managing HR flow

• Growth of Part-time and Flexible Working

  Advantages of this trend for businesses

  – Cheaper to employ as entitled to less benefits

  – More flexible workforce

  – Wide range of potential recruits
• Growth of Part-time and Flexible Working

  Disadvantages of this trend for businesses

  – Employees feel less loyal to business and therefore less motivated

  – Harder for managers to control and coordinate workforce
• Methods of Internal Recruitment

  • Jobs given to staff already employed by business

  • Involves promotion and reorganisation
• Methods of External Recruitment

  • Job centres

  • Job advertisements

  • Recruitment agencies (offline and online)

  • Headhunting

  • Personal recommendation
• Benefits of Internal Recruitment

  • Cheaper and quicker to recruit

  • People already familiar with business and how it operates

  • Provides opportunities for promotion with in business
• Drawbacks of Internal Recruitment

  • Business already knows strengths and weaknesses of candidates

  • Limits number of potential applicants

  • No new ideas can be introduced from outside

  • May cause resentment amongst candidates not appointed

  • Creates another vacancy which needs to be filled
• Benefits of External Recruitment

  • Outside people bring in new ideas

  • Larger pool of workers from which to find best candidate

  • People have a wider range of experience
• Drawbacks of External Recruitment

  • Longer process

  • More expensive process due to advertisements and interviews required

  • Selection process may not be effective enough to reveal best candidate
• Training

  • Supporting new employees (induction training)

  • To improve productivity

  • To increase marketing effectiveness

  • Supporting high standards of customer service and production quality

  • Introduction of new technology, systems or other change

  • Addressing changes in legislation

  • Support employee progression and promotion
• Training leads to

  • Better productivity

  • Higher quality

  • More flexibility through better skills

  • Less supervision required

  • Improved motivation

  • Better recruitment and employee retention

  • Easier to implement change in the business
• Effective training is also linked with a better-motivated workforce

  • Employees feel more loyal to firm

  • Shows that business is taking an interest in its workers

  • Provide employees with greater promotional opportunities
• businesses neglect employee and management training, possible reasons include

  • They fear employees will be poached by competitors (who will then benefit from the training)

  • A desire to minimise short-term costs

  • They cannot make a justifiable investment case

  • Training takes time to have the desired effect
• On-the-Job Training methods

  • Demonstration / instruction

  • Coaching - involves a close working relationship between an experienced employee and the trainee

  • Job rotation - where the trainee is given several jobs in succession, to gain experience

  • Projects - employees join a project team
• Advantages for On-the-Job training

  Generally most cost-effective

  Employees are actually productive

  Opportunity to learn whilst doing

  Training alongside real colleagues
• Disadvantages for On-the-Job training

  Quality depends on ability of trainer and time available

  Bad habits might be passed on

  Learning environment may not be conducive #

  Potential disruption to production
• Off-the-Job Training

  • Day or part-time attendance at college

  • Professional development courses or conferences

  • Online training / distance learning
• Advantages for Off-the-Job training

  A wider range of skills or qualifications can be obtained

  Can learn from outside specialists or experts

  Employees can be more confident when starting job
• Disadvantages for Off-the-Job training

  More expensive – e.g. transport and accommodation

  Lost working time and potential output from employee

  New employees may still need some induction training

  Employees now have new skills/qualifications and may leave for better jobs
• Redeployment

  involves moving employees to different jobs, departments or locations within the same business@
• Redundancy

  arises when an employee is dismissed because the job / role no longer exists or is required.
• Redeployment is preferable to redundancy, from both the employee and employer perspective. With redeployment:

  • Maintains job security for employee

  • Business retains skills & experience

  • Labour resources are allocated more effectively

  • Reduced costs of recruitment and selection
• Alternatives to redundancy

  • A freeze on recruitment – with jobs lost through natural wastage (e.g. retirement)

  • Short-time working or job-sharing

  • Pay cuts or overtime bans to reduce wage costs