Analyzing HRM Trends, Ethical Issues & Planning in Vodafone Group

This report provides an analysis of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices at Vodafone Group PLC, focusing on current trends, challenges, and long-term planning strategies. It highlights the importance of HRM in achieving organizational goals, emphasizing talent acquisition, upskilling the workforce, and adapting to flexible working arrangements. The report identifies challenges such as navigating diverse regulations, managing company culture changes, and optimizing employee training programs. Furthermore, it explores the application of theories like Human Capital Theory and Dynamic Capability Theory in workforce planning. Ethical considerations in recruitment and selection processes are discussed, along with recommendations for addressing HRM issues, including enhancing work culture, incentivizing employees, and developing leadership within the company. The conclusion underscores HRM's critical role in managing people and maintaining quality work within the organization.

Human Resource
Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Current HRM trends and the issues faced by the company with its impact...............................3
Long term planning by HRM with the application of theories...................................................5
Ethical practices in the recruitment and selection process..........................................................6
Recommendations for solving the HRM issues..........................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
Books and Journals.....................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Human resource management is related with the management of people who are working in the
organisation for achieving the goals and objectives. There are different policies in every
organisation which are related with managing the employees and the departments in the
company conduct a lot of activities which includes the recruitment of new people, providing
them training, performance appraisal and many other things(Bemelmans-Videc, Eriksen and
Goldenberg, 2020). The main function of human resource management is to increase their
productivity and to motivate them so that they work towards accomplishing the objectives of the
company. Human resource department is considered to be the most important part in every
organisation because they are the one who recruit new people according to the their talent and
whether they would be able to manage the objectives of the company. They are the one who are
responsible for maintaining and managing the quality work in the company. Vodafone group plc
is a British company which is based on telecommunications and has its registered office in
Newbury, Berkshire, England. This report will cover trends in HRM and the issues which are
faced by them, long term planning of HRM team, ethical practices for recruitment and selection
and recommendations on the HRM issues.
MAIN BODY
Current HRM trends and the issues faced by the company with its impact
In today's time, every small aspect has been changed in the market and mainly in human
resource department. There are different trend and major changes which are helpful for the
growth to work and make significant aspect and manage the suitable changes which are related
to effective growth and adoptive nature in the company(Barbu, Logofătu and Olari, 2019).
Vodafone try to increase and expand their culture in new markets and for this they are needed to
work with great team. There are some major trend which may get the impact to the Vodafone
related to their future growth:

 Discovering the right talent: With the increasing competition and make suitable
changes to analyse effective team work and make systematic changes and work as per the
fast speed and investment for having the major responsibilities to the work culture. All is
related to work and make systematic changes and analyse the concept and make the
effective trend for the growth of the company.
 Up-killing and grooming workforce: Up-killing to develop the different skills and
make existing workers for the nature and trend are related to effective work style and
manage the suitable growth in the different knowledge and skills for highly essential
concepts(Galli, 2018). This will be related to work culture and make significant growth
in the management of grooming skills and workforce in the large multinational company
like Vodafone.
 Flexible working adjustment: Further, in order to retain and make effective work for
working in talent management and work as per the significant growth to analyse the task
and make effective work environment is one of the next effective trend.
After working on the major trends of HR team, there are different challenges which are
face by the company an make sure to analyse their different prospective and manage he suitable
growth to work in an appropriate way:
 Different rules and regulation: This is one of the main priorities to analyse the concept
and work as per the progressive change and manage the suitable growth and make the
changes only in constants(Kreutzer and Sirrenberg, 2020). Therefore, a company is
needed to be analyse and manage the growth which are related to full accordance and
management abilities.
 Changes in company culture: Another challenge for the company is to have change in
company's culture and make sure to work with the effective culture ability and make
analyse of different concept and growth. These make the impact on Vodafone and try to
analyse the effective work culture for the future growth.
 Employee Training: This is one of the big part in grooming the talented sources, which
actually help the cost cutting system and make sure for the approaches and manage the
suitable growth which are related to some major problems. Company may get the impact
and manage the sources for the right course and work to analyse different aspect and
make team work to teach an effective workforces.

Long term planning by HRM with the application of theories
Human resource department is that one which works for managing the workforce of the company
as they people who are working for the company are considered to be the important assets for
them. Vodafone HR department also tries to maintain and manage the planning which will be
effective for the company and also in terms of meeting goals. The HRM department can make
the long term planning strategically in following ways-
 Assess the HR capacity- It is important to assess and make the evaluation of the capacity
which the department has and by which they can make planning(Cai-Ming and Hao-Nan,
2020). Vodafone HR department also plans the long term strategies by looking into the
capacity which they have.
 Forecast HR requirements- It is important from the side of HR department that they
evaluate the requirements which they will be having in the future. Vodafone company
always makes the evaluation of the factors which will be required in the future.
 Develop the strategies- The HR department of the Vodafone in this stage identifies the
strategies which will work the best for the company and also fro the employees. This
strategy will be useful in achieving the objectives of the HR department as well.
Theories which will be helpful in defining the workforce planning has been explained below in
context with Vodafone-
 Human Capital theory- The main ideology of this theory is that the employees with
good educational qualifications, habits, good experience are the one who are required by
the company. As they are the ones who have the capability to achieve the objectives of
the company(Kundu and Gahlawat, 2018). Vodafone is the company which always tries
to employ those people who are good in productivity otherwise the training which is
provided to the employees before their joining the company helps them in providing the
knowledge which is important and beneficial.
 Dynamic capability theory- It is the capability of the organisation to develop and adopt
to the external and internal factors of the company. The factors in internal terminology
includes the human resource also and other factors also that the company can develop the
ability to react to the things which are new for them or which might be challenging. For

the Vodafone company it is very important to adopt to the changing factors as these are
the one by which the company will accomplish its objectives.
Ethical practices in the recruitment and selection process
Ethical practices is the human conduct which the company must follow to bring the best results
but sometimes when the recruitment and selection process takes place the ethical practices are
not followed by the Human resource department which creates the problem to the candidates
who come for the job(Pera, 2019). Thus, it wholly depends on the HR department as how they
have to conduct the recruitment and selection process so that the recruitment and selection
process is taken ethically and no person will face the problem of unethical issues. Vodafone HR
department also conducts the ethical practices for the recruitment and selection process which
are discussed as below-
 To advertise about the existing job- The main ethical problem which is created and
developed during the recruitment and selection process is that at times the HR department
of the company advertise about that job which is non existing in nature. This means that
it will be represented as the unethical practice by the company. Vodafone always tries
that the job which they are posting either in the newspapers or in the online mode then
they are providing those which actually exists. Thus, the candidates who will be applying
for the jobs can trust on what is being provided by the company so that it does not looks
unethical.
 Unethical employee referral practices- This includes the practices which are usually
taken by the top most employees who are on the higher position. The employee referral
means those employees are recruited which might not be good in the education but
because they relate with the top management so the company provides the employment.
But in case of Vodafone, in which giving employee references is in but the HR team also
looks into the facts which are required in the employee for that particular position(Patky
and Pandey, 2020). They does not go to any favouritism but on the facts.
 Altering a candidate resume- It has been seen and this is most common type of practice
which is usually undertaken in the workplace in which the employer may want to
employ the person to whom they know in short the general preference which will be
given to particular candidates. Vodafone does not conduct such activities in which they

are providing personal preference to people and not employing those who actually
deserves the position.
Recommendations for solving the HRM issues
There are many issues which are faced by the HR department but with the challenges there are
many solutions which can be applied by the HR department for solving the issue which has been
discussed below in context with Vodafone-
 The main issue which the HR department is facing is that of the recruitment and retention
of the employees with the right talent and right knowledge. It is the major issue and the
most important one which is faced by the HR team of every company(Vaziri and Farhadi
Mahalli, 2018). They are the one who are responsible for managing the employees and
on the other hand they are the one who will recruit the right talent according to the
requirement of the company. But as the human resource department is considered to be
the most important asset they have then in this case they have to make the work culture of
the company positive and flexible so that right people came and are retained in the
company.
 The culture of the company is a very important thing which is useful to develop positive
environment and on the other side to increase the retention of the employees. The
development and balancing of working environment is very important which will be
useful for the HR department in solving the work environment issue. With that if timely
incentives will be provided to the employees then at that time the employees will also
work hard for the company objectives(Olsen, 2019). When the workplace environment
of the company is good then at that time the employee turnover problem is also reduced
and on the other side the flexibility and the friendly relations also gets increased.
 The other is the leadership development practices which are considered to be the most
important and making leaders from the company itself are considered to be the most
important for increasing the motivation and on the other side retain the top talent in the
company. Vodafone company develops and creates the opportunity for developing a good
leaders in the company which will be helpful for providing the motivation to the
employees and not just this they will also support the team members of the company. In
this way the leaders will take half of the responsibility of the HR team.

CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that human resource management is the most
important department in the company because they are the one who are responsible for
managing the people. They are the who manage the work and maintain the quality workplace so
that the positive environment can be created and can be developed. They define the policies to
the employees in the best way so that the employees know what company expects from them.
The leaders are the one who motivates the employees but human resource department also plays
the important role in motivating the employees.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Barbu, C.M., Logofătu, M. and Olari, C., 2019. ISO 26000: A Vital Vector in Interconnecting
the Human Resource Management Standards. In ISO 26000-A Standardized View on
Corporate Social Responsibility (pp. 29-45). Springer, Cham.
Bemelmans-Videc, M.L., Eriksen, B. and Goldenberg, E.N., 2020. Facilitating organizational
learning: human resource management and program evaluation. In Can Governments
Learn? (pp. 145-187). Routledge.
Cai-Ming, Z. and Hao-Nan, C., 2020, December. Preprocessing method of structured big data in
human resource archives database. In 2020 IEEE International Conference on
Industrial Application of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI) (pp. 379-384). IEEE.
Galli, B.J., 2018. What Human Resource Management Can Teach The Goal: A Research
Note. International Journal of Service Science, Management, Engineering, and
Technology (IJSSMET). 9(4). pp.26-36.
Kreutzer, R.T. and Sirrenberg, M., 2020. Fields of Application of Artificial Intelligence—Health
Care, Education and Human Resource Management. In Understanding artificial
intelligence (pp. 167-193). Springer, Cham.
Kundu, S.C. and Gahlawat, N., 2018. Ability–motivation–opportunity enhancing human
resource practices and firm performance: Evidence from India. Journal of Management
& Organization. 24(5). pp.730-747.
Olsen, M., 2019. Using data analytics in the management of employees: Digital means of
tracking, monitoring, and surveilling worker activities. Psychosociological Issues in
Human Resource Management. 7(2). pp.43-48.
Patky, J. and Pandey, S.K., 2020. Does flexibility in human resource practices increase
innovation? Mediating role of intellectual capital. South Asian Journal of Human
Resources Management. 7(2). pp.257-275.
Pera, A., 2019. Towards effective workforce management: Hiring algorithms, big data-driven
accountability systems, and organizational performance. Psychosociological Issues in
Human Resource Management. 7(2). pp.19-24.
Vaziri, S. and Farhadi Mahalli, A., 2018. Impact of knowledge-based human resource
management policies on innovation performance and intellectual capital (Case Study:
National Oil Products Distribution Company-Golestan Region). Public Policy In
Administration. 9(3).pp.95-112.