Unit 22 Managing Human Resources Assignment

Program	Diploma in Business
Unit Number and Title	Unit 22 Managing Human Resources
QFC Level	Level 4

Introduction:

This unit focuses on different models of HRM that supports the organisation to frame its policies. It also discusses about the factors that has its impact on the practices of human resource management (HRM) of the organisation. It talks about the strategic approach of HRM that has been used by the organisation these days. The unit also throws light on the discussion of the flexibility in the organization and the management of diversity and equality among the employees. The last part of the unit describes about the Health and safety legislations in UK for the organizations to follow.

Task 1:

1.1 Explain guest model of HRM.

David Guest was the one who has introduced this model in 1987. Combination of hard and soft approaches of HRM has been discussed in the model. This model also discussed about the four elements that have their impact on the organisation functions. Following are the elements:

• Strategic integration
• Strategic quality

Strategic integration: Strategic integration is considered as the part of hard approach of HRM. This is because it believes in treating the human resource as all other resources of the company that has been used to perform the tasks. This also refers to the alignment of the business strategies with the HR strategies. This helps in making and formulation f the HR policies that somehow support to complete the organisational objectives. (Gilbert, De Winne and Sels, 2015)
Strategic quality: Strategic quality refers to the attainment of the competitive advantage with the help of the human resource or the employees of the company. This element suggests that HRM should be the prior concern of the top management of the company and they should formulate strategies to manage the human resources properly.
Commitment: Commitment refers to the whole and sole interest of the employees in the company. If the employees fell happy and satisfied, they make some of the commitments for the company willingly. The commitment by the employees is very important for the organisation and makes a great difference in the functioning of the organisation.
Flexibility: Flexibility is the part of soft human resource approach. It deals with accepting the changes that happens in the internal as well as the external environment of the organisation. It believes in adopting the strategies that help the company to compete with its competitors. Flexibility also has a hard [art that is numeric flexibility. Numeric flexibility refers to recruiting the employees when they are needed. This is a very hard approach as organisation fires the employees when there is no need of them. (Joshi, Liao and Martocchio, 2011)
Guest mainly developed this model by keeping in mind the HR system of UK. It has been identified that HRM in UK is very slow in development. Unilever is the UK based company that uses this model to make its HR policies. This model supports the organisation to achieve the following objectives:
Improved problem solving ability: Strategic knowledge of the company results in improving its ability to solve the problem. This model helps the organization to gain that knowledge. (Klingner, Nalbandian and Llorens, 2010)
Performance enhancement: This model supports the overall performance of the organization. This is because this model helps the company to formulate the strategies for performing the function of every department. Unilever uses this approach and adapt the flexible environment to work. This helps the company to perfect in an efficient way as flexibility of work allows the employees to work with commitment and hard work. (Kramar, 2013)
Less employee turnover: Unilever is the company with very less employee turnover rate. This means that the number of employees that leaves the company by theory own will is very less. It is because the employees working in Unilever are very satisfied with the company policies.

• Example: Unilever is the company that provides an open environment to the employees to work. This facilitates the company to extract great performance from the employees. Less employee turnover in Unilever suggests that employees working there are very much satisfied wt the work environment of the company.

1.2 Compare the differences between Storey’s definitions of HRM, personnel and IR practices.

Human Resource management: According to Storey, HRM is the strategic approach that considers human resource as the asset of the organisation. Storey also defines two types of HRM that is, soft and hard HRM. Hard HRM is based on manage the people in such a way that they come up with their best performance to achieve the objectives of the organisation. On the other hand, soft HRM deals with the human relations. The management with this approach focuses on maintaining the relation between the employees as well as between the employee and the seniors to provide an open culture and working environment to the employees so that they can be satisfied and perform better.
Personnel and IR: Storey descries personnel management as the management of the human resource to comply with the rules and regulation of the organisation. It involves recruitment, payroll and employment laws.  Personnel management has been identified as the bureaucratic approach as it is based on the pre decided rules and regulations and there is no scope of change and innovation in the strategies. (Minten, 2010)

• Example: As far as the HRM practices of the organization like Unilever are considered, it focuses on maintaining the balance between the strategies of HRM with the strategies of Organisation. This facilitates the company to achieve organisational goal as well as the individual goals. HRM practices of the company also focuses on maintaining the health and safety well being of the employees by introducing some of the programs such as lamplighter.

Unilever personnel management focuses on providing training to the employees that affect the productivity of the employees and the organisation as a whole. Industrial relations practices of the company focus on maintaining the relation between the labor unions and the management so that easy information flow can be conducted to manage the staff.

1.3 Assess the implications for line managers and employees of developing a strategic approach to HRM

All the departments of the organisation functions with the support of the employees. Strategic approach to HRM refers to the development and formulation of the systematic methods in order to complete the objectives and goals of the organisation. It is very important to achieve the goals of the organisation by strategizing the functions of HRM. This is because strategic HRM helps and supports the organisation to achieve the goals in a systematic manner. Strategic approach of HRM means the implementation o the plans in such a way that adopts the changes happening in the environment so that innovation can takes place. This helps the organisation to compete with its competitors in the strategic way. The coordination between the different departments of the organisation suggests that the Hr activities have their impact o the activities of the line managers of each and every department. Following are some of the HR functions that fuse with the functions of the line managers: (Mondy, Noe and Gowan, 2005)

• Training: Training is the main function of the HR department of Unilever. However, this company involves the line managers to training the employees of the respective departments. Strategic approach to the function allows the company to use the tools such as training need analysis and planning according to the identification of the training needs. This supports the company to provide training to the employees in order to get effective productivity from them. (Patel and Rana, 2007)

• Motivation: Motivation refers to the practices that are required to inspire the employees to work. This is the work of the HR department but Unilever is the company that considers the opinions of the line managers of the department in order to provide rewards to the employees in order to motivate them.

• Recruitment: In Unilever, the recruitment function is handled by the HR department. However, line managers of the department are also included at the time of recruitment according to the hiring process. (Riccucci, 2006)
  Unilever is the company having the portal of the line managers. This portal describes the supporting roles of the line mangers that include the roles at pre leave, on leave and return to work section.

Task 2:

2.1 Explain how a model of flexibility might be applied in practice.

Flexibility in organisational sense refers to the ability to adopt the changes. Flexibility is the element that is very necessary for the employees to maintain their professional and personal life. It is a very important element of work life balance and therefore, it is important for the organisation to be flexible. Unilever is the organisation that can be considered as flexible because it has the ability to change its practices or modify its policies according to the change in the dynamic environment outside and inside the organisation. (CIPD, 2016)

Atkinson model of flexibility:

According to Atkinson, there are two major types of workforce:

•  Core workforce: Core workforce is the permanent workforce of the organisaton that deals with the functional department and functions of the organisation. The employees of this group are highly skilled in their work and have high job security.
• workforce: This type of workforce of the organisation falls under numerical flexibility. They are not so much important for the organisation but hired only when they are required.
                Example: In Unilever, the core workforce involves the departmental employees that works in marketing, HR, finance, and production department of the company while peripheral workforce are the contract based employees that work as labors for the organisation for short period of time and hired for the project. (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2002)

2.2 Discuss the types of flexibility that may be developed in an organisation.

Flexibility is the ability of the organisation to accept the changes and innovations of the external environment. Unilever is the organization that is flexible because it uses the contingency approach for dealing with the issues by making modification in the policies that compliments the changes taking place. There are different types of flexibility:

• Financial flexibility: This type of flexibility deals with the change in the wages and salary level of the employees in order to save the cost. It also deals with the investment to cut down the cost of the process.
• Numerical flexibility: Numerical flexibility deals with the change in the number of hiring and firing of the employees according to the need. The organisation that follows this flexibility approach hire the employees at the time they are required and fire them when there is no need of them.
• Functional flexibility: Functional flexibility deals with the change in the position of the employees in different deportment or may be within the depertments. This allows the employees to know about the working process of different department and made the coordination easy. The information flow also becomes efficient by this approach.
• Temporal flexibility: Temporal flexibility is considered as the best practice to adopt the flexible approach in the organisation. This deals with changing the working hours of the employees according to their comfort. This involves practices such as flexi hours that allow the employees to complete their working shifts when they want to do it without ant force of the organisation. (Hrmguide.co.uk, 2016)
• Unilever adopts the practice of temporal flexibility as it focuses on provision of sustainable living of the employees. It also focuses on maintaining the workplace balance for the women employees working there. So they allow their employees with the flexibility of completing their working hours according to their comfort and will.

2.3  Assess the use of flexible working practices from both the employee and the employer perspective.

Some of the flexible practices used by the organizations are:Job sharing: Job sharing is the process of sharing tasks between the two employees. These employees’ works for the single task and share the credit ad responsibilities for its completion.

• Zero hours contract: In this case, employer and employees are not bounded with the time frame for the completion of the task. They are independent of taking the tasks.
• Tele working: This is the flexible practice that allows the employees to work with the help of telephone. Telephone acts as the medium of coordination and communication between the employees.
• Part time: It is the practices that allow the employees to work less the normal office hours.
• Employee perspective at Unilever: The organisation believes in sustainable living of the employees. Employees are very happy with the temporal flexibility of the organisation. Employees I this case have the power to choose the working timings according to their comfort. It also helps them to maintain their work life balance.

Employer perspective: The management of Unilever believes that agile working and flexibility in working hours enhance the performance of the employees as they work according to their comfort without any pressure. This reduces the employee turnover of the company as the employees want to stick to the company that facilitates them with so much flexibility. This help the company to maintain their productivity level with consistency.

2.4 Discuss the impact that changes in labor market have had on flexible working practices.

It is a much known fact that the external environment of the organization is dynamic in nature. Labor market is one of the elements of that environment that has undergone many changes. These changes have great impact on the practices of the organisation. Labor market change act as the driving force for changing the internal policies of the organisation. Some of the factors like demography, climate change, recruitment of fresher etc affect the flexible practices of the organisation. (Klingner, Nalbandian and Llorens, 2010)
Demography is the major reason for the change in the labor market. It has been observed that the
reduction in the birth rate affect the supply of young labor to the market and hence companies like Unilever has to make the changes in the policies to hire the labor that are available. Women empowerment also affects the ratio of men and women in the workforce. Involvement of women pushes the organization to make policies that support the employees of the organisation. Better flexibility polices have to be made by the organizations that facilitates the women employees of the organisation.
Type of market is another reason for change in the labor market. Global changes results in change in the labor market all over. If the organisation mainly dependent on the local labor and the supply of local labor reduced than the organisation have to switch the dependency o the labor outside the area. (Kramar, 2013)
Sustainable living policy of Unilever supports the women workers to maintain work life balance. It allow the women to work according to their comfort and supports them with the programs that results in better maintenance of the professional and personal life of the women employees.

Task 3:

3.1 Explain the forms of discrimination that can take place in the work place.

There is difference in age, sex, caste, religion etc of the employees. However, this difference should not be the basis for any kind of discriminatory practices for the organisation. Discrimination basically means difference based on some of the factors. Organizations have to ensure that they do not practice ant discrimination between the employees on grounds of their age, sex, caste, religion etc. any discriminatory practice by the organisation can be subjected to legal punishment and penalties. Some of the factors or the elements on which discrimination can be possible are:
Age: Age should not be the basis for judging the performance of an individual in the organisation. Every person of different age should be treated according to their performance avoiding the age of the person. Any discrimination on this ground should not be practiced and entertained by anyone. (Minten, 2010)
Religion: Religion is another factor that may become the basis for discrimination. Many top management people supports the employees of one of the religions and ignore the other. This preference practice should not the practiced as it is ethically and legally wrong.
Sex discrimination: there should be no discrimination between male and female. The performance of the employees should be judged according to their skills and work. Oracle Corporation UK lost
a tribunal case filed by an employee. She was suffered from sex discrimination by her boss and filed a case against the management in tribunal court. She got the compensation of some amount for sex discrimination, injustice and injury to her feelings. (Mondy, Noe and Gowan, 2005)

3.2 Discuss the practical implications of equal opportunities legislation for an organisation.

Equal opportunity means treating employees of the organisation at equal level. There should be no discrimination on many grounds in order to create the environment of equality. Employment equality Act is the one that needs to be followed by every organization. It is very important to treat every employee on equal grounds so as to maintain peace in the organisation. Opportunity 2000 was the main initiative that has been conducted in UK to maintain the equality in the organizations based at UK. The main aim of the Act is to support the women employees of the organisation so that they can maintain the work life balance.
In recent times, many companies in UK are using such practices that help in reduction of the discrimination practices that in turn create the environment of equality. These practices involve assurance of equal opportunities, salaries and wages to the employees. Equal chance of promotions on the basis of the performance and not on any other preference. Implementing the practices and programs such as EEO so that every employee has the knowledge about the equality rights. Companies like M&S, Ford and Royal Bank took the intuitive called as The Think Act that is based on the providing equal opportunities to the employees. This Act has inspires the employers to engage themselves in equal opportunity programs to facilitate their employees. This act mainly focuses on gender equality issue that needs to be resolved at high pace at the workplace in UK. (Patel and Rana, 2007)

3.4 Compare the approaches to managing equal opportunities and managing diversity

Managing equal opportunities and managing diversity are two different aspects. Equal opportunities refer to the management of the external legal affairs that are related to the provision of equal opportunity to the employees of the organisation. It focuses on implementation of the practices that facilitates the employees to gain equal chances of getting promotions, wages, salaries, rewards etc. There would be no discrimination between the employees on grounds of caste, religion, colour, race etc. It is an external affair as government and legal Acts are considered when discrimination has been practiced in type organisation. Any practices that are against the equality or violates the law of equality than the organisation that conducts that practices directly subjected to the legal punishment. (Riccucci, 2006)
On the other hand, managing diversity is about maintaining the balance between the workforces that has different backgrounds. This is the internal affair of the organisation as the practices that are against these affairs are not subjected to any legal consideration and it is purely the call of the organisation to come up with the policies on their own way. There is no external body influence on these practices other than the organisation itself.
P&G is the organisation that uses practices to manage the diversity in the organisation. They focus on the talents of the individual employees and place them accordingly on different positions so that there are no diversity issues as well as equality issues. (CIPD, 2016)

Task 4:

4.1 Compare different methods of performance management.

Managing performance of the employees is very important. This is because management of the performance allow the company to judge the level of performance of the employees in order to provide the rewards and benefits. It is essential judge the performance level of the employees because it affects the ultimate productivity of the organisation as a whole. Some of the practices that are used by the different organisation to manage the performance of the employees are:

• Management by objective: It is the most effective practice that is used by the organisation ns to manage the performance of the employees. In this practice, different objectives have been set for the employees with the deadlines. The objectives have been set concerning the views of employees as well as the management. The employees that complete the task at the time that is given have been rewarded with the pre decided benefits. (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2002)
• 360-degree appraisal: In this case, the evaluator evaluates the employee on every basis. The opinions of the colleagues, seniors as well as juniors have been considered to make the final report of the performance evaluation of nay individual of the organisation.
• Assessment centres: Assessment centres are the place that is not at the organisation’s workplace. The trainer has been appointed to train the employees of the organisation and assess them accordingly. (Tsui and Lai, 2009)

4.2 Assess the approaches used to manage the employee welfare.

Welfare means development of the employees and the employers as well. Practices that have been conducted in order to develop the employees in every sense. The factors that should be considered to develop the employees are work, social, health, personal growth etc. If the company focuses on welfare, of the employees than these employees feel the sense of belongingness with the company and make more commitments with the same. Employees stitch to the companies for long time that supports them to grow personally as well as professionally. Employee welfare schemes are of two types:

• Statutory scheme: These practices are mandatory for the organisation to implement in the organisation. This involves the schemes such as Factory Act, Workers Act, and Employment Opportunity Act etc. These practices are subjected to legal considerations and thus are very essential to be practices by every organisation of UK.
• Non-statutory scheme: These schemes are the personal call of the organisations. They can be practices concerning the opinions of the organisation’s management. There is no involvement of the government ad legal establishments. This involves the introduction of practices such as, maternity leaves, flextime, personal health care etc. (Hrmguide.co.uk, 2016)
  Unilever is the organisation that has the health and welfare staff to support the employees. They have also introduced the heath fair practices that results in high morale and satisfaction of the employees.

4.3 Discuss the implication of Health and safety legislation on Human resource practices.

Health and safety legislations involve all such laws that are related to the maintenance of the health and welfare of the employees at the workplace at UK. This legislation aims at prevention of the employees by the illegal practices and the frauds that have been practices by some of the organisations that affect the employees. This legislation suggests that there should be programs and policies to safeguard the employees at the workplace and provide son of the rights to the employees regarding the issue.
Hr department of the organisations plays a very important role in introducing the policies that safeguards the employees at the workplace. Hr people needs to ensure that the management of the
organisation is formulating and updating the practices related to the health and safety of the employees according to the recent legislations related to the same. (UK & Ireland, 2016)
HSWA 1974 is the Act by UK government that argues about the legislations, laws, structure and authority of health and safety all over the UK workplace. Unilever is the organisation that provides the health environment to the employees at the workplace and keeps a check on the diet of the employees as well as safeguard them from the hazardous practices that may hark them.

4.4 Evaluate the impact of another topical issue on human resource practices.

There are many topical issues that have the impact on the human resource practices of the organisation. These topical issues involve work life balance, e-recruitment, e-learning etc. E-recruitment refers to the recruitment practices that involve the introduction of internet usage for recruitment practices. E learning refers to the process of training people or employees via internet. This facilitates the organisation to reduce its training cost by saving the cost that may be spent on trainers and training place. Work life balance is the issues that are mainly considered by the companies like Unilever these days. It refers to maintenance of the work and the personal life of the employees. (Tsui and Lai, 2009)

• Example: Unilever practices Agile working and flexible working hours so that the employees of the organisation maintain the balance between the life of personal and professional. The company supports its employees so that they perform effectively for achieving the organisational objectives and gain personal growth as well. (UK & Ireland, 2016)

Conclusion:

Human resource management refers to managing the employees of the organisation. Different HRM models have been introduced to facilitate the companies to formulate the policies. Flexibility at the workplace is the recent practice by the organisation to support their employees. This helps the organisation to maintain their work life balance.