Human Resource Management Study Guide

This document provides a comprehensive study guide on human resource management, covering various topics such as performance management, collaborative working, and leadership training. It includes references to key books and articles on the subject, including works by Armstrong, Askegren, Beardwell, and others. The guide is suitable for students looking for detailed notes and study materials on human resource management.

Developing Individuals, Teams and Organizations

Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
LO1Analyse Employee Knowledge, Skills AND Power Required by HR Professional....................................4
LO2 Analyse the Factors to be Considered When Implementing and Evaluating Inclusive Learning &
Sustainable Business Performance..............................................................................................................6
LO3 Apply Knowledge and Understanding to the Ways in Which High Performance Working Contributes
to Employee Management and Competitive Advantage...........................................................................10
LO4 Evaluate Ways in Which Performance Management, Collaborative Working & Effective
Communication Can Support High Performance Culture and Commitment.............................................11
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................13
References.............................................................................................................................................13
References.............................................................................................................................................14
.

Introduction
Humans are the most valuable asset for an organization. They are the driven force that runs an
organization. The HR professionals teaches employees and also manages talent, collaborates
work, diversifies work and skills. And employees receives training in order to produce higher
performance. So HR department is the most important department for an organization as it
contributes the most to an organization’s progress. And the employees of the HR department
play the most vital roles in the organization. So the employees of HR department should have
some behavioural skills and knowledge. And those who already have those skills and depth of
knowledge, they should not stop there. They should have hunger for more. Because knowledge
has no limit and one should not stop acquiring knowledge and developing skills, if he or she
really want self-development. One more thing that an HR professional or employee should keep
in mind that besides working for self-development he or she should try to help, assist others in
gathering skills or knowledge that he gathered. He should not confine the learning within
himself. And most importantly he or she should always try to spread knowledge, and an HR
should focus on gathering communication skill, adapting to any situation trait and keeping head
cool in any tensed situation. That is how he or she could make himself or herself a good HR
professional. An HR professional have some inherent quality. Quality that is gathered by born.
Skill that he or she already has. And so with those inborn qualities, he or she needs to gather
some more skills and techniques through training, learning and development so that he can
deliver high performance for his organization and maintain a high performance culture that
would lead the company to success.

LO1Analyse Employee Knowledge, Skills AND Power
Required by HR Professional
P1 Determine appropriate and professional knowledge, skills and behaviour that
are required by HR professionals
A human resource professional is not the one who only teaches the employees under him, but
also continue to develop his or her skills. The HR profession map shows what skills and
behaviors and knowledge an HR professional needs to have.
Knowledge
He or she should be able point out the important information from any source and take a decision
that would prove to be fruitful (Askegren, 2005). The HR professional should have a personality
that inspires or motivates others so that he could easily gain their attention and influence them to
do what he requires for the training and development techniques. HR Professional must have the
proper knowledge of handling human resources. They must have sufficient knowledge to handle
the software. They should also have an adequate knowledge about the needs and demands of
workers working in there organization.
Skills
He should be expert in all areas rather than only be an expert in the HR area. Because he would
have to take decisions on issues which are not confined to the HR part only. He should have the
quality of working with a group of diversified people and he should also have the quality to
communicate effectively which is very essential for a HR professional (Dowling, Festing and
Engle, 2017). HR professionals must have to budgeting skills because compensation, benefits
performance appraisals and social activities all go through HR so HR have to know about
organizations planing and budgeting.. So this skills also a major. They must posses emotional
intelligence skills. Also they must have a skill to handle human resource. The HR professional
must analyze and evaluate his performance for performance management.
Behavior
An HR professional must have some knowledge in some specific areas. He or she should know
the professional approach of communication. He should know what design or structure should be
perfect for his organization and develop the structure accordingly. He should develop a healthy
culture inside the organization where employees would be helpful to each other and would work
together for the betterment of the organization (Beardwell and Thompson, 2017). He or she
needs to ensure that the employees have the skills which are needed for their particular work and
arrange any workshop if it is needed. He needs to assess the employee work and check their
remuneration and decide whether it is perfect for them or not. He should ensure that he leads by
example, otherwise employees would not be motivated. The most important quality he needs to
have is the ability to maintain an organization that has a group of people with a variety of skills.
HR professionals needs to have a trustworthy and transparent behaviour. They are expected to do

so with both professionalism and a fair, but firm hand. As such, it’s important that Employees
feel their HR Professional is someone they can speak to openly and honestly without fear of
judgement. They also need to be purpose oriented.
Contribution of these things in personal and professionals development.
The professionals development overall interrelate with personal development because
through all skills of HR they guide to their employees efficiently for achieve goals of
organisation. So that they develop productivity and profitability of organisation(Clarke and
Higgs, 2016).
P2 Analyze a completed personal skills audit to identify appropriate knowledge,
skills & behaviors and develop a professional development plan for a given job
role
Personal audit
In case of the development, there have been several issues related to the personal skills. A person
may have several personal knowledge and skills. Finding all those skills and knowledge perfectly
will give an idea to develop present skills for the future needs and also achieving the future
requirements.
Requirements Personal
audit
GAP Strategy/ actions Deadlines
Knowledge
- Contract law
- Training and
development
- 7
- 9
I can deal
with the basic
sides but I
can not
manage the
critical sides.
- Seminars,
- Classroom,
- Read books,
- Practice.
6 months
Skill
- Communication
- Problem solving
skill
- 6
- 8
I often
struggle to
communicate
with the
people.
- Classroom,
- Read books,
- Practice,
- Mentoring.
6 months
Behavior
- Ethics,
- Confidentiality.
- 7
- 9
Need to get
used to with
new rules.
- Studying
books.
6 months
Professional Development Plan of Myself:
SWOT Analysis
My strengths are in time management, communication, leadership areas as I have these qualities.
My weaknesses are in critical reasoning, organizing & planning and data collecting areas.

My opportunity is in HR profession. As I have time managing, communication and leadership
qualities, I have a very good chance of being a HR professional.
As I have not a good expertize in critical reasoning, organizing etc. activities it could be a threat
to me if I want to be in HR profession as these skills are a must in this profession.
Setting goals
As I have qualities that suits the HR profession so I want to be a HR professional. But for this I
need to turn my weaknesses into strength. I need to achieve the qualities. I need to have a good
organizing & planning skill and for those I need to practice a lot. It won’t take much time. But to
achieve critical reasoning ability I need to be more careful & conscious. This would take some
time.
I need to also enhance my team work skill and increase technological awareness.
In this way I can develop myself.
As a consultant of Whirlpool, I think the employees of this organization should surely have the
skills of effective communication, collaborative working and performance managing. Because
this organization needs to deal with its customers which need communication skill. It also needs
its employees to work together to invent new things which need collaborative working skill and
also need people of diversified knowledge. So if any of the employees lack above mentioned
skills, he or she should be fired.
And the HR employees of Whirlpool should have the skills mentioned in the audit from,
otherwise they are not suitable for that particular role.
So I need to work on the skills that I am poor at and also enhance qualities where I rate myself
average if I want to be an HR professional.
I got a very strong practice on the management of time which have been well associated by
several other factors. On the other side, I also managed to arrange a very strong communication
side along with the leadership. For organization and planning, I will need to work even more
alongside the attainment the skill of critical reasoning. There are many time table and each
should be finished within time.
LO2 Analyse the Factors to be Considered When Implementing and
Evaluating Inclusive Learning & Sustainable Business Performance
Inclusive Learning
Every organization wants to become successful. And to be successful it needs the collaborative
effort of all its workforce. If an organization wants it needs to make an environment within its
area where all employees would get equal platform to showcase their talent. Where gender, creed
or caste won’t create an issue (Dessler, 2004.). A study has shown that organizations that have
achieved success were innovative as well as well diversified. Innovation helps an organization to
attend the attraction quickly from customers. And this helps to make the customer regular.
Innovation, uniqueness or creativity whatever u call, all comes from the organization’s inclusive

culture. So inclusive culture is very important for an organization. And an inclusive culture helps
to develop an organization when the employees of it uses their individual learning, training and
development of the organization which helps an organization to achieve success as a unit.
P3 Analyze the difference between organizational & individual learning, training
& development
Organizational learning is learning that is kept within an organization where employees learn and
share their knowledge among themselves (Mathis et al., 2002.). This is relative to inclusive
learning whereas individual learning is learning alone and keeping the learning only to thyself.
So an organization’s employees should follow organizational learning.
An individual learns new skills through lessons and courses which is one kind of training and
when the employees of an organization are given training to learn different techniques smd skills
to improve their work then that is organizational training.
Organizational development is when an organization or the people of that organization succeed
in achieving continuous improvement and individual development is when an individual
develops skills that would make his performance better. And so individual development of the
employees of an organization helps an organization as a whole to develop.
Difference between organisational and individual learning, training and development.
ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING OF
WHIRLPOOL
INDIVIDUAL LEARNING OF WHIRLPOOL

Organisational learning of whirlpool states that
to be competitive in this changing environment
company need to discover new ways to change
their goals and patterns of work to reach those
goals .
Individual learning may be very vital and leads
to the development of employees, crew
learning seems to be a prerequisite for
organizational gaining knowledge as it permits
the learning from people so that it could be
shared and delegate.
Learning of whirlpool is affected by the
learning of individual as before learning the
organisation it is necessary to learn an
individual who acts on behalf of the
organisation.
Effective individual learning leads to effective
organisational learning.
It includes learning of both internal and
external environment of whirlpool.
It only includes learning of internal
environment i.e. Human resource and internal
staff.
TRAINING DEVELOPMENT
1. Training is short run as organisation gives
training to employees to improve their skills
and ability to work.
1.development is long run as development is
not one time process .it enhances the skills and
ability of employees on continuous way.
2.training is given to employees for improving
their performance for that particular given job.
2.development helps employees to improve
their overall performance which help them
further in their professional development.
3.training given by organisation to employees
in a group either by coaching or lectures etc.
3. Development is individual process. Each
employee's development is depends on their
personal ability to learn and perform.
Organizational learning, training and development is more beneficial for whirlpool
Organizational learning is beneficial for whirlpool. And whirlpool
follow organizational learning as it helps the employees of Whirlpool to learn new methods and
skills. In organisational learning firm make sures that effective training has been given to
employee's so that there efficiency is increased and there group goal is been achieved.

So through it also save time and cost. Training and development also reduce Training is best
suitable for the employees of Whirlpool. As it supports workers of organization in
grooming there skills. They also learn about optimum utilization of resources and reduce
their errors. Training create confidence in their mind and It motivates employee's to
perform better. So organisational training learning and development is beneficial for
Whirlpool(Argyris, 2017).
P4 Analyse the need for continuous learning and professional development to drive
sustainable business performance
Sustainable Business Performance
In order to achieve sustainable business performance, a business organization must focus on the
continuous learning and professional development or performance development of its
employees. Because today’s world is very dynamic and one has to adopt every now and then to
maintain pace with others.
There are several learning style theories which are connected with it. Kolb’s learning style is one
of the most important in this matter and it is often followed by a cycle in it. In the cycle, a person
will watch a thing which will create the observation resulting into the reflection later.
Why continuous learning and professional development is necessary for
sustainable business performance
Learning is something that nobody can deny at any age. For example an employee working for
forty years might think that he has learn enough and now its time to share knowledge only rather
than gaining it. But he might find things while teaching other junior employees under him that
this is new and he has no knowledge of it. There he would have to learn that in order to teach
others, so learning is a continuous process that never ends. And continuous professional
development is something that would accelerate this learning process (Torrington et al.,
n.d.).Because it develops confidence in an employee that he has gained what he had needed and
now he can compete and take any challenge he gets. This would help him to contribute to the
organization. If one stopped learning and stopped developing professionally, he or she would
have confined him or her to only a few skills and those would not have been enough for himself
or herself and also would have proved costly for the business organization. Because he or she
would not have been able to contribute to the organization if he or she is not well prepared.
So inclusive learning along with organizational learning is very important for an individual in
whirlpool organization in order to prosper and take the company into higher position and
continuous learning and professional development are also needed foe employees to prove
beneficial for the organization (Bratton and Gold, 2007). Otherwise the organization would fall
down badly in the market and even those individuals would find hard to survive if the company
does not get success and they get out of the company.
Suggestions for Inclusive Culture

As a consultant of Whirlpool, I think managers of this organization should be close to the
employees and make them very comfortable towards him so that they always share whatever
problems they are facing. For example they should feel free to complain to the manager if
anyone is racist to them about their gender, colour or creed.
Sometimes employees feel uncomfortable to share any view or idea or anything alone. But if he
was in a group, he might have kept his view or idea in the group and the group could have
transfer that thought to the manager (Noe 2016). So inclusive learning encourages to form
informal groups among employees and build and diversify network
Organization should be aware of any conflict issues and try to train some employees and
managers about what to do when a conflict arises or how to handle conflict before it reaches a
turns into a massive issue. They should try to give a hint to the organization about any conflict
regarding deeply rooted issue so that the organization takes steps before it becomes a big issue.
So before implementing inclusive learning and culture in the organization these facts should be
considered to make the organization more diversified which would make it more creative and
creativity would turn this company into a complete success.
In an organization, the learning style is managed according to the needs where the individual
learning style is influenced by the goals, objectives, and activities and so on. This is how the
organizational and individual learning can be influential.
Kolb’s learning cycle
In the learning cycle theory, there will be several steps within it. First step will be feeling the
actual things. After the feeling of it, watching and thinking will come through. Once a people is
done with thinking, the activities will be done. This is how the Kolb’s learning cycle theory can
be used.

Honey and Mumford learning styles
In case of the learning styles, activists tend to learn something new from the whole system. On
the other side, reflectors will reflect from what they have learnt from it. The theorists have been
depending on the understanding of the orthodox learning that they have managed. This is how
the Honey and Mumford learning styles will be changed and managed.
LO3 Apply Knowledge and Understanding to the Ways in Which High
Performance Working Contributes to Employee Management and
Competitive Advantage
High performance work system is some kind of human resource activities or practices that is
mainly designed to enhance or increase the employee work effectiveness, effort and skills. It
involves activities like selecting right employees, training them, evaluating their performance
and giving reward according to them and also compensating them if needed. It also involves
making the best use of employees’ skills and knowledge that they possess (Debroux, 2006.).
These would ensure high performance of the employee which would automatically turn into
success for the organization.
P5 Demonstrate the understanding of how HPV contributes to employee
engagement & competitive advantage within a specific organizational situation
Whirlpool has a grid matrix organizational structure, which is a half and half blend of various
highlights from the essential kinds of hierarchical structure. This company has a mix of
functional, geographical and product based organizational structure.
Function based organization means an organization that has separate department based on sales,
marketing, advertising, human resource management. So high performance working helps
Whirlpool to increase employee engagement in these departments because high performance
culture of an organization makes the employee of this company hungry towards success. In
addition to that, it also uses different approaches to evaluate the performance of employees and

offer rewards to the high performer. So employees are always engaged in how to do well to
deliver higher performance. High performance culture also makes an employee clear about his
roll and contribution to the company which also increases employee engagement and this gives
Whirlpool a competitive advantage over other companies.
So it is understandable now that to deliver or get high employee performance employee
engagement is needed in Whirlpool organization would not succeed. For an example, a software
company needs to select employees who have knowledge about technology and software
(Bouchlaghem, 2012). If it selects a worker who is hardworking but ignorant of software then he
won’t be able to deliver higher performance. If the organization selects the right employee but
doesn’t provide him training, he would not be able to work as effectively as he would have if he
had been given training. In case of the right employees, if they are well trained and are in good
relationship with the employers, a better employee engagement will be assured. Employees must
also be paid according to their effort and outcome. If two employees gets same amount of money
but if one puts more effort than the other, he or she might be unhappy with his or her salary and
thus would leave an impact on his or her work. If the work of impact can be maintained in a
good term, the competitive advantage can be well assured and placed in it. So providing fair
salary according to the work is important. It is also needed to provide incentive to get higher
performance.
LO4 Evaluate Ways in Which Performance Management, Collaborative
Working & Effective Communication Can Support High
Performance Culture and Commitment
Performance management is the way of measuring and improving employee capability. There
are a lot of ways by which a company can evaluate the performance of its employees and use
these ways to maintain the high performance culture of the company. Collaborative working is to
work with a group of diversified people and adopt to them according to the situation. And
effective communication skill is communicating with others in the best possible
way: (Performance management, 2011). These skills are most necessary skills to deliver higher
performance.
P6 Evaluate different approaches to performance management & demonstrate
with specific examples how they can support high-performance culture and
commitment
Measuring and improving performance of employees is a tough ask. There are different ways to
do it. They are-
Comparative Approach- In this approach employees are ranked in an organization according
to their approaches. And top ranked employees get rewards whereas bottom ranked employees
might get suspended from the job. This will mean the comparison of the high support and low
support management system which is facilitated and placed by high-performance culture.

For example, Mr. X is an employee of a Whirlpool company and this company has a high
performance culture where every employee is committed to delivering high performance. So if
comparative approach is used in performance management of this company the result shows that
Mr.X is a low ranked performer, then he would try his best to deliver the best performance to be
in this company and to maintain the high performance culture.
Trait Approach- In this approach employee’s personal characteristic or behaviour is tested
such as- his ability to take decision or his dependence on others or his reliability etc. are rated
here (Mathis et al., 2014).
For example, Whirlpool is an organization that is known for their high performance. So if this
company uses Trait approach of performance management then there would be a database of
employees where which employee has which ability that is superior to others is given. Then
when they need to take a crucial decision, they could take the help of the employee who is better
in critical reasoning according to that database.
Behavioural Approach- In this approach employee actual work time behaviour is evaluated.
Whether he gets nervous at pressure times or deals it with a cool head, whether he works alone in
tough works or work together etc. is examined on this behavioural approach.
For Example, Mr. Y is a HRM Employee of Whirlpool. They use behavioural approach of
performance management. So they know that MR.Y is cool head customer in crunch times and
they also know that he works better when he works alone. They can use this data and use him
whenever a situation like above arises and maintain high performance in the organization.
Outcome Approach-In this approach only what is achieved by the employee giving his effort
is evaluated. What did he do during the work or how he approach to do the work is not evaluated
here .Only the result produced by him is examined here.
Example: Whirlpool Company uses outcome approach to evaluate their employees. They found
out that some employees couldn’t achieve the result that were expected from that and this made
the company’s performance fall. So Whirlpool fired them and recruited high performers to
maintain high performance culture of the company.
Evaluating Collaborative Working
Collaborative working workplace is completely different from old workplace. In collaborative
working employer thinks that the power to take decision is not his alone. Rather he takes the
suggestion of everyone and takes decision. Employer gives full facilities to the employees for
doing their work. They are encouraged and inspired to keep their thought or ideas in front of
everyone. They are also encouraged to take part in brainstorming sessions where their thinking
might get recognition. Employer always provide guideline and work as a guide to the employees.
He gives them the feedback of their job which helps them to understand what went wrong and
they can rectify themselves on future: (Mondy and Martocchio, 2009). So collaborative working
is related to inclusive learning and organizational learning. For example, if the leader of a
multinational company listens to his employees’ demand, provide them with enough resources,

guide them throughout and gives them feedback of their activity immediately, he or she is
maintaining collaborating work place. This collaborative workplace is very satisfying for the
employees and it helps them to produce higher performance.
For example, Whirlpool is a private company that have employees who work well when they are
given freedom to do work in their own way. So they should use collaborative working system to
achieve higher performance.
Effective Communication
Today’s era is the era of people who are good in communication. Effective communication is
needed in every aspect of our lives. So it is very important in the perspective of an organization
too. Employer needs to communicate regularly and effectively with his employees. He needs to
check regularly whether they are finding any difficulty in working or if any tension is growing
there. The better his communication skills are, the better the employees would be friendly to him
and share all their views and ideas and will complain frankly to him if they are bothered with
anything (Bratton and Gold, 2007.). There should be effective communication between the
employees too so that there remains a healthy and friendly environment which is suitable for
higher performance. So to get higher performance from employees, employer should ensure
effective communication.
So as a consultant of Whirlpool, I think for Whirlpool performance management, collaborative
workplace and effective communication all of the three skills are very important in order to
deliver higher performance. Otherwise higher performance would not be delivered. For example,
if employee’s performance is not correctly measured and if employee that works hard is rated
poor he or she would not perform well. If employer is very dominant and does not listen to his
employees and try to force them to work, the working environment would not be suitable and
employees would not produce magical performance. And if employer is unsuccessful in
communicating with employees effectively, if misunderstanding is created between him and the
employees then there would be disaster. A wrong message would be sent to the employees which
would make them disappointed and that would result in bad performance (Dowling, Festing and
Engle, 2017). So performance management, collaborative working and effective communication
is essential for higher performance.
Conclusion
The main resource of an organization is its Human Resource Management. From choosing
employee to training and recruiting them, evaluating their performance, managing their skills,
diversifying the workforce, ensuring effective communication and maintaining collaborative
workforce to produce higher performance which would ensure the progress of the organization is
important for an organization. Besides this HR professionals are also important for an
organization. Because they already gathered the skills mentioned above. So they can guide new
HRs and they can also become like them. Hr professional should not just guide the juniors or
new employees but also try to take the new learnings that they get when they mix with these new
generation employees because learning has no ending and if they do so they will be able to

match or cope up with the present scenario or era,. This would ensure that they are developing by
day. No matter what their age is, no matter what their position is, they should not stop
developing themselves. Because in this competitive world if one gets tired of improving himself
or can’t cope up with the pace of other competitors and that would bring his downfall. And
human resource manager is one of the most influential role player in a company’s success. So if
an HR employee or manager is not up to the mark in terms of performance and can’t commit to
keep high performance, he is surely going to be vanished in the long run.
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