MG411 Reflective Portfolio: People Management Skills, HR & Challenges

This portfolio provides an overview of people management, emphasizing the skills, knowledge, and behaviors required for effective leadership, along with an examination of key HR processes that underpin performance management. It addresses contemporary challenges faced by line managers, such as leadership flexibility, coordination, communication, and talent retention, offering insights into how managers can navigate these issues. The report also highlights the importance of teamwork, interpersonal skills, performance management, and motivation in fostering a productive work environment. Furthermore, the document outlines the human resource process including planning, recruitment, training, performance management, and off-boarding, emphasizing the role of goal-setting theory in optimizing employee performance. The analysis concludes with recommendations for improving people management practices within organizations, such as adopting a participative leadership style and providing effective training and development sessions.

Introduction to people
management

Executive summary
The study has developed focused on the context of people management along with its
importance of having necessary knowledge and skills for the higher authorities in order to ensure
success of an organization. Along with this, it explores the behavior, skills and knowledge which
are expected from managers to manage people at workplace. The human resource process as well
as employee performance with contemporary challenge faced by managers related to people
management is the main subject concerned in the following study.

Contents
Executive summary..........................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................4
Current issues facing line managers associated to people management................................4
Skills, knowledge and behavior to be an effective people manager.......................................5
HR process that underpin performance management.............................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Recommendations............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
People management is defined as the part of human resource management which
encapsulates all the procedure of acquisition as well as optimization of talent at workplace. In
addition to this, it includes training, motivating and directing staff members with the objective to
maximize their productivity and enhance workplace growth. The role and functionalities of
higher authorities can never be referred from single prospect until it is perceived that managers
have to recognize what aspects the skills, behaviors and expertise are essential for their
operations(Brown, and Jenness, 2020). The people managers requires a broad range of expertise,
experience and attitude in order to deal with the contemporary challenges. For the present report,
Amazon is taken into consideration. It is an American multinational technology organization that
emphasis on cloud computing, artificial intelligence, E commerce, digital streaming and many
more. The company was established in year 1994 and headquarter in Washington, US. The
organization has around 1,46,000 talented and skilled staff members which is one of the main
reason of its success and growth at marketplace. The report will cover the issues faced by line
managers associated to people management. Along with this, there will be discussion regarding
skills, knowledge and behavior required to be an effective people manager. In the last, human
resource procedure that underpin performance management is elaborated in the present report.
Main Body
Current issues facing line managers associated to people management
In every organization, line managers supervise and monitor the departments and report it to
the higher authorities. Along with this, they are liable for taking initiatives and achieving
objectives. It is the responsibility of line managers to deal with all the situations and resolved the
problems effectively so that they can manage staff members in an appropriate way at workplace.
The line managers face some difficulties at the time of people management and is given below:
Leadership flexibility and obligation: it is analyzed that operating staff members are
handled by the line managers they control and track employee operations, interact with them
directly while sustaining efficiency development that has been apparent in order to deal with the
present situation(DiClaudio, 2019). Along with this, they face issue in using the limited
resources and optimize the results. In order to deal with such issue, the line managers ensure that

all the roles and responsibilities are clear to the staff member so that the limited resources is
optimally utilized and the objectives are attained in an appropriate manner.
Lack of coordination: Coordination brings positive outcome and is necessary for the
growth of an organization. But, it is determined that staff members fail to effectively coordinate
with each other which may hamper the overall performance and the business procedure. To
maintain the coordination is one of the challenging tasks for line managers within the business
procedure. This issue also arise due to internal conflicts, diversity, ineffective relationship among
employees and many more.
Lack of communication: In the present time period, communication is one of the vital key
of business through which all information flow at workplace. Lack of communication is one of
the major issue that develop a lot of problems such as conflicts, disputes, ambiguity and many
more(Hill, 2019). Line managers find it complex to maintain good relationship and proper
communication among staff members. Due to lack of communication, it is complex for line
managers to carry out all the activities effectively and meet with targets timely.
Retaining top talent: It is analyzed that retaining as well as acquiring skilled staff
members is one of the complex tasks that take place in every organization. Sometimes
organisations do not have enough resources in order to offer compensation and benefit packages
to the talented employees. This impact negatively on the performance and competencies of
company which further decline the growth and performance also. Human resources are one of
integral part of a company and retaining top talent is vital so that they can gain growth at
marketplace.
Apart from this, there are also other issues that line managers face at the time of people
management such as changing regulatory issues, diversity issue, conflicts, balance among
management and employees, maintaining positive working culture and many more.
Skills, knowledge and behavior to be an effective people manager
In the present time period, employees are undertaken as one of the important stakeholders
of business as they are responsible for the betterment as well as growth of an
organization(Oliveira, Araujo and Tam, 2020). In order to manage human resource effectively,
there are various skills, knowledge as well as behavior required and is given below:
Teamwork and coordination: It is the ability to work within a group in an effective and
collaborative manner. In order to manage people, it is important to develop effective teamwork

capabilities as it assists to execute all the activities and meet with the targets in a timely manner.
Along with this, coordination is also required in order to decline the level of conflicts and delays.
It is important for managers to have teamwork abilities so that they can manage workforce and
bringing coordination among staff members at the workplace.
Interpersonal skills: It is important for human resource managers and leaders to interact
with this staff members and other external parties in an appropriate way. They are required to
communicate and interact with staff members on continuous basis as it help in maintaining
positive relationship with them due to which they work with full potential and retain at
organization for longer time. Interpersonal skills are also needed in order to resolve the issues
that is being faced by employees within the company. Apart from this, the managers need to
have empathy towards their employees so that they can resolve issues timely and ensure
employee satisfaction.
Performance management: It is referred to evaluating and maintaining performance of
staff members at work place. For this, it is important to analyze the performance of every
employee on continuous basis so that they can improve it(Olofsson, 2020). In order to deal with
this, managers are needed to set benchmarks for employees and motivate them to meet it on
timely basis. The managers take necessary steps in order to manage performance of employees
which further leads to attainment of better outcomes.
Motivation: One of the major skill and behavior that is required in order to manage people
of an organization is motivation. It is useful in generating willingness among staff members to
put their full potential which further leads to attainment of higher growth and success of a
company within the market. There are various ways by which an organization and managers
inspire and influence staff members that is providing monetary benefits, non monetary benefits,
compensation, appreciation and so on. Motivation has become one of the important part of
people management as it helped in getting done the desired work on time.
HR process that underpin performance management
When it comes to HR process there are a lot of steps which are involved which need to be
followed by the organisation in order to achieve its aims and objectives. For this purpose
the HR process includes the following steps:

Human resource planning : It is basically considered to be the first step in the HR process
that involves the plan for recruiting and selecting human resource for the objective to meet
the future goals of the organisation in a effective and efficient manner( Harney and
Alkhalaf, 2021).
Recruitment and selection : Recruitment is the process of searching for prospective
employees in order to fill a job position in the organisation. The managers selects the
qualified employees from the pool of employees in order to achieve business objectives.
Training : After the recruitment and selection process, another step is to provide training
to the employees in order to get things done from them. In addition to that training helps in
enhancing the skills and improving the productivity of the employees.
Performance management: It is important to measure the performance of the workforce.
Under this step, the employee’s performance is measured and evaluated in order to take
required actions for improving the performance.
Off boarding/ Lay off: It basically includes the last stage where the employees are
terminated by the managers or they either leave the organisation. After this stage, the
employees are considered or remain the part of the company.
It is also analysed that the performance management plays a significant role in the
HR process as it helps in deep understanding of how the managers of the organisations can
communicate roles, job requirements and expectations to the workforce in order to
optimize the performance of the employee at the organisation( Du and Lapsley,
2019 ).After measuring the performance of the employees the organisation takes necessary
measures and corrective actions to make their employees feel motivated and make them
inspired for their job in order to achieve organisational goals. In order to easily measure the
performance, goals setting theory is of performance management is used by the managers.
As per the goal setting theory, it is important to measure goals in order to maintain the
performance of workforce in the company. This theory also helps in creating and

development of appropriate plans which helps in guiding the employees. Moreover, the
employees get motivated to work in a better way for achieving the predetermined
objectives and can result in brining positive impact on the company’s operations. Major
principles of goal setting theory:
 Clarity: It involves the clear objectives that can be measured easily on the basis of
predetermined parameters.
 Challenge: It involves the objectives which are challenging and which can
motivate the workforce to put more efforts in order to achieve these goals.
 Commitment : This principle enables the organization and individuals to put more
efforts in order to meet the pre set goals. It also helps in achieving organisational
objectives.
 Feedback: It plays a very important role and also provides required data in order to
initiate improvement in the organisation’s operations.
 Task Complexity: According to this principle, goal need to divided into small
components in order to reduce the complexity. Then, employees need to put effort
for achieve small objectives effectively.

Conclusion
From the above study, it has been concluded that people management is an activity that
comprises lot of roles and responsibilities, functions from hiring to inspiring and retaining
employees in an effective and efficient manner. In addition to this, there are various skills and
knowledge required for effective people management such as motivation, team development,
interpersonal skills and so on. It is determined that human resource procedure significantly assist
in effective performance management of staff members prevailing at workplace.
Recommendations
By analyzing the above study, some of the recommendations to the higher authorities of
Amazon is given below:
 It is suggested to managers of Amazon to make use of participative leadership style as it
help in making employees feel valued and important at workplace(Romo, 2018). In
addition to this, it also brings creativity and new ideas at workplace due to which there is
high growth and success of company in an effective manner.
 It is recommended to Amazon to provide effective training and development session to
both existing and new employees as this will help in clarifying roles and responsibilities
and decline the level of conflicts and delays at workplace which further leads to
improving performance and productivity of staff members.

REFERENCES
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