Human Resources Issues (BCS, PIISP)

HR

Understanding Requirements 🧠

• The complexity of the law in this area
• Constraints under which management and human resources staff act
• Why and to what extent must managers be aware of general human resource issues?

What are human resources?🚶‍♂️

• The term human resources emphasises the fact that the people who work for an organisation are an indispensable part of the organisation’s resources and very often the most important part

How New Staff is Hired ❓ 🆕 🕵️

• They need to be skilled, qualified and experienced
• This must be done without wasteful overstaffing
• The cost of recruiting new staff is high and the loss of continuity when staff leave can also be expensive
• The organisation needs to keep staff turnover low

The Legal Context 🎓 🔙 ⛱️

• HR management is an area in which it is often difficult to legislate clearly

Responsibilities of the HR Department

The greater attention paid to the rights of individual employees and the need to comply with anti-discrimination legislation

• Staff training and development
• Contracts of employment
• Workforce planning
• Health
• Safety

Recruitment and Selection 🎤 1️⃣

HR managers often make a distinction between the two terms, recruitment and selection, using recruitment to mean soliciting applications and selection mean selecting the applicants to whom offers will be made

Sometimes this process is outsourced

Before you employ a recruitment agency, you need a description of the job to be filled and the type of qualifications or experience expected in the successful applicant

Selection Techniques

• On-on interviews
• Interviewed by a panel
• Ability test
• Personality Test
• Task Assessment: Candidates are asked to carry out some of the tasks they will be required to do on the job.

Things That Shouldn’t Be Done When Hiring 👎 🚫

• Nepotism: choosing cousins, children or other family members
• Cronyism: Choosing Friends or Former Colleagues
• Comply with anti-discrimination legislation
• code of good practice is of great importance in large organisations

Staff Training and Development 🚆 🆙

In the US employers commonly encourage staff to undertake part-time master’s degrees by paying the fees and buying the books needed for the course and most importantly, by not promoting people who don’t have a master’s degree. Such behaviour is rare in Britain. UK Management is frequently criticized for its lack of interest in staff training.

It is important, however, to ensure that employees can keep their skills up to date throughout their working lives and this falls under the Investors in People programme

It usually falls to the human resources department to establish and administer a policy for staff training and development

Staff training and development are of particular importance to hi-tech companies

Remuneration Policies and Job Evaluation:

One of the major sources of discord and staff dissatisfaction in organisations both large and small is perceived disparities and remuneration

• Remuneration is the pay or other financial compensation provided in exchange for an employee’s services performed. Several complementary benefits, in addition to paying, are increasingly popular remuneration mechanisms. Remuneration is one component of reward management.

Job Evaluation 🧑‍💼

• Job evaluation is a technique that is often used for comparing the relative worth of jobs and allocating jobs to specific grades, Job evaluation must always involve an element of individual judgment but the aim is to be as objective as possible

Job Evaluation Schemes

Job evaluation schemes may be analytical or non-analytical

Non-analytical schemes involve comparing whole jobs without considering the individual elements and skills that make up the job

• Comparing applicants at a higher level to a more in-depth understanding

Analytical job evaluation schemes assess each job based on the different elements that are involved

• Comparing applicants at a low level where the interviewer has more idea about the applicant and knows about their skills and experience, etc.

Appraisal Schemes 🆘

• This is when a Colleague or superior gives them any indication of how well they are doing or how they might improve
• The essence is that managers and their subordinates agree on a set of objectives for the subordinate to achieve over the next period, typically six months
• At the end of the period, they meet and discuss the extent to which these objectives have been achieved
• Empowerment: This is telling employees at all levels what is expected of them but leaving it to them to decide how to achieve it.

Redundancy, Dismissal and Grievance Procedures

When staff are made redundant or are dismissed, the proper procedures are followed. Failure to follow the proper procedures may lead the organisation to be sued

Unfair Dismissal 🚫

The reason for the dismissal must be a fair one. If either of these conditions is not satisfied, an employee can take action. If the court rules in favour of the employee, it usually orders the employer to pay compensation to the employee who has been unfairly dismissed

Justifying Dismissal

• Lack of Capability
• Breach of law
• Redundancy

Dismissals are automatically considered unfair unless the statutory dismissal procedure has been followed

Redundancy

Essentially, dismissal because of redundancy occurs when employees are dismissed because the employer no longer needs people to do their jobs

In most cases of redundancy, the employer will seek to reduce the number of workers in a particular job category rather than dismiss all such workers.

• How do they select which employees are wanted?😂
  “Last in, first out.”
  That is, the most recently recruited employees are the first to be made redundant

Constructive Dismissal 🚧

• It sometimes happens that an employer behaves toward an employee in such a way that the employee feels that he or she has no option but to resign
• Example: The employer moves an employee’s place of work to somewhere 400km away at short notice

Takeovers and outsourcing 🌄 📤

• It frequently happens in modern commerce and industry that one company tasks over another; this is particularly frequent in the IT industry
• In these circumstances, the staff involved are usually transferred to the new employer, which could mean a major change in their employment

Public Interest Disclosures 📢

• Until comparatively recently, an employer could dismiss an employee publicly that, for example, the employer was consistently wilfully breaking the law
• Employees (so-called whistleblowers) were dismissed and because of the high-profile cases, they found it impossible to get other jobs
• But it has changed in recent years

Wrongful Dismissal

This is significantly different from unfair dismissal; an action for wrongful dismissal is an action for damages brought by an employee against an employer for a breach of the contract of employment

Contracts and Employment

• Under British law, every employee has a contract of employment, whether or not it is written down
• A good contract of employment should be written in terms that are easily understandable and should avoid legal jargon

Human Resources Planning

If the HR department is to ensure that the organisation always has available needs, it must be able to forecast the needs some time ahead

In a software house, there are three data sources in which they can decide

• HR plans from existing or old projects
• Sales Forecasts
• Forecasts in general

From these inputs, we can predict how many staff will be required each month, with their grades, qualifications and experience, and how many will be available. We can then proceed to produce a plan for recruiting staff if necessary