THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE

REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

UNIVERCITYOF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 

DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT 
 
 
 
 
 

T E R M     P A P E R

     on the subject "Human resource management organizations"

     on the theme:

     “Functions of HR management” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

                                                                 Prepared by:

student of 4’th cource

internal department, MGTM 434

     Imanova A.B. 

     Submitted by:

the senior teacher, Bazarbaeva A. K. 

Almaty

2011

 

      C O N T E N T

 
 

Стр. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

INTRODUCTION

The Human Resource Department deals with management of people within the organization. There are a number of responsibilities that come with this title. First of all, the Department is responsible for hiring members of staff; this will involve attracting employees, keeping them in their positions and ensuring that they perform to expectation. Besides, the Human Resource Department also clarifies and sets day to day goals for the organization. It is responsible for organization of people in the entire Company and plans for future ventures and objectives involving people in the Company.

Research has shown that the human aspect of resources within an organization contributes approximately eighty percent of the organization’s value. This implies that if people are not managed properly, the organization faces a serious chance of falling apart. The Human Resource Department’s main objective is to bring out the best in their employees and thus contribute to the success of the Company. 

Human resource (or personnel) management, in the sense of getting things done through people. It's an essential part of every manager's responsibilities, but many organizations find it advantageous to establish a specialist division to provide an expert service dedicated to ensuring that the human resource function is performed efficiently.

"People are our most valuable asset" is a cliché which no member of any senior management team would disagree with. Yet, the reality for many organizations is that their people remain

• under valued
• under trained
• under utilized
• poorly motivated, and consequently
• perform well below their true capability

The rate of change facing organizations has never been greater and organizations must absorb and manage change at a much faster rate than in the past. In order to implement a successful business strategy to face this challenge, organizations, large or small, must ensure that they have the right people capable of delivering the strategy.

The market place for talented, skilled people is competitive and expensive. Taking on new staff can be disruptive to existing employees. Also, it takes time to develop 'cultural awareness', product/ process/ organization knowledge and experience for new staff members.

As organizations vary in size, aims, functions, complexity, construction, the physical nature of their product, and appeal as employers, so do the contributions of human resource management. But, in most the ultimate aim of the function is to: "ensure that at all times the business is correctly staffed by the right number of people with the skills relevant to the business needs", that is, neither overstaffed nor understaffed in total or in respect of any one discipline or work grade. 
 
 

CHAPTER 1. THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION: FUNCATIONS OF HR MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

1.1 Manpower planning 

Manpower planning enables a department to project its short to long term needs on the basis of its departmental plans so that it can adjust its manpower requirements to meet changing priorities. The more changing the environment the department is in, the more the department needs manpower planning to show:

• the number of recruits required in a specified timeframe and the availability of talent
• early indications of potential recruitment or retention difficulties
• surpluses or deficiencies in certain ranks or grades
• availability of suitable qualified and experienced successors

Key components:

Manpower planning comprises two key components:

• succession planning
• Turnover

 

Succession Planning

Succession planning assesses the likely turnover in key posts, identifies suitable candidates to fill these posts in future, and ensures that they have the right training and exposure for their future work. Given the effort and support required for undertaking succession planning, it is normally confined to the directorate and those ranks immediately below, plus any grades with high turnover or anticipated expansion. Succession planning is a very important exercise because it minimizes the impact of turnover in these key ranks and gives a branch or department early warning of any skill shortages or likely difficulties in finding suitable candidates. Ideally a succession plan should cover 3 to 5 years. The succession plan should identify

- key posts and possible successors

- causes of turnover

- competencies of successors and the training required for them

- posts for which no apparent successor exists and the remedial action planned

The information derived from the succession plan should feed into the training and

development of the individuals concerned by ensuring that they attend the necessary training and are posted to jobs that will provide them with the experience for their intended role. 

Turnover

Turnover refers to retirement, resignation and redundancy. While a department cannot plan turnover because there are factors, such as resignation, which are beyond its control, it can monitor turnover carefully to ensure the department will have minimal difficulties in retaining staff. If such difficulties are envisaged or experienced, the department will find out the causes for them and take early steps to address them by improving, for example, motivation or training and development opportunities.

When addressing the aspects of succession and turnover, the department also needs to consider other manpower planning factors:

• external factors
• internal factors

 

External Factors:

A number of factors may affect whether talent is available in the market to fill posts in a department. These include the availability of the required personnel with the necessary qualifications, skills and experience at a specified time, the relative job opportunities in the private sector and the general outlook of the economy. 

Internal Factors:

Departmental Plan: A department assesses the number of staff it requires at different levels, at specified timeframes, in the light of its present and planned future work commitments. This may lead to an increase or decrease of the current manpower. 

1.2 Recruitment and selection

Recruitment of staff should be preceded by:

An analysis of the job to be done (i.e. an analytical study of the tasks to be performed to determine their essential factors) written into a job description so that the selectors know what physical and mental characteristics applicants must possess, what qualities and attitudes are desirable and what characteristics are a decided disadvantage; 

In the case of replacement staff a critical questioning of the need to recruit at all (replacement should rarely be an automatic process).

Effectively, selection is 'buying' an employee (the price being the wage or salary multiplied by probable years of service) hence bad buys can be very expensive. For that reason some firms (and some firms for particular jobs) use external expert consultants for recruitment and selection.

Equally some small organizations exist to 'head hunt', i.e. to attract staff with high reputations from existing employers to the recruiting employer. However, the 'cost' of poor selection is such that, even for the mundane day-to-day jobs, those who recruit and select should be well trained to judge the suitability of applicants.

The main sources of recruitment are:

Internal promotion and internal introductions (at times desirable for morale purposes)

Careers officers (and careers masters at schools)

University appointment boards

Agencies for the unemployed

Advertising (often via agents for specialist posts) or the use of other local media (e.g. commercial radio)

Where the organization does its own printed advertising it is useful if it has some identifying logo as its trade mark for rapid attraction and it must take care not to offend the sex, race, etc. antidiscrimination legislation either directly or indirectly. The form on which the applicant is to apply (personal appearance, letter of application, completion of a form) will vary according to the posts vacant and numbers to be recruited.

It is very desirable in many jobs that claim about experience and statements about qualifications are thoroughly checked and that applicants unfailingly complete a health questionnaire (the latter is not necessarily injurious to the applicants chance of being appointed as firms are required to employ a percentage of disabled people).

Before letters of appointment are sent any doubts about medical fitness or capacity (in employments where hygiene considerations are dominant) should be resolved by requiring applicants to attend a medical examination. This is especially so where, as for example in the case of apprentices, the recruitment is for a contractual period or involves the firm in training costs.

Interviewing can be carried out by individuals (e.g. supervisor or departmental manager), by panels of interviewers or in the form of sequential interviews by different experts and can vary from a five minute 'chat' to a process of several days. Ultimately personal skills in judgment are probably the most important, but techniques to aid judgment include selection testing for: 

• Aptitudes (particularly useful for school leavers)
• Attainments
• General intelligence

(All of these need skilled testing and assessment.) In more senior posts other techniques are: 

• Leaderless groups
• Command exercises
• Group problem solving

(These are some common techniques - professional selection organizations often use other techniques to aid in selection.) 

Training in interviewing and in appraising candidates is clearly essential to good recruitment. Largely the former consists of teaching interviewers how to draw out the interviewee and the latter how to xratex the candidates. For consistency (and as an aid to checking that) rating often consists of scoring candidates for experience, knowledge, physical/mental capabilities, intellectual levels, motivation, prospective potential, leadership abilities etc. (according to the needs of the post). Application of the normal curve of distribution to scoring eliminates freak judgments. 

1.3 Training and development

In general, education is 'mind preparation' and is carried out remote from the actual work area, training is the systematic development of the attitude, knowledge, skill pattern required by a person to perform a given task or job adequately and development is 'the growth of the individual in terms of ability, understanding and awareness'. 

Within an organization all three are necessary in order to:

• Develop workers to undertake higher-grade tasks;
• Provide the conventional training of new and young workers (e.g. as apprentices, clerks, etc.);
• Raise efficiency and standards of performance;
• Meet legislative requirements (e.g. health and safety);
• Inform people (induction training, pre-retirement courses, etc.);

From time to time meet special needs arising from technical, legislative, and knowledge need changes. Meeting these needs is achieved via the 'training loop'.  

The diagnosis of other than conventional needs is complex and often depends upon the intuition or personal experience of managers and needs revealed by deficiencies. Sources of inspiration include: 

• Common sense - it is often obvious that new machines, work systems, task requirements and changes in job content will require workers to be prepared;
• Shortcomings revealed by statistics of output per head, performance indices, unit costs, etc. and behavioral failures revealed by absentee figures, lateness, sickness etc. records;
• Recommendations of government and industry training organizations;
• Inspiration and innovations of individual managers and supervisors;
• Forecasts and predictions about staffing needs;
• Inspirations prompted by the technical press, training journals, reports of the experience of others;
• The suggestions made by specialist (e.g. education and training officers, safety engineers, work-study staff and management services personnel).

Designing training is far more than devising courses; it can include activities such as:

• Learning from observation of trained workers;
• Receiving coaching from seniors;
• Discovery as the result of working party, project team membership or attendance at meetings;
• Job swaps within and without the organization;
• Undertaking planned reading, or follow from the use of self–teaching texts and video tapes;
• Learning via involvement in research, report writing and visiting other works or organizations.

So far as group training is concerned in addition to formal courses there are: 

• Lectures and talks by senior or specialist managers;
• Discussion group (conference and meeting) activities;
• Briefing by senior staffs;
• Role-playing exercises and simulation of actual conditions;
• Video and computer teaching activities;
• Case studies (and discussion) tests, quizzes, panel 'games', group forums, observation exercises and inspection and reporting techniques.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of training is done to ensure that it is cost effective, to identify needs to modify or extend what is being provided, to reveal new needs and redefine priorities and most of all to ensure that the objectives of the training are being met. 

The latter may not be easy to ascertain where results cannot be measured mathematically. In the case of attitude and behavioral changes sought, leadership abilities, drive and ambition fostered, etc., achievement is a matter of the judgment of senior staffs. Exact validation might be impossible but unless on the whole the judgments are favorable the cooperation of managers in identifying needs, releasing personnel and assisting in training ventures will cease.