Barton’s Coach and Touring Services Case Study
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report endows information about the current HRM problems occurred in Barton’s Coach and Touring Services. The main goal of the paper is to present a comprehensive management discussion of the identified problems. In addition, there are also problems that are considered as spill-over of the main problems and significantly affect the organization’s management and its operations. Recommendations applicable to the current problems of the organization are studied, presented, and implemented to solve the defined macro and micro problems.
Barton’s Coach and Touring Services encountered problems in its HR functions. The HR officer committed the mortal sin in employee recruitment and selection. Another problem occurred was the failure of the upper management to specify, control, and maintain the role of every worker. These two macro problems created spill-over effects on the organizational performance. The other related and affected aspects of the HR function such as employee motivation and compensation to improve performance, division of labor, and conflict management are also discussed.
With the identification of the organization’s problems in the HR function, suggested recommendations are presented to fully reconcile the lapses in the specified area. At the end of the report, it seeks to apply functional management consultancy responsibility for the betterment of the whole organization’s management, workforce, operations, and performance.
INTRODUCTION
The role of human resource management (HRM) has long been recognized by work organizations. While the function of this department mainly revolves around hiring, evaluating employees and other similar activities, the changing business and organizational trends have emphasized other significant functions of HRM, particularly in organizational performance and the development of the employees. This newfound recognition led to the common belief that the HR function champions the employees’ cause and achieves results for the organization.
Conventionally, organizations adapt a workforce control scheme where subordinate employees would just go with the decisions made by the management. As one of HRM’s important role in the organization, its members must then develop means of empowering the workforce by providing them with more important responsibilities, including activities that require decision-making, leadership and participatory skills ( 1998, ).
The function of HRM significantly influences the employees’ abilities and motivation (1995). This concept has been supported by a number of other authors and analysts (1996; 1997). (2000, ) has stated that the HRM plays a key role in leveraging the knowledge of the organization specifically the enhancement of the abilities and skill of the employees. In particular, the function of the HRM in employing people with the right skills and competence influences the morale of the employees. Conducting a proper analysis of each employee’s abilities enables the human resource department to assign them to responsibilities or positions where they can perform their best. In turn, this contributes to employee motivation.
Moreover, the HRM involves the provision of feedbacks through employee appraisal, which also motivates the employees overall performance. This enables the company to assess their employees individually based on various aspects such as daily work output, quality of work, work attitudes and overall performance. It also helps the company identify their employees’ strengths and weaknesses. Included in this aspect is the provision of various forms of recognition for hard working and deserving employees.
In connection to Barton’s Coach and Touring Services, the HR function of the organization is not properly implemented especially to the initial process of employee hiring. This is the reason why they hired the wrong person to do the job. As a consequence, it created some nuisance and led to enumeration of some existing problems that are not given favorable amount of special attention.
Recruitment and Selection
Hiring as the operation scheduler in replacement to after retiring is a necessary action for the company to take. Since the job of the operations scheduler is imperative to the running of the business, the management expects the best from . Just after his initial days and after encountering a problem in one of their clients, tendered his resignation to . was surprised with the decision and immediately called an all-managers meeting. After studying the identified problems, asked , the personnel manager on how did he chose as an employee. With relaying the process of recruitment and selection of employee, they concluded that there is a problem in their HR function in connection to hiring of potential employees of the company.
According to (2001), recruiting is part of the over-all management function of staffing that serves a major role player in ensuring that company strategies will be implemented. (2004) also emphasized that staffing requires both the process of attracting and selecting prospective personnel’s capabilities and competencies with the company position. It is perhaps the most important function because it is the starting point in the whole HR process. Its importance is noted by (1992, p.96) as he said that “every organization is in competition for its most essential resource: qualified, knowledgeable people”. Recruitment is defined as the process of discovering, developing, seeking and attracting individuals to fill actual and/or anticipated job vacancies (2002). It has three general purposes: to fulfill job vacancies; to acquire new skills; and to allow organizational growth.
Several factors which influence recruiting efforts are: organizational reputation, attractiveness of the job, cost of recruiting, recruiting goals and recruiting philosophy (2002). Organizations project an image to the community and it determines the attractiveness of the company to qualified employees. It may either be a potential barrier or significant advantage depending on the ability of the HR team to effectively advertise its job vacancies. The second factor is attractiveness of the job which refers to the job description. Any job that is considered as interesting, dangerous, stressful, low-status, low-paying or lacking in promotion potential will have a hard time attracting the right people. Cost is also an important factor because recruitment is expensive to the organization. Thus, every company needs to assess the costs involved in each proposed methods of recruitment. The fourth issue is recruitment goals of the program which have to serve many different purposes. However, the over-all purpose should be to fulfill the definition mentioned earlier. The last issue to be considered is the recruitment philosophy which depends on the emphasis of recruitment practices, depth of commitment in seeking and hiring a diverse range of employees and the ethical aspect of fairness in the recruitment process.
Selection is the partner of recruitment in HR planning. It is a critical process for the organization because good selection decisions ensure the company of their financial investments in their employees ( 1993, ). The wrong selection process can lead to frustration, repetitive training, documentation, low morale and a waste of time and financial resources. Moreover, an effective selection also decreases the risk of lawsuits of either discriminatory or criminal in nature. Each organization has a selection system, wherein the applicants are subjected to both the basic criteria of an employee in the organization and the specific criteria for the job description.
The Selection Interview. The interview has attracted a good deal of research ( 1982) but, somewhat surprisingly, very little of the work done in this field has approached the interview from the perspective of impression management. The purpose of the interview is that it inevitably raises the individual's awareness of being judged. It can be argued that all candidates’ behavior in interviews can be looked on as impression management, albeit with varying degrees of consciousness, control, and success. This would extend to activities that take place before the interview itself, such as completing the application form and doing preparatory work – both of which are likely to affect what goes on in the face-to-face interaction.
Techniques for improving the reliability and validity of selection interviews are now known ( 1982). However, such techniques are of value only to the extent that they are used in organizations to select employees. Thus, there is a strong need for researchers to take into account the practicality of the interview in addition to its reliability and validity. Practicality can be defined as the extent to which the interview is perceived by users as enabling them to achieve their objectives. By understanding how different types of selection interviews are perceived by the people who used those, researchers can study ways in which the reliability and validity of the interview can be improved without sacrificing those qualities that make it attractive to users. There are at least three groups of users who should be considered in determining the practicality of an interview procedure, namely: managers or interviewers, applicants or interviewees, and the attorneys who are called on by clients to defend an interview procedure.
Job Analysis in Selection Interview. Job analysis is a basic requirement for developing valid selection procedures according to both professional and legal testing guidelines. Its value for structuring interviews was recognized by (1947,). It is not expected to enhance reliability, but there might be a weak positive relationship if it limits the domain in the interview. The (1995) meta-analysis showed a low positive relationship between job analysis and reliability, which they interpreted as an indirect effect. Job analysis should enhance job-relatedness, partly because it allows the interviewer to obtain job-related samples of applicant behavior (1993). Job analysis should enhance the amount of job information brought into the interview, thus decreasing deficiency. Similarly, by focusing the interview on job-related content, it should reduce contamination. Without a job analysis to provide a common frame of reference, interviewers might base the interview on idiosyncratic beliefs about job requirements (1994,).
If the personnel manager of Bartons will take into consideration the following principles, the problem and its consequences may be prevented if not totally eradicated. Another problem that was elicited in the meeting is the issues on specification, control, and maintenance of the role of every worker. The job description of several members of the company is vague and tends to be inclusive. With regards to control and maintenance, the problem of employee motivation and compensation was brought out.
Employee Motivation and Compensation
The issue of motivation and compensation was manifested with the statement about interstate companies that are same with Bartons but offers competitive salaries to their employee. Bartons’ management needs to restudy and focus the competitiveness of their offers that will lead to further motivation and productivity of their workforce. As with organisation, “people are the most valuable asset”, employee satisfaction – ensured through proper motivation and compensation – must be carefully considered by the HR team. This must be done to retain good staff and to encourage them to give of their best while at work requires attention to the financial and psychological and even physiological rewards offered by the organization.
Essentially, there is a gap between an individual’s actual state and some desired state. Managers must reduce this gap. Motivation is a means to reduce and manipulate this gap. It is inducing others in a specific way towards goals specifically stated by the company. Naturally, these goals as also the motivation system must conform to the corporate policy of the organization. It must be tailored to the situation and to the organization.
Basic financial rewards and conditions of service are determined by national bargaining or government minimum wage legislation such as the Employment Relations Act (2004) or by collective bargaining with labor unions. Details of conditions of service are often more important than the basics (2002). Hence, financial and other motivations must constantly be evaluated and improved to ensure employee satisfaction.
According to the expectancy theory, employees expect and need to be rewarded according to the work they do, and will help them to develop their capability, help them to work up to a higher level so that they can be better rewarded. Employees expect organizations to have compensation systems that they perceive as being fair and commensurate with their skills and expectations ( 2002). The compensation may, in some cases, act as employee motivators. These compensations that employees receive may be value-added compensation including direct compensation, such as salary, incentives and commissions; and indirect compensation, such as insurance benefits, employee recognition programs, flexible work hours, and vacation benefits. To improve performance, the system theory assumes a synchronized work environment. To synchronize the parts of the organization, it is necessary for the productivity of the company is ensuring the effectiveness of the organization. According to Sims, an organization needs constantly to take stock of its workforce and to assess its performance in existing jobs for three reasons:
• To improve organizational performance via improving the performance of individual contributors.
• To identify potential, i.e. to recognize existing talent and to use that to fill vacancies higher in the organization or to transfer individuals into jobs where better use can be made of their abilities or developing skills.
• To provide an equitable method of linking payment to performance where there are no numerical criteria.
Division of Labor
In accordance to the systems theory, work must be divided specifically among work units such as companies, divisions, departments or groups. Tasks must be assigned perfectly so there will be no gaps and overlaps of responsibilities, as dictated by the contingency theory. Also, different levels of an organization require different kinds of work. The HR staff needs to consider these aspects in the planning of the organizational structure.
Work also needs to be divided so that each group is doing a particular kind of work in which they have and develop expertise and where experience and results may be accumulated and used to improve the level of working and the work which is being done. This means that division of work has to be functional. Also, the same work could have been allocated to two different workers. There is now an overlap of responsibility. The same work could be done twice. Now, if they both got the same answer and did the same thing, this might not be important. However, a problem does arise if they get different answers and do different things. A more serious arises when the worker assumes that another was doing it or vice versa. So on the one hand the work could be done twice, but on the other hand it could be forgotten altogether.
Another problem that may arise is when there is bypassing –when a worker does not report to his immediate superior, but instead reports on his superior’s superior; or the worker reports to both. This makes it difficult for the worker’s immediate superior to do the job properly. Or it may affect the worker in the long run, as s/he feels that s/he is working for two individuals. This bypassing of authority greatly upsets the organization.
If situations like these come up, the organization chart can be used at different levels to look at the work done by different people in different groups so as to sort out problems which show up as crisis situations. This makes it critical that the HRM plan the organization carefully and precisely. They must arrange the flow of work in the best and most effective way for getting the work done.
Managing Conflict
One of the spill-over effects of the macro problems in the organization is conflict. For one, it wastes essential human resources that should have been used in more productive endeavors, which should include the ultimate goal of the organization. Managers spend increasingly more time mending conflicts and its repercussions. Yet, conflict gives out negative results and it ironically paves the way for beneficial results. For example, the emerging conflict between often helps uncover persistent problems so that they can undergo careful scrutiny. In this manner, conflict sometimes serves as the drive for effective and needed change (1988).
Managing the process of resolving conflicts is the central task regarding organizational order. Such management of conflict requires a full and sophisticated grasp of major elements in the conflict process. Individual causes and determinants of conflict, such as faulty attributions, poor styles of communication, and personal traits or characteristics that contribute to interpersonal friction, all play a role and must be taken into account. Similarly, organization-based factors, such as competition for scarce resources, ambiguity over responsibility or jurisdiction, growing internal complexity, and faulty or inadequate forms of communication, must also be considered. Make sure that positive effects are garnered from the situation and all of those involved or in control must do everything in their power to maximize the positive products while minimizing the disruptive consequences.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The main recommendation of this report focuses on the recruitment and selection of potential assets of the company. The HR manager must keep in mind the underlying principles affecting the initial steps in employee hiring. The following recommendation could be applied:
- An established selection process along with criteria to be able to fully and fairly assess its applicants must be composed by Bartons. Thus, the recommendations would be in line to the integration of the existing culture and the possible actions applicable to the company.
- The HR manager must be keen enough in recruiting and selecting potential employees. The selection process must not be confined with face-to-face interview alone but a series of oral and written examinations could be applied.
- Meanwhile, the information on the resume must be validated especially with the list of character references of the applicant. Constant communication to the contact persons is recommended.
- An efficient and inclusive definition of the job requirement must be presented in any job posting. The goal of the HR manager is to attract people who are not just capable but excellent for the job and its demand.
In connection to employee motivation and compensation, Bartons management must focus on the fairness and equal treatment of employee. Managers must be willing to communicate with their associates. The leadership style must be evaluated in order to know if it is effective or not. Benefits, incentives and rewards are some means to motivate employee performance. However, it is also recommended that it must be used in moderation. Further, collective bargaining and maintaining an open line of communication among concerned parties is imperative. Effective implementation of motivational actions will result to increased productivity.
The clear, specific and exclusive definition of job responsibility of every employee is necessary. This could be done by identifying the duties and responsibilities of the worker as early in the period of selection. An organizational chart is also useful.
Finally, in managing conflict, the manager must be equipped with the skills in conflict solving process. Investigation and the process of mediation is the most vital solution to this problem. Additionally, fairness and equality must be present in the working environment.
CONCLUSION
The HR function plays a great role in the execution of company’s goal. Through effective implementation from the start up to the end, it will yield to higher employees’ productivity and increase of revenue. All HRM functions are deliberate and directed to the success of the organization. , chair and CEO of Right Management Consultants, Inc., has identified what administration officials require from lead professionals in terms of HR. he also added that to increase real value to a company, HR must relate to the organization's overall strategy. When this approach is accomplished, affirmative changes can occur in talent management, leadership development, and organizational performance (2005).
The function of HRM is for the betterment of the organization's working force. It is very essential for the HRM officer to concentrate on the feature wherein it needs special kind attention. Everything changes. In order for companies to go with the flow of current trends, they must be fully equipped with all the necessary factors affecting a satisfactory HRM system. As from the conception of an employee up to the end of his/her service to the organization, the HRM function will always be directed to the purposes of holistic human development to attain the ultimate goal – competitive growth rooted on people’s trust, commitment, loyalty, adaptability, and high-quality knowledge and abilities.
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