Implementing a Database Management System for HR Functions in Virgin Australia

This report discusses the need for a database management system (DBMS) in Virgin Australia for HR functions like recruitment and selection, and training and development. It highlights the development of DBMS, functionalities required, and the role of IT in the designing process. The report is based on the modernization strategy of Virgin Australia and its aim to enter the Hong Kong market.

Running head: HRM INFORMATION SYSTEMS
HUMAN RESOURCE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
[Virgin Australia]
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary
The main purpose of this report is to highlight the needs of a database management system
(DBMS) in Virgin Australia. The company goes for a modernization strategy and also aims to
enter the Hong Kong market. This is why the study highlights the needs for an implementation of
a DBMS into the chosen HRM functions. The paper discusses the development of DBMS. It also
talks about the functionalities required to be included in the DBMS. Moreover, it also highlights
what role-play the IT team has in the designing process.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
2. Body.............................................................................................................................................3
2.1 Organizational DBMS needs based on the chosen HR functions..........................................3
2.2 Recommendation for how DBMS would be developed especially in respect to the chosen
HR functions.................................................................................................................................4
2.3 Functionalities required to be integrated with designing a DBMS for Virgin Australia........5
2.4 How IT can assist in the designing process............................................................................6
3. Conclusion....................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................8

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1. Introduction
The report highlights the importance of a database management system (DBMS), which is
a set of programs that support the storage of multiple files and controls access to the stored data.
Virgin Australia is being chosen as an organization, which is assumed to be as needed an
implementation of DBMS. It is due to its modernization strategy, which helped Virgin Australia
Holdings Ltd (VAH.AX) transformed from just a budget airline service provider to one of the top
performing airlines. Virgin Australia gives serious rivalry to Qantas Airways Ltd (QAN.AX)
with the help of its strategic investors, which also include China’s HNA Group and Singapore
Airlines Ltd. It is to be noted that Virgin Australia is adding flights to take the advantage of the
competitive Hong Kong market (Reuters.com, 2018). Evidently, they will need fresh people to
support the added operation. Human resource professionals will be needing to manage fresh data
to be able to utilize it later on for various purposes like training and development. Hence,
‘Recruitment and Selection’, and ‘Training and Development’ are chosen as the two functions.
The report is sticking just with ‘Flight Attendant’ as the job classification.
2. Body
2.1 Organizational DBMS needs based on the chosen HR functions
According to Anosh, Hamad and Batool, (2014), there are positive impacts of recruitment
and selection on productivity, it needs to be dealt with by adopting advanced and best practice to
effectively handle this crucial HR functions. It means that recruitment and selection is a good
way to enhance productivity. Therefore, Virgin Australia needs to set up plans for the recruitment
and selection as it is aiming to introduce more flights in the Hong Kong circuit and will,
therefore, need to go for fresh recruitments. However, recruitment and selection is indeed a very
critical and challenging HR function that must be dealt with a serious and calculative approach to
produce better impacts. Hence, DBMS is a tool, which provides the seriousness that the Virgin’s
HRM needs. A DBMS won’t just be helpful for the proposed selection of ‘Flight Attendant’ but
will also create a database generating structured files to be used in the future.
Imran and Tanveer, (2015) opine that training and development positively impact trainees
in terms of their job knowledge, functional skills, work quantity & quality and their loyalty and
motivation towards the company. Imran and Tanveer did find that employees working in banks in

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Pakistan agree to the importance of training and development either strongly or moderately. A
DBMS is exceedingly useful in regards to conducting the training and development program.
During the training trainers require to access to different data especially being designed to train
‘Flight Attendants’. Trainers may experience a number of issues if such data is not available to
them in an organized manner. There will be a consumption of extra time for accessing some
important data. This can be irritating to trainers and consequently, affect their concentration level
to an extent. A DBMS is a perfect solution for all these challenges as it provides large-scale data
in an organized way. Additionally, a DBMS act as an intermediary between the data and the user.
Hence, access will be both easier and secure.
2.2 Recommendation for how DBMS would be developed especially in respect to the chosen HR
functions
A DBMS for Recruitment and Selection
It is needed to organize the entire recruitment and selection process in an organized way
to effectively counter a few barriers of ‘Recruitment Management System’ such as unnecessary
time consumption, unwanted expenses and others. The first stage towards the development would
be an official meeting between human resource professionals, the operations team and the top
management of Virgin Australia. Afterward, IT team in coordination with the HRM of Virgin
will discuss the design for the database. The database should have the following things (Jalloh,
Habib & Turay, 2015):
 Records for channels being used for the job advertisement
 Impact of the advertisement being identified separately for each of the channels
 Number of appearing and shortlisted applicants
 Salaries offered
 Other compensation benefits
A DBMS for Training and Development
On a similar note, a training and development management system can be developed through the
following points (Bell et al., 2017):
 Skills sets for the training
 Number of trainees

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 Training venue
 Budget allocation
 What training modules were being covered for a specific ‘job classification’
 Training modes being used
 How long the training had continued
 The overall impact on the productivity
2.3 Functionalities required to be integrated with designing a DBMS for Virgin Australia
For recruitment and selection following stages of a DBMS development should be followed
(Kumar & Singh, 2017):
Screening and storing profiles in the system: The first stage of the development will include
storing of resumes in the system. The process needs to be repeated for each one of the applicants.
Add skills to candidates: It means categorizing candidates based on their skill sets, not on any
other variable. Hence, all candidates applying for the same skill set will be under one file. This
will ease down the search work because skill sets will be used as search keywords. In the case of
Virgin Australia, skills set will be ‘Flight attendant'.
Keywords suggestions: Functionality should also include a suggestion for keywords to avoid
unnecessary consumption of time and expenses as well. An appropriate designing of the software
will help to add more applicants in the future under the same skill set.
Formats for tracking details: A DBMS must be designed after speaking to the HRM only to
know what keywords they want to be included to make the search task easier.
Hire someone to manage the database: An expert needs to be hired on an ongoing format to
organize files if locating a file has become messy.
For training and development following functionalities should be considered (Sung & Choi,
2014):
Guidelines for the ethical code of conducts: This is an essential part of a training and
development program. Trainees should be made aware of the organizational policy for the ethical
code of conducts to ensure that they are guided towards ‘things to do’ and ‘to avoid’.

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Management of records: This will help to train those who are willing to work as ‘flight
attendants’. The records thus saved in the form of data will assist trainers in the future whenever
they will need to train applicants for the ‘flight attendant’ job.
Organization of relevant modules: This will help trainers to easily access the training module
especially being designed to train applicants on the ‘flight attendant’ skills.
Presentation videos: Trainers may require some presentation slides to be stored and organized in
a DBMS as training through presentation slides is more productive. Moreover, trainers will easily
be able to find the required presentation slides. There will be needs for a number of presentation
each discussing a different topic such as the skills required for a ‘flight attendant’. Skills include
customer service skills, communication skills, positive and friendly attitude, care and
understanding nature, professional and responsible approach and others.
2.4 How IT can assist in the designing process
An appropriate designing of a database management system (DBMS) requires a
collaborative work between Virgin’ HRM and its IT team. Human resource professionals will
only guide towards what elements they need with a DBMS. Apart from this, they will only
confirm whether the designed DBMS works, so that, necessary repairing could be done to the
DBMS. ‘IT’ team will take care of the larger part of the work involved in a DBMS design. The
first thing that the IT team will do is enquiring the deadline for the design work. This will help
the IT team to plan their schedules and divide works into segments to make implementation an
easier task to conduct (Chudinov, Osipova & Bobrova, 2017).
Once, the IT team is done with the design part, they will ask the Virgin’s HRM to have a
trial of the DBMS as per the guideline rules. It is necessary for the IT team to explain a few
components of the DBMS to the HR professionals of the Virgin to prevent any challenges being
faced by the HRM. Those few components include procedures, database access language, data
manager, report writer and data dictionary (Haak-Saheem, Darwish, & Al-Nasser, 2017). Since
the DBMS will be used for a few complex practices of HRM, it is necessary that they have no
confusions whatsoever with the essential components of the DBMS.
3. Conclusion

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In summary, this can be said that the DBMS, in particular, is an essential part of growing
industries. It provides a few characteristics to a trustworthy HR database. DBMS can assist the
HR professionals in taking care of their crucial role-plays, which are the ‘Recruitment and
Selection’ and ‘Training and Development’. These tasks of the HRM require access to a large
scale data consisting of different things from selection records to training modules. Therefore, it
is very important that the HRM has access to organized files to be able to avoid barriers of
effective HRM functions those mentioned in this unit. Since Virgin Australia is on the verge to
witness a modernization of strategy, it is important for the company's HRM to be competitive
enough to take up the challenge.

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References
Anosh, M., Hamad, N., & Batool, A. (2014). Impact of Recruitment and selection of HR
Department Practices. European Journal of Business and Management, 6, 31.
Bell, B. S., Tannenbaum, S. I., Ford, J. K., Noe, R. A., & Kraiger, K. (2017). 100 years of
training and development research: What we know and where we should go. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 102(3), 305.
Chudinov, I. L., Osipova, V. V., & Bobrova, Y. V. (2017, January). The methodology of
database design in organization management systems. In Journal of Physics: Conference
Series (Vol. 803, No. 1, p. 012030). IOP Publishing.
Haak-Saheem, W., Darwish, T. K., & Al-Nasser, A. D. (2017). HRM and knowledge-transfer: a
micro analysis in a Middle Eastern emerging market. The International Journal of Human
Resource Management, 28(19), 2762-2791.
Imran, M., & Tanveer, A. (2015). Impact of training & development on employees’ performance
in banks of pakistan. European Journal of Training and Development Studies, 3(1), 22-
44.
Jalloh, A. A. A., Habib, M. A., & Turay, B. (2015). The effects of recruitment and selection
processes and procedures in achieving organisations strategic objectives. Journal for
Studies in Management and Planning, 1(8), 121-144.
Kumar, P., & Singh, S. (2017). Recruitment Process: a Case Study in Banking Sector. Journal of
Bank Management & Financial Strategies, 1(2), 25-32.
Reuters.com. (2018). Virgin Australia strategy, CEO search complicated by airline investors.
Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-virgin-australia-strategy/virgin-
australia-strategy-ceo-search-complicated-by-airline-investors-idUSKCN1LL36K
Sung, S. Y., & Choi, J. N. (2014). Do organizations spend wisely on employees? Effects of
training and development investments on learning and innovation in
organizations. Journal of organizational behavior, 35(3), 393-412.

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