Human Resource Management Practices and Effectiveness Report

This report provides a comprehensive overview of Human Resource Management (HRM) functions, practices, and their effectiveness within an organization, using British Telecom (BT) as a case study. It begins by outlining the core functions of HRM, including recruitment, selection, orientation, employee relations, and training and development, and their applicability in workforce planning. The report then analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of various hiring approaches, such as internal and external recruitment. It delves into different HRM practices, including employee performance assessment, compensation, and benefits, and discusses their benefits for both employers and employees. The significance of managing workforce relationships and the impact of key labor laws on HRM decision-making are also examined. Finally, the report assesses the effectiveness of HRM practices in achieving organizational goals and objectives, highlighting the importance of a dedicated and loyal workforce in ensuring a firm's success in a competitive market.

Human Resource Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1 HRM: Functions and Applicability ..................................................................................1
P2 Advantaged and disadvantages of various approaches of hiring.....................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
P3 Various HRM practices and their benefits........................................................................5
P4 Effectiveness of HRM practices........................................................................................6
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................7
P5 Significance of managing workforce relationship............................................................7
P6 Key Labour Laws and their effect on HRM decision making.........................................8
P7 Human Resource Management practices in firm and its application...............................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
HRM forms the basic functional for any organization which serves as a support for firm's
growth and success in the long run. It is a critical function as it compiles some most important
and critical issues and activities related to compensation, safety, employee training,
organizational development, performance management and so on. With the increased
competitiveness in the market scenario HRM has shifted its focus from merely achieving
objectives within specific time to strategic utilization of its workforce and to measure the impact
of employee benefit schemes on the functioning of the business. The reason for this movement is
that in the recent times more and more companies are becoming customer centric, adaptive and
quick in shifting directions of its operations and product and service strategies as per customers
requirements (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014).
British Telecommunication is a multinational telecommunicate company that was
founded in 1969, with its headquarter base in London,UK. It a global service division BT is
providing services to corporate and government customers worldwide.
This assignment will focus on some of the most important functions of HRM explaining
about its applicability in workforce planning along with strengthen and weakness of different
approaches. Moreover it will also give a brief about the significance of employer - employee
relations and various legislations laid down by government for the benefit of employees.
TASK 1
P1 HRM: Functions and Applicability
BT is world's top public companies of UK provides various telecom services such as
mobile , broadband services, fixed lines through a number of telephone exchanges, trunk
networks and local loop that are managed and operated by the company itself. To carry out all its
operations with perfect synergy and efficiency BT group has a large, resourceful and dedicate
workforce whose proper management and coordination is of prime concern and priority of the
firm. It is where the significance of HRM comes into existence. Hrm is the key function which
serves as catalyst in enhancing the productivity and performance level of both – the employee
and of enterprise (Boxall and Purcell, 2011). By taking care of some of the most vital functions
like hiring, performance and change management, compensation and benefits Hrm ensures that
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the firm objectives are been achieved that to with full efficiency, maximum productivity and
gaining customer satisfaction. Out of many functions undertaken, most prominent ones are
mentioned as follows :
 Recruiting and selecting the appropriate employee : This forms the first and foremost
business functions from where it initiates operations. It involves activities like attracting
individuals to apply for a job vacancy, conduct interviews and then selecting the most
appropriate candidate according to job position. BT being a customer oriented company
puts special efforts while hiring any individual. Proper job analysis and job specification
is prepared so as to match the specifications, capabilities, knowledge and skills of the
candidate to be hired with that of a particular job profile. By taking into consideration
both internal and external sources to recruit BT ensures that they have a right person, at
right job, at right time (Daley, 2012).
 Orientation: Orientation is an important event conducted by every organization for its
new joiner. It is organized to make an employee familiar with the work culture, polices
and procedures of firm along with a brief about their expected roles and responsibilities
in that company. It makes it easy for employees to adjust in new working environment
and clarifies the tasks and duties to be performed in their job.
 Managing employee relations: Employees are considered as the cornerstones of any
firm as it is by utilizing their talent, skills , knowledge and capabilities an organization
converts its resource into maximum output giving higher returns. Hrm serves as an
connecting tool for bridging gaps between employer and its employees. Through
formulating polices and procedures for employee benefit and conducting various team
building activities HRM ensures to built mutual trust and coordination among its
workforce as well as between management and its people.
 Training and Development- Training and development is an dispensable function
which directly contribute in increasing work efficiency an productivity of an individual.
The main objective of T & D is to enhance and improve the skills and knowledge of an
employee by through various learning styles and techniques. It benefits firm in building
up the morale and confidence of its employee making them proficient and confident
enough to take up bigger challenges and higher responsibilities. T & D is provided for
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fresh as well as currently working employees to improve their skills regarding to
specific field to make them perform their tasks with best of their abilities (Guest, 2011).
Mentioned above were some key functions followed by BT to manage its staff efficiently and
effectively. The purpose of HRM is to bring organization and its people to work together by
aligning their personal and organizational objectives to goals and targets of a firm.
There are various approaches used by a manager to administer its work force. The two main
approaches are
 Hard HRM- Hard HRM treats employees as machines who are hired by company to
make them work and achieve targets and objective. The top management follows
autocratic leadership style and maintains minimum level of communication with its staff.
 Soft HRM: Soft HRM approach treats employees as the most valuable assets of an
organization which helps in attaining its objectives in addition to maintain an edge over
its business competitors s. In this approach manager follows democratic leadership style
and motivates its employees in participating in decision making process (Jackson,
Schuler and Werner, 2011).
P2 Advantaged and disadvantages of various approaches of hiring.
Hiring process is significant in attracting an effective work force which in turn impacts
the success and operations of an enterprise. It comprises recruitment which can be defined as
attracting individual with appropriate knowledge, skills and qualifications, short-listing most
likely to fit job profile and appointing the best candidates and selection which involves
interviewing an candidate and evaluating its capabilities by applying certain behavioural and
aptitude tests to check his suitability in reference to the job vacancy. Process of recruitment
seems to be constructive process whereas selection process is considered as a pessimistic
process.
There are two main recruitment sources and are mentioned as follows: Sourcing within an organization : Internal recruitment deals with hiring people from
within the company itself by encouraging them to apply for vacancy. Most common
forms of internal recruitment are promotions, transfer, present employees, retired
employees etc.
Advantages Disadvantages
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 It encourages an employee to work
with best of his abilities to achieve
good performance level to get
promotion, which in return enhances
company's productivity level.
 It helps in increasing the employees
job satisfaction level which leads to
reduction in employee turnover.
 It serves as economic method as it
involves less investment and efforts to
apply in the process of recruitment,
selection and orientation.
 By reducing the chance to hire new and
talented candidate from outside it limits
company's opportunity to get the entry of
fresh blood .
 Internal recruitment in general accused to
be biased process which is based on
favouritism.
 Employee end up doing the same
monotonous work which same idea and
work procedures.
 External sources: Recruitment through external sources involves process of searching
the most suitable, talented and proficient candidate from outside a company. Sources of
external recruiting involve placement agencies, walk in interviews employment
exchange, by poaching, campus interview etc.
Advantages Disadvantages
Ii gives the opportunity to the company to
hire the most appropriate and proficient
employee best suited tom job profile.
It motivates the present staff to increase their
work efficiency and performance level so as
to become competitive with the new joiners.
It provides company a large pool of talented
candidate to be consider for vacancy.
One of the most critical disadvantage of this
system is that the new candidate is discarded by
the exiting employees and they doest support and
cooperate with him which give rise to conflicts
and disputes.
It is an expensive, lengthy and time consuming
process.
The new candidate hired might face problems in
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getting adjusted with company's policies,
employees ,work culture, policies and procedures
TASK 2
P3 Various HRM practices and their benefits.
HRM practices plays a key role in assisting a manager in formulating policies and
procedures that aims towards benefiting the employees by enhancing their work performance
thereby enabling company to accomplish it goals efficiently. HRM ensures that all strategies, and
schemes formed should provide benefit for both employer and their workforce , so that non of
the parties objects its application (Meredith and Belbin, 2011). The practices adopted by HRM
should be proactive and effective enough to help the management in identify and avoid the
probable future risk that can impact the functioning and operational efficiency of a firm.
HRM practices for employer are:
Hiring of candidates: Hiring forms the basic and most critical functions of a manager . It is so
because it has a direct link with success and production efficiency of a company. Any
unqualified candidate or a misfit might hamper work performance and quality which will
ultimately reflect in company's output. Therefore a firm by using appropriate recruitment and
selection sources should ensure that they are hiring right person for right job.
Benefits of hiring candidates are:
 It lead to entry of fresh blood which proves to be source of new and creative ideas and
innovations.
 Having competitive workforce serves as an edge over business rivals. Having efficient and dedicated team helps in achieving pre-determined objectives and
goals within a specific time frameworks
Assessment of employees performance : Assessment of employees performance is the
technique for evaluating work efficiency and performance level of an employee by comparing
his actual performance with desires performance on the basis of pre set standards (Bloom and
Van Reenen, 2011). This comparison reveals the areas of lacking or improvement of employees
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on the basis of which a manager can design most appropriate training and development module
to reduce the loopholes and improve work proficiency.
Benefits of performance appraisal:
 Appraisal system is an indicator of a company's concern towards the development and
improvement of its employees. Thus,it encourages workforce to improve work efficiency
and gain proficiency in their work so that they can help the firm in return to achieve its
objectives.
 It helps in tracking down the performance level of each employee and to notify them then
and there only about the deviation from expected work performance.
HRM practices for employee are:
Compensation and benefits: Compensation and benefits schemes are formulated by the
management to appreciate the efforts given by an employees by giving them rewards in return of
their services provided to the company. It is adopted as a motivating tool for them which builds
up their morale and zeal to give their best efforts in successfully completing tasks assigned to
them as they feel associated with the company (Kehoe and Wright, 2013). It benefits the firm by
reducing employees turnover, in their retention and in building a dedicated and loyal workforce.
It includes both monetary rewards like bonus, incentives, pay increment etc. and non-monetary
rewards like promotion, retirement benefits, medical insurance etc.
P4 Effectiveness of HRM practices
In this present era of intense competition a team of proficient, dedicated and loyal human
resource becomes most prominent factor in ascertaining success of a firm. It is therefore utmost
important for a firm to retain its talented workforce as there is no substitute of a professional an
committed employee. BT being one of the world's leader in telecommunication works with
motive of providing the best uninterrupted services to its customers (Weber and Fried, 2011).
Thus, to gain advantage on its leading business rivals and to gain higher returns HRM practices
is considered to be an important factor to produce new and creative ideas that are innovative
enough to capture attention of customers. Mentioned d below are some of such HRM practices:-
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Flexible working hours: Flexibility in working time schedule has a two way beneficiary effect
as one hand it makes employees more productive by reducing their stress level, helping them to
maintain work life balance and so. On other hand it give the advantage of satisfied workforce
with better morale resulting in less turnover and been cost effective. Application of flexible
working hours will give BT more dedicated staff having mutual coordination, trust and respect
for each and will also enhance relations between management and its people.
Measuring performance: To make training and development program effective it is of
crucial importance for a manager to monitor and evaluate work efficiency and performance
level of each and every employee. BT managers together with their employees should review
and evaluate their work performance so that any deviations can be detected at early stage and can
be overcome by taking corrective actions beforehand only.
Training and development: Training & development aims at improving knowledge ,
skills and action of employees so as to make them proficient and capable to perform their present
as well as future job. It encourages employees to be pro active in taking bigger challenges and
higher responsibilities .
TASK 3
P5 Significance of managing workforce relationship
One of most important responsibility for HRM is to ensure that an organization maintains
healthy, cooperative and amicable relationship with its workforce. It becomes t priority aspect
for a manager to handle because employees are considered to be most valuable resources
utilizing whose competencies a firms attain its objectives.. Managers of BT gives utmost
importance to this aspect and motivates its employees to be participative in giving new ideas ,
suggestions and feedbacks during decision-making process (Kusluvan and et. al., 2010). It thus
leads to building up the morale and job satisfaction level as they feel connected with the
company. Significance of employee relation is evident from the below mentioned advantages:-
Timely achievement of set objectives : There are certain crtical business decision that
require collective efforts and cannot be individually handled by a manager himself. In such
situation involving employees indecision making process proves to be a wise decision. It is
because it helps manager in getting creative and innovative ideas, different probable solution
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through brain storming and highlighting some key point which might be missed by management.
This ultimately results in achieving objectives successfully an don time.
Discourage Conflicts & Fights: When there is mutual coordination, trust and respect
among employees, they generally adjust with each other by ignoring faults. It makes people more
dedicated an committed towards their work rather than indulging themselves in unnecessary
arguments an conflicts.
Leads to increase in productivity : An organization with good and friendly work
environment encourages employees to work with full dedication giving best of their efforts for
accomplish the tasks assigned to them. It therefore helps the organization in successfully dealing
with issues of employee getting frequently absent & switching resulting in enhancing
performance of a firm.
P6 Key Labour Laws and their effect on HRM decision making
Employee being cornerstone of business needs to be put into centre of focus while
formulating any policy or procedure. Government therefore at different levels be it federal ,state
and local have laid down some legislations that serves as a regulatory factors in deciding various
prospects that relates to HRM starting from hiring to compensating (Vörösmarty and et. al.,
2011). Thus an organization abide to involve all those legislations to safeguard employees rights.
Mentions below are few significant laws:-
Employment Right Act 1996:- It safeguard an employee from by providing them right
to get flexible working hours, right to claim statutory rights and right to get compensation in
case employee's job become obsolete.
Health and safety act 1974: This act makes it the obligatory for management to
provide its workforce with healthy & safe working environment as per the set standards that are
prescribed by government in the law. It is obligatory for manager to follow without making any
excuse by declaring firm's incapability to afford such provisions.
The National Minimum Wage Act 1998: According to The National Minimum Wages
act the age of a person is the most important factor that is to be considered while deciding his
minimum wage as a worker. Minimum Wages is wage per hour which each and every worker
is entitled to get. The act makes is mandatory for the HR Manager to check accuracy of amount
that are been paid to workers & to revise wages periodically.
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P7 Human Resource Management practices in firm and its application
HRM manager has to deal with a wide range of activities that initiates with conducting
an induction program for new joiners, to solve their disputes to ensure the smooth performance
of business operations as per the set standards (Jiang and et al, 2012). Below is an example of
one of the action undertaken by Human Resource manager. The illustration indicates the whole
process of recruitment and selection.
Hotel receptionist training
Workshop title/ Training practices Date- Time-
Location Instructor
Candidates
Activity Time of activity Process Equipment required
Induction of candidates
Training objectives
a)
b)
Warming up
Contents and necessary
points
Job advertisement
Instructor require
Qualification /Eligibility
MBA/BBA in HRM from any recognised college
To apply:
You are required to upload your application with CV and latest photograph on our websites
latest by 15 April, 2018.
Email-id: www.btplc.com
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Contact no.: 00000XXXX
Job specification
Qualification Master's Degree in HRM
Graduation in business or related field.
Experience Should have 2 year experience in HRM.
Skills Should be proficient with communication
skills and leadership skills.
Other qualities Good communication skills
Basic knowledge of computer.
Good interpersonal qualities
Interview Questions
 What are your major competencies ?
 What are your areas of lacking?
 Were you participative in co- curricular activities?
 Plan of action you will adopt while working in the firm?
 Your expectations from this compnay?
 Your future career exceptions ?
Person specification
Particulars Required criteria Learning and outcomes
Qualification and training Communicate with new
employees
Able to perform whole
induction process.
Experience Providing the best services to
customer
Pressure handling ability
Must have performed certain
induction process in training
sessions in college days
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Skills and knowledge Attentive and good
communication skills
Developing and generating
innovative ideas
Personal characteristics Proactive, leader, confident,
positive attitude
Team Builder
Developing certain skills
and traits to work in
organisational culture.
CV
Information of candidate
Name: Steven Cook
Father's name: Samson Cook
Mother's name: Elena Cook
Mobile no,: 6644582074
Email id: [e-mail]
Key skills:
 Creativity
 Well versed with the concepts and theories of Human Resource Development
 Have advance knowledge of Computer
 Team builder
 Ability to learn and grasp new things quickly
Experience:
11 Goldman : Assistant to Retail Manager11 Schroedinger: Worked as a leader in retail store located at Durham
CONCLUSION
The project undertaken concludes that HRM is a planned process which brings
organisation and staff together to attain business goals and objectives. It initiates with recruiting
right person at right job at right time to ensure that company gains competitive edge over its
business rivals. A manager should thus formulate strategies by keeping in mind all internal and
external factors that can benefit organisation by generating maximum profits. Moreover a
manager should also initiate to maintain good employee - employer relation practices to ensures
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healthy working environment. In addition to this it is of vital importance for manner to follow all
the labour laws that are laid down by government for safeguarding employees rights.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management
practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Boxall, P. and Purcell, J., 2011. Strategy and human resource management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Daley, D. M., 2012. Strategic human resource management. Public Personnel Management,
pp.120-125.
Guest, D. E., 2011. Human resource management and performance: still searching for some
answers. Human resource management journal. 21(1). pp.3-13.
Jackson, S., Schuler, R. and Werner, S., 2011. Managing human resources. Cengage Learning.
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.
Meredith Belbin, R., 2011. Management teams: Why they succeed or fail. Human Resource
Management International Digest. 19(3).
Bloom, N. and Van Reenen, J., 2011. Human resource management and productivity. Handbook
of labor economics. 4. pp.1697-1767.
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.
Weber, Y. and Fried, Y., 2011. Guest Editors' Note: The role of HR practices in managing
culture clash during the postmerger integration process. Human Resource Management.
50(5). pp.565-570.
Kusluvan, S. and et. al., 2010. The human dimension: A review of human resources management
issues in the tourism and hospitality industry. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly. 51(2).
pp.171-214.
Vörösmarty, C. J. and et. al., 2010. Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity.
Nature. 467(7315). pp.555-561.
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