BP Case Study: HRM Practices Impacting Workforce Planning

This report provides an analysis of Human Resource Management (HRM) and workforce planning within British Petroleum (BP). It explores the purpose and roles of HRM in workforce planning, including advisory, operative, and managerial functions. The report assesses methods used by BP to acquire talent and skills, such as recruitment, training, and organizational culture. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of internal and external recruitment methods, as well as recruitment through agencies. An evaluation of the merits and demerits of different recruitment approaches used by BP is presented. Furthermore, the report outlines the benefits of various HRM practices within BP for both the employer and employees, including work design, employee relations, recruitment, training, performance management, and compensation. The study highlights how these practices contribute to the overall development and operational effectiveness of the company.

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Contents
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................2
LO1...................................................................................................................................................3
P1.................................................................................................................................................3
M1................................................................................................................................................5
P2.................................................................................................................................................6
M2................................................................................................................................................9
LO2.................................................................................................................................................10
P3...............................................................................................................................................10
P4...............................................................................................................................................12
M3..............................................................................................................................................13
LO3.................................................................................................................................................14
P5...............................................................................................................................................14
P6...............................................................................................................................................15
M4..............................................................................................................................................16
LO4.................................................................................................................................................17
P7...............................................................................................................................................17
M5..............................................................................................................................................22
CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................23
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................24
1

INTRODUCTION
Human resource management is related to effective management of employee relations in the
organization. It plays a crucial role in the development of the organization and also helps the
company to perform its daily operations effectively (Cascio, 2018). This assignment is focused
on human resource management in an organization and its context with workforce planning of
the company. It also focuses on different approaches to recruitment with their advantages and
disadvantages. This assignment also highlights the effectiveness of human resource
management in the organizational context and the internal and external factors that contribute
to its development in the company.
The company that studied in this assignment is British Petroleum (BP). BP is one of the top ten
companies in the UK in terms of revenues and turnover (BP,2018). It deals with the multi-nation
trade of oil and gas; the products that it offers are aviation fuels, motor fuels, and natural gas
and petroleum products (BP,2018). The company is more than hundred years old and the
company has patents over several petroleum products. The company has its headquarters in
London and listed in London stock exchange.
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LO1
P1
PURPOSE AND ROLES OF HRM, RELEVANT IN WORKFORCE PLANNING
Workforce planning is the method of planning the needs and requirement of the company with
the current work capacities of the company (Boxall and Purcell, 2011). It is the function of the
human resource management of the company and helps in proper scheduling and operation of
the work capital needs of the company. This workforce planning is significant for BP as it helps
the company to achieve the goals and objectives based on the objective of the company.
Workforce planning also plays a role in minimizing the entropy related to work allotment and
work management of BP (Bratton and Gold, 2017).
The functions of HRM-related to BP are as follows:
ADVISORY FUNCTION
The HRM at BP is responsible to analyses the gap and the scope of improvement in the
company; they do it by constant evaluation of the results of the HRM methods that they have
used (Vance and Paik, 2014). The HRM than find the best methods of improvement and then
suggests the board of directors of the company pot implement these changes for further
improvement.
OPERATIVE FUNCTIONS
The operative function of the company includes training and development, motivation,
maintenance and performance management of the company (Bratton and Gold, 2017). The
operative function is important because they help in supporting the daily track of the work in
BP. The operative function of HRM in BP also includes payroll and incentive compensation
record.
3

MANAGERIAL FUNCTION
The managerial functions of human resource department at the company are to plan and
organizing the daily activity at of the company. It also includes directing the employee and
management of the company about schedules and task of the company on daily, weekly and
mouthy basis.
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M1
ASSESSMENT OF METHODS THAT CAN PROVIDE APPROPRIATE TALENT AND SKILLS TO FULFILL
THE BUSINESS OBJECTIVE OF BP
The methods that performed by HRM at BP to provide appropriate talent and skills to the
company to fulfil the business objects are as follows:
RECRUITMENT
The HR at BP is recruiting the best talent in the oil and gas industry in engineering, marketing
and operation department (BP, 2018). This candidate helps the company to achieve its business
objective. The recruitment process at BP is designed to identify the best candidate and the
rewards and incentive policy of the company make the talented people at the company stand
by with it.
TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT
The training and development process at the company makes the candidate skilled
appropriately for the job, the different test and the process that is used in the company make
sure that the people are trained in the best possible manner. In addition to this, the HR team at
BP constantly upgrades the training process of the company.
ORGANISATION CULTURE
The HR at the company makes sure that the healthy and productive organisation culture
maintained at the company. This ensures that the employee shares their issues with the
management and find easy to perform their daily duties (Crane, 2017). Better organisation
culture also makes sure that the creative ideas shared in the company.
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P2
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF DIFFERENT METHODS TO RECRUITMENT IN BP
Recruitment is the process of calling the candidates for a job position, shortlisting the
candidates based on tests and interviews and then filling the position with the appropriate
candidates. The different methods of recruitment that used in BP are internal recruitment,
external recruitment and recruitment through an external agency.
INTERNAL RECRUITMENT
Internal recruitment is the process in which the vacant position in BP filled by recruitment of
existing employee in that position (Rees and Rumbles, 2010). This process is done by the
methods of promotion or shortlisting out of the employee those who have applied for the post.
The advantages of internal recruitment are as follows:
 It helps to save money and time of the company, as the internal employee is recruited at
the position (BP Careers, 2018)
 It acts as motivation for the existing employee as they can apply at various position in
the company
 It helps to achieve good productivity as the employee who has recruitment on the
position is familiar with the process and culture of the company
 In BP it helps in building trust within the employee and the company
The disadvantage of the internal recruitment process is as follows:
 It prevents better talent to enter in BP for the same position
 It leads to the disorder as one position in the company became vacant if the other
position in the company gets filled
 This process is exposed to completion and other internal limitations of BP
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EXTERNAL RECRUITMENT
External recruitment is the process in which the company attars candidate from outside of the
company to fill the vacant positions (Rees and Rumbles, 2010). External recruitment is
conducted through advertisement on job portals, newspapers and magazines about the job
post in the company. The advantages of external recruitment are as follows:
 It helps to identify potential employee from a wider pool of candidates
 External recruitment helps to improve diversification in BP by hiring an employee from
different backgrounds
 It improves healthy completion in the company, as the new employees come with new
skills and different experience
The disadvantage of external recruitment is as follows:
 External recruitment involves a lot of cost of the human resource department of the
company
 It can result in lower productivity as the new employee are not acquainted with the
working culture of the company
 The time required for the external recruitment is higher as time is spent in training and
hiring of candidates.
RECRUITMENT THROUGH AGENCY
The other method that used by BP HR department is the recruitment of candidate through an
external agency. In this process, the candidate hired through the recommendation of the third
party recruitment agency. The advantages of this method are:
 It helps to save a lot of time of the company that is involved in the publication of
advertisements and shortlisting of candidates
 It helps to save the cost of the company in a recruitment process
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The disadvantage of the process is as follows
 The recommended candidate from the recruitment agency is limited to the pool of
candidate that is registered with the company itself
 The cost is higher for the candidate as she/he has to pay for the agency fees.
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M2
EVALUATION OF MERITS AND DEMERITS OF DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO RECRUITMENT
The method that used in BP for recruitment is internal and external recruitment both, the
company has a job portal on which the job openings related to different positions displayed (BP
Careers, 2018). On this job portal, employee and outside candidates can log in and apply for the
job positions.
The internal recruitment in BP has helped the company to fulfil the requirements related to
leadership and management roles in the company (BP Careers, 2018. It has also helped the
employee of the company to stay motivated for the work. The internal recruitment method
that is followed in BP is only limited to the certain position (Taylor, 2014). The external
recruitment at BP conducted for filling the bulk opening in the company. This is done through
the job portal of the company itself and by posting the job opening advertisement on different
mediums. Use of internal recruitment in the company for filling the bulk opening helps the
company in cost saving.
Use of the mixture of the internal and external recruitment process in BP has helped the
company to save cost and reduce the time required to hire candidate (Taylor, 2014). It has also
offered the company with the benefits of both the recruitment methods.
9

LO2
P3
BENEFITS OF DIFFERENT HRM PRACTICES WITHIN BP FOR BOTH THE EMPLOYER AND
EMPLOYEE
HRM in BP have a variety of functions and roles, as the company is a multinational company,
human resource management play a very important role in the development and daily
operations of the company (Brewster, 2017). The different HRM practices are training and
development, employee relation, performance management, the design of work, recruitment
and compensation.
 Design of Work
The HRM is responsible in BP to design the work process and management of the
different roles related to management and engineering in the company (Alfes et al.,
2013). The HRM takes care that the work design is suitable for both employee and
employer. Better work design makes it easeful for the employee of BP to do the work
with minimum efforts and it helps the company by improving the overall productivity of
the company.
 Employee Relation
The human resource at BP is responsible for the management of employee relations and
solves the issue that they are facing. This helps to build better working environment in
the company and also helps the company to understand the issue related to work and
improve them.
 Recruitment and selection
This is one the most important task of the human resource manager, as it helps the
company to get the best talent to do the work in the company. This process helps them
to grow and develop the employment (Alfes et al., 2013). However, the process of
internal recruitment and promotions the employee of BP benefited by this practice as
they get a chance of growth in career.
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 Training and development
Training and development help the employee of the company to get the hands-on
practice of the job. This also helps the new employee to know the working culture of BP
and help them to get along with the job. Training is a very important part of human
resource management. It helps the company, as the new employee is productive form
the job and does minimum mistakes. It also helps the company to build a better brand
image.
 Performance management
The human resource of the company makes a daily work performance chat in the
company. This chart is different for different roles in the company. This helps the human
resource manager at BP to measure the performance of the employee. It also helps the
company to identify the appropriate talent and skilled employee for promotion and
higher pays (Alfes et al., 2013). This method is also helpful for the employee as it helps
them to benchmark their performance with the accepted performance of the company.
 Payroll and compensation
The human resource manager at BP is responsible for making payments related to salary
and compensation to the employee of BP. The compensation includes payment for
travel, stay or other expense that the employee has made for the job that related to the
company (Alfes et al., 2013). It helps the employee to get the payment for their work in
time and it helps BP to improve the employee satisfaction. Proper payroll management
in the company is very important in terms of brand image and employee retention in BP.
This helps the company to grow steadily and help the company to overcome challenges.
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