internal conflicts within the workplace. Flexibility Flexibility is the process wherein employees within the business organization will be able to immediately respond to the changing circumstances within the work place. HR manager may apply the concept of work flexibility by offering new employees the option for a “part-time job, flexy time at work, job sharing, and unpaid leave” (Hough & Oswald 2000, p. 632; Secord 2003, p. 173). A good example of work flexibility is the part-time job especially in the case of low-salary paid jobs (Secord 2003, p. 173). In line with this, HR managers should “consider providing employees with fixed weekly scheduled hours to ensure that part-time employees would be available to do their jobs within a given time frame” (Secord 2003, p. 173). For HR managers to effectively handle part-time employees, each of the part-time worker should be required to tell the HR manager ahead of time in case an employee cannot work during his/her shift. When emergency arises, HR manager should create an organizational culture that practice on-call work option in case a part-time worker is not available to work. Flexy hours simply means that a worker will be given the benefit to work on his/her chosen time schedule as long as he/she can fulfill the job requirements on time. In line with this, HR managers should implement strict rules and regulation that could effectively motivate an employee to submit their job before or on a specified period of time. For example: Employee A who is required to =complete a job within the specified time frame was not able to fulfill his/her goal. Therefore, this worker can be given a fine in case a client will purposely cancel the order from the company. Although case-to-case basis is normally applied in the case of work flexibility, HR managers should carefully draw the rules and regulation so that each employee will have the option to avoid violating the rules which could weaken the business relationship between the company and part-time job workers. Job sharing between two or more Virgin Mobile Australia (VMA) employees can be done without too much specification. In line with this, the HR manager should carefully assign the time schedule allocated for workers who are sharing a single job assignment. To ensure that the workers will work for specific time schedule, “a sum of 40 hours per week should be equally divided to three employees who are sharing the same project” (Dessler 2001, p. 312). As a result, the HR managers lessen the incidence of internal complain about equal work opportunity. Likewise, HR managers should also consider the offering of paternal and maternal leave to all individuals who are or will be employed by the company. Recruitment Human resource managers often consider job analysis as an important component of recruitment process. This is primarily due to the fact that both the local and international businesses that exist today is very dynamic aside from the fact that most of these companies are heavily relying with the use of high-communication technology (Hough & Oswald 2000, p. 632). A sensitive part of the duty and responsibilities of the HR department is to recruit and select individuals who are searching for a job employment. As a standard operating procedure of recruiting process, one of the prerequisite of having a group of highly competitive employees is to analyze a particular job description such as skills or personal traits of the applicants (Nelson 1997, p. 40). Referring to the process on how to determine employees’ responsibilities and skills requirement in a given job position including the type of person who can be hired for each available job vacancy” (Dessler 2000, p. 678), job analysis can be considered an essential part of job recruitment processes. Through job analysis, HR managers can define a particular job responsibility and identify the a potential employee’s work abilities, skills, educational background and experiences necessary to allow the person to perform a given job position (Stone 2005, p. 10). After developing a detailed job analysis and systematic process, HR manager can easily divide the work among a group of employees (Heron 2005). Most companies today are experiencing close competition within the domestic and international markets. To improve the cost-effectiveness and profitability of the company during economic recession, having competitive employees and assigning the right person for each particular job description becomes a significant factor that can contribute to the success of a business organization (Marchington & Wilkinson 2005, p. 104). According to Hacker (1997), “a poor recruitment decision can cost a company the amount equal to 30% of the company’s First-year earnings” due to the possibility that the company will lose some of its loyal customers, the high cost associated with the provision of training programs, advertising costs, recruitment fees, and lower productivity level (Bach 2005, p. 115). In the case of Royal Mail, the company is recruiting new employees partly from the company’s 18-months full- and part-time apprentice program (Royal Mail 2009). This strategy enables the HR manager to screen and test the performance and learning skills of the trainees while on the 18-months apprentice program. Although the company pays the apprentice trainees, this particular HR recruitment strategy is beneficial on the part of Royal Mail since HR managers are given the opportunity to test the actual skills and performance of each trainee before deciding on whether or not they will make the trainee a regular employee. Conclusion and Recommendation During economic recession, HR managers should maximize the use of the available human resources. To avoid problems related to human resources, HR managers should conduct careful HR planning. In line with this, it is highly recommendable for HR to build organizational culture and behavior that is open to any forms of strategic change. Doing so will enable the HR managers to easily resolve organizational problems related to resistance-to-change. In times of financial crisis, HR managers should reduce the unnecessary operational costs by extending work flexibility to its employees. This is possible by extending part-time jobs, flexible time-at-work, job sharing, and/or unpaid leave to employees. Recruitment of new employees is another area that needs careful planning. To enable HR managers to hire the right applicants for a specific job, HR managers should carefully evaluate the needed skills and work experiences for a said post. *** End *** References Bach, S. (2005). Managing Human Resources. 4th Edition. Personnel Management in Transition. Blackwell Publishing. Dessler, G. (2001). Management: Leading people into the 21st Century. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Publishers. Dessler, G. (2000). Human Resource Management. 8th Edition. Pearson Education Ltd. Hacker, C. (1997). The Cost of Poort Hiring Decisions... and How to Avoid Them. In Nuewell, Sue (ed) "Chapter Five - Recruitment and Selection". Heron, R. (2005). ILO Skills and Employability Department. Retrieved November 8, 2009, from Job and Work Analysis Guidelines on Identifying Jobs for Persons with Disabilities: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=gladnetcollect Hough, L. M., & Oswald, F. L. (2000). Personnel Selection: Looking toward the future—remembering the past. Annual Review of Psychology , Vol. 51, pp. 631 - 664. Marchington, M., & Wilkinson, A. (2005). Human Resource Management at Work. People Management and Development. 3rd Edition. London: CIPD. Nelson, J. B. (1997). The Boundaryless Organization: Implications for Job Analysis, Recruitment, and Selection. Human Resource Planning , Vol. 20, pp.39-48. Royal Mail. (2009). Retrieved November 8, 2009, from Full and part-time Apprentices: http://www.develop-faster.co.uk/ Secord, H. (2003). Implementing best practices in human resources management . CCH. Stone, R. (2005). Human Resource Management, 5th Edition. Ausralia: John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd. Sweringa, J., & Wierdsma, A. (1992). Becoming a Learning Organization. London: Addison-Wesley. Read More