An Assignment on Human Resource Management

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Introduction

The purpose of doing business has changed now than its traditional purpose of generating profit only. Organisation now is now realised that without suitability of business continuous profit cannot be possible to achieve. And, sustainable business cannot possible without the improvement of human resources of the organisation. Good human resource management will increase the employee satisfaction, reduce employee turnover and costs that helps in sustainable business (Mayhew, 2016). For these reasons, human resources management are now taking an important concern to all organisations. This write up will discuss about the definition of human resource management, purposes, and functions of human resource management. The differences between best fit approach and best practice approach to human resource management, hard and soft models of HRM, and workforce planning will also discuss in this write up. In addition, this write-up will discuss different approaches to recruitment and selection, external and internal recruitment, flexible organisation, performance and reward and many others.

  

Task one: Essay

1.1       . Discussion of the purpose and the functions of HRM and its application on Kingfisher Plc

In simple words, human resource management is the formal process of managing workforce within an organisation.Dessler (2011) defined human resource management as a process of acquiring, training, appraising and compensating staffs as well as employees’ health and safety, labour relations and fairness concern. Human resource management supports the strategies, objectives and mission of business organisation.

Human resource management has some specific purpose for the organisation. Human resource management is serving two main purposes. First, supply organisation necessary amount of skills, knowledge and attitudes manpower. Second, contended the manpower which includes satisfied and happy workforce.

Human resource management performs some specific functions for an organisation. The functions that HRM conducts are human resource planning, recruitment and selection, employee relations, job analysis and work design, compensation, training and development and performance management. HR manager should establish and activate these HRM functions within the organisation.

Best fit and best practice approaches of HRM are extensively used in an organisation. Best practice approach focuses on the high performance or high commitment that will facilitate all organisations at any context (Breen, 2015).Best practice approach is based on universalism. This approach is applicable to any organisation or sector. Best practice approach determines the indicators of best practice, get top level management, give human resource a high profile, give fair appraisal and rewards. Best practice approach establishes rules of thumbs for appraisal, training and selection process. On the other hand, best fit recommends an interconnected relationship between different systems and organisational strategy. It emphasise on fulfilling the immediate needs of organisation. Best fit is more complex compare to universalism, but it is flexible and differs according to the time, and contexts. Best fit helps organisation to gain short term and long term goals.

The purpose of best fit and best practice at Kingfisher Plc is that best practice assists the company to develop HR policies and practices and best-fit assists the company to select most suitable reward system for the organisation. 

At Kingfisher Plc the functions of best practice include selecting, training and appraisal. And the functions of best fit include the selection, appraisal and reward techniques according to the job position, job place and performance.

HRM comprises of several practices such as recruitment and selection, workforce planning, employee relations and so many. These practices of HRM are mostly used in Kingfisher Plc. Through recruitment process the company attracts more candidates for the job application to the company. Through selection process the company chooses the best people from the applicants for the selected post. Also, workforce planning is used by the Kingfisher Plc to determine the job vacancies, job placement, promotion and other issues. Moreover, the employee relations make a bridge between employees and the company that creates the workplace favourable and resolve disputes.

1.2. Explain the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to recruitment and selection used by Kingfisher

Recruitment and selection are two main functions of human resource management. Recruitment is the process of encouraging required skills people to apply for the job and selection is the process of choosing suitable people from the applicants (Sims, 2007). In other words, selecting right person for the right job is the main purpose of recruitment and selection process.

Recruitment approach includes job analysis, job description and job specification. The strengths and weaknesses of job analysis, job description and job specification are described here.

The three strengths of job analysis are;

Ø  It helps to identify the needed skills for particular job,

Ø  Helps to formulate effective hiring strategies, and

Ø  It helps to determine appropriate compensation and facilities.

The three weaknesses of job analysis are;

Ø  It is time consuming,

Ø  Source of information is very narrow, and

Ø  Personal biases can be taken place.

The three strengths of job description are:

Ø  It helps to encourage right skills person to apply for job,

Ø  The job responsibilities are clearly defined and specific, and

Ø  It helps to select right people for the right job.

The three weaknesses of job description are;

Ø  It is sometimes difficult to identify all responsibilities properly,

Ø  It often fails to attract suitable applicants, and

Ø  It discourages innovation because job responsibilities are defined.

The three strengths of person specification are;

Ø  It attracts the required skills people for the job,

Ø  The applicants can understand their qualities, and

Ø  It gives idea to applicants what actually want the company from him/her.

The three weaknesses person specifications are;

Ø  Poorly defined person specification will allow low skills people and reject high skill people, when job specification attracts many applicants it will be difficult to create short list, and

Ø  Too much requirement in the job specification may not be fruitful.

The major approaches to selection are reliability and validity. Reliability refers the degree to which a selection technique attains density in what it is assessing over continuous use.

The three strengths of reliability are;

Ø  It reduces time consumption in preparing new techniques,

Ø  The cost will be minimised, and

Ø  Standard selection technique for the company can be determined.

The weaknesses of the reliability are;

Ø  With the passage of time the effectiveness of repeat use of same technique can be reduced, it requires periodical changes, and

Ø  It varied according to the job nature.

 On the other hand, validity refers the degree to which a selection technique assesses what is decides to assess.

The three strengths of validity are;

Ø  It determines the effectiveness of the selection techniques,

Ø  Right people with necessary skills can be grabbed, and

Ø  The necessary of changes over time can be understood.

The three weaknesses of validity are;

Ø  Sometimes it can be delayed to determine the effectiveness of current techniques,

Ø  The changes of technique is cost oriented and

Ø  New techniques validity checks time consuming.

External recruitment refers when the required skills people are collected from the company. For example, when Kingfisher gives notice on the notice board of the company for the post of HR senior executives. Internal recruitment takes place through office notice board, company newsletter, intranet, fliers and internal e-mail (Applegate, 2016). On the other hand, external recruitment refers when company searches people from the outside of the company to fill the vacancy. For example, give advertisement in the local newspaper for the vacancy of HR manager. External recruitment takes place through national newspapers, local newspaper, job center, professional journal, jobs websites, recruitment agency and shop window. 

Task two: Prepare a report

To,

HR Director

Kingfisher Plc.

Title/Subject: Report on evaluating the effectiveness of the key elements of HRM for Kingfisher

Introduction

Human resource management is an important functions of organisation on which the success of organisation is closely related. Workforce is one of the important resources of any organisation. So, proper utilisation of the resource can only fulfil the strategic objectives of Kingfisher. This report will present various practices of human resource management within Kingfisher Plc.

3. Explain the benefits of different HRM practices within Kingfisher

HRM practices are merely wide. The HRM practices include learning, job design and workplace design, development and training, flexible organisation, payment and reward system. Here two HRM practices are discussed considering the case of kingfisher.

Learning, development and training

Learning, development and training is very important practices of HRM that every organisation is applied in their human resource practice. No employee is perfect with their skills and knowledge. Many new changes also come within the organisation. So, training and development is essential for Kingfisher’s employees for continuous improvement of their performance. Mathis et al (2016) claimed that training and development can help to understand how much capabilities an employee can attain. Training and development efforts must be designed considering the require skills, knowledge and abilities of employees thus they can serve to achieve the objectives of Kingfisher. Training and development also works as a technique of motivation.

Kingfisher is suing various techniques of learning, training and development program within the organisation those are as follows:

v  On-the–job training: It refers a worker is learning by doing job actually (Dessler, 2011). On-the-job training is very common practice at Kingfisher. The trainee executive or experience worker of a department will give training to the worker of Kingfisher. This time they are getting on-the-job training at Kingfisher.

v  Apprentice training:

It is a process where an employee becomes skilled and knowledgeable worker through long term on-the-job training and formal learning. After entering the job, the workers of Kingfisher spend six months in an internal apprentice training.

v  Informal learning: It refers when an employee is learning without any formal training arrangement. Most of the workers are learned through informal ways at Kingfisher. For example, when an store worker does not understand of a particular issue, he/she ask the supervisor and learned the process of conducting the task.

v  Audio-visual based training: This training is used at Kingfisher when many number of employees are participated in the training program. In this method power point presentation, audiotapes are used to train the employees.

v  Off-the-job training: It refers get training and learning outside of the organisation. This off-the-job training may include outside seminar, management games, case study method, behaviour modelling, university related programs, role playing, corporate universities etc. For management development of Kingfisher, off-the-job training is extensively applied.

Performance and reward

It is another important practise of human resource management. Performance management refers evaluating the performance of employees that support the organisational mission and goals (Simons, 2011). Evaluating the performance of employees and providing rewards to motivate employees and increase job retention rate can be ensured through performance and reward system at Kingfisher. Performance appraisal and reward are interrelated because employee is allowed for reward for their hob performance (Chimoriya, 2016).

Employee performance monitoring techniques

There are several techniques are applied by Kingfisher to track the performance of employees of the company.

v  Self-appraisal: It is techniques where a list of questions is send to the worker for self-assessment. The employee is allowed to mark or give opinion of self.

v  360 degree: In this technique workers receive confidential and anonymous feedback from the workers working around them. It includes the peers, managers, supervisors of Kingfisher.

v  Kaizen method: It is very popular technique in Japan and now become familiar all over the world. Kaizen refers continuous improvement of performance. Kingfisher uses this technique at the company.

v  Target setting: In this technique, a target is set up by the Kingfisher to its employees and the actual performance of employee’s is evaluated against the target.

Types of payment and reward system

There are two types of payment and reward systems are practiced at Kingfisher.

v  Financial reward: The financial reward is very important for the employees of the kingfisher because it increase the motivation of the workers. Financial reward includes salary, wages, bonuses, commission, pensions, share, and performance related pay.

v  Non-financial reward: There has no monetary involvement in this reward system. It includes job enrichment, promotion, job enlargement, job recognition, job rotation etc.

4. Evaluate the effectiveness of different HRM practices in terms of Kingfisher

The effectiveness of learning, training and development and payment and reward system in terms of Kingfisher are discussed below:

The effectiveness of learning, training and development

v  Kingfisher uses the most suitable learning, training and development techniques to improve the abilities of works. For example, the on-the-job, apprenticeship and informal learning increases the skills and abilities of workers through working in the company. This training technique is less costly that reduces cost of training and helps in profit and productivity improvement.

v  Off-the-job training is sometimes cost oriented but it is very essential for the management development of Kingfisher. The success of an organisation is largely depends on the management skills, knowledge and application capabilities. This short term cost gives long term productivity, profitability and sustainability of the company’ operations.

The effectiveness of performance and reward

People are worked to get benefits that satisfy him. For this reason, performance and reward system are necessary. The performance and reward system of Kingfisher is effective and support its productivity and profitability.

v  Every organisation wants that their worker will be done good performance. And performance appraisal helps Kingfisher to understand the actual performance of each worker against standard. Kingfisher also can understand the strengths and weaknesses of each worker through performance appraisal and takes necessary initiatives. As a result the productivity of workers is increased that ultimately increases the profitability of the company.

v  To improve the motivation of workers and removes gloomy from the work, reward is well accepted tool at Kingfisher. Workers are doing hard for the betterment of the company. So, they want proper recognition for their performance. Kingfisher uses both monetary and non-monetary reward system which increases the motivation of workers and ultimately the productivity and profitability of the company is increased.

Conclusion

The benefits of human resource management are many. Organisation can get the actual benefits of practicing HRM when it can select right tools and techniques considering the organisational mission, vision, goals and objectives. And then organisation can get actual benefits from the practice of human resource management.