ADL 09 - Human Resource Management Assignment-2

Amity Campus

Uttar Pradesh

India 201303

ASSIGNMENTS PROGRAM: ADL 09

Human Resource Management

Subject Name :

Study COUNTRY :

Roll Number (Reg.No.) :

Student Name :

INSTRUCTIONS

a) Students are required to submit all three assignment sets.

ASSIGNMENT DETAILS MARKS

Assignment A Five Subjective Questions 10

Assignment B Three Subjective Questions + Case Study 10

Assignment C Objective or one line Questions 10

b) Total weightage given to these assignments is 30%. OR 30 Marks

c) All assignments are to be completed as typed in word/pdf.

d) All questions are required to be attempted.

e) All the three assignments are to be completed by due dates and need to be

submitted for evaluation by Amity University.

f) The students have to attached a scan signature in the form.

Signature : _________________________________

Date : _________________________________

( √ ) Tick mark in front of the assignments submitted

Assignment

‘A’

Assignment ‘B’ Assignment ‘C’

Human Resource Managment

Assignment A

Q1. “Job analysis is the most basic human resource

management activity.”

Solution

A job is an aggregation of tasks, duties and responsibilities

which are regarded as a regular assignment for an employee. Job

analysis is the process of studying and collecting information

relating to the operations and responsibilities of a specific job.

The immediate products of this analysis are job description and

job specification The information obtained is used in

recruiting, performance appraisal, career planning ,training and

development, salaries and wages etc

These activities are required to acquire the services of people,

developing their skills, motivating them to higher levels of

performance and ensuring that they continue to maintain their

commitment to the organization. All these are essential to

achieving organisational objectives. This is true regardless of the

type of organisation – government, business, education, health,

recreation or social action and by definition this is HRM which

makes job analysis a fundamentally defining HRM activity in

the following sense:

Job analysis is the process of collecting job related

information. Such information helps in the preparation of

job description and job specification. And the purpose of

job analysis is

HRP

Recruitment & Selection

Training & Development

Remuneration

Safety & Health

Performance Appraisal

While the purpose of jo

Q2. Job analysis is the process of collecting job related

information. Such information helps in the preparation of

job description and job specificationAlso compare

Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scale and MBO as methods

of performance appraisal.

Solution

Performance appraisal is a developmental and Administrative

decision process. It seeks to show a clear link between what we

evaluate and the job requirements. And it is when an

organization evaluates the job performance of an employee

The process involves among other things establishing performs

standards, communicating those standards, measuring

performance, doing an ex-post analysis of performance against

the standards and where necessary taking corrective action. This

is done to achieve some of the following:

Achieve performance improvement

Placement decisions

Training and development needs

Job design errors etc

BARS AND MBOS

A measurement criteria will have to be in place in order to

perform an effective appraisal and BARS is one such tool. It is a

behavioural approach to performance consisting of a series of

vertical bars, one for each important dimension of job

performance. This scale uses a job analysis to determine

what it takes to do the job, after it does that it rates the employee

against that and determines how well you do.

On the other hand MBOS are a form of rating that measure set

objectives against the desire and the willingness to achieve those

objectives. MBOS aim to create empowered employees who

have clarity of the roles and responsibilities expected from them,

So one can see MBOS are about the self actualisation of an

employee while BARS are about the efficiency of an employee

Q3. Explain the emerging trends in Human Resource

Management and discuss the importance of technology on

human resource function. Illustrate your answer with examples.

SOLUTION

The world of work is rapidly changing. As a part of

organization, Human Resource Management (HRM) must be

prepared to deal with effects of changing world of work. For the

HR people it means understanding the implications of

globalization, work-force diversity, changing skill requirements,

corporate downsizing, continuous improvement initiatives, re-

engineering, the contingent work force, decentralized work sites

and employee involvement

Employee involvement

For today’s organization’s to be successful, there are a number

of employee involvement concepts that appear to be accepted.

These are delegation, participative management, work teams,

goal setting, employee training and empowering of employees.

HRM has a significant role to play in employee involvement.

What is needed is demonstrated leadership as well as supportive

management. Employees need to be trained and that’s where

human resource management has a significant role to play.

. Contingent workforce

A very substantial part of the modern day workforce are the

contingent workers. Contingent workers are individuals who are

typically hired for shorter periods of time. They perform specific

tasks that often require special job skills and are employed when

an organization is experiencing significant deviations in its

workflow. When an organization makes its strategic decision to

employ a sizable portion of its workforce from the contingency

ranks, several HRM issues come to the forefront. These include

being able to have these virtual employees available when

needed, providing scheduling options that meet their needs and

making decisions about whether or not benefits will be offered

to the contingent work force.

Engaging a contingent workforce requires sufficient planning.

As such, when these strategic decisions are being made, HRM

must be an active partner in these discussions. As temporary

workers are brought in, HRM will also have the responsibility of

quickly adapting them to the organization. HRM will also have

to give some thought to how it will attract quality temporaries.

.Re-engineering work processes for improved productivity

Although continuous improvement initiatives are positive starts

in many of our organizations, they typically focus on ongoing

incremental change. Such action is intuitively appealing – the

constant and permanent search to make things better. Yet many

companies function in an environment that is dynamic- facing

rapid and constant change. As a result continuous improvement

programs may not be in the best interest of the organization. The

problem with them is that they may provide a false sense of

security. Ongoing incremental change avoids facing up to the

possibility that what the organization may really need is radical

or quantum change. Such drastic change results in the re-

engineering of the organization.

Re-engineering occurs when more than 70% of the work

processes in an organization are evaluated and altered. It

requires organizational members to rethink what work should be

done, how it is to be done and how to best implement these

decisions. Re-engineering changes how organizations do their

business and directly affects the employees. Re-engineering may

leave certain employees frustrated and angry and unsure of what

to expect. Accordingly HRM must have mechanisms in place for

employees to get appropriate direction of what to do and what to

expect as well as assistance in dealing with the conflict that may

permeate the organization. For re-engineering to generate its

benefits HRM needs to offer skill training to its employees.

Whether it’s a new process, a technology enhancement, working

in teams, having more decision making authority, or the like ,

employees would need new skills as a result of the re-

engineering process.

. Globalization and its implications

Business today doesn’t have national boundaries. The rise of

multinational corporations places new requirements on human

resource managers. The HR department needs to ensure that the

appropriate mix of employees in terms of knowledge, skills and

cultural adaptability is available to handle global assignments.

Human Resource Management (HRM) must develop

mechanisms that will help multicultural individuals work

together. As background, language, custom or age differences

become more prevalent, there are indications that employee

conflict will increase. HRM would be required to train

management to be more flexible in its practices. Managers must

recognize differences in workers and to appreciate and even

celebrate these differences.

. Work-force Diversity

In the past HRM was considerably simpler because the work

force was strikingly homogeneous. Today’s work force

comprises of people of different gender, age, social class sexual

orientation, values, personality characteristics, ethnicity,

religion, education, language, physical appearance, marital

status, lifestyle, beliefs, ideologies and background

characteristics such as geographic origin, tenure with the

organization, and economic status. Diversity is critically linked

to the organization’s strategic direction. Where diversity

flourishes, the potential benefits from better creativity and

decision making and greater innovation can be accrued to help

increase organization’s competitiveness. One means of

achieving that is through the organization’s benefits package.

This includes HRM offerings that fall under the heading of the

family friendly organization. A family friendly organization is

one that has flexible work schedules and provides such

employee benefits such as child care. In addition to the diversity

brought by gender and nationality, HRM must be aware of the

age differences that exist in today’s work force. HRM must train

people of different age groups to effectively mange and to deal

with each other and to respect the diversity of views that each

offers. In situations like these a participative approach seems to

work better.

Changing skill requirements

Recruiting and developing skilled labor is important for any

company concerned about competitiveness, productivity, quality

and managing a diverse work force effectively.

Skill deficiencies translate into significant losses for the

organization in terms of poor-quality work and lower

productivity, increase in employee accidents and customer

complaints. Since a growing number of jobs will require more

education and higher levels of language than current ones ,

HRM practitioners and specialists will have to communicate this

to educators and community leaders. Strategic human resource

planning will have to carefully weigh the skill deficiencies and

shortages. HRM department will have to devise suitable training

and short term programmes to bridge the skill gaps &

deficiencies.

Corporate downsizing

Whenever an organization attempts to lay-off some employees,

it is attempting to create greater efficiency. The premise of

downsizing is to reduce the number of workers employed by the

organization. HRM department has a very important role to play

in downsizing. HRM people must ensure that proper

communication must take place during this time. They must

minimize the negative effects of rumors and ensure that

individuals are kept informed with factual data. HRM must also

deal with actual layoff. HRM is key to the downsizing

discussions that have to take place.

Continuous improvement programs

Continuous improvement programs focus on the long term well

being of the organization. It is a process whereby an

organization focuses on quality and builds a better foundation to

serve its customers. This often involves a company wide

initiative to improve quality and productivity. The company

changes its operations to focus on the customer and to involve

workers in matters affecting them. Companies strive to improve

everything that they do, from hiring quality people, to

administrative paper processing, to meeting customer needs.

Q4. Why should organizations engage in HR Planning? Why do some organizations require relatively complex and comprehensive HR planning systems than do others?

SOLUTION. The main purpose of HRP is to support the organisation’s

objective of securing a competitive advantage.

There are four main general objectives in developing an HRP:

■ Continuity flow: To get the right people in the right place at

the right time with the necessary skills. This involves policies

in respect of recruitment, succession planning and training.

■ Maintenance: To retain the stability in the workforce through

pay and benefits, and individual career planning.

■ Response to change: To put into effect changes that come

about from major operational strategies. These can involve

re-location, re-training or re-deployment.

■ Control: To ensure that staff move in the right direction

through the establishment of standards, performance control

systems and building long-term employee relationships.

the nature of the business, its locaiton, demand and supply of

manpower, top management style etc are the factors that

determine the need & intensity of HR system

Q5. “What are some of the traditional and current sources of recruitment used by organizations? What are their pros and cons?

Assignment B

Q1. Explain the steps you will suggest to design an effective salary system for a medium sized equipment manufacturing organization.

SOLUTION Attraction, motivation and retention are among the three

objectives of HRM. These can be achieved in part by a

conducive work environment and great compensation scheme.

No organization will want to pay too much for it will lose

competitive edge nor too little for it will lose talent. Bigger

companies frequently have greater amounts of variable pay

within their leader’s salary package, which might be credited

towards the alignment with worldwide practices where pay-for-

performance is strongly urged. This is a luxury that small to

middle companies cannot afford. So there must be some

building blocks for pay structure design.

Step One: Condition your objectives

The initial step to creating a pay-for-performance plan would be

to understand in which way the organisational direction is

certainly going and just how a pay-for-performance plan will

enhance these business objectives. What exactly are the critical

success areas for the organization? What's the preferred outcome

from applying the pay-for-performance plan?

Step Two: Establish a market Baseline

Obtain market rates for similar establishments. This sort of data

is very valuable for making quick decisions about how far out of

whack your current pay rates are for your key employees. Apart

from learning exactly what the industry benchmarks are, when

collecting data, you ought to consider both benefits and issues

that arise out of your plan.

Step Three: Construct your foundation

What exactly are the more prevalent organisation pay-for-

performance plans that organisations use?

Incentives:

Bonus plans are where compensation structures get powerful

and interesting. The purpose of a bonus structure is to further

your company’s strategy. That means you have to have a

strategy that is well formed and clear enough to build a bonus

program around. Many companies don’t have that. They exist

on inertia – they have a strategy, but it’s an implicit one.

Before you have a strategy, you have to have a vision. Then you

can develop key performance indicators and build your bonus

plans on those. How do you find a vision? It’s easy. Ask

yourself, “What does my company do that makes the world a

better place?” It’s probably what people are paying you for.

Doing more of that is your vision.

Billability

Let’s assume that part of your strategy is to keep consultants

highly billable most of the time. Billability, more typically

termed ‘utilization rate’, is the percentage of time in a given

period during which an employee or set of employees are

working in a revenue producing capacity. You must configure

your timesheet system to track whether work is considered

billable to the customer or not. Then utilization for any period,

group or person is found by the formula B divided by T, where:

B = billable hours for the employee or group in the period

T = all hours worked for the employee or group in the period

Profit-discussing:

Employees who typically take part in profit-discussing schemes

frequently get a mentioned area of the company’s profits,when

they meet a collection revenue profit.

Gain-discussing:

This incentive can be used when companies share any

productivity or profitability enhancements using the relevant

employees.

Goal-discussing:

Much like gain-discussing, goal-discussing places a focus on

employees to achieve certain management-set goals. Whichever

incentive plan you select, a great pay-for-performance must be

based on a trusted, obvious and transparent performance data

collection which employees feel they're fairly measured and

examined against.

Step Five: Test out your model

When a pay-for-performance system continues to be designed,

HR professionals should test the feasibility from the model by

testing it against its previous business results - in good

financial occasions and bad. In individuals situations, wouldso

would affiliate payouts have labored? Would the model assist

the business achieve its goals?

Besides an economic point of view, companies should garner a

variety of sights from employees over the spectrum to determine

the actual model would affect their departments and

compensation plans.

Step Six: Communicate and implement

Companies should spare without trying in interacting for their

employees at all the implementation stage.Business leaders have

to address all of the concerns which employees need to gain

their buy-in. Not just should business leaders communicate the

brand new pay-for-performance plan and it is objectives, they

ought to address how this plan would affect employees’ within

the short and long term.

Q2. Discuss the concept of relevance of employee discipline.

Identify the important methods of grievance handling, with

examples

Solution

Q3. Style Warehouse is a major retailer of men’s business

clothing. Despite the increasing size of the services sector,

management of retail personnel is often poor and turnover is

high. Further, training is non – existent and the industry is

increasingly competitive. Style Warehouse wishes to establish

itself as a quality clothier with a high growth and earnings rate,

as well as growth in its stock value. If you were the training

manager of Style Warehouse:

(a) What kinds of training programmes would you

organize for the employees of the organization?

(b) What approach would you follow for evaluating the

effectiveness of training

Case Study

Mariam has been a data processing supervisor for two years. She

is in the process of selecting a candidate for a programmer

trainee position she has created. Her plan is to develop the

trainee into a system analyst within two years. Since this is a fast

track, she needs a candidate whose aptitude and motivation is

high.

Fourteen candidates applied for the job in employment section

of the human resource department. Six were women, eight were

men. An employment specialist screened the candidates for

Mariam using a carefully prepared interview format that

included questions to determine job - related skills. Six

candidates, three women and three men, were referred to

Mariam.

Mariam then conducted structured, in – depth interviews and

further narrowed the selection to one woman and two men. Her

boss, a company vice – president, agrees with her judgment after

hearing Mariam’s description of the candidates. However,

Mariam’s boss feels particularly unsure of the abilities of the

female candidates. From the selection interview, past job

experience and education, there is no clear indication of the

candidate’s ability to perform the job. The vice – president is

insistent that Mariam should screen the candidate with a

programmer aptitude test devised by a computer manufacturing

firm. The test had been given four years ago, and some of the

most successful current analysis had scored high on it.

Mariam went to the human resource department and asked

them to administer the test to the ‘questionable’ candidate. The

human resource manager informed her that the company policy

had been to do no testing of any kind during the last two years.

Mariam explained that the request had come from a vice –

president and asked that she be given a decision on her request

by Friday.