Personnel and Organisation

🌁
Personnel and Organisation

The decision is ruthless.
Ethics are in the execution.
💡 Colour codes:
→ Green learning outcomes means, they have been covered.
→ Yellow refers to vocabulary terms.
→ Blue refers to important notes
Chapter 1: HRM Definition and History

1. Management is the attainment of organisational goals in an effective and efficient
manner through planing, organisizing, leading and monitoring organisational
resources.
2. Managing humans:
Human machines:
→ Don’t let them overwork
→ Maintain(train) the personnel when necessary
Personnel and Organisation 1

Roles of an HR Manager:
→ Planning
→ Organising
→ Leading
→ Monitoring
3. Managing humans is a team effort:
EB refers to Employer Brand. This term is referred to describe the company’s reputation
and popularity from a potential employer’s perspective and describes the values passed
down from the company to its employees.

What managers have to say and do towards the emplyees plays a crucial role in the
performance of the employees, as HR cannot supervise their relationship all day long.
Any negative comment done by the manager can damage the self-esteem and
motivation of an extremely hard working individual.
Hence, to prevent the problem mentioned above, there exists a direct relationship
between the HR and the managers. This is where, HR provides the necessary training
to the managers, to prevent such occurences of thoughtless comments made by
managers towards employees.

Employees also execute HR practices between each other, as shown in the above
figure. An example of this would be when, employees motivate each other to get an
order in time or help create good work environment between each other.
4. A good HR should be:
Effective: does that they promise to do
Efficient: does what they promise to do within a given budget
Calculated: makes the HR case like other business departments do. Meaning, in
case the management puts aside a certain amount of budget for a department to
use it, and there are 2 departments fighting for this. The departments should
provide figures, in terms of return on investment of the project. If necessary figures
are not provided even if the idea was amazing, the case will bo lost. So, all ideas
and projects must be valuated in monetary terms to be presented to the
management.
5. Keeping in mind that HR is not charity, and their main goal is not to keep the staff
happy. The main goal of HR as well as all other departments of a business is to
meet the organisational goals, and return money to investors; more money in profits
than the interest rates banks could offer.
Sometimes HR managers make tough decisions such as laying off employees, and
this is not an easy task for emotional people.
Dismissing people requires both soft skills and strategic(hard skills). Meaning the
process of firing should be done as gently as possible while being cool headed and
executing it as calmly as possible. HR is trained to do this effectively and efficiently -
like offering other job places for the fired workers or providing excellent reference
papers.
And although the primary responsibility of HR lies with the organisation, the
wellbeing of the staff is still quite important. Because motivated and engaged
workers are more productive than their unmotivated and uncommitted counterparts.
Plus, if the aura of the working environment is poor it will also make it more difficult
for the company to hire the best talent in the market.
6. Dave Ulrich’s Model regarding the 4 roles of HR:

Strategic partner: this is where the HR thinks alongside the top management and the
shareholders regarding how the organisation should develop, among other important
questions such as: which competences are we looking for in the labour market? which
new positions do we need to create? etc.
Refers back to the Planning role of an HR.
HR is also responsible for impacting strategic decision making processes to aid in
maintaining a competitive edge in the market and surviving in the long term. The
relation between HR and strategic decision making is explained with the help of 2
methods: positioning approach and resource-based approach.
Positioning approach (a.k.a. outside-in approach): is when the company analyzes the
market and identifies how competitors behave and produce. The business then
attempts to find the whole in the market, basically the part that is not optimally
addressed towards the customers and makes an endeavour to take advantage of it. For
instance if the company was to produce computers from now and onwards, it would hire
a different set of employees, than if it were to produce something like
notebooks/copybooks/books/diapers. The risk of utilising this method is that, the
management will not look enough at the firm’s strengths and at the potential in its own
organisation.
Resource-based approach (a.k.a. inside-out approach): this is where the strengths of
the current employees are examined and utilised to come up with a strategy for the

organisation. So for instance: if the employees are exceptionally skilled in social media,
the new advertising campaigns will be online, through social media rather than old,
traditional methods. With this method, the business has no concern for what or how the
competitors are doing. They might or might not do the same things, but either way the
organisation is doing great becuase it focused on existing skills and improved upon
them.
Change agent: after a clear plan is set out, it is time to think about how to execute it.
This is where the organisation of personnel “tactical HRM” comes in. They do things
like, coming up with a job design and a lucidly set plan regarding how the screening and
hiring process will be done. Thus, they transform the organisation in line with the newly
adapted strategy.
Refers back to the Organising role of an HR.
Although strategic HR and tactical HR seem to be similar to each other, tactical HR

requires more expert knowledge to predict the concrete consequences of the decisions
made. They have to redesign jobs and procedures if necessary to create a better team
cohesion. Ex: merger of 2 companies wieth differnet work cultures could create an “us-
versus-them” culture. And if the tactical HRM is unable to fix this “rivalry” then split is
desirable again.

Employee champion: this is where managing and monitoring the employees is done.
The most tangible and visibe part of the HRM according to employees. This is where
supervisors or direct managers of employees are responsible for understanding and
learning about the employees to adjust existing operational policies within the
companies to suit them better. Because employees are the key input in an organisation
to bring the output of profit. Direct supervisors are better sources of information in this
case as they are more in touch with the employees than the people in HR. Knowing the
skillset (skills inventory), strengths and weaknesses of the employees is a huge asset to
the firm. Skills inventory include: job title, education and diplomas, experinece, technical
and language skills, self-declared career goals etc.
Refers back to the Leading and Monitoring role of a HR.
Smart Management (HR 2.0 version): this part of the HR enables what is referred to as
smart management. Basically refers to satisfying organisational goals in the most
optimal and cost effective way possible.
Includes the use of:
Internal transfers: rather than going through the hassle of hiring a new person,
internal transfers are made.
Well-adapted HR policies
Enables resource-based approach

Knowing the strengths of the employees and working on their weaknesses
Administrative expert: the 4th and final role of an HR. This is where an HR would be
responsible for documenting the needs of employees, through methods such as:
Performance and evaluation interviews
Paying salaries
Calculating holiday allowances
Calculate dismissal arrangements
These are only some of what an HR is responsible for, thus it is necessary to decide on
which tasks will be done “in the house” and which things would be outsourced.
There are 3 ways of doing this:
Different department: by delegating some tasks to specific departments. For

instance, calculating fringe benefits to the financial department.
Outsourcing: by hiring an external company to do the job. For instance, paying the
wages by hiring payroll agency.
Workers themselves utilising eHRM-systems: workers themselves can also do

some of these tasks utilising eHRM systems. For instance they can check the

system to see how long till their vacation or how many days are left until their
holidays are finished. The quality of information is the same. The only concern is the
depth of the information, as computers don’t possess human feelings and
understanding abilities.
7. HR and the Inflow-Transfer-Outflow Model: a.k.a. the HR cycle of Fombrun et al

(1984):
First comes the recruitment and selection procedure of suitable candidates. The
organisation creates appropriate job advertisements and distribute it as widely as
possible. In the case that the recruitment phase was successful and more than 1
candidate has applied for the same position, comes the selection phase. The
organisation tries to find the most suitable candidate within the applicants through a
means of tests, interviews, etc. After the selected candidate has been informed of
his/her lucky day, begins the socialisation phase. This is where the candidate gets
acquainted with his new employer and the firm.
After all these phases have been covered comes the HR cycle, the 5th phase of
performance management. Here the organisation tries to evaluate the performance of
the employee through reward, training, feedback and regular evaluation. This can lead
to 3 different circles:
→ Positive circle of performing, evaluating, rewarding and performing again: as the
cycle suggest, the employee performs well, the evaluation result of his/her performance
is great and thus leads to a reward such as bonus. And repeated behaviour of great
performance.
→ Upward cycle of performance, evaluation, training and performance in a new

position: in this cycle the employee performs so well that he/she gets a higher position
and for that goes through a targeted training. Then goes the repeated behaviour of
excellent performance.
→ Corrective circle of performing, evaluating, training and performing again: in some
cases the performance of the employee is not good enough or lacking, thus requires a
corrective action of training for instance. If even after the necesary training and
supervision the employee is still lacking, they are dismissed.
8. The Principal-Agent relationship:

A principal agent relationship is a contract where one or more people (the principle)
hires another person (the agent) to perform some sort of service for them, by
delegating some decision-making authority from the principle to the agent.
An example: hiring a cleaning lady and giving her/him the power to choose which
detergeants will be used.
9. However, not every new employee has the same vision as the principle, thus arises
the problem called “a conflict of utility functions”. So if principle and agent are in a
conflict, who wins?
This dilemma brings up two different theories with 2 very different perspectives:
→ Control: The Agency Theory: here it is assumed that it is better for the principle
to monitor the activities of the agent at all times to get the most optimal outcome of
the principle-agent relationship. Ex: a cleaning lady being paid on an hourly basis
can simply delay the working hour to get more money, hence the principle watches
over all activities to ensure fast service and less pay; control is required.
→ Trust: The Stewardship Theory: here it is assumed the principle and the agent
may or may not have common objectives , but at least the agent has no means of
taking advantage of the principle, hence no control is required. The relationship is
built on trust as the agent integrates principal’s utility function. This is what is
applied in a strong company culture.
10. Looking at HRM from different perspectives:
Business Perspective:
Humans are seen as production factors just like machines.
Durable, maintenance & development
Basicallly means that just as machines, people are seen as valuable and
durable means of production, thus they are given the necessary attention

and investment. Just like a machine may need an update to keep running,
periiodic trainings would be provided for the employees. And just like faulty
machines halt the production process, accident at work jeopardize the
efficiency of the business. So attention is certainly paid for issues such as
prevention at work.
Effectiveness and efficiency is key
Production process determines the layout and job design
All decisions are weighed upon costs vs return on investment(ROI):

→Workers are provided training(maintenance) only if strictly necessary and
return on investment is greater than the cost.
It is often considered a hard view on HR, but is often adapted by many

companies.
Socio-psychological perspective:
Labor power + personal characteristics; so unlike the business perspective,

here employees are ahead of the machines and are paid more attention and
given more care in essence.
Management will better listen to their needs and expectatioons and make rather
different choices. Such as, here in a factory, for instance, the management may
add job rotation or more than 1 person per line, to make the work environment
better for the employees. In this perspective the wellbeing and the happiness of
the employees is a good enough ROI even if there is no additional benefit or
lower cost.
Interest perspective:
Organisation is seen as an arena
Different groups within the organisation fight amongst each other
Temporary staff VS the core staff
Essential key personnel VS peripheral workers
Dividing costs and benefits:
Different departments like marketing and finance departments may have

different objectives regarding budget splitting and staffing. Thus, the budget

is not spent uniformly but rather depending on the department and their
needs.
Aggregate of interconnected parts:
Each individual or group within the organisation is connected with each

other. A decision made on 1 employee, has an effect on the whole
organisation. According to the equity theory (talked in CH5) employees
except equal treatment by the manager towards them.
Each individual or group within the organisation brings in a different value to

the organisation and has different expectations, thus through the interest
perspective, more attention is paid to the expectations and the behaviour of
the employees and a better HR policy is tailored for the cause.
Societal perspective:
Reciprocal relationship between the company and society: it basically means

that the company explicitly asks whether their organisation’s personnel policies
are socially acceptable.
Companies have power: the influence that companies have on the economy,
gives them the power, through strong lobbying, to have an impact on politcal
decisions.
But governments have power too: companies have big power, however their
impact ends when government enters the chat. 😂
Basically, if for example,
there is a rule imposed by the government or forced by the society that the work
week should be 38 hours. Then the companies cannot force anybody to work
more than that.
So it becomes from “everything for profit” to “everything for profit within society’s
limits”.
11. The development of HR:
Around 1800: Crafts and guilds:
These associatiions kept clear and concise rules and working hours.
During this period (just before the iIndustrial Revolution), labour was strongly
determined by old traditions.

HR was more relevant in bigger structures like the army, smaller companies
usually had craftsmen with a lot of independence and few employees.
1830-1940 Period: Sales Increase, a.k.a. The Classical Management Perspective:
Scientific Management:
The creators of this view and flag bearers, Frederick Taylor and Frank
Gilbreth, were insanely focused on finding more efficient ways of producing
goods.
Their views go head on with the Business Perspective on HRM, since the
core idea is to make the production more efficient and get more return on
investment as cost effectively as possible. Taylor also introduced shorter
working hours and breaks at works as incentives for the workers to do
better.
According to their views, machines would’ve been the correct answer to

execute the same actions over and over again, in a standard way to
eliminate any errors and time wasting, but the technology was missing.
Thus employees had to be taught, Thus came the Gilbreth’s time-and-
motion study. This study basically referred to ergonomics of how factory
workers at lower levels should be moving and lifting weights to eliminate
any possible fatigue and injuries, and lenghten the time the workers would
be able to work.
The 4 important influences of Gilbreth’s time-and-motion study:

→ Social unrest causing the urge for trade unions
→ It created the foundation of modern ergonomics
→ Taylor’s shorter work hours (from 14 to 12 hours) and providing breaks,
proved increased productivity of workers
→ Scientific management pushed our economy to greater efficiency and
effectiveness. More products could be produced, at greater volunmes for
cheaper.
First forms of pay-for-performance based from here
Bureaucratic organisations:
Max Weber observed companies during this period, and came to the
conclusion that many companies were run on a personal basis, and

employees were more so attached to the boss than the organisation. Plus,
there was favoritism, managers were not getting the job becuase they were
actually good leaders but becuase they had good relationship with the
executives.
Thus Weber rebuilt the organisations and introduced 3 important

innovations:
→ Direct supervision; which actually increased the efficiency and
effectiveness of the employees.
→ Weber also emphasised the selection and promotion of the workers
purely on their skills, competencies and performances.
→ For equal/uniform selection of workers Weber also came up with the
“red-tape”. Basically refers to an excess of rules and procedures that are
obligatory to be followed regardless of your position in the hierarchy.
And just like Taylor, Weber also sees the advantages in task sharing and
people working on parts of tasks rather than the full task itself for better
efficiency.
1930-1960 Period: HR with Human Face:
During this period more attention was paid to humans - the more humanistic
approach. Not because companies started caring about everyone, but it was
economically necessary to take care of employees and make them happy.
Otherwse they would set the companies on fire and or go on strikes.
The change in leadership, from a rather harsh to a softer management, was

reinforced by the Hawthorne experiements.
In Hawthorne experiments, factory workers were tested. The control group was
the normal workers and then there was the experiment group working under
more, brighter light. In the end however the results showed that both had
increased productivity. At first the results were unclear, because in essence
nothing was changed in the control group. But after a few years, it was
unraveled that the researchers were actually going around asking workers how
they were doing. And this little action of asking them how they were doing, and
caring for their well-being made a huge difference.
Thus the humanist perspective polished off the rough edges of classical
management but it is not to say that classical management is completely
abandoned. Some of its concepts are even now utilised.

Despite the evolution of the HR department, it still remains a service where
employees go to when they have personal and or family issues. As well as
taking care of payroll administration.
During a period of job design, the HR department is isolated from the rest of the
domains, for the sole purpose of seeing employees as a cost factor rather than
a revenue factor.
1960s: Attention to self-development:
Revisionism: basically refers to the concept of how best sides of classical and
humanist perspectives were combined and revised to come to an optimal
solution.
This turn of events was inspired by Abraham Maslow’s motivation theory.
More attention to task enrichment & motivation
HR department was allowed to study:
Work structuring
Jobintrinsic motivators
Forms of participation
More involvement by government and unions
1970s: Difficult search for suitable profiles:
Due to technological advancements, unemployment was now a qualititative

problem rather than a quantitative.
HR was now more involved in:
Recruitment & Selection
Performance evaluation
Training
Compensation; more resources were given to HR if the company wanted to

find the best possible talent in the market.
1990s: The impact of globalisation:
Globilisation

Emerging anti-globalists. However in the 21st century their names are changed
to alter-globalists as they also understand that globalisation has many
advantages.
Business Process Reengineering; during this period, employees didn’t have it

easy. As there was a strong correlation between redundancies and share prices
of companies.
The Renault case: basically Renault had to cut on costs, and in 1990 Carlos
Ghosn, switched from Michelin to Renault. In 1997 he went to Vilvoorde to
analyse and find a solution. Without a notice to the workers or anyone, he
callled the journalists and broke the news that the plant was closing down
and all its employees were being laid off. As a result of this came the
Renault Act on Feb 13 1998, where the law obliged companies to provide
prior notice the employees’ representatives such as the unions before
contiuning with such collective redundancies.
Corporate anorexia: is a term referred when companies over-fire workers.

In the seach of cost-cutting further and further to create a leaner
organisation, the company might fire way more than necessary. Thus
making the companny suffer rather than healthier.
Flatter structures (horizontalisation): in the period of Industrial Revolution

companies liked to have large hierarchies, with many managers above each,
but in our days flatter structures are preferred with fewer hierachical levels
(horizontalisation).
Decision making delegated to line managers: this is done so that reaction is

faster and more efficient towards a change in the market.
Team based structures with shorter decision lines
HR supports the line managers and higher managers
2000s: Functional and Numerical flexibility:
Functional Flexibility:
Generalists instead of specialists; nowadays companies prefer generlaists

because of their broader knowledge about everything and their flexibility on
which task they can execute. During a restructuring, this is the advtange
they possess over specialists with one area of expertise,

Work through temporary shocks: in case a worker is absent, sick or has
personal problems and cannot be present at job, generalists have the
functional flexibility to take over the job of the absent person, and complete
it to the very best of their abilities.
Easy transfer of workers: in case the company is looking to hire a new

worker for a department, marketeer for instance, they can look at the
competencies of the current workers and their willingness to change
position, and just transfer them from one department to another. This cuts
down on company costs and increases job enjoyability of the employee.
Numerical flexibility:
Numerical flexibility can be found in 4 different ways in companies:
Flexible contracts & flexijobs

→ Interims and temporary contracts: it is beneficial for companies to hire
employees on a temporary contract, as there are no additional costs for
when the employee leaves the company. They agreed for 6 months, now
the time has finished, so bye. Same also applies for interim contracts, they
require no additional costs whatsoever. Sometimes they can fire the
employee any day, with a valid reason at hand.
→ Not renewing contracts to adapt quickly: companies prefer to keep the
core staff, and hire temporary employees as needed. Becuase this enables
fast adaptability towards the change in market. If more workers are
required, they are hired for a certain period, and if later on not so much,
their contracts will expire soon anyway so its not costly for the company.
→ No notice periods, no layoff compensations
→Makes sense from employers POV, and allows workers to get experience
from differnet employers
→Flexi-jobs that came alive in December 2015, makes it possible for
pensioners as well as employees to work 2 jobs at the same time. They
work 4 days a week minimum on one job and extra on another job from
retail or hospitality sectors. They don’t pay any taxes or social contributions,
but still have rights for unemployment benefits,pensions and holidays.
Moreover its better for employers as they only have to pay 25% of the
employer’s contribution - this is normally a 50-50 thing between employees
and employers.

→ There is no certain future for the employee, thus they are stressed
towards the end of the contract, less productive and looking for jobs.
Broken shifts: this refers to flexibility of working hours.

→ For example in the case of restaurant that works from 12-2pm and then
again from 5-10pm later in the evening, they send back employees to home
when the restaurant is closed. Because during this time there are no
customers in bulk, hence no revenue is generated to cover the wages of the
employees during those empty hours.
→ This broken shift however, may interfere with the life of the employee,
because of commuting back and forth. If they live far away from the
restaurant, it would even make things worse and they would have to hang
around the restaurant not to waste time going back. This would also rip
them off from other things they could have done such as meeting up with
friends, or drinking alcohol and chilling at home, because they would have
to cut short and be sharp for work in a few hours anyway.
→ The employee may also find another job within the pause at the
restaurant, to cover up for the lost time and earn money at the same time.
However, in most cases it is impossible to find a second job that fits
perfectly with the schedule of the first job. 1+1 is not always 2 in the case of
juggling between
2 jobs.
Reference period:
→ Refers to the uneven distribution of working hours, over a period of time.
→ Basic reference period of 3 months, so its not to say that employees
should work 38h per week, rather they should achieve an average of 38h
per week over 3 months.
→ Limit is 40h per week and 9 hours per day; so the numerical flexibility
regarding the work hour cannot exceed 40h per week.
→ There is also a number of maximum hours that can be worked before the
employee asks for compulsory catch-up rest, the so called “Internal Limits”
→ Annual reference period:
-Allows to compensate busy winters with slow summers and vice-versa
-Allows the business to avoid hiring extra stuff during busy winter
-Not paying extra staff in summer when there is few or no work
-Basically the firm is able to avoid additional costs

→ Benefit for the worker is unclear and person-specific
-Is the discomfort of 1 hour of work really equal to the comfort of 1hour of
free time later?
It is more of a person specific case, as for some people this schedule might
cause some problems; things like missing family events or friend meetings.
Freelancer:
→ Employer pays for output not time
→ Employer saves on costs such as company car, insurance, pensions.
→ Employer saves on costs:
-Company car, insurance, pensions are saved upon for the sole purpose of
not actually employing the worker; basically you are not entitled to pay
these costs because you don’t own the employee, they are self employed in
essence.
-Freelancers are self-employed
-No cost in case of illness (instead of 1st month salary)
→ Freelancers also benefit from this:
-Work-life balance is easier to attain since there is no obligation of going to
the work place at a specific time period. When there are too many projects,
you may ignore some of them, but there also exists the pressure to say yes
in fear of losing clients.
-The job can be executed fast if the task is within expertise area; fast
money, ez win.
Competency management:
Training more and wider than the job requires
Employability:
The new way of looking at work:

→ Clear career choice
→ Actively thinking about life and career simultaneously
→ Jumping from one organisation to a new one, seeking promotion and
better career prospects. Or perhaps, due to toxic organisations/misfit
organisation structures. Helps avoid burnout, cynicism and depression.
→ Knowledge that you will find a job elsewhere easily makes it more likely
to switch organisations
→ Need for proper retention management and clauses; basically refers to

how companies cannot employ people for 40 years; no longevity, thus more
of an empathetic open conversation is executed to understand the clear
path of the employee. This is a win-win situation for the employee and the
company at the same time.
Lifelong employment VS Employability

→ In countries like Japan people thought seriously about lifelong
employment. A worker would enter the company in a young age and goes
out during retirement.
A matter of loyalty but to what, the company or your family.
The 2010s: Workable Work:
Employer Branding: the purpose of this is to clearly communicate what the

organisation is about. Then there is sort of self-selection where some people
apply and some don’t due to person-organisation fit.
Better work performance
Low turnover intentions
Increase in internal and external communication

→ Person-organisation fit
→ Self-selection
→ Superficial values VS concrete behaviour
→ Cold cultures such as AB Inbev might not be the right place for warm
people.
The end-of-career debate
Babyboomers are retiring
The balance between contributors and benefitters shifts
Official retirement age increased from 66 in 2025 and 67 in 2030
Making early exit more difficult
Need to keep people eager to work for longer:

→ The will to work should be reignited through something new
→ Non-linear recruitment (atypical profiles)

→ Ability should be proven by test, not diploma or CV
→ Upsurge of the competency management idea
Shorter, more focused training with direct added value
War for talent VS war for experience
Career guidance:
Career cheques
Discover strenghts and weaknesses
Map skills, competences and working values
Clarify the job market
Reduce continuence commitment; basically staying at a job even if it is

depleting your mental health because you think that is the only option you
have.
Prevention and management of burn-out:
Career guidance could be a prevention technique
Role of closing loopholes like SWT:

→ People planned careers based on early exit
→ Manageable in case of early retirement, not if longer
→ No need for retraining or career moves
Managing mental health could be done through things like yoga and
mindfulness
Minimal requirements to prevent stress and burn-out put in law
Reintegration schemes
→ Get employees back to work faster
→ Temporarily or permanently adjusted work
→ Company’s medical officer examines possibilities for reinitegration
Flexijobs
→ 4 days of work stress in the same organisation rather than 5
→ 1 day of flexijob
→ Less impact on salary compared to working only 80%
→ Completely differnet environment

→ Feelings of value and competence, peace of mind
→ Positive effect on main job
→ Reduces continuance commitment
→ Prevention of mental imbalance and burn-out
Work-life balance: there exists Work-Life Separation and Work-Life Integration:
Work-life separation:
There is a clear split by employer
Forced to mentally step out of the work context
Avoids work depletion; so poeple don’t overdose on work and deplete their
mental battery.
Right to deconnect at home means also same at work; if you get the right to
stop all contacts with work right at the moment that work finishes, it means
similarly at work you should halt all contacts with private life during work
hours.
Creates a very specific company culture
Less flexible for workers
Work-life integration:
More flexibility, often more realistic
Work in private time and doing private things in office hours is allowed
Employee is required to take responsibility for his/her own mental well being.
This is the difference between people with burnout and depression; people
who are able to separate work and life on their own and treat their mental
health are able to enjoy their hobbies outside of their work.
Working at after office hours or so called strange hours is totally normal
Keeping work-life integration manageable
Working fewer hours:
30 hour working week was demanded to be the new norm
It was seen as a counteract too burn-out numbers and work-life separation

Is working hours a social construct or law of nature:
→ Working hours have diminsihed through time
→ There has been a transition from industrial economy to knowledge
economy: Arguement for 6h work is because most people work in the
knowledge economy and the human brain is not able to constantly focus for
8h straight; but perhaps less.
→ There has also been work intensification due to technological progress:
the computer executes the boring regular tasks and the human worker does
more intense things that the computer is unable to execute.
→ Enable work-life separation
However management is hesitant to the 30 hour working week: as they

would have to pay the wage for 38h when the employees work for 30h. Or
perhaps they could get new machine to replace the human labour, which is
also costly to the business. Makes no sense for the business to increase
cost, just to satisfy the employees.
The 30h work week actually enables task rationalisation and inefficiency
reductions:
→ High work pressure; makes employees incentivised to work more
efficiently to finish work earlier.
→ Easier to apply in smaller groups thanks to social pressure free riders
can be told off or pushed back to work through supervision; more easily
done in small and medium sized enterprises.
→ Question is who actually reaps the benefits of this rationalisation:
employees or the employer?: a pilot is done for the idea of 30h work hour
with a small group of people. If the idea proves to work properly then it
would be applied to the whole organisation.
Basically the level of trust between the management and employees
determine the result of this pilot as well as whether employees task
rationalise or not.
Because it is also that if in the end the pilot proves to be right and workers
complete the work in 6h, the management says no, so all this time they
were able to complete the work in 6h and they did 8h. The management
now adds more tasks per employee.
If you reveal that you can do a job faster, it becomes the new standard.

Quiet quitting is when there is a certain level of pay that your given upon the job
description in your contract. But most people do extra things, besides their job
description because perhaps they like the culture or the company. This is called
engagement. But what the industry tries to do is to make you believe that this
extra performance is the normal, and that if you do not do this you are weak.
New form of supporting quiet qutting: #actyourwage. People do only what is
agreed to be done, and it is okay, they do great. If you do more, thank you, its
not normal, but a plus. It is valued.
Stackhanov: Alexey Stakhanov, came up with the idea of Stakhanovism. This

term refers to the fact that people are competitive, they try to be the best. And it
refers to Stakhanov because the Russian government used his name to
manipulate others:
If Stakhanov can do, so why can’t you?
People push each other through competition.
Manipulated Stakhanovism is utilised by companies, otherwise all companies
are afraid of the term quiet quitting since if everyone started to quiet quit,
companies would not get the same profit and would have to pay more for
increased labour.
Chapter 2: Recruitment
1. The HR Cycle:
2. Job analysis: reers to a systematic process for collecting information on the

important work-related aspects of a job.

Job analyis = job description + job specification.
In job description:
Tasks and responsibilities of that job are stated
What you need to do: what the job requires

Job specification:
The profile we look for: knowledge, skills, abilities, traits and other characteristics for
effective performance on the job
Who can do the job: who the job requires

Job valuation:
What is the pay and extra legal benefits of this position
3. An important nuance:
The job analysis has a focus on the chair, not on the person sitting in that chair.
Each time a worker leaves the organisation, it is a chance to renew the organisation
and work flow. Ex: some workers have outdated work methods, so now we exclude
it from the job advertisement. Or some workers don’t know the newest techniques,
so now we include it in the job advertisement.
So it is possible that you quit your job today, and you apply for the same job the
next day, you may not get it back.
Focus on the future
Don’t only register what is here today; otherwise you may not find the correct fit for
the job.
4. A proper job analysis:
More responsibilities instead of task:
More longevity
More flexibility and autonomy
Less hiding behind job description; inclusion of responsibilities prevent

employees from running from extra tasks or duties by referring back to the job
description.

Important info for job redesign
Reveals training needs
Makes evaluations easier
5. Job valuation:
Identify the difficulty of a job since pay is varied accordingly
Then a salary structure is done
6. We create 2 structures:
Job group structure:
Hierarchy based on the difficulty of the jobs
Salary structure is fitted here.

Wage increase only happens from a block to another. Even though within one
block, the guy at a higher level does more difficult job and has more
responsibilities from the guy at the bottom of the same block, they earn the
same.

Representative method:
Only analyse a few jobs (anchors)
Fit remaining jobs where it feels logical: the problem is that, in the case that the
employee of that position leaves, the company does not know what to put in the
job description because in the beginning they didn’t analyse it properly. They just
analysed a few and made them anchors for the next jobs.
It is also possible to lose faith from employees towards the company,
This is done to save on costs and time, plus management accepts this because
managers don’t want to be stuck in strict rules while ranking people in the
hierarchy.
Analytical method:
Here all jobs are analysed. The point system is most often used. All jobs are
analysed based on 5 factors with a certain point attached to it from 10-50. This is
also not fully objective, but it is a system that is applicable for all with an idea of
fairness.
In order to reduce this subjectivity we use “behaviouraly anchored rating systems”.
We tell in advance how to rate. So for example: in the case that working conditions
are as follows circle 3, if it is as such, circle 5 etc. Range of valuation/ span of
valuation: is from 50(lowest) - 250(highest).
More info for the R&S and mediation
External consultants can be expensive
Salary structure
Hierarchy of wages
Minimal and maximal wage per job
7. Job groups are lower at the bottom of the hierarchy and more wider at the top.
Because people at the top of the hierarchy think that they are doing a hard job and
that their pay check pays it already and they have no ambition of goiong forward,
unlike those at the bottom.
There is also a Minimum and Maximum wage for every job group. What you earn
depends on your competencies and skill inventory.

8. External comparison:
It basically refers to in the case someone leaves the company, and we need a new
employee within the company or from outside, the market value of the open poisiton
may differ in the industry. So in the end if the company cannot hire someone else
from outside, they could increase the company pay to equal the industry value. But
if the company absolutely cannot increase the value, the company can promote the
IT officer to IT manager for 3.5k and hire another IT officer instead. We also offer
training for the newly promoted IT officer, but we add the clause that he/she cannot
leave the organisation for the upcomin 2-3 years.
Efficieny wage theory:
High wage compared to the sector: way more, if the sector gives 3k, offer 6k.
Become the employer of choice; people in the labour market would be

competing over the position.
Small probability of getting caught; basically means that employees are less
likely to do things that the organisations don’t like. Because they would not want
to jeopardise a big paycheck with something dumb.
Problems:
Self selection & market for lemons; it means that you also attract people who
are only interested in the pay, even if they are not interested in the products or
services provided by the company. So perhaps, they may not even be
productive and effective enough.
In market for lemons, or perhaps second hand market for cars, there is
information assymetry. So it is really important make a logical and well rounded
selection. So just like in a market for cars, it may happen in efficiency wage
theory, unqualified people may also apply for these high paying jobs, just or the

sake of trying. And this is really a time wasting process for the company as they
have to go through thousands of resumes; relevant and irrelevant.
Standard performance is enough; when employees have no compassion for

what the company is doing and only works for the pay, they only deliver
standard erformance.
No affective commitment; some people only apply for money solely, they may
not have any interest or compassion towards the mission of the organisation.
Which perhaps stops potential extra work the employee could be doing for the
company for free.
Positive wage spiral; theres a constant money outflow for large sums of wage
as other companies also try to copy this tactic and increase wages. Then arises
the bid wars for wages. In return, this gives power to the employees to be more
carefree, and ignorant as per say. So now even if they are fired from their
current job that pays 15k, they can simply move to the other company that pays
14k for the same job.
Signalling function:
Intrinsic motivation; some people value meaning and purpose more than the
amount of wage they earn.
Fixed wage VS pay-for-performance: some companies cannot compete with

other firms in terms of wages, so even if they pay lower fixed wages, they may
offer variable pay as well according to employee performance. As a result of the
employee performance the company can pay the worker more than the industry
average, which is good for both the company and the employee respectively.
Tournament wages
Your wage depends on your performance relative to other workers, it is no

longer individual as it is in bonus pay.
Bonus depends on your target that is obtained, but then relatively fades away
as the target has been reached.
Commission is different as you get a certain percentage on each sale you

make, hence the employee is tempted to work till the very end of the month.

Tournament wage is a combination of bonus and commission system. At the
start of each month employees are told how much bonus they can earn,
according to their sales compared to other colleagues. So the person who has
the most sales gets 5k in bonus, 2nd place gets 3k etc. In essence the
performance of other colleagues affect your bonus pay, so employees are
incentivised to work till the very end of the month.
Company culture: competition, sabotage, hard in case of bad luck (if bad
performance even for 1 month, all perks and privilages disappear).
9. Recruitment: refers to the activities, performed by the organisation or on its behalf,

aimed at creating awareness about vacant jobs.
The organisation, aka the recruiter, searches for the best alignment between
skills/employability between the individual and the job demands.
10. However applicants have wishlists too:
Entire labour market is not relevant:
Choice of profession
Choice of organisation (reputation & employer brand)
Educational level
Geography: where you live and where the company is situated
Salary
Career perspectives; promotional potentials affect the number of people that

apply for the vacant position.
Self assessment: before applying to a job, take a look at the above criteria.
11. Telling or selling:
Selling is done with nice pics and stories
Telling is done with smart communication
Pay attention to the psychological contract: as an employee there is this thought

regarding what he/she promised the organisation to do and what the organisation
promised to do for the employee.
By definition: “employee’s perceived mutual obligations between himself and his

employer” by Robinson en Rousseau.
However the concept was brought forward by:
Argyris (1960) and there is no generally accepted definition
It is more difficult to enforce
Implicit & explicit promises
Expectations
Broad and Narrow sense; broad sense is both implicit and explicit promises
made by the employer and expectations of the employee, whereas narrow
sense refers to promises only.
Support for difference between promises & expectations
The psychological contract also:
Two parties sign the same contract
Breach in the psychological contract; this leads to lower the affective

commitment and performance. If through misunderstanding an employee was
expecting a promotion for lets say working hard for 5 years in a company, and
didn’t get the expected, or in essense wasn’t delivered the implicit promise by
the organisation, this seriously affects the employees performance in the
company later on.
Employees can be kept in the dark for long
Avoid through communication; the company can lower these expecations that
arise by employees through informal talks or mid year reviews and evaluation
interviews. It is better for an employee to know that he or she will not be
promoted within their expected duration in 2 weeks rather than 2 years.
12. Realistic Job Previews:
Concept grouping different techniques
Day on the job
Chat with job holder or ambassador
Company presentations
Realistic recruitment message (RRM)

The aim of this is to show positive and negative feature of a job.
13. Realistic Recruitment Messages (RRM):
Job advertisements with positive and negative features
Does not intuitevely make sense to put bad feautres of a job in the job description,
but there are reasons to do so. Companies are relcutant to do so because of 2 main
reasons:
First, because they fear that there will be too little applicants as the labour
market gets tighter. They fear that harsh job ads will push away potentially good
candidates.
Seconds, they also fear losing great candidates to competitors that do actually
put put positive ads. Realistic Recruitment Messages make it tough to compete
with organisations that put out pretty ads.
4 reasons to use RRM:
Applicants still apply, but with lower expectations
Ask questions to competing firms, in the case that other companies agree to the
hard conditions of the job there is a sense of trust developed by the employee
towards the company that was honest with the conditions from the very
beginning.
Credibility and sense for challenge
Balance between pros and cons is only one aspect of the ad
Ethics
14. Testimonials:
Quick evolution
Controlled communication to make values discernable; testimonials are trusted
Microsoft created a blog with a campaign of testimonials done by employees,

regarding the values put out by the company. Pictures and videos are more
representative and symbolistic than words can ever be.
15. Virtual Reality:
New hype in RJPs (Realistic Job Previews)

Let applicant see and feel the job
Case of Willemen; a construction job where they made possible for others to
experience what the job had in bag for them through virtual reality.
16. Excelling is not always better:
Setting low expectations that are easily excelled
Not sure how workers will respond when expectation is excelled:
Example of little autonomy
Self-selection;
Set high expectations that you can meet
17. Types of recruitment:
Internal Recruitment:
Active internal recruitment(advertising):
Invite qualified workers to apply only; so the company is selective of the

open vacancy is notified to
Skills inventory
Can be motivating, and demotivating; can be motivating because

employees know that the organisation cares for them, thinks of them and
values their skills. Can also be demotivating in the case that the
organisation does not invite a suitable candidate for the position simply
because the skills inventory of the organisation was not up to date.
Better formal & simultaneously
Passive internal recruitment(advertising)
Initiative with the workers; this time, the vanacy is sent to everyone within
the firm, whether qualfied or not, and the choice of application is left to the
employees.
Since the application initiative is with the employees, they can also pass on
this vacant position to a family member or a friend; referral technique.
Job posting better than informal

Referrals: reputation effect, diversity, conncetion with the referrent.
Advantages of internal recuritment:
Cheaper
Faster
We already know the competencies of the workers; since the firm

doesn’t need to do any expensive external advertising the execution
time between job analyis and closing the application round are much
shorter.
Socialisation is also easier for both the employee and the organisaiton as
the worker has prevously worked here
Career perspectives for the employees are motivating; these chances show
the employees that they don’t have to leave the company to advance their
careers.
Disadvantages of internal recruitment:
Quickly becomes less formal and objective; resemtment between

employees may arise due to the thoughts of unfair treatment and
favouritism.
Being “known” can be a disadvantage; potential previous nasty behaviour

can be considered a predictor of future bad behaviour
Vacancy chain; one open vacancy in the higher positions creates a chain of
vacancies from the bottom and upwards until an external person is recruited
to fill up the open position at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Organisational blindness: missed opportunity to attract external knowledge

and experience.
Unhealthy competition: sabotage and lack of collaboration. If employees

know that for instance there will only be 3 employees selected out of the
potential 10, they may decisde to create obstacles for their colleagues
because of the promotion opportunity.
Peter-Principle:
→ Promoted to the level of one’s incompetence

→ Demotion; since the person felt pressure to say yes to the promotion,
he/she is not able to perform well (Peter Principle) now and the company
intervenes to solve this problem, usually by demoting the employee.
→ Strong in up-or-out cultures; up or out is when a company gives a
promotional opportunity, the employee is pressure to say yes even oif
he/she is not ready for the responsibilty yet, because they are blocking the
career development of the rest of the employees. So, it is either up the
promotional ladder, or out the organisation.
External Recruitment:
Active external recruitment
Headhunting: people who find correct people for right job vacancies;
especially for the higher positions in the organisation.
Interim (temporary employment) agencies; these agencies usually find

people for the lower end jobs.
LinkedIn; some people argue that LinkedIn is going to put headhunters out
of job, however these specialised people do more than just find the correct
person, they also do the screening, convincing, guidance and selection
process; all with extreme delicacy and confidentiality.
Passive external recruitment:
Making a vacancy known to the general public
Initiative given to the applicants
Types of passive external recruitment include:

→ Advertisements
→ E-recruitment
→ Internships
→ College recruiting
→ Point-of-purchase recruitment
→ Temporary employment agencies
18. Job advertisements: in the old days:
There was specialised Vacature Magazine en Jobat were dominant
Newspapers had a bit of labour market news and then pages and pages of job ads

Distributed by newspaper of the same media company, so it was a very profitable
business back then
For organisations it was very costly to publish their job ads in the newspaper back
then
Job advertisements: today:
Fast digititalisation, easier to publish jobs, make it seen and get it printed.
Mid 2019: there was a joint venture between Jobat & Vacature Magazine
→ Jobat.be was the new portal
→ Crossmedial communication
19. Printed job advertisements:
Advertising in general media
Reach out to passive job seakers:
People who does not look at specialised media to find job since they already
have a job, ‘can see vacancies through printed
job advertisements
Can be convinced if they see a great job
In the job section or outside of it
Marketing is required to draw attention
20. Job ads in general media:
Pictures help get attention
Nice design of job ads through social media also help:
Readers look longer at the ad
Info from the ad is remembered better
Less unqualified applicants (P-O fit)
Especially important for junior profiles
Fit campaign to the time of the year (holidays)
21. Content of the job advertisement include:

Sectors, products & services; image of the company
Size of the organisation and the work team
Culture and values of the organisaton
Location of the organisation
Mentioning why the vacancy is open; is it expansion or pregnancy leave or

something
Job description, job specification, job valuation
Info regarding the selection process
How to submit the CV and which email to send it to
21. How do we sell the job:
Gain frame is better than the loss frame:
Gain frame highlights what you can win if you apply with a certain organisation,
instead of loss frame, where losses are highlighted.
Be transparent about the salary:
“Competitive compensation” doesn’t do anything
Bullets VS Paragraphs
Lay-out should not prevail over content
22. What shouldn’t be in a job ad?
Law of May 10, 2007
Antiracism act
Antidiscrimination act
Act on the equal treatment of men and women (Gender Equality Act)
M/F/X with talent
Exceptions: concrete and determining job demand
Exceptions: actors, singers, dancers
Concept ‘positive action’ (or ‘affirmative action’);

Positive action (or affirmative action) refers to rules that are allowed to be
followed to protect minority groups. For example in an organisation there are
lots of white than black people, and there are 2 people equally qualified for a
position. One is black, one is white, the company is allowed to pick up the black
person. But this decision should be done at selection, everyone needs to get
the chance of application and has to be screened to prove they were actually of
equal qualification. Otherwise, if this is done before the selection phase where
competencies could have been measured, this would be positive discrimination.
23. E-recruitment: Jobsites
Since the 2000s the market for online jobs have grown exponentially
Jobat and Vacature took advantage of the internet to get into online services
besides their offline activites, but this didn’t stop other huge players from entering
the market. These include: Stepstone, Monster, Indeed, Glassdoor and LinkedIn.
Easier to filter and find suitable jobs/works.
24. E-recruitment: General Websites:
Searching fot the target groups online
Easy to reach passive job seekers
Searching the internet for the right content
25. E-recruitment: Google:
Buying keywords from google:
Link on top of the page, or just above the next-back buttons at the bottom of the
page
More chance on getting a click
Smartt guerilla campaigns: you can also buy keywords of other companies, so
you pop up even if the searcher was looking for something else. For instance;
someone needs jobs ate nike, but they see jobs at adidas.
Search Enginge Optimisation (SEO):
Using SEO companies to exploit the Google-algorithm.
26. E-recruitment: Company’s website;

Cheap
Walk-ins; companies are advised to put the “vacancy” tab on their websites even if
there are no active jobs positions for anyone, because then, when someone enters
to look at the jobs and is informed that there are no jobs at the moment but they are
invited to put their CVs in for future opportunities. These people are called ‘walk-
ins’.
Bigger companies have more traffic on their website
Lay-out & usability is important
Standard forms as a threshold and streamlining
Log-in with LinkedIn to compensate
Out-of-office
27. Special event recruitment:
Open company days; this is when companies organise open days so people who
are interested in a career with the company can visit and see what the company is
like and how it operates.
Targetted company visits; this is also a special event recrutiment, where the event is
not open for the general public, but for final year university students. And then, at
the end of their visit they are informed with vacancies within the job.
Job fairs; companies (employers) from different sector come together in one place
to set up a stand and promote their vacancies.
Case Fabricom: had issues with finding workers to fix the electricity antenna. Their
solution was to go to the World climbing championship and put billboards. They
thought that, people who watched this would be doing climbing as well and would
have no fear of heights.
28. Internships:
More than just a student job; gives a better idea of the actual job
Stronger effect on organisational performance
Better view on real job (RJP)

Welcomed by students as it gives them better, more realistic and challenging work
life experience.
More effort from the company
On the job training
Monitoring&controlling
29. College recruitment:
Some companies are eager to capture talent for their organisations as soon as they
are out in the labour market, or even earlier, when they are in their final year of
studies.
The sooner the bond created by the emerging talent in the market, the more
chances that they will apply to work with company of interest.
30. Point of purchase recruitment:
Job ads within the stores
Colruyt is a major example of this, putting vacancy posters within the shops
Bolfrost also does this, but since they don’t have shops, they have this message on
their trucks.
32. Contacting the own network:
Freinded managers
Collective layoff; when layoffs are necessary managers can ask their manager
friends to see if they have open vacancy to take employees.
If for example 3 applicants of equal power were compared and 1 was selected,
the manager can consult his/her other manager friends to see if they can take
on the other two for a potential job position.
Case UZ Brussel; hospital in brussels had a shortage of nurses. They asked all
mothers with a foreign background living next to the hospital to come and tour the
hospital. They said, if you have children deciding what to study, there are vacancies
here in our hospital. So then, these mothers would put direction on their kids
towards a medical career.

Rode Kruis Vlaanderen (Red Cross Flanders); they have limited budget, so they
can’t have expensive recruitment campaigns. So they went into news, calling out to
CEOs of companies in Belgium, saying that if they had stron and motivate
applicants, but couldn’t hire them for some reason, send their CVs to us.
This is not a referral system, because wether they get hired or not doesn’t affect the
reputation of whatever company sends them.
32. Boomerang employees:
Boomerang employees are also known as “Alumni workers”
Used to work for the company but left, and are rehired after some time with another
employer
Boomerang employees have 2 advantages:
These employees know the company
These workers bring in new, external knowledge that could be beneficial to the
company
Monitoring and targetted rehiring; this is active external recruitment
Remain in touch through trainings; this is passive external recrutiment
Easier for the bigger companies
Employees come back to different supervisor or department in the case that

they had problems before they left
Reasons for leaving is important in recruiting again
Chapter 3: Selection
1. Getting and interpreting information:
Screen CVs and motivation letters
Get additional information
Exchange information
Which applicant will attain our performance standards; or even exceed performance
standards

2. Dark side of selection:
Not about good and bad people
About who is the best fit for the job; suitable or unsuitable applicant for the vacant
position
Not qualified today, but maybe tomorrow for a different job
3. Not all information is relevant:
Only some info is relevant to whether the candidate is suitable for the job or not.
The right information regarding an applicant is a signal to hire the employee, and
the opposite is also true.
Providing the correct info on resumes, and correct action upon these resumes gives
an effective product.

The effetiveness of the hiring an employee done by the HR, can be presented like the
above diagram.
A, B, C and D applicants exist.
A and C candidates are rejected like the diagram shows, and B & D candiadtes are
hired.
The ideal zone is B, and the problematic zones are A & D.

Because here (on zone A), something called Type A error can occur. A potentially
suitable candidate may be rejected from the position simply because his/her test
score was not to par. This can have 2 main disadvantages for the company:
The company has to put out more expensive job ads, when they already had
the suitable candiate for the open position.
The rejected candidate may go on and work for a rival company, and
outperform everyone. Great example of this is Brian Acton, being rejected from
Facebook, he came up with Whatsapp, and sold it for 11,6 billion Euros.

The aim is then to maximise hits of B and C, the company rejects unsitable
candidates and hires the best fits.
Minimise misses of zones A & D
The company also aims to pursue the highest ration of B/B+D possible, ideally
being 1.
4. Why we as HR test:
Correlation between test result and future performance on the job
Positive linear correlation; refers to high score on the test as well as the
performance which in turn indicates a great combination.
Negative linear correlation; sometimes however higher test scores are not
necessarily good indicators. For instance int he case of stress tests, if the worker
scores high they are unlikely to get the job.
Non-linear correlation
Overqualified applicant; overqualified applicants are usually not taken into jobs
because they are in fact better than what the job offers them. So, if they were to
be employed for the vacancy when they are overqualified, the job may become
boresome for them after a while and they could also potentially make begineer
mistakes because they take the task so lightly.
5. Zero defects:
HR is an expert position, so they have to make little to no mistakes
Needs to do better than tossing a coin

HR is not accountable to recruitment mistakes if:
Veto power for selection decisions is not completely in the hands of HR

department, but also open to supercisor or manager opinion.
Monitoring the newcomer; the employee ay have been the suitable candidate
but due to poor supervision by the supervisor later on, the newcomer could
have performed poorly as a response to lacking manager.
Continuous improvement of test instruments is done with each recruitment mistake

to have B/B+D as close to 1 as possible
6. 5 criteria for instruments:
Standardisation
All applicants are treated equally; provided with the same opportunities
Follow instructions precisely
Eliminating disturbance
Objective scoring
Result is only matter of calculating; IQ tests and personality tests done on

computer.
Only method determines relative performance; sometimes when tests are

conducted by people personal biases affect the end result.
Rater’s personal preferences have no influence
More difficult for observations than questionnnaires; because there is more

human interpretation, rather than in an IQ exam for example where the
candidates complete the exam and the computer does the calculations.
Thus ‘behaviourally anchored rating scales’ comes up where each amount of
point has a certain description, to how the rater is supposed to be grading
people - on what basis.
Norm
Standard to value score; they should firstly be tested for their psychometric
properties. Meaning the test should have been done on a very large group of
respondents in order to be sure that the test is constructed in correct manners.

Comparing score to average
Population VS Sample
Reliability
Degree of consistency; consistent results show reliable test.
Weighing scale or a ruler for example, while traditional versions may give the
same result over and ovver again, electronic versions may vary in result due to
battery reducuction or something like that.
Validity
Are we measuring what we want to measure?
IQ test
7. Steps to take:
Preliminary screening (resumes)
Matching resumes with job specification
Evaluate motivation letter
Reduction in the number of selection interviews
Seems easy, but is quite hard since not all people are truly honest with their
resumes.
Exaggerating or telling lies
Most often about:
Work experience
Language skills
Driven by competition effect
Ticket to the interview
What does a diploma say?
Signal that competences & knowledge were obtained
Marks are not indisputable:

Professors sometimes evaluate differently
Good reasong for lower mark
Believe in overall performance
Exceptions to the rule
Diploma supplements to reveal interests of the applicant
Getting it right?:
Applicants are not decided based on facebook information
nformation from Facebook may however, bu utilised to strenghten the

interview
Lack of e-professionalism is an issue, but can be improved
Social media policies:
Loyalty duty can go above free speech
Comments against the employer even without mentioning their names

is not allowed. Loyalty overrules freedom of speech in court.
There is protection against negative behaviour of the workers.
Reference checks:
Seems to make sense in theory
Reference contacts informed in advance by the applicant
Rarely someone who is negative
Often not someone from the current job because a lot may have changed in the
past few years.
Often someone from the private sphere
Charming friend, but dictator at work
Work identity is not always equal to personal identity
Letters of recommendation:
Have similar problem: because there is no constructive criticism and too

positive

Handed over to the individual himself/herself
Insufficient knowledge
Professors to students perhaps is a good example, teachers don’t know

students so what they wrote could be so general it could fit for anybody.
Letters of recommendations have limited weight in hiring recommensation
Male recommenders write over the top recommendations for females.
Selection interview
Structured interview:
Chairman of the panel makes the protocol
Collect the questions from the other jury members
Makes an order
Rephrases leading questions
Drops improper questions
Less discrimination, less forgotten, more control over the interview, more
time to listen, easier to compare applicnts, still possible to ask follo-up
questions.
Same jury members for all applicants
Same number of jury members for each interview
Same length of the interviews
Reflection in between the interviews:
Avoid recency and primacy errors.
Contrast effect refers to being compared with the previous applicant
Unstructured interview:
Smart opening question = end of prepation
Continue building on what the applicant says
Sense of flexibility

Sense of normal conversation
Almost no preparation
Differnet questions are asked with various applicants but then this makes it
difficult to compare individuals. So how credible is that question if we can’t
compare it with other applicants.
Leading questions:
“You also think that…, right?”
“Do you think…”
Improper questions:
About private life of the applicant
Do you want to have children?
Hobbies are an exception
Conversation is controlled by applicant:
Oportunity to self-promote
Stay away from less familiar topics
Chaotic conversation:
Questions are all over the place because they were not prepared
beforehand.
Answers unrelated to the question
Listening is harder than you think:
Thinking about next question
Applicants give very short answers
“If” means “if not”
Concepts are not identical to everyone
Echoing: means repeating the most important words from a sentence

and putting into question terms.
Selection tests:

Behavioural Description Interview (BDI):
Focus on the past
Link incidents from previous jobs with the job you applied for
STAR(R) method:
Situation, task, action & result (& reflection)
Admitting mistakes not necessarily a bad idea
Not always applicable
Situational interview (SI):
Focus on hypothetical bejaviour in the future
Social desirability
Case: The Candidate by Heineken: they put applicants in test situations

where a person fell down with a heart attack to see how applicants react to
the situation.
Reliability SI higher than BDI:
Becauase of the variation in examples
Similar validity:
BDI is better for higher positions
Physical test:
Interviwer errors:
→Excessive talking by the interviewer:
Marks own importance and knowledge
80/20 rule, so interviewer is supposed to listen 80% of the time rather than
speak mostly.
→Unrelated questions:
What are we going to do with the answer
But not everything is unrelated (hobbies).
Making the applicant feel uncomfortable:

Shock effect
→Stress:
Effect of stress:
Less control over oneself
Black-out
Performance boost only when stressed
Avoid being too self-confident
Lower productive validity when applicants are nervous
Measure of Anxiety in Selection Interviews (MASI);
Shows that there is a negative correlation with interview performance and level
of anxiety of the applicant
Lower pereptions of organisational attractiveness
Less information being picked up by the applicants
→Deciding on stereotypes:
General characteristics of a group
Member of that group = general characteristics
Women, foreigners, young graduates, blue collars
Our own preference in the way
Women who smile modestly, make few eye contact and miniminiz success are
better in interviews
Men who are assertive and make a lot of eye contact are better in interviews
Other stereotypes:
Pregnant women
Obese individuals
Immigrants
Shortcomings of judgements based upon these stereotypes:

Simplistic
Small applicant pool
Anonymous applications are not necessarily better
→Deciding on attractiveness:
Luxen & Van de Vijver (2006)
Men and women prefer more attractive applicants (opposite gender) in case of
high contact
Stronger for men
Invite external interviewers
Don’t exclude interal interviewers
Male and female HR managers there is no difference in the case of same

gender.
Female HR managers:
Higher scores to women than to men with low contact
Lower scores to women than to men with high contact
What is beautiful is good; attractive people have more advantages in life
Beauty is beastly; sometimes people who are beautiful are also blamed more in
the case of failure. People think that they spend too much time on their personal
looks rather than focusing on work.
Impact decreasess
Age of the intervieewer is important; young people below 40 this effect of

choosing applicants based on their attractivenss of the opposite gender, but for
people above 40 it didn’t matter.
→Letting your mood decide:
Leniency error
Central tendency error
Stringency error

Be mindful about yout mindset
Parking/halting your feelings
→Easily manipulated:
Halo-effect; if the answer to the first interview question is great then the rest of the
answers are evaluated upon the first great answer; applicant is over-evaluated.
Horns-effect; if the answer to the first interview question is bad then the rest of the
answers are evaluated upon the first bad answer; applicant is under-evaluated.
Impression error; is an extreme case of either a halo-effect or horns-effect, but in

this case you just see and you evaluate, no need to even listen. Judgement is cast.
→Quickly forgotten or memorized too long:
Contrast effect
Behaviourally anchored rating scales
Compare to same standard instead of to other applicant
Recency effect & primacy effect
Reflection in between interviews
→You look like me, so you’re good:
Similar-to-me errors
Some similarities
Assumed that other characteristics are similar too
Gut feeling (good and bad people)
SImilar-to-job specification
→Influenced by friends and institutions:
Letter from Obama or mail from Harvard; then the interviewer is blinded by these
shining names and doesn’t actually focus on the competencies of the applciant.
Guilt-by-association error
Scoring the characteristics of the referent
Projecting those upon the applicant

Letter of recommendation
Facebook & LinkedIn networks
P-O fit not sure, even with 1000 recommendations
8. A good welcome:
Candidate experience starts in the entrance hall of the organisation
Giving diretions versus picking up the applicant; the person is welcomed by the
secretary. Then the secretary asks the interviewer whether they are coming down to
pick the interviewee or the direction is given to the interviewee.
But in reality, there is no choice, the intervieer is supposed to be coming down to
pick up the applicant to prevent time wastage.
Name and position
Side by side and open subject on the way down, until they get to the office
Introduce with name and position again; because people pick up info less when
they are stressed, the applicant may not have remembered the name of the
interviewer the first time.
Introduce other panel members
Lengths and order of the interview
Order of asking questions is explained to the applicant
Open and work related opening questions
How interviewers sit at the table
9. Interviews:
Better 1 applicant per interview; so there no order effect regarding the 2nd and 3rd
applicants don’t get the benefit of learning answers from previous responses.
Sequence of responses distorts validity.
Employer has the right to ask:
Doesn’t apply to elements of appicant’s private life
Only for vacancy required information
Applicant:

Only info relevant for kind and conditions to do the job
A legally sound question has to be answered
Duty to speak:
Reveal elements of which he knows or should know that they objectively

make him unqualified for the job.
Unless employer is/can be informed on these issues(investigation duty)
Right to lie:
When question is not legally sound
Stipulating in contract does not help
Negative effect on image company & treatment:
Even stronger for women.
10. 10 Tips for the applicant:
Get to know the organisation beforehand:
Study the job description and job specification
Research the companies products and recent news
Website, internet, Belfirst, ask around, etc.
Download the advertisement right when you send your CV, to prepare for the
job interview when invited.
You cannot know everything about the company, but getting some info is always
beneficial.
Preparation is a signal.
What do you want and what can you do:
3 best qualities; you should choose your 3 best qualities from within the job
specificaiton.
List of priorities
Make a link with the job description and job specification
Don’t lie

Link with first evaluations by the supervisor
Link with difficult first days on the job
What don’t you want and can’t you do?:
3 worst qualities
Not related or twisted
Perfectionism and mobilizing others
Duty to speak
Few chances that we get realistic answers
Test yourself instead of asking
Stay to-the-point and force the STARR method:
Answer concrete
More time for one question is less for another one
Give examples yourself
More info about you than about other applica
Say ‘yes’ to water:
Avoid a dry mouth
You will speak longer and easier
More information for the jury
Coffee is not a good idea becuase it adrenaline & cortisol + cafeine is not great
combo during an important interview
Rephrase unclear questions:
Long question + “what do you think about this?”
Guessing = risk that answer besides the point
Interviewer will think it’s you, not him
Rephrase or ask to repeat, and then answer properly.
Be loyal to yout current employer:

Don’t talk negatively about current or past employer
Signal that you may be the problem
Difficult employee
Poor conflict managements skills
Dismissal would make you say the same negative things sbout the organisation
that you are applying for.
Neutral reasons:
New challenge
Better commute
Nice company
Development opportunities
Be careful with ‘bizarre’ questions:
The pencil and the superhero
Link with job demands
Reason behind the answer instead of the answer itself
Limit this type of question (or none at all)
Be honest if you apply elsewhere:
Why not can be important; the company may think that this is your dream
opportunity.
Lying will lead too a follow-up question:
Indicates social desirability
When in final stages somewhere else, the current process may move faster.
Ask all your questions:
Don’t make them up
Questions about pay are allowed
Questions about the next selection steps too

11. Selection tests came out after WW2 and were quickly adopted by companies.
These included:
Intelligence tests
Personality tests (NEO-PI-R) (not necessary for exam)
Match with team and company culture
The Big Five:
Extraversion/Introversion:
Extraversion means social, self-confident, assertive & spontaneous.

MEanwhile introverted people are quiet, subordinating, timid and holding
back.
Extraversion fits with:
Social professions such as teacher, social workers.
Entrepreneurial professions: salesmen, entrepreneurs.
Job satisfaction.
Neuroticism (no need for exam)
Altruism/Agreeableness
Opennes
Conscientiousness
12. Graphology: refers to how handwriting is analyzed to come up with an analysis of a

person’s personality. These are Illusory correlations.
Barnum-effect.
However sometimes its useful because it lowers the number of people applyfing for
the job.
13. The biographical questionnaire:
Current characteristics & past experience
Age
Family composition
Education

Interest & hobbies
Collecting background information
Cynism, emoitional stability
Social desirability
14. Selection tests:
Job Sample Performance tests:
Labour tests
Manual aspect:
Situation test
Mental aspect:
Both examples of sample approach
15. Asssessment centers:
Role play:
The test is to see:
Problem solving skills
Management skills
Personality
Conflict oriented:
A hint from the field; it shows whether the applicant is patient or not, etc.
In basket exercise: you come in place of another person and get dumped with their
pile of work. This is done to see how the newcomer works.
Mail of predecessor
Brief job description
Letters, reports & notes with realistic problems
Time limit
Gain insight in:

Administrative skills
Ability to set prioritites
Ability to manage time schedule
Problem solving strategies
Management skills
Explain your choices
Presentation exercise:
Realistic problem
Find a solution
Present a solution
Defend the solution
Direct supervisor present
Content
Trainer
Presentation skills
Group assignment:
These are done with or without a leader
With or without conflicting roles, but always with purpose
Behaviour in groups, management skills & leadership
Defending your POV and attaining compromise
Pitfalls;
Too dominant
Moderator
Secretary
Tips:
Keep thinking about the purpose

Changing attitudes
Competence-oriented interview
Behaviour-oriented interview
Psychological tests
16. Assessment center advantages:
Incentive to do job analyses
Realistic job preview
Supervisors & evaluating behaviour
High validity & reliability
Disadvantages:
Cost
Degree of expertise:
Incomplete job analysis
Tests only face valid
Trainer training
Poorly informed applicants
17. Communication works:
Communicate reasons for rejections
Communicate deadline changes
Chapter 4: Socialisation
1. Socialisation: refers to the process in which new members learn the value systems,
the norms & the necessary behaviours of the organisation or the group they enter.
2. Newcomers need to learn a lot:
Tangible elements
Structure of the organisation

Goals and mission
Task and responsibilities
Normally attained during R&S
Now seeing the practical side of it
Less tangible elements:
Past determines the present;
Language and politics of the organisation
Subconscious core values
Rituals and ceremonies;
Birthday
End of the day
Symbols
Stories and heroes
Implicit dresscode
Small traits of collega’s
3. Socialization parameters:
Task management(task mastery)
Social integration in the work group
Knowledge & acceptance of culture
Role clarity
4. Selected the newcomer:
Inform the selected appliacant
Discuss their strenghts and weaknesses
Discuss the role for the applicant
5. Work identity is what you yourself pick up at work and who you choose to be at
work, meanwhile role clarity is what is asked by the organisation for you to be.

6. Types of culture:
Adaptibility culture
Achievement culture
Involvement culture
Consistency culture
Academic Culture
7. The anticipatory stage:
In advance socialization:
Before the first day of work
Information from R&S(RJP)
Creating an initail reference frame with anchors; reference frame ar anchor

points in human brain from past experiences and creates judgement based
upon those anchor points.
Framing & interpreting signals
Coincidences interpreted as anchors
Significant effect on the 4 socialisation variables
8. Psychological enoculation: basically an exercise where you refute every statement

told to you, up to the point you even question yourself and your own answers.
9. Intervision groups: newcomers are put into one room together, which is a good thing
in a sense, as there goes an opportunity to socialize and learn from each other.
10. Preparing for the 1st day:
Contact in last week before entrance; the call is done with someone familiar from
the company, someone you have seen before.
Where to start: which department should the employee start in.
When to start: newcomer is expected to arrive a bit later in their first day, compared
to following days.
The newcomer is welcomed by the HR or higher manager; this makes the new
employee feel welcomed.

Sense of certainty & improtance.
11. The accomodation stage (6 months in total):
First days at work (encounter):
Around 4 weeks
Peak in emotions and experience
Newcomer stage:
5 months in the organisation you are still a newcomer but you know more now
and still learning things about the company.
Slower evolution than during encounter.
A lot of unfamiliar info & work prcoesses
Change:
Objective difference
Known in advance & equal to all newcomers
12. Inclusionary change:

Central members are key members, everyone asks them for guidance.
Peripheral members; relatively less important members with little to no value of
existence.
Newcomers are generally pushed out, because existing groups are not open to
change.
When a newcomer joins however, now the peripheral members are also closer to
the central members and become more united to be one whole group against the
newcomer.
Tie Strengths Analyses: is a technique to understand who the central members are
in an organisation that you lead.
Risking exclusion
Resistance to change:
Fear for the unknown
Replacing the one who left
Contact with familiar colleagues is easier

Initiation rituals:
Superficial, fast closure and clear symbol
13. The newcomer stage:
Tasks are being performed
Not yet real feeling of mastery
Limited assistance; if someone is struggling with thier job you can’t really help them
since you are barely able to do your own.
Peripheral position.
14. The adaptation stage: by now you are either closer or in the central members.

15. The ideal position is Satisfaction stage:
Worker likes the values and norms of the company
Accepts them emotionally and shows them in behaviour
Perceptions of fit and belongingnesss
Positive attitude towards the team
Efforts to keep the work climate high
Gradual move towards the center.
16. Frustration:
Doesn’t emotionally accept the values and norms
But shows them in the job
All looks fine
But problems behind the scenes
Risking explosion or general disinterest
Little affective commitment
17. Rebellion:
Doesn’t emotionally accept the values and norms
Doesn’t show them in the job

Organisation needs to decide
Affects other workers too.
18. Creative Individualism:
Softer form of rebellion
Selective in which values and norms are shown
What worker agrees with
What employer and colleagues can see
The rest is rejected; emotionally and in the behavior
19. School leavers in a special role:
Have no previous/similar work experience
Adaptation often extensive with first job
Reunions
Preferences incompatible with company context
Knowledge frozen, follows the companu
Resistance towards innovation:
Especially in groups with routine tasks
Difference between being right and getting told you are
Effective on motivation, job satisfaction & turn-over
Style important
20. 4 Advantages of socialisation:
Greater Productivity
More affective commitment
Collegial and cooperative colleagues
A warmer organisation
21. What the newcomer can do:
Initial motivation become a member

Affective reasons; ex: it was their dream job
Continuance reasons; it offers their dream opportunity
Proactively seeking info & building relations
Higher task management, social integration & knowledge of power division in

organisation
There is no link with role clarity
Slides 42-48 not for exam.
22. Mentors:
Proactively looking out for the newcomer: mentors look out for the newcomer and
guide them through the organisation.
Central members are usually selected to be mentors beasue they have an impact
on the opinions of the whole group.
Liaison function: the mentor creates cases where members of the group and
newcomer finds common grounds. They create situations where everyone is
together and individuals bond on common interests, thus the newcomer becomes a
part of the family.
Newcomers:
Learn more about the organisation
Better P-O fit
Better socialisation to values of the company
Mentors get benefit from this this mentorship task as well. It yields a high job
satisfaction as they guide and mentor a newcomer into the company.
Chapter 5: Performance Management

1. Goal setting is an important part of motivating workers, and Locke and Latham’s
goal setting theory proves this point. This theory is scientifically backed up and
enhances understanding of employees’ thinking patterns. This theory is
strengthened by the models of Meyer, Becker and Vandenberghe and linking it to
the older expectancy theory og Vroom.

2. Goal setting:
Goals clarify what is expected of the worker
When there are no goals set, the following occurs:
Workers wait
Workers do waht they want (mission drift)
Workers guess what the manager wants and acts based on hypothesis
Difficult to evaluate the workers:
It is difficult to understand whether the failure within the business is because of

the workers or because of lack of goals.

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Personnel and Organisation

Chapter 1: HRM Definition and History

Personnel and Organisation 1

3. Managing humans is a team effort:

Personnel and Organisation 2

Personnel and Organisation 3

4. A good HR should be:

Effective: does that they promise to do

Efficient: does what they promise to do within a given budget

6. Dave Ulrich’s Model regarding the 4 roles of HR:

Personnel and Organisation 4

Personnel and Organisation 5

Refers back to the Organising role of an HR.

Although strategic HR and tactical HR seem to be similar to each other, tactical HR

Personnel and Organisation 6

Enables resource-based approach

Personnel and Organisation 7

Performance and evaluation interviews

Calculating holiday allowances

Calculate dismissal arrangements

Different department: by delegating some tasks to specific departments. For

Workers themselves utilising eHRM-systems: workers themselves can also do

Personnel and Organisation 8

7. HR and the Inflow-Transfer-Outflow Model: a.k.a. the HR cycle of Fombrun et al

Personnel and Organisation 9

8. The Principal-Agent relationship:

10. Looking at HRM from different perspectives:

Humans are seen as production factors just like machines.

Durable, maintenance & development

Personnel and Organisation 10

Effectiveness and efficiency is key

Production process determines the layout and job design

All decisions are weighed upon costs vs return on investment(ROI):

It is often considered a hard view on HR, but is often adapted by many

Labor power + personal characteristics; so unlike the business perspective,

Organisation is seen as an arena

Different groups within the organisation fight amongst each other

Temporary staff VS the core staff

Essential key personnel VS peripheral workers

Dividing costs and benefits:

Different departments like marketing and finance departments may have

Personnel and Organisation 11

Aggregate of interconnected parts:

Each individual or group within the organisation is connected with each

Each individual or group within the organisation brings in a different value to

Reciprocal relationship between the company and society: it basically means

11. The development of HR:

Around 1800: Crafts and guilds:

Personnel and Organisation 12

1830-1940 Period: Sales Increase, a.k.a. The Classical Management Perspective:

According to their views, machines would’ve been the correct answer to

The 4 important influences of Gilbreth’s time-and-motion study:

First forms of pay-for-performance based from here

Personnel and Organisation 13

Thus Weber rebuilt the organisations and introduced 3 important

1930-1960 Period: HR with Human Face: