Human Resource Management Practices at Chocolate Presence

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HUMAN RESOURCES

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1........................................................................................................................................ 4
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................4
Task 2......................................................................................................................................... 9
a) Person Specification...........................................................................................................9
B) Advantages and Disadvantages of Methods of Job Adverts............................................11
c) Recommendation for the Job Advert...............................................................................13
Task 3....................................................................................................................................... 14
a) Graduate Training Schemes and Internships at Microsoft...............................................14
b) Flexible Working Arrangements at Microsoft..................................................................16
c) The motivation for Employees through Job Designing.....................................................17
Different HRM practices in terms of raising organisational profit and productivity............17
Task 4....................................................................................................................................... 18
a) Employee Engagement.................................................................................................... 18
b) Key Points from the Employee Engagement Summit 2018..............................................19
c) Employment Legislation...................................................................................................20
Conclusion............................................................................................................................... 21
References............................................................................................................................... 22

INTRODUCTION
This assignment is about Human resource management and the different practices used in the
HRM. In the first task we have learned about the recruitment and selection in the company in
order to gain the maximum profit, as the company want to increase the manpower in the
organization so they opt for the recruitment process, where the detailed study of the
recruitment and selection, training and development is described. HRM is an important part of
any organization and the HRM practices affect the organization growth productivity. There are
many HRM practices which can help in the growth of an organization; there are also employee
engagement programs, in which the organization tries to keep the employee passionate
towards the work. Other than that there are certain employment legislation, rules and
regulation to maintain the relationship between the employ and employer.

TASK 1
INTRODUCTION
The case is about the company ‘Chocolate Presence’ based in North Yorkshire. This company
provides the tailor-made chocolates, personal greeting cards as well as presents in the UK. As
the business of this organization is growing rapidly so they need to increase their workforce but
the business owner doesn’t have any type of experience in that. But in order to grow the staff,
they have started the procedure of hiring, but the company is based in the high unemployed
area so they get the no. of applications. So to shortlist the candidates the company have
prepared the assessment test in which it is necessary to have 50% marks in order to pass the
test, after the assessment test the references would be checked before the interview. The
interview process is of 15 min. and very informal. And some complaints are also there about
the partiality in the interview and the test. As the company staff is grown now but the loyal
customers of the company are not satisfied with the work now. Company has also hired some
of the new recruiters but they have failed during their probation period.

HR (Human Resource) department is in responsible for all the staff related queries. This includes
recruiting, analyzing, selecting, training, promoting, appraisal, paying and firing of the
candidates. The HR department is also responsible for how an individual is treated in between
this whole process (Cabellero et al., 2010). In the changing business scenario, the HR
department plays a key role in recruiting quality employees.
HR Functions
The major functions of the Human Resource are as follows;
1. One of the major functions of the Human Resource Department is to ensure that all the
business functions are done by keeping labour laws in mind, there should not be anything
which is against the law.
2. Recruiting the right candidate for the work and giving them the proper training is the key
responsibility of the Human Resource department.
3. Human resource department is also responsible for keeping the records regarding all the
finance within the company related to the employees.
4. The employee performance and what training they need are totally dependent on the
human resource department. This can also be called performance improvement plans,
which is commonly called PIPs.
5. Human resource department is responsible to maintain the relationship between the
employees or between the employees and management.
Importance of HR functions
HR function plays a major role an organization as the key function of the HR department are
described above, the major part of the organization depends on these function as the key
function is to recruit and train people, which involves the overall growth of the company.
Because the right employees only can give the right growth to the company and the right
candidates are identified by the HR department (Cascio and W.F., 2015).
Apart from it, they are responsible for the overall growth of the employees like training
programs, when to give appraisals to the employees, appreciation and also firing. HR
department takes care of the labour laws so that the organization can work smoothly and
without any obstacles (CHUANG et al., 2010).
For the given organization the problem with the Human resource department is that the
company ‘Chocolate presence’ doesn’t have right recruiter for instance so that they are failing
to hire the right candidate for the work due to which the quality of the products is not matching
the customers’ expectations.

Future plans for further growth
As of till now the company doesn’t have the human resource department. So first thing
‘Chocolate presence’ needs to do is to form a human resource department and recruit the best
human resource manager in order to find out the best talent. After hiring the Human resource
manager give them the complete specification that what are the qualities that the company is
looking for in the candidate (DeCenzo et al., 2016).
From now the work of HR department starts, now it’s their responsibility to make a recruiting
plan.
Steps of the plan are as follows;
1. Giving an advertisement for the recruitment
2. Calling all the candidates on a particular date
3. Assessment test (setting criteria of 60%)
4. Shortlisting the candidates
5. Interview process
6. Backgrounds Check
7. Background check
8. Hiring the right talent without partiality
9. Job offer
10. Final selection
11. Training for the task to maintain the brand name.
As the organization is based in the area of high unemployment so the no. of candidates would
be very high, that is why the test criteria are 60%.
Strengths and weaknesses of the current selection methods are as follows;
As the current selection method followed by the organization is internal recruitment, in which
there was partiality in the written test and the interview was also very formal (Ekwoaba et al.,
2015). The strength and weaknesses are as follows;
Strength
 No. of applicants is very high,
 Assessment test for shortlisting the no. of applications.
Weaknesses
 The criteria of assessment test were only 50%,
 Partiality in the test as well as in the selection,
 Very informal interview,
 Not having the right recruiter.

Potential Improvements
Selection process plays a very important part of an organization. Because the future of the
organization depends on the employees and employees are selected through the selection
process. Recruiting and selection is the responsibility of the human resource department
(Gimpelson et al., 2010). There are different selection processes in every company according to
the job profile, but they all follow step by step procedure of selection;
Here in the company ‘Chocolate Presence’, the process of selection is followed but not in the
right way (Hendry and C., 2012). They have shortlisted the application forms and for that, they
also conducted the written test, but as given in the case that there was unfairness in the written
test. Two potential improvements that could be made by the Chocolate presence for the
selection process are;
1. They can be more clear and fair in terms of the written test.
2. They can interview the candidates in a more professional manner so that the right
candidates for the job could be shortlisted. As the interview was very casual and just 15
minutes, the recruiter can’t analyze the candidate in this short span of time. They can hire
the other human resource manager in order to select the right candidate for the work and
to manage their loyal customers as well as the quality.
Step 1 Recruitment
Step 2 Application
Step 3 Written Test
Step 4 Interview
Step 5 Reference Check
Step 6 Final Selection

Conclusion
The conclusion for this case is that as the company is in the growing stage so they also need to
grow their staff and for that the company needs to establish a good HR department, although
‘Chocolate Presence’ have some HR’s but they hadn’t done there work properly and because of
that the organization is unable to hire the right talent. And as organization also had received
complaint from the customers, there were some improvements which are needed in the hiring
process.
Recommendation
According to Boxall et al., (2011), human resource management includes all the activities which
are related to the work of the organization or people in the organization. The main things which
are covered in the human resource management are employee relations, labour management
or people management. HRM is also an inevitable process. HRM is related to the
entrepreneurial success and organizational growth.

Task 2
a) Person Specification
Chocolate Presence is a chocolate manufacturing company in North Yorkshire. Which is looking
for a receptionist, earlier when they have a vacancy in the production and administration
department they went with the procedure of internal recruiting process but now chocolate
presence is intended to change the advertising process for the post of a receptionist, for this,
the person specification for the role is as follows;
Job specification
 Job Title: Receptionist
 Salary Band: £ 1500 pm
 Working Hours: 8 hours
 Department: Administration
 Reporting to: Administration Manager
 Job Location: North Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
Academics
High school Diploma, Graduation Degree, Any degree in management.
Roles and Responsibilities
 Meet and greet clients,
 Checking out for a meeting and manage them successfully,
 Keeping a proper account for meetings,
 Communicating with the clients and conveying and forwarding the message to higher staff,
 Maintain all the required things for clients like stationary,
 Checking the emails regularly.
Required skills
 Communication and intrapersonal skills
 Strong written and verbal skills,
 Organization skills,
 Should be able to handle client’s problems and ready to face challenges
 Confident and calm in order to handle the clients.
 Basic math’s and writing skills
 Good with computers and in Microsoft office.

Experience
0- 1 year of experience in customer service (freshers can also apply)

b)
Chocolate presence has used two methods for recruitment jobs;
1. Internal recruitment
2. External recruitment
Internal recruitment is the process in which the candidates are hired within the organization or
promoted to a higher level rather than recruiting the new ones. In the ‘Chocolate presence'
first, the job vacancies have been circulated internally, in which the family members and friends
of the staff were also eligible to sit in the recruiting process (Kadiresan et al., 2015). Internal
recruitment could be done by employee referral, promotions, or through the transfer. The
process of internal recruitment contains some advantages as well as the disadvantages. Some
of them are as follows;
Advantages
 As the candidate is already known, so the company employees and recruiter are already
familiar with the candidate.
 The employee would not need as much training as the new employee, because they are
already familiar with the companies’ work approach and ethics.
 The morality would increase within the organization as another employee would be
motivated from this.
 Time and money-saving process as a company don't need to advertise on external channels
to find out the best one.
Disadvantages
 Bitterness would be increased among the employees.
 The same old ideas are given by the employees.
 If one employee would get promoted than another vacancy would be there to be filled.
 Sometimes the organization needs to bring just new ideas and thinking.
 It also limits the no. of potential candidates.
 There can also be partiality between the two candidates.

 External recruitment
External recruitment is to fill the vacant posts in the company with the new people or it can be
said that filling the vacant post externally or from outside of the organization, this is known as
external recruitment. External recruitment can be done through advertising, walk-ins, private
employment agencies and campus drives (Kattenbach et al., 2010). As in ‘Chocolate Presence’
the external process which has been used is to advertise on the noticeboard of the main
entrance of the site. Some of the advantages and disadvantages of external recruitment are as
follows;
Advantages
 Recruiters have a larger pool of candidates so they can select the best one for the post.
 By recruiting the new or fresh talent for the company, recruiters open the gate for the new
ideas in order to rejuvenate the organization.
 Candidates from different backgrounds help the organization to maintain the diversity of
the organization.
Disadvantages
 External recruitment is a costly and time taken process.
 Can affect the current employees’ morale, they may feel like there are fewer opportunities
for them in the organization.
 It takes a lot of time to train a candidate from the fresh background.