People Management
Part A
Graduates constitute a large pool of supply for employers in the market that has the ability of supporting business development and eventually prosperity considering that they pose as a source of highly qualified and expertise workforce for businesses to attain short-term and long-term needs. The process of attracting and employing graduates may be a daunting task in terms of its resource intensive nature; hence, businesses may need to employ a number of ways get to the graduates and secure them for the various job positions. Due to the high competition that exists between firms for the best talent, organizations have set to invest a huge amount money and time in coming up with effective recruitment process in order to land the best graduate candidate. However, various firms have failed when it comes to assessing the jobs that graduates are likely to perform well considering that these forms have adopted rudimentary techniques for picking their new workforce leading to a serious disconnect. This paper will analyze the present graduate recruitment criteria being employed by Pearl & Mutual Benefit Insurance Company (PMIC) in terms of its weakness and strength and offer recommendation on the best method that the organization should employ for competitive advantage.
Pearl & Mutual Benefit Insurance Company (PMIC) has been using a general mental ability method to carry out assessment on the graduates for the purposes of recruitment, a technique that allows the organization to comprehend the manner in which recruits learn, take instructions, and solve problems. The human resource department has mainly been conducting tests that assess recruits on the strive to achieve success for the firm, selling skills and interpersonal strengths, social abilities among many others (Youndt, Snell, Dean, and Lepak, 1996). The overall score that is normally obtained by the human resource team is regarded as the most vital factor as it explains more variation in personal performance as compared to individualized capabilities. The organization has been using general mental ability to carry out its graduate recruitment considering that the method ensures persons who will perform well a selected to join the already existing team of personnel. According to Becker and Gerhart (1996), individuals who exhibit high mental ability are able to garner increased work knowledge and garner it faster and mastering of work knowledge is the key aspect to top performance. However, the fact that the organization failed in carrying out objective analysis of the existing general mental ability procedure that has led to deteriorating of the hiring decision in addition to employee retention and productivity. As a result, a large number of employees amounting to about sixty percent have resigned or quitted from the company, which means that a full analysis of the existing process be conducted to check on the high employee turnover. Employee turnover refers to the process at which works opt to quit from the firm by going for other job opportunities, heading back to school, being laid off among many other reasons (Guest, 2011). The figure below demonstrates an employee turnover classification scheme:
Figure 1: Employee turnover classification scheme (source: Barrick and Mount, 1991).
The main factor that differentiates turnover in a firm is whether it is voluntary or involuntary considering that the former is evoked by the worker who may have found a better job opportunity elsewhere while the latter is evoked by the organization by either laying off workers among other reasons. The cost of employee turnover for a firm is very high today considering that it is estimated that a firm can end up using approximately sixty percent of an employee salary to carry out a fresh hiring process after a worker has left the company (Kehoe and Wright, 2013). Moreover, the overall costs that are linked to turnover in a company can be considerably high considering that around ninety to two-hundred percent of a firm annual salary may be consumed in the process of hiring every year.
Analysis of PMIC New Hiring Process
The proposed recruitment process is mainly made up of two categories that include the category of job analysis and the category of attracting applicants where the top management should regard job analysis as a vital process and should aim at retaining its responsibility. Job analysis category will involve research, job description, and person specification with the research part of the recruitment process involving the determination of whether the available posts poses as a viable vacancy.
Figure 2: Recruitment and selection flowchart
During the research category, the human resource panel will need to provide an accurate definition regarding the nature and purpose of the job to be filled and viewing the job opportunity from diverse views like automating it or subcontracting it will assist to analyze the available options. After making sure that the job opportunity is viable, the panel will engage itself in carrying out a deep analysis of the job in addition to its firm environment so that full data regarding the job is collected and the abilities needed of an individual suited for the job (Renwick, Redman, and Maguire, 2013). After completing the research stage, the human resource pane should have a detailed description or information regarding the job opportunity description in addition to a person specification that can be documented and availed to the public.
The next category involves job description where the human resource department will have to include the following aspects in coming up with a documentation of the job description that include identification data comprised of pay grade and the job title. Additionally, it should contain a job summary regarding a statement on the reason the job is there, the job content that elaborates on the tasks of the job and the organizational data. The role of specific job description can never be downplayed considering that it offers a basis for evaluation of jobs, training and performance management (Delery and Doty, 1996). Person specification is the final aspect of this category where the human resource panel will embark on coming up with the most suitable description of the most suited individual for the job at hand. Therefore, all the applicants or graduates who will be considered for the opportunity will be needed to have possessed all the needed basic requirements and to be able to be trained to an agreed standard of the organization. Competencies that incorporates all the abilities that workers need to have in order to get to work on a specific job is what the human resource panel will then embark on developing. The document will offer employees with an outline of the abilities that they will be expected to show and that will be cherished and identified within the organisation.
The second stage of the process as described earlier involves attracting applicant’s where the human resource panel of the firm will need to attract an appropriate pool of graduates made up of a small suitable number as a compared to a large number of graduates whose suitability to the job will be questionable. Advertising possess as the most suitable means of reaching and attracting graduates for the available position, but it can only be effective when the advertisement content, design and timing have been well considered and adjusted (King, 2000). The next step will involve graduate selection process based on appropriate collection of data, analysis of the graduates and detailed comparison in order to pick the most suitable candidate for the job. The panel should aim at gathering information from each of the graduates that begin after a list of shortlisted candidates is provided through the analysis of the data provided through the curriculum vitae. Of the various techniques collecting data from graduates, the organization will mainly focus on assessment centres where a number candidates are assesses together by trained personnel and against a well stipulated job-required competencies (Alfes, Shantz, Truss, and Soane, 2013). The use of assessment centres is recommendable as compared to the earlier tests considering that it allows evaluators to perceive and assess graduates behavior in various circumstances that offer for a more detailed and rounded portrait of the person concerned.
In conclusion, the assessment of every graduate will be carried out in a manner in which they are evaluated against the job-applicable criteria as described in the individual description. The comparison stage will incorporate the human resource panel of the organization carrying out a contrast of the graduate assessment against the individual’s specification and aiming at locating the closes fit, which implies the graduate who will closely match the ideal individual. After arriving at the most suitable graduate or candidate, the panel can then make the appointment bearing in mind that it has implemented a process that will ensure the least employee turnover is recorded within the organization.
Part B: Reflective Commentary
Human resource can be compared to naturally occurring resources considering that the best of the talents and skills are normally buried deep within our societies; hence, organizations need to come up with instances in which these talents are able to manifest themselves. Individuals pose to be the most expensive assets in various companies, but the challenge remains in the management of this human resource as a way of ensuring that the firm maximizes its benefit. Therefore, the study of human management has been of great help considering that it has assisted to shade light on the aspect of employee retention within the organization, training, and development and in ensuring that the available meagre resources are utilized in the right manner.
The employment aspect of the human resource department is very important considering that it determines the level of skills that that organization will offer to the general public; hence, needs to be addressed with utmost keenness. The success or failure of an organization is solely dependent on how the management brings together the various parts of the workforce into working together in unison towards the attainment of the common set goals and objectives (Harel and Tzafrir, 1999). The aspect of recruiting and training of personnel within a firm is the main task of the human management department, as it is required to establish a set of regulation to follow to ensure the right persons are hired and the designed technique should be well suited for the precise job. Additionally, it is the role of the human resource to ensure that it has come up with the duties that each employee is required to do while working at the organization in addition to the variety of tasks that have been assigned to them. Moreover, the aspect of training ranks high within the human resource considering that employees will requires short-term courses to sharpen their skills and remind them of how they need to carry out themselves (Delaney and Huselid, 1996). Appreciating what employees have done or the achievement, whether long-term or short-term, is also vital I making sure that they are psyched up to continue with their day-to-day activities. Hence, the human resource management role of performance appraisal is the other key aspect that needs to be learned and maintained as a culture within the organization.
Therefore, human resource is an important part of the organization as it helps to bring the various parts of the firm by ensuring that they stick together and portray or send the same message to the clients. The success of a firm begins with the right formulation of a human resource department, one that is able to select the right pool of graduates for employment and to pick the best out of them. The selection of the right pool of graduates poses as the beginning of the long journey toward ensuring that the organizations gains competitive advantage considering that the team will need to train the employees and even carry out performance appraisals.
References
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