6 - HR

• Recruitment is the process of finding and hiring new employees
• Recruitment is needed when sales rise, workers retire or leave the job, or if new goods and services are being produced
• When sales rise, a business will need extra employees to enable increased production
• When employees leave or retire, recruitment is need to fill in vacant jobs
• When new goods and services are being produced, additional employees may be required
• Recruitment needs to be precise to..?

  provide quality goods to satisfy customers

  to maximise productivity or output of employees to keep costs low

  to retain employees
• Employee retention is the proportion of a workforce that remains within the business over a period of time
• Employee retention is important because...?

  it is expensive to recruit new replacement workers because of the costs of advertising of the job and training of new employees, new workers won't be as skilful and won't produce as many goods as those who left
• Possible employees should have good skills to minimise training
• A person specification outlines the type of person a business would like to employ including qualifications, skills, work experience and personality
• Internal recruitment is when a job vacancy is filled from within the workplace
• Benefits of internal recruitment

  Advertising and training costs are low, worker motivation will be increased as employees aim for promotion, no need to pay for external agencies
• Disadvantages of internal recruitment

  Limited number of people to choose from so its difficult to appoint the most talented person, no new ideas are brought into the business which can be a problem from innovative businesses,
• External recruitment is when a job vacancy is filled by someone not already employed in the business
• Benefits of external recruitment

  Access to more talented workers, new ideas brought in can improve productivity of the workforce
• Disadvantages of external recruitment

  More costly due to training new employee and advertising, existing employees may feel overlooked and leave the business
• Recruitment process

  Prepare a job description and person specification → advertise the job → make a shortlist of applicants and ask for references → interview applicants → select most suitable candidate
• A job description includes the job title, the type of work, worker responsibilities, annual salary and location of workplace
• A person specification includes qualifications needed, personality preferences and additional skills preferred
• Job advertising can be done through newspapers, job centres or the internet
• Recruitment agencies are experts in recruitments
• Shortlisting is selecting the most suitable applicants
• Shortlisting is good as unsuitable candidates won't be asked to interview and speeds up the recruitment process
• Application forms indicates interest in a job vacancy, containing qualifications, name and address
• Curriculum Vitae is a document outlining a indiviual's personal details
• Applications can be made easier by ensuring contact details are correct and giving the names of points of contact
• Selection is choosing the right employees from among those who have applied for a job
• Interviews are where the candidate is interviewed face-to-face or online and asked questions about their suitability for the job
• Telephone or online interviews saves travel costs
• Sometimes the wrong individual can be selected during the interview if a person has nerves during the interview but good skills or if the interviewer isn't skilled in asking the right questions
• Skills tests, group tests and psychometric tests are better than interviews as they find whether the applicant has practical skills
• References are checked during the selection stage
• Large business would require formal personal descriptions whereas smaller businesses would need less formal descriptions
• Large businesses have formal processes and would require CVs for their many applicants whereas that isn't necessary for small businesses due to the small number of applicants
• Large firms have the resources to hold face-to-face interviews whereas small businesses would resort to online interviews
• Large businesses would be able to afford tests like psychometric tests but a small business wouldn't
• Psychometric test show an applicants personality, aptitude tests judges an applicants ability to carry out specifies
• Training is the process of giving employees job-related skills and knowledge
• As workers gain more knowledge and skills they will produce goods with better quality, at a faster rate, with fewer mistakes and customers will be willing to pay for high quality goods
• Training is important for healthy and safety reasons, to keep skills of the workforce sharp, for improved customer satisfaction and to reduce costs from wastage or mistakes as goods won't be rejected during quality control