Human Resource Management Report: Unit 3 Analysis and Evaluation

This report provides a comprehensive overview of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices within organizations, focusing on workforce planning, recruitment, and employee management. It explores the core functions of HRM, including recruitment and selection, compensation, performanc...Read More

Unit 3: Human Resource Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY .................................................................................................................................3
LO1.................................................................................................................................................3
Purpose and the functions of HRM for workforce planning and resourcing an organisation... .3
LO2.................................................................................................................................................5
P1:The advantage that both the employee or employer receive through the HRM practices - 5
P2: Different HRM practices should be effective in increasing the financial or output of
organisations - ...........................................................................................................................6
LO 3................................................................................................................................................7
LO4.................................................................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES...............................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Human resource management is one of the most important department of every
organisation. They are responsible for hiring right person at the right time for the right place.
Their functions include planning related to workforce in the organisation, managing and
maintaining workforce in the organisation. They recognise various employee needs and try to
satisfy those needs for organisational benefits. Here in this report many practices used by HR
manager in the organisation has been discussed. For this, Marks & Spencer which is a UK based
company dealing in clothing, food and various household products has been taken to explain HR
practices adopted by it.
MAIN BODY
LO1
Purpose and the functions of HRM for workforce planning and resourcing an organisation.
Meaning of HRM: Human resource management refers to one of the most important
department and function of every organisation responsible for recruiting, motivating, controlling
and maintaining the employees in the organisation. They are formed to ensure that the right
person must be appointed at the right time on the right place according to their specifications.
Functions of HRM: There are some main activities and functions of HRM which enable them
to get talented and skilled personnel for their organisation (Boon and et. al., 2019).
Human Resource Planning: The first and the most important task of every HR manager to plan
for how many, what kind of, when and for which position in the organisation they need to
recruit people. This function facilitates other functions of HR manager of Marks & Spencer in
carrying out smoothly.
Recruitment and selection: Recruiting refers to attracting candidates to apply for the vacant
position. It aims at attracting those candidates who posses high potential and qualifications.
Selections refers to the process of selecting the right candidates whose qualifications matches
with organisation's needs. By performing this function Marks & Spencer can have talented and
skilled candidates for achieving their goals and objectives (Chams and García-Blandón, 2019).
Compensation of employees: Rewarding employees with both monetary and non-monetary
terms is necessary for Marks & Spencer to satisfy and motivate their workforce. They must give
proper incentives, perks, recognition, good working environment and culture.

Performance management and learning and development of workforce : Marks & Spencer's HR
manager is responsible for reviewing the performance of its workforce on timely basis which
enables them to get best of their efficiency. Also, they must invest out of their earnings in
learning of new skills for their workforce which would be helpful in bridging the gap between
the present skills and their future need of skills (Mondy and Martocchio,2016).
Best practice vs Best fit approach for HRM: These two approaches has been regarded as the
strategic approach of every HR manager. Best practice approach states that there are many
activities and approaches universally applicable which links organisational performance with
that of HR activities which helps in achieving competitive advantage for any organisation like
Marks & Spencer. This approach doesn't consider the type of industry and organisational set up
adopted. On the other hand best fit approach argues that there is no universally applicable
approach for doing right work because what is best for one business may not be fit with the
policies and strategies of other businesses. In the context of this approach, HR manager of
Marks & Spencer must frame policies and strategies that fit best with their objectives and goals.
The policies and practices of HR can be regarded as the best approach if it best fit with their
organisational objectives (John and Taylor, 2016).
Hard and soft models of HRM: Hard model of HRM considers workforce just as the resource
of the organisation and treats them in the same way as machines and building. On the other hand
soft model of HRM considers workforce as the most important asset of the organisation. The
former lays emphasize on task accomplishment, hire and fire strategy and least consideration to
employee satisfaction while the later is more focused about employee friendly environment and
culture, satisfaction and motivation of employees, recognition of employee needs, etc. So, it is
always being argued that what is best out of these two approaches is depends upon the nature
and type of workforce an organisation have. Marks & Spencer must analyse its workforce and
adopt the best approach out of these two.
Internal and External sources of recruitment: Internal sources refers to attracting candidates
within organisation who are already on some position in the organisation. It is a cheaper sources
and motivate employee to perform well for getting promotions. Its weakness is that it provides
limited choice and causes conflicts among internal workforce. External sources refers to
attracting candidates outside the organisational context through advertisements, campus
recruitment, word of mouth, etc. The advantage of adopting this source of recruitment is

availability of large number of candidates and selection of best and talent candidates. But the
weakness of this source is time consuming and costly affair and causes disappointment among
existing employees. In order to decide upon which source to be adopted requires proper job
analysis which includes what are the skills requirements of the job. Job description is helpful in
recruitment as it includes the profile of the job so that candidates with such profile can applied
for the job. Personal specification forms the base of the recruitment where the required skills,
experience, qualification and knowledge of candidate is mentioned. Competency framework
aids in defining the benchmark of excellence required for the roles for getting the potentially
high candidates (Kianto, Sáenz and Aramburu, 2017).
Selection methods, its strengths and weaknesses: The common method of selection is
interview where a direct communication takes place between the interviewer and candidate. It
includes both basic and qualification based questions. Strengths: It avoids mistakes, errors and
misinterpretation and forms good relationship between interviewer and interviewee. Also, the
best candidate can be selected. Weaknesses: It is affected by the biasness of interviewer. The
interviewer may be inefficient. There is no reliable record of questions asked in the interview.
Ability and aptitude tests are also conducted to select the right candidate where a test is
conducted to judge the candidate's knowledge in the field and general, numerical and logical
ability can be judged. Strengths: This method is free from any biasness. It improves the quality
of recruitment and considered as standardised way of selection. Weaknesses: May be not
suitable for every type of job like ground level jobs. It doesn't consider soft skills and
communication skills (Macke and Genari, 2019).
Issues in induction and socialisation of employees: The main issues that affects induction
process are, a lot of information given to the employees on first day creates confusion among
candidates. The person performing induction may take it as a formality and doesn't provide
sufficient information about organisation.
LO2
P1:The advantage that both the employee or employer receive through the HRM practices -
Training and development
High expectation occur when any employee enter in an organisation. If talking about the Mark
& Spencer, they need to trained its staff thoroughly so that they perform according to the
business requirement. This practices helps in keeping the abilities of the employees up to date to

bring out more innovative ideas to the firm (Waheed And et.al., 2019). The employers of M&S
will increase their overall efficiency in performing their task that results in expanding the overall
productivity of the organisation.
Performance appraisal
Mark & Spencer performance reviews taken at the end of every six months for all the employees
or employee. This practice in company is advantageous to as it helps employees in enlarging a
focused professional trail. Moreover, this benefits the employers in having well-established,
productive or motivated human resource base.
Recruitment or retention
Mark & Spencer recruit the candidates within or outside the organisation. It will benefit the
employees or employers to become more expertise in their particular field or bring out the
perfection from them. Several retention schemes will benefit both the employees or employers
in terms of motivation to remain with the organisation, will boost their morale and bring
efficiency in their work(Azeez, 2017).
Development of healthy relations
M&S HRM team should ensures to maintain the basic relationship function among the overall
management by organising seminars, meetings or official gatherings. The employees will enjoy
the organisational culture that promotes the diversity, personal growth and respect. At the same
time, it will expand the cognitive skills or enhances the overall performance of employers.
P2: Different HRM practices should be effective in increasing the financial or output of
organisations -
The overall profits or performance of Mark & Spencer will expand when its focuses on the
human practices. Training and development helps the management of M&S to increase the
efficiency of the work that are accomplished by different teams as it enhance the knowledge and
upgrade the proficiency in performance. With well equipped or better trained management helps
the organisations to sustain in the competitive market. This factor is become an instrument that
help the human capital in enlarging their capability(Almarzooqi, Khan and Khalid, 2019).
The M&S is aiming to expand its growth and through the performance appraisal an organisation
can maintain it. If M&S focusses on the promotion, transfer to higher position or provides the
perks and bonuses to each employees than it will definitely increase the productivity of the

organisation but the M&S also need to evaluate the performance of management towards the
procurement of the company goal. As the overall success of the M&S highly rely on the
performance of the management team.
As in every organisation the employees are backbone of the team, hence the retention or
selection is nearly imperative as other factors to keep the company on path. Retaining or
selecting the desired candidates is advantageous for Mark & Spencer in securing competitive
benefits that cannot be replace by other competitors. If talking about building high morale and
satisfied co-workers who will supply superior customer service and build up productivity, that
results in increasing sales generation, smooth succession of management and boost
organisational growth.
The effect of morale, engagement or productivity is directly links with environment of the
workplace in negative or positive way. Its the quality of the organisation's culture that mostly
influence on the motivational level and the successive performance of the management of Mark
& Spencer (Likhitkar and Verma, 2017). And how the overall team are engaging in the business,
mainly in accordance with the immediate surroundings, determine to a large extent of their error
rate, innovational level, and cooperation with other team member and how long they continue in
the job. In order to enhance the work rate or net profits of the M&S, maintaining healthy
environment in which employees work should be productive. The interrelation between the
work, the workplace and the equipments of the work should effect the M&S performance and
become the one of the most fundamental part of the work and moreover become the reason of
survival of the M&S. The culture has been conceptualised by assessing the scope to which
employees observe their overall surroundings as extrinsically or intrinsically fulfilling their
social wants thus through their intention the M&S know whether they are remaining with the
organisation or not.
LO 3
Internal and external factor that affect human resource and decision-making and include
employment legislation.
Maintaining good healthy relation with the employees in the organizationals the most
required for the succession of the organization. This encourages the employees of the
organizational and increase the productivity and satisfaction level in the company. It required
safe work environment, full involvement and commitment by the employees. Proper

communication between the staff and the management motivate the employee of Marks and
Spencer. Healthy employee relation leads to more efficiency results to increase the sales of the
company. Strategies to build the strong relation to the employee by involving the employees to
team which feels important for the organization and assign the responsibilities and roles
according to their interest, encourage each other to share and complete the work with each other
can increase the comfort level between the employees, offer career opportunities for the
employees to enhance the career growth that motivate the to work hard and achieve target goal
of the company, healthy environment in the organization lead to increase in productivity at work
and spread the positivity in the company environment (Arulrajah, Opatha, and Nawaratne,
2015).
The purpose of the employment law shows the employee employer relation in the
organization and involves both state of government to protect the worker rights. This law
protects the:
 Discrimination in the organization: If the company discriminate between the employees
of the company due to their colour, region, culture of the individual.
 Promote the safety and health issue of the employees: Safety and health of the
employees are considered to be most important in the organization in the work place
 Minimum wages of the employees in the companies: It includes the minimum wage of
the company to support the basis leverage of the employees (Dau-Schmidt, 2017).
 Resolves dispute between labour and management: To maintain smooth flow of work in
the organization sustain standards are followed by the company maid by union and
government of the country.
Key legal issue of the employee relation and law are based on the equality of the
employees in the organization and treatment to the employees, employment contract is a
contract that are made between the employees and the employer during the hiring by the
company and shows the roles and responsibilities of the employees, health and safety of the
employees in the organization during the work like medical insurance for the employees, fire
exist in the organization, hospital reimbursement bills.
Ethics shows the rules of conduct or morale principle that should be carries by individual
and the company values, guideline and code of conduct and ethical behaviour of the employees.
The social responsibilities of the company is to take care of the stakeholder and the society. This

is to contribute the society for the welfare of the environment that shows the awareness about
the company to maximize the shareholder value. The company can act voluntary, make changes
that help the environment to grow (Aslam, Hasnu, 2016).
Trade union is a group of employees who get together to improve their condition in the
organization of employment. The role of Trade union is to assist the employed and their member
for accepting the conditions of the union like increase in basic pay, quality of working condition,
safety and health policies. Local unions help the workers to solve the small dispute between
employee and employer and nation union trades involves when it becomes major issue that
government also had to be the part of strike.
Collective agreement is a deal to negotiate with union and employer by the group of
employees. Its shows the certain terms and condition about the working condition in the
organization presented by the trade union. Thy deal with wage rate, health benefits, lay-off rule
etc.
Discipline: it means to follow the certain rules and regulation of the organization and use
punishment to obey the rules. Employer and employee are always find problem to resolve the
issues. Employer finds disciplinary issues can be resolved internally and if not solved internally
then formally it has to solved by basic fairness principle (McBride, 2020).
Grievances: It is the concern or problem of an employee about work, workplace or for
the company policy or management. Anything made them dissatisfaction either by unfair to
them. They include pay and benefits, work condition, and work load of the employee brings the
grievances in the employees.
Redundancy: It occurs when an organization reduces their workforce which affect the
employment economical. This is done when the cost of the organization increase and need to
reduce the employees from the company. This bring redundancy among the employees.
LO4
Job specification: Job description is a written description about a particular job which
states the qualification required in performing job, experience required, skills and
responsibilities one must have to apply for the job. Here a specimen of job specification for the
position of finance manager in Marks & Spencer is given.

Job Specification
Marks & Spencer
Position: Executive finance manager
Description: Lead and supervise the team of finance, associate finance and assistant finance
managers, responsible for providing services like financial management, daily and weekly
report preparations, preparation of income and expenditure reports on quarterly basis.
Experience: minimum experience of the candidate should be 4- 5 years.
Education: candidate must completed CA/ post graduation majorly in finance/
MBA(finance)/CFA
Personal specification: It is a written statement consisting of the candidates qualifications,
skills, education, attributes and experience. It can be used in the selection process to shortlist the
candidate and the interviewer can also ask questions on the basis of person specifications. Here
a specimen of person specification of John Marty has been written.
Person Specification
John Marty
johnmarty@gmail,com
xxxxx52638
Professional detail: I have an experience of around 7 years in the field of finance and in my
previous employment I have served as a Chief Financial Officer for 3
years.
Core skills: Good communication skills, better understanding of computer and good typing
speed.
Education profile: Chartered Accountant, Graduated in commerce, Master of Business
Administration in finance from A grade university of Bangalore.
Work Experience: 3 years articleship in MNC, 2 years served as a assistant financial
manager, 3 years served as a Chief Financial Officer.
Career objective: I would like to become a part of your finance team and want to explore
more in finance field to become a financial expert.

Recruitment and selection in practice: Nowadays improvements made in technology has
changed the practice of recruitment and selection like uses of online resources to place job
advertisements on social networking sites, mailing jobs to potential candidates, conduction of
online and telephonic interview and group discussions. For performing this various websites and
applications has been developed for successful implementation of recruitment and selection
practices (Nankervis and et. al., 2019).
Preparatory notes: Many questions that may be asked by the interviewer can be prepared by
the candidates before interview. Such as- Tell me something about yourself?, what are your
strengths and weaknesses?, what are your hobbies?, reason for hiring you?. From where did you
heard about this position?, etc. are some common questions always asked during interviews
(Nankervis and et. al., 2019).
Selection: When a candidate passes all the level of selection process and if the company feels
that the candidate is best fitting on the vacant position, then HR manager communicate its desire
through sending job offer to the candidate. Here a specimen of job offer has been given for the
position of Executive Finance Officer in Marks & Spencer.
Job Offer
16 June 2020
Dear, John Marty
Congratulation, you have been selected as an Executive Financial Manager in Marks &
Spencer. You have impressed our interviewing team with your vast knowledge in the field of
finance. We are delighted to welcome you in our company. Your joining date would be
communicated soon.
Thank you.
Sherry Milton
Human Resource Manager
Marks & Spencer
CONCLUSION
From this report it has been concluded that how human resource management plays an
important role in every organisation. Without successfully accomplishment of HRM functions,

an organisation cannot achieve its desired objectives and goals. We learnt that how in the
modern time HR practices has changes where traditional recruitment and selection process has
improved with the innovation and technological developments. After this it has been discussed
that how external and internal environment affects the human resource management practices.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Almarzooqi, A.H., Khan, M. and Khalid, K., 2019. The role of sustainable HRM in sustaining
positive organizational outcomes. International Journal of Productivity and
Performance Management.
Arulrajah, A. A. , Opatha, H. H. D. N. P. and Nawaratne, N.N.J., 2015. Green human resource
management practices: A review. Sri Lankan Journal of Human Resource
Management. 5(1).
Aslam, S. and Hasnu, S.A.F., 2016. Issues and constraints perceived by young entrepreneurs of
Pakistan. World Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable
Development.
Azeez, S.A., 2017. Human resource management practices and employee retention: A review of
literature. Journal of Economics, Management and Trade. pp.1-10.
Boon, C., and et. al., 2019. A systematic review of human resource management systems and
their measurement. Journal of management, 45(6), pp.2498-2537.
Chams, N. and García-Blandón, J., 2019. On the importance of sustainable human resource
management for the adoption of sustainable development goals. Resources,
Conservation and Recycling, 141, pp.109-122.
Dau-Schmidt, K.G., 2017. The impact of emerging information technologies on the employment
relationship: New gigs for labor and employment law. U. Chi. Legal F., p.63.
John, R. and Taylor, B., 2016. Human resource management.
Kianto, A., Sáenz, J. and Aramburu, N., 2017. Knowledge-based human resource management
practices, intellectual capital and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 81, pp.11-
20.
Likhitkar, P. and Verma, P., 2017. Impact of green HRM practices on organization sustainability
and employee retention. International Journal for Innovative Research in
Multidisciplinary Field.3(5). pp.152-157.
Macke, J. and Genari, D., 2019. Systematic literature review on sustainable human resource
management. Journal of cleaner production, 208, pp.806-815.
McBride, A., 2020. Gender democracy in trade unions. Routledge.
Mondy, R. W. and Martocchio, J. J., 2016. Human resource management. Pearson.
Nankervis, A. and et. al., 2019. Human resource management. Cengage AU.
Stewart, G.L. and Brown, K.G., 2019. Human resource management. John Wiley & Sons.
Taamneh, A., Alsaad, A.K. and Elrehail, H., 2018. HRM practices and the multifaceted nature of
organization performance. EuroMed Journal of Business.
Waheed, A., And et.al., 2019. How new HRM practices, organizational innovation, and
innovative climate affect the innovation performance in the IT industry: A moderated-
mediation analysis. Sustainability. 11(3).p.621.
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Human Resource Management. 2020. [Online]. Available through:
<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1099050x>
7 Human Resource Management Basics Every HR Professional Should Know. 2019. [online]
Available Through: <https://www.digitalhrtech.com/human-resource-basics/>
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