Chapter 8: Human Resource Management

Human resource planning - analyzes staffing needs and identifies actions to fill those needs

Steps in strategic human resource planning:
Step 1: review organization mission, objectives, strategies
Step 2: review human resource objectives and strategies
Step 3: assess current human resources
Step 4: forecast human resource needs
Step 5: develop and implement human resource plans to match people and job openings

Foundations of human resource planning
Job analysis
Job description
Job specifications

Recruiting techniques

Recruitment - a set of activities designed to attract a qualified pool of job applicants
Three steps in recruitment process:
Step 1: advertisement of a job vacancy
Step 2: preliminary contact with potential job candidates
Step 3: Initial screening to create a pool of qualified applicants

External and internal recruitment
- External - seeks job applicants outside the organization
- Internal - seeks job applicants inside the organization

Realistic job previews
- Traditional recruitment - focuses on selling the job and organization to applicants
- Realistic job previews - provide job candidates with all pertinent information about a job and organization

Selection techniques

Selection - choosing to hire individuals from a pool of job applicants
Steps in selection process → reasons for rejection:
Step 1: completion of a formal application → deficient qualifications
Step 2: interviewing → insufficient ability or ambition, or poor interpersonal skills
Step 3: testing → poor test scores
Step 4: reference checks → poor references
Step 5: physical examination → physically unfit for the job
Step 6: final analysis and decision to hire or reject → overall potential is low

Applications and interviews
- Application: declares an individual as a job candidate and records their background and qualifications
- Interview: the selection process of when the applicant and employer can get to know each other.
Employment tests - should meet the criteria of reliability and validity
Reference and background checks - verifies resume material and better inform potential employer
Physical examination - a health check to ensure the person is physically capable of fulfilling job requirements
Final decisions to hire or reject - involves extensive consultation among an applicant, future employer, new co-workers, and human resources staff

Flexibility and work-life balance
Work-life balance - involves balancing career demands with personal and family needs

Compensation and benefits
Base compensation - a salary or hourly wage paid to an individual

Merit pay systems
Merit pay - pay increases based on your performance contributions

Bonuses and profit-sharing plans
- Bonus pay - plans that provide one-time payments based on performance accomplishments
- Profit-sharing - plans that distributes to employees a proportion of net profits earned by the organization
- Gain-sharing - plans that allow employees to share in cost savings and productivity gains by their efforts

Stock ownership and stock options
- Employee stock ownership plan - help employees purchase stock in their employing companies
- Stock options - give the right to purchase shares at a fixed price in the future

Fringe benefits
- Fringe benefits - non-monetary forms of compensation such as retirement plans and dental insurance
- Flexible benefits - programs that allow employees to choose from a range of benefit options
- Family-friendly benefits - help employees achieve better work-life balance
- Employee assistance programs - help employees cope with personal stresses and problems

Retention and turnover
- Early retirement incentive programs - offer workers financial incentives to retire early
- Termination - the involuntary dismissal of an employee
- Wrongful dismissal - a doctrine giving workers legal protections against discriminatory firings

Labour-management relations
- Labour union - an organization that deals with employers on the workers’ collective behalf
- Collective bargaining - the process of negotiating, administering, and interpreting a labour contract
- Labour contract - a formal agreement between a union and employer about the terms of work for union members
- Two-tier wage systems - pay new hires less than workers with more seniority already doing the same jobs

Human resource management - the process of attracting, developing, and maintaining a high-quality workforce.

HRM process: attracting, developing, and maintaining a quality workforce

Global HRM

Challenges of managing a global workforce: keeping track of expertise, and legality—the availability of visas for foreign workers

Legal environment of HRM

Laws against employment discrimination
- Discrimination - when someone is denied a job or job assignment for reasons not job relevant
- Canadian Human Rights Act
- Employment Equity Act
- Employment equity - the right to employment and advancement without regard to race, sex, religion, colour, or national origin.

Current legal issues in HRM
- Sexual harassment - behaviour of a sexual nature that affects a person’s employment situation
- Comparable worth - the notion that persons with jobs of similar importance should be paid at comparable levels
- Pregnancy discrimination - penalizes a pregnant woman in a job or as a job applicant
- Independent contractors - hired as needed and not a part of the organization’s permanent workforce
- Workplace privacy - the right to privacy at work

Orientation and socialization
- Orientation - a set of activities to familiarize new employees with jobs, co-workers, and organizational policies and services
- Socialization - the process of learning and adapting to the organizational culture through casual interactions with coworkers

Training and development

On-the-job training - accomplished in the work setting while someone is doing a job
- Job rotation - people switch tasks to learn multiple jobs
- Coaching - when an experienced person offers performance advice to a less-experienced person
- Mentoring - a form of coaching—assigns early career employees as proteges to more senior ones
- Modeling - another form of coaching—uses personal behaviour to demonstrate the performance expected of others
Sample training goals and options
- Acquire information
- Improve analytical skills
- Learn job behaviours

Off-the-job training - accomplished outside the work setting
- Management development - training to improve knowledge and skills in the management process

Performance management system - sets standards, assesses results, and plans for performance improvements

Performance appraisal purposes
- Performance appraisal - the process of formally evaluating performance and providing feedback to a job holder—serves evaluation and development purposes

Performance appraisal methods
- Graphic rating scale - uses a checklist of traits or characteristics evaluate performance (quick and easy, but poor reliability and validity)
- Behaviourally anchored rating scale (BARS) - uses specific descriptions of actual behaviours to rate various levels of performance (more reliable and valid)
- Critical-incident technique - keeps a log of someone’s effective and ineffective job behaviours
- Multi-person comparisons - compares one person’s performance to others—done in different ways such as rank ordering, paired comparisons, forced distributions
- Peer appraisals - people who work regularly and directly with a job holder
- Upward appraisals - subordinates reporting to the job holder
- 360º feedback - when superiors, subordinates, peers, and customers are involved in the appraisal process