Human Resource Management Functions and Activities

This solved assignment delves into the core functions and activities of Human Resource Management (HRM). It examines the various roles played by HRM, including recruitment, training, performance management, compensation and benefits, employee relations, and legal compliance. The assignment utilizes relevant examples and theoretical frameworks to illustrate the importance of effective HRM practices in achieving organizational success.

Human resource management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1. Purpose and functions of HRM applicable to workforce planning..................................1
P2. Various strengths and weaknesses of approaches for recruitment and selections...........3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
P3 Different HRM practices for both employees and employer within a organisation.........5
P4 Evaluation the effectiveness of HRM practices for raising organisational profits...........6
Task 3...............................................................................................................................................7
P5 Importance of employees relations in respect to influence HRM decision-making.........7
P6 Key elements of employment legislation and impact on HRM decision-making.............8
Task 4...............................................................................................................................................9
P7 Application of HRM practices in a work related context..................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Human resource management (HRM) is defined as a formal system which includes the
management of people within an organisation. HR manager has responsibility to perform various
activities such as planning, staffing, providing employee’s compensation and benefits as well as
designing of work. Its main objective is to acquire, develop and retain people for business
organisation. This report is based on Aldi which is one of the world's leading grocery retailer
organisations and it has more than 7,000 stores across 70 countries. It’s headquartering is in
Germany. Human resource management plays a vital role in maximising the productivity within
firm. They focus on effective utilisation of manpower for achieving particular goals and
objectives. This assignment will define various purposes and functions of HRM which are
applicable to workforce planning. There are some strengths or weaknesses of recruitment and
selection process discuss in this. Different HRM practices describe for the benefits of both
employer and employee. It will analyse importance of employee relation that influence HRM
decision-making and also employment legislation which can affect on decisions. Applications of
HRM practices also describe in this report.
TASK 1
P1. Purpose and functions of HRM applicable to workforce planning
HR management includes various functions within the firm as they focus on the process
of recruitment and selection and provide some direction to guidelines to employees for the
purpose of achieving company's goals. These purposes and functions concerned with number of
activities regarding the staff members such as hiring, compensation, performance development,
provide motivation and training, their safety as well as wellness, benefits etc. HR management
enables the overall workforce of the company that contribute efficiently and effectively towards
organisational goals and outcomes.
Here are some objectives of human resource management that help in better coordination
among people within Aldi to achieve set targets.
 HRM focuses on individuals and review them as an asset as well as internal customers
and perform for creating job satisfaction in effectively and efficiently.
 They concentrate on achieving competitive advantages through internal sources. That is
why employees are to be reviewed as an asset for an organisation.
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 This department generally communicates to the employees for adopting the best culture
and effective structure according to people's needs within organisation such as union and
re-engineering.
 HR always try to attract more talented person and right the hire employees that facilitate
for best performance so they lead employment life cycle.
Apart from these, there are various functions of HRM in Aldi which manager needs to
perform. These are given as below:-
Recruitment: This is the major task of human resource manager to recruit and select the
best candidate from various applicants for fulfilling job requirements. In this required a lot of
attentions as well as resources for drawing, employing and holding the prospective employees.
Some processes are included in this like developing the job description, publishing a post,
sourcing of candidates, interviewing round, making negotiation on salary and then offering the
job.
Training and development: It is the main responsibility of HR department to provide
training to both people new hire and existing with the organisation and there are various firm
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Illustration 1: functions of human resource management
source: Function and activities of human resource management
2015

who organise such programmes to improve the performance of workers towards company
success, Aldi is also consider this session for increasing work productivity. Fresher training is
helpful in making employee up to date in their respective field which required by the firm. So it
helps in making understand to all employees regarding the process and support to make ease foe
them in getting their job. During training and development programs, results or outcomes are
monitored and measured to find out the training need analysis for enhancing their skills and
knowledge.
Professional development: It is the most important function of human resources as it
helps in providing opportunity for growth, education and management training for company's
employees. Aldi undertakes some sponsor for their employees regarding seminars, trade shows
and corporate social responsibilities.
Compensation and benefits: Company provides various benefits to the employees for
motivating them to achieve particular goals and objectives such as:
 Flexibility in working hour
 Vacations extended
 Dental or medical insurance
 Leaves for maternal and paternal Education reimbursement for children
Performance appraisal: HR department evaluates the performance of an organisation as
it is a supportive function in the human resource which helps in ensuring about employee that
they have hired for achieving company's goals and objectives.
P2. Various strengths and weaknesses of approaches for recruitment and selections
Recruitment is defined as the process for finding and hiring the most suitable or qualified
candidates for a job opening on time and cost effective manner. It also known as the process of
searching talented employees and attract them by stimulating and encouraging to apply for job in
the company. There are two methods of recruitment as internal and external which have
strengths and weaknesses as well.
Internal process
It can be defined the employment opportunity which is to be filled from outside an
organisation. Various organisation consider internal recruitment process rather than external.
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They offer the chance for changing the positions within organisation by giving the notice to their
existing employees about current vacancies.
Strengths of internal recruitment:
 Managers can make quick decisions for recruiting any person through direct
appointment and promotion.
 This process can be done by transferring the existing employees from one to another
department. It is called as job rotation programme.
 It helps in saving the cost of training and development programmes.
 It reduces the recruitment cost.
 It helps in providing motivation and promoting them for another post.
 It reduces the time for induction program.
Weaknesses:
 Size of prospective applicants can be reduced in significantly.
 It does not brings any new skills or ideas.
 It reduced broad possibilities of innovative things.
External recruitment
This process helps in bring new face, bloods and fresh talented person within the firm so
that Aldi can get new innovative ideas from new people and also have many benefits. Candidates
come from outside of business.
Strengths of External recruitment:
 Attracts new skilled or qualified person with in the organisation
 Many options are there to find or select best suitable candidates from various applicants
 company can adopt new ideas and innovative things for getting success as well as to
achieve goals and objectives.
Weaknesses:
 It is long process as it consumes lost of times and energy from the HRM functions for
handling all job candidates in the process of selections.
 It is more expensive process due to requirements of advertisement and interviews for
finding best possible candidates (.CHUANG and Liao, 2010). It also take time for
searching and screening.
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 Sometimes this recruitment process is not effective to reveal the suitable candidates
because they may fake as well as lie to make them best for the job.
SELECTIONS:
It consider the process in which include actions or fact for choosing carefully to someone
as well as person who being the best or most suitable. HR manager decide the selections of
candidates
Strengths of selections process:
 Selections methods helps in selecting more prospective employees for the organisation
development
 It support in finding the individual capacities according to their skills and knowledge. Company can ensure about the candidate's background information
Weaknesses:
 It can be costly because it involved various methods and procedure in this process.
 It can take more time during long process of selections
TASK 2
P3 Different HRM practices for both employees and employer within a organisation
In the department of human resource includes various practices which is used by the
managers as well as HR workers for managing the people within the Aldi firm. There are several
practices involved such as performance management, hiring and firing, training and
development, payroll systems and employee benefits administration (Daley, 2012). Without
HRM practices, an organisation can not manage the employees due to lack of coordination so it
is cumbersome to manage personnel that result the employees feels dissatisfactions and want to
work in another organisation.
There are some benefits of HRM practices for employer-
Promoting positive behaviour: For the successful organisation, it is requires to create
positive working environment that helps in achieving particular goals and objective. These
practices support in providing favourable benefits to the employees and keep them happy as well
a productive. It helps in reinforcing and rewards to desired employee's behaviours.
Developing employees: The practices of HRM always encourage to employees and
satisfy them for effective contribution towards organisational intellectual property or assets. It is
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beneficial for achieving competitive advantages through enhancing worker's knowledge and
skills. So it is required to improve employees performance for the development of an
organisation.
Create a flexible workplace: An effective HRM practices support in diversion of
workplaces according to flexibility of employer (Fulton, 2011). Every organisation wants to
retain more employees for increasing work productivity so they provide them flexible
environment including work assignment, schedules, compositions of workforce or team, areas
and locations, accountability etc.
benefits for employee:-
Motivation: HR managers must focus on motivations as they have to perform their duty
to motivate employees for effective working environment so that performance can be increase.
Therefore, workers tend for hiring or promoting for managing entire performance and operations
in effective manner. Successful managers always try to implement all practices which helps in
impacting positively on the company.
Performance appraisal: It is another benefit for the employees as this is opportunity for
workers to increase their performance in effective manner. Manager ensure about employees
performance and analyse training needs so that they organise such programmes as well as
learning session after measure their level of capacities for performing any task and objectives.
Aldi company consider the measurement of performance for achieving particular goals and
targets.
P4 Evaluation the effectiveness of HRM practices for raising organisational profits
Human resource management practices has been effective for every organisation as it
helps in achieving organisational targets and objectives and they can increase their profits as well
as productivity (Fulton, 2011). These practices support in gaining huge profits through utilisation
of available resources and managing entire workforce. There are some perspective which helps
in developing productivity such as:
Innovative and high performing workers: HRM department always focus on creative or
innovative environment by motivating employees to perform better so that they will perform in
effective to achieve their goals and objectives and of course it helps the company to increase the
productivity.
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Direction setting and effective execution: It is the responsibility of managers and leaders
as they play important role in setting the direction, objectives, purpose, priorities, goals and
workforce. HRM practices support in recruiting appropriate managers and employees for the
right place so that they can work according to their skills and knowledge as well as perform any
tasks in effective manner.
Team and individual goals with proper communication: It is another benefit of HRM
practices that to set goals of individual and team goals for achieving the. Aldi company also
consider to set and attain the common goals and objectives (Glendon and Clarke, 2016).
Communication process is helpful in maintaining relations among employees so HRM provide
the effective mode of information transformation.
Effective rewards drive performance: Managers generally motivates to employees by
providing monetary benefits as this rewards are tied direct with performance and each specific
objectives. Workers reinforce as well as perform well after getting monetary rewards.
Sharing and collaboration: Aldi retailer company improve their profits and productivity
by the collaborating with outside the company so they willingly share the best ideas as well as
tools of collaboration. HRM is the best management aspects which helps the company to grow
and develop formal methods for generate the way of the collaboration and sharing process.
Update employees skills to maintain the productivity: This world is full of competitions.
So Aldi firm created a massive pace of several changes in order to cope with global competitors
which means, it needs present skills set as well as it continually updates.
Building good brand image: This is the main purpose of every organisation to build
strong market image among competitors so HRM practices support to make effective goodwill
and attract many new or fresh talented people by convincing them to come and join the
organisation (McKenna, 2016). Company can grow through its reputation which must be good.
Task 3
P5 Importance of employees relations in respect to influence HRM decision-making
Every and each individual at Aldi company share their ideas, knowledge and innovative
thoughts in a particular relationship with entire team workforce. In HRM of every organisation, it
is must to maintain the relation among employees for achieving particular task and objective or
meet desired outcomes. Company have to do this because human are not machine like press a
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particular switch and they start to work so they are required to talk and discuss regarding making
any decisions. Effective environment should be there so that employees will feel motivated that
cannot be measure in monetary value. For the Aldi firm, it is essential as employees are
comfortable with each other and cooperate with team members towards common goals or targets.
Work diversification: It can support to perform all task in timely and easily because work
can be make easy if it is shared among all workers. Healthy relations among team members
support in making work ease and effective as well as reduce the workloads on any particular
person by the sharing with another employees (Guest, 2011). It increase the chances of
productivity and profitability. In other words, it is impossible for individual to do everything on
his or her own so entire work musty be divided among all workers of the team for accomplishing
the desired task with in limited time period. In Aldi company, they believe in making good
relations with all team members so that they will have the ability for assisting them in making
task easy.
Discourage conflicts among workers: For the successful organisation, there must be a
healthy relations among workers as it support in reducing the chances of raising any conflicts as
well as any disputes between colleagues and fight among workers. It will support in maintaining
relations with faith or trust among each other as it can assist the performance to fulfil the
particular goals and objectives (Knowles and Holton, 2014). They remove the thinking of
competitions by considering their fellow workers as their colleagues not as the competitors at
workplace. So it will support in increasing effective productivity so that HRM can make
favourable decisions regarding the company.
Loyalty of the employee: Aldi company believes in pleasant and interactive work
environment for encouraging employees to perform better and make them loyal. Workers will
feel more motivated to complete their work which is assigned in a appropriate manner. They try
to provide and put more efforts which helps in leading greater productivity and return to the
organisation. It also will support in reducing employees turnover as well as reducing the cost of
recruiting new candidates as soon as possible.
Ensuring equality by communicating effectively: Effective communication is must be
required in an organisation as this helps in ensuring regarding employees that there are no any
discriminations across the company in perspective. Employees feel more motivated to perform
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their task and put efforts for attaining desired goals which set by company's management. So it
can be said that proper communication is require to make effective decisions on time.
P6 Key elements of employment legislation and impact on HRM decision-making
Every organisation consider employment legislation for recruiting and selecting any
person within the organisation. Aldi company also focus on maintaining these legislation while
recruiting the new employees and they make decisions for running organisation in appropriate
manner so there are some critical impacts on the HRM for decision making of the company.
There are some major legislation of employment and these are as follows:
Defining positions: In this describe that at the time of recruitment process, company has
to clear employee's position within an organisation (Marchington, 2016). It also helps in
explaining that what will be their rights as well as responsibilities regarding the work and in
respect to HR management decisions making.
Proper compensation: It is must be clear with he employees as at the time of recruitment
company have to define their compensation. It must ensure regarding their minimum wages and
lengths as well as working hours.
Ensuring quality: They must be ensure about employees quality and equality in every
perspective before appointing them. There should be equality regarding wages, sex, working
hour, health care services and many other facilities perspective. Employee have rights to ask
about legislative helps in the case of discriminations.
Time of work: In this, employees must be aware regarding their time within the
organisation as it means the daily as well as weakly working hour for performing particular tasks
and objectives (Meredith, 2011). It is depends on the workers that they may perform overtime
duties according to their capacities but they have to get proper compensation for their work.
Company have to allow them leave on any specific occasions. So company can make effective
decisions towards organisation.
Therefore, this legislation or any legal actions must be ensured by the Aldi retailer
company while recruiting and selecting suitable candidates for increasing work productivity and
achieve its predetermined goals and objectives. This helps in contributing company's
development and it has the positive impact on the human resource management in making
decisions for the successful organisation.
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Task 4
P7 Application of HRM practices in a work related context
HR management perform various roles and responsibilities regarding the functions or
activities for organisational goals and objectives. It support in managing effective workforce and
maintain the relations between employee and employer within the firm. There are several
management activities involved in this such as recruitment, selections, directing, staffing and
performance appraisal etc. so it enable the process of recruiting persons for the purpose fulfilling
the empty job position within the Aldi firm.
There are formate of job description which Aldi company can use so it may be like as the
following:
Job Title:- HR executive
Job purpose:- manage entire team or workforce within the Aldi firm. He must be able to
communicate company's goals and objectives, policies, practices as well as proceed to all these
in a team. Quality of providing motivations for improving employees performance (Purce, 2014).
He requires to support or helps to the organisation in recruiting, hiring, training and improving
the employees for keeping them up to date for better performance. There should be link between
management and team members for assessment of performances.
Job duties:-
 Support to the managers and be the mangers in the case of manager absent.
 Keep and maintain proper records for managing tasks or work.
 He must be helpful in management of hiring and training for the new employees.
 Communications process must be follow with management and other team workers.
 Helps in identifying various strategies for promoting team members towards
organisational goals and objectives.
 Conduct meeting for discussing the roles and responsibilities to maintain the overall
work performance (Scullion and Collings, 2011).
 Supply the quality of services to the customers.
 He must be support in generating and sharing the performance report for finding better
answers of defining questions of the team members.
 Solve the many problems or issues of the all workers.
Skills and qualifications:-
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 Previous experiences are required on the HR executive.
 He should have knowledge about company's products and legislation as well as various
policies.
 Quality and skills for motivating employees.
 Good leadership skills
 Managerial skills
 He must be good in written and oral communication as well as these skills are required
 Building good relationship among employees and manage workforce.
 Self motivations
 self confidence
 attractive personality
Person specification for effective HR executives in Aldi firm which may be as follows
knowledge of:-
 An understanding the company's principle, practices and legislative perspective.
 An insight to work within the team or group
 Know about the process of recruitment and selections
 Knowledge regarding organisation's current and desired level of performance.
Required experience:-
 Experience regarding effective recruitment of skilled employees.
 Know about the hiring and training people.
 Managing company's human resource policies in sufficient manner.
Academic requirements:-
 He must have relevant and recognized qualification on this regards and also bright
academic qualifications.
 Degree of managing and training to employees which will be preferable.
So there are some key elements which must be included in the job description (Chelladurai and
Kerwin, 2017). It describe the person's quality and specification for a particular job or task in
Aldi company that will take into account of legislation and company's policies.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that human resource management is a
essential process or activity that helps in arranging the employees in an organizations. In this
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report functions of HRM along their practices are included. Other side strengths and weakness of
the process of recruitment and selection are brighten up with Explanation of employment
legislations in effective manner. HRM helps in raising company's productivity and profits. There
are several impacts on HRM practices on the decision-making, employment relations etc. This
helps to Aldi company in achieving particular task and objective and strategic goals.
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REFERENCES
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psychology. 63(1). pp.153-196.
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Marchington, M. and et.al., 2016. Human resource management at work. Kogan Page
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Meredith Belbin, R., 2011. Management teams: Why they succeed or fail. Human Resource
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Scullion, H. and Collings, D., 2011. Global talent management. Routledge.
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