Pearson
BTEC Level 5 HND Diploma in Business
Unit
21: Human Resource Management
Introduction
Human resource management has become more important factor for
consideration in an organisation. HRM has come with new procedures which will
affect the organisational goals and the employees of the organisation as a
whole. In the history managing people in an organisation was called as
‘Personnel management’ and it was just a flat theory on controlling people.
With the time it has been changed to Human Resource management or Human capital
management, which is more flexible and more organized as well. As HRM has shown
it’s affect on organisational goals and development and also employee
controlling, it has now become a vital part in every organisation.
1.1
Distinguish between personnel management and human
resource management
According to Mathis and Jackson (2005), a traditional approach to Personnel management is managing people in an organisation. Human resource management can be considered system that manages people and their strength is a modern approach. Personnel Management focuses on employee administration, benefit and employee relations. Human resource management system focuses development, train, and retain of employees in an organisation. Personnel management considers people as an input for achieving goals. Human resource management considers people as an important and valuable resource for achieving a desired output. Under personnel management jobs are designed on the division of the labour and when it comes to human resource management the jobs are designed to promote team work and team building.
According to Mathis and Jackson (2005), a traditional approach to Personnel management is managing people in an organisation. Human resource management can be considered system that manages people and their strength is a modern approach. Personnel Management focuses on employee administration, benefit and employee relations. Human resource management system focuses development, train, and retain of employees in an organisation. Personnel management considers people as an input for achieving goals. Human resource management considers people as an important and valuable resource for achieving a desired output. Under personnel management jobs are designed on the division of the labour and when it comes to human resource management the jobs are designed to promote team work and team building.
According to Dessler (2010) Human
Resource Management, a company that practices personnel
management does not like to spend money on training and development but in
human resource management, the money spent on training and development is
considered as an investment. The decisions that are being made inside a company
that practices personnel management are sole decisions of its top management
but in an organisation that practices
Human resource management, they value the suggestions of the employees of the
organisation. And all the people in the organisation are given authorities to make
decision in their levels of management. Personnel management always tries to
keep an increased production without caring much about the employees. But human
resource management focuses on employee satisfaction, efficiency and effective
and the well being of the employees as well as the production.
Shown below is a
chart that shows the difference between personnel management and HRM,

Figure:
Difference between HRM and Personnel management
Source:
http://www.virbusgame.eu/virbus/mediawiki/images/8/8b/Hr_management.png
1.2
Assess the function of the human resource
management in contributing to organisational purposes.
Typically the proposes or goal of an organisation
is to make higher number of sale, increase profits, get market for the
products, getting their brand name popular and expansion of business, expansion
of clientele etc. in-order to achieve these goals, the goals itself has to be
specific, achievable, challenging enough and executable.
According to American Management Association (2000),
"Human Resource can be described as
the organisational function accountable for obtaining and maintaining qualified
employees. In the complex environment today, fulfilling that mission is a major
contributor to an organisation success". As it states, managing of
human resources plays a giant role when it comes to increasing the productivity
and the performance of an organisation which finally leads to achieve
organisational goals. People or the employees working in the organisation
contribute their knowledge and labour for the achievement of objectives. Human
resource management selects the people from outside of the organisation who
have the potential to support the organisation in achieving it’s goals, and give
them employment opportunities, develop their skills more and more, utilise
their skills, and compensate them for their contribution. Functions of the
human resource management include,
Human Resource department of
ScottishPower is responsible for Employee Relations, Recruitment, Staffing,
Training and Development, Security, Rewards, Facilities, Pensions, Fleet, , Health
and Safety.
According to Horler, the CEO of ScottishPower, "Our people are at the heart of our
success". This means
that he truly considers the human resource as his success key. Out of the five
5Ms which are,
According to Resnick (2013), Men or the human
capital considered to be the most important part of an organisation as men can
react on different situation and they are unpredictable. Therefore it is
essential to have a system to manage, motivate and maintain people in the
organisation in order to keep it running smoothly and to make sure the
organisational goals are being achieved at the same time.
According to McDonald (2013), the responsibilities of line managers can be listed as
below,
1
Employee engagement
2
Performance appraisal
3
Disciplining Employees
4
Performance related pay
1.
According to Slayor Academy (2010),
line managers supervise their employees to take the approach of employee
engagement, is the most important factor. The culture in a team is created by
the line manager. Managers who focus on the negative aspects of the employee's
performance, or to micromanage their employees only seek to raise their status,
create detached and dissatisfied employees. But line managers who care about employees
and react positively on their performances and focus on their employees’
strengths and freedom of speech will get more encouraged and motivated employees.
2.
Performance Appraisal are architect-ed by HR
professionals and are being practiced by line managers of HRM. Performance is
monitored and evaluated by the line managers and the feedback is given to the
employee directly in one to one meeting at appraisal meetings.
3.
Disciplining Employees – discipline is the
behaviour expected from an employee inside the organisation. The expected
behaviour is informed to the employees in expressed and implied terms and the
behaviour is monitored by line managers. If there has been any breach of the
expressed or implied terms in discipline, the line managers will be taking
actions to correct them.
4.
When it comes to performance related pay, the
line managers are responsible for deciding the performance levels and the
deserved pay of an employee. Line managers should make sure that the above
average performing employees should get paid more. And the pay should be fair
depending on the load of work and the quality of work of an employee. And not
be biased or discriminatory.
1.
Sex Discrimination Act (1975/1995/1997).
2.
Race Relations Act (1992 – amended 2000)
This law is to protect men and women from any
discrimination on their gender or marital status, race, colour, nationality,
ethnic, and national origin in the fields of employment and as in education and
public functions as well.
3. Equal Pay Act (1970)
This is an act which stops favourable treatment or
pay for men and women in professional environments.
4. Disability Discrimination Act (1995 –amended 2005)
This law has prohibited discriminating people on the
grounds of their disabilities in the fields of employment and as in education
and public functions as well.
5.
Employment Equality Act (Sexual Orientation,Religion and Belief) (2003;
Equality Act - 2010)
Like the Race relations act, this act also defines
that there shall not be any discriminations in any organisation for people on
their race, gender or disability.
6. Employment Act (2008)
This act is to make provisions for resolutions that
needs to be applied in case of any occurrences of disputes between employer and
the employee.
7. Work and Families Act (2006)
This is an act made to help employees to balance
their work and family lives without much problems. This act defines the
maternity leaves and payments, introducing new rights for fathers such as
paternity leaves, making flexible working times etc.
8. Data Protection Act (1998)
Mainly defines how the data should be gathered,
stored, transferred and destroyed inside organizations and on individuals.
9. Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (1974)
This
act makes sure that the criminal convictions are ignored after a rehabilitation
period so that people would not have a dark mark in their whole life for a
minor offense came across.
2.1 Analyse the reasons for human resource planning in organisations
According to Price
(2000), a simple definition to human resource planning is making sure that the
right amount of qualified people are working in the right place and in the
right time in-order to make sure that the organisational goals are achieved.
For an example if there are 10 machines and 10 people working on them,
and if the company is going to but another 5 machines, the Human resource
planners will make sure that another 5 trained people will be there to work on
the new machines when they arrive, but not before it is too early or after it
is too late so that there will be production loss or time lost.
2.2 Outline the stages involved in planning human resource requirements
Shown below is a graph that simplifies
the human resource planning process.

Figure
2: human resource planning process
Source:
http://webfidel.free.fr/maich/ch04.htm
According to Dessler (2010) the first step is to assess
and make an inventory of existing man power in the organisation. Then the human
resource planners have to forecast the future demand and supply of human
resources. There are several expertise methods to forecast the man power
demands and supplies in the future. And then the planners have to take actions
to fill the imbalances in the areas that were assessed.
2.3 Compare the recruitment and selection process in two organisations
The two companies taken for evaluation are TESCO UK
and ASDA. And their recruitment and selection process is briefly stated below.
The steps involved in this process of TESCO are,
- Identify
Vacancy
- Develop
Position Description
- Develop
Recruitment Plan
- Select
Search Committee
- Implement
Recruitment Plan
- Review
Applicants Short List
- Conduct
Interviews
- Select
Hire
- Finalize
Recruitment
Shown below is a sample
advertisement of Tesco.

Figure:
sample advertisement of Tesco
Source
: Case 2- Recruitment and Selection at Tesco
The process of recruitment and selection in Tesco
is as below,

Figure : Recruitment
and selection in Tesco
Source : Case
2- Recruitment and Selection at Tesco
According to Case
2- Recruitment and Selection at Tesco After all the applications are
received or the deadline for applications is met the candidates who are short
listed will be called for interviews. In those interviews, recruitment team
will select the best person from all the applicants and hire.
Once that decision is made, the applicant will be
notified that they have been selected and will be given all the appointment
letters to start their employment. After that the decision will be reviewed
depending on the feedback which the recruitment team will receive and will be
used to make the future recruitments better.
The other organisation I have selected, ASDA, uses
pretty much the same recruitment method with few differences.

Figure : Recruitment
and selection in ASDA
Source : Case
1- Recruitment and Selection ASDA
The differences are that ASDA offers a four week
induction period for the newly selected employees. And the other difference is
that they do not send out emails to the candidate who gets eliminated in the
screening process.
2.4 Evaluate the effectiveness of
the recruitment and selection techniques in two organisations
According to Raymond,A.
(2004), When it comes
to the effectiveness of the process, the process which was more close to the
ideal process shall be the one which is more effective. So in the first steps
of identifying vacancies the small company has a benefit as it does have many
employees and therefore the forecasting of Human resource needs can be easily
done and accurate.
But in the process of making job description and job specification the
larger company which has more employees and experts can perform more and be
more accurate.
And also in the sections of selecting recruitment methods, the larger
company as more options as internal and external while the small company will
have to stick to external recruitment as the number of employees is very low.
However we can say that the recruitment process in the larger company
will be more effective and accurate over the small company we talked about as
they have the privilege to do an ideal recruitment.
3.1 Assess the link between motivational theory and reward
According to BPP
Learning Media (2010), “Motivation is the process by which the behaviour of an
individual is influenced by others, through their power to offer or withhold
satisfaction of the individual’s needs and goals”. According to that
definition, motivation can be defined as a process of influencing the people in
and to achieve the goals and objectives of the .
And the other
factor, reward, is something that employees may receive depending on their
performance. Reward can be a financial incentive, or that can be non financial
as well. Non financial rewards are promotions, recognition, achievement and
praise.
According to Learning
Media (2010), There are several theories about motivation invented by Human
resource experts.
In Herzberg’s theory he mentions that there
two factors that motivates people. Those are hygiene factors and motivation
factors. The motivations include recognition, working environment, working
conditions, challenging work etc. hygiene factors are the ones that
de-motivates people such as pay and compensation.
According to
Maslow’s motivational theory there are levels of motivation that people need in
their lives.

Figure
: Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs
Source
: www.google.com/images
According to Dale M (2004), Managers,
who follow the Maslow’s theory, try to make their subordinates motivated by
giving them more attractive work, more opportunities for self actualization.
Moreover we can
say that there’s a direct link between reward and motivation. Basically the
more rewards and employee gets, the more motivated he will be. Therefore
rewarding system is a good way to make the employees motivated which will at
the end help the to achieve its goals.
3.2 Evaluate the process of job evaluation and other
factors determining pay
According to Armstrong, (2006),
“Job evaluation is a systematic process for defining the relative worth or size
of jobs within an organisation in order to create internal relativities.” In
simple language job evaluation includes gathering all the information related
to a specific job position, analyzing them and recording the information for
future references.
The main advantage or the
objective of the job evaluation is to determine the pay structures or salary
scales.

Figure : Job evaluation
Methods
Source :
www.google.com/images
As shown above there are
many ways and methods to evaluate the jobs. However it is done, the final
outcome of the job evaluation will be to make decision on fair salary payments,
improve the job design, redesign the jobs, changes in duties and
responsibilities of the person who carries out the job.
As Dale
M (2004), mentiones, other factors that determine pay can be vary from one to
another. The pay is a compensation for work, and that can be influenced by
various factors and it creates some difference between the roles and the organisations.
Those factors can be stated as below,
1.
Size of the organisation,
2.
Seniority,
3.
Skills and experience,
4.
Industry sector,
5.
Profitability of the organisation,
6.
Employee performance
Bratton and Gold (2003)
define a reward system as “The mix of
extrinsic and intrinsic rewards provided by the employer. It also consists of
the integrated policies, processes, practices and administrative procedures for
implementing the system within the framework of the human resources (HR)
strategy and the total organisational system”.
There are
basically two types of rewards. Those are,
·
Extrinsic rewards
·
Intrinsic rewards
Extrinsic
rewards are the financial intensives the employees are given for their
performance. Those are,
·
Bonuses
·
Salary increments
·
Gifts
·
Commissions
·
Target bonuses
Intrinsic
rewards are the non financial rewards given to employees for their performance.
Those are,
·
Good feedback
·
Praise
·
Recognition
·
Promotions
·
Seniority
·
Trust
·
More responsibilities
·
Authority
As per Raymond
(2004), reward
systems are implemented as a very positive strategy of motivation. Rewards has
to given for not only performance, but attendance, loyalty, quality of work,
group work, confidence, and leadership. When the employees are rewarded they
become motivated and they will try to make their performance even better. And
when the employees receive the deserved recognition and reward, it will help
the to retain the employees in the rewards will also help to reduce the labour
turnover in and also, the salary increments can be the most important reward an
employee may receive for his performance. When they are treated fairly and in a
justifiable way, they will not have any disputes with the management and will
try to improve their performance to get better rewards in the future.
3.4 Examine the methods organisations use to monitor
employee performance
According to Price
(2000), monitoring and evaluating the performance is vital part in rewarding and
recognizing high performing employees. Since the performance and reward is
directly linked, the monitoring of performance has to not bias and has to be
accurate. Organisations use different protocols to monitor the performances of
their employees. Those can be stated as,
·
Self-Evaluation
Self evaluation is when the employee
is asked to evaluate his own performance in pre defined categories. The
employee is given a form to fill, most of multiple choice questions, which will
help the management to understand the knowledge level of the employee and the
quality standards. In this if the management can identify the training needs of
the employee; the management will take actions to arrange training session to
fulfill their training needs. In this method the employee has to honest about
his knowledge in order for the final outcome to be accurate.
·
360 degree Evaluation

Figure : 360 degree
performance evaluation
Source :
www.google.com/images
As shown in the graph, 360 degree performance
monitoring involves for parties apart of the employee. Those are the direct
reports, peers, customers and his subordinates/ superiors. They will be asked
to monitor and give feedback on the employee’s performance. This method is the
most widely used method to monitor the performance of employees. This method will
be more accurate as there will be 4 parties evaluating one person. Therefore
the probability of getting false information is less. This can be considered as
the best performance monitoring method.
·
Checklists
In this method, a manager or the
person who is appointed to evaluate the employee will get a form with
checklists and will tick them according to the performance of the employee. This
method can be very fast as it will be just a form with questions and the
manager who knows well about the employee can fill the form quickly. Shown
below is an example for a checklist form,

Figure : Checklist form
Source :
www.google.com/images
4.1 Identify the reasons for cessation
of employment with an organisation.
Cessation of
employment can be simply defined as either the employee leaving the
organisation for his personal reasons or the organisation terminating the
employment for any reason.
When it comes
to employees willing resigning from work, the reason, most of the time if
de-motivation. Heathfield (2010), who is an HR
expert, mentions 10 reasons why people leave companies. Those are,
1.
Relationship with boss
2.
Bored and unchallenged by the work
itself
3.
Relationships with co-workers
4.
Opportunities to use skills and abilities
5.
Contribution of work to the ’s
business goals
6.
Autonomy and independence
7.
Meaningfulness of job
8.
’s financial stability
9.
Overall corporate culture
10. Management’s
recognition of employee job performance
And there are
the reasons for the company to terminate the employees from their work.
Heathfield (2010), presents top five reasons why the people are being
terminated in s. Those are,
1.
An employee lacks integrity
and you have caught him or her in repeated lies or underhanded actions.
2.
The employee
can’t do the job.
3.
The employee
demonstrates that he/she doesn’t fit the company’s culture
4. The employee
fails to keep commitments.
5.
The employee behaves
unethically and ignores the company code of
conduct.
4.2 Describe the employment exit procedures used by
two Organisations
According to
the hand book “Exit procedure” published in NHS Shetland website (2014), exit
procedure in NHS Shetland involves 4 steps. Those are,
·
Processing resignation
·
Exit interviews
·
Reference requests
·
Review
As per the
regulations mentioned in “Exit Procedure” by NHS Shetland, Once a resignation
is submitted, the HR department will process it and will confirm the last
working day to the employee. And his line managers will also be notified and if
there is any unfinished work to be done, the line manager will be taking
responsibility of them to allocate them to another person.
Then there
will an exit interview to inquire why the employee has decided to leave and the
information will be used to improve the organisation if there’s anything that
needs change.
Liner
managers will provide personal reference to the employees if they wish to get
reference from the company when they are applying for new positions.
And finally
the managers and the HR department will review the policy of exit and will make
any changes if they identify any needs.
And the other
company, Pizza hut, uses a very simple exit procedure. The employee has to give
2 weeks’ notice to the line manager. The manager will try to identify the
reasons of the resignation and will try to retain the employee by making a
positive idea.
4.3 Consider the impact of the legal and regulatory
framework on employment cessation arrangements
According to UK
Government Legislation (2014), cessation of employment is directly
impacted by laws and regulatory frameworks in the UK. The job security is
assured by the laws. This means that no employee will be terminated from
employment without any fair reason. If anything like that happens the employee
has the right to take legal actions against the employer.
And the other is that, any kinds of
discriminations regarding the gender, race, nationality or ethnic are
prohibited inside the company. No employee can be dismissed or terminated owing
to his gender, race, ethnicity, nationality or colour.
And also no employees can be terminated
owing to any physical conditions like being disabled or pregnant or any kind of
those.
There are laws and acts for the company
to support and pay pension to the employees when the employees are retired.
Conclusion
The core processes of Human resource
management have been taken in to consideration and have been evaluated. The
difference between personnel management and human resource management, human
resource management’s contribution to organisational goals, responsibilities of
Human resource departments in organisations have been mentioned with examples. And
also, the motivational theories and its applications, employee performance
evaluation and exit procedures of different organisations have also been
compared and contrasted. And the legal framework in UK and how it affects
organizations in different scenarios has been discussed. After all the facts
that has been considered, it vividly depicts that the Human Resource management
is a vital part/ process in any organisation for it’s growth and success.
References
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