Human Resource Management Report

This report on Human Resource Management provides an in-depth analysis of HR functions, including recruitment, employee engagement, training, and the importance of effective HR practices in organizations. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of current selection methods, evaluates potential improvements, and highlights the significance of employee engagement and flexible working arrangements. The report concludes with recommendations for enhancing HR practices to achieve organizational goals.

HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
a) Explaining purpose of HR function and its importance to organisation............................3
b) Strengths and weaknesses of current selection methods ...................................................6
c) Evaluating potential improvements for enhancing selection process ...............................7
TASK 2 ...........................................................................................................................................7
a) Creating a person specification for job role of Receptionist..............................................7
b) Advantages and disadvantages of current methods of advertising job in organisation.....9
c) Recommendations on job advert for the vacancy of receptionist ...................................10
TASK 3 .........................................................................................................................................10
a) Evaluating benefits of training and internships provided by Microsoft...........................10
b) Identification of flexible working arrangements in Microsoft and its benefits ...............11
c) Evaluating how organisation motivates employees through the way of designing job roles
..............................................................................................................................................13
TASK 4 .........................................................................................................................................14
a) Meaning of employee engagement and its importance in effective relations ................14
b) Key approaches of engaging workers discussed in summit and how these improves
communication in organisation............................................................................................15
c) UK employment legislation affecting HR decision making ...........................................16
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................17
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................18

INTRODUCTION
HRM is a systematic approach of managing people in the company. It is very
commonly called as Human Resource (HR) department of a firm . The present
assignment is divided into segment in which part 1 will discuss the purpose and scope
of human resource management, strengths and weaknesses of selection methods in
Chocolate Presence, a company based in North Yorkshire manufactures and sells tailor
made chocolates for presents and greetings etc. Further, a job specification will be
created for the role of reception in firm, advantages and limitations of current methods
of advertising of job vacancies will be highlighted.
The other segment is part 2 which will discuss the benefits of training and
internships to graduate by Microsoft to employees and organisation. An evaluation will
be done of flexible working arrangements in Microsoft and how this is beneficial to
organisation and employees will be determined in this assignment. Lastly, the report will
cover how the company motivates its workers by the way it designs job roles.

TASK 1
a) Explaining purpose of HR function and its importance to organisation
Human resource management is a well defined and systematic process of
planning, organising, directing, monitoring and controlling the human aspect of the
organisation (Bratton and Gold, 2017).
Human resource function of management is concerned with the effective
management of employees within the organisation. It ensures smooth and seamless
flow of talented and skilled personnel in company along with taking care of their needs
of growth and development (Brewster and Hegewisch, eds. 2017).
The purpose of HR function in Chocolate Presence is to provide required staff to
company. The main aim is to align human capital with organisational goals and
objectives. The HR department's objective is to bring the required transformation and
changes for bringing the effectiveness and efficiency in organisation. It ensures that
proper compliances of laws has been done and a suitable working environment exists
based on business ethics for the employees (Brewster, 2017).
Scope of HR department is very broad as it plays different functions such as:
Human resource functions :
Rewards : The HR department is responsible for setting remuneration, benefits and
rewards for al the employees in the company. Reward is used as a tool for motivating workers
for outperforming the tasks allotted to them. Example financial perks such as bonus, incentives,
paid holidays etc.
Performance management : The human resource of Chocolate Presence develops an
environment at workplace where people are enabled to preform to their best capabilities. The
management process consist of stages that is coaching, analysing, corrective actions and
termination. This management is concerned with activities that ensures that operations in the
company are conducted in such a way that best meets the organisational goals in the most
effective and efficient manner.
Employee training and Development : This function is one of the crucial practise of
HRM. Establishing training programs and providing opportunities to the employees for their
personal and professional growth. This helps in achieving employee satisfaction, competent
workforce and developing dedicated employee strength.

Illustration 1: Scope of HR function
(Source: Human Resource Management. 2019)
From the above diagram, it can be clearly seen that HR performs the functions of
building teams, enhancing employees skills through proper training development,
appropriate staffing, establishing employee motivation schemes. It ensures that
company's policies are properly complied for achieving the organisational goals in the
most structured way.
However, problems arises when the HR department works towards
organisational development by integrating employees' interest with organisational
objectives. The HR focuses too much on achieving organisational goals that it overlooks
the needs and requirements of its employees. This creates employee's dissatisfaction
with job that ultimately reflects in employee turnover (Brewster, 2017).

Planning and recruiting staff for fulfilling staff needs of organisation. It conducts
research for potential candidates that best meets the requirement of different
departments such as production, marketing, finance, designers etc., through a long
comprehensive recruitment process. This helps in providing a talented and competent
workforce to organisation.
It focuses on employee retention and enhances employee engagement by
meeting their needs financially and non financially. It makes efforts in motivating
employees and works on them by providing them necessary trainings. This helps
them in their professional development through which organisation develops. It plays a
role of watch dog and makes sure that proper adherence is made in complying business
policy, rules, legal laws and of course the business undertakes the most ethical
behaviour in its workings (Mone and London, 2018).
The HR department holds great significance in Chocolate Presence because of
the following reasons; It helps in strategic management as human factor directly affects
Chocolate Presence success. The department is concerned with employment retention
as high employee turnover decreases productivity, profitability and customer
satisfaction. The compensation structure is prepared by HR department which is best
suited for company, employees and which is in accordance with market rates. This
helps in attracting highly skilled people in organisation and also retaining them. It plays
a role of mediator between employee and organisation and helps to meet the needs of
both components of business. Employee satisfaction, settling of disputes, employees
training and professional development are all vital duties and responsibilities of HR
department of Chocolate Presence (Jaiswal, 2018).
The company is having certain issues lately. Because of the lack of knowledge
and experience of employing talented and competent workforce of company's owner, it
is facing problems such as high employee turnover. Also, as per the opinions and
feedbacks from old and regular customers, the firm is not able to create products which
it used to produce in terms of quality. The jobs are also filled internally and no external
methods of recruitments are employed. This restricts company in having fresh and
young people with creative thinking in organisation's environment (Brewster, Mayrhofer,
and Morley,eds., 2016).

The future plans of company are expanding its operations. It desires to retain its
competent employees and also desires of acquiring highly skilled and talented
professionals for enhancing the quality of its products in the future. It plans to introduce
technology in recruitment and selection process such as posting jobs on online portals,
using an integrated management information system for effectively managing
employees' databases. It desires of operational efficiency which would lead to cost
effectiveness. It plans for sustainability, longevity, achieving customer satisfaction and
building a loyal customer base.
All these could be achieved by effective HRM practises such as bringing the
most talented and suitable workforce who could carry out operations with efficiency.
Making employees satisfied through appropriate motivation techniques such as financial
and non financial like recognition etc. Training and developing employees for helping
them in shaping their career. Such practises will help Chocolate Presence in achieving
its desired business objectives.
b) Strengths and weaknesses of current selection methods
Selection is a process of choosing the right person for the right job. More
specifically, a person is chosen as per its skills and qualification which best meets the
requirements of a particular job.
Chocolate Presence is currently employing a selection strategy where candidates
are chosen on the basis of written tests and an informal personal interview of 15
minutes. It conducts maths and comprehensive tests which requires a candidate to
score 50% for getting into interview. The hiring test are common for all posts in the
company.
Strengths: The procedure is useful as technical knowledge is being assessed by
written tests. These tests set the base for preliminary selection of people for interview
round.
The informal chats with potential employees helps in making them comfortable.
This in turn creates an environment in interview room where people tell about
themselves more openly without getting nervous. Right persons are selected for higher
positions by assessing mathematical, problem solving abilities (Torchy and Dany,
2017).

Weaknesses: Informal interviews leads to biased decisions. Structured
interview sessions leads to gathering information about people in more organised.
Informal interviews sometimes leads to omission of important questions that are needed
to be addressed by candidate.
These omissions lead to faulty selection of people for the required job roles in
company.
Conducting these tests involve large documentation, time, administration cost.
The tests when assessed manually increases result time which may be subjective in
nature.
Several candidates have compliant about the viability of tests and informal chats
as the decisions formed from these methods are biased and subjective in nature. This is
the reason why newly recruited people are not even completing their probationary
period. This is because job roles are not matched with candidates skills and
qualifications.
c) Evaluating potential improvements for enhancing selection process
Adoption of technology in selection process. For example, tests must be
checked by customised software that rules out the probability of error, omission, biasses
etc. This would satisfy the potential candidates that they are being judged
systematically. It will also result in quick decision making regarding selection of
candidates.
The employment of technology in the selection process brings efficiency in HR's
routine work. Computerization of work eliminates the need of more manual power of
performing the activities of screening the applications. This in turn reduces the cost of
operations of company (Stone and et.al., 2015).
A formal and structured interview system would help Chocolate Presence in
selecting the best people for organisation which can best meet firm's objectives.
Questions prepared in advance helps in eliminating the omission of important questions
during interviewing people. Information gathered by structured and formal interviews are
more reliable and a more meaningful conclusion could be drawn out of it.

A formal interview session should be made that is at least of 30 minutes where
hypothetical situations needs to be given for understanding human behaviours, solving
queries of candidates with regards to job roles, package, candidate's expectations from
proposed job etc. These things could be adopted by company in future for its growth
and development.
In formal and structured interview system panel of interviewers asks the
questions from the candidates in which the starting questions are icebreakers for
relaxing the person. The interview gets intense when it moves forward. This structured
system helps in assessing useful information about the potential candidates in the very
organised way. Employees in HR department could be trained regarding how they
should conduct a formal interview.
The selection process must have Group discussion round where
communication skills of candidates could be efficiently assessed. People at level must
possess good communication skills for maintaining coordination, harmony, and
effectiveness in organisation's communication system. This method also the asses the
self confident a person possess.
This method of selecting is people is necessary because it helps in assessing the
divergent and creative thinking of people involved in group discussion. It also highlights
the analytical skills of interviewees regarding how they analyse the topic and how they
present the topic (Dipboye, 2017).

TASK 2
a) Creating a person specification for job role of Receptionist
Chocolate Presence
Person specification : Receptionist
Reporting to : Administration manager
Department: Administration
Salary package : £15000
Qualifications
Must be of 18 years age
Must have a bachelor's degree in any field.
Experience
Must have an experience of minimum 2 years in related field
Skills
Strong communication skills
Excellent knowledge of MS Office
Presentation skills
Interpersonal skills
Time management skills
Key roles
Ability of pleasantly meeting and greeting clients
Booking meetings and making arrangements for couriers
Efficiently management of phone calls
Managing administrative paperwork
Customer support service
Management of stationary
Technical abilities
Efficient handling telephone switchboard and
applying of IT facilities
Working on customised administrative software
Responsibilities

Ordering refreshments as and when asked by authorities
Allocation of visitor badge
Maintaining attendance log
Personal qualities
Self resilience
Team player
Ability of prioritising work
Keen to learn new things
Budget for advertising the job of receptionist
Expenses Amount (£)
Advertisement in newspaper 500
Advertisement on Job portals 1500
Administrative expenses
Printing and Mailing 600
Telephone expenses 200
Office supplies 100
Salary to staff 2000
Total expenses 4900
b) Advantages and disadvantages of current methods of advertising job in organisation
Chocolate Presence is applying different methods for advertising its job
vacancies such as posting internally to existing employees, their friends and families. It
also circulates its job vacancies on the notice board outside the organisation on its main
entrance site. These methods have their own benefits and limitations which are
discussed below:

Internal advertisement of job vacancies: It is basically communicating to
existing employees regarding various vacancies. The company asks for their referrals
and are provided with incentives if their referrals are selected.
Advantages
This method of advertising involves very less cost and consumes less time as
compared to other methods such as paid advertisements on TV, newspaper, journals,
social media etc.
This method is also suited because employees have experienced and talented
professionals in their social circuit. Recommendations from exiting employees gives a
sense of surety to company regarding potential candidates' competency.
Communication of job within the organisation motivates people to polish their
existing skills for applying for the post of higher position. This way employees indulge in
self learning activities and become more competent that eventually helps in firm's
success. Eliminates the extra documentation and paperwork at searching stage of
recruitment process (Furnham, 2017).
Disadvantages
This method limits the options for the available job role. It also creates unhealthy
competition in the Chocolate Presence.
Posting on Notice board outside organisation: The mentioned method has
following advantages and disadvantage which are stated below:
Advantages
It is less expensive and time consuming as compared to advertisements methods
such as communicating job through newspaper, magazines, job portals etc. Employees
or visitors can recommend potential candidates who are competent enough for a job.
This reduces HR's efforts of searching and identifying desired candidates.
Disadvantages
This method is inefficient in providing pool of desired applicants for the job
vacancies of higher and complex positions. Also, people do not give much attention to
these notices on the physical boards at the entrance site of Chocolate Presence. This
eventually leads to wastage of time, money and others efforts by employing this method
in its advertising strategy.