Reference no: EM132725225 , Length: word count:2250

Unit 3 Human Resources Management - HND in Business

Learning Outcome 1: Explain the purpose and scope of Human Resource Management in terms of resourcing an organisation with talent and skills appropriate to fulfil business objectives.

Learning Outcome 2: Evaluate the effectiveness of the key elements of Human Resource Management in an organisation.

Learning Outcome 3: Analyse internal and external factors that affect Human Resource Management decision-making, including employment legislation.

Learning Outcome 4: Apply Human Resource Management practices in a work-related context.

Assignment Brief

An increasing number of workers working for a multinational company see themselves as overworked, underpaid and just fed up with the way their employer is treating them. They are having to work longer hours for less pay. The job security they enjoy just 10 or 15 years ago seems like a distant memory. The workplace that used to be ‘one big happy family' is now the scene of stressed-out workers who fear for their jobs. Most of the mid-level managers and technical staff are recruited from outside instead of resourcing internally. There is no clear-cut career path for managers.

In order to cut costs and improve productivity, the firm has instituted layoff on a magnitude not seen before. To improve competitiveness, the firm is asking those employees who survive the layoff to work longer hours. The result is a workforce that is tired and burned out. In addition, the employer is increasingly replacing laid-off workers with part-time employees and also outsourcing some of the work to external parties because the latter give management flexibility and often costs a lot less. Layoffs, outsourcing, pressures for higher productivity and replacement of permanent workers with temporaries are undermining employee loyalty. For instance, only one in four employees today say they are committed to this organization. As the employer has demonstrated by their actions that employees are expendable, employees are responding with a dramatic decline in loyalty to their firm.

The new workplace climate is highly threatening to people. When employees are asked what is important to them, factors like a better work environment, flexible jobs and understanding bosses are near the top of the list. But it is just these factors that are being undermined in this organization as management tries to increase productivity.

An organization's human resource policies and practices represent important forces shaping employee behavior and attitudes. Top management finally admit there are problems in the organization and something needs to be done drastically. You being a HR consultant and expert in this field, the firm would like to seek your advice and guidance.

This will be presented as a report to the CEO and should include the following:

1. Selection practices: An organization's selection practices will determine who gets hired. If properly designed, they will identify competent candidates and accurately match them to the job.

2. Training and development programs and compensation: Training programs can affect work behaviour in two ways. The most obvious is by directly improving the skills necessary for the employee to successfully complete his or her work job. A second benefit from training is that it increases an employee's self-efficacy. A major goal of performance evaluation is to assess accurately an individual's performance contribution as a basis for making reward allocation decisions.

3. Labour-management interface: The existence of a union in an organization adds another variable in their search to explain and predict employee behaviour. In addition, the formal norms that union cohesiveness fosters can encourage or discourage high productivity, organizational commitment and morale.

4. HRM practices in work-related context: The objective of effective selection is to match individual characteristics (ability, experience and so on) with the requirements of the job. When management fails to get a proper match, both employee performance and satisfaction suffer. In this search to achieve the right individual - job fit, where does management begin? The answer is to assess the demands and requirements of the job.