HR and Personnel Management

Human resources: in contrast with the financial resources, employees obtain material and
psychological rewards
Human resources management (HRM): uses the techniques and procedures known collectively as
Personnel Management
HRM deals with issues of:

 motivation
 communication
 training
 compensation
Employment: it is a contact between the employer and the employee

 private, public, non-profit, household sectors

Employer: person or constitution that pays people who work for them
Employee: hired by an employer to do a certain job

 full-time, part-time, temporary

 sign a contract → should be revised (task of the HR department)
HRM:

 related to psychology
 staffing the company
 determine and satisfy the needs of the company
History of HR

- Developed in Britain in the 2nd half of the 19th century

- Employers were unsatisfied with their working condition → TRADE UNIONS
- HR is:
o planning
o recruitment
o selection
o placement
o termination
- HR deals with education and training as part of career development
- Communication:
o deals with negotiation on wages and salaries
o records & statistics
o job description
o coaching, training
- Main objectives: dealing with people
o administration
o health insurance
o pension questions
The 4Cs:

- Developed by researchers at Harvard Business School

- Commitment:
o Concerns the employees’ loyalty
o Surveys, questionnaires, statistics
o Labour turnover
o Interviews can help
- Competence: relates to employees’ skills and abilities
- Congruence: share the same vision, work together for the same goal
- Cost-effectiveness:
o Operational efficiency
o Outcost maximized at the lowest input → react to market changes quickly
- Problems with the 4Cs:
o Hard to measure
o Conflicts between the cost-effectiveness and the congruence part
o Not easy to distinguish the 4 factors as there are overlaps

Personnel manager:

- Service function:
o Organizing training courses
o Keeping the personal records
o Writing the copies
- Control function: examines, analyses statistics, appraisals
- Advisory function: expert advice on who should attend a training course, personal policies

Evaluating the effectiveness of a Personnel Department:

- The productivity is higher among employees

- Better customer service
- Employee motivation
- Willingness to accept changes

Consultants:

- Typically used when emergency emerges

- They have more expertise in dealing with the problem
- They can easily question anyone without any concerns about internal policies
- Easily identify problems outside
- Disadvantages:
o Lack of knowledge of the firm’s day to day operation
o Don’t have all the information that is necessary

Motivation
- Motivation is key to efficiency
- Consists of all the drives, forces, and influences that cause the employee to want to achieve
certain aims
- Reasons why employees can be motivated:
o Money
o Job satisfaction
 o Respect for their job

Aldelter’s Theory:

- He proposed 3 levels of needs:

o Extensive needs: physiological
o Relatedness needs: social needs, esteem needs, personal relationships
o Growth needs: self-actualization needs, individual effort

Herzberg’s Theory:

- Based on Maslow’s theory

- Related to the working environment
- Hygiene factors → dissatisfiers
o Working conditions, job security, money, policies, salary
- Motivators: recognition, achievement, job challenges
- Hygiene must be present before the motivators!
- Money: simultaneously satisfy all the needs – high income represents some kind of
competence, expertise
- Methods managers could use to achieve these factors:
o Job enlargement: workers being given a greater variety of tasks to perform which
should make the work more interesting
o Job enrichment: involves workers being given a wider range of more complex and
challenging tasks surrounding a complete unit of work → greater sense of
achievement
o Job extension (job enlargement + job enrichment)
 Advantage:
 greater satisfaction
 Disadvantage:
 Conflicts with colleagues
 More stress, tasks
 Trade unions
Job rotation: employees are trained several minor skills so that they can change tasks

HRP → Human Resources Planning

- Attempt to forecast how many people and what kind of employers will be required
- How this demand is likely to be met
- Comparison of the organisation
- Important to plan ahead
- Purpose of HRP
o Can help management in making decisions in several areas
o Areas:
 Recruitment
 Training → management development
 Estimation of labour costs
 Avoidance of redundancies
o HRP should include feedback
o Objectives and plans should be feasible
- HRP Process:
 - Advantages:
o Helps productivity
o Surpluses can be avoided
o Labour short-falls can be avoided
o Develop a good plan for employee training and management succession
o Better coordination, integration of workers’ efforts
o Can work only if it is communicated well
- Disadvantages:
o In practice, it is difficult and inaccurate because it is very difficult to predict changes
o Managers don’t always like HR
o Rapid growth of new technologies

Training
Training is about the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities through professional development
Role of training:

- Business Environment → Changes and challenges → Learning and implementation →

Business Excellence
- Two functions: utilisation and motivation

Training and development

- Managers have to find who is the most suitable for the job
- Importance of training and development:
o Optimum Utilization of Human Resources
 Helps the employees to achieve their own goals and organizational goals
o Development of Human Resources
 Supports personal growth
o Development of skills of employees
 Training increases skills
o Productivity
 Long term goals can be achieved
o Team spirit
  Cooperation, better work in teams, higher performance
o Organization Culture
 Helps creating the learning culture within the organization
o Organization climate
 Working conditions, environment, feelings of workers
o Quality
 Work-life balance
o Healthy work environment
 Relationships, working conditions, tasks are allocated properly, providing
conditions in which workers can do their best
o Health and safety
 Prevent accidents
o Morale
o Image
 Corporate image
o Profitability

Benefits of training

- Higher productivity
- Better performance
- Achieving goals
- Fewer accidents
- Greater job satisfaction
- Lower labour turnover
- Less absences

Arguments against it

- Can be extremely expensive (e.g. off-job training)

- can be a waste of time & energy if it is not chosen properly or if trainer is not an expert

Reasons for training

- Changes in production or product

- Performance is inadequate
- Labour shortage → upgrade employees
- Quality problems
2 types of training:

- On-job training
o Is given in the normal work situation
o Uses the equipment that is there
o Advantages:
 Cheaper
 No problem with the transfer of learning
 Trainee is in the production environment
o Disadvantages
 Instructors are workers at the company
 Bad methods → high amount of spoiled work
 Training takes place under production
- Off-job training:
o Takes place away from the workplace
o Advantages:
 Professional trainers
 Special tasks are designed
 Free from stress
 No damage to equipment
 No spoiled work
o Disadvantages:
 Higher costs
 Transfer of learning is more difficult
 Trainer did not get enough information about the needs of the trainees
Methods of training

- Business Games:
o Present a situation
o Set on several rules
o Results of the games are evaluated
o Benefits:
 Various skills can be improved
 Strengthens management skills
 Complex problems can be analysed
- Case Studies:
o Come up with a solution
o Its objective is to get trainees to apply their own methods
o Trainees get written materials, a series of questions appear at the end of the case
studies sheet
o Benefits:
 Strengthens decision making skills
 Helps to develop communication and interpersonal skills
- Equipment simulators:
o Repeat the task several times
o Mental condition of trainees is important
o E.g. pilots, air-traffic controllers
- In-Basket techniques:
o Trainee has to act out the role
 o Everything is provided
o Time is set
o Discussion with the trainer
o Trainee can describe why he / she reacted the way he / she did
o Benefits:
 Communication skills can be developed
 Presentation skills can be developed
 Strategic knowledge can be developed

Management development
On-job training:

- Coaching:
o Collective method
o Can be done on the phone, via Skype or through email
o Coach helps to find the weaknesses
o Helps in realizing what the problems are
o Develop a concept
- Mentoring:
o For managers
o Managers can get a global view of the company
- Job rotation:
o For managers
o Managers can get a global view of the company
- Institution Technique (JIT):

Off-job training:

- Sensitivity training:
o Social sensitivity should be developed
o Getting rid of old values and prejudices
o Done in groups
o Analysing decisions together
- Transitional analysis:
o Understanding the behaviours of others
- Simulation exercises
- Lectures

Fitting the person to the job is important.

It’s usual to deal with individual differences under three headings.
Physique: determined by rapidity, coordination, reaction
Intelligence:

 mental ability
o verbal fluency
o mechanical aptitude
o numerical ability
 useful only if reliable (consistent results) and valid (test measures what it aims to measure;
standardization of tests)
 IQ: Intelligence Quotient
o set of standardized tests which measure individuals’ intelligence
o the average IQ is 100
o Alfred Binet developed it in 1904
 his aim was to identify students who need more help in their studies
 5 types: gifted, highly gifted, extremely gifted and profoundly gifted
o Types of tests → handout!

Team Building
- 5 stages that a team goes through:
o Forming: creating the team
o Storming: coming up with ideas, conflicts can happen, trying to find a solution
o Norming: conflicts are disappearing, working relationship
o Performing: carrying out the task
o Transforming: feeling that they are the best team, implementing what they have
learnt
- 12 Cs for Team Building
o Clear expectations: team leaders should communicate the expectations, team
members should know why the team was created
o Context: team members should understand why they were asked to join the team
o Commitment: how committed team members are, how much team members would
like to participate
o Competence: knowledge
o Charter: contains all the responsibilities of the team members
o Control: checks whether the team has enough freedom or whether they understand
their tasks
o Collaboration: how well they can work together
o Communication: ongoing process, how clear the members are about tasks, how often
they get feedback
o Creative Innovation: coming up with new ideas, brainstorming
o Consequences: what happens if the team fails; pro-active
o Coordination: leadership, how well they are coordinated
o Culture Change: company culture

Interviewing
Recruitment: it is the first part of the process of filling a vacancy
Selection: it is the next stage
Applicants appear:
 - new departments
- retirement
- relocation
- expansion
- restructuring

Internal sources: filling vacancy within the company

Pros Cons
- quicker & cheaper - old ideas
- better utilization - might not be flexible
- motivation, capabilities are considered - there might be some tensions
- people are more reliable
External sources: filling vacancy out of the company

Pros Cons
- New ideas
- New orders - Process of finding a person is time
consuming and uncertain
- New content
- Can be expensive
- Motivation

2 classes:

- Job centres, schools

- Private agencies, advertising

Problems:

- Too many candidates or not enough

- Skills are rare
- Selection takes too long, and it is too expensive
- Students are available at one time every year

Advertising vacancy:

- Principles:
o Job specification
o Find the media where you can advertise

Selection strategy:

- Form job description, specification

- Deadline
- Description of shortlisting applications
- Interview framework should be established
- Assess the results

Interviewing

- Reliability & validity

- Meeting which takes place between the employer and the applicant
- Interviewer must be chosen carefully
- Questions should be chosen carefully
- Person general behaviour is stable
 o Interviewer must ask the applicant’s past behaviour
o Interviewer should develop a good relationship with the applicant / candidate
o Candidates are provoked
- Functions of a well-conducted interview:
o Motivation and behaviour → to assess candidates’ personality
o 1. check whether the information about the candidate is valid
o 2. check the experience
o 3. give information about the job & company to the candidate
- Preparing for the interview
o From the HR point of view:
 Documents should be read
 List of questions
 Ideal time, place and participants
- Conduct of the interview
o Start with the remarks, questions
o Questions shouldn’t suggest the answers
o Open-ended questions
o Questions should be clear
o Interviewer should direct the interview
o Appropriate number of questions
o Candidate should be given an opportunity to ask
o Questions (e.g. working conditions, perks, career opportunities)

Assessment

- Taking notes before the next candidate is seen

- 2 systems
o The seven-point plan
o Fraiser’s five-fold grading
- Problems with the 2 systems:
o Some of the points are broad terms
o Just a starting point
o Depends on the type of job

Types of Interviews

- Successive:
o One-to-one
o One after the other
o One interviewee
o Pros:
 Gaining experiences
o Cons:
 Very tiring for the interviewer
 Responses might change
- Panel:
o 2-3 interviewers and 1 interviewee
o Evaluation is more objective
o Cons:
 More pressure on the candidate
  Difficult to find the appropriate time
 Some of the questions can be repetitive
- Board:
o More than 3 people ask the candidate
o Somebody dominates
o Rivals
o Final assessment is difficult

Alternative approaches

- Psychometric testing
- Use of biodata
- Open-door recruitment → point out the applicant on the basis of the CV

Other types of interviews

- Counselling interviews: for existing employees; unstructured

- Problem-solving interviews

Appraisal
- Judgement of the employees’ performance
- Different factors taken into consideration
- Purpose:
o Increases of payment
o Future use of an employee
o Decide on promotion, demotion, dismissal
o Decide on training needs
- Types:
o Performance reviews: analyse successes and failures
o Potential reviews: suitability for promotion
o Reward reviews: determining pay rises, bonuses, extra perks
- Methods:
o Ranking: best, good, so-so, get rid of him / her
o Grading: 5 categories – all the employees are put proportionally into one category
Promotion

- Move of an employee to a job within the company

- Greater importance → higher pay
- Two ways:
o By management decision
 Employee is selected to promotion on the basis of information that is known
by the management
 Quick
 Cheap
 Suitable for smaller companies
o By internal advertisement
 Employees informed by emails, newsletters, etc.
 More expensive
 More time consuming
- Policy of promotion
o There must be a policy, otherwise dissatisfaction can appear within the company
o Criteria must be fair
o Method must be fair

Transfer

- Move to a job within the company at the same level

- Why is it needed?
o Restructuring
o Changed working conditions
o Somebody is unhappy in his / her job
- Set to increase job satisfaction
- No transfer against the employee’s will

Demotion

- It’s a move within the company which is lower

- Get less money
- Opposite of promotion
- Reasons:
o Employer is not satisfied with the employee
o Worker is not capable of carrying out the task
o Reorganisation
o Employee may feel humiliated, others can be threatened
o Kind of a punishment

Resignation

- Employee gives his / her employer notice to terminate the contract of employment
- Reasons: dissatisfaction of the employee
- Manager can organise exit interviews
o Find reasons of leaving

Dismissal

- Termination can be done by the employer with or without notice

- Cannot renew the fixed-term contract
- Constructive dismissal: employees’ resignation without notice, no alternative but to quit