Business Human Resource Management: Report on HRM Practices

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Business Human Resource Management (HRM), focusing on its strategic importance in organizations. It examines the role of HRM in workforce planning, employee recruitment, training, and maintaining healthy employee relations. The report uses ...Read More

BUSINESS HUMAN RESOURCE MANGEMENT
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Task 1.........................................................................................................................................5
Task2..........................................................................................................................................9
Task 3.......................................................................................................................................13
Task 4.......................................................................................................................................16
Conclusion................................................................................................................................19
Reference List..........................................................................................................................20
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Introduction
Human Resource Management (HRM) involves the strategic as well as systematic approach
that can assist in the administration of valued assets of any organisation. The HRM of an
organisation act as a catalyst in the maintenance of an impactful workforce within the
organisation and also empowers the business by helping the employees for efficiently so that
the company can grow in the competitive market.
In the first section, the study will focus on a rapidly growing organisation like ‘Say it with
Chocolate’ that has been failing to employ workers as per the growing workforce and hence
the introduction of an effective Human Resource has become obligatory in the better
management of employing the employees who can work efficiently and ensure better quality
of the products and services.
In the part 2 scenario, the case study reflects on the business giant like Microsoft who has
been maintaining their healthy relationship with their employees by the reward and appraisal
management system and also encouraging the development and growth of the employees.
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Task 1
a) The purpose of the HR function and its importance to the organization, given its
current problems and future plans for further growth.
The Human Resource Department plays a pivotal role in the resourcing as well as workforce
management of the business. “Say It with Chocolate” has been enhancing its business with
the varied range of chocolates and gift items. However, in recent times the quality has
dropped and the owner took the initiative of building a strong HRM team to recruit skilled
employees for maintaining the product quality and services. In order to build up the team it is
mandatory to know about the purpose of the HR functions that can deal with the current
problems and can also accelerate future growth.
Functions of HRM
Workforce planning is an intrinsic business process that aims at complete alignment with
the changing needs of the organisation (Cascio, 2018). The workforce planning can be
beneficial to reduce the cost of the labour favouring the flexibility and the deployment of the
workforce, understand the changing needs of the customer, identifying the strategies for the
focused employees and make developmental plans for them. Moreover the workforce
planning also concentrates on improving the products quality and helping the employees to
work efficiently. The HRM Team must work in complete alliance with the workforce plan.
Some of the crucial functions played by the HRM Team are:
Employment: The primary function of the HRM team is to employ suitable employees
(JILI'OW, 2015).The recruitment process of the HRM Team plays a crucial role in the
organisation.
Training and Development: This forms an extended wing of employment function wherein
the organisation can arrange proper training and developmental programs for the employees
(Keep, 2014).
HR Planning: The determination of the different personal programs and understanding the
job requirement is done solely by the HRM team as per their planning (Armstrong and
Taylor, 2014).
Employee Relations: The employee’s relation has to be very healthy to maintain the
productivity and the profitability of the business. A strained workplace culture can hamper
the business immensely ( Kmicinska, 2014).
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Rewards and Recognitions: In order to push the employees perform diligently to improvise
the business turnovers, it is crucial to give appraisal and rewards to their employees
(Marchington et al., 2016). “Say It with Chocolate” can build up a HRM Team that can give
appropriate appraisal to their employees.
Apart from the above functioning the Human Resource group also maintain success planning
and talent management, payroll management, legal procedures and employee welfare.
Importance to the organization:
The above functions can help the company to organize their employees in such a way that the
employees can utilize their skills as per the workforce plan and enhance the profitability and
productivity of the business.
The current problem of the organisation:
Presently the organisation is giving is failing on the recruitment and selection process of the
employees and hence it is important to train their managers to adapt a detailed job analysis to
take fair decisions in the recruitment process.
Future Plans for further growth:
Say it with Chocolate can enhance the annual turnover of the business by rewarding and
appraising their employees as per their performance. This will help the business to get happy
and efficient employees.
b) How you see your role and responsibilities as a Human Resource Officer.
The roles and responsibilities as a Human Resource Officer are immensely tactful and
strategic (Brewster, 2017). It is important to recruit the employees as per their skills and
thereby monitoring their regular performance and training them properly. It is relevant to
recruit, develop talents with various procedures and policies. The role of taking an active part
in the administrative tasks and ensure that the work culture and the environment of the
company is perfect for the employees is one of the foremost responsibilities of the Human
Resource Officer. The degrading quality of the products is a cause of concern for the business
and the Human Resource employee must take initiative to hire the employees according to
their talents and thereby train their employees to perform efficiently and work as per the
workforce planning
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c) The advantages and disadvantages of the current selection methods used by the
organization and compare it to other approaches of selection methods.
The selection process of the Say it with Chocolate is done on the basis of the Cognitive Test
as a part of their own Assessment Test conducted by the Human Resource Manager
The advantages and the disadvantages of the present selection methods of the organisations
can be illustrated in the given table:
Advantages Disadvantages
 Interview process is objective and
quantitative
 The process is non invasive
(Meijerink et al., 2016).
 Repeatable since the same test gets
conducted in order to assess the
validity related to the test results.
 Helps in indirect intelligence
measurement
 Interview process is expensive
 Requires a specific setting
 The result can get affected by the
candidate’s gender, age, and
extraneous factors like education.
 Absence of the work sample test will
not be able to judge the candidates
capability to make chocolates and
design gift items.
Table 1: The advantages and the disadvantages of the present selection methods of the
organisations
(Source: Created by the author)
Comparison of the Interview process with other selection methods:
Cognitive Test
(Own
Assessment
Test)
Job
Knowled
ge Test
Work
sample
tests
Psychomo
tor
abilities
tests
Personal
ity tests
Honesty
and
integrity
tests
Vocatio
nal
interests
tests
The
process
is
objective
and
involves
The
knowled
ge of the
job is
being
considere
A
demonstrat
ion of the
on the job
training is
reflected.
The skill
level of the
candidate
is
measured
Assess
the
personal
traits of
the
candidate
Assesses
the
truthfuln
ess of the
candidat
es.
Analysis
of the
occupati
on in
which
the
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in the
measure
ment of
the
intellige
nce
d s candidat
e gets fit
in.
Table 2: Comparison of the Interview process with other selection methods
(Source Subramaniam et al., 2016)
d) Potential improvements that could be made to the current selection methods.
The potential improvement that can be made to the current selection methods is to develop
the selection method more digitally and technologically (Gatewood et al., 2015). Moreover
the cognitive selection method although is beneficial at times but it should also be supported
with work sample tests. The sample of the performance of the candidates must be taken
into account. It is important to ask the employees to give a glimpse of their capability to
make chocolates and also design the gift items in an innovative manner.
The sample of the work done can then be forwarded to the production department and also
the food tasting department who after testing the items can give a positive or a negative
feedback regarding the work done. Moreover, the designing of the different gift items ca also
be checked by the concerned department and hence decide on the rejection and selection of
the available candidates. The knowledge test of the employees must also be considered to
check whether they have a fair idea about the different formulations and the designing of the
items related to the growth of the business.
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Task2
a) Create a person specification for the role
In order to hire a Receptionist for the organisation it is worthy to understand the skills and
the specified qualities required to select a candidate for the vacant position.
Job title Receptionist
Department/Section Administration
Reporting to Administration Manager
Skills Required Good Knowledge about the M.S Office
including M.S Word and Excel.
Profound skill in communication with the
peers in different levels.
Taking own initiative and work by own
taken.
Positive and welcoming attitude
Excellent time management sills
Providing a warm welcome to the visitors
and the clients
To answer to the calls and maintain the
online portal of the company.
Excellent interpersonal skills.
Additional requirements Work in flexible timings
Showing an interest in the overall
development of the industry.
Experience Must have experience regarding the positive
welcoming of the guests
Experience of coordination on the
switchboards.
Experience of the preliminary clerical duties.
Experience of promoting a good image of the
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company to their customers.
Qualifications Must have minimum graduate degree
Must have degree on the computer
programming.
Table: Person Specification
(Source: Created By Author)
b) Provide a rationale for a suitable medium for placing the advertisement
The organisation must invest a proper medium of promotion and advertisement of the
available vacancies within the organisation. The different multimedia channels can be used as
a technique of placing the advertisement. The job portal of the company must be kept up to
date and also follow the current trends of the market. The advertisement of the vacancies
must be incorporated in the career option of the company so that the candidates can directly
check the current vacancies and respond accordingly. The HRM team must ensure that the
portal provides proper online application form so that the desired candidates can apply
without much difficulty (Jamali et al., 2015).
The online advertisement can help the candidates get instant information about the current
jobs available with the company with a single click on their browser. E-Advertisement is in
current trend and hence the organisation can utilize this technique of publicizing their job
vacancies (Lu et al., 2016). This form of advertisement is also very cost effective as there is
no involvement of cost required for publishing the vacancies in magazines and journals.
Online mode of advertisement can help the organisation get candidates as per job
specifications because the portal provides option for specifying their skills in the provided
sections. Say it with Chocolate can filter the candidates as per the options provided. The use
of online mode of advertisement can also help the Human Resource Team to concentrate on
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the time management system. The use of online media can help the team to save time as this
process is not very lengthy and complicated. The advertisement should be short, accurate,
positive relevant and honest so that the candidates find it interesting to apply.
c) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the previous methods of advertising jobs
in the organization
The traditional method of circulating the job vacancies within the organisation and the use of
on the jobs board has been prevalent within the organisation (Brewster et al., 2016). Say it
with Chocolate however has been facing some issues related to this traditional ways of
advertising their job vacancies. The advantages of the traditional ways of advertising are
as follows:
 The existing employees within the organisation can apply for the jobs and can get
promotion as per the post.
 The traditional ways of advertisement can create a awareness among the employees to
perform more efficiently as new recruitments can be a risk factor for the old
employees.
 The on the job board is the most simple form of advertisement that an organization
can undertake without much hassles
The disadvantages of the traditional ways of advertising are as follows:
 The traditional ways of advertisement is not at all cost effective
 Unable to attract wider audiences
 Often fails in getting right candidate for the job
 The advertisement may be overlooked by the audiences
 Much time is wasted on the overall process of advertisements.
 The traditional advertisement is lengthy and the execution is not concurrent.
d) Produce a minimum of 6 questions which could be asked at the interview for the
Receptionist, which would help to improve the selection decision making process.
The selection decision of the employees is completely based on the interview process
undertaken by the Human Resource Team. A set of six sample questions were given to the
viable candidates to judge their sills and aptitudes. The questions asked by the interviewer are
as follows:
 How will you handle a situation where you have to deal with an upset person present
at your reception desk?
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 An individual has called up to have a conversation with a person not available at that
time. What would be your way of dealing with the individual calling up and how
would you help him connect that person further.
 What software are you acquainted with?
 How can a receptionist bring changes in the office culture?
 How will you be able to manage communications among each department in the
office?
 An ideal relationship to be maintained with the office. Do you agree?
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Task 3
Microsoft offer apprenticeship and graduate training schemes. Evaluate the benefits to
both the organisation and employees of such schemes
Bill gates the founder of Microsoft Company is known to be very humble and gentleperson
he donated over $28 billion on charity. Microsoft offer for the apprenticeship and graduation
training has helped bring a revelation on working environment. The students who graduate
through Microsoft they get the privilege to know the real world scenario. They get to learn
not by reading but by doing a particular work. There is no other process that can replace the
process of learning something from experiences. The students gets familiarized with the
work culture and work as well so when they go to work for a company it gives them an upper
hand on doing work. They help a student to follow their passion and achieve success through
it (Meister, and Mulcahy, 2016).
Microsoft graduation training schemes provide training on finance, engineering, data center,
hardware engineering and many more. With these, training on hand any company will not
have much trouble on providing any extra training to its employee. When work becomes easy
the employees bring efficiency to the organization. This training method is very much helpful
for not only to the workers but to the organization as well. With trained employee, the
organization does not have to invest much on training process. It also saves valuable time for
the organization. The workflow always stays strong and make better working environment
(Miller, 2015).
Developmental opportunities are available to staff once they are in a permanent job role
Every company provides some developmental opportunities to its employees Microsoft being
one of them. Microsoft Company provides on-the-job training, training in the classroom,
online training and many more ways of training to its employees. It also provides frequent
opportunities for promotions to its employees. Microsoft believes that everyone can grow and
develop. From time to time Microsoft collects data of work efficacy of every employee it
acknowledges hard work of the employees and helps them get opportunities to make good
use of their talents.
For every new post an employee goes he or she gets a good amount of training on the job.
Microsoft focuses on quality instead of quantity. This company has also focused on diversity
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and inclusion to satisfy the changing workforce of the company. Microsoft provides many
privileges to its employees so that they can make a more efficient and productive. This
company believes in growth and development in every stage of employment. The passion for
a person that he or she can choose as a carrier is always a great thing for that person.
Microsoft looks for the passion within its employees that drives them to do work. Higher
percentage in academy is one of the basic criteria to get promotion. However, this company
tries to find people having higher IQ and extraordinary talents in the field of software and
hardware of a computer (Othman, et al 2018).
The benefits of the approach Microsoft has taken in respect of flexible working
practices
There are different benefits in flexible working approaches to the employee and to the
organization as well. The employees enjoy his working time in a manner he like and the
organization benefits the efficiency of the workers. The timing issues may come up during
these processes. For example, an employee may want to have the flexibility to work during
the night time where as the manager and the team leader may work during the day time.
There may come a miss-communication between them due to this. However, the flaws of
flexible working practices are been removed by Microsoft. These are the benefits of flexible
working time. (Rana, 2015)
Flexibility to meet family needs- Every person work so that he or she can have a better
social life. Microsoft understands this fact and allows its employees to work for the time,
which is very much suitable for them.
Avoid traffic and the stress of commutating- Most of the company in a country fix a
particular time to work which leads to a lot of traffic in road and very much problematic for
the employee to travel. Microsoft allows some workers to work staying within the preferred
environment of the employee.
Decrease in cost of childcare and fuel- Every organization try to save money by cost
cutting. This allows the Microsoft Company to have less expense on childcare and fuel on the
employee’s child and motorcar.
Explain how Microsoft motivates its workers through its job design and systems of
reward
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Microsoft is known to provide one of the highest paid salary jobs on the face of this planet.
This company has very few competitors in the market. Due to its work culture and good
working environment, this company achieved success in very less time. Microsoft provides
health benefits, help with invest in future, casual games during the work time, work
flexibility, care for family, help with education and many more.
Health benefits- Microsoft provide time-to-time health checkups, dental checkups, for the
employee. It always ensures that the employees are staying fit for the work. The safety of the
employees is always important.
Help with invest in future- Microsoft always ensures that the employees future is safe and
secure. It provides healthy amount of provided fund along with other benefits to it retiring
employees.
Casual games during the work time- Casual games during the work ensure the happiness of
the employees. Microsoft always help and promotes fun activities to keep the employees
entertaining some might say it is the best place to work.
Work flexibility- Microsoft provide work flexibility to its employees it makes sure that
employees stay comfortable to do all their work.
Care for family- Microsoft care for the families of its workers. It provides childcare for
single mothers so that they do not have to worry about their child.
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Task 4
a) What is meant by the term employee engagement?
As per the summit held by Microsoft, six leaders from the giant organisations like: KFC,
Accenture, TSB Bank, Sanofi Pasteur and Mondelez International the engagement of the
employees is the foundation of any organisations growth and success. According to the world
leaders in vaccines Sanofi Pasteur, the use of the Yammer has helped to get innovative ideas
from the employees and hence enhance the product quality of the company. This form of
employee’s engagement has helped the organisation a lot. Mondelez International enhances
on the employees connection with their global workforce. This connection becomes an
integral part of the employee engagement system. In a food chain giants like KFC, Yammer
has been implemented to link the disparate employees throughout many of their outlets.
According to all the giant leaders it has been accepted that Yammer plays a pivotal role in the
improvement of the employees’ engagement (Microsoft, 2018). An enhanced way of
communication helps in building a transparent culture from the leaders to the workers and
also accelerates the process of keeping them informed and aligned. Construct communities of
the interest to get people all together around a shared idea, topic or any genre of practice. The
use of Yammer brings the employees on the same page and hence helps the HRM team work
coherently to increase the productivity of the organisation.
b) Why is employee engagement an integral strategy of employee relation?
The employee engagement forms an integral strategy of the employee relation by building a
strong communication and hence making the access of the information much easier and also
helps the employees work as a team coherently.
Making the employees engaged with the advanced technological uses like IM, Conferencing
and also other meeting solutions help them to develop a good and healthy relationship with
each other. The sharing of the innovative ideas on a common platform make the employees
communicate with each other which in turn improvises the employee relationship. Human
resource is based on the thought that the success of the organisation depends on the capability
to extract the utmost degree of willingness from the employees to work efficiently to bring
business for the organisation (Chuang et al., 2016) Set against the given backdrop,
engagement of the employees is one of the key factors of the managerial strategies aiming to
align with the interest of the employees which in turn is directly connected to the employee
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relation within the organisation. The employees work as a family within the organisation and
this can be achieved only when the engagement of the employees forms an integral strategy.
c) Identify some of the key approaches to engaging workers discussed in the summit and
explain their importance in terms of improving communication in the workplace.
In the Employee Engagement Summit organised by Microsoft the detailed analysis of the
modern approaches to the engagement of the employees have been lime lighted. The different
approaches the organisations can adapt are technologically driven and extensively employee
friendly. The organisation can leverage different videos for the training and development of
the employees. The communication and the sharing of the information with the Stream are
modern in its approach. Use of smart searching tools and implementing the intelligence
features in the video help the employees interact with the concerned videos and get an easy
access to the relevant content.
Use of the applications like the Office 365 apps like Yammer, Teams and SharePoint
make it relevant for the employees to remain engaged and ring an integrated productive
output. The modern approach keeps the communication more forceful and compelling.
Reaching the entire organisation and keeping all the people connected and making the remote
teams also in complete alignment is done with the assistance of these personalized videos.
The use of the different tools and apps for the improvement of the communication is relevant
and important for increasing the productivity and profitability of the business. Moreover with
an advanced form of communication the employees can get innovative ideas to perform in a
manner that is not only technologically drive but also enforces on the overall growth of the
company.
d) Identify the main pieces of employment legislation in the UK and explain how they
influence human resource decision making (from recruitment, training and
development and reward, to redundancy and retirement)
The employee Legislation in a country like UK influences a lot on the decision making of the
Human Resource Team. The following functions of the HRM Team get influenced by the
employee legislation:
Recruitment: The Equality Act of 2010 emphasizes on the recruitment of the employees
without doing any discrimination on their age, gender, sex and race. No candidate can be
discriminated to get a job in the organisation on the ground of their age or their race or
gender. It is an offence to discriminate any of the candidates on the basis of the above
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mentioned criteria. Hence the HRM team has to take decisions keeping this factor on the
mind. The training and developmental programs of the organisation follows the Equality Act
of 2010 to maintain a fair process of training and helping the employees participate in the
developmental programmes irrespective of their status, culture and gender(Shah, 2015).
According to the UK Labour Law, the redundancy and the retirement of the employees has
to follow the rules like avoiding the dismissal of the employees without any reason before the
maturation of their tenure and also giving proper notice period to the employees before
getting them dismissed from the job. The employees must be given time to get another job
and hence maintain the healthy workforce culture within the organisation by the HRM Team.
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Conclusion
In the above discussion an image of how a human resource manager work under different
circumstances is been mentioned. The selection methods, a Human resource manager takes to
satisfy the need of the organization. The advantages and disadvantages of different methods
of human resources is stated. Microsoft is one of the most prestigious company in the world
how this company’s human resource takes decision to satisfy the needs of the company and
the employees well is also been stated. Employ engagement can be one of the most
important duty for the human resource and sometimes it can be very important as it establish
employee relation this discussion can give a good image how it must be done.
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