HRM Practices at Nissan Sunderland Plant: A Case Study Review

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HRM Case Study Review
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Table of Contents
Task-1.........................................................................................................................................3
Task-2.........................................................................................................................................8
Task-3.........................................................................................................................................9
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................11
Appendix..................................................................................................................................13
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Task-1
Introduction
This task is mainly about the basic purpose & functions of HRM to fulfil the business goals.
It also includes different methods to approach the critical analysis of strengths & weaknesses.
Case studies are also provided in this context. Here the consideration is mainly the case study
of the car manufacturing plant NISSAN located in Sunderland.
Q1. Define HRM and explain the purpose of HRM in an organisation.
Human Resource Management (HRM) is the strategic practise or approach for managing
the people in an organisation effectively to gain an overall competitive advantage. It can be
categorised under the inner strengths of a business firm. It is designed such to increase
employee efficiency & their performances up to a maximum level. (Jamali et al.,2015)
Q2. Identify and list from your reading about HRM, the various functions of HRM in
an organisation.
HRM gives the following functions in an organisation-
 Organising
 Training & Development
 Employee welfare
 Planning
 Performance appraisal
 Directing
 Controlling
 Personal research
 Maintenance
 Job priority
 Recruitment
 Labour relations
 Personal record
Q3. Select 2 from your above list and explain them in detail.
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Planning:
Planning is the main key before undertaking any task. Proper planning can give the best
way to the framework before a job is to be done. Research works like HRM help the
management to meet the current & future needs of an organisation. NISSAN is now
planning to manufacture electric cars which are very economic in global prospect.
Personal Research:
Researching is the most vital part of the HRM department. Every individual employee’s
research gives information about his or her job satisfaction, welfare activities & other
issues. All of these are very important in terms of organisational development.
Q4. Identify various approaches of recruitment and selection.
Recruitment:
 Internal-
Job posting
Promotion from within
Internal contacts
Referring
Advantage: Existing employees are already motivated to perform well, no requirement for
organising motivational lectures.
Disadvantage: It promotes narrow thinking.
 External-
Colleges & Universities
Vocational & High schools
Older employees
Self-employed workers
Competitors & other organisations
Advertisements
Employment agencies
Advantage: New ideas are created.
Disadvantage: It is time consuming & not at all economical.
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Selection:
 Employment test
 Interview
 References
 Medical & Fitness tests
Advantage: It can be carried out both by manually or electronically.
Disadvantage: Partiality may happen.
Q5. Select 2 approaches among each of recruitment and selection and explain them in
detail highlighting the strengths and weaknesses.
Recruitment:
 Promotions from within
Strength- No time & money investment
Weakness- No source for new ideas
 Referring
Strength- More reliable source
Weakness- Partiality may occur (Hale et al.,2016)
Selection:
 Interview
Strength- Difficult question can be skipped without facing
Weakness- May have a lack of uniformity
 Medical & Fitness tests
Strength- No chance of casualty issues
Weakness- May be ignorance of talent (Zehra et al.,2015)
Q6. You are to select an organisation and identify various HRM practices in that
organisation and list them.
NISSAN is considered here as the organisation whose various HRM practises are listed
below. Before that, it is important to state that it is a multinational automobile company
having business outlets almost everywhere in the world.
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 It has the flexible working hours adjusting to the employee’s comfort zone.
 A very strong telecommunication system is present through which a person can
connect to their customer needs. It also provides flexibility for the “work from home”
option to the employees for better connection to the international customers.
 They always maintain an interconnection between any two outlets within a certain
region. This feature provides them with a very strong customer connectivity. They
are also allowed to suggest any customer to their nearest outlet considering their
locations.
 Every employee is provided with his or her nearest job location after his or her
selection process is over.
Q7. Select more than one practice and explain the benefits for both the employer and
employee providing appropriate examples for each type within an organisational
context.
 The benefits of having good customer connectivity give a company always
profitable counts even in the off seasons. Even during peak seasons, this feature gives
special credits to the employees who are good at managing customers.
 Organizing several award functions and meetings regularly, say, yearly or half-
yearly gives a huge motivation to the employees to work with more efficiency. This
results in the overall effective growth of the company.
Q8. Now give details of how your selected practices will benefit your selected
organisation in terms of profit and productivity. Justify your answers with examples.
HRM deals with the managing practises of a company’s Human Resource (HR) department.
People engaging in any work pressure should have given refreshment to focus on their job.
National companies like NISSAN always organise cultural, sports or seasonal events after
certain intervals to give their employees a fare chance to find themselves spaces from the
workload.
Behavioural aspect is another big issue in making profitable productivity. For example,
NISSAN conducts several behavioural lecture awareness programmes to make their
employees especially fresher well trained to develop their behavioural skills with customers
as well as with other employees.
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Conclusion
After completing the task, it can be concluded that through the whole progress of the report,
the discussion about the strengths & weaknesses of a NISSAN is prepared supported with
relevant theories. This describes how it helps in recruiting, selecting and decision making of
the company. Taking a multinational company like NISSAN as an example gives an overall
outcome of HRM and its objectives along with managerial & functional purposes in a broader
view.
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Task-2
Q1. What are employee relations?
Employee relations means any means of any company’s efforts to manage the relationship
between employees & employers. If a company can manage to organise a good employee
relation program, that means the company is giving fair chances to each & individual to be
loyal enough to their job & to the company also.
Q2. In detail explain with examples its importance in HRM decision making.
 The healthy & happy working environment provided by employee relations
implements in decision making.
 If employees are motivated enough, there should not be any cat or dog fight in
between two. Also no dramatic decision making happens.
 After thoroughly researching the leadership qualities, decision making becomes much
easier (Veloso et al., 2015).
Q3. You are to identify and list various employment legislations that are key for an
organisation.
 Race relations act, 1976
 Sex discrimination act, 1975
 Disability discrimination act, 1995
 Equality act, 2006 & 2010
 Equal pay act, 1970
Q4. Explain how these will have an impact on HRM decision making. Discuss the pros
and cons of each of the above discussed legislations.
The discrimination acts in UK gives an easy idea for decision making for the HRM
department of all the companies having business outlets in the country. Under these
discrimination acts, NISSAN is bound to make a uniform payment for all the employees
irrespective of their age or sex or the current government. After all, the laws remain same for
everyone.
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Task-3
Q1. Select a business organisation and give an introduction.
Introduction on NISSAN is given here.
NISSAN is currently world’s one of the top selling automobile manufacturer. After its
collaboration with Renault, together they employed almost 1,30,000 employees in all their
combined outlets in the world. Hiroto Saikawa is the current President & Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) of the company. According to him, NISSAN is now launching modern
technologies to be updated in terms of their interior designing, marketing, manufacturing &
selling (careersatnissan.co.uk, 2019).
Q2. Identify two vacancies in your selected organisation.
Right now, NISSAN has vacancies in Sunderland in the posts of-
 Automobile engineer
 Car designer (Debnath, 2015).
Q3. Create job specification and person specification for your selected job vacancies.
Automobile engineer- Job specification: In Manufacturing unit Person specification: Bachelor or master degree in automobile engineering (Tamboto
and Pangemanan, 2019).
Car designer-
 Job specification: Interior & exterior designing with the most effective effort to
reduce the car size
 Person specification: At least Bachelor degree in automobile engineering & any
designing course under any government university (Quirós et al., 2015).
Q4. Mention what recruitment and selection methods will be appropriate for those
vacancies and support your justification using theory with appropriate referencing.
The recruitment & selection methods are given step by step-
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Francis Bond
e-mail:
Address: 32, Becker Street, London.
Educational Qualification:
Graduation- B.Tech in Automobile Engineering from Duke University
Special Courses- Java basic
Hobbies- Playing Football, Listening Music.
Automobile Engineer:
 Written test
 Technical round
 Personal interview
 Documentation
Car Designer:
 Communication screening
 Group discussion
 Technical interview
 Documentation (Zentner, 2016)
C.V.
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John Hastings
e-mail:
Address: 55, Llong Road, California.
Educational Qualification:
Graduation- M.Tech in automobile engineering from San fransisco
University
Special Course- Interior decoration from David James College
Hobbies- Playing Volleyball, watching Fictional Movies.
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Interview Questions:
For the post of automobile engineer-
Q1. Why did you choose automobile engineering?
Q2. Why have you applied this post?
Q3. How an automobile engineer is associated with the car manufacturing industry?
For the post of car designer-
Q1. Why have you done masters in automobile engineering?
Q2. How can you fit yourself in this post?
Q3. Why do you think you are going to be a part of our industrial unit?
Offer Letters
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