Responsibilities of a Human Resource Manager in different work sectors

PART 1 – Recruitment and Selection

Task 1 – Knowledge (LO 1)

a) Explaining the aim of workforce planning and the role of the HR manager with regards workforce planning and resourcing for Woodhill College

HR manager plays a vital role in the development of workforce planning and builds several kinds of strategies for its successful growth in the society. According to Ash et al. (2013, p.94), HR manager is the key important element for the organisation as it recruits and hires well-skilled and well-trained employees to the company. Employees are the backbone of an organisation, so it is the HR manager responsibility to hire efficient workers in the education institute like Woodhill. HR manager builds several strategies for selecting and recruiting the employees and management such as it gives job vacancy advertisement in internet, newspaper, magazine and putting hoardings in the street.

It is essential for an Hr manager to make freshers and job seekers aware about the job vacancy in the company; hence, it is through the process of marketing strategies. The main purpose or aim of HR manager for workforce planning of Woodhill College is to fulfil its goal and target as soon as possible. The goal of this organisation is to fulfil the crisis of employee deficiency in the company. As stated by Van den Brink et al. (2010, p.1460), deficiencies of the staff and employee will hamper the growth, stability and progress of the organisation. It is through the HR manager company will be available to achieve its goal successfully and reach to its success. HR manager selection process helps the company to get optimistic, well-qualified, well-deserved, knowledgeable, well-trained and well-skilled workers; even the HR department provide essential training to the workers for an organisation success.

The resources plan of HR manager is quite vast and influential for an institute like Woodhills college, it is the mainly HR manager responsibility and role to recruit efficient worker in the company, for fulfilling this criterion an HR manager follows important rule and policy before selecting and recruiting the workers. HR manager works under the law and policy of the government it follows some of the important acts like equality act of 2010, sex discrimination act, racism act amended in 2010 and norms of ethical values before selecting and recruiting the candidate for an organisation. HR manager has to select its employee without any biases, partiality, discrimination and racism, any kind of discrimination based on religion, culture, tradition, caste, creed, colour, ethnicity and gender should be strictly avoided by an HR manager (Rees and Rumbles, 2010, p.170).

Through HR resource process the workers get the good working condition, their fundamental rights are maintained, flexible working hours are provided, they get skilled training, compensation, sick and maternity leaves, any conflict or issues occurs for an employee it is HR manager duty to solve it immediately. Furtmueller et al. (2011, p.245) mentioned that the employees, as well as the company, gets massive and important help though the role and resources of HR manager. It is an HR manager role and responsibility to verifies all the qualification and personal detail of the employee before hiring in the company. An HR manager of the company conducts the final round of the interview and it is totally in its hand to recruit the employee the communication skill of an employee plays a vital role in the recruitment process of HR. It is essential for HR of Woodhill College to play its role and responsibility properly and uses its resources efficiently.

b) Explaining the weakness and strength of different approaches to recruitment and selection

The recruitment and selection process of the employees comprises of two aspect its strength and weakness. According to Hays and Singer (2012, p.31), companies gets several kinds of benefits through recruitment and selection process of an HR manager, manager plays an integral part for an organisation growth, success and stability in the society. The importance of strengths to the different approaches of the selection and recruitment process are as follow, it is through HR manager strategies the company goal and targets are achieved. The companies as Woodhill College get efficient, talented, smart, energetic, well skilled, good communication skill and well-qualified candidates for its company. Workers are the pillar for an organisation without its hard work and efficient talent organisation will not be able to achieve its goal and success in the society.

The company, as well as employees, get several benefits and advantages through the different approaches to the recruitment and selection process. As stated by Salas et al. (2012, p.75), good working conditions are provided by the company, scope of promotion and incentive is high, flexible working hours, skilled training free of cost is also provided to the employees, funds, compensation, holidays, sick and maternity leaves provided and most important an employee cannot be terminated without discussion with HR manager. Any kind of disparities or conflict occurs between the employee manager takes instant action to resolve it.

Several kinds of weakness are clearly noticed in the recruitment and selection process through its different approaches; this creates negative impact on the performance of HR manager and hampers the workflow. The weakness of the selection and recruitment through different approaches has many aspects some of them are as follows many times it has been found that the employee does not submit their original documents and lie about their personal and qualification detail. In that case, the company recruits inefficient worker as a result workflow of the organisation is hampered and entire blame of workers not performing well is put on HR manager head. Marketing strategy for recruiting and selecting process is considerably expensive and time consuming most of the time it has been seen right candidate does not response properly and lots of time is wasted for searching right candidates on right time (Saks and Burke, 2012, p.120).

Searching online candidates create quite stress to the Hr department for selecting the candidates, most of the time workers does not response or does not come for an interview, does not receive phone calls from the recruiters and sometimes speak rudely with the recruiters also. Therefore, these are the important strengths and weakness of selecting and recruiting process through different approaches. An HR manager of Woodhill College must look after all these criteria for its fulfilling the goal of it college.

Task 2 – Application (LO 4)

As Woodhill College has experienced a major staff turnover, it is looking for hiring efficient teaching assistant. The college requires an English professor at the college. The major skills required for the English professor for Woodhill College include reading efficiency, speech clarity, active listening skills and critical thinking ability. The professor needs to guide and assist the students with learning strategies. Identifying the complicated problems student face in their daily lessons and resolving those effectively is another criteria for the English professor. The professor needs to have the assessment ability for monitoring the performance of the students and assessing them based on their skills. The professor needs to foster creativity and innovation among the literature students for making them competent to deliver better perspectives on the lessons they are learning.

a) Creating a job advertisement for English professor in Woodhill College

b) Identifying suitable platforms to place the advertisement

Apart from different job websites, the most suitable platform for placing this advertisement is all the local newspapers and magazines of the region. Considering the impact of digital platforms in today’s time, posting this advertisement in different blogs of the reputed educators and academicians will be a highly effective option. Other than this, social networking websites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook will be an ideal platform for placing this advertisement to catch the maximum attention of the teaching professionals.

c) Preparing a job specification and person specification for the English Professor

Job Specification: The candidate must be able to teach courses related to English language, linguistics, literature and comparative literature. The teacher needs to moderate the classroom discussions more efficiently, prepare the required course material, prepare and deliver the lectures to both undergraduate and graduate students. Moreover, the professor needs to maintain the attendance record. Planning, evaluating and revising the curriculums along with the course content needs to be done in the supervision of the professor.

Person specification: The candidates must be creative, alert and flexible for working under complex situations. Moreover, they should have planning and team building efficiency. The candidates must have strong communication skills. On the personal level, the candidates must be patient and consistent. Among the special skills, the candidates need to have supervisory skills and stress management skills.

PART 2 – Employee performance, development and reward

Task 3 (LO 2)

a) Explaining the difference between training and development

Human resource management has two major operational areas that include providing training to the employees and ensuring overall development. The department aims to improve the productivity of the employees in all the sectors of an organisation. According to Olexova (2014, p.96), training gradually develops the skills and knowledge of the employees, helping them to grow as a better performer. On the other hand, development is a process under which the entire workforce of the organisation grows and ensures the productivity elevation of the organisation at the same time. In the case of Tesco, both the training and development is required to retain the existing employees.

However, the newly appointed HR department of the company needs to consider the basic differences between training and development process. As per Phillips and Phillips (2016, p.56), the training is considered as a learning process that enables the employees to grow their skills and knowledge, whereas development can be regarded as an educational process that looks at the overall growth of the employees. Training is a short-term process, while development is needed for long-term impact. Development is a more career-oriented process, while training is job-oriented. The prime objective of development is to prepare the employees for future growth, whereas training aims to improve the performances of the employees. Training is related specific jobs, whereas development process encompasses the improvement of overall knowledge of the employees.

b) Explaining how changes in the customer expectations affected Tesco and its need to train staffs

As Tesco has grown as one of the biggest retail outlets in the United Kingdom over the time, the customer expectations have also developed at the same time. Tesco has already diversified its business and expanded from its primary products like grocery to insurance and banking services, telephone equipment, electrical goods and more. The concept of ‘one stop shopping’ of Tesco has become quite successful in catering to the customer needs. However, as the new product lines have also included, Tesco needed more qualified and skilled employees to meet the customer expectations at every level of their service. In order to satisfy the customers with better service quality and describing them about the new product lines, employee training became the mandatory option for Tesco.

 Other than this, when an organisation goes for geographic expansion, the choices and preferences for services become diversified automatically (Albert et al. 2010, p.316). In order to understand and cater to the need along with the expectations of the customers, Tesco needed to train its employees and infuse the understanding of the demand structure more prominently. Moreover, they needed to train their employees regarding how to approach the customers with the new product range Tesco has incorporated in all their stores.

c) Describe the methods of training of Tesco

Training needs to be a systematic approach that can enable the organisations to make the employees more proficient and competent over the time. According to Hays and Singer (2012, p.65), organisations need to prepare strong strategies that will keep the employees prepared to highlight their best results in difficult times. Following the traditional yet advanced approach of training, Tesco has started two different training processes that include both on-the-job and off-the-job training. In order to carry out the off-the-job training, Tesco made the employees attend several training courses conducted by professionals and experts within as well as outside the organisation.

Among the on-the-job training methods, shadowing is the most significant approach where the existing employees in specific job roles help the trainees to understand the work process (Teece, 2010, p.173). Apart from shadowing, Tesco has also incorporated coaching and mentoring methods where the employees with high designations advise and train the trainees to combat the problems related to the job and motivate them to find out the solutions by themselves. Job rotation is another training process that helps the employees to fulfil the required job targets by changing their positions.

d) Explaining the process of identifying training needs

The general process of identifying the requirements of the training is set based on the organisational objectives. In the case of Tesco, as the organisation is on the verge of expanding its business, understanding the diversification approaches is the prime organisational objective in the present state. In order to achieve the business targets, it is essential for the organisation to segregate the training needs between the in-store and off-store employees. In the case of in-store employees, the basic organisational demand is to make them competent enough to understand the customer needs of the new stores.

According to Bock et al. (2012, p.281), the employees with a strong set of skills and knowledge are more prone to resolve the workplace issues more promptly compared to the management. In the case of Tesco, the employees are needed to train about the profiles of the new customers from the new locations as based on that, they will be able to submit their requirements for the inventory. Other than this, the training team of Tesco needs to identify the knowledge gaps of the employees that are needed to be fulfilled in order to make the employees competent to fulfil the development needs of the organisation. Moreover, the employees are required to get the training of the diversified culture, approach and language of the customers that will help them to improve their service quality in the new zone.

e) Evaluating the advantages of Tesco and the employees in organising a training programme

According to Cardy and Lengnick-Hall (2011, p.215), structured and well-organised training programme is considered the approaches and techniques utilised in order to improve the skills and potential of the employees. It is quite evident that a systematic approach to training is reflected in the performance of the employees along with the prompt growth of the organisation. In the case of Tesco, the organisation monitors the employee performance more closely and evaluates their performance based on the performance feedback. In order to derive optimum advantages of the structured training process, Tesco has put the employees in different scenarios and provided them with necessary support that is required to perform the tasks.

Both the employees and the organisation have derived enough advantages that helped them to cater to the customer needs more proficiently. Moreover, the employees have achieved in-depth knowledge regarding the professional approach for dealing with the customers. The training provided by the experts enabled the employees to improve their efficiency level in their existing job roles. As a result, the employees have received the required motivation of retaining their jobs with the organisation. The ability of the employees to deal with crisis utilising the knowledge and skills they get from structured training have made the organisation more competent among the competitions. On the long run, the employees have become the prime assets of Tesco as they learned to resolve the challenges.

f) Indicating the extent to which you think the training has achieved a Return on Investment

Whether any specific training process has successfully achieved the return on investment or not, is being assessed based on a few determinants. Direct cost, indirect cost, employee efficiency, performance growth, received income; behavioural change and productivity are some of the key determining factors that justify the success of any training process (Phillips, 2012, p.13). In the case of Tesco, the structured training programme has delivered positive outcomes and ensured continuous growth in the company’s business.

Over the time, it has become quite evident that Tesco has achieved positive customer reaction for their successful service quality in both in store as well as non-store business sectors. In the current year, the total profit achieved by the organisation is over 3 billion pounds. Moreover, in the United Kingdom, Tesco has established around 2,200 stores and created small expresses of Tesco by breaking down their previous structure of hypermarket style. Considering this statistical approach, it can be said that Tesco has successfully received their return on the investment. Their noticeable growth in business operations also justifies that the training infrastructure has helped the organisation to fulfil its objectives successfully.

g) Suggesting the approaches to flexibility that Tesco can utilise to expand the business

In order to expand the business, organisations are opting for several flexible approaches to increase the benefit derived by the organisation. According to Sandhya and Kumar (2011, p.1780), the continual success of a business is determined by various flexible approaches adopted by the organisations for generating sustainable benefits to the employees. It is also essential to adopt the flexibility approaches in a more sincere approach and push it beyond the statutory minimum. In the case of Tesco, there are some flexibility approaches it can introduce for retaining their employees and ensure successful expansion of their business. Firstly, the adaptation of advanced technology is highly required to ensure the increased productivity from the employees.

Moreover, it is required for Tesco to select its locations for business expansion more prominently so that both the local employees and customer find it easy to make Tesco stores their first preference. Blending with the diversified shopping habits of the customers and offering the products based on the specific requirements will prove to be a flexible approach for Tesco as well. Incorporating the newly generated societal values and considering the constantly changing demographics are the other two major flexibility approaches that will help Tesco to expand its business successfully. Retention of experienced employees, encouraging the female employees, increasing the participation of the employees and promoting the trainees to achieve the organisational objectives are the other options for flexible approaches that will accelerate the organisational growth.

PART 3 - Employment relationship

Task 4 (LO 3)

a) Analysing the importance of maintaining good employee relationship and evaluating its impact on the HR decisions of ITV

It is extremely necessary for an organisation to promote healthy employee relation for the sake of sustaining the core organisational intact and effective. According to Carleton (2011, p.461), strong employee relation does not only help in the process of employee retention, but it also ensures the organisational growth. Strong relationship and bonding among the employees let them share the values and significantly promote their behaviour within the workplace. The practices related to employee relationship increase the productivity of the employees and provides deserved recognition to the employees. Moreover, the practices involving employee relations helps the human resource department in developing the organisational policies.

As per James and Mathew (2012, p.85), in order to make the employees competent in dealing with complex organisational environments and outperform, the human resource department of the organisations foster the employee relationship. The most common practices HRM perform is related to the communication within the organisation. Downward communication is the very first system the HRM incorporates to foster strong employee relation under which the employer communicates with the employees. The upward communication, where the direction is directed from employees to the employer, is the less practised employee relations operation, whereas the horizontal communication, involving the employees of different levels is the most effective communication process to strengthen employee relation.

ITV has adopted its own technique of maintaining an employee relation as their approach of creating strong employee relation is related to the engagement of the employees. The organisation follows a series of combined methods that include collective bargaining and consultation with the elected representative of the employees. Moreover, the organisation focuses on engaging the employees directly. As the success of the company has been quite essential for the past success of the company, the HR tends to utilise direct communication method for fostering employee engagement. ITV has used the intranet, popularly recognised as Watercooler that provides online updates related to the organisational news on a daily basis. Moreover, the company engages the employees who remain offline most of the times by sending out weekly updates regarding the company.

The HR also enters collective consultation with the employee representatives as they generate information regarding the overall workforce of the organisation (Bal et al. 2013, p.550). This process enables the HR of ITV to get relevant information related to the level of changes becoming effective because of the involvement of the employees. The HR has prepared 15 groups of consultation for different business purposes. On the other hand, ITV also utilises the method of collective bargaining in order to involve the employees in new work practices. As a result, the company derives significant benefits related to change management and make the employees feel respected.

The specific approach of the company helps the HR to follow a systematic pattern for strengthening employee relations. At the first stage, the HRM delivers the proposals, grant the feedbacks and responses from the employee representatives and takes necessary actions. However, the collective bargaining approach does not ensure satisfactory engagement that is prepared based on the responsibilities of the line managers, the HR policies and effective horizontal communication process among the employees of ITV. Other than this, the absence of negotiation process further complicates the actions that HR needs to take at some points while dealing with critical employee issues.

b) Identifying the key elements in the employment legislation and explaining its impact on ITV’s HR decision

Employers adopt several HR practices in order to ensure prolonged business growth and strong employee retention. The regulations related to employment legislation have left significant impact on the multiple levels of HR practices in ITV. Some of the major employment legislations that have impact on the HR practices of ITV include Health and Safety regulations, Agency Workers regulation and Time Directive Regulation. Moreover, the Dismissal and Redundancy regulation is a significant legislation related to employment that influences the HR practices in crisis (Markos and Sridevi, 2010, p.91).

However, the HR does not take account of these regulations in most of the cases, as they do not count legislation as the key driver for carrying out the practices effectively. The employers and human resource management that follow the legislations minutely to carry out the functions related to staff management, employee retention and maintaining the morale, often becomes confident (Teece, 2010, p.192). As ITV does not follow the employment legislation minutely, the organisation often faces the fear of litigation. Moreover, as the HR practices often fail to comply with the legislation because of its informal approach to HR practices. In various cases, the HRM feels that informal practices can lead to strengthening the relationships among the employees and successfully establishes managerial autonomy (Carleton, 2011, p.465). Communication regarding the regulations and policies are highly required for strengthening the formal culture within the organisation. However, the direct communication process taken up by ITV does not include the exchange of information regarding legislation.

Conclusion

Based on the above discussion, it can be summarised that human resource management has some fundamental contributions in carrying out the work process more efficiently. The discussion has highlighted the functionalities of human resource management in different organisations. Moreover, the discussion has focused on the three basic functionalities of human resource management individually that include recruitment, selection, and employee development and employee relationship.

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