Human Resource Management and Organization Development

This assignment involves analyzing various studies and research papers related to human resource management (HRM) and organization development (OD). It covers topics such as HRM in developing countries, performance evaluation models, cultural intelligence, and organizational outcomes. The assignment requires a critical review of the literature and identification of key concepts and findings.

Developing Individuals,
Teams and Organisations

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................1
Appropriate and professional knowledge, skills and behaviours that are required by HR.
manager..................................................................................................................................1
Conduct an audit to identify appropriate knowledge, skills and behaviours and develop a
professional development plan for a given job role...............................................................2
Analyse the differences between organisational and individual learning, training and
development...........................................................................................................................4
Importance of continuous learning and professional development for sustainable business
performance............................................................................................................................6
Importance of HPW in contributes towards employee engagement and competitive
advantage. ..............................................................................................................................7
Approaches to performance management and contribution in High performance culture.. .9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Human Resource Management is defined as function performed within an organisation
that help in collaborating various activities of the firm. It helps in utilising the human resource to
accomplish desired goals and objectives. Whirlpool is an American Multinational manufacturer
and marketer of home appliances. The report discuses about the effective knowledge, skills and
behaviour required by employees to perform HR role in a firm.
TASK
Appropriate and professional knowledge, skills and behaviours that are required by HR.
manager.
Human Resource Department is used to describe professionals who are responsible for
maintaining and managing resources related to employees. Human Resource manager are
responsible for recruiting, hiring, imparting training to new employees and developing policies
or strategies to retain them. In order to perform following task HR. professionals required
appropriate knowledge, skills and competencies which are as follows:
 Decisive Thinking: Human Resource Manager is responsible for managing employees
within an organisation and to maintain them properly HR. professionals need to think
different. They must be able to analyse and understand data/information quickly and
show better attitude to others. The decisive nature of HR. Professionals can be seen in the
case of Whirlpool where Human Resource department has analysed the information
quickly and made decision to improve their performance (Alfes and et. al., 2013).
 Relationship Management: It is an essential skill that must be poses by HR. professionals
as Human Resource manager looks over employees of the organisation. Relationship
management helps in employee engagement as well learning and development of them.
Whirlpool was able to succeed through relationship management tool by integrating and
motivating employees to participate in completion of goals of company.
 Build Capability: Human Resource professional should build organisational capabilities
by analysing the skills and competence of workers. They should impart necessary
training to employees in order to meet the objectives of company. In North American
Region, employees of Whirlpool have address the special off site meetings to help staff
members of NAR to creatively address the strategic issues and improve existing skills to
meet the targets of Whirlpool (Brewster and Hegewisch, 2017)
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 Effective decision making: HR. professionals should be able to make good judgements
and take quick decision. They are responsible for hiring, recruiting and selecting
employees for company which are important assets of firm. This implies that HR should
hire talented applicants for working in organisation. Further, if HR fails to recruit right
person for right job then it would create loss to firm.
 Build Capacity: HR. should develop their employees capacity to bring an internal change
so to meet the needs and demands of outside world. They should ensure seamless
integration of change process at the institutional, departmental and individual levels. This
can be seen in the case of Whirlpool where staff member of North America Region
strives hard and build their internal competency to meet and overcome the challenges of
macro environment (Budhwar and Debrah, 2013).
Professional knowledge
Contract law-
The contract law of UK should be studied so that they may effectively be able to make
agreement with employees. Furthermore, absence of such leads to poor operations.
Training and development-
The techniques such on-the-job training should be provided and experience must be
within HR so that employees are able to shape their skills in a better way.
Skills
Communication skills-
The HR professionals need to have an effective communication with employees, as they
are responsible for preparing them to perform assigned task correctly. It can be seen in the case
of Whirlpool where the team members along with their Human Resource manager has developed
a strong and transparent communication network.
Problem-solving skills-
The problems or issues held between parties in workplace should be solved. HR manager
should hear opinions of employees and then reach to mutual agreement. Hence, problem-solving
skills should be possessed by him.
Behaviours
Ethics-
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HR manager should conduct activities and behave ethically so that he may positive
influence the inner atmosphere of workplace. Furthermore, no issues such as health and safety,
compensation should be dishonoured.
Confidentiality-
The information relating to basic salaries, bonuses and related perks of employees should
be kept confidential and no one should reach the same.
Conduct an audit to identify appropriate knowledge, skills and behaviours and develop a
professional development plan for a given job role.
The term personal audit refers to evaluation of human resource in the organisation. It is
conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of individual person in the organisation. Conducting a
personal audit is beneficial for organisation as well for employees (Kehoe and Wright, 2013).
Further, if employees implement or conduct a personal audit it can make self-improvement
within his/ her behaviour. Techniques through which employees can do personal audit is SWOT
analysis.
In this context Annie who is a manager of B&Y venture, is applying SWOT model to
conduct a personal audit:
Strength
 Annie has high command on Human
resource techniques and implement HR
policies.
 She has the capability of forming
strategic HR policies for her workplace.
 She has effective decision making skill
which is the core requirement of being
a manager,
Weakness
 Annie has weak communication skill.
 Ineffective management and leadership
skills.
 Her convencing power is quite weak. A
HR manager needs to have this skill so
that they could attract other members
towards the decisions of company.
Opportunities
 Annie has the great potential to become
a effective HR manager.
 Further, she can work in a leading firm.
 Increase in demand of HR in the
Threats
 Annie is being threatened from new
policies formulated in company.
 Increase in the nember of new HR in
the market.
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various companies.
Professional Development Plan for employees in H&M are as follows:
Skills Action Resource Remedial action Time frame
Technical
skills
It is essential
for individual
to work on
computers
and upgrade
their
technical
knowledge.
Training
session will
be conducted
for imparting
this skills
Gaining knowledge
through technical
studies, attending
classes conducted
for training in
technical assistance.
The action will be
taken within 4
months
5-6 weak
Communicati
on Skill
Effective
communicati
on is the key
to successful
organisation
and thus
important to
have efficient
communicati
on skills.
This can be
learned
through self-
Conference and
group discussion
will be conducted to
motivate employees.
Through self-
assessment and
practices.
The remedial action
will be taken within
2 months
6 weaks
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practice,
facilitating
interaction
with other
employees.
Leadership
skills
The
leadership
skills are
required for
completing
work on
time. One
main
characteristic
of leader is to
motivate and
complete the
work on time
with much
efficiency.
Analysing the
presentations made
by leaders. The
motivation will be
attained and
negatives will be
vanished.
The time of 3
months will be
taken.
4-5 weaks
Analyse the differences between organisational and individual learning, training and
development.
The term Organisational and Individual learning are broadly used in today corporate
world but they differ in the meaning, nature and scope.
Basis Organisational learning Individual learning
Meaning The term organisational
learning refers to concept in
Individual learning is the
process of building knowledge
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which leaders and managers
give priority to learning as
integral to the practice of
organisation (Cummings and
Worley, 2014).
through individual reflection
and re-elaboration of
individual knowledge and
experience in light of
interaction with others and the
environment.
Nature It includes process of creating,
retaining and transferring
knowledge within
organisation. Whirlpool uses
the concept of Organisational
learning to motivate
employees through
constructive debates and
discussion about issues faced
by company.
The process of Individual
learning depends upon
Individual person and its
ability to learn. Employees
within NAR division learns
through challenging one
another and build a skilled of
effective listening mechanism.
Scope The scope of organisational
learning is wider than
Individual, as it is concerned
to the whole company.
Whirlpool implementing of
organisational learning helps
each individual within
company.
It has limited scope as it is
concerned with Individual
person. Staff members of NAR
regions has made individual
commitment to align their
individual behaviour (Erez and
et.al., 2013).
Importance It is required for working of an
organisation and is essential
for firm to integrate it.
Building of Organisational
learning concept has helped
North America Region to
Individual learning is more
essential to organisation as
skilled employee help in
achieving set target more
effectively. It can be seen in
the case of Whirlpool where
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improve performance and meet
their challenges.
employee decided to bring
changes in attitude and
behaviour which in turns bring
better result to company.
Training and development are essential for the growth of employees and organisation as
whole. The difference between training and development is as follows:
Basis Training Development
Meaning The action of teaching a
person a particular skill or type
of behaviour (Jiang, Lepak,
Hu, and Baer, 2012).
The term development refers
to providing opportunity to
individual person to enhance
their abilities, skills and
general knowledge which will
promote their overall growth.
Term Training is imparted for Short
time period like to train
employees on how to operate
the new machinery. In the
above case, employees of NA
region imparted training on
how to effectively fulfil goal
of Whirlpool
Development is concerned
with a life time process where
person is trained with certain
skills that will be useful in
future. Staff member of
Whirlpool learns to coordinate
and build effective learning
skill which will promote their
overall development.
Purpose This is done to improve the
work performance or
capabilities of employees.
Trained employees of
Whirlpool help company to
perform better during a critical
situation.
It is done to prepare
individuals for future
challenges.
Implementing of HPT process
by company helped to enhance
team ability to deliver
exceptional results (Jiang and
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et.al., 2012).
Individual/group Training is delivered to
particular group of people. For
instance; seminars, classes,
and workshops.
In the above case, company
uses High Performance Work
practice to instigate employees
to achieved their target and
increase sales (Jenter and
Kanaan, 2015).
It focusses on personalised
experience and it is related to
individual person.
The use of HPW motivates
employees to align their
individual behaviour and make
changes within their attitude to
achieve success.
Organisational Learning (OL) theory is provided by Chris Argrys and Donald Schon. Te
theory states that organisation learning is termed as product of firm enquiry. It means that when
result differs from actual one, group or individual will unite to study the problem and resolve
inconsistency in a better way. In such process, individual will get into interaction with other
members and learning will take place.
The application of theory in Whirlpool can be analysed that when problems are arrived
by company, an enquiry is made with management which then implements team for carrying out
the root cause behind problems or deviations. Thus, results are attained in a better way and also
interaction between team members leads to attain organisation learning.
Importance of continuous learning and professional development for sustainable business
performance.
Continuous learning is essential for the growth of individual, it involves the process of
learning through events and experience. The process of continuous learning of an individual
would entail a behaviour and change in it perception. Continuous learning within team refers to
acquire or sharing of new knowledge and information by any member then process of team
learning take place.
Continuous Professional Development is defined as maintaining and improving of one’s
knowledge , skills and competencies to carry out a given profession more effectively. To
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compete and sustain in the dynamic business world it is essential for the individual to impart
continuous learning. Importance of continuous learning can be evaluating through performance
of employees of North American Region of Whirlpool. Continuous learning has helped
Whirlpool in many ways which are as follows:
 Continuous learning enables Whirlpool to develop new skills and plans accordingly to the
current market needs and situation (Gray, and et.al., 2013).
 Changes within a macro environment factors like political, economic, social and legal,
etc. employees of company need to address Continuous learning in relation to know
changes within market situation, current needs and demands of consumers, etc. Staff
member of Whirlpool uses this process to understand current situation prevailing in an
industry and took steps to overcome them.
 It enhances the knowledge of employees in the field of technology and assist them on
how to implement effective technology within organisation. Whirlpool is an electronic
company and deliver products like Washing machines and refrigerator, etc. which help
employees to develop and have knowledge of current technology.
 Continuous learning help in improving performance of current employees and eases the
process of training as employees are well aware.
 This process is both cost efficient and time saving, as it helps in reducing employee
turnover and further training of new employees. Further, if staff member of Whirlpool is
engaged in continuous learning then they will not be required to guide by senior
profession on how to carry out there job.
 Whirlpool operates in dynamic environment that keeps on changing from time to time.
This creates more importance of Continuous learning by employees in order to be well
aware of consumer taste and preferences, current market trends and changing structure of
industry in which firmoperate (Hendry, 2012).
 Continuous learning ensures that information possess by company is up to date and
relevant for applying in formulating market strategies and policies. Further, this will help
Whirlpool to keep pace with ongoing market changes.
 The process of Continuous learning helps company to build up a better public relation
with their different stakeholders. As, whirlpool is well aware of the current needs and
demands of consumers and business entity will make products accordingly.
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 Continuous learning helps in delivering meaningful contribution to team and motivate
employees to make workplace more effective.
Honey and Mumford Theory
The style of learning was developed by Honey and Mumford and has various styles. Four
styles are provided which are listed below-
Activist-
They are the persons who learn by doing as they have an open-minded learning approach
in them and learn with experiences quite effectively.
Theorist-
The persons under these likes to go through theory which provide actions. Models,
concepts and facts are gathered by them to learn with much logic.
Pragmatist-
They put their ideas and seek how to they can put learning into real world. Moreover,
they try out new ideas and do experiments also for seeking in real world.
Reflector-
The people learn by observing things and have much preference for watching from
sidelines. Thus, they stand back and view experiences and then reach towards conclusion.
In this regard, it can be analysed that with the help of Honey and Mumford Theory, a
person can learn various things and put their new ideas on numerous and use them into the actual
world. It can help them in improving their professional skills.
Kolbs learning theory:
The kolbs learning theory provides an effective way through which a person can improve
its knowledge. It contains 5 elements namely; concrete experience, Reflective observation,
abstraction and conceptualisation and active experimentation. As per this theory, the learner
should learn and acquire new concepts and should start using them in various situations. It would
help in learning new things with experience. Further, by analysing the experience, Annie can
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develop her own plans for the purpose of using the concepts on different flexible situations more
effectively.
Importance of HPW in contributes towards employee engagement and competitive advantage.
High performance work practice refers to set of management practices which is used for
increasing the productivity and profit for organisation. It creates and build an environment where
employees have greater contribution, involvement and responsibility. These tactics when applied
systematically and fairly throughout the organisation over time period helps in increasing
employee engagement, building customer trust, etc.(Goetsch and Davis, 2014)The outcomes of
High performance Work Practice are as follows: It helps in increasing productivity, support high
performance work culture within an organisation and contributes in garnering profits. Some
HPW techniques are as follows:
 Using psychometric and validated employee selection tools.
 Employee suggestion and Innovation programs
 Employee reward and award programmes.
 Structured team briefings and debriefings at every level within an organisation.
Employees are the important assets of an organisation and they contribute in achieving
goals and objectives of company. In order to be successful, company needs to build the
environment that fulfils the needs of each individual within business and this can be achieved
through High Performance Work Techniques.
HPW helps in followings ways to increase and motivate employee engagement:
 Conveying mission and Vision: High performance work technique help in delivering the
goals, mission and vision to employees. It helps in communicating the scope and
clarifying their in supporting that purpose. In the above case, staff members of NA region
have shared their goals and worked as a team to achieve desired targets.
 Employee involvement in decision making: HPW practice supports employees’ ability to
influence the decision through mechanism such as process project teams; group
discussion, management meetings or through suggestion system. North American Region
of Whirlpool has developed special off-site meetings for employees to address critical
issues. Team of NAR has conduct an appropriate forum for constructive debate and
discussion about issues facing by Whirlpool.
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 Information sharing: The implementation of HPW in the organisation helps in sharing
information on organisational performance and other data that could affect jobs is
communicated to employees. This help in building a loyal work environment and
encourage employee engagement. Whirlpool team has decided to eliminate “End Run”
communication with their president and focused on sharing information and resolving the
urgent operational issues affecting the business. Meetings were conducted more with
employees rather than board members and it includes even the lower staff members
(George, Haas, and Pentland, 2014).
Enable Competitive advantage:
HPWT has become highly important as a source of competitive advantage in today
competitive scenario. Competitive advantage refers to factors that help company to gain power
over other firms within an industry. High performance work practice help firm to recruit
qualified and potential employees within the organisation. Skilled and competent employees help
in achieving desired objectives which leads firm to higher position than others.
Employees of North America Region strive hard to bring improvement in their
performance and increase their productivity which benefit company even in tough situation.
High performance work practice trained employees to develop a dedicated behaviour and works
toward the achieving company’s objectives. This help company to deliver more effective as
well as quality services to their consumers and meet demand in given time period. Further,
enthusiastic employees help company to gain a competitive advantage as Whirlpool address the
current market needs and fulfil it before their competitors (Gardner, Gino and Staats, 2012).
Approaches to performance management and contribution in High performance culture.
Performance management refers to the process through which managers and employees
work together and formulate plan to review an employee work objectives and overall
contribution to the organisation. It includes activities which ensure that goals and objectives of
firm are met in an efficient manner. Performance management helps in delivering successful
result in organisation by improving performance and delivering the capabilities of employees.
There are different approaches through which performance management can be applied in the
organisation to increase productivity of employees and build a high performance work culture in
the company:
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 Collaborative working: To enhance performance of employees’ company should build a
Collaborative work environment where goals, objectives and vision of firm is shared with
employees and management team. Applying of this approach within company will help
firm to be effective in working towards achieving of goals and target. It will help to build
an adaptive nature of company to easily adjust to changing environment and flexible
work culture (Gallo and et.al., 2014)
Whirlpool has applied a collaborative approach to improvised their employees
performance and create a better working culture. This lead to share working environment
where employees shared commitment to the vision and extraordinary goals. Further, they
encouraged by implementing High performance work technique and shared
accountability for results.
 Comparative Approach: In this approach employees are compared on the basis of their
performance and allot ranking accordingly. Employees are rank on basis of highest to
lowest performance depending on the task performed by them. Implementing of this
technique within firm help in motivating other employees to increase their productivity
and improve their performance. Staff members of North America Region has developed a
comparative approach where employees are encouraged to perform better than co-
partners. This in turn leads to excellent performance thus benefiting both employees as
well company at large. Further, employees are ranked according to their performance and
being rewarded which inspire other staff members to become best performer and get
encouraged.
Comparative approach helps in building high performance culture and committed
employees as staff members are being motivate to work harder through comparison
with their team members. Further, employees are rewarded for their performance which
contributes to high performance culture as monetary and non-monetary incentives
urge employees to work harder and achieve goals of company.
 Result oriented: This approach focus more over the result achieved through performance
of employees rather than what strategy is being implement for improving performance.
This approach helps in improving efficiency and effectiveness of employees in order to
achieve better productivity of all the resources including time (Estampe and et.al., 2013).
Further, result oriented approach helps in overcoming the resistance and obstacles in
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meeting desired objective. Employees whose performance are measured through result
oriented approach performs better, as they are concerned to get better result for which
they employ effective procedure. In Whirlpool, employees performance is measured by
using result oriented approach and thus, it help company to gain an effective result even
in a critical situation.
 Behavioural: In this approach employees performance is measured on the basis of their
behaviour. Itis the oldest method being applied in evaluating performance of employees.
This can be done through BARS or BOS technique. These techniques provide more
specific description of employees along with frequency with regard to employee
behaviour for an effective performance.
Whirlpool implement a behavioural approach to evaluate performance of their
employees. The outcome of this technique was motivated employees who are willing to
address the company goals more effectively.
Effective communication: The communication is formalised in a better manner and roles
are specified to employees. Thus, through allocated work and perfect communication,
work is accomplished and duplication of work is eradicated.
CONCLUSION
The report concludes about the factors that need to be considered when implementing
and evaluating continuous learning and its role in sustainable development. Further, report shows
importance of High Performance work practices and it contribution in employee engagement and
competitive advantage for Whirlpool employees.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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journal of human resource management. 24(2). pp.330-351.
Brewster, C. and Hegewisch, A. eds., 2017.Policy and Practice in European Human Resource
Management: The Price Waterhouse Cranfield Survey. Taylor & Francis.
Budhwar, P. S. and Debrah, Y. A. eds., 2013.Human resource management in developing
countries. Routledge.
Cummings, T. G. and Worley, C. G., 2014.Organization development and change. Cengage
learning.
Erez, M., and et.al., 2013. Going global: Developing management students' cultural intelligence
and global identity in culturally diverse virtual teams. Academy of Management
Learning & Education.12(3). pp.330-355.
Estampe, D. and et.al., 2013. A framework for analysing supply chain performance evaluation
models. International Journal of Production Economics. 142(2). pp.247-258.
Gallo, M. and et.al., 2014. Performance evaluation of the random replacement policy for
networks of caches. Performance Evaluation. 72. pp.16-36.
Gardner, H. K., Gino, F. and Staats, B. R., 2012. Dynamically integrating knowledge in teams:
Transforming resources into performance. Academy of Management Journal. 55(4).
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George, G., Haas, M. R. and Pentland, A., 2014. Big data and management. Academy of
Management Journal. 57(2). pp.321-326.
Goetsch, D. L. and Davis, S. B., 2014.Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Gray, C. M. and et.al., 2013. Football Fans in Training: the development and optimization of an
intervention delivered through professional sports clubs to help men lose weight, become
more active and adopt healthier eating habits. BMC public health. 13(1). pp.1.
Hendry, C., 2012.Human resource management. Routledge.
Jenter, D. and Kanaan, F., 2015. CEO turnover and relative performance evaluation. The Journal
of Finance. 70(5). pp.2155-2184.
Jiang, K. and et.al., 2012. How does human resource management influence organizational
outcomes? A meta-analytic investigation of mediating mechanisms. Academy of
management Journal. 55(6). pp.1264-1294.
Jiang, K., Lepak, D .P., Hu, J. and Baer, J.C., 2012. How does human resource management
influence organizational outcomes? A meta-analytic investigation of mediating
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Kehoe, R .R. and Wright, P. M., 2013. The impact of high-performance human resource
practices on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Journal of management. 39(2). pp.366-
391.
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