Human Resource Management Case Study Review: Dilmah Tea, Unit 03

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the human resource management (HRM) practices at Dilmah Tea, a Sri Lankan tea company. It begins with an overview of the company, its history, and its global presence. The report then delves into the core functions of HRM at Dilmah, including recruitment and hiring, training and professional development, benefits and compensation, and international legal compliance. It evaluates various approaches to HRM, such as job and person specifications for recruitment, and leadership mentoring and on-the-job training for employee development, and comparative and attribute approaches for performance management. The report assesses the effectiveness of these approaches, particularly focusing on recruitment and selection. Key aspects of employee relations and engagement are discussed, along with an evaluation of different HRM practices like open-book management and feedback mechanisms. The report also examines the role of employment legislation, including the Employment Equality Act, Health and Safety Act, and Data Protection Act, in HRM decision-making at Dilmah. The conclusion emphasizes the crucial role of HRM in the company's success.

RUNNING HAED: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Business Management

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Organization overview.....................................................................................................................2
Analysis of HR practices.................................................................................................................2
Evaluation of Approaches................................................................................................................3
Effectiveness of approaches for Recruitment and Selection...........................................................4
Key essentials..................................................................................................................................5
HRM practices evaluation...............................................................................................................5
Employment Legislation..................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Bibliography....................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The assessment report is prepared in respect of the given scenario. The case focuses on the
subject of ‘Human Resource Management’. It mainly includes the HRM purpose, scope,
effectiveness and decision-making factors in the organization. Additionally, the report also
comprises of the role of ‘Employment protection legislation’ in relation to the HRM practices.
The key purpose of the report is to enhance the knowledge based on HRM practices.
Organization overview
Dilmah is a Sri Lanka based tea company owned by Merrill J Fernando. It assesses that ‘Dilmah’
as one of the explorers has brought up the concept of single-origin tea. It is a globally recognized
brand founded in the year 1988. It offers multiple varieties teas including Ceylon tea (Tea, 2019).
It is the top brand in the Sri Lanka market and often considers as the world’s biggest tea brand
(Srinivasan , 2018). It is a recognize tea brand as it provides traditional, natural and authentic tea
quality. Being a luxury tea brand, it also operates in the digital channels. It has an annual revenue
of ’$70.2 million’ and employs a strength of ‘602’ employees (Owler, 2019). Moreover, it has
also established its lounge named as ‘The t- lounge by Dilmah’ (Tea, 2019).
Analysis of HR practices
The key functions of HR are:
1. Recruitment and Hiring
2. Training and professional development
3. Benefits and compensation
4. International legal compliance
The major objective behind the above functions is to help ‘Dilmah’ in achieving the organization
goals. It provides the company with efficient and skilled workers and develops training programs
to retain maximum and quality output from the employees. It trains the employees to ensure
effective utilization of their skills in the organization. It also performs the activity of maintaining
high morale among the employees in the organization to boost the employee motivation and to
enhance capability in the workplace in ‘Dilmah’. It also acknowledges the employees with the

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various benefits and compensation that ‘Dilmah’ offer to its loyal and productive staff members.
Moreover, it recognizes its foreign employee with international law to avoid future legal issues
(Maalderink , 2014).
HR has a significant role as it deals with the human resource of the organization. It attains the
responsibility of attracting workforce talent as per the labor requirement in the organization. It
has the role of developing effective recruitment strategies to retain talented professionals from
relevant locations. HR attains the role of making the new employee acquainted with the Dilmah
work pattern. HR should also enroll the new employee and develop conferences, trade shows and
seminars to gain employee engagement. HR should timely carry out a performance appraisal and
provide necessary feedback to the employees. Moreover, he should provide the employees with
the trending legal policies and checks that the employees are abiding by the Dilmah policies. He
is responsible for maintaining a healthy, safe and fun work environment and ensure employee
comfortably. Additionally, he is responsible for resolving conflicts prevailing among the staff
members in Dilmah (Price , 2011).
Evaluation of Approaches
The key approaches that HR should consider in workforce planning are matching staffing with
the business requirement and downsizing. He should retain employees as per the ‘Dilmah’
company requirement. He should know the effective usage of downsizing approach. It is
necessary, as it will assist the company in better resource planning. It helps in reducing the
workforce with fair means that focused business needs (Gandolfi, 2013).
‘Job specification’ and ‘Person specification’ are the two approaches for recruitment and
selection. A job description is a preliminary step for systemic hiring. It includes the detailed
information of the job including pay, job task and responsibilities. A person specification is the
compilation of skills, education and experience required by the candidate. It is considered
significant as it helps in assessing whether current employees can meet the Dilmah objectives
(Ingram , 2019). ‘Leadership Mentoring’ and ‘On the Job Training’ are methods for employee
development and training. In leadership mentoring, the mentor shares the quality information
with the trainee and assists him/her in enhancing the skills needed in the workplace. Through on

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the job training approach, employees actively participate in activities concerning their job profile
(Harrison , 2012).
‘Comparative approach’ and ‘Attribute approach’ are some approaches for performance
management. The comparative approach involves ranking the employee's performance with
respect to other employees. This approach ensures rewards for the top performers. Attribute
approach deals with rating the employee performance based on specific parameters like problem-
solving skills, teamwork innovation and creativity (Sarieddine, 2014). The reward system is
based on the development of smart goals. Smart goals measure the progress of the goal in
relation to specific criteria. Smart goal act as an approach for rewarding the employee as they
clearly specify the level of outcome achieved (CFI, 2109). Similarly, in Dilmah, employee
rewards should be based on the quality and progress of the work in respect of smart goals.
Effectiveness of approaches for Recruitment and Selection
As mentioned above, Job specification and Person specification are the two approaches for
employee selection and recruitment process. In the recruitment process, the job specification
approach assists HR in screening the resume. It will save time by choosing the application
closest to the job requirement from the multiple applications. It prevents from recruiting the
unsuitable applicants. It will also help in evaluating employees and providing them essential
training. It will also help in performance appraisal and promotion process (MSG, 2019).
A person specification is another essential document that assists in hiring the best candidate for
the required job. It acts as a comprehensive description of the person required for the job.
Moreover, it also helps the applying candidate as with the help of person specification they can
evaluate whether they possess the required skills. It saves time in the recruitment process and
thus helps in streamline the operation (Garner, 2012).
Similarly, in the recruitment process for Dilmah, Job specification and Person specification will
assist the HR in making a quality selection. As Dilmah is a renowned organization, it is very
important to choose the appropriate candidate. Through job specification, HR can attract the
right candidate and by creating the person specification, it will save their time and thus they can
invest their time in other important areas.

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Key essentials
‘Employee relations’ is an effort to manage the relationship between employers and employees
in the organization (Craig , 2017). Developing positive relationships between the different
authorities will help the Dilmah in retailing high productivity and performance from the
employees that ultimately assist in the organization growth. It leads to higher retention rates
among the workforce. Additionally, positive employee relation fosters employee morale and
motivation in the workplace resulting in higher productivity. It eradicates workplace stress and
conflicts and thus leads to less absenteeism in Dilmah (Picincu , 2018).
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment of an employee towards the organization
goals (Kruse , 2102). It has a significant role as it boosts productivity, enhances customer
satisfaction and Dilmah company culture. It will lead to employee’s alignment with Dilmah
company values. Additionally, it enhances the employee retention rate. Hence, it is considered as
a symptom of success (Gruman, 2011).
It is analyzed that the adoption of practices such as ‘flexible organization’ and ‘employer of
choice’ will not be suitable for a long period, as these practices will provide high unnecessary
authority to the employees. However, employees will take undue advantage of such facilities and
will become habitual to such practices. It will result in the development of poor organization
system (Svensson, 2012). Additionally, ‘flexible working practice’ like ‘work from home’ can be
considerable for loyal employees, as it will motivate the other employees to perform better
output to avail such benefits in Dilmah.
HRM practices evaluation
1. Open book management style
2. Fair evaluation system
3. Feedback mechanism
Open-book management is a management approach that involves providing the employees with
the company financial information to enable them to make a better decision. It is providing the
necessary data to the employee to assist them to foster work performance. This practice will be
more suitable as it involves treating the customers as partners. It will enhance the employee
motivation and he/she will lay active participation in the work process (Times, 2019).

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Additionally, higher participation will generate quality output resulting in a few errors. Hence, it
will save the ‘Dilmah’ cost.
The fair evaluation system is beneficial, as it will provide work achievement recognition to the
employees. It will help in building their morale. Thus, high morale employees will be more
productive. Moreover, it will provide a clear linkage between employee performance and
compensation. Compensation based on employee performance evaluation will save the ‘Dilmah’
cost on unproductive employees (LG, 2019).
A feedback mechanism is a method to improve employee performance in the workplace. It is
beneficial as it enhances employee motivation. It is asses that constructive criticism assists in
producing better decisions and thus improves employee performance. HR should offer periodic
feedback to the employees as it fosters employee personal growth. Hence, the feedback
mechanism enhances the productivity of the employee resulting in higher output and enhanced
profit (Business, 2014).
Employment Legislation
Employment legislation also referred as ‘Employment Law’, it regulates the relationship between
the employers and employees. It states what the employer can expect from employees, what
employer can ask employees to do and employees rights at the workplace (Taylor, 2015). The
important legislation acts that HR must acknowledge in the decision making in Dilmah are
‘Employment Equality Act’, ‘Health and Safety Act’ and ‘Data Protection Act’.
The ‘Employment Equality Act 1998’ is developed to protect the employees in an organization.
It safeguards employee rights in the workplace and is applied to all the employment agencies,
trade union, public, and private sector employment. It promotes equality, bans discrimination,
bans harassment, bans victimization and determines the availability of essential facilities in the
workplace (Holt, 2015). Thus, HR must ensure that any employee in the Dilmah organization
does not face direct or indirect discrimination. His decision should not treat any employee less
favorably in the workplace. Hence, HR must make decisions that foster equality among the
employees.

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The ‘Health and Safety Act 1974’ states that employer must protect the health and safety of the
employees at the workplace. It is essential as it ignores prosecution and enhances profitability. it
includes the adoption of decisions and practices that fosters employees safety and health and
assessing risk in the workplace (Hughes, 2012). Thus, HR must ensure that there is the
availability of only safe equipment for tea production and safe system of work in the Dilmah
workplace.
The ‘Data Protection Act 1998’ states that employees personal data should be processed in a fair
and lawful manner and should only be used for the legal purpose (Rumbold, 2017). Thus, HR in
Dilmah should assess that protection of employee personal data to avoid monetary penalties for
the Dilmah. Additionally, he must timely check the data security review in the workplace.
Conclusion
The report is summarized on ‘Human resource management’. It states the important practice,
functions and objectives of HR in respect of Dilmah organization. It includes the approaches
used in the functions of HR. Additionally, it comprises of the benefits of employee relation and
employee engagement in the Dilmah organization. It also focuses on the adoption of practices
such as flexible organization, flexible working and employer choice. It also states the important
HR practices that foster Dilmah overall profit and productivity. Lastly, it pours light on the
crucial employee legislations in the HRM decision-making process. Thus, it concludes that HR
performs a key role in the company and act as a significant resource.

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