Notes, projects, reference material etc

Status
Not open for further replies.

dk2424

New member
Notes, projects, reference material etc all under 1 roof MP
Dk's collection
starting with FINANCE:
 

Attachments

  • concepts.doc
    132.5 KB · Views: 725
  • finance doc.pdf
    253.7 KB · Views: 738
  • FM notes.doc
    164 KB · Views: 727
  • Microsoft_Word__Finance_Notes.pdf
    552.3 KB · Views: 806
  • CAPITAL STRUCTURE AND SOURCES OF FUNDS proj vipin sir.doc
    524.5 KB · Views: 792

dk2424

New member
Notes, projects, reference material etc all under 1 roof MP
Dk's collection
starting with FINANCE:

notes projects on finance more to comeeeeeeeeeee
 

Attachments

  • A Project Report on Mutual Fund.doc
    215 KB · Views: 553
  • accounting basic.doc
    637.5 KB · Views: 522
  • ALM.DOC
    117 KB · Views: 381
  • ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL STATEMENTS.doc
    31 KB · Views: 536
  • asset based financing.DOC
    127.4 KB · Views: 360

dk2424

New member
notes, projects, reference on finance more to comeeeeeeeeeee
 

Attachments

  • Mutual Fund and other Managed Investments.ppt
    104 KB · Views: 331
  • money mkt instrument.doc
    68 KB · Views: 349
  • mortgages.doc
    106.5 KB · Views: 270
  • RATIO ANALYSIS final.ppt
    98 KB · Views: 364
  • WHAT ARE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.doc
    27 KB · Views: 354
  • Capital Structure.doc
    189 KB · Views: 344
  • Corporate_Finance.pdf
    2.9 MB · Views: 531
  • Final_report_but_not working cap mgt.doc
    613.5 KB · Views: 344

dk2424

New member
heavy duty notes, projects, reference on finance more to comeeeeeeeeeee
 

Attachments

  • STUDY OF WORKING CAPITAL MANAGEMENT.doc
    701 KB · Views: 530
  • Special Study In Finance.doc
    530.5 KB · Views: 430
  • ratios formula.doc
    25 KB · Views: 416
  • ratio analysis.doc
    96 KB · Views: 451
  • mergers n acquisition.doc
    203.5 KB · Views: 434

dk2424

New member
heavy duty notes, projects, reference on finance more to comeeeeeeeeeee
imp questions and ques papers
 

Attachments

  • Qpaper.zip
    25.7 KB · Views: 320
  • International_Finance_and_Trade_II_0705.pdf
    91.2 KB · Views: 395
  • FM Q bank.doc
    38 KB · Views: 350
  • FM Concept Q's gooooooooooooooood.doc
    132 KB · Views: 430
  • Financial_mgmt_nm_(with solutions).zip
    44.1 KB · Views: 429

dk2424

New member
TIME 2 study HR
heavy duty notes, projects, reference on HR more to comeeeeeeeeeee
 

Attachments

  • 360bestpractices.pdf
    142.7 KB · Views: 335
  • 360-DA.pdf
    302.6 KB · Views: 272
  • A USER'S GUIDE TO 360° FEEDBACK.doc
    38.5 KB · Views: 241
  • Compensation.doc
    44.5 KB · Views: 269
  • Counsel-1.doc
    51.5 KB · Views: 212

dk2424

New member
heavy duty notes, projects, reference on HR more to comeeeeeeeeeee
 

Attachments

  • Definations and Conceptsof HR- notes.doc
    51.5 KB · Views: 314
  • employee relations.doc
    45 KB · Views: 256
  • Employee Retention.doc
    31 KB · Views: 262
  • Employeeturnover.doc
    76.5 KB · Views: 247
  • Full HRM Notes by Ramchadran Sir.DOC
    564 KB · Views: 577

dk2424

New member
HR IMP POINTS

HRM dept prob: personnel planning,recruitment n selection, induction, performance uppraisal, training n delop, promotion n transfer, compensation payment, career planning, participative mgt.
Duties of HR manager:recruitment, selection, training, promotion, transfer, wage payment, working condition, welfare facilities, industrial relation.
Qualities of HR manager: knowledge of all labour laws, well qualifide, good communication skills, social outlook(knoweledge of market), feeling of sympathy 4 employees, resourcefullness, knwg of subject like (sociology, logic), creative thinking, leadership, decision making, generate trust amg employees.
Features of HRM: managing people, people oriented process, develop empo potentialities, intergral part, continous activity, co-operation, future oriented, challenging function.
Growing imp of HRM:automation, globalisation, information technology, quality concious, cut throat competition, impact of technology, growth of trade unions.
Objective of HRM: individual development, improve quality of service, maintain co ordination, maintain HRM, motivation, tean work, 2 achieve org goals, proper utilization of resources, good empo relation, empo satisfaction.
Function of HRM: managerial function-planning, organising, directing,controlling.
Operational function-selecting of manpower, develop of manpower, compensation payment, integration of manpower, maintainance of manpower, providing welfare facilities.
MEANING OF HRM: HRM is a management function that helps organization to recruit, select, train, develop and manage its members. Simply stated, HRM is all about management of people in the organization from Recruitment to Retirement. HRM refers to set of programs, functions, and activities designed and carried out in order to maximize both employee as well as organizational effectiveness.
Definition-“HRM is planning,organizing, directing and controlling of the procurement,development,compensation, integration,maintenance and separation of human resources to the end that individual, organizational and social objectives are accomplished.”
OBJECTIVES OF HRM 1. Organizational Objectives: To assist the organization to achieve its primary objectives, whether it is profit making or charity or social agenda.
2. Societal Objectives: To be responsive to the needs and challenges of the society while minimizing the negative impact, if any, of such demands upon the organization.
3. Functional Objectives: To maintain department’s contribution and level of services at a level appropriate to the organization’s needs.
4. Personal Objectives: To assist employees in achieving their personal goals, at least in so far as these goals enhance the individual’s contribution to the organization. This is necessary to maintain employee performance and satisfaction for the purpose of maintaining, retaining and motivating the employees in the organization.
SCOPE OF HRM-From Entry to Exit or Recruitment to Retirement of an employee in the organization
Following are the areas of operation of HRM:
1.Human Resource Planning
2.Job Analysis
3.Job Design
4.Recruitment & Selection
5.Orientation & Placement
6.Training & Development
7.Performance Appraisals
8.Job Evaluation
9.Employee and Executive Remuneration
10.Motivation
11.Communication
12.Welfare
13.Safety & Health
14.Industrial Relations
Based on the above activities, we can summarize the scope of HRM into following seven different categories:
1. Introduction to HRM
2. Employee Hiring
3. Employee and Executive Remuneration
4. Employee Motivation
5. Employee Maintenance
6. Industrial Relations
7. Prospects of HRM
ROLE OF HRM
1. Advisory Role: HRM advises management on the solutions to any problems affecting people, personnel policies and procedures.
(a)Personnel Policies: Organization Structure, Social Responsibility, Employment Terms & Conditions, Compensation, Career & Promotion, Training & Development and Industrial Relations.
(b)Personnel Procedures: Relating to manpower planning procedures, recruitment and selection procedures, and employment procedures, training procedures, management development procedures, performance appraisal procedures, compensation procedures, industrial relations procedures and health and safety procedures.
2. Functional Role: The personnel function formulates personnel policies in accordance with the company’s doctrine and management guidelines. It provides guidance to managers to help them ensure that agreed policies are implemented.
3. Service Role: Personnel function provides personnel services. These services constitute the main activities carried out by personnel department, like payroll, disciplinary actions, etc, and involve the implementation of the policies and procedures described above.
MANAGERIAL FUNCTIONS OF HRM
1. Planning: Research and plan about wage trends, labor market conditions, union demands and other personnel benefits. Forecasting manpower needs etc.
2. Organizing: Organizing manpower for the achievement of organizational goals and objectives.
3. Staffing: Recruitment & Selection
4. Directing: Issuance of orders and instructions, providing guidance and motivation to managers and employees.
5. Controlling: Regulating personnel activities and policies according to plans. Observations and comparisons of deviations
OPERATIONAL FUNCTIONS OF HRM
1. Procurement: Planning, Recruitment and Selection, Induction and Placement
2. Development: Training, Development, Career planning and counseling.
3. Compensation: Wage and Salary determination and administration
4. Integration: Integration of human resources with organization.
5. Maintenance: Sustaining and improving working conditions, retentions, employee communication
6. Separations: Managing separations caused by resignations, terminations, layoffs, death, medical sickness etc.
CHALLENGES OF HRM IN INDIAN ECONOMY
The job of HRM department in India has never been so challenging. Last decade has witnessed tectonic shift in Job market. From being an employer’s market, it has suddenly turned into employee’s market, especially in the most crucial segment, i.e. middle management. Globalization and India’s growing stature in the world has seen demand for Indian managers soaring. From the state of plenty, there is a stage of scarcity of the right talent. The biggest challenge is to retain the talent one has so assiduously hunted and trained. The attrition rate has reached alarming proportions. It has reached such proportions that certain segments of Industry are maintaining bench strengths to fill in the sudden gaps due to resignations. In addition, there are following new issues.
1. Globalization: Growing internationalization of business and workforce has its impact on HRM in terms of problems of unfamiliar laws, languages, practices, attitudes, management styles, work ethics and more. HR managers have a challenge to deal with more and more heterogeneous functions and more involvement in employee’s personal life.
2.Corporate Re-organizations: Liberalization has led to large-scale reorganization of businesses in terms of expansions, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, take over’s, and internal restructuring of organizations. In circumstances as dynamic and as uncertain as these, it is a challenge to manage employees’ anxiety, uncertainties, insecurities and fears.
3. New Organizational Forms:Exposure to international business and practices has led to change in the organizational structure and HR policies of the local companies. Take for instance, the hierarchical structure of Indian companies. Suddenly, Indian companies have begun to adopt flat hierarchical management structure. But to implement and grout such fundamental changes in management philosophy of any company is never easy. The challenge for HRM is to cope with the implications of these new relations in place of well established hierarchical relationships that existed within the organizations for ages in the past.
4. Changing Demographics of Workforce: Changes in workforce are largely reflected by dual career couples, large chunk of young blood with contrasting ethos of work among old superannuating employees, growing number of women in workforce, working mothers, more educated and aware workers etc. Thus, changing demography of workforce has its own implications for HR managers and a true challenge to handle.
5. Changed Employee Expectations: With the changes in workforce demographics, employee expectations and attitudes have also transformed. Traditional allurements like job security, house, and remunerations are not much attractive today. Rather, employees are demanding empowerment and equality with management. Hence, it is a challenge for HRM to redesign the profile of workers, and discover new methods of hiring, training, remunerating and motivating employees.
6. New Industrial Relations Approach: In the changed industrial climate, even trade unions have realized that strikes and militancy have lost their relevance and not many workers are willing to join them and disrupt work. However, the problems faced by workforce now have different dimension for the management. They manifest in the form of increased attrition rate. Unsatisfied employees instead of approaching the management for resolution, often take up the new job. The challenge before the HRM is find ways and means to feel the pulse of employees and address the issues on proactive basis.
7. Renewed People Focus: “Man behind the machine is most important than the machine”. This is an old doctrine of the Armed Forces. However, this doctrine has begun to gain acceptance in the corporate world and thus all out efforts to grab the best talent at whatever cost.
8. Managing the Managers: Managing the managers is most difficult. Armed with inside information, they cannot be lured with rosy promises. They are in great demand too with growth in economy. These are the people who are most mobile, attrition rate being highest for the junior and middle management level. The challenge of HRM is how to manage this tribe?
9. Weaker Section’s Interests: Another challenge for HRM is to protect the interest of weaker sections of society. The dramatic increase of women workers, minorities and other backward communities in the workforce, coupled with weakening of trade unions, has resulted in the need for organizations to re-examine their policies, practices and values. In the name of global competition, productivity and quality, the interests of the society around should not be sacrificed. It is a challenge of today’s HR managers to see that these weaker sections are neither denied their rightful jobs nor are discriminated while in service.
10. Contribution to the Success of Organizations: The biggest challenge to an HR manager is to make all employees contribute to the success of the organization in an ethical and socially responsible way. Because society’s well being to a large extent depends on its organizations.
HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
Human Resource Development is a process to help people to acquire competencies and to increase their knowledge, skills and capabilities for better performance and higher productivity.
Definition 1:
HRD is a process of enhancing the physical, mental and emotional capacities of individuals for productive work.
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
Definition: A team is a small group of people who agree to work together for achieving a clear and identifiable set of goals.
Teams can be Very Effective.
A team is able to produce more than the sum of individuals working separately. A team benefits from complementing and sometimes contrasting abilities of its members. Teams can bring to bear a wider range of skills and experience to solve a problem. Teams often lead to better quality decisions as individual whims and prejudices are kept in check. Further, members of team have an obligation to each other and thus there is a moral force/binding to perform. Energy among the team members is very important. The team needs a clear sense of direction which the leader provides. Harmony and trust among the group members is utmost essential. In any group, conflicts are inevitable, however harmonious it may be. There has to be a well formulated policy for conflict management. Decision making is a source of potential conflicts. A well charted course for decision taking will be able to minimize such conflicts.
HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING (H R P)
Human Resource Planning, as the name suggests, is the process of identification/ forecasting a firm’s future requirement of type and number of people in order to meet the organizational goals and objectives. It is a continuous process either due to fresh requirement of manpower owing to change/growth/diversification of business or due to attrition of manpower due to retirement, termination, death, disability or resignations.
Definition 1:
“HRP includes estimation of how many qualified people are necessary to meet the future business requirement, how many people will be available, and what, if anything, must be done to ensure availability of personnel equals the demand at all times in the future.”
Advantages of HRP/need/importance/role/benefits
Human resource planning can be defined as the process of identifying the number of people required by an organization in terms of quantity and quality. All human resource management activities start with human resource planning. So we can say that human resource planning is the principle/primary activity of human resource management.The process of HRP plays a very important role in the organization. The importance of HRP can be explained as follows.
1. Anticipating future requirement: - Thru this process of HRP, the company is able to find out how many people will be required in future. Based on this requirement the company could take further actions. This method also helps the company to identify the number of jobs which will become vacant in the near future.
2. Recruitment and selection process: - The recruitment and selection process is a very costly affair for a company. Many companies spend lakhs of rupees on this process. Therefore recruitment and selection must be carried out only if it is extremely necessary. HRP process helps to identify whether recruitment and selection are necessary or not.
3. Placement of personnel:-Since the HRP process is conducted for the entire organization we can identify the requirements for each and every department. Based on the requirement, we can identify existing employees and place them on those jobs which are vacant.
4. Performance appraisal:-HRP make performance appraisal more meaningful. Since feedback is provided in performance appraisal and employee is informed about his future chances in same company, the employee is motivated to work better. Information for all this is collected from HRP process.
5. Promotion opportunity: - HRP identifies vacancies in the entire organization including all the branches of all the company. Therefore when the company implements promotion policy it can undertake its activities in a very smooth manner.
NEED & IMPORTANCE OF HRP
Human Resource comes at a cost and generates profits. While excess of human resource will lead to unproductive costs, shortages of same will lead to idling of other resources and impede profit generation. Having the people is not enough. Each job needs specific skills and experience and only a certain trained personnel can do it effectively. Therefore, it is necessary that right kinds of people are hired for each job. Personnel requirement is never static. Manpower wastages in the organization keep taking place regularly due to retirement, injury, resignations, termination, etc. In addition, changes in the business environment, business model and plan, capacity/product changes, diversifications, etc, also generate need to review the human resource requirement of the organization. Changes in the Business Environment in the past one and half decade have led to relative scarcity of talented people. Right kinds of people are no more available at short notice. There is considerable time gap between identifying the need for manpower and filling the vacancy, sometimes stretching between 6 months to one year. Thus, it will help the company if the requirement is forecasted adequately in advance to enable hiring of right kind of personnel just in time so that neither the machines/other resource idle for want of manpower nor do the people idle. At the same time, there could be situations when there is spare manpower in the company. Company may have changed over to new technology productions and therefore all personnel trained in old machines may have become redundant and surplus. The “Exit Policy” for workers is not easy and they cannot be released at short notice. Re-training or retrenchment of personnel has to be planned in advance. In India services is growing at a fast pace. It has already overtaken agriculture and Industrial production sectors to become the biggest contributor to GDP. In service industry, human capital is the most important asset. HRP bears a disproportionate importance in this industry. Foundation of Personnel Functions:HRP provides for not only front line manpower but also caters for support staff requirement which are called Personnel “Functions” like recruitment, selection, personnel development, training and development etc. Large scale changes in frontline staff will have proportional changes in requirement of support staff as well which can be planned alongside.
HRP PROCESS
Organizational Objectives & Policies: Organizational objectives and policies give a clue to future requirement of manpower. A company planning expansion would require more manpower in near future. Kind of people required would be dictated by technology being planned for expansion. HRP needs to align hiring of people with these elements. In addition, company’s policies towards its manpower policies, like using internal resources for promotion or external resources or dependence on certain caste or region for some jobs have also to be catered for. Gujarati companies in diamond business hire only gujaraties. Similarly, certain Business Houses from Rajasthan prefer Rajasthanies. So, HRP process will be dictated by following organizational policies:
1.Internal Hiring or External Hiring?
2.Training & Development plans
3.Union Constraints
4.Job enrichment issues
5.Rightsizing organization
6.Automation needs
7.Continuous availability of adaptive and flexible workforce
Manpower Demand Forecasting: It is the process of estimating the future quantity and quality of people required. The basis should be long term corporate plans. Demand forecasting should be based on following factors.
Internal Factors: -
• Production levels
• New products and services
• Organizational structure
• Employee separation
• Budget constraints
External Factors:
• Economic climate
• Laws and regulatory bodies
• Technology changes
• Social Factors
• Legal requirements with regards to reservations
Manpower Supply Forecasting: This process measures the number of people likely to be available from within and outside the organization after making allowance for absenteeism, internal movements and promotions, wastages, changes in hours and other conditions of work.
Supply Analysis covers:
Existing Human Resources: HR Audits facilitate analysis of existing employees with skills and abilities. The existing employees can be categorized as skills inventories (non-managers) and managerial inventories (managers).
Skill inventory would include the following
• Personal data
• Skills
• Special Qualifications
• Salary
• Job History
• Company data
• Capabilities
• Special preferences
Management inventories would include the following:
• Work History
• Strengths• Weaknesses
• Promotion Potential
• Career Goals
• Personal Data
• Number and Types of Subordinates supervised
• Total Budget Managed
• Previous Management Duties
Internal Supply Assessment:
• Inflows and outflows (transfers, promotions, separations, resignations, retirements etc.)
• Turnover rate (No. Of separations p.a. / Average employees p.a. X 100)
• Conditions of work (working hours, overtime, etc.)
• Absenteeism (leaves absences)
• Productivity level
• Job movements (Job rotations or cross functional utilizations)
External Supply Assessment: External sources are required for following reasons
• New blood,
• New experiences
• Replenish lost personnel
• Organizational growth
• Diversification
External sources can be colleges and universities, consultants, competitors and unsolicited applications.
CAREER PLANNING
Career as a concept means a lifelong sequences of professional, educational and developmental experiences that an individual goes through in his working life. It is a sequence of positions occupied by a person during his life. Career planning is the process of identifying an individual’s strengths, weaknesses, aptitudes, inclinations, aspirations and attitudes and designing his job responsibilities to take maximum advantages of positive traits and minimizing the effect negatives traits. After identifying the personality traits of the individual then begins the process of identifying suitable job billets for him. It may also involve training at times to strengthen his weak areas. Career planning is a process of integrating the employees’ needs and aspirations with organizational requirements.
A typical succession planning involves the following activities:
1. Analysis of the demand for managers and professionals by company level, function and skill.
2. Audit of existing executives and projection of likely future supply from internal and external sources.
3. Planning of individual career paths based on objective estimates of future needs and drawing on reliable performance appraisals and assessments of potential.
4. Career counseling undertaken in the context of a realistic understanding of the future needs of the firm as well as those of the individual.
5. Accelerated promotions with development targeted against the future needs of the business.
6. Performance related training and development to prepare individuals for future roles as well as current responsibilities
7. Planned strategic recruitment not only to fill short term needs but also to provide people for development to meet future needs
8. The actual activities by which openings are filled
JOB ANALYSIS
Definition 1
“Job Analysis is a process of collecting and studying the information relating to operations and responsibilities of a specific job. The immediate products of this analysis are ‘Job Description’ and ‘Job Specifications’.”
PURPOSE OF JOB ANALYSIS: -
•Human Resource Planning (HRP): Job analysis helps in determining staffing needs, type, quality and quantity.
•Recruitment & Selection: Knowing the staffing needs is essential for Recruitment and Selection – Right person for each job. Sourcing of recruits also becomes easy and cost effective
•Training & Development: Job analysis is the key to determining Training and Development programs.
•Job Evaluation: Job evaluation means determination of relative worth of each job for the purpose of establishing wage and salary. This is possible with the help of job description and specifications i.e. Job Analysis.
•Remuneration: Job analysis also helps in determining wage and salary for the jobs.
•Performance Appraisal:Job analysis helps in fixing the bench marks of performance standards which in turn help in objective Performance appraisal, rewards, promotions, etc.
•Safety & Health: Job Analysis helps to uncover hazardous conditions and unhealthy environmental factors so that corrective measures can be taken to minimize and avoid possibility of human injury.
JOB DESCRIPTION
“Job Description implies objective listing of the job title, tasks, and responsibilities involved in a job.”Job description is a word picture of the duties, responsibilities and organizational relationships that constitutes a given job or position. It defines work assignment and a scope of responsibility that are sufficiently different from those of the other jobs to warrant a specific title. Job description is a broad statement of purpose, scope, duties and responsibilities of a particular job.
Contents of Job Description
1. Job Identification
2. Job Summary
3. Job Duties and Responsibilities4. Supervision specification
5. Machines, tools and materials
6. Work conditions
7. Work hazards8. Definition of unusual terms
Format of Job Description
1. Job Title
2. Region/Location
3. Department
4. Reporting to (Operational and Managerial)
5. Objective
6. Principal duties and responsibilities
JOB SPECIFICATIONS
“Job Specification involves listing of qualifications, skills and abilities required in an employee to meet the job description. These specifications are minimum required to do the job satisfactorily.”
In other words, it is a statement of minimum acceptable physical/psychological attributes and professional skills necessary to perform the job properly. Job specifications seek to indicate kind of persons who can be expected to meet the role requirements. Thus, it is basically concerned with matters of selection, screening and placement and is intended to serve as a guide in hiring.
Contents of Job Specifications
1. Physical Characteristics
2. Psychological characteristics
3. Personal characteristics
4. Educational Qualifications
5. Skill Set and Experience/Responsibilities
6. Demographic features
Job specifications can be further divided into three broad categories
1. Essential Attributes
2. Desirable Attributes
3. Contra-Indicators – Attributes which are likely to act as impediments to success of job
JOB EVALUATION
Job evaluation is the process of analyzing and assessing various jobs systematically to ascertain their relative worth in an organization.
Job Evaluation involves determination of relative worth of each job for the purpose of establishing wage and salary differentials. Relative worth is determined mainly on the basis of Job Description and Job Specification only. Job Evaluation helps to determine wages and salary grades for all jobs. Employees need to be compensated depending on the grades of jobs they perform. Remuneration must be based on the relative worth of each job. Ignoring this basic principle results in inequitable compensation and attendant ill effects on employees’ morale. A perception of inequity is a sure way of de-motivating an employee.
Jobs are evaluated on the basis of content and placed in order of importance. This establishes Job Hierarchies, which becomes the basis for satisfactory wage differentials among various jobs.
Jobs are ranked (not jobholders)
PROCESS OF JOB EVALUATION:
1. Defining objectives of job evaluation
(a)Identify jobs to be evaluated (Benchmark jobs or all jobs)
(b)Who should evaluate job?
(c)What training do the evaluators need?
(d)How much time involved?
(e)What are the criteria for evaluation?(f)Methods of evaluation to be used
2. Wage Survey
3. Employee Classification
4. Establishing wage and salary differentials.
METHODS OF JOB EVALUATION
1. Analytical Methods
(a)Point Ranking Methods: Different factors are selected for different jobs with accompanying differences in degrees and points.
(b)Factor Comparison Method: The important factors are selected which can be assumed to be common to all jobs. Each of these factors is then ranked with other jobs. The worth of the job is then taken by adding together all the point values.
2. Non-Analytical Methods(a)Ranking Method: Jobs are ranked on the basis of their title or contents. Like Managers, Supervisors, Workers, Peon, etc. All managers whether from production, planning, sales, stores or Allied Services (House Keeping) Dep’t are treated equal. Job is not broken down into factors etc. It is easier to implement but not always satisfactory for the employees.
(b)Job Grading Method: It is based on the job as a whole and the differentiation is made on the basis of job classes and grades. Like in a hotel, Receptionist’s job may be graded higher than back office billing clerk’s job. Similarly, a production/sales manager billet may be graded higher than Allied Services Manager’s. In this method it is important to form a grade description to cover discernible differences in skills, importance to company’s core operations, responsibilities and other characteristics.
DISADVANTAGES OF JOB EVALUATION:
1. Sometimes encourages employees to manipulate for promotion/internal placement when there may be limited opportunities for enhancement as a result of downsizing.
2. It promotes internal focus (office politics) instead of customer orientation
3. Not suitable for forward looking organizations, which may have trimmed multiple job titles into two or three broad jobs.
JOB DESIGN
In the most simplified form - The process of breaking/organizing work into specific tasks in order to perform a specific job is called Job Design. Job Design is the logical Sequence to Job Analysis. Job design involves conscious efforts to organize tasks, duties and responsibilities into a unit of work to achieve certain objective.
Steps in Job Design1. Specification of Individual Tasks
2. Specification of Methods for Tasks Performance
3. Combination of Tasks into Specific Jobs to be assigned to individuals
FACTORS AFFECTING JOB DESIGN
1. Organizational factors
(a)Characteristics of Tasks (Planning, Execution and Controlling of Task)
(b)Work Flow (Process Sequences)
(c)Ergonomics (Time & Motion Study)
(d)Work Practices (Set of ways of performing tasks)
2. Environmental Factors
(a)Employee Abilities and Availability
(b)Social and Cultural Expectations
3. Behavioral Elements
(a)Feedback
(b)Autonomy
(c)Use of Abilities
(d)Variety
TECHNIQUES OF JOB DESIGN
1. Work Simplification: Job is simplified or specialized. The job is broken down into small parts and each part is assigned to an individual. To be more specific, work simplification is breaking down the job to such small tasks that complexity is taken out of them. Like in an assembly line of car, one person only tightens wheel nuts with a pneumatic tool which tighten the nuts. The complexity of ensuring that each nut is tightened to required degree has been transferred to machine and the worker only applies the tool to the right place. He does not even put the wheel in place. In such cases, work becomes repetitive in nature. Work simplification is used when jobs are not specialized.
2. Job Rotation: Same job, same people, same surrounding, days over days, months over months, leads to boredom and even fatigue. And it manifests in higher error rate, fall in productivity, absenteeism, job hopping, etc. Job rotation is answer to such problems. While broadly the job may remain same, minor variations between jobs are enough to rejuvenate the employee. It not only benefits the personnel but also the organization in equal measure
(a)Benefit to the Employee. It is a development tool since the employees get exposure to several jobs which develop their personality and employability. It improves their self-image and leads to personal growth. Such cross functional deployments often reveal hidden performance potentials/skills of many employees in the course of new job.
(b)Benefits to the Company: Such cross functional knowledge of employees provides the company with a fall back option in case of absence of any employee. It also gives flexibility to the management to reorganize the functional setup just in case of need like demand pattern shift or change in business model or any other eventuality. Also, periodic job rotation is the best method to avoid compartmentalization of departments. Movement of personnel between departments and firsthand knowledge of limitations and problems faced by other departments reduces frictions and leads to better cooperation between them. Interpersonal bonds developed during in the course of such cross functional job rotation further smoothens the interaction between departments. On the negative side, training costs rise and it can also de-motivate intelligent and ambitious trainees who might take it as their undesirability in their own department unless it is well laid down policy of the company.
3. Job Enlargement: It means expanding the number of tasks, or duties assigned to a given job. Job enlargement is naturally opposite to work simplification. Adding more tasks or duties to a job does not necessarily mean that new skills and abilities are needed. There is only horizontal expansion. It is with same skills taking additional responsibilities like increasing the number of machines operators under a supervisor from 10 to 15. Job enlargement may involve breaking up of the existing work system and redesigning a new work system. For this employees also need to be trained to adjust to the new system. Job enlargement is said to contribute to employee motivation but the claim is not validated in practice.
4. Job Enrichment: Job enrichment is to add a few more motivators to a job to make it more rewarding. A job is enriched when the nature of the job is exciting, challenging, rewarding and creative or gives the job holder more decision-making, planning and controlling powers. An enriched job will have more authority, responsibility, autonomy (vertical enrichment), more variety of tasks (horizontal enrichment) and more growth opportunities. The employee does more planning and controlling with less supervision but more self-evaluation. For example: transferring some of the supervisor’s tasks to the employee and making his job enriched. As per Hertzberg, who was the father of this term, an enriched job has eight characteristics:
(a)Direct Feedback: Employee should be able to get immediate knowledge of the results they are achieving.
(b)Client Relationship: An employee who serves a client or customer directly has an enriched job. The client can be outside or inside the firm.
(c)New Learning: An enriched job allows its incumbent to feel that he is growing intellectually.
(d)Scheduling Own Work: Freedom to schedule own work (autonomy) is job enrichment.
(e)Unique Experience: An enriched job has some unique qualities or features.
(f)Control over Resources: One approach to Job enrichment is for the each employee to have control over his or her resources and expenses.
(g)Direct Communication Authority: An enriched job allows worker to communicate directly with people who use his or her output.
(h)Personal Accountability: An enriched job holds the incumbent responsible for the results. He or she receives praise for good work and blame for poor work.
Problems with Job Enrichment
(a)Job enrichment is not a substitute for good governance. If other environmental factors in the business are not right, mere job enrichment will not mean much.
(b)Job enrichment may have short term negative effects till the worker gets used to the new responsibility.
(c)Job enrichment itself might not be a great motivator since it is job-intrinsic factor. As per the two-factor motivation theory, job enrichment is not enough. It should be preceded by hygienic factors etc.
(d)Job enrichment assumes that workers want more responsibilities and those workers who are motivated by less responsibility, job enrichment surely de-motivates them
(e)Workers participation may affect the enrichment process itself.
(f)Change is difficult to implement and is always resisted as job enrichment brings in a changes the responsibility.
5. Autonomous or Self-Directed Teams: Empowerment results in self-directed work teams. A self-directed team is a group of employees responsible for a whole work segment. They work together, handle day-to-day problems, plan and control, and are highly effective team.
JOB SATISFACTION-Job satisfaction is self satisfaction derived by an employee in doing the job he has been entrusted to do. Job satisfaction is more a function of the various attitudes possessed by an employee towards his job, related factors and life in general than the job itself. The attitudes related to job may be wages, supervision, steadiness, working conditions, advancement opportunities, recognitions, fair evaluation of work, social relations on job, prompt settlement of grievances etc. A person with a kind heart will find high level of job satisfaction in working with some agency involved in charitable work though the salary might be relatively less. An over ambitious person will never find the job satisfaction. In short job satisfaction is a general attitude towards the job, which is the result of many specific attitudes in three areas namely, job factors, individual characteristics and group relationships outside the job.
COMPONENTS OF JOB SATISFACTIONPersonal factors: Sex, Dependents, Age, Timings, Intelligence, Natural affinity towards the job, Education and Personality.
Job Inherent Factors: Nature of work, Skills, Occupational status, Geography, etc.
Management Controlled Factors: Security, Payment, Fringe benefits, Advancement opportunities and Working conditions, Co-workers, Responsibilities, Supervision
RECRUITMENT
Definition:
“Recruitment is the process of finding and attracting capable applicants for a job to create a pool from which selection is to be made of the most suitable candidates”.
The Process begins when new recruits are sought and ends when their applications are submitted. Though theoretically recruitment process is said to end with the receipt of applications, in practice, the activity extends to the screening of applications so as to eliminate those who are not qualified for the job. The result is a pool of applicants from which selections for new employees are made.”
PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE
1. To broad base the applicant pool in order to get the right talent at the affordable cost.
2. Increase the pool of job candidates at minimum cost
3. Help increase success rate of selection process by reducing number of under-qualified or over-qualified applications.
4. Meet legal and social obligations
5. Identify and prepare potential job applicants
FACTORS AFFECTING RECRUITMENT
External Factors:
1. Demand and Supply status of specific skills set.
2. Unemployment Rate (Area-wise)
3. Labor Market Conditions
4. Political and Legal Environment (Reservations, Labor laws)
5. Company’s Image
Internal Factors:
1. Recruitment Policy (Internal Hiring or External Hiring?)
2. Human Resource Planning (Planning of resources required)3. Size of the Organization (Bigger the size lesser the recruitment problems)
4. Cost
5. Growth and Expansion Plans
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
1. Recruitment Strategy Development
(a)Trained or untrained (to be trained at company’s expense)
(b)Internal or external sourcing
Internal Recruitment (Source 1)
1. Present employees
2. Employee referrals
3. Transfers & Promotions
4. Former Employees
5. Previous Applicants
External Recruitment (Source 2)
(i) Professionals or Trade Associations
(ii) Advertisements
(iii) Employment Exchanges
(iv) Campus Recruitment
(v) Walk-ins Interviews
(vi) Consultants
(vii) Contractors
(viii) Displaced Persons
(ix) Radio & Television
(x) Acquisitions & Mergers
(c) Competitors
(d) Technological tools to be used for advertising
(e) Where to look
(f) How to look
Internal sources of recruitment: - Internal sources of recruitment refer to obtaining people for job from inside the company. There are different methods of internal recruitment1. Promotion:- Companies can give promotion to existing employees. This method of recruitment saves a lot of time, money and efforts because the company does not have to train the existing employee. Since the employee has already worked with the company. He is familiar with the working culture and working style. It is a method of encouraging efficient workers.
2. Departmental exam :- This method is used by government departments to select employees for higher level posts. The advertisement is put up on the notice board of the department. People who are interested must send their application to the HR department and appear for the exam. Successful candidates are given the higher level job. The method ensures proper selection and impartiality.
3. Transfer:- Many companies adopt transfer as a method of recruitment. The idea is to select talented personnel from other branches of the company and transfer them to branches where there is shortage of people.
4. Retirement :- Many companies call back personnel who have already retired from the organization. This is a temporary measure. The method is beneficial because it gives a sense of pride to the retired when he is called back and helps the organization to reduce recruitment selection and training cost.
5. Internal advertisement:- In this method vacancies in a particular branch are advertised in the notice board. People who are interested are asked to apply for the job. The method helps in obtaining people who are ready to shift to another branch of the same company and it is also beneficial to people who want to shift to another branch.
6. Employee recommendation :- In this method employees are asked to recommend people for jobs. Since the employee is aware of the working conditions inside the company he will suggest people who can adjust to the situation. The company is benefited because it will obtain.
External methods/sources of recruitment: External sources of recruitment refer to methods of recruitment to obtain people from outside the company. These methods are
1. Management consultant: - Management consultant helps the company by providing them with managerial personnel, when the company is on the lookout for entry level management trainees and middle level managers. They generally approach management consultants.
2. Employment agencies:- Companies may give a contract to employment agencies that search, interview and obtain the required number of people. The method can be used to obtain lower level and middle level staff.
3. Campus recruitment: - When companies are in search of fresh graduates or new talent they opt for campus recruitment. Companies approach colleges, management, technical institutes, make a presentation about the company and the job and invite applications. Interested candidates who have applied are made to go through a series of selection test and interview before final selection.
4. News paper advertisement: - This is one of the oldest and most popular methods of recruitment. Advertisements for the job are given in leading news papers the details of the job and salary are also mentioned. Candidates are given a contact address where their applications must be sent and are asked to send their applications within a specified time limit. The method has maximum reach and most preferred among all other methods of recruitment.
5. Internet advertisement:- With increasing importance to internet, companies and candidates have started using the internet as medium of advertisement and search for jobs. There are various job sites like naukri.com and monster.com etc. candidates can also post their profiles on these sites. This method is growing in popularity.
6. Walk in interview:- Another method of recruitment which is gaining importance is the walk in interview method. An advertisement about the location and time of walk in interview is given in the news paper. Candidates require to directly appearing for the interview and have to bring a copy of their C.V. with them. This method is very popular among B.P.O and call centers.
2. Recruitment Planning
(a) Number of applicants sought (Based on past experience)
(b) Types of applicants to be called (Qualification, category, area, etc)
3. Searching
(a) Source activation
(b) Selling
4. Screening of Applications
5. Evaluation and Cost Control
(a) Salary Cost
(b) Management & Professional Time spent
(c) Advertisement Cost(d) Producing Supporting literature
(e) Recruitment Overheads and Expenses(f) Cost of Overtime and Outsourcing
(g) Consultant’s fees
EVALUATION OF RECRUITMENT PROCESS
1. Return rate of each source of recruitment
2. Selection rate from each source
3. Retention and Performance of selected candidates
4. Recruitment Cost
5. Time lapsed data
6. Image projection
SELECTIONMEANING OF SELECTION
Selection is the process of picking up individuals (out of the pool of job applicants) with requisite qualifications and competence to fill jobs in the organization. A formal definition of Selection is as under:
“Selection is the process of differentiating between applicants in order to identify and hire those with a greater likelihood of success in a job.”
Process of selection: - The process of selection is different in different companies however a general procedure of selection can be framed. This process of selection can be explained with the help of following diagram
1. Job analysis: - The very first step in the selection procedure is the job analysis. The HR department prepares the job description and specification for the jobs which are vacant. This gives details for the jobs which are vacant. This gives details about the name of the job, qualification, qualities required and work conditions etc.
2. Advertisement:- Based on the information collected in step 1, the HR department prepares an advertisement and publishes it in a leading news papers. The advertisement conveys details about the last date for application, the address to which the application must be sent etc.
3. Application blank/form: - Application blank is the application form to be filled by the candidate when he applies for a job in the company. The application blank collects information consisting of 4 parts- 1) Personal details 2) Educational details 3) Work experience 4.Family background.
5. Written test: - The applications which have been received are screened by the HR department and those applications which are incomplete are rejected. The other candidates are called for the written test. Arrangement for the written test is looked after the HR department i.e. question papers, answer papers, examination centers and hall tickets etc.6. Interview: - Candidates who have successfully cleared the test are called for an interview. The entire responsibility for conducting the interview lies with the HR department i.e. they look after the panel of interviewers, refreshments, informing candidates etc.
7. Medical examination: - The candidates who have successfully cleared the interview are asked to take a medical exam. This medical exam may be conducted by the organization itself (army). The organization may have a tie up with the hospital or the candidate may be asked to get a certificate from his family doctor.
8.Initial job offer:- Candidates who successfully clear the medical exam are given an initial job offer by the company stating the details regarding salary, terms of employment, employment bond if any etc. The candidate is given some time to think over the offer and to accept or reject.
9. Acceptance/ rejection: - Candidates who are happy with the offer send their acceptance within a specified time limit to show that they are ready to work with the company.
10. Letter of appointment/final job offer: - Candidates who send their acceptance are given the letter of appointment. The letter will state the name of the job. The salary and other benefits, number of medical leaves and casual leaves, details of employment bond if any etc. It will also state the date on which the employee is required to start duty in the company.
11. Induction: - On the date of joining the employee is introduced to the company and other employees through am elaborate induction program.
GOOD SELECTION PRACTICE: ESSENTIALS
1.Detailed Job Descriptions and Job Specifications prepared in advance and endorsed by personnel and line management should be available with Selection Board.
2.Train the selectors to assess the right attributes in applicants.
3.Determine aids to be used for selection process.
4.Check competence of recruitment consultants before hiring their services.
5.Involve line managers at all stages
6.Attempt to validate the procedure regularly
7.Help the appointed candidate to succeed by training and management developmentTypes of selection test: Different selection test are adopted by different organization depending upon their requirements. These tests are specialized test which have been scientifically tested and hence they are also known as scientific test. Different types of test can be explained with the help of following diagram,
I.Aptitude test:- Aptitude tests are test which assess the potential and ability of a candidate. It enables to find out whether the candidate is suitable for the job. The job may be managerial technical or clerical. The different types of aptitude test are
a.Mental ability/mental intelligence test:- This test is used to measure the overall intelligence and intellectual ability of the candidate to deal with problems. It judges the decision making abilities.
b.Mechanical aptitude test:-This test deals with the ability of the candidate to do mechanical work. It is used to judge and measure the specialized knowledge and problem solving ability. It is used for technical and maintenance staff.
c.Psycho motor test:-This test judges the motor skills the hand and eye co-ordination and evaluates the ability to do jobs lie packing, quality testing, quality inspection etc.
II.Intelligence test:-This test measures the numerical skills and reasoning abilities of the candidates. Such abilities become important in decision making. The test consists of logical reasoning ability, data interpretation, comprehension skills and basic language skills.
III.Personality test:-In this test the emotional ability or the emotional quotient is tested. This test judges the ability to work in a group, inter personal skills, ability to understand and handle conflicts and judge motivation levels. This test is becoming very popular now days.
IV.Performance test:- This test judges and evaluates the acquired knowledge and experience of the knowledge and experience of the individual and his speed and accuracy in performing a job. It is used to test performance of typist, data entry operators etc.
BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE SELECTION
1.Perception: We all perceive the world differently. Our limited perceptual ability is obviously a stumbling block to the objective and rational assessment of people.
2.Fairness: Barriers of fairness includes discrimination against religion, region, caste, race or gender, etc.
3.Plethora of Human Traits:Success in any job is more a function of attitude than aptitude. The tests are validated over a period of time to differentiate between the employees who can perform well and those who will not. Yet, no test can claim 100% success in finding the right employee.
4.Pressure: Pressure brought on selectors by management, politicians, bureaucrats, relatives, friends and peers to select particular candidate are also barriers to effective selection.
5.Time and Cost: Often the time and funds available to undertake selection process are limited forcing the selectors to forego certain tests.
TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT
Training and development, though are spoken in the same breadth, are quite different. Training generally refers to teaching of new skill in professional field of the employee. Like an employee being taught to operate another machine, or to perform a new operation in the same machine. Development refers to enhancement of personal qualities of the employee which do not have a one to one relationship with his current job. It may be to help an employee to grow. Like stress management techniques, yoga lessons, meditation exercises, soft skills training, etc. While training is expected to reward the company immediately in terms of better productivity of employee, Development does not lead to any immediate and tangible benefits to the company. At the best, there might be some intangible benefits in the long run, like improved motivation, loyalty, improved intra-departmental relations, reduced absenteeism on medical ground, etc.
Dividing line between training and development is expectation of immediate benefits. Thus, in case a program, generally qualifying as development program, is directly related to employee’s job skills, like Communication Skills course for telephone attendant or receptionist, will qualify as training and not as development. Same program for someone in back office would be termed as Development program.
Education: It is a theoretical learning in classrooms. The purpose of education is to teach theoretical concepts and develop a sense of reasoning and judgment. Any training and development program must contain an element of education.
Definition of Training & Development
“Training & Development is any attempt to improve current or future employee performance by improving his performance capabilities and potential through learning, usually by changing the employee’s attitude or increasing his or her skills and knowledge.”
The need for Training and Development is determined by the employee’s performance deficiency, computed as follows.
Training & Development Need = Standard Performance – Actual Performance
Objectives/purpose/goals of training and development
Training is defined by Wayne Cascio as “training consists of planed programs undertaken to improve employee knowledge, skills, attitude, and social behavior so that the performance of the organization improves considerably.”
The purpose of training and development can be explained as follows.
1.Improving quality of work force:- Training and development help companies to improve the quality of work done by their employees. Training programs concentrate on specific areas. There by improving the quality of work in that area.
2.Enhance employee growth:-Every employee who takes development program becomes better at his job. Training provides perfection and required practice, therefore employee’s area able to develop them professionally.
3.Prevents obsolescence:-Through training and development the employee is up to date with new technology and the fear of being thrown out of the job is reduced.
4.Assisting new comer:-Training and development programs greatly help new employees to get accustomed to new methods of working, new technology, the work culture of the company etc.
5.Bridging the gap between planning and implementation:plans made by companies expect people to achieve certain targets within certain time limit with certain quality for this employee performance has to be accurate and perfect. Training helps in achieving accuracy and perfection.
6.Health and safety measures:- Training and development program clearly identifies and teaches employees about the different risk involved in their job, the different problems that can arise and how to prevent such problems. This helps to improve the health and safety measures in the company.
OBJECTIVES OF MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS (MDP)
1. To make the managers
• Self-starters
• Committed
• Motivated
• Result oriented
• Sensitive to environment
• Understand use of power
2. Creating self awareness
3. Develop inspiring leadership styles
4. Instill zest for excellence
5. Teach them about effective communication
6. To subordinate their functional loyalties to the interests of the organization
IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT
1. Helps remove performance deficiencies in employees
2. Greater stability, flexibility and capacity for growth in an organization
3. Accidents, scraps and damages to machinery can be avoided
4. Serves as effective source of recruitment
5. It is an investment in HR with a promise of better returns in future
6. Reduces dissatisfaction, absenteeism, complaints and turnover of employees
IDENTIFICATION OF TRAINING NEEDS
Individual Training Needs Identification
1. Performance Appraisals
2. Interviews
3. Questionnaires
4. Attitude Surveys
5. Training Progress Feedback
6. Work Sampling
7. Rating Scales
Group Level Training Needs Identification1. Organizational Goals and Objectives
2. Personnel / Skills Inventories
3. Organizational Climate Indices
4. Efficiency Indices
5. Exit Interviews
6. MBO / Work Planning Systems
7. Quality Circles
8. Customer Satisfaction Survey
9. Analysis of Current and Anticipated Changes
Benefits of Training Needs Identification
1. Trainers can be informed about the broader needs in advance
2. Trainers Perception Gaps can be reduced between employees and their supervisors
3. Trainers can design course inputs closer to the specific needs of the participants
4. Diagnosis of causes of performance deficiencies can be done
METHODS OF TRAINING
On the Job Trainings (OJT): When an employee learns the job in actual working site in real life situation, and not simulated environment, it is called OJT. Employee learns while working. Take the instance of roadside mechanics. Small boys working there as helpers learn while helping the head mechanic. They do not learn the defect analysis and engine repairing skills in any classroom on engine models.
On the job method :- (5 marks)
On the job method refers to training given to personnel inside the company. There are different methods of on the job training.
1.Job rotation :- This method enables the company to train managerial personnel in departmental work. They are taught everything about the department. Starting from the lowest level job in the department to the highest level job. This helps when the person takes over as a manager and is required to check whether his juniors are doing the job properly or not. Every minute detail is studied.
2.Planned progression :- In this method juniors are assigned a certain job of their senior in addition to their own job. The method allows the employee to slowly learn the job of his senior so that when he is promoted to his senior job it becomes very easy for him to adjust to the new situation. It also provides a chance to learn higher level jobs.
3.Coaching and counseling :- Coaching refers to actually teaching a job to a junior. The senior person who is the coach actually teaches his junior regarding how the work must be handled and how decisions must be taken, the different techniques that can be used on the job, how to handle pressure. There is active participation from the senior. Counseling refers to advising the junior employee as and when he faces problems. The counselor superior plays an advisory role and does not actively teach employees.
4.Under study :-In this method of training a junior is deputed to work under a senior. He takes orders from the senior, observes the senior, attends meetings with him, learns about decision making and handling of day to day problems. The method is used when the senior is on the verge of retirement and the job will be taken over by the junior.
5.Junior board :- In this method a group of junior level managers are identified and they work together in a group called junior board. They function just like the board of directors. They identify certain problem, they have to study the problem and provide suggestions. This method improves team work and decision making ability. It gives an idea about the intensity of problem faced by the company. Only promising and capable junior level managers are selected for this method.
Advantages of On-the-Job Training:
1. It is directly in the context of job
2. It is often informal
3. It is most effective because it is learning by experience
4. It is least expensive
5. Trainees are highly motivated
6. It is free from artificial classroom situations
Disadvantages of On-the-Job Training:
1. Trainer may not be experienced enough to train or he may not be so inclined.
2. It is not systematically organized
3. Poorly conducted programs may create safety hazards
Off the Job Training: Trainings conducted in simulated environments, classrooms, seminars, etc are called Off the Job Training.
Advantages of Off-the-Job Training
1. Trainers are usually experienced enough to train
2. It is systematically organized3. Efficiently created programs may add lot of value
Disadvantages of Off-the-Job Training:
1. It is not directly in the context of job
2. It is often formal
3. It may not be based on experience.
4. It is expensive.
5. Trainees may not be much motivated
6. It is artificial in nature
“Off the Job Training” Methods
1.Classroom Lectures:Advantage – It can be used for large groups. Cost per trainee is low. Disadvantages – Low interest of employees. It is not learning by practice. It is One-way communication. No authentic feedback mechanism. Likely to lead to boredom for employees.
2.Audio-Visual: It can be done using Films, Televisions, Video, and Presentations etc. Advantages – Wide range of realistic examples, quality control possible. Disadvantages – One-way communication, No feedback mechanism. No flexibility for different audience.
3.Simulation: Creating a real life situation for decision-making and understanding the actual job conditions give it. Ensures active participation of all trainees. Can be very effective but needs good conductors.
4.Case Studies: It is a written description of an actual situation in the past in same organization or somewhere else and trainees are supposed to analyze and give their conclusions in writing. This is another excellent method to ensure full and whole hearted participation of employees and generates good interest among them. Case is later discussed by instructor with all the pros and cons of each option. It is an ideal method to promote decision-making abilities within the constraints of limited data.
5.Role Plays: Here trainees assume the part of the specific personalities in a case study and enact it in front of the audience. It is more emotional orientation and improves interpersonal relationships. Attitudinal change is another result. These are generally used in MDP.
6.Sensitivity Trainings:This is more from the point of view of behavioral assessment as to how an individual will conduct himself and behave towards others under different circumstances. There is no pre-planned agenda and it is instant. Advantages – increased ability to empathize, listening skills, openness, tolerance, and conflict resolution skills. Disadvantage – Participants may resort to their old habits after the training.
7.Programmed Instructions: Provided in the form of blocks either in book or a teaching machine using questions and feedbacks without the intervention of trainer. Advantages – Self paced, trainees can progress at their own speed, strong motivation for repeat learning, and material is structured and self-contained. Disadvantages – Scope for learning is less cost of books, manuals or machinery is expensive.
8.Computer Aided Instructions:It is extension of PI method, by using computers. Advantages – Provides accountabilities, modifiable to technological innovations, flexible to time. Disadvantages – High cost.
9.Laboratory Training.
INDUCTION & ORIENATION
Induction and Orientation are the procedure that a new employee has to go through in the organization. Every employee starting from the lower most, say, from peon to CEO, need orientation course when they join the organization? A new employee carries with him a lot of apprehension about place, job, colleagues, organizational culture, and so on. On the day of reporting, he needs to know his office/work place, routine, amenities, functional and reporting channels, etc.
Definition
“It is a Planned Introduction of employees to their jobs, their co-workers and the organization per se.”
Difference between Induction and Orientation
Induction refers to formal training programs that an employee has to complete before he is put on job. Like in Military, before a new recruit is sent to border, he is trained for a few months in Drill/Parade, physical fitness, weapon handling, etc. This is called Induction.
Orientation is the information given to the new employees to make him aware of the comfort issues - where the facilities are, what time lunch is, who are the people he would be working with and so forth.
Orientation conveys following information:
1. Organization’s geography/layout
2. Organizational set up (Structure)
3. Daily Work Routine
4. Organization Profile, History, Objectives, Products and Services, etc
5. Introduction to colleagues/immediate superiors and subordinates.
6. Importance of Jobs to the organization
7. Detailed Orientation Presentation covering policies, work rules and employee benefits.
TYPES OF ORIENTATION PROGRAMS
1.Formal or Informal: In informal orientation, new employees are put on the jobs and they are expected to acclimatize themselves with the work and the organization. In contrast, in formal orientation, an employee goes through a structured introduction programme.
2.Individual or Collective: Another choice is to be made whether new employees are to be inducted in group or individually.
3.Serial or Disjunctive: Orientation becomes serial when the person relinquishing the post hands over the position to the new incumbent. It becomes disjunctive when the new employee occupies a vacant position with no one to hand him over the position. He learns the prevalent practices and history slowly from his subordinates and superiors on gradual basis.
4.Investiture or Divestiture: This is the final strategic choice which relates to decision regarding allowing the new employees to affect the organization with his identity/ideas/functional methods or asking him to modify his identity to merge with existing culture of the organization. This is more applicable to high positions that may have been hired with a view to bring in their experiences and methods of management to the organization.
5.Define placement :- Companies conduct recruitment and selection and finally select employees. The employees undergo an induction program. After the induction program is over the employee is given a specific job in the company. This is called placement.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Change Management is a Critical HR Professional Skill
Definitions:
1. The adoption of a new idea or behavior by an organization.
2. Alterations in People, Structure and Technology
Change has become inevitable due to: -
(a) Technology
(b) Competition
(c) Growing customer needs
(d) Environment
(e) Politics
EXTERNAL FORCES OF CHANGE
1. Marketplace
2. Labor markets
3. Economic Changes
4. Technology
5. Laws and Regulations
INTERNAL FORCES OF CHANGE
1. Corporate Strategies2. Workplace
3. Technology and Equipments
4. Employee Attitudes
HOW TO REDUCE WORKPLACE STRESS
Biggest source of stress is Uncertainty. Quite often worst of the result is less painful than the anxiety waiting for it. If you can reduce uncertainty, stress will automatically reduce. However, reducing uncertainty is not always possible. Some of these methods can be employed to reduce work place stress: -
1.Organizational communication: Clear and prompt communication of policies and decisions can help in keeping the stress within manageable limits.
2.Performance Assessment is another source of anxiety. Clear predefined performance parameters will take the uncertainty out of assessment and also anxiety.
3.Job Redesign, especially when processes change, jobs merging, and relocation happens
4.Employee Counseling
5.Time management programs for employees: In the busy life of today, time management is another source of stress for a lot of employees. Time management programs will allow them to fill in more events into their daily life and reduce stress.
PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS
Performance Appraisals is the assessment of individual’s performance in a systematic way. It is a developmental tool used for all round development of the employee and the organization. The performance is measured against a number of factors. These factors can be divided into two groups.
(a)General personality such as initiative, leadership qualities, dependability, team spirit, etc.
(b)Professional qualities like job knowledge, quality and quantity of output, versatility and so on.
Factors vary from organization to organization and job to job. For a soldier, courage and endurance are more important factors. But for the Army General, his tactical abilities are more important. On the other side, a foreman in a factory would never be assessed for his courage. Assessment is often not confined to past performance but checks for potential performance also. The second definition brings in focus behavior because behavior affects not only employee’s performance but even his peers’ and subordinates’.
Definition 1: “It is a systematic evaluation of an individual with respect to present performance on the job and his potential.”
Objectives:performance appraisals are used as a basis for following activities: -
1. Promotions
2. Confirmations
3. Training and Development program planning
4. Compensation reviews
5. Competency building
6. Evaluation of HR Programs
7. Feedback & Grievances
Advantages/needs/importance/use/purpose of performance appraisal
Performance appraisal is defined by Wayne Cascio as “the systematic description of employee’s job relevant, strength, weakness.
1.Feedback to the employee:performance appraisal is beneficial because it provides feedback to the employee about his performance. It identifies the areas for improvement so that employee can improve itself.
2.Training and development:-
Due to performance appraisal it is easy to understand what type of training is required for each employee to improve himself accordingly training programs can be arranged.
3.Helps to decide promotion:-
Performance appraisal provides a report about the employee. Based on this report future promotions are decided, incentives, salary increase is decided.
4.Validation of selection process:-
Through performance appraisal the HR department can identify whether any changes are required in the selection process of the company normally a sound selection process results in better performance and positive appraisal.
5.Deciding transfers and lay off of the worker:-
Employee with specific talent can be transferred to places where their talents are utilized properly similarly decisions regarding termination of employees depend upon performance appraisal reports.
6.Human resource planning and career development:-
Companies can plan for future vacancies at higher levels based on performance appraisal reports. Similarly career planning can be done for the employee on the performance appraisal report.
PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL PROCESS
1. Setting Objectives and Standards of performance
2. Design an appropriate appraisal program – Appraisal program for different levels of employees would be different.
3. Performance Interviews
4. Appraise and record the performance
5. Use and store data for appropriate purposes
6. Identify opportunities variables
TECHNIQUES / METHODS OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS
Numerous methods have been devised to measure the quantity and quality of performance appraisals. Each of the methods is effective for a particular class of employees in certain types of organization only.
Broadly all methods of appraisals can be divided into two different categories.
• Past Oriented Methods
• Future Oriented Methods
PAST/TRADITIONAL ORIENTED METHODS: Traditional method of performance appraisal has been used by companies for very long time. A common feature of these methods is they are all relatively simple and involve appraisal by one senior.
1.Check list method :-In this method the senior, the boss is given a list of questions about the junior. These questions are followed by check boxes. The superior has to put a tick mark in any one of the boxes a questioner containing questions is given to the senior. This method is an extremely simple method and does not involve a lot of time. The same set of questioners can be given foe every employee so that there is uniformity in selecting employee.
2.Confidential report :- This method is very popular in government departments to appraise IAS officers and other high level officials. In this method the senior or the boss writes a report about the junior giving him details about the performance about the employee. The positive and negative traits, responsibilities handled on the job and recommendations for future incentives or promotions. The report is kept highly confidential and access to the report is limited.
3.Critical incident method :- In this method critical or important incidents which have taken place on this job are noted down along with employee’s behavior and reaction in all these situations. Both positive and negative incidents are mentioned. This is followed by an analysis of the person, his abilities and talent, recommendations for the future incentives and promotions.
4.Ranking method :- In this method ranks are given to employees based on their performance. There are different methods of ranking employees.
Simple ranking method
Alternate ranking method
Paired comparison method
i.Simple ranking method :- Simple ranking method refers to ranks in serial order from the best employee e.g. If we have to rank 10 best employees we start with the first best employee and give him the first rank this is followed by the 2nd best and so on until all 10 have been given ranks.
ii.Alternate ranking :- In this method the serial alternates between the best and the worst employee. The best employee is given rank 1 and then we move to the worst employee and give him rank 10 again to 2nd best employee and give him rank 2 and so on.
iii.Paired comparison :- In this method each and every person is the group, department or team is compared with every other person in the team/group/department. The comparison is made on certain criteria and finally ranks are given. This method is superior because it compares each and every person on certain qualities and provides a ranking on that basis.
5.Graphic rating scale :- Graphic rating scale refers to using specific factors to appraise people. The entire appraisal is presented in the form of a chart. The chart contains certain columns which indicate qualities which are being appraised and other columns which specify the rank to be given.The senior has to put a tick mark for a particular quality along with the ranking. Such charts are prepared for every employee. According to the department in which they work. Sometimes the qualities which are judged may change depending upon the department.
6.Narrated essay :- In this method the senior or the boss is supposed to write a narrative essay describing the qualities of his junior. He may describe the employees strength and weakness, analytical abilities etc. the narrative essay ends with a recommendation for future promotion or for future incentives.
FUTUR/MODERN ORIENTED METHODS
Modern methods of appraisal are being increasingly used by companies. Now days one of the striving feature that appraisal involves is, the opinion of many people about the employee and in some cases psychological test are used to analyze the ability of employee. These methods are as follows
1.Role analysis :- In this method of appraisal the person who is being apprised is called the focal point and the members of his group who are appraising him are called role set members.
These role set members identify key result areas (KRA) (areas where you want improvement are called KRA) which have to be achieved by the employee. The KRA and their improvement will determine the amount of incentives and benefits which the employee will receive in future. The appraisal depends upon what role set members have to say about the employee.
2.Assessment centers :- Assessment centers (AC) are places where the employee’s are assessed on certain qualities talents and skills which they possess. This method is used for selection as well as for appraisal. The people who attend assessment centers are given management games, psychological test, puzzles, questioners about different management related situations etc. based on their performance in these test an games appraisal is done.
3.Management by objective :- This method was given by Petter Druckard in 1974. It was intended to be a method of group decision making. It can be use for performance appraisal also. In this method all members of the of the department starting from the lowest level employee to the highest level employee together discus, fix target goals to be achieved, plan for achieving these goals and work together to achieve them. The seniors in the department get an opportunity to observe their junior- group efforts, communication skills, knowledge levels, interest levels etc. based on this appraisal is done.
4.Behavioral anchored rating scale :- In this method the appraisal is done to test the attitude of the employee towards his job. Normally people with positive approach or attitude view and perform their job differently as compared to people with a negative approach.
5.Psychological testing :- In this method clinically approved psychological test are conducted to identify and appraise the employee. A feedback is given to the employee and areas of improvement are identified.
6.Human resource audit/accounting :- In this method the expenditure on the employee is compared with the income received due to the efforts of the employee. A comparison is made to find out the utility of the employee to the organization. The appraisal informs the employee about his contribution to the company and what is expected in future.
7.360* appraisal :- In this method of appraisal and all round approach is adopted. Feedback about the employee is taken from the employee himself, his superiors, his juniors, his colleagues, customers he deals with, financial institutions and other people he deals with etc. Based on all these observations an appraisal is made and feedback is given. This is one of the most popular methods.
ESSENTIALS OF A GOOD PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL SYSTEM:
1. Standardized Performance Appraisal System
2. Defined performance standards – Bench Marks
3. Uniformity of appraisals
4. Trained Raters
5. Use of relevant rating tools or methods
6. Should be based on job analysis7. Use of objectively verifiable data
8. Avoid rating problems like halo effect, central tendency, leniency, severity etc.
9. Consistent Documentations maintained
10. No room for discrimination based on cast, creed, race, religion, region etc.
Process of performance appraisal (5 marks)
Performance appraisal is defined by Wayne Cascio as “the systematic description of employee’s job relevant, strength, weakness.
Process of performance appraisal followed by different companies is different. A general procedure is explained below with the help of a diagram.
1.Setting performance standards:- In this very first step in performance appraisal the HR department decides the standards of performance i.e. they decide what exactly is expected from the employee for each and every job. Sometimes certain marking scheme may be adopted e.g. A score 90/100 = excellent performance, a score 80/100 = good. And so on.
2.Communication standard set to the employee:- Standards of performance appraisal decided in 1st step are now conveyed to the employee so that the employee will know what is expected from him and will be able to improve his performance. 3.Measuring performance:- The performance of the employee is now measure by the HR department, different methods can be used to measure performance i.e. traditional and modern method. The method used depends upon the company’s convenience.
4.Comparing performance with standard:-The performance of the employee is now judged against the standard. To understand the score achieved by him. Accordingly we come to know which category of performance the employee falls into i.e. excellent, very good, good, satisfactory etc.
5.Discussing result:-The results obtained by the employee after performance appraisal are informed or conveyed to him by the HR department. A feedback is given to the employee asking him to change certain aspects of his performance and improve them.
6.Collective action:-The employee is given a chance or opportunity to improve himself in the areas specified by the HR department. The HR department constantly receives or keeps a check on the employee’s performance and notes down improvements in performance.
7.Implementation and review:-The performance appraisal policy is to be implemented on a regular basis. A review must be done from time to time to check whether any change in policy is required. Necessary changes are made from time to time.
Limitations of performance appraisal
Performance appraisal is defined by Wayne Cascio as “the systematic description of employee’s job relevant, strength, weakness.
The following are the limitations of performance appraisal
1.Halo effect :- In this case the superior appraises the person on certain positive qualities only. The negative traits are not considered. Such an appraisal will not give a true picture about the employee. And in some cases employees who do not deserve promotions may get it.
2.Horn effect :- In this case only the negative qualities of the employee are considered and based on this appraisal is done. This again will not help the organization because such appraisal may not present a true picture about the employee.
3.Central tendency :- In this case the superior gives an appraisal by giving central values. This prevents a really talented employee from getting promotions he deserves and some employees who do not deserve anything may get promotion.
4.Leniency and strictness:-
Some bosses are lenient in grading their employees while some are very strict. Employee who really deserves promotions may lose the opportunity due to strict bosses while those who may not deserve may get benefits due to lenient boss.
5.Spill over effect:-
In this case the employee is judged positively or negatively by the boss depending upon the past performance. Therefore although the employee may have improved performance, he may still not get the benefit.
6.Fear of losing subordinates and spoiling relations:-
Many bosses do not wish to spoil their relations with their subordinates. Therefore when they appraise the employee they may end up giving higher grades which are not required. This is an n injustice to really deserving employees.
7.Goodwill and techniques to be used:-
Sometimes a very strict appraisal may affect the goodwill between senior and junior. Similarly when different departments in the same company use different methods of appraisal it becomes very difficult to compare employees.
8.Paper work and personal biased:-
Appraisal involves a lot of paper work. Due to this the work load of HR department increases. Personal bias and prejudice result in bosses favoring certain people and not favoring others.
MOTIVATION THEORIES
Performance is a function of ability and motivation. P = f (A x M)
Definition:
Motivation is a set of forces that cause internal desire in people to behave in certain ways.
MOTIVATION PROCESS (6 STEPS)
1. Identify Individual’s Needs
2. Search for ways to satisfy needs
3. Goal & Objectives directed
4. Increased performance
5. Receiving rewards or punishment
6. Reassessment of needs
CRITICALITY OF MOTIVATION TO MANAGERS
Manager is responsible for improving the productivity of his subordinates and ensuring that his they contribute towards the objective and mission of the organization. It is only possible when employees perform at their maximum efficiency level. Motivation is a tool to achieve high level of performance from employees. Depending upon the direction, motivation can achieve one or more of the objectives below: -
1. Motivation improves productivity.
2. Motivation stimulates both participation and production at work
3. Motivation helps employees find new ways of doing a job
4. Motivation makes employees quality conscious
5. Motivation improves job related behavior.
6. Motivation increases attention towards human resources along with physical resources
PERSONNEL POLICIES
MEANING OF PERSONNEL POLICY
A Policy is a Plan of Action. It is a statement of intentions committing the management to a general course of action. A Policy may contain philosophy and principles as well. However a policy statement is more specific and commits the management to a definite course of action.
Hence Personnel policy is the company’s plan of action towards treatment of its employees in matters of pay, benefits, welfare, work, etc. A personnel policy spells out basic needs of the employees. Through personnel policy the personnel department ensures a fair and consistent treatment to all personnel by minimizing favouritism and discrimination. Personnel policy serves as a standard of treatment to all employees. Sound personnel policies help build employee motivation and loyalty. And this happens when personnel policies reflect fair play and justice and help people grow within the organization. Personnel policies are also plans of action to resolve intra-personal, inter-personal and inter-group conflicts.
IMPORTANCE OF PERSONNEL POLICY
Personnel policy is very important for an organization since it gives several benefits for managing the human resources effectively. Listed below are some of the benefits: 1.Consistent Treatment: Personnel policies ensure consistent treatment of all personnel throughout the organization.
2.Fair Play & Justice: Personnel policies reflect established principles of fair play and justice.
3.Minimize Favouritism: Personnel policies help minimize favouritism and discrimination
4.Promote Stability: Personnel policies ensure continuity of action plan even if top management is changed. These policies promote stability.
5.Motivation & Loyalty: Sound Personnel policies help build employee motivation and loyalty.
6.Basic Needs: Personnel policy helps the management to think deeply about basic needs of organization and the employees.
7.Standard of Performance: Personnel policies serve as a standard of performance.
8.Growth: Personnel policies help people grow within the organization.
PERSONNEL MANUAL
Personnel Policy Manual: A personnel policy manual is a booklet, which contains a comprehended form of the organizations policies regarding personnel. These policies deal with different aspects like employee benefits, employee discipline, company policies regarding unions etc. These policies prove to be guidelines for the functioning of an employee as an individual and also the functioning of the organization in totality. These policies avoid any sort of confusion when they are in written form. A personnel manual acts a guide to employees, managers and supervisors. A personnel manual should be provided to all managerial employees as a reference book for their task performance.
CONTENTS OF THE PERSONNEL MANUAL
1.Organization goals and objectives.
2. Personnel Policy.
3. The role of the Personnel Department.
4. Human Resource Planning.
5. Job Design, Job Analysis, Job Evaluation.6. Recruitment and Selection.
7. Orientation, Induction and Placement.
8. Training and Development.
9. Performance Appraisal.
10. Remuneration, Rewards, Incentives.
11. Employee Benefits and Services.
12. Promotions, Transfers, Separations.
13. Employee Welfare/Employee Relations.
14. Safety and Health, Counseling.
15. Employees Participation.
16. Industrial Relations.
BENEFITS OF PERSONNEL POLICY MANUAL
1) Clear explanation of existing policies:
One major benefit is that a written manual of policy provides everyone in management with a clear explanation of all existing company policies and practices. This acts as an invaluable asset to communications. Policy manual acts as a self-explanatory document
2) Useful tool in supervisory training:
Personnel policy manual provides excellent material that can be used in conducting supervisory training courses for new supervisors and for refreshing their understanding of past company policy. Results of supervisory training will be available if company develop a comprehensive and integrated company policy manual and use it as a basis for supervisory training programme, personnel policy manual acts as a cornerstone of supervisory training programmed in human relation case studies, role playing, and other problem solving techniques can be designed around the policy manual. Discussion among supervisors in the context of the company’s policy manual generates comment and criticism that are invaluable feedback for consideration of further modification.
3) Document to company’s faith on fair personnel polices: Personnel policy manual serves as written documentation of a company good faith in providing fair employment practices and equal employment opportunities for present employees and future job applicants of the company.
4) Readymade guide or personnel policies and procedures: A company needs well-trained and properly qualified managers who are capable of administering company’s policy in fair and a consistent manner. For this managers should know how to interpret company policy effectively clearly and promptly personnel policy acts as a guide to supervisory staff in regard to personnel policies and procedures.
5) Training manual for supervisory staff: Personnel policy manual act as a training manual for all ranks of supervision and key personnel officers in clearly understanding the personnel policies firmly, fairly equally to all employees regardless of their race color religion. Members of management can support the personnel policies and practices towers providing equal employment opportunities only to the degree of understanding of such policies and practices.
6) Avoid indecision on personnel matters: Personnel policy manual avoids indecision in regard to personnel matters. This reduces the tension on the part of management. It is in a position to reach to decisions in relation to operating personnel policies and practices.
7) Avoids unfair employment practices: Supervisors are supposed to know how to interpret companies’ personnel policies effectively and correctly so that employees or trade union will not be able to charge management with unfair employment practices. These manuals provide with necessary information explanation and guidance to managers and avoid misinterpretation of personnel policies and practices of the company by the managers and supervisors. This protects goodwill and reputation of the company.
8) Act as a communication tool: Personnel policy manual is useful as a tool of communication with the users it act as two-way communication tool in development stage and an authorized announcement method after policy has been approved. The view of supervisors can be collected and studied before changing the policies incorporated in the manual. The official announcing of the new policy is made through the manual. This provides the details that answers question before they are asked. In brief policy manual acts as a useful communication device within the organization.
PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT
Participative management refers to the process of involving employee or employees’ representative at all levels of decision-making. Co-determination is another term for participative management. Participative management is also called employee involvement. Participative management is admittedly a synthesis of several management theories. Combining the best of several theories with a variety of state-of-the-art ideas may result in a leadership style that exceeds the capability of any single model or previously conceived combination. The basic principle in this leadership model is to involve all of the employees and managers actively in a common goal. This overall goal must be clearly defined and understood by everyone. It is best accomplished by direct face-to-face communication among all employees and all managers. On discovery of the well-defined goal, employees and managers must then set about developing secondary goals and rational objectives to meet the group's responsibility. Each goal or objective is then given to a subgroup for study. These smaller groups are commonly made up of employees and managers with a particular expertise or interest in the issue at hand. Employees or managers who are especially vocal concerning a given issue might be included in the study group for that issue. In its narrow sense, participative management refers to the constitution of consultative councils and committees, comprising representatives of employees and employers, to recommend steps for improving productivity, machine utilization, job loading for effecting savings in power light for identifying lazy workers, safety, so on and so forth. Participative management is considered as a process by which the workers’ share in decision – making extends beyond the decisions that are implicit in the specific contents of the jobs they do. This, in actual practice, amounts to the workers having a share in the reaching of final managerial decisions in an enterprise.
Definition: -
In the words of DAVIS,
“It is a mental and emotional involvement of a person in a group situation which encourages him to contribute to goals and share responsibilities with them.”
IMPORTANCE OF PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT
The importance of participative management is universally accepted and efforts are being made for introducing such participation through suitable agencies and methods.
1.Participative management has wider socio-economic importance as it gives various advantages to workers, employers and the society at large. Such participation gives higher status to workers and enables them to think and express their views on the working of their company.
2.Industrial peace and cordial industrial relations are also established through participative management. In addition, workers’ participation brings industrial democracy in reality.
3.Participative management is important as it satisfies the psychological need of self-_expression of workers. Even the process of decision-making is made democratic through workers’ participation.
4.It brings human element or humanitarian approach in industrial management.
5.Participative management introduces a new set of values for the workers and employers in which power is to be replaced by persuasion and compulsion by co-operation.
6.Employee’s participation is also useful for raising industrial production and productivity. It helps consumers in an indirect manner.
7.The national economy also gets certain benefits when industrial peace and harmony exist over a long period. In brief, the concept of participative management is important because of economic, social and human values connected with it.
The ILO [International Labor Organization] has given moral support to employee’s participation and has advocated its adoption in all countries. Efforts are being made in all countries in this regard. In the countries of the West, this experiment is reasonably successful, while in developing countries including India the process is not satisfactory even when consultative machinery exists in many countries.
PRE-REQUISITES OF PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT
1. The participants, namely, the management and the operatives, must have clearly defined and complementary objectives. And the objectives of one party should not work at cross-purposes with the objectives of the other party.
2. There must be a free flow of information and communication between the management and the workers. In this way, distrust and suspicion are avoided, and workers become responsible and mature when they discuss their demands with the management.
3. The representatives of workers must be drawn from the workers themselves. The participation of the outside trade union leaders should be discouraged. This is necessary because the problems and difficulties of the workers are better understood by the workers themselves than by others. The workers, therefore, can put across their points of view to the management with confidence.
4. Strong and effective trade unionism is necessary for the success of participative management politicization and multiplicity of trade unions defeat the purpose of participation and management.
5. Education and training of workers make a significant contribution to the purposive working of participative management. Trade unions and the government can play a major and meaningful role in organizing and conducting training programmes.
6. Neither party should feel that its position is threatened by participation. If workers think that their status will be adversely affected, they will not participate. If the managers feel that their authority is threatened, they will refuse participation or will be on the defensive.
7. Consultative bodies, collective bargaining and suggestion schemes make a mockery of participative management. To make worker’s participation meaningful and purposeful, workers should be associated at all levels of decision-making.
8. The success of participation depends on a suitable participative structure and a change of heart on the part of employers and employees, which may take a long time to develop. To expedite this development, some sort of legislative action is necessary.
9. There could be the danger of a major portion of the resources of the enterprises being diverted to workers without much consideration for further investments. It may be desirable to reserve a certain percentage of the resources for reinvestment, either through mutual agreement or legislation.
10. The financial cost of participation should not exceed the values, economic and otherwise, that come from it. Employees cannot spend all their time in participation, to the exclusion of other work.
METHODS AND TECHNIQUES OF PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT:
Participative management is possible by creating suitable agencies, forum or platform through which effective communication between workers and management will be possible and joint decision will be arrived at.
The following methods/technique is normally used in India for the introduction of participative management:
The methods of participative management noted above are the different alternatives and employers and workers can select anyone method which is suitable and convenient. They have to make the selected method popular and also purposeful. This is natural as the method selected/used is not important but the result-oriented participations are important. The method used is a means while effective participation is end.
1. WORKS COMMITTEE:The Industrial Dispute act, 1947 provided for the setting up of a works committee consisting of representative of management and employees in every undertaking employing 100 or more employees. The committees are for removing the causes of friction between employer and workers in the day-to-day working of the factory. They also provides forum for negotiation between employers and workers at factory level. This joint consultative committee meets frequently for decision on common problem before workers and the management. After discussion, joint decisions are taken and such decisions are binding on both the parties.
Matters like wage payment, bonus, training, discipline, welfare facilities, working condition, etc. This committee are extremely popular and effective in France and England whereas in India it is not popular an effective.
2. JOINT MANAGEMENT COUNCIL: These councils are similar to works committee with equal representation to employees. Workers express their views, problem and difficulties through their representative on such councils. Various problems such as welfare facilities, discipline, training, removal of workers, common grievances, etc. are discussed in the meeting. Such joint consultative committees exist in UK and Sweden. In India, participative management is mainly through joint management council but not effectively operated.
3. CO-PARTNERSHIP (PARTICIPATION THROUGH OWNERSHIP): In co-partnership, workers are converted into shareholders of the company and are allowed to participate in the management like others shareholders. The company may give financial assistance to workers to purchase equity shares. They can elect their representative on the board of directors. Workers are also allowed to attend meeting of the company and participate in the discussion. Voting rights are also given to employees. This makes them to participate in the decision-making and policy framing of the company at their highest level. They work in two different capacities- as workers and as co-workers. Many companies in India offers theirs shares to the employees but workers don’t give positive response and hence not encouraging. This suggests that co-partnership, as a method of participative management is not effective/popular in India.
4. EMPLOYEE DIRECTORS: Here, two or three representative of workers are taken on board of directors of the company. The employee directors/ workers directors are elected by workers and they express their view of workers in the meeting of the board. Here, employee’s directors act as a link between top management and the workers. Such participation ensures cordial industrial relation. The representative of workers can put the view of workers before the directors and can also safeguard the interests of workers. As a result, the personnel policies will be fair and favorable to workers. Unfavorable decision to workers will be avoided and better treatment will be ensures to them. This mechanism of participation is now used extensively in public sector undertaking in India as per the initiative taken by the government.
5. SUGGESTION SCHEMES / PROGRAMMES: Under suggestion programme/scheme, workers are asked to give suggestion to the management on various administrative and other matters such as machines utilization, waste management, energy conservation and safety measures. Their suggestions are considered by a joint committee representing workers, heads of departments and technical experts. Such suggestions are for improvement in the existing organizational setup. Suitable suggestions relating to production activities, cost control, quality improvement, working condition, etc. are promptly accepted an executed. In addition, rewards are also given to those who make constructive suggestion. For collecting suggestion, suggestion boxes are kept in the organization. Suggestion scheme of participative management encourages workers to think (individually or collectively) and participate in raising the efficiency of the organization. In India companies like TATA, DCM, etc. adopt this method. This idea of participative management is now put into operations through quality circles, which are popular in Japan and now function in many Indians companies.
6. WORKERS CO-OPERATIVES (AUTO MANAGEMENT): In this extreme form of labors participation, workers take over the industrial unit and manage it completely on co-operative basis. Naturally, the entirely management is by the workers themselves. This method is also called as auto management.The basic purpose of above noted scheme of participative management is to associates workers with the decision making process. The methods used for workers participation are not important but the purposeful participation is important.
7. PARICIPATION THROUGH COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: The principle of collective bargaining confers on the management and the workers the right, through collective arguments, to lay down certain rules for formulation and termination of the contract of employment, as well as the conditions of service in an establishment. Such agreements are binding on parties and have the force of law. Collective bargaining can really work well if the bargaining parties, namely, the employers and the workers’ representatives, make use of the opportunity for bargaining in the right spirit and for a positive purpose. Collective bargaining is no-substitute for workers’ participation in management. Participation brings both the parties together and develops appropriate mutual understanding, and brings about a mature and responsible relationship. Collective bargaining, on the contrary, is based on the crude concept of power and its exercise for sectional bargaining, which may end up in mistrust, withholding of information and use of pressure tactics.
8. PARTICIPATION THROUGH JOB ENLARGEMENT AND JOB ENRICHMENT: Job enlargement means expanding the job content – adding task elements horizontally. Job enrichment means that additional motivators are added to the job so that it’s more rewarding. The purpose of job enlargement and job enrichment is to relieve boredom of the workers, which flow from excessive specialization in mass-production industries so that the job itself may be a source of self-satisfaction. Job enlargement and job enrichment do provide for workers participation because they offer freedom and scope to them to use their judgment.However this form of participation provides only limited freedom to a worker concerning the method of performing his/her job. It will not give him or her any say in some of the vital questions he or she may be interested in, such as job and income security, welfare scheme and other policy decisions of the company which affect him/her directly.
9. PARTICIPATION THROUGH QUALITY CIRCLES: A quality circle consists of seven to ten people from the same work area who meet regularly to define, analyze, and solve quality and related problems in their area. Membership is strictly voluntary, and meetings are usually held once a week for an hour. During the groups initial meetings, members are trained in problem solving techniques borrowed from group dynamics, industrial engineering and quality control. These techniques include brainstorming, Pareto analysis, cause-effect analysis, histograms, control charts, stratification and scatter diagrams.Quality circles are credited with producing quick and impressive results when correctly implemented.
Their advantages include the following:
1.Employees are involved in decision-making. This privilege makes them acquire communication and analytical skills and improve their efficiency at the workplace.
2.Savings-to-costs ratios generally are higher than those achieved with other productivity improvement programmes.
3.Because the programme is voluntary, employees and unions do not view them as another cost control effort.
4.Circle members enhance their chances of promotion to supervisory positions.
CURRENT TRENDS IN PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT:
1. SUBGROUP ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT: -Each subgroup should elect a discussion leader and a recorder. The responsibility of the discussion leader is to focus group meetings, and the responsibility of the recorder is to present an accurate record of the group's activities. Subgroups should meet regularly for a limited amount of time. An agenda for each meeting is a necessity agenda items may be referred by the group or by members of the management team. It is important for the subgroup to present a consensus within a set of previously established time constraints. In other words, with each topic comes a time frame for ultimate decision. If necessary, the group may issue a majority and a minority opinion, but only when a group cannot reach a consensus opinion regarding a single issue. Participation in each subgroup should be limited to 15 members or fewer, to facilitate effective decision-making. An odd number of members in each group will assist in establishing majority versus minority opinions.
2. MANAGEMENT PARTICIPATION IN GROUP ACTIVITIES: -Members of the existing management team act as facilitators within the groups. Each group should include a minimum of one staff member (a middle or upper manager) with a particular interest or expertise in the group's topic. This management person should provide the group with pertinent information and resources necessary to accomplish the group's task.
The staff member is not necessarily the group leader unless elected by a majority of the group members. Frequently, the group is better served by electing a rank-and-file member as group leader, rather than a management team member. However, the assigned manager is responsible for assisting the discussion leader in maintaining decorum and maintaining a focus on the group's assigned activities. Additionally, the discussion leader, recorder, and management advisor are jointly responsible for preparing and presenting the group's decisions and opinions to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or Chief Administrator of the organization.
3. ANNUAL GOAL- SETTING MEETINGS: The traditional annual goal-setting meeting has value, particularly to identify Training needed to fulfill specific work tasks. An area, which requires constant attention, is staff development. For leaders to trust staff with greater autonomy or decision-making power, they must be confident that staffs have adequate skill levels. Similarly, most staff are reluctant to take the initiative and accept responsibility if they are not confident of their ability to succeed. Use goal-setting meetings to consider career goals and skills and knowledge needed for future effectiveness. Laying a foundation of common goals and competent staff is vital for participative management to succeed. Also absolutely crucial is promoting an environment of trust where staff can speak out and take initiative without fear of punishment
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY AND PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT: Both the concepts are supplementary and complementary in character and not conflicting and clashing with each other. In fact, industrial democracy can be introduced through various forums of participative management. Thus, participative management is an essential ingredient of industrial democracy. Works committees, joint management councils, etc are the different methods useful for the introduction of industrial democracy in concrete form.
Participative management is the basic requirement of industrial democracy. It is through such participation that industrial democracy is put into practice. Labor participation in industry is rightly viewed as industrial democracy in action. This is how the workers participation in any suitable form serves as an essential ingredient of industrial democracy. In industrial democracy, an effective system of communication and consultation in between the employer and workers is required and labor participation in management creates such system/ machinery. Industrial democracy is not merely an economic concept but an attitude of mind and hits attitude can be given clear and concrete shape through workers participation scheme. Thus, participative management prepares sound and solid base for industrial democracy. There is absolutely no conflict between the two concepts. Attention to both is needed for industrial peace, cordial industrial relations and rapid industrial growth.
UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES
Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, specifies the following as unfair labor practices:
1.To interfere, restrain, coerce workmen in the exercise of their right to organize, form, join or assist a trade union.2.Threatening workmen with discharge or dismissal
3.Threatening of lockout or closure
4.Granting wage increases to undermine trade union efforts
5.To dominate, interfere with or support financially or socially by taking active interest in forming own trade union, and
6.Showing partiality or granting favors to one of several trade unions
7.To establish employer sponsored trade unions
8.To encourage or discourage memberships in any trade union by discriminating workman by punishing or discharging, changing seniority ratings, refusing promotions, giving unmerited promotions, discharging union office bearers
9.To discharge or dismiss workmen by victimizing, not in good faith, implicating in criminal case for patently false reasons.
10.To abolish work of a regular nature
11.To transfer workmen
12.To show favouritism or partiality
13.To replace workers
14.To recruit workmen during legal strikes
15.To indulge in acts of violence or force
16.To refuse collective bargaining
17.Proposing and continuing lockouts
ORGANIZATIONAL DOWNSIZING: Downsizing necessarily means reducing work force to an optimal level depending upon the business conditions and organizational needs. It is said that an organization should be rightly staffed i.e. It should not be overstaffed and or understaffed. There are broadly following method used to downsize the workforce as mentioned below.
RETRENCHMENT
It means termination of service. It is a termination for reasons other than disciplinary actions, retirement or superannuating, expiry and termination of contract or prolonged illness. Retrenchment compensation and notice for retrenchment are only pre-conditions for retrenchment. If notice and compensation are not given, the worker will not be called as retrenched. Compensation is payable for 15 days wages for every completed year of service besides one month’s notice or pay in lieu of notice. But employee should have completed at least one year of complete service in order to receive compensation.
LAY OFFS
Lay off is inability of the employer to provide employment to workers due to circumstances beyond his control such as shortage of power, coal, breakdown of machinery, natural calamity etc. It is not a termination of service. Lay off compensation can be claimed as a statutory right by the worker if he has completed one year of continuous service or has worked for 240 days on the surface or 190 days underground in 12 calendar months. Compensation payable
 

dk2424

New member
EXECUTIVE REMUNERATION



An executive is at the highest levels in a management. Executives play a critical role in the functioning of the organization. So, it is obvious that they should be paid hefty amounts. Every company has its own remuneration plan for its executives. And most of the times their pay is kept secret. Executives are the decision makers in the organization. In the recent years, there has been a sudden spurt in managerial remuneration due to economic deregulation. Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Managing Directors and General Managers fall with the category of “Executives.”





COMPONENTS OF EXECUTIVE REMUNERATION

SALARY

Salary is determined through job evaluation and it serves as a basis for other types of benefits. They are paid for their capabilities. Executives are offered hefty incentives and attractive perks because their total salary is subject to deductions at source. So, the incentives and perks are given in good amount in order to make good all the losses.

BONUS

Bonus plays an important role in today’s competitive Executive Payment Programmes. It is on an annual basis and based on the performance.

LONG TERM INCENTIVES

If bonus constitutes a short term benefit then stock options (E-SOPS) are long term benefits offered to executives. Companies allow the executives to purchase their shares at fixed prices. The disadvantage here is that the executives are at the same risk in terms of share prices falling down as the other shareholders of the company. But, it’s better than “millions of dollars of obvious money changing hands.”

The criteria to select employees under E-SOP are:-

1. Positions held by employees: - The positions held are crucial and retention of employees is essential for the company.

2. Consistent performance:- Employees whose performance has been consistently outstanding.

3. Length of service in the company: - Those employees who have stayed with the company for a minimum number of years and who have demonstrated honesty, loyalty and commitment to the company.

PERQUISITES

These constitute a major source of income for executives. Perks that are offered are provident funds, gratuity, special parking, plush office, vacation travel, auto expenses, and membership in clubs and well furnished houses. Executives are rarely required to spend money from their pockets. Their holidays, servants, telephone bills, electricity and even gas bills are taken care of by their companies.













SPECIAL FEATURES
Factors and variables are more numerous in management jobs and so simple comparison and ratings may not be possible.
Executives are denied the privilege of having unionized strength. Therefore, they cannot go on strikes, ask for a pay rise, etc.
Secrecy is maintained in executive remuneration. Remuneration depends upon such factors as competence, length of service and loyalty to the founders.
Executive pay is not supposed to be based on individual performance but on organizational performance.
Private Ltd. Companies have no ceilings for executive remuneration. Whereas, Public Ltd. Company can not exceed 10% of its net profit in case it has more than one managerial personnel.









EXTENT OF PAY

Exorbitant amounts are paid to the decision – makers in an organization. Executive’s salary in India range from 50 lakh to 1 crore.







WHY ARE EXECUTIVES PAID MORE?

1. Executives have intrinsic worth and so they command hefty premiums.

2. They are always in short supply.

3. Retaining high – caliber personnel is more difficult than attracting them.

4. Having succeeded in retaining them, the managers must be motivated for better performance.

5. ‘The Third Wave’ that is sweeping across the world compels disproportionately high remuneration to be paid to knowledgeable personnel.

6. They have wider access to vital documents, have contacts with other parties and are able to connive with security personnel.
 
Last edited:

dk2424

New member
WHAT IS HRM?

MEANING OF HRM
HRM is a management function that helps organisation to recruit, select, train, develop and manage its members. Simply stated, HRM is all about management of people in the organisation from Recruitment to Retirement. HRM refers to set of programs, functions, and activities designed and carried out in order to maximise both employee as well as organisational effectiveness.
Definition 1
“HRM is planning, organizing, directing and controlling of the procurement, development, compensation, integration, maintenance and separation of human resources to the end that individual, organizational and social objectives are accomplished.”
Definition 2
“HRM is concerned with the people dimensions in management. Since every organization is made up of people, acquiring their services, developing their skills, motivating them to higher levels of performance and ensuring that they continue to maintain their commitment to the organization are essential to achieving organizational objectives. This is true, regardless of the type of the organization – government, business, education, health, recreational, or social action.”

OBJECTIVES OF HRM
1. Organizational Objectives: To assist the organization to achieve its primary objectives, whether it is profit making or charity or social agenda.

2. Societal Objectives: To be responsive to the needs and challenges of the society while minimizing the negative impact, if any, of such demands upon the organization.

3. Functional Objectives: To maintain department’s contribution and level of services at a level appropriate to the organization’s needs.

4. Personal Objectives: To assist employees in achieving their personal goals, at least in so far as these goals enhance the individual’s contribution to the organization. This is necessary to maintain employee performance and satisfaction for the purpose of maintaining, retaining and motivating the employees in the organization.
SCOPE OF HRM
From Entry to Exit or Recruitment to Retirement of an employee in the organization

Following are the areas of operation of HRM:
1. Human Resource Planning
2. Job Analysis
3. Job Design
4. Recruitment & Selection
5. Orientation & Placement
6. Training & Development
7. Performance Appraisals
8. Job Evaluation
9. Employee and Executive Remuneration
10. Motivation
11. Communication
12. Welfare
13. Safety & Health
14. Industrial Relations

Based on the above activities, we can summarize the scope of HRM into following seven different categories:
1. Introduction to HRM
2. Employee Hiring
3. Employee and Executive Remuneration
4. Employee Motivation
5. Employee Maintenance
6. Industrial Relations
7. Prospects of HRM

ROLE OF HRM
1. Advisory Role: HRM advises management on the solutions to any problems affecting people, personnel policies and procedures.
(a) Personnel Policies: Organization Structure, Social Responsibility, Employment Terms & Conditions, Compensation, Career & Promotion, Training & Development and Industrial Relations.
(b) Personnel Procedures: Relating to manpower planning procedures, recruitment and selection procedures, and employment procedures, training procedures, management development procedures, performance appraisal procedures, compensation procedures, industrial relations procedures and health and safety procedures.

2. Functional Role: The personnel function formulates personnel policies in accordance with the company’s doctrine and management guidelines. It provides guidance to managers to help them ensure that agreed policies are implemented.

3. Service Role: Personnel function provides personnel services. These services constitute the main activities carried out by personnel department, like payroll, disciplinary actions, etc, and involve the implementation of the policies and procedures described above.

ROLE OF HR MANAGERS
1. Humanitarian Role: Reminding moral and ethical obligations to employees.
2. Counsellor: Consultations to employees about marital, health, mental, physical and career problems.
3. Mediator: Playing the role of a peacemaker during disputes, conflicts between individuals and groups or management.
4. Spokesman: To represent the company in Media and other forums because he has better overall picture of his company’s operations.
5. Problem Solver: Solving problems of overall human resource management and long-term organizational planning.
6. Change Agent: Introducing and implementing institutional changes and installing organizational development programs
7. Management of Manpower Resources: Broadly concerned with leadership both in the group and individual relationships and labour-management relations.


OBJECTIVES V/s FUNCTIONS OF HRM
HRM Objectives Supporting HRM Functions
Social Objectives (3) (a) Legal Compliance
(b) Benefits
(c) Union Management Relations
Organizational Objectives (7) (a) Human Resource Planning
(b) Employee Relations
(c) Recruitment & Selection
(d) Training & Development
(e) Performance Appraisals
(f) Placement & Orientation
(g) Employee Assessment
Functional Objectives (3) (a) Performance Appraisals
(b) Placement & Orientation
(c) Employee Assessment
Personal Objectives (5) (a) Training & Development
(b) Performance Appraisals
(c) Placement & Orientation
(d) Compensation
(e) Employee Assessment

MANAGERIAL FUNCTIONS OF HRM
1. Planning: Research and plan about wage trends, labour market conditions, union demands and other personnel benefits. Forecasting manpower needs etc.
2. Organizing: Organizing manpower for the achievement of organizational goals and objectives.
3. Staffing: Recruitment & Selection
4. Directing: Issuance of orders and instructions, providing guidance and motivation to managers and employees.
5. Controlling: Regulating personnel activities and policies according to plans. Observations and comparisons of deviations

OPERATIONAL FUNCTIONS OF HRM
1. Procurement: Planning, Recruitment and Selection, Induction and Placement
2. Development: Training, Development, Career planning and counselling.
3. Compensation: Wage and Salary determination and administration
4. Integration: Integration of human resources with organization.
5. Maintenance: Sustaining and improving working conditions, retentions, employee communication
6. Separations: Managing separations caused by resignations, terminations, lay offs, death, medical sickness etc.


CHALLENGES OF HRM IN INDIAN ECONOMY

The job of HRM department in India has never been so challenging. Last decade has witnessed tectonic shift in Job market. From being an employer’s market, it has suddenly turned into employee’s market, especially in the most crucial segment, ie middle management. Globalisation and India’s growing stature in the world has seen demand for Indian managers soaring. From the state of plenty, there is a stage of scarcity of the right talent. The biggest challenge is to retain the talent one has so assiduously hunted and trained. The attrition rate has reached alarming proportions. It has reached such proportions that certain segments of Industry are maintaining bench strengths to fill in the sudden gaps due to resignations. In addition, there are following new issues:

1. Globalization: Growing internationalization of business and workforce has its impact on HRM in terms of problems of unfamiliar laws, languages, practices, attitudes, management styles, work ethics and more. HR managers have a challenge to deal with more and more heterogeneous functions and more involvement in employee’s personal life.

2. Corporate Re-organizations: Liberalisation has led to largescale reorganization of businesses in terms of expansions, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, take overs, and internal restructuring of organizations. In circumstances as dynamic and as uncertain as these, it is a challenge to manage employees’ anxiety, uncertainties, insecurities and fears.

3. New Organizational Forms: Exposure to international business and practices have led to change in the organisational structure and HR policies of the local companies. Take for instance, the hierarchical structure of Indian companies. Suddenly, Indian companies have begun to adopt flat hierarchical management structure. But to implement and grout such fundamental changes in management philosophy of any company is never easy. The challenge for HRM is to cope with the implications of these new relations in place of well established hierarchical relationships that existed within the organizations for ages in the past.

4. Changing Demographics of Workforce: Changes in workforce are largely reflected by dual career couples, large chunk of young blood with contrasting ethos of work among old superannuating employees, growing number of women in workforce, working mothers, more educated and aware workers etc. Thus, changing demography of workforce has its own implications for HR managers and a true challenge to handle.

5. Changed Employee Expectations: With the changes in workforce demographics, employee expectations and attitudes have also transformed. Traditional allurements like job security, house, and remunerations are not much attractive today. Rather, employees are demanding empowerment and equality with management. Hence, it is a challenge for HRM to redesign the profile of workers, and discover new methods of hiring, training, remunerating and motivating employees.

6. New Industrial Relations Approach: In the changed industrial climate, even trade unions have realised that strikes and militancy have lost their relevance and not many workers are willing to join them and disrupt work. However, the problems faced by workforce now have different dimension for the management. They manifest in the form of increased attrition rate. Unsatisfied employees instead of approaching the management for resolution, often take up the new job. The challenge before the HRM is find ways and means to feel the pulse of employees and address the issues on proactive basis.

7. Renewed People Focus: “Man behind the machine is most important than the machine”. This is an old doctrine of the Armed Forces. However, this doctrine has begun to gain acceptance in the corporate world and thus all out efforts to grab the best talent at what ever cost.

8. Managing the Managers: Managing the managers is most difficult. Armed with inside information, they can not be lured with rosy promises. They are in great demand too with growth in economy. These are the people who are most mobile, attrition rate being highest for the junior and middle management level. The challenge of HRM is how to manage this tribe?

9. Weaker Section’s Interests: Another challenge for HRM is to protect the interest of weaker sections of society. The dramatic increase of women workers, minorities and other backward communities in the workforce, coupled with weakening of trade unions, has resulted in the need for organizations to re-examine their policies, practices and values. In the name of global competition, productivity and quality, the interests of the society around should not be sacrificed. It is a challenge of today’s HR managers to see that these weaker sections are neither denied their rightful jobs nor are discriminated while in service.

10. Contribution to the Success of Organizations: The biggest challenge to an HR manager is to make all employees contribute to the success of the organization in an ethical and socially responsible way. Because society’s well being to a large extent depends on its organizations.



STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Strategy:
“Strategy is a way of doing something. It includes the formulation of goals and setting of action plans for accomplishment of that goal.”

Strategic Management:
“A Process of formulating, implementing and evaluating business strategies to achieve organizational objectives is called Strategic Management”

Definition of Strategic Management
“Strategic Management is that set of managerial decisions and actions that determine the long-term performance of a corporation. It includes environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, evaluation and control.”

The study of strategic management therefore emphasizes monitoring and evaluating environmental opportunities and threats in the light of a corporation’s strengths and weaknesses.

STEPS IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
1. Environmental Scanning: Analyze the Opportunities and Threats in External Environment
2. Strategy Formulation: Formulate Strategies to match Strengths and Weaknesses. It can be done at Corporate level, Business Unit Level and Functional Level.
3. Strategy Implementation: Implement the Strategies
4. Evaluation & Control: Ensure the organizational objectives are met.

IMPORTANCE & BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
1. Allows identification, prioritization and exploration of opportunities.
2. Provides an objective view of management problems.
3. Represents framework for improved co-ordination and control
4. Minimizes the effects of adverse conditions and changes
5. Allows major decisions to better support established objectives
6. Allows more effective allocation of time and resources
7. Avoids ad hoc decisions
8. Helps to integrate the individual behaviours
9. Encourages forward thinking
10. Encourages favourable attitude towards change.


ROLE OF HRM IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Role in Strategy Formulation: HRM is in a unique position to supply competitive intelligence that may be useful in strategy formulation. Details regarding advanced incentive plans used by competitors, opinion survey data from employees, elicit information about customer complaints, information about pending legislation etc. can be provided by HRM. Unique HR capabilities serve as a driving force in strategy formulation.

Role in Strategy Implementation: HR Manager helps strategy implementation by supplying competent people. Additionally, HRM facilitates strategy implementation by encouraging proactive thinking, communicating goals and improving productivity and quality.

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Human Resource Development is a process to help people to acquire competencies and to increase their knowledge, skills and capabilities for better performance and higher productivity.

Definition 1:

HRD is a process of enhancing the physical, mental and emotional capacities of individuals for productive work.

Definition 2:

HRD means to bring about the possibility of performance improvement and individual growth.

PROACTIVE HRD STRATEGIES FOR LONG TERM PLANNING AND GROWTH

Like quoted earlier, employee retention has become bigger challenge than employee hiring today. With trade unions breathing their last, and easy job availability, employees have developed propensity to switch jobs for minor reasons without voicing their protest. Thus, HRD has to take a proactive approach, that is, to seek preventive care in human relations. By using HRD strategies, maximization of efficiency and productivity could be achieved through qualitative growth of people.

Long-term growth can also be planned by creating highly inspired groups of employees with high aspirations to diversify around core competencies and to build new organizational responses for coping with change.

A proactive HRD strategy can implement plans directed at improving personal competence and productive potentials of human resources.

Following strategic choices can be considered which would help today’s organizations to survive and grow.

Change Management: Manage change properly and become an effective change agent rather than being a victim of change itself.

Values: Adopt proactive HRD measures, which encourage values of trust, autonomy, proactive approach and experimentation.

Maximize Productivity and Efficiency: Maximize productivity and efficiency of the organization by helping qualitative growth of people


TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

Definition:

A team is a small group of people who agree to work together for achieving a clear and identifiable set of goals.

Teams Can be Very Effective.

The benefit of teams lie in Synergy which means – The whole is greater than sum of its parts. Thus, a team is able to produce more than the sum of individuals working separately. A team benefits from complementing and some times contrasting abilities of its members. Teams can bring to bear a wider range of skills and experience to solve a problem. Teams often lead to better quality decisions as individual whims and prejudices are kept in check. Further, members of team have an obligation to each other and thus there is a moral force/binding to perform.

TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
For a team to be effective, following are the prerequisites:
1. Harmony and trust among the team members
2. Effective leadership
3. Shared goals
4. Diverse skills and experience - technical, problem solving and interpersonal skills
5. Creativity and risk taking ability
6. Freedom to voice views
7. Ability to self-correct
8. Interdependent work
9. Effective decision making process
10. Ability to resolve conflict
11. Clear communication channels
Synergy among the team members is very important. The team needs a clear sense of direction which the leader provides. Harmony and trust among the group members is utmost essential. In any group, conflicts are inevitable, how ever harmonious it may be. There has to be a well formulated policy for conflict management. Decision making is a source of potential conflicts. A well charted course for decision taking will be able to minimise such conflicts.
HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING (H R P)

Human Resource Planning, as the name suggests, is the process of identification/ forecasting a firm’s future requirement of type and number of people in order to meet the organisational goals and objectives. It is a continuous process either due to fresh requirement of manpower owing to change/growth/diversification of business or due to attrition of manpower due to retirement, termination, death, disability or resignations.

Definition 1:

“HRP includes estimation of how many qualified people are necessary to meet the future business requirement, how many people will be available, and what, if anything, must be done to ensure availability of personnel equals the demand at all times in the future.”

Definition 2:

“HRP is a Process, by which an organization ensures that it has the right number of right kind of people at the right place, at the right time, capable of effectively and efficiently completing those tasks that will help the organization achieve its overall objectives.”

NEED & IMPORTANCE OF HRP
Human Resource comes at a cost and generates profits. While excess of human resource will lead to unproductive costs, shortages of same will lead to idling of other resources and impede profit generation. Having the people is not enough. Each job needs specific skills and experience and only a certain trained personnel can do it effectively. Therefore, it is necessary that right kinds of people are hired for each job.

Personnel requirement is never static. Manpower wastages in the organisation keep taking place regularly due to retirement, injury, resignations, termination, etc. In addition, changes in the business environment, business model and plan, capacity/product changes, diversifications, etc, also generate need to review the human resource requirement of the organisation.

Changes in the Business Environment in the past one and half decade have led to relative scarcity of talented people. Right kinds of people are no more available at short notice. There is considerable time gap between identifying the need for manpower and filling the vacancy, some times stretching between 6 months to one year. Thus, it will help the company if the requirement is forecasted adequately in advance to enable hiring of right kind of personnel just in time so that neither the machines/other resource idle for want of manpower nor do the people idle. At the same time, there could be situations when there is spare manpower in the company. Company may have changed over to a new technology productions and therefore all personnel trained in old machines may have become redundant and surplus. The “Exit Policy” for workers is not easy and they can not be released at short notice. Re-training or retrenchment of personnel has to be planned in advance.

In India services is growing at a fast pace. It has already overtaken agriculture and Industrial production sectors to become the biggest contributor to GDP. In service industry, human capital is the most important asset. HRP bears a disproportionate importance in this industry.

Foundation of Personnel Functions: HRP provides for not only front line manpower but also caters for support staff requirement which are called Personnel “Functions” like recruitment, selection, personnel development, training and development etc. Large scale changes in frontline staff will have proportional changes in requirement of support staff as well which can be planned alongside.
HRP SYSTEM
HRP System as such includes following elements or sets for planning.
• Business Environment
• Overall Organization Objectives
• Forecasting Manpower Needs
• Assessing Manpower Supply
• Matching Manpower Demand-Supply factors
Based on these elements we can draw “HRP System Architecture” as under.



HRP PROCESS
Organizational Objectives & Policies:
Organizational objectives and policies give a clue to future requirement of manpower. A company planning expansion would require more manpower in near future. Kind of people required would be dictated by technology being planned for expansion. HRP needs to align hiring of people with these elements. In addition, company’s policies towards its manpower policies, like using internal resources for promotion or external resources or dependence on certain caste or region for some jobs have also to be catered for. Gujarati companies in diamond business hire only gujaraties. Similarly, certain Business Houses from Rajasthan prefer Rajasthanies. So, HRP process will be dictated by following organisational policies:

1. Internal Hiring or External Hiring?
2. Training & Development plans
3. Union Constraints
4. Job enrichment issues
5. Rightsizing organization
6. Automation needs
7. Continuous availability of adaptive and flexible workforce

Manpower Demand Forecasting: It is the process of estimating the future quantity and quality of people required. The basis should be long term corporate plans. Demand forecasting should be based on following factors.

Internal Factors: -
• Production levels
• New products and services
• Organizational structure
• Employee separation
• Budget constraints

External Factors:
• Economic climate
• Laws and regulatory bodies
• Technology changes
• Social Factors
• Legal requirements with regards to reservations

Manpower Supply Forecasting: This process measures the number of people likely to be available from within and outside the organization after making allowance for absenteeism, internal movements and promotions, wastages, changes in hours and other conditions of work.

Supply Analysis covers:

Existing Human Resources: HR Audits facilitate analysis of existing employees with skills and abilities. The existing employees can be categorized as skills inventories (non-managers) and managerial inventories (managers).

Skill inventory would include the following;
• Personal data
• Skills
• Special Qualifications
• Salary
• Job History
• Company data
• Capabilities
• Special preferences

Management inventories would include the following:
• Work History
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Promotion Potential
• Career Goals
• Personal Data
• Number and Types of Subordinates supervised
• Total Budget Managed
• Previous Management Duties

Internal Supply Assessment:
• Inflows and outflows (transfers, promotions, separations, resignations, retirements etc.)
• Turnover rate (No. Of separations p.a. / Average employees p.a. X 100)
• Conditions of work (working hours, overtime, etc.)
• Absenteeism (leaves, absences)
• Productivity level
• Job movements (Job rotations or cross functional utilizations)

External Supply Assessment: External sources are required for following reasons
• New blood,
• New experiences
• Replenish lost personnel
• Organizational growth
• Diversification
External sources can be colleges and universities, consultants, competitors and unsolicited applications.
 

dk2424

New member
SUCCESSION PLANNING
Meaning of Succession Planning

Succession planning is the process or activities connected with the filling of key positions in the organization hierarchy as vacancies arise. Succession planning focuses on identification of future vacancies and locating the probable successor. For example in succession planning the key concern can be who will be next CEO or what will happen if the Marketing Manager retires in coming March. Grooming a person to fill an important position may take years. Succession planning involves identification of key positions in the company and then scouting for people who can effectively fill those positions at short notice.

Importance of Succession Planning

1. Succession planning helps when there is a sudden need due to job hopping/death of serious injury to a key employee.
2. There is little or no set back due to absence of key employee.
3. Acts as a motivator for the individual employee who comes to know of the impending promotion in advance.
4. Succession planning helps create loyalty towards the organization and improved motivation and morale of individual employees.
5. Organization gains stable workforce and low employee turnover.
6. Ultimately organization becomes successful in accomplishing its goals effectively.

CAREER PLANNING
Career as a concept means a lifelong sequences of professional, educational and developmental experiences that an individual goes through in his working life. It is a sequence of positions occupied by a person during his life.

Career planning is the process of identifying an individual’s strengths, weaknesses, aptitudes, inclinations, aspirations and attitudes and designing his job responsibilities to take maximum advantages of positive traits and minimising the effect negatives traits.

After identifying the personality traits of the individual begins the process of identifying suitable job billets for him. It may also involve training at times to strengthen his weak areas.

Career planning is a process of integrating the employees’ needs and aspirations with organizational requirements.

A typical succession planning involves the following activities:

1. Analysis of the demand for managers and professionals by company level, function and skill.
2. Audit of existing executives and projection of likely future supply from internal and external sources.
3. Planning of individual career paths based on objective estimates of future needs and drawing on reliable performance appraisals and assessments of potential.
4. Career counselling undertaken in the context of a realistic understanding of the future needs of the firm as well as those of the individual.
5. Accelerated promotions with development targeted against the future needs of the business.
6. Performance related training and development to prepare individuals for future roles as well as current responsibilities
7. Planned strategic recruitment not only to fill short term needs but also to provide people for development to meet future needs
8. The actual activities by which openings are filled





JOB ANALYSIS

Definition 1

“Job Analysis is a process of collecting and studying the information relating to operations and responsibilities of a specific job. The immediate products of this analysis are ‘Job Description’ and ‘Job Specifications’.”

Definition 2

“It is a basic technical procedure that is used to define duties and responsibilities and accountabilities of the job.”

PURPOSE OF JOB ANALYSIS: -
• Human Resource Planning (HRP): Job analysis helps in determining staffing needs, type, quality and quantity.

• Recruitment & Selection: Knowing the staffing needs is essential for Recruitment and Selection – Right person for each job. Sourcing of recruits also becomes easy and cost effective

• Training & Development: Job analysis is the key to determining Training and Development programs.

• Job Evaluation: Job evaluation means determination of relative worth of each job for the purpose of establishing wage and salary. This is possible with the help of job description and specifications; i.e. Job Analysis.

• Remuneration: Job analysis also helps in determining wage and salary for the jobs.

• Performance Appraisal: Job analysis helps in fixing the bench marks of performance standards which in turn help in objective Performance appraisal, rewards, promotions, etc.

• Safety & Health: Job Analysis helps to uncover hazardous conditions and unhealthy environmental factors so that corrective measures can be taken to minimize and avoid possibility of human injury.


JOB DESCRIPTION

“Job Description implies objective listing of the job title, tasks, and responsibilities involved in a job.”

Job description is a word picture of the duties, responsibilities and organizational relationships that constitutes a given job or position. It defines work assignment and a scope of responsibility that are sufficiently different from those of the other jobs to warrant a specific title. Job description is a broad statement of purpose, scope, duties and responsibilities of a particular job.

Contents of Job Description
1. Job Identification
2. Job Summary
3. Job Duties and Responsibilities
4. Supervision specification
5. Machines, tools and materials
6. Work conditions
7. Work hazards
8. Definition of unusual terms

Format of Job Description
1. Job Title
2. Region/Location
3. Department
4. Reporting to (Operational and Managerial)
5. Objective
6. Principal duties and responsibilities


JOB SPECIFICATIONS

“Job Specification involves listing of qualifications, skills and abilities required in an employee to meet the job description. These specifications are minimum required to do the job satisfactorily.”

In other words, it is a statement of minimum acceptable physical/psychological attributes and professional skills necessary to perform the job properly. Job specifications seek to indicate kind of persons who can be expected to meet the role requirements. Thus, it is basically concerned with matters of selection, screening and placement and is intended to serve as a guide in hiring.

Contents of Job Specifications
1. Physical Characteristics
2. Psychological characteristics
3. Personal characteristics
4. Educational Qualifications
5. Skill Set and Experience/Responsibilities
6. Demographic features
Job specifications can be further divided into three broad categories
1. Essential Attributes
2. Desirable Attributes
3. Contra-Indicators – Attributes which are likely to act as impediments to success of job













JOB EVALUATION

Job evaluation is the process of analyzing and assessing various jobs systematically to ascertain their relative worth in an organization.

Job Evaluation involves determination of relative worth of each job for the purpose of establishing wage and salary differentials. Relative worth is determined mainly on the basis of Job Description and Job Specification only. Job Evaluation helps to determine wages and salary grades for all jobs. Employees need to be compensated depending on the grades of jobs they perform. Remuneration must be based on the relative worth of each job. Ignoring this basic principle results in inequitable compensation and attendant ill effects on employees’ morale. A perception of inequity is a sure way of de-motivating an employee.

Jobs are evaluated on the basis of content and placed in order of importance. This establishes Job Hierarchies, which becomes the basis for satisfactory wage differentials among various jobs.

Jobs are ranked (not jobholders)

PROCESS OF JOB EVALUATION:
1. Defining objectives of job evaluation

(a) Identify jobs to be evaluated (Benchmark jobs or all jobs)
(b) Who should evaluate job?
(c) What training do the evaluators need?
(d) How much time involved?
(e) What are the criteria for evaluation?
(f) Methods of evaluation to be used
2. Wage Survey
3. Employee Classification
4. Establishing wage and salary differentials.
METHODS OF JOB EVALUATION
1. Analytical Methods

(a) Point Ranking Methods: Different factors are selected for different jobs with accompanying differences in degrees and points.
(b) Factor Comparison Method: The important factors are selected which can be assumed to be common to all jobs. Each of these factors are then ranked with other jobs. The worth of the job is then taken by adding together all the point values.

2. Non-Analytical Methods

(a) Ranking Method: Jobs are ranked on the basis of their title or contents. Like Managers, Supervisors, Workers, Peon, etc. All managers whether from production, planning, sales, stores or Allied Services (House Keeping) Deptt are treated equal. Job is not broken down into factors etc. It is easier to implement but not always satisfactory for the employees.

(b) Job Grading Method: It is based on the job as a whole and the differentiation is made on the basis of job classes and grades. Like in a hotel, Receptionist’s job may be graded higher than back office billing clerk’s job. Similarly, a production/sales manager billet may be graded higher than Allied Services Manager’s. In this method it is important to form a grade description to cover discernible differences in skills, importance to company’s core operations, responsibilities and other characteristics.

PITFALLS OF JOB EVALUATION:
1. Sometimes encourages employees to manipulate for promotion/internal placement when there may be limited opportunities for enhancement as a result of downsizing.

2. It promotes internal focus (office politics) instead of customer orientation

3. Not suitable for forward looking organizations, which may have trimmed multiple job titles into two or three broad jobs.














JOB DESIGN

In the most simplified form - The process of breaking/organizing work into specific tasks in order to perform a specific job is called Job Design. Job Design is the logical Sequence to Job Analysis. Job design involves conscious efforts to organise tasks, duties and responsibilities into a unit of work to achieve certain objective.

Steps in Job Design
1. Specification of Individual Tasks
2. Specification of Methods for Tasks Performance
3. Combination of Tasks into Specific Jobs to be assigned to individuals

FACTORS AFFECTING JOB DESIGN
1. Organizational factors
(a) Characteristics of Tasks (Planning, Execution and Controlling of Task)
(b) Work Flow (Process Sequences)
(c) Ergonomics (Time & Motion Study)
(d) Work Practices (Set of ways of performing tasks)
2. Environmental Factors
(a) Employee Abilities and Availability
(b) Social and Cultural Expectations
3. Behavioural Elements
(a) Feedback
(b) Autonomy
(c) Use of Abilities
(d) Variety
TECHNIQUES OF JOB DESIGN
1. Work Simplification: Job is simplified or specialized. The job is broken down into small parts and each part is assigned to an individual. To be more specific, work simplification is breaking down the job to such small tasks that complexity is taken out of them. Like in a assembly line of car, one person only tighten wheel nuts with a pneumatic tool which tighten the nuts. The complexity of ensuring that each nut is tightened to required degree has been transferred to machine and the worker only applies the tool to the right place. He does not even put the wheel in place. In such cases, work becomes repetitive in nature. Work simplification is used when jobs are not specialized.

2. Job Rotation: Same job, same people, same surrounding, days over days, months over months, leads to boredom and even fatigue. And it manifests in higher error rate, fall in productivity, absenteeism, job hopping, etc. Job rotation is answer to such problems. While broadly the job may remain same, minor variations between jobs are enough to rejuvenate the employee. It not only benefits the personnel but also the organisation in equal measure

(a) Benefit to the Employee. It is a development tool since the employees get exposure to several jobs which develops their personality and employability. It improves their self-image and leads to personal growth. Such cross functional deployments often reveal hidden performance potentials/skills of many employees in the course of new job.
(b) Benefits to the Company: Such cross functional knowledge of employees provides the company with a fall back option in case of absence of any employee. It also gives flexibility to the management to reorganise the functional setup just in case of need like demand pattern shift or change in business model or any other eventuality. Also, periodic job rotation is the best method to avoid compartmentalisation of departments. Movement of personnel between departments and first hand knowledge of limitations and problems faced by other departments reduces frictions and leads to better cooperation between them. Interpersonal bonds developed during in the course of such cross functional job rotation further smoothens the interaction between departments. On the negative side, training costs rise and it can also de-motivate intelligent and ambitious trainees who might take it as their undesirability in their own department unless it is well laid down policy of the company.
3. Job Enlargement: It means expanding the number of tasks, or duties assigned to a given job. Job enlargement is naturally opposite to work simplification. Adding more tasks or duties to a job does not necessarily mean that new skills and abilities are needed. There is only horizontal expansion. It is with same skills taking additional responsibilities like increasing the number of machines operators under a supervisor from 10 to 15. Job enlargement may involve breaking up of the existing work system and redesigning a new work system. For this employees also need to be trained to adjust to the new system. Job enlargement is said to contribute to employee motivation but the claim is not validated in practice.

4. Job Enrichment: Job enrichment is to add a few more motivators to a job to make it more rewarding. A job is enriched when the nature of the job is exciting, challenging, rewarding and creative or gives the job holder more decision-making, planning and controlling powers. An enriched job will have more authority, responsibility, autonomy (vertical enrichment), more variety of tasks (horizontal enrichment) and more growth opportunities. The employee does more planning and controlling with less supervision but more self-evaluation. For example: transferring some of the supervisor’s tasks to the employee and making his job enriched. As per Hertzberg, who was the father of this term, an enriched job has eight characteristics:

(a) Direct Feedback: Employee should be able to get immediate knowledge of the results they are achieving.
(b) Client Relationship: An employee who serves a client or customer directly has an enriched job. The client can be outside or inside the firm.
(c) New Learning: An enriched job allows its incumbent to feel that he is growing intellectually.
(d) Scheduling Own Work: Freedom to schedule own work (autonomy) is job enrichment.
(e) Unique Experience: A enriched job has some unique qualities or features.
(f) Control over Resources: One approach to Job enrichment is for the each employee to have control over his or her resources and expenses.
(g) Direct Communication Authority: An enriched job allows worker to communicate directly with people who use his or her output.
(h) Personal Accountability: An enriched job holds the incumbent responsible for the results. He or she receives praise for good work and blame for poor work.
Problems with Job Enrichment
(a) Job enrichment is not a substitute for good governance. If other environmental factors in the business are not right, mere job enrichment will not mean much.
(b) Job enrichment may have short term negative effects till the worker gets used to the new responsibility.
(c) Job enrichment itself might not be a great motivator since it is job-intrinsic factor. As per the two-factor motivation theory, job enrichment is not enough. It should be preceded by hygienic factors etc.
(d) Job enrichment assumes that workers want more responsibilities and those workers who are motivated by less responsibility, job enrichment surely de-motivates them
(e) Workers participation may affect the enrichment process itself.
(f) Change is difficult to implement and is always resisted as job enrichment brings in a changes the responsibility.

5. Autonomous or Self-Directed Teams: Empowerment results in self-directed work teams. A self-directed team is a group of employees responsible for a whole work segment. They work together, handle day-to-day problems, plan and control, and are highly effective team.


JOB SATISFACTION

Job satisfaction is self satisfaction derived by an employee in doing the job he has been entrusted to do. Job satisfaction is more a function of the various attitudes possessed by an employee towards his job, related factors and life in general than the job itself. The attitudes related to job may be wages, supervision, steadiness, working conditions, advancement opportunities, recognitions, fair evaluation of work, social relations on job, prompt settlement of grievances etc. A person with a kind heart will find high level of job satisfaction in working with some agency involved in charitable work though the salary might be relatively less. An over ambitious person will never find the job satisfaction.

In short job satisfaction is a general attitude towards the job, which is the result of many specific attitudes in three areas namely, job factors, individual characteristics and group relationships outside the job.

COMPONENTS OF JOB SATISFACTION
Personal factors: Sex, Dependents, Age, Timings, Intelligence, Natural affinity towards the job, Education and Personality.

Job Inherent Factors: Nature of work, Skills, Occupational status, Geography, etc.

Management Controlled Factors: Security, Payment, Fringe benefits, Advancement opportunities and Working conditions, Co-workers, Responsibilities, Supervision

WORK SAMPLING
Definition:
"A measurement technique for the quantitative analysis of an random/irregularly occurring activity."
MEANING OF WORK SAMPLING
Work sampling is based on the theory that the characteristics of a sufficiently large sample represent the actual characteristics of entire population. Work sampling operates by an observer taking a series of random observations on a particular "item" of interest (machine, operating room, dock, etc.) to observe its "state" (working, idle, sleeping, empty, etc.). When enough samples are taken, an analysis of the observations yields a statistically valid indication of the states for each thing analyzed.
Assume, for example, that you wish to determine the proportion of time a factory operator is working or idle. Also assume that 200 random observations were made of the operator and during 24 of these he or she was observed to be idle. From the random samples of his state you conclude that the individual is working 176/200 = 88% of the time.
ADVANTAGES OF WORK SAMPLING
It is relatively easy, simple and inexpensive to use and extremely helpful in providing a deeper understanding of all types of operations.
When properly used, it can help pinpoint those areas, which should be analyzed in further detail and can serve as a measure of the progress being made in improving operations.
QUESTIONS OF WORK SAMPLING STUDY
• What is our equipment/asset utilization?
• When we are not adding value to the product, how are we spending our time?
• How are our inter-dependent systems performing?
• Where should we focus our continuous improvement activities?
DISTINCTION BETWEEN WORK SAMPLING AND "TIME STUDIES"
Before we set out to analyse the distinctions between work sampling and time studies, let us understand that the two are as different as chalk and cheese. The purpose of each is different and one can not be substituted by the other in most cases. While work sampling is a broad analysis of trend, time study is microanalysis of the job and procedure. Time study is conducted with a view to improve the process/method where as work sampling is done to improve quantitative utilisation of resources.
• Work sampling is relatively cheaper because it uses random samples instead of continuous observations.
• Many operators or machines can be studied by a single observer
• Work sampling normally spans over several days or weeks, thus minimizing the effects of sudden variations on a particular day.
• Work Sampling tends to minimize operator behaviour modification during observation (operator, deliberately or otherwise, under or over performing while under observation).
• Work Sampling, in general, does not require a trained time-study analyst to take the observations. Also, stopwatches or other timing devices are not required. Many studies make use of off-shift technicians or operators to take the observations.
WORK SAMPLING METHODOLOGY
An analyst RANDOMLY observes an activity (equipment, operating room, production line) and notes the particular states of the activity at each observation.

The ratio of the number of observations of a given state of the activity to the total number of observations taken will approximate the percentage of time that the activity is in that given state.

Randomness of observations is very critical for a work sampling study. The observations should vary over the time of the day, days of the week and if possible, months to get he correct trend.



RECRUITMENT

Definition:

“Recruitment is the process of finding and attracting capable applicants for a job to create a pool from which selection is to be made of the most suitable candidates”.

The Process begins when new recruits are sought and ends when their applications are submitted. Though theoretically recruitment process is said to end with the receipt of applications, in practice, the activity extends to the screening of applications so as to eliminate those who are not qualified for the job. The result is a pool of applicants from which selections for new employees are made.”

PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE
1. To broad base the applicant pool in order to get the right talent at the affordable cost.
2. Increase the pool of job candidates at minimum cost
3. Help increase success rate of selection process by reducing number of under-qualified or over-qualified applications.
4. Meet legal and social obligations
5. Identify and prepare potential job applicants

FACTORS AFFECTING RECRUITMENT
External Factors:
1. Demand and Supply status of specific skills set.
2. Unemployment Rate (Area-wise)
3. Labour Market Conditions
4. Political and Legal Environment (Reservations, Labour laws)
5. Company’s Image

Internal Factors:
1. Recruitment Policy (Internal Hiring or External Hiring?)
2. Human Resource Planning (Planning of resources required)
3. Size of the Organization (Bigger the size lesser the recruitment problems)
4. Cost
5. Growth and Expansion Plans
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
1. Recruitment Strategy Development
(a) Trained or untrained (to be trained at company’s expense)
(b) Internal or external sourcing
Internal Recruitment (Source 1)
(i) Present employees
(ii) Employee referrals
(iii) Transfers & Promotions
(iv) Former Employees
(v) Previous Applicants
External Recruitment (Source 2)
(i) Professionals or Trade Associations
(ii) Advertisements
(iii) Employment Exchanges
(iv) Campus Recruitment
(v) Walk-ins Interviews
(vi) Consultants
(vii) Contractors
(viii) Displaced Persons
(ix) Radio & Television
(x) Acquisitions & Mergers
(c) Competitors
(d) Technological tools to be used for advertising
(e) Where to look
(f) How to look
2. Recruitment Planning
(a) Number of applicants sought (Based on past experience)
(b) Types of applicants to be called (Qualification, category, area, etc)
3. Searching
(a) Source activation
(b) Selling
4. Screening of Applications
5. Evaluation and Cost Control
(a) Salary Cost
(b) Management & Professional Time spent
(c) Advertisement Cost
(d) Producing Supporting literature
(e) Recruitment Overheads and Expenses
(f) Cost of Overtime and Outsourcing
(g) Consultant’s fees
 

dk2424

New member
Recruitment and Selection

Theoretically speaking, Recruitment and Selection are 2 separate functions. Recruitment deals with the forming a pool of applicants for a particular job, whereas Selection deals with finding the best one of the lot.

MEANING AND DEFINITION
In simple terms, recruitment is understood as the process of searching for and obtaining applicants for jobs, from among whom the right people can be selected. A formal definition of recruitment is:
“It is the process of finding and attracting capable applicants for employment. The process begins when new recruits are sought and ends when their applications are submitted. The result is a pool of applicants from which new employees are selected.”

PURPOSES AND IMPORTANCE

The general purpose of recruitment is to provide a pool of potentially qualified job candidates. Specifically, the purposes are to:

 Determine the present and future requirements of the organization in conjunction with its personnel planning and job analysis activities
 Increase the pool of job candidates at minimum cost
 Help increase the success rate of the selection process by reducing the number of visibly, under qualified or overqualified job applicants
 Help reduce the probability that job applicants, once recruited and selected, will leave the organization only after a short period of time
 Meet the organizations legal and social obligations regarding the composition of its workforce
 Begin identifying and preparing potential job applicants who will be appropriate candidates
 Increase organizational and individual effectiveness in the short term and long term
 Evaluate the effectiveness of various recruiting techniques and sources for all types of job applicants

Recruitment represents the first contact that a company makes with potential employees. It is through recruitment that many individuals will come to know a company, and eventually decide whether they wish to work for it. A well-planned and well-managed recruiting effort will result in high-quality applicants, whereas, a haphazard and piecemeal effort will result in mediocre ones. High-quality employees cannot be selected when better candidates do not know of job openings, are not interested in working for the company, and do not apply. The recruitment process should inform qualified individuals about employment opportunities, create a positive image of the company, provide enough information about the jobs so that applicants can make comparisons with their qualifications and interests, and generate enthusiasm among the best candidates so that they will apply for the vacant positions.

RECRUITMENT PLANNING

The first stage in the recruitment process is Recruitment Planning.
Planning involves ht e translation of likely job vacancies and information about the nature of these jobs into a set of objectives or targets that specify the
(i) Number and
(ii) Type of applicants to be contacted.

Number Of Contacts
Organisations, nearly always, plan to attract more applicants than they will hire. Some of those contacted will be uninterested, unqualified, or both. Each time a recruitment programme is contemplated, one task is to estimate the number of applicants necessary to fill all vacancies with qualified people.
Companies calculate yield ratios (yRs), which express the relationship of applicant inputs to outputs at various decision points. For example, assume that an organisation attempting to recruit sales people ran a series of newspaper advertisements. The advertisement generated resumes from 2000 applicants, of which 200 were judged to be potentially qualified (yR = 10:1). Of these 200, 40 attended the interview for final selection (yR = 5:1). Of these 40, 30 were actually qualified and offered jobs (yR = 4:3); and of the 30, 20 accepted (yR = 3:2). In this case, the overall yR is 100:1. Thus, a requirement of 30 hires, during a specified period, would mean a recruitment target of 3000.
The yRs must be used with circumspection. No yRs will be available for recruiting employees for the first time, or for recruiting sources or methods that have not been tried. Recruiters in such cases have to depend upon their counterparts in other organisations or make their own guesses.

Type Of Applicants to be contacted
This refers to the type of people to be informed about job openings. The type of people depends on the tasks and responsibilities involved and the qualifications and experience expected. These details are available through job description and job specification.



EVALUATION AND CONTROL OF RECRUITMENT

Evaluation and control is necessary as considerable costs are incurred in the recruitment process. The costs generally incurred are:
 Salaries for recruiters.
 Management and professional time spent on preparing job description, job specifications, advertisements, agency liaison, and so forth.
 The cost of advertisements of other recruitment methods, that is, agency fees.
 Cost of producing supportive literature.
 Recruitment overheads and administrative expenses.
 Costs of overtime and outsourcing while the vacancies remain unfilled.
 Cost of recruiting unsuitable candidates for the selection process.
Questions should always be asked as to whether the recruitment methods used are valid and whether the recruitment process itself is effective.
Statistical information on the cost of advertisements, time taken for the process, and the suitability of the candidates for consideration in the selection process should be gathered and evaluated. However, exercises seem to be seldom carried out in practise.

Evaluation of Recruitment Process
The recruitment process has the objective of searching for and obtaining applications from job-seekers in sufficient numbers and quality. Keeping this objective in mind, the evaluation might include:
 Return rate of applications sent out.
 Number of suitable candidates for selection.
 Retention and performance of the candidates selected.
 Cost of the recruitment process.
 Time lapsed data.
 Comments on image projected.

Evaluation of Recruitment Methods
The evaluation of recruitment methods might include:
 Number of initial enquiries received which resulted in completed application forms.
 Number of candidates at various stages of the recruitment and selection process, especially those short listed.
 Number of candidates recruited.
 Number of candidates retained in the organisation after six months.







Philosophy of Recruiting:

The traditional philosophy of recruiting has been to get as many people to apply for a job as possible. A large number of jobseekers waiting in queues would make the final selection difficult, often resulting in wrong selections. Job dissatisfaction and employee turnover are the consequences of this.
A persuasive agreement can be made that matching the needs of the organisation to the needs of the applicants will enhance the effectiveness of the recruitment process. The result will be a workforce which is likely to stay with the organisation longer and performs a higher level of effectiveness. Two approaches are available to bring about this match.
1. Realistic Job Previews (RJP):
RJP provide complete job-related information, both positive and negative, to the applicants. The information provided will help jobseekers to evaluate the compatibility among the jobs and their personal ends before hiring decisions are made. RJP's can result in self-selection process - job applicants can decide whether to attend the interviews and test for final selection or withdraw themselves in the initial stage. The following table contracts some of the outcomes that can develop from traditional and realistic job previews.

Research on realistic recruiting shows a lower rate of employee turnover in case of employees recruited through RJP's, particularly for more complex jobs and higher levels of job satisfaction and performance, at the initial stages of employment. RJP's are more beneficial for organisations hiring at the entry level., when there are innumerable applicants per position, and under conditions of relatively low employment. Otherwise, the approach may increase the cost of recruiting by increasing the average time it takes to fill each job.

2. Job Compatibility Questionnaire (JCQ):
JCQ was developed to determine whether an applicant's preferences for work match the characteristics of the job. The JCQ is designed to collect information on all aspects of a job, which have a bearing on employee performance, absenteeism, turnover and job satisfaction. The underlying assumption of the JCQ is that the greater the compatibility between an applicant's preferences for a job and the probability f employee effectiveness and longer the tenure.
The JCQ is a 400-tem instrument that measures job factors that are related to performance, satisfaction, turnover and absenteeism. Items cover the following job factors: task requirements, physical environment, customer characteristics, peer characteristics, leader characteristics, compensation preferences, task variety, job autonomy, physical demands, and work schedule.
The JCQ is administered to jobseekers who are very familiar with either a specific position to be filled and/or a target job under study. Respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which each JCQ item is descriptive of the job or position under study.


Recruitment process

Recruitment is a process of finding and attracting capable applicants for employment. The process begins when new recruits are sought and ends when their applications are submitted. The result is a pool of applicants from which new employees are selected. A well-planned and well-managed recruiting effort will result in high quality applicants, whereas a haphazard and piecemeal effort will result in a mediocre once. Several factors such as external factors like supply an demand unemployment rate, labour markets and political and legal considerations, internal factors like recruiting policy, size, cost of recruiting etc govern the recruiting process.

The process comprises of 5 inter related stages: -
1. Planning
2. Strategy development
3. Searching
4. Screening
5. Evaluation and control


I Planning

The first stage in recruitment process is planning. Planning involves translation of likely job vacancies and information about the nature of these jobs into a set of objectives or targets that specify the number and the type of applicants to be contacted.
Number of contacts: organisations always plan to attract more applicants than they plan to hire. Some of those contacted will be uninterested unqualified or both. Each time a recruitment process is contemplated, one task is to estimate the number of applicants necessary to fill all the vacancies with qualified people.
Type of contacts: this refers to the type of people to be informed about the job openings. The types of people depend on the tasks and responsibilities involved and the qualifications and experience expected. These details are available through job description and job specification.

II Strategy development

Once it is known how many and what type of recruits are required, consideration needs to be given to make or buy employees, technical sophistication of recruitment and selection devices, geographic distribution of labour markets comprising job seekers, sources of recruitment, and sequencing the activities in the recruitment process.
Make or buy refers to hire less skilled employees ad to invest in training and education programmes or hire skilled professionals. The second decision in strategic relates to the methods used in recruitment and selection. The advent of computers has made it possible for employers to scan national and international applicants qualifications. It has also made possible for job seekers to gain better access. In order to reduce costs, companies look into the national markets for managerial employees, regional or local markets for technical employees, and local markets for clerical and blue-collar employees.
The sources for recruitment may be internal or external. The internal sources would be present employees, referrals given by the employees, former employees or previous applicants. Whereas the external sources would be consultants, headhunters, advertisements, employee exchanges, campus recruitment, contractors, displaced persons, radio and television, acquisitions and mergers, competitors, international recruitment etc. then both the sources of recruitment are evaluated. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages.

III Searching

Once a recruitment plan and strategy are worked out, the search process can begin. It involves two steps:
1. Source aviation
2. Selling

1. Source Aviation:
Typically sources and search methods are activated by issuances of an employee requisition. This means that no actual recruiting takes place until line managers have verified that a vacancy does exist or will exist. If the organisation has planned well and done a good job of developing its sources and search methods, activation soon results in a flood of applications and/or resumes. The application received must be screened. Those who pass have to be contacted, and invited for interview. Unsuccessful applicants must be sent letters of regret.

2. Selling
The second issue to be addressed in the searching process concerns communication. Here, contacts are tightrope. On tone hand they want as many applications and on the other hand they must resist overselling of their virtues. In selling the organisation both message and the media need attention. Selection of medium or media has to be done with lot of care.

IV Screening

Screening of applicants can be regarded as an integral part of recruiting process. The selection process will begin after the applicants have been scrutinized and short-listed. Applications received in response to advertisement are screened and only the eligible applicants are called for interview.
The purpose of screening is to remove from the recruiting process, at an early stage those applicants who are visibly unqualified for the job. Effective screening can save a great deal of time and money. Care must be taken that potentially good employees are not lost and women and minorities receive full and fair consideration.
In screening, clear job specifications are invaluable. Applications are judged on the basis of their knowledge, skills, abilities, and interests required to do the job. The techniques used to screen applicants vary depending on the candidate sources and recruiting methods used. Interviews and application blanks are used to screen walk ins. Campus recruiters and agency representative’s use in interviews and resumes. References checks are also useful in screening.

V Evaluation and control

Evaluation and control is necessary as considerable costs are incurred in the recruitment process. The costs generally incurred are

 Salaries for recruiters
 Management and professional time spent on preparing job description, job specification, advertisements, agency liaison, and so forth
 The cost of advertisement and other recruitment methods like agency fees
 Cost of producing supporting literature
 Recruitment overheads and administrative expenses
 Cost of overtime and outsourcing while the vacancies are remain unfilled
 Cost of recruiting unsuitable candidates for selection process

Questions should always be asked as to whether the recruitment methods used are valid and whether the recruitment process itself is valid. Statistical information on the cost of advertisements, time taken for the process etc should be gathered and evaluated. However, exercises seem to be seldom carried out in practice.

Evaluation of recruitment process:
The recruitment process has the objective of searching for and obtaining applications from job seekers in sufficient numbers and quality. Keeping in mind these objectives, the evaluation might include:

 Return rate of application sent out
 Number of suitable candidates for selection
 Retention and performance of the candidates selected
 Cost of recruitment process
 Time lapsed data
 Comments on image projected


Evaluation of recruitment methods:
The evaluation of recruitment methods include:
 Number of initial inquiries received which resulted in completed application forms.
 Number of candidates at various stages of the recruitment and selection process, especially those short-listed.
 Number of candidates recruited
 Number of candidates retained in the organization after six months.

Role of Selection (Selection Policy).

Selection is the process of picking individuals (out of the pool of job applicants) with requisite qualifications and competence to fill jobs in the organization. A formal definition of selection is

“It is the process of differentiating between applicants in order to identify (and hire) those with a greater likelihood of success in a job.”

The role of selection in an organization’s effectiveness is crucial for at least, two reasons. First, work performance depends on individuals. The best way to improve performance is to hire people who have the competence and the willingness to work. Arguing from the employee's viewpoint, poor or inappropriate choice can be demoralizing to the individual concerned (who finds himself or herself in the wrong job) and demotivating to the rest of the work-force. Effective selection, therefore, assumes greater relevance.
Second, cost incurred in recruiting and hiring personnel speaks volumes about the role of selection. Here is one instance to prove how expensive recruitment has become. Pepsi had gone on a crash recruitment drive. Six people from the company took over the entire Oberoi Business Center in Bombay for six days. 3000 applications in response to an advertisement issued earlier were scanned, applicants were asked to respond by fax within 100 hours. Finally, the short-listed persons were flown in and interviewed. Quite an expensive affair by any standard!


Success

Failure


Failure Success
Predicted Predicted

Outcomes of the Selection Process

Costs of wrong selection are much greater. The figure shows four possible outcomes of a selection decision. Two of these—'true positive' ('high hit') and 'true negative' (low hit')—are right selection decisions. The other two out-comes represent selection errors. In the 'false positive error', a decision is made to hire an applicant based on predicted success, but failure results. In 'false negative error', an applicant who would have succeeded is rejected based on predictions of failure. In either case, selectors will have erred. They may remember that the selection successes will be written in sand and failures in stone.
An organization with a false positive error incurs three types of costs. The First type is incurred while the person is employed. This can be the result of production or profit losses, damaged company reputation, accidents due to negligence, absenteeism, and the like. The second type of costs is associated with the training, transfer or terminating the services of the employee. Costs of replacing an employee with a fresh one—costs of hiring, training and replacements—constitute the third type of costs. Generally, the more important the job, the greater the cost of the selection error.
In the case of false negative error, an applicant who would have succeeded is rejected because of predicted failure. Most false negative errors go unnoticed except when the applicant belongs to a reserved category and files a discrimination charge. Costs associated with this type of error are generally difficult to estimated
A careful selection will help an organization avoid costs associated with both false positive error as well as false negative error.

Explain the selection process

Selection is the process of picking individuals with requisite qualifications and competence to fill jobs in the organization. A formal definition of selection is it is the process of differentiating between applicants in order to identify those with a greater likelihood of success.
Selection is significant as it has its impact on work performance and employee cost. Selection is generally done by the HR department often in consultation with the line managers.

Selection Process

Selection is a long process, commencing from the preliminary interview of the applicants and ending with the contract of employment. In practice, the process differs among organizations and between two different jobs within the same organization. Selection procedure for senior managers will be long-drawn and rigorous, but it is simple and short while hiring shop-floor workers.

Environmental Factors Affecting Selection

Selection is influenced by several factors. More prominent among them are supply and demand of specific skills in the labour market, unemployment rate, labour-market conditions, legal and political considerations, company’s image, company’s policy, HRP, and cost of hiring. The last three constitute the internal environment and the remaining form the external environment of the selection process.

1. Preliminary Interview
The applications received from job seekers are subject to scrutiny so as to eliminate unqualified applicants. This is usually followed by a preliminary interview the purpose of which is more or less the same as scrutiny of applications, that is, elimination of unqualified applications. Scrutiny enables the HR specialists to eliminate unqualified jobseekers based on the information supplied in their applications forms. Preliminary interview, on the other hand, helps reject misfits for reasons, which did not appear in the application forms. Besides, preliminary interview, often called ‘courtesy interview’, is a good public relations exercise.

2. Selection Tests
Job seekers who pass the screening and the preliminary interview are called for tests. Different types of tests may be administered, depending on the job and the company. Generally, tests are used to determine the applicant’s ability, aptitude and personality. Ability tests assist in determining how well an individual can perform tasks related to the job. An excellent example of this is the typing test given to a prospective employee for a secretarial job. An aptitude test helps to determine a person’s potential to learn in a given area. An example of such a test is the General Management Aptitude Test which many business students take prior to gaining admission to a graduate business school programme.

Personality tests are given to measure a prospective employee’s motivation to function in a particular working environment.
There are various tests designed to assess a candidate’s personality. The Bersenter Personality Inventory, for example, measures one’s self-sufficiency, neurotic tendency, sociability, introversion and extroversion, locus of control, and self-confidence. The Thematic Apperception test (TAT) assesses an individual’s achievement and motivational levels. Other personality tests, such as the California Psychological Inventory (CPI), the Thurstone Temperament Survey (TTS), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), and Guildford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey, have been designed to assess specific personality traits.
Aptitude tests indicate the ability or fitness of an individual to engage successfully in any number of specialized activities. They cover such areas as clerical aptitude, numerical aptitude, mechanical aptitude, motor-coordination, finger dexterity and manual dexterity.
Interest tests are used to measure an individual’s activity preferences. These tests are particularly useful for students considering many careers or employees deciding upon career changes.
Graphology test is designed to analyse the handwriting of an individual. It has been said that an individual’s handwriting can suggest the degree of energy, inhibitions and spontaneity, as well as disclose the idiosyncracies, and elements of balance and control. For example, big letters and emphasis on capital letters indicate a tendency towards domination and competitiveness. A slant to the right, moderate pressure and good legibility show leadership potential. Employers usually consult graphologists to supplement their usual personnel recruitment procedures. Polygraph tests are designed to ensure accuracy of the information given in the applications. Department stores, treasury offices and jewellery shops – that is those highly vulnerable to theft or swindling – may find polygraph tests useful.

3. Employment Interview
The next step in the selection process is employment interview. An interview is conducted at the beginning and at the end of the selection process. The emphasis here is on the latter.
Interview is a formal, in-depth conversation conducted to evaluate the applicant’s acceptability. It is considered to be an excellent selection device. Its popularity stems from its flexibility. Interview can be adapted to unskilled, skilled, managerial and professional employees. It allows a two-way exchange of information, the interviewers learn about the applicant, and the applicant learns about the employer.
However, interviews do have shortcomings. Absence of reliability is one limitation. No two interviewers offer similar scoring after interviewing an applicant. Lack of validity is another limitation. This is because, few departments use standardized questions upon which validation studies can be conducted. Finally, biases of interviewers may cloud the objectivity of interviews.
The employment interview can be one-to-one, sequential or panel. In one-to-one interview, there are only two participants – the interviewer and the interviewee. This can be the same as the preliminary interview discussed earlier. The sequential interview takes the one-to-one a step further and involves a series of interviews, usually utilizing the strength and knowledge-base of each interviewer, so that each interviewer can ask questions in relation to his subject area of each candidate, as the candidate moves from room to room.
The panel interview consists of two or more interviewers and the figure may go up to as many as 15. Any panel interview is less intimate and more formal than the one-to-one, but if handled and organized well, it can provide a wealth of information. If not handled carefully, the panel interview can make the candidate feel ill at ease and confused about whose question to answer and whom to address. Interviewers themselves are likely to experience nightmare, not knowing who will ask which question and in what order.

4. Reference & Background Checks
Many employers request names, addresses, and telephone numbers of references, for the purpose of verifying information and perhaps, gaining additional background information on an applicant. Although listed on the application form, references are not usually checked until an applicant has successfully reached the fourth stage of a sequential selection process. When the labour market is very tight, organizations sometimes hire applicants before checking references.
Previous employers, known public figures, university professors, neighbours or friends can act as references. Previous employers are preferable because they are already aware of the applicant’s performance. But, the problem with the reference is the tendency on the part of the previous employer to over-rate the applicant’s performance just to get rid of the person.
Organizations normally seek letters of references or telephone references. The latter is advantageous because of its accuracy and low cost. The telephone reference also has the advantage of soliciting immediate, relatively candid comments, and attitudes can sometimes be inferred from hesitations and inflections in speech.
It may be stated that the information gathered through references hardly influence selection decisions. The reasons are obvious:

• The candidate approaches only those persons who would speak well about him.
• People may write favourably about the candidate in order to get rid of him.
• People may not like to divulge the truth about a candidate, lest it might damage or ruin his career.

In several cases, references are a formality and are seldom verified by the employer.

5. Selection Decision
After obtaining information through the preceding steps, selection decision – the most critical of all the steps – must be made. The other stages in the selection process have been used to narrow the number of candidates. The final decision has to be made from the pool of individuals who pass the tests, interviews and reference checks.
The views of the line manager will be generally considered in the final selection because it is he who is responsible for the performance of the employee. The HR manager plays a critical role in the final selection.

6. Physical Examination
After the selection decision and before the job offer is made, the candidate is required to undergo a physical fitness test. A job offer is, often, contingent upon the candidate being declared fit after the physical examination. The results of the medical fitness test are recorded in a statement and are preserved in the personnel records. There are several objectives behind a physical test. Obviously, one reason for a physical test is to detect if the individual carries any infectious diseases. Secondly, the test assists in determining whether an applicant is physically fit to perform the work. Third, the physical examination information may be used to determine if there are certain physical capabilities which differentiate successful and less successful employees. Fourth, medical check-up protects applicants with health defects from undertaking work that could be detrimental to themselves or might otherwise endanger the employer’s property. Finally, such an examination will protect the employer from workers’ compensation claims that are not valid because the injuries or illnesses were present when employee was hired.


7. Job Offer
The next step in the selection process is job offer to those applicants who have crossed all the previous hurdles. Job offer is made through a letter of appointment. Such a letter generally contains a date by which the appointee must report on duty. The appointee must be given reasonable time for reporting. This is particularly necessary when he is already in employment, in which case the appointee is required to obtain a relieving certificate from the previous employer. Again, a new job may require movement to another city which means considerable preparation and movement of property.
The company may also want the individual to delay the date of reporting on duty. If the new employee’s first job upon joining the company is to go on training, the organization may request that the individual delays joining the company until perhaps a week before such training begins. Naturally this practice cannot be abused especially if the individual is unemployed and does not have sufficient finances.
Decency demands that the rejected applicants be informed about their non-selection. Their applications may be preserved for future use, if any. It needs no emphasis that the applications of selected candidates must also be preserved for future references.

8. Contracts of Employment
After the job offer has been made and the candidates accept the offer, certain documents need to be executed by the employer and the candidate. One such document is the attestation form. This form contains certain vital details about the candidate which are authenticated and attested by him. Attestation form will be a valid record for future reference. There is also a need for preparing a contract of employment. The basic information that should be included in a written contract of employment will vary according to the level of the job, but the following checklist sets out the typical headings.

 Job Title
 Duties, including a phrase such as “The employee will perform such duties and will be responsible to such a person as the company may from time to time direct.”
 Date when continuous employment starts and the basis for calculating service
 Rate of pay, allowances, overtime and shift rates, method of payments
 Hours of work including lunch break and overtime and shift arrangements
 Holiday arrangements
 Length of notice due to and from employee
 Grievance procedure
 Disciplinary procedure
 Work Rules
 Arrangements for terminating employment
 Arrangements for union membership
 Special terms relating to rights to patents and designs, confidential information and restraints on trade after termination of employment
 Employer’s right to vary terms of the contract subject to proper notification being given

Alternatively called employment agreements or simply bonds, contracts of employment serve many useful purposes. Such contracts seek to restrain job hopers, to protect knowledge and information that might be vital to a company’s health bottom line, and to prevent competitors from poaching highly valued employees.
Great care is taken to draft the contract forms. Often, services of law firms are engaged to get the forms drafted and finalized.
Most employers insist on agreements being signed by newly hired employees. But high employee turnover sectors such as software, advertising and media are more prone to use such contracts.
The drawback with the contracts is that it is impossible to enforce them. A determined employee is bound to leave the organization, contract or no contract. The employee is prepared to pay the penalty for breaching the agreement or the new employer will provide compensations. It is for this reason that several companies have scrapped the contracts altogether. Lintas and Ogilvy and Mather are examples.

Concluding the Selection Process
Contrary to popular perception, the selection process will not end with executing the employment contract. There is another step – a more sensitive one- reassuring those candidates who have not been selected. Such candidates must be told that they were not selected not because of any serious deficiencies in their personalities, but because their profiles did not match the requirements of the organization. They must be told that those who were selected were done purely on relative merit.

9. Evaluation of the Selection Programme
The broad test of the effectiveness of the selection process is the quality of the personnel hired. An organization must have competent and committed personnel. The selection process if properly done will ensure availability of such employees. How to evaluate the effectiveness of a selection programme? A periodic audit is the answer. Audit must be conducted by people who work independent of the HR department.
Two alternative methods of selection are participative selection and employee leasing. In participative selection, subordinates participate in selection of their co-employees. Employee leasing represents the leasing of employees by a client company from a third party.
 

dk2424

New member
What are the Sources of Recruitment.

The sources of recruitment can be broadly categorized into internal and external sources-

(I) Internal Recruitment – Internal recruitment seeks applicants for positions from within the company. The various internal sources include

a. Promotions and Transfers –
Promotion is an effective means using job posting and personnel records. Job posting requires notifying vacant positions by posting notices, circulating publications or announcing at staff meetings and inviting employees to apply. Personnel records help discover employees who are doing jobs below their educational qualifications or skill levels. Promotions has many advantages like it is good public relations, builds morale, encourages competent individuals who are ambitious, improves the probability of good selection since information on the individual’s performance is readily available, is cheaper than going outside to recruit, those chosen internally are familiar with the organization thus reducing the orientation time and energy and also acts as a training device for developing middle-level and top-level managers. However, promotions restrict the field of selection preventing fresh blood & ideas from entering the organization. It also leads to inbreeding in the organization. Transfers are also important in providing employees with a broad-based view of the organization, necessary for future promotions.

b. Employee referrals-
Employees can develop good prospects for their families and friends by acquainting them with the advantages of a job with the company, furnishing them with introduction and encouraging them to apply. This is a very effective means as many qualified people can be reached at a very low cost to the company. The other advantages are that the employees would bring only those referrals that they feel would be able to fit in the organization based on their own experience. The organization can be assured of the reliability and the character of the referrals. In this way, the organization can also fulfill social obligations and create goodwill.

c. Former Employees-
These include retired employees who are willing to work on a part-time basis, individuals who left work and are willing to come back for higher compensations. Even retrenched employees are taken up once again. The advantage here is that the people are already known to the organization and there is no need to find out their past performance and character. Also, there is no need of an orientation programme for them, since they are familiar with the organization.


d. Dependents of deceased employees-
Usually, banks follow this policy. If an employee dies, his / her spouse or son or daughter are recruited in their place. This is usually an effective way to fulfill social obligation and create goodwill.

(II) External Recruitment – External recruitment seeks applicants for positions from sources outside the company. They have outnumbered the internal methods. The various external sources include

a. Professional or Trade Associations –
Many associations provide placement service to its members. It consists of compiling job seeker’s lists and providing access to members during regional or national conventions. Also, the publications of these associations carry classified advertisements from employers interested in recruiting their members. These are particularly useful for attracting highly educated, experienced or skilled personnel. Also, the recruiters can zero on in specific job seekers, especially for hard-to-fill technical posts.

b. Advertisements -
It is a popular method of seeking recruits, as many recruiters prefer advertisements because of their wide reach. Want ads describe the job benefits, identify the employer and tell those interested how to apply. Newspaper is the most common medium but for highly specialized recruits, advertisements may be placed in professional or business journals.
Advertisements must contain proper information like the job content, working conditions, location of job, compensation including fringe benefits, job specifications, growth aspects, etc. The advertisement has to sell the idea that the company and job are perfect for the candidate. Recruitment advertisements can also serve as corporate advertisements to build company’ image. It also cost effective.

c. Employment Exchanges-
Employment Exchanges have been set up all over the country in deference to the provision of the Employment Exchanges (Compulsory Notification of Vacancies) Act, 1959. The Act applies to all industrial establishments having 25 workers or more each. The Act requires all the industrial establishments to notify the vacancies before they are filled. The major functions of the exchanges are to increase the pool of possible applicants and to do the preliminary screening. Thus, employment exchanges act as a link between the employers and the prospective employees. These offices are particularly useful to in recruiting blue-collar, white collar and technical workers.

d. Campus Recruitments-
Colleges, universities, research laboratories, sports fields and institutes are fertile ground for recruiters, particularly the institutes. Campus Recruitment is going global with companies like HLL, Citibank, HCL-HP, ANZ Grindlays, L&T, Motorola and Reliance looking for global markets. Some companies recruit a given number of candidates from these institutes every year. Campus recruitment is so much sought after that each college; university department or institute will have a placement officer to handle recruitment functions. However, it is often an expensive process, even if recruiting process produces job offers and acceptances eventually. A majority leave the organization within the first five years of their employment. Yet, it is a major source of recruitment for prestigious companies.

e. Walk-ins, Write-ins and Talk-ins-
The most common and least expensive approach for candidates is direct applications, in which job seekers submit unsolicited application letters or resumes. Direct applications can also provide a pool of potential employees to meet future needs. From employees’ viewpoint, walk-ins are preferable as they are free from the hassles associated with other methods of recruitment. While direct applications are particularly effective in filling entry-level and unskilled vacancies, some organizations compile pools of potential employees from direct applications for skilled positions. Write-ins are those who send written enquiries. These jobseekers are asked to complete application forms for further processing. Talk-ins involves the job aspirants meeting the recruiter (on an appropriated date) for detailed talks. No application is required to be submitted to the recruiter.

f. Contractors-
They are used to recruit casual workers. The names of the workers are not entered in the company records and, to this extent; difficulties experienced in maintaining permanent workers are avoided.

g. Consultants-
They are in the profession for recruiting and selecting managerial and executive personnel. They are useful as they have nationwide contacts and lend professionalism to the hiring process. They also keep prospective employer and employee anonymous. However, the cost can be a deterrent factor.

h. Head Hunters-
They are useful in specialized and skilled candidate working in a particular company. An agent is sent to represent the recruiting company and offer is made to the candidate. This is a useful source when both the companies involved are in the same field, and the employee is reluctant to take the offer since he fears, that his company is testing his loyalty.

i. Radio, Television and Internet-
Radio and television are used to reach certain types of job applicants such as skilled workers. Radio and television are used but sparingly, and that too, by government departments only. Companies in the private sector are hesitant to use the media because of high costs and also because they fear that such advertising will make the companies look desperate and damage their conservative image. However, there is nothing inherently desperate about using radio and television. It depends upon what is said and how it is delivered. Internet is becoming a popular option for recruitment today. There re specialized sites like naukri.com. Also, websites of companies have a separate section wherein; aspirants can submit their resumes and applications. This provides a wider reach.

j. Competitors-
This method is popularly known as “poaching” or “raiding” which involves identifying the right people in rival companies, offering them better terms and luring them away. For instance, several executives of HMT left to join Titan Watch Company. There are legal and ethical issues involved in raiding rival firms for potential candidates. From the legal point of view, an employee is expected to join a new organization only after obtaining a ‘no objection certificate’ from his/ her present employer. Violating this requirement shall bind the employee to pay a few months’ salary to his/ her present employer as a punishment. However, there are many ethical issues attached to it.

k. Mergers and Acquisitions-
When organizations combine, they have a pool of employees, out of whom some may not be necessary any longer. As a result, the new organization has, in effect, a pool of qualified job applicants. As a result, new jobs may be created. Both new and old jobs may be readily staffed by drawing the best-qualified applicants from this employee pool. This method facilitates the immediate implementation of an organization’s strategic plan. It enables an organization to pursue a business plan, However, the need to displace employees and to integrate a large number of them rather quickly into a new organization means that the personnel-planning and selection process becomes critical more than ever.

Evaluation Of External Recruitment
External sources of recruitment have both merits and demerits.

The merits are-
 The organization will have the benefit of new skills, new talents and new experiences, if people are hired from external sources.
 The management will be able to fulfill reservation requirements in favour of the disadvantaged sections of the society.
 Scope for resentment, heartburn and jealousy can be avoided by recruiting from outside.

The demerits are-
 Better motivation and increased morale associated with promoting own employees re lost to the organization.
 External recruitment is costly.
 If recruitment and selection processes are not properly carried out, chances of right candidates being rejected and wrong applicants being selected occur.
 High training time is associated with external recruitment.

METHODS AND TECHNIQUES OF TRAINING

A multitude of techniques are used to train employees. Training techniques represent the medium of imparting skills and knowledge to employees. Training techniques are means employed in the training methods. They are basically of two types.

Methods and Techniques of Training














1. Lectures: It is the verbal presentation of information by an instructor to a large audience. The lecturer is presumed to possess knowledge about the subject. A virtue in this method is that it can be used for large groups and hence the cost of training per employee is very low. However, this method violates the principle of learning by practice. Also this type of communication is a one-way communication and there is no feedback from the audience because in case of very large groups it is difficult to have interactive sessions. Long lectures can also cause Boredom.

2. Audio Visuals: This is an extension of the lecture method. This method includes slides, OHPs, video tapes and films. They can be used to provide a range of realistic examples examples of job conditions and situations in the condensed period of time. It also improves the quality of presentation to a great extent.

3. On- the – Job- Training: It is used primarily to teach workers how to do their present jobs. Majority of the industrial training is on the job training. It is conducted at the work site and in the context of the job. Often, it is informal, as when experienced worker shows a trainee how to perform tasks. In this method, the focus of trainer’s focus is on making a good product and not on good training technique. It has several steps, the trainee first receives an overview of the job, it’s purpose and the desired outcomes. The trainer then demonstrates how the job is to be performed and to give trainee a model to copy. And since a model is given to the trainee, the transferability to the job is very high. Then the employee is allowed to mimic the trainer’s example. The trainee repeats these jobs until the job is mastered.

4. Programmed Instruction (PI): In this method, training is offered without the intervention of the trainer. Information is provided to the employee in blocks, in form of books or through teaching machine. After going through each block of material, the trainee goes through a test/ answers a question. Feedback in the form of correct answers is provided after each response. Thus PI involves:
 Presenting questions, facts, and problems to the learner.
 Allowing the person to respond
 Providing feedback on the accuracy of the answers
 If the answers are correct, he proceeds to the next block or else, repeats the same.
However it is an impersonal method and the scope of learning is less as compared to other methods of training. Also the cost of preparing books, manuals and machinery is very high.

5. Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI): This is an extension of the PI method. In this method, the learner’s response determines the frequency and difficulty level of the next frame. This is possible thanks to the speed, memory and the data manipulation capabilities of the computer.

6. Simulation: It is any equipment or technique that duplicates as nearly as the possible the actual conditions encountered at the job. It is an attempt to create a realistic for decision-making. This method is most widely used in Aeronautical Industry.

7. Vestibule Training: This method utilizes equipment which closely resemble the actual ones used in the job. It is performed in a special area set aside for the purpose and not at the workplace. The emphasis is placed on learning skills than on production. It is however difficult to duplicate pressures and realities of actual situations. Even though the kind of tension or pressure may be the same but the employee know it is just a technique and not a real situation. Also the employees behave differently in real situations than in simulations. Also additional investment is required for the equipment.

8. Case study: It is a written description of an actual situation in the business, which provokes the reader to think and make decisions/ suggestions. The trainees read the case, analyse it and develop alternative solutions, select the best one and implement it. It is an ideal method to promote decision making skills. They also provide transference to an extent. They allow participation through dicussion. This is the most effective method of developing problem solving skills.
The method /approach to analysis may not be given importance. Many a times only the result at the end of the case may be considered and not the line of thinking to approach it. This is a major disadvantage since case studies must primarily be used to influence or mend the attitude or thinking of an individual.

9. Role Playing and Behavior Modeling: This method mainly focuses on emotional (human relation) issues than other ones. The essence is on creating a real life situation and have trainees assume parts of specific personalities (mostly interchanged roles of boss and subordinate to create empathy for one another). The consequence is better understanding of issues from the other’s point of view. Concept of Behavior Modeling:
 Fundamental psychological process by which new patterns of behavior can be acquired and existing ones can be altered.
 “ Vicarious process” learning takes place not by own experience but by observation or imagination of others’ action.
 It is referred to as “copying”, “observational learning” or “imitation” implying that it a behavior is learned or modified through observation of other’s experiences.
 This change may be videotaped and showed to the trainee and he can review and critique it.
 It also helps him see the negative consequences that result from not using the behavior as recommended.

10. Sensitivity Training: it uses small number of trainees usually less than 12 in a group. They meet with a passive trainer and get an insight into their own behavior and that of others. These meetings have no agenda and take place away from the workplace. The discussions focus on why participants behave the way they do and how others perceive them. The objective is to provide the participants with increased awareness of their own behavior, the perception of others about them and increased understanding of group process. Examples: Laboratory training, encounter groups. Laboratory training is a form of group training primarily used to enhance interpersonal skills. It can be used to develop desired behaviors for future job responsibilities. A trained professional serves as a facilitator. However once the training is over employees get back to being the way they are.

11. Apprenticeships and Coaching: It is involved learning from more experienced employee/s. This method may be supplemented with other off-the-job methods for effectiveness. It is applied in cases of most craft workers, carpenters, plumbers and mechanics. This approach uses high levels of participation and facilitates transferability. Coaching is similar to apprenticeships. But it is always handled by a supervisor and not by the HR department. The person being trained is called understudy. It is very similar to on the job training method. But in that case, more stress is laid on productivity, whereas here, the focus is on learning.
In this method skilled workforce is maintained – since the participation, feedback and job transference is very high. Immediate returns can be expected from training – almost as soon as the training is over the desired outcomes can be seen in the trainee.


JOB DESCRIPTION:

Job description is an important document, which is basically descriptive in nature and contains a statement of job analysis. It provides both, organizational information (location in structure, authority, etc) and functional information (what the work is). It defines the scope of job activities, major responsibilities, and positioning of the job in the organization. It provides the worker, analyst and a supervisor with a clear idea of what the work must do to meet the demands of the job.
It concerns such functions as planning, coordinating and assigning responsibility. Though job description is not assessment, it provides an important basis for establishing assessment standards and objectives.
Job description describes “jobs” and not the “job holders”. The movement of employees due to promotion, quits, etc would create instability to job descriptions if people rather than jobs are described.

JOB SPECIFICATION:

The job specification takes the job description and answers the question, “what human traits and experience are needed to do the job well?” It tells what kind of person to recruit and for what qualities that person should be tested.
Job specifications translate the job description into terms of the human qualifications that are required for a successful performance of a job. They are intended to serve as a guide in hiring and job evaluation. As a guide in hiring, they deal with such characteristics as are available in an application bank, with testing interviews and checking of references.
Job specification is developed with the cooperation of the personnel department and various supervisors in the whole organization. The personnel department co ordinates the writing of the job descriptions and job specifications and secures agreement on the qualifications required. These specifications relate to physical characteristics, psychological characteristics, personal characteristics, responsibilities and other features of a demographic nature.

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL:
A performance appraisal is a process of evaluating the performance and qualifications of the employees in terms of the requirements of the job for which he is employees, for purposes of administration including placement, selection for promotions, providing financial rewards and other actions which require differential treatment among the members of a group as distinguished from actions affecting all members equally.
Several methods and techniques of appraisal are available for measuring the performance of an employee. Some of the traditional methods are
 Straight Ranking Method
 Man-to-man Comparison Methods
 Grading
 Graphic Rating Scales
 Check Lists
Following are some of the modern methods:
 Assessment Centers
 Appraisal by Results or Management by Objectives
 Human Asset Accounting Method

We will briefly discuss one of the modern methods of appraisal

Assessment centers:
The most important feature of assessment center is job-related simulations. These simulations involve characteristics that managers feel are important to the job success. The evaluators observe and evaluate participants as they perform activities.
Under this method, many evaluators join together to judge employee performance in several situations with the use of variety of criteria. It is used mostly to help select employees for the first level (lowest) supervisory positions. Assessments are made to determine employee potential for purposes of promotion. The assessment is generally done with the help of a couple of employees and involves a paper-and-pencil test, interviews and situational exercises.



























JOB ANALYSIS: An Important Employment Tool

Introduction:

All hiring decisions and supervisory evaluations should be made on objective criteria. A supervisor needs to know each job under his or her supervision, and the qualifications needed to perform it, to develop objective interview questions and objectively evaluate an employee’s performance. Human resource specialists who are responsible for initial screening of job applicants and mediating performance appraisal disputes must also understand the key components of the jobs in their organization.
Job analysis provides an objective basis for hiring, evaluating, training, accommodating and supervising persons with disabilities, as well as improving the efficiency of your organization. It is a logical process to determine: (1) purpose-the reason for the job, (2) essential functions-the job duties which are critical or fundamental to the performance of the job, (3) job setting-the work station and conditions where the essential functions are performed, and (4) job qualifications-the minimal skills an individual must possess to perform the essential functions. A job analysis describes the job, not the person who fills it.
Job Analysis is a process to identify and determine in detail the particular job duties and requirements and the relative importance of these duties for a given job. Job Analysis is a process where judgments are made about data collected on a job.

Purpose of Job Analysis
1. To produce a basic job description of what the job is in the here and now which can facilitate basic human resource problem solving.
2. To describe duties and characteristics in common with and different form other positions or jobs. When pay is closely associated with levels of difficulty these descriptions help foster a feeling of organizational fairness related to pay issues.
The purpose of Job Analysis is thus to establish and document the 'job relatedness' of employment procedures such as training, selection, compensation, and performance appraisal.
Job Analysis should collect information on the following areas:
 Duties and Tasks (frequency, duration, complexity)
 Work Environment (risks)
 Tools and Equipment ( eg. protective clothing)
 Relationships ( internal and external)
 Requirements (The knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA's)

Methods of Job Analysis/ Data Gathering methods
 Interviews – individual or group
 Questionnaire
 Observation
 Critical incidents
 Photo tape recording
 Review of records
JOB DESCRIPTION
Job description is an important document, which is basically descriptive in nature and contains a statement of job analysis. It provides both, organizational information (location in structure, authority, etc) and functional information (what the work is). It defines the scope of job activities, major responsibilities, and positioning of the job in the organization. It provides the worker, analyst and a supervisor with a clear idea of what the work must do to meet the demands of the job.

The content of job descriptions should identify and describe:
 Mental Functions
 Relations with Others
 Physical Demands (strength, movement, auditory, vision, etc.)
 Environmental Conditions and Physical Surroundings
 Equipment Used
 Hazards
It concerns such functions as planning, coordinating and assigning responsibility. Though job description is not assessment, it provides an important basis for establishing assessment standards and objectives.
Job description describes “jobs” and not the “job holders”. The movement of employees due to promotion, quits, etc would create instability to job descriptions if people rather than jobs are described.
Thus to sum it up all, Job descriptions, as a management tool, can greatly simplify an organization's human resource management.

JOB EVALUATION
The aim of job evaluation is to provide a systematic and consistent approach to defining the relative worth of jobs within a workplace, single plant or multiple site organization. It is a process whereby jobs are placed in a rank order according to overall demands placed upon the jobholder. It therefore provides a basis for a fair and orderly grading structure.
Job evaluation does not determine actual pay. That is a separate operation, normally the subject of negotiation between management and employees or their trade union representatives. Only the job is evaluated, not the person doing it. It is a technique of job analysis, assessment and comparison and it is concerned with the demands of the job, such as the experience and the responsibility required to carry out the job. It is not concerned with the total volume of work, the number of people required to do it, the scheduling of work, or the ability of the job holder.
Purpose of job evaluation
 It can be beneficial when the existing grading structure is in need of review.
 It can help establish or maintain the credibility and acceptability of a grading system.
 It facilitates the accommodation of new or revised jobs into the grading structure.
 It can be used by organisations as a basis for job matching and external pay comparisons.
 Improved Human Resource Management
In the past job evaluation has tended to be used more often for white collar, rather than manual employees. However, there has been a steady increase in the use of job evaluation for all types of jobs. The concern for unit labour costs makes it vitally important for organisations, operating in highly competitive markets, to ensure that the grading level of their employees accurately reflects the relative importance of their jobs to the organization.
Properly introduced and maintained, job evaluation can help lay the foundation of fair and orderly pay structures and thus improve relationships.
Techniques of job evaluation:
 Non-analytical
• Job ranking - Each job is considered as a whole and placed in a ‘felt fair’ rank order to produce a league table.
• Paired comparisons - Each job is compared as a whole with each other job in turn, and points (0, 1 or 2) awarded according to whether its overall importance is judged to be less than, equal to, or more than the other jobs.
• Job classification - In job classification the number of grades is decided first and detailed grade definitions produced. Representative (benchmark) jobs are evaluated to validate the definitions.
 Analytical
• Points rating – It breaks down each job into a number of factors, with the factors sometimes being further broken down into sub-factors. Points are awarded for each factor according to a predetermined scale and the total points decide a job’s place in the ranking order.
• Tailor made or “off the peg” - Factors and definitions more accurately reflect the range of jobs to be evaluated and are arrived at through consensus; consequently they are more likely to be acceptable to the workforce.
New Methods for Selection.

In recent years, new methods of selection have been found out by HR specialist these approaches are deemed to be alternatives to the traditional methods of selection.












1. Participative Selection

Two interesting alternative are participative selection and employee leasing. Participative selection means that subordinates participate in the selection of their co-workers and supervisors. The idea is that such participation will improve quality, increase support for the selected supervisor and co-workers, and improve employee morale.

2. Employee Leasing

In employee leasing, the client company leases employees from a third party, not on temporary basis, but rather are leased as full-time, long term help. An interesting feature of this method is that the client company need not perform such personnel activities as hiring, compensation or record keeping. Employees already working elsewhere are leased. They are not directly employed by the company where they are working. The advantages of employee leasing are significant. The client is relieved of many administrative burdens, as well as the need to employ specialized personnel employees. Further, employees not recruited by one client are sent to another client company for employment.
 

dk2424

New member
Training and Development
Q) Meaning and Definition
A business' most important asset is often its people. Training and developing them can be one of the most important investments a business can make. The right training can ensure that your business has the right skills to tackle the future. It can also help attract and retain good quality staff, as well as increasing the job satisfaction of those presently with you - increasing the chances that they will satisfy your customers.
Training and development refer to the imparting to specific skills’ ability and knowledge to an employee. A formal definition of training and development is:

“… it is any attempt to improve current or future employee performance by increasing an employee’s ability to perform through learning, usually by changing the employee’s attitudes or increasing his or her skills and knowledge.”

The need for training and development is determined by the employee’s performance deficiency, computed as follows:
We can make a distinction among training, education and development. Such distinction enables us to acquire a better perspective about the meaning of the terms. Training, as was started earlier, refers to the process of imparting specific skills. Education, on the other hand, is confined to theoretical learning in the classrooms.
Development refers to those learning opportunities designed to help employees grow. Development is not primarily skill-oriented. Instead, it provides general knowledge and attitudes, which will be helpful to employees in higher positions. Efforts towards development often depend on personal drive and ambition. Development activities, such as those supplied by management development programmes, are generally voluntary.
(1) ORGANIZATIONAL OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGIES:
The first step in the training process in an organization is the assessment of its objectives and strategies. What business are we in? At what level of quality do we wish to provide this product or service? Where do we want to be in the future? It is only after answering these and other related questions that the organization must assess the strengths and weaknesses of its human resources.


(2) ASSESSMENT OF TRAINING NEEDS:
Organizations spend vast sums of money on training and development. Before committing such huge resources, organizations would do well to assess the training needs of the employees. Organizations that implement training programmes without conducting needs assessment may be making errors.

Needs assessment occurs at two levels:
a) Individual
b) Group

Individual:
An individual obviously needs training when his or her training falls short of standards, that is, when there is performance deficiency. Inadequacy in performance may be due to lack of skill or knowledge or any other problem. The problem of performance deficiency is caused by absence of skills or knowledge can be remedied by training. Faulty selection, poor job design, uninspiring supervision or some personal problem may also result in poor performance. Transfer, job redesign, improving quality of supervision, or discharge will solve the problem.
Individuals may also require new skills because of possible job transfers. Although job transfers are as common as organizational personal demands vary, they do not necessarily require elaborate training efforts. Employees commonly require an orientation to new facilities and jobs. Recently, however, economic forces have necessitated significant retraining efforts in order to assure continuous employment for many individuals.
Group:
Assessment of training needs occurs at group level too. Any change in the organization’s strategy necessitates training groups of employees. For example, when the organization decides to introduce a new line of products, sales personnel and production workers have to be trained to produce, sell and service the new products. Training can also be used when high scrap or accident rates, low morale and motivation, or other problems are diagnosed.

Needs Assessment Methods:
Several assessment methods for are available for assessing training needs. Some are useful for organizational level needs assessment and others for individual needs assessment.
Benefits of Needs Assessment:
Needs assessment helps diagnose the cause of performance deficiency of employees. Causes require remedial actions. There are specific benefits of needs assessment.
 Trainers may be informed about the broader needs of the training group and their sponsoring organizations.
 The sponsoring organizations are able to reduce the perception gap between the participant and his or her boss about their needs and expectations from the training programme.
 Trainers are able to pitch their course inputs closer to the specific needs of the participants.

(3) ESTABLISHMENT OF TRAINING GOALS:
Once the training needs are assessed, training and developmental goals must be established. With out clearly set goals, it is not possible to design a training and development programme and, after it has been implemented, there will be no way of measuring its effectiveness. Goals must be tangible, verifiable, and measurable. This is easy where skill training is involved. For example, the successful trainee will be expected to type 55 words per minute with two or three errors per page. But behavioral objectives like attitudinal changes can be more difficult to state. Nevertheless, clear behavioral standards of expected results are necessary so that the programme can be effectively designed and results can be evaluated.


(4) DEVISING THE TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
1. Who are the trainees?
Trainees are selected on the basis of:
 Self Nomination
 Recommendations of the Supervisor
 By the HR Department itself
Whatever is the basis, it is advisable to have two or more target audiences. For example, rank-and-file employees and their supervisors may effectively learn together about a new process and their respective roles. It also helps facilitate group processes such as problem solving and decision – making.

2. Who are the trainers?
Training and development may be done by:
 Immediate Supervisors
 Co – workers
 Personnel Staff
 Specialists in other parts of the company
 Outside Consultants
 Industry Associations
 Faculty Members at Universities

Who among these are selected to teach, often depends on where the program is held and the skill that is being taught.

3. What Methods and Techniques of Training should be used?
A multitude of methods and techniques is used to train employees. Training techniques are the means employed in the training methods. Training methods are categorized into two groups – on-the-job methods and off-the-job methods. The most commonly used techniques are shown in the table given below.
 On-the-Job Method (OJT):
Majority of industrial training is on the job training type. OJT method is mainly adopted while orienting new employees, introducing innovations in products & services and in special skills training. OJT is conducted at the work site and in the context of the job. Often, it is informal, as when an experienced worker shows a trainee how to perform the job tasks.
 Off-the-Job Training Method:
Off-the-job training is mainly adopted for orienting new employees, introducing innovations in products and services, special skills training, safety education, creative, technical & professional education and sales, administrative, supervisory and managerial education. The advantages and disadvantages of some of the important techniques of off-the-job methods are listed below:
a) Lectures:
Lecture is a verbal presentation of information by an instructor to a large audience. This method can be made effective when combined with other means of training.
b) Audio-Visuals:
These include television slides, overheads, video-types, films and LCD Projectors.
c) Programmed Instruction (PI):
Training is offered without the intervention of the trainer. Information is provided to the trainee in blocks, either in a book form or through a teaching machine. PI involves:
1. Presenting questions, facts, or problems to the learner.
2. Allowing the person to respond.
3. Providing feedback on the accuracy of his or her answers.
4. If the answers are correct, the learner proceeds to the next block.
d) Simulations:
A simulator is any kind of equipment or technique that duplicates as nearly as possible the actual conditions encountered on the job. It is an attempt to create a realistic decision – making environment for the trainee. The advantage of simulation is the opportunity to ‘create an environment’ similar to real situations the managers incur, but without the high costs involved should the actions prove undesirable.

The other techniques of training are:
 Leadership games: exercises to teach different styles of leadership.
 Skill Games: Tests to develop analytical skills.
 Communication Games: exercises to build bias – free listening and talking.
 Strategic Planners: Games to test ability to plan ahead.
 Team – building games: Exercises requiring collaborative efforts.
 Lateral Thinking: thinking randomly to come up with new ideas.
 Cross – cultural training: Programmes to teach specifics of varied cultures.


4. What should be the level of learning?
The inputs passed on to trainees in training and development programmes can be taught at three basic levels.
All the inputs of training can be offered at the three levels. How effectively they are learned depends upon several principles of learning.

5. What should be the Principles of Learning?
Training and development programmes are more likely to be effective when they incorporate the following principles of learning:
 Motivation:
Motivation to learn is the basic requisite of making training and development programmes effective. Motivation comes from awareness that training fetches some rise in status and pay. Internal pressures (self-esteem, quality of life, job satisfaction) are the most powerful motivators. At the same time the individual must also have the ability to learn.
 Individual Differences:
Individuals enjoy varying learning stimuli. Ability varies from individual to individual and this difference must be considered while organizing training programmes.
 Practice Opportunities:
People learn best through practice. The trainee should be given the opportunity to practice what is being taught. Practice is also essential after the individual has been successfully trained.
 Reinforcement:
Reinforcement is anything that
a) Increases the strength of response
b) Tends to induce repetitions of the behavior that preceded the reinforcement.
Reinforcement could be positive and negative. Positive reinforcement strengthens and increases behavior by the presentation of desirable consequences. The reinforcement consists of a positive experience for the individual. Example: if an employee does something well and is complemented by the boss, the probability that the behavior will be repeated will be strengthened.
In negative reinforcement, the individual exhibits the desired behavior to avoid something unpleasant. Example: an employee who does something to avoid incurring a reprimand from his boss. The effect of negative reinforcement is avoidance of learning.
 Knowledge of Results (feedback):
Knowledge of results is a necessary condition for learning. Feedback about the performances will enable the learner to know where he or she stands and to initiate corrective action if any deviation from the expected goal has taken place.
 Goals:
Goal setting can also accelerate learning, particularly when it is accompanied by knowledge of results. Individuals generally perform better and learn more quickly when they have goals, particularly if the goals are specific and reasonably difficult.
 Schedules of learning:
One of the most well – established principles of learning is that distributed or spaced learning is superior to continuous learning.
Schedules of learning involve:
a) Duration of practice sessions
b) Duration of rest sessions
c) Positioning of rest pauses
All the three must be carefully planned and executed.
 Meaning of material:
A definite relationship has been established between learning and meaningfulness of the subject learnt. The more meaningful the material, the better the learning process.
 Transfer of Learning:
What is learnt in training must be transferred to the job. The traditional approach to transfer has been to maximize the identical elements between the training situation and the actual job. This may be possible for training skills such as maintaining a cash register, but not for teaching leadership or conceptual skills. Often, what is learnt in a training session faces resistance back at the job. Techniques for overcoming resistance include creating positive expectations on the part of trainee’s supervisor, creating opportunities to implement new behavior on the job, and ensuring that the behavior is reinforced when it occurs.
Though, it is desirable that a training and development programme incorporates all these principles, seldom is such a combination effected in practice.

6. Where to conduct the programme?
A training and development programme can be conducted:
i. At the job itself
ii. On site but not the job – for example, in a training room in the company.
iii. Off the site, such as in a university or college classroom, hotel, a resort, or a conference center.

(5) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROGRAMME:
Once the training programme has been designed, it needs to be implemented. Implementation is beset with certain problems:
a) Most managers are action oriented and frequently say they are too busy to engage in training efforts.
b) Availability of trainers is a problem. In addition to possessing communication skills, the trainers must know the company’s philosophy, its objectives, its formal and informal organizations, and the goals of the training programme. Training requires a higher degree of creativity than, perhaps, any other personnel specialty.
c) Scheduling training around the present work is another problem.

Programme implementation involves action on the following lines:
a) Deciding the location and organizing training and other facilities
b) Scheduling the training programme
c) Conducting the programme
d) Monitoring the progress of trainees

(6) EVALUATION OF THE PROGRAMME:
The last stage in the training and development process is the evaluation of results. Since huge sums of money are spent in training and development, how far the programme has been successful must be judged or determined. Evaluation helps determine the results of the training and development programme. In practice, however, organizations either overlook or lack facilities for evaluation.

Need for Evaluation:
The main objective of evaluating the training programmes is to determine if they are accomplishing specific training objectives, that is, correcting performance deficiencies. A second reason for evaluation is to ensure that any changes in trainee capabilities are due to the training programme and not due to any other conditions. Training programmes should be evaluated to determine their cost effectiveness. Evaluation is useful to explain programme failure, should it occur. Finally, credibility of training and development is greatly enhanced when it is proved that the organization has benefited tangibly from it.

Principles of Evaluation:
Evaluation of the training programme must be based on the following programmes:
a) Evaluation specialists must be clear about the goals and purpose of evaluation
b) Evaluation must be continuous
c) Evaluation must be specific
d) Evaluation must provide the means and focus for trainers to be able to appraise themselves, their practices, and their products.
e) Evaluation must be based on objective methods and standards.
f) Realistic target dates must be set for each face of the evaluation process. A sense of urgency must be developed, but deadlines that are unreasonably high will result in poor evaluation.
There are various approaches to training evaluation. To get a valid measure of training effectiveness, the personnel manager should accurately assess trainee’s job performance two to four months after completion of training.
Two writers have suggested that four basic categories of outcome can be measured.
a) Reaction: evaluate the trainee’s reaction to the programme. Did he like the programme? Did he think it worthwhile?
b) Learning: did the trainee learn the principles, skills and the fact that the supervisor or the trainee wanted him to learn?
c) Behavior: Whether the trainee’s behavior on the job changed because of the training programme?
d) Results: what final results have been achieved? Did he learn how to work on machine? Did scrappage costs decrease? Was turnover reduced? Are productions quotas have been met?

Questionnaires or structured interviews with the immediate supervisors of the trainees are acceptable methods for obtaining feedback on training. The supervisor is asked to rate the former trainee on job proficiency directly related to the training objectives.
Besides, pre-and-post tests be administered to the training groups. Prior to the training, a test related to the training material is applied, and the results of this pre-test are compared with results on the same or similar test administered after the programme has been completed.
 

dk2424

New member
Q) Objectives of Training and Development
Staying ahead in today's business world is more challenging than ever. Building trust and promoting teamwork are just two expectations of any business leader.
Training and development programs are designed to keep an organization at the front of its industry maximize performance and energize every level of the organization. Training and Development is also seen to strengthen the tie between employee development and strategic operation objectives.

The objectives of Training and Development are as follows: -
 Efficiency: Employees become efficient after undergoing training. Efficient employees contribute to the growth of the organization.
 Fewer accidents: Accidents, scrap and damage to machinery and equipment can be avoided or minimized through training. Even dissatisfaction, complaints, absenteeism, and turnover can be reduced if employees are trained well.
 Meeting manpower needs: Future needs of employees will be met through training and development programmes. Training serves as an effective source of recruitment. Training is an investment in human resource with promise of better returns in future.
 Improves quality: Better-informed workers are likely to make less operational mistakes. Quality of products or services will definitely increase. This can be well measured through the reduction in rejections.
 Personal growth: Training programmes also deal with personality development of the employees (through goal setting, motivation, leadership skills, etc.) thus they personally gain through exposure to training programmes.
 Obsolescence prevention: Training and development programs foster the initiative and the creativity of the employees and help to prevent the manpower obsolescence, which may be due to age, temperament, or the inability of the person to adapt himself to technological changes.

• Versatility in operations: Training makes the employees versatile in operations. All rounders can be transferred to any job. Flexibility is therefore ensured. Growth indicates prosperity, which is reflected in profits every year.

• Employee stability: Training contributes to employee stability in at least 2 ways. Employees become efficient after undergoing training. Efficient employees contribute to the growth of the organization. Growth renders stability to the work force. Further trained employees tend to stay with the organization.





















Q) Effectiveness and Evaluation of Training and Development
Effectiveness of Training
Training and Development programmes are most likely to be effective when they incorporate the following principles

1.Employee Motivation-motivation to learn is the basic requisite to make training and development programmes effective. Motivation comes from awareness that training fetches some rise in status and pay. Motivation alone is not enough; the individual must have the ability to learn.

2.Recognition of individual differences
Regardless of individual differences, and whether a trainee is learning a new skill or acquiring knowledge of a given topic, the trainee should be given the opportunity to practice what he is taught. Practice is essential after individual is successfully trained.

3.Schedule of learning
Duration of practice sessions, duration of rest sessions and positioning of rest pauses are the three schedules, which must be carefully planned and executed for an effective training programme.

Besides, Training can be made effective, if action on the following lines is initiated: -

1.It should be ensured that the management commits itself to allocate major resources and adequate time to training. This is what high performing organizations do. For example XEROX, invest 300 $ million annually or about 2.5% of its revenue on training. Similarly Hewlet Packard spends about 5% of its annual revenue to train 87000 workers.

2.It should be ensured that training contributes to competitive strategies of the firm. Different strategies need different HR skills for implementation. Let training help employees at all levels acquire the needed skills.

3.Ensure that a comprehensive and systematic approach to training exists, and training and retraining are done at all levels on a continuous and ongoing basis.

4.Training can be made effective by making learning as one of the fundamental values of the company. This philosophy should percolate down to all employees in the organization.

5.It should be ensured that there is proper linkage among organizational, operational and individual training needs.

6.And finally to make training effective a system to evaluate the effectiveness of training needs to be prepared so that the shortfalls can be easily looked at.




Why Training Fails?
 The benefits of training are not clear to the top management.
 The top management hardly rewards the supervisors for carrying out effective training.
 The top management rarely plans and budgets systematically for training
 The middle management, without proper incentives from top management does not account for training in production scheduling
 Without proper scheduling from above, first line supervisors have difficulty in production norms if employees are attending training programmes.
 Trainers provide limited counseling and consulting services to the rest of the organization.

Evaluation of Training
Organizations are under pressure to justify various expenses. The training budget is, often, not exempted from this purview. There are a number of questions raised on the value derived from training programmes—both directly and indirectly. Business heads and training managers are under pressure to prove the effectiveness of training

Thus it can be seen,
The last and one of the most important stages in the training and development process is the evaluation of results. Since huge sums of money are spent on training and development. how far the training has been useful must be judged/determined.
Evaluation helps determine the results of the training and development programme.
In practice is however seen, organizations either overlook or lack facilities for evaluation.

Need for evaluation: -
• The main objective of evaluating the training programme is to determine if they are accomplishing specific training objectives, that is correctible performance deficiencies.
• Secondly training programme should be evaluated to determine their cost effectiveness. Evaluation is useful to explain programme failure, if it occurs.
• And finally the credibility of training and development is greatly enhanced when it is proved that the organization has benefited tangibility from it.



Principle of evaluation

Evaluation of training programme must be based ob following principles
1. The evaluation specialist must b clear about the goals and purposes of evaluation.
2. Evaluation must be continuous.
3. Evaluation must be specific.
4. Evaluation must provide the means and focus for trainers to be able to appraise themselves
5. Evaluation must be based on objective methods and standards.
6. Realistic target dates must be set for each phase of the evaluation process. A sense of urgency must be developed, but deadlines that are unreasonably high will result in poor evaluation.

Criteria for evaluation.
HR professionals should try to collect four types of data while evaluation training programmes.
I. Measures of reaction.
Reaction measures reveal trainees’ opinions regarding the training programme.

II. Learning
Learning measures assess the degree to which trainees have mastered the concepts, knowledge and skills of the training.

III. Behavioural change
Behavior indicates the performance of the learners.

IV. Organizational results
The purpose of collecting organizational results is to examine the impact of training on the work group or the entire company.

Techniques of evaluation
Several techniques of evaluation are being used in organizations. It may be stated that the usefulness of the methods is inversely proportional to the ease with which the evaluation can be done.
The following are the techniques of evaluation: -
1.Experimental and control groups.
Each group is randomly elected, one to receive training and the other not to receive training.
The random selection helps to assure the formation of the groups quite similar to each other. Measures are taken of relevant indicators of success. (E.g.-words typed per minute, pieces produced per hour etc) before and after training for both groups.
If the gain demonstrated by the experimental group is better than those by the control group, the training programme is labeled as successful.

2.Longitudinal or time series analysis
Measurements are taken before the programme begins and are continued during and after the programme is completed. These results are plotted on a graph to determine whether changes have occurred and remain as a result of training effort. To further validate, that change has occurred as a result of training and not another variable, a control group can be included.

In order to conduct a thorough evaluation of a training programme, it is important to assess the costs and benefits associated with the programme. This is a difficult task, but it is useful in convincing the management about the usefulness of the training.
Some of the costs that should be measured for a training programme include needs assessment costs, salaries of training department staff, purchase of equipment, programme development costs, trainers cost during the training period.
The benefits to be compared to the costs are rupee payback associated with the improvement in trainee’s performance, their behavioral change and the longevity of the period during which the benefit would last.


Q) Follow – Up of Training
Following-up is the last step in the training process. Here, the training program is already completed and the trainees go back to their departments or positions and start doing the work assigned. However, the management feels that training / development is a means and not the end in itself. Training is essentially for achieving certain objectives. Management will like to know actual results / benefits of training. For this, follow-up of training in the form of evaluation training is essential. Management spent huge amount of money on training of employees and this expenditure should give positive return in terms of higher efficiency, productivity, high morale, cordial industrial relations and so on. For this, critical evaluation of training program is essential. This indicates the effectiveness of the training. Even suitable modification / improvement in the training program is possible after analyzing the results available from such evaluation. In brief, evaluation helps determine the results of training and development program. Unfortunately, many organizations overlook this important step in the training process. In some companies, suitable facilities required for evolution of training are not available.
Follow-up is the key to ensuring that interventions improve performance. Various follow-up approaches in the work place are used to support trainers, supervisors, service providers and others responsible for implementing the performance improvement interventions.
The follow up technique will increase the probability that learning and behavior changes will "stick" back on the job. These techniques are easy to use, don't require large amounts of time or organizational integration and cost very little. They can be added on to existing training or designed with new training.
On the whole, follow–up action is required to ensure implementation of evaluation report at every stage of training.


Q) Importance of Training and Development


Training and development programmes help remove performance deficiencies in employees. This is particularly true when
(1) The deficiency is caused by a lack of ability rather than a lack of motivation to perform
(2) The individual(s) have the aptitude and motivation needed to learn to do the job better, and
(3) Supervisors and peers are supportive of the desired behaviors.


There is greater stability, flexibility and capacity for growth in an organization. Training contributes to employee stability in at least two ways. Employees become efficient after undergoing training. Efficient employees contribute to the growth of the organization. Growth renders stability to the work force. Further, trained employees tend to stay with the organization. They seldom leave the company. Training makes the employees versatile in operations. All rounder can be transferred to any job. Flexibility is therefore ensured. Growth indicates prosperity, which is reflected in increased profits from year to year. Nobody else but well trained employees can contribute to the prosperity of an organization.

Accidents, scrap and damage to machinery and equipment can be avoided or minimized through training. Even dissatisfaction, complaints, absenteeism, and turnover can be reduced if employees are trained well.

Future need of employees will be met through training and development programmes. Organizations take fresh diploma holders or graduates as apprentices or management trainees. They are absorbed after course completion. Training serves as an effective source of recruitment. Training and development is an investment in human resources with a promise and it serves as an effective source of recruitment. Training and development is an investment in HR with a promise of better returns in future.

A company’s training and development pays dividends to the employee and the organization. Though no single training programme yields all the benefits, the organization which devotes itself to training and development enhances its HR capabilities and strengthens its competitive edge. At the same time, the employee’s personal and career goals are furthered, generally adding to his or her abilities and value to the employer. Ultimately, the objectives of the HR department are also furthered.

How to identify training needs?

Needs assessment diagnoses present problems and future challenges to be met through training and development. Organizations spend vast sums of money (usually as a percentage on turnover) on training and development. Before committing such huge resources, organizations would do well to assess the training needs of their employees. Organizations that implement training programmes without conducting needs assessment may be making errors. For ex- ample, a needs assessment exercise might reveal that less costly interventions (e.g. selection, compensation package, job redesign) could be used in lieu of training. Needs assessment occurs at two levels group and individual. An individual obviously needs training when his or her performance falls short of standards, that is, when there is performance deficiency. Inadequacy in performance may be due to lack of skill or knowledge or any other problem. The problem of performance deficiency caused by absence of skills or knowledge can be remedied by training. Faulty selection, poor job design, uninspiring supervision or some personal problem may also result in poor performance. Transfer, job redesign, improving quality of supervision, or discharge will solve the problem. Figure illustrates the assessment of individual training needs and remedial measures.
Assessment of training needs must also focus on anticipated skills of an employee. Technology changes fast and new technology demands new skills. It is necessary that the employee be trained to acquire new skills. This will help him/her to progress in his or her career path. Training and development is essential to prepare the employee to handle more challenging tasks. Deputation to a part-time MBA programme is ideal to train and develop such employees. Individuals may also require new skills because of possible job transfers. Although job transfers are common as organizational personnel demands vary, .hey do not necessarily require elaborate training efforts. Employees commonly require only an orientation to new facilities and jobs. Recently, however, economic forces have necessitated significant retraining efforts in order to assure continued employment for many individuals. Jobs have disappeared as technology, foreign competition, and the force of supply and demand are changing the face of our industry.
Assessment of training needs occurs at the group level too. Any change in the organization’s strategy necessitates training of groups of employees. For example, when the organization decides to introduce a new line of products, sales personnel and production workers have to be trained to produce, sell and service the new products. Training can also be used when high scrap or accident rates, low morale and motivation, or other problems are diagnosed. Although training is not a cure-all, such undesirable happenings reflect poorly trained work force.


Needs Assessment Methods: How are training needs assessed? Several methods are available for the purpose. As shown in Fig. 9.4, some are useful for organizational-level needs assessment and others for individual needs assessment.

Group or Organizational Analysis
 Organizational goals and objectives
 Personnel/ skill inventories
 Organizational climate indices
 Efficiency indices
 Exit interviews
 MBO or work planning systems
 Quality circles
 Customer survey/satisfaction data
 Consideration of current and projected changes

Individual Analysis
 Performance appraisal
 Work sampling
 Interviews
 Questionnaires
 Attitude survey
 Training progress
 Rating scales

Benefits of Needs Assessment: As was pointed above needs assessment helps diagnose the causes of performance deficiency in employees. Causes require remedial actions. This being a generalized statement, there are certain specific benefits of need& assessment. They are:
1. Trainers may be informed about the broader needs of the training group and their sponsoring organizations.
2. The sponsoring organizations are able to reduce the perception gap between the participant and his or her boss about their needs and expectations from the training programme.
3. Trainers are able to pitch their course inputs closer to the specific needs of the participants.

Performance appraisal

Q) Give the meaning and definition of performance appraisal and its objectives?

In simple terms, appraisal may be understood as the assessment of an individual’s performance in a systematic way, the performance being measured against such factors as job knowledge, quality, and quantity of output, initiative, leadership abilities, supervision, dependability, co-operation, judgment, versatility, health, and the like. Assessment should not be confined to past performance alone. Potentials of the employee for future performance must also be assessed.

A formal definition of performance appraisal is:
“It is the systematic evaluation of the individual with respect to his or her performance on the job and his or her potential for development.”

A more comprehensive definition is:
“Performance appraisal is a formal, structured system of measuring and evaluating an employee’s job related behaviors and outcomes to discover how and why the employee is presently performing on the job and how the employee can perform more effectively in the future so that the employee, organization, and society all benefit.”

The second definition includes employee’s behavior as part of the assessment. Behavior can be active or passive. Either way behavior affects job results. The other terms used for performance appraisal are: performance rating, employee assessment, employee performance review, personnel appraisal, performance evaluation, employee evaluation, and merit rating. In a formal sense, employee assessment is as old as the concept of management, and in an informal sense, it is probably as old as mankind. Nor performance appraisal is done in isolation. It is linked to job analysis.


Objectives of performance appraisal.

Data relating to performance assessment of employees are recorded, stored, and used for several purposes. The main purposes for employee assessment are:

1) To effect promotions based on competence and performance

2) To confirm the services of probationary employees upon their completing the probationary period satisfactorily.

3) To assess the training and development need of employees.

4) To decide upon a pay raise.

5) To let the employees know where they stand insofar as their performance is concerned and to assist them with constructive criticism and guidance for the purpose of their development.

6) To improve communication. Performance appraisal provides a format for dialogue between the superior and the subordinate, and improves understanding of personal goals and concerns. This can also have the effect of increasing the trust between the rater and the ratee.

7) Finally, performance appraisal can be used to determine whether HR programmes such as selection, training, and transfer have been effective or not.



Q. What is the Performance Appraisal process?
The employee performance appraisal enables you to identify, evaluate and develop an individual's performance. It is a tool to encourage strong performers to maintain their high level of performance and to motivate poor performers to do better.
Other important benefits of a formal appraisal process are:
• Validation of hiring practices — are the right people in the right positions?
• Provision of an objective measuring tool on which compensation decisions, and promotions can be based
• Identification of training needs — individually, departmentally and organizationally
• Identification of employees who have the potential for advancement or who might be better suited in other areas of the organization

1. Objectives Of An Appraisal:
1. Promotion, separation, and transfer decisions
2. Feedback to the employee regarding how the organization viewed the employee's performance
3. Evaluations of relative contributions made by individuals and entire departments in achieving higher level organization goals
4. Criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of selection and placement decisions, including the relevance of the information used in the decisions within the organization
5. Reward decisions, including merit increases, promotions, and other rewards
6. Ascertaining and diagnosing training and development decisions
7. Criteria for evaluating the success of training and development decisions
8. Information upon which work scheduling plans, budgeting, and human resources planning can be used

2. Establish Job Expectations:
Goals should be realistic, i.e., practical and achievable. Realistic goals provide a "balance" between what is hard and what is easy to achieve. Goals should motivate people to improve and to reach for attainable ends. For a goal to be motivational, the person must feel that the goal can be achieved. Impossible goals de-motivate and defeat the goal-setting process. Likewise, easy goals do not motivate any more than unattainable goals. You should review your goals on a quarterly or semi-annual basis to check your progress and to make any necessary adjustments.
3. Design An Appraisal Programme:
(i) Formal versus Informal approach?
• Many organizations encourage a mixture of both formal and informal approach. The formal approach is used as the primary evaluation, where as the informal approach is used more for performance feedback.
(ii) Who are the raters?
• Immediate supervisors, specialists from the hr department, subordinates, peers, committees, clients, or a combination of many.
(iii) What problems are encountered?
• Leniency, severity, bias
(iv) How to solve the problems?
• Train the raters and appraisers
(v) What should be evaluated?
• Quality, quantity, timeliness, cost effectiveness, need for supervision, interpersonal impact.
(vi) When to evaluate?
• Once in three months, once in six months or once a year
4. Appraise Performances:
Use methods of appraisal such as psychological appraisals, assessment centers, ranking method, performance tests and observations, essay method etc.
The formal performance appraisal process is one of assessing, summarizing and developing the work performance of an employee. The performance appraisal process should include at least two meetings convened by the supervisor with the employee.
5. Performance Interview:
Once appraisal has been made of employees, the raters should discuss and review the performance with the ratees, so that they receive feed back about where they stand in the eyes of the superiors. Feedback is necessary to effect improvement in performance. Performance interview has 3 goals:
(i) To change the behavior of employees whose performance does not meet organizational requirements or their own personal goals
(ii) To maintain the behavior of employees who perform in an acceptable manner
(iii) To recognize superior performance behaviors so that they will be continued
6. Use Appraisal Data For Appropriate Purposes:
The Hr department must use the data and information generated through performance evaluation. The employers offer significant rewards to employees in the form of:
(i) Money to purchase goods and services, for luxury
(ii) Opportunities to interact with other people in a favorable working environment
(iii) Opportunities to learn grow and make full use of their potential etc.
Data & information outputs of a performance will be useful in the following areas of HRM:
(i) Remuneration administration
(ii) Validation of selection programmes
(iii) Employee training & development programmes
(iv) Promotion, transfer & lay-off decisions
(v) Grievance & discipline programmes
(vi) HR planning




Q)Methods of Evaluation of Performance Appraisal

Numerous methods have been devised to measure the quantity and quality of employee’s job performance. Each of the methods discuss could be effective for some purposes for some organization as different organizations different methods. Broadly all the approaches can be classified into past oriented and future oriented.


PAST ORIENTED

Rating Scales

This is the simplest and most popular method of appraising employee performance. The typical rating-scale system consists of several numeric scales, each representing a job-related performance criterion such as dependability, initiative, output, attendance, attitude and the like. Each scale ranges from excellent to poor. The rater checks the appropriate performance level on each criterion, then computes the employee’s total numerical score. The number of points scored may be linked to salary increases, whereby so many points equal a rise of some percentage.
Rating scales offer the advantages of adaptability, relatively easy use and low cost. Nearly every type of job can be evaluated with the rating scale, the only requirement being that the job performance criteria should be changed. This way a large number of employees can be rated in a short time, and the rater does not need any training to use the scale.
The disadvantages of this method are several. The raters biases are likely to influence the evaluation, and the biases are particularly pronounced on subjective criteria such as co-operation, attitude and initiative. Furthermore, numerical scoring gives an illusion of precision that is really unfounded

Man to Man comparison method:

This technique was used by the US army, during the first world war. By this method certain factors are selected for the design by the rater for each factor. A scale of man is also created for each selected factor. Each man to be rated is compared with the man in the scale, and certain scores for each factor are awarded to him. So, instead of comparing a “whole man” to a “whole man” personnel are compared to the key man in respect of one factor at a time. This method s used in job evaluation and is called the factor comparison method. In performance appraisal it is not of much use because the designing of scales is a complicated task.

360-degree system of appraisal

Where appraisal are made by peers, superiors, subordinates and clients it is called 360-degree system of appraisal. First developed at GE, US in 1992, the system has become popular in our country too. GB (India), Reliance Industries, Crompton Greaves, Godrej soaps, Infosys, Thermax and Thomas Cook are using the method with greater benefits. The Arthur Anderson survey (1997) reveal the20% of the organizations use the 360-degree method. Here, besides assessing performance, other attributes of the assesse- talents, behavioural quirks, values, ethical standards, tempers and loyalty are evaluated by people who are best placed to do it.

Peer appraisal

Peers are in a better position to evaluate certain facts of job performance which the subordinates or supervisors cannot do. Such facts include contribution to work group projects, interpersonal effectiveness, communication skills, reliability and initiative. Closeness of the working relationship and the amount of personal contacts place peers in a better position to make accurate assessments. Unfortunately, friendship or animosity may result in distortion of evaluation. Further, when reward allocation is based on peer evaluation, serious conflicts among co-workers may develop. Finally, all the peers may join together to rate each other high.

FUTURE ORIENTED

MBO

The Management by objectives concept which was conceived by Peter Drucker, reflects a management philosophy which values and utilizes employee contributions.
MBO wroks can be described in four steps:
1) The organization, superiors and subordinates together or just the superiors alone establish the goals of the employee. This goal usually the desired outcome to be achieved and it can be used to evaluate performance.

2) Second step involves involves setting the performance standard for the subordinates in a previously arranged time period. As subordinates perform, they know fairly well what there is to do, what has been done, and what remains to be done.

3) Then the actual level of goal attained is compared to the goals agreed upon. The evaluator figures out why the goals were not met and accordingly determines training needs.

4) The last step is establishing new goals and, possibly, new strategies for goals not previously attained. If the goals were succeeded the subordinate may have larger involvement in setting of his next goal otherwise the superior may have to do it alone.

However, this method has been criticised for not being applicable to jobs with little or no flexibility, such as assembly-line work. It works well with managerial personnel and employees who have a fairly wide range of flexibility and self control in their jobs. And if this method is linked to employee rewards, the they are more likely to take up less challenging goals so that they are more likely to achieve them. Also if the rewards are semi annual or annual, then the employees may take up short term goals and neglect the important long term goals. L&T follows MBO style of evaluation

Assessment centers:

Mainly used for executive hiring, assessment centers are now being used for evaluating executive o supervisory potential. An assessment centre is a central location where managers may come together to have their participation in job related exercises evaluated by trained observers. The basic idea is to evaluate managers over a period of time, say one to three days, by observing and evaluating their behaviour across a series of selected exercises or work samples. Assesses are requested to participate in-basket exercises, work groups (without leaders), computer simulations, role playing, and other similar activities which require the same attributes for successful performance, as in the actual job. After recording their observations, the raters meet and discuss these observations. The decision regarding the performance of each assessee is based upon this discussion of observations. Self evaluation and peer evaluation are also thrown in for final rating.







Q)What are the uses of Performance Appraisal?

• Suitable Placement: Performance appraisal is useful for evaluating performance of subordinates and also for understanding their potentials. This information is available progressively and can be us purposefully for assigning duties to employees as per their merits and potentials. Thus, placement of staff and periodical adjustment in the placement can be made scientifically.

• Assistance in Self-improvement: Performance appraisal gives the details of plus points and weaknesses of employees. In addition, they are given guidance for removing their weaknesses and also for making their plus points more conspicuous. In brief, performance appraisal assists the employees in self-development. This is possible through performance feedback to every employee periodically.

• Incentive to Grown and Develop: Performance appraisal acts as an incentive to employees to improve their performance, develop new qualities and secure higher positions in the org. the employee with merit may be given special increments or promotion to higher position. This motivates others to improve their performance and qualities for similar benefits.

• Effective training programme: performance appraisal suggests the drawbacks and other weaknesses of employees. It is possible to remove such common weaknesses and deficiencies of employees by adjusting their training programmes accordingly.

• Introduction of Sound Personnel Policies: transfers, promotions, wage rates and dismissal are the different areas of personnel management. These personnel policies are directly connected with the performance appraisal of employees. Such policies become fair, impartial and acceptable to emp. When they are based on performance appraisal.

• Cordial Employer-Employees Relation: performance appraisal avoids or at least minimizes grievances of employees as regards promotions, transfers, increments etc. Employees develop a sense of confidence that injustice will not be done to any employee as performance appraisal system is based on sound principles. Management is also not in a position to make partiality/ favouratism when performance appraisal records are maintained properly and used when required.

• Human Resource Planning and Development: performance appraisal facilitates human resource planning and development. It suggests the type of manpower available. It is also possible to train or develop the existing manpower as per the future needs of the enterprise. This is possible through training and exec. Development programmes.

• Employee Communication: performance appraisal facilitates direct communication with the employees through appraisal interview and post appraisal interviews. Such communication guides emp. And also provides more info. to the mgmt. regarding the expectations and feelings of the employees.

• High Employee Morale: scientific and impartial appraisal gets the support from the employees. They feel that the mgmt. gives due importance to them and is genuinely interested I their career development and well being, this creates positive impact on the mental make-up of employees. They treat mgmt. as their friend, guide and well wisher. This raises the morale.


Q)The meaning of Pay Structure
A company's pay structure is its method of administering its pay philosophy. The two leading types of pay structures are the internal equity method, which uses a tightly constructed grid to ensure that each job is compensated according to the jobs above and below it in a hierarchy, and market pricing, where each job in an organization is tied to the prevailing market rate.
A company needs job descriptions for positions such as executives, managers, technologists, entry-level people, and the like, so that people know where they fall within the organization. A pay structure helps answer questions about who's who, what each person's role is, and why people are compensated differently. It also helps human resources personnel administer fairly any given pay philosophy. For example, a company might want to pay everyone at market; or pay some people at market and some above it. Opportunities for incentives are also dealt with in the pay structure. For example, people with strategic roles will have opportunities for higher incentives.

In most organizations wage and salary rates are still assigned to jobs. The relationships between the pay for jobs involve pay structure decisions. Although organizations often make pay level decisions (how much to pay) and pay structure decisions (pay relationship) at the same time, these decisions and the process by which they are reached require separate treatment.

Actually, wage structures represent wage relationships of all kinds. Analysis of wage differentials of any kind (geographic, industry, community, or occupation) deals with wage structure issues. But because our primary focus is on pay decisions in organizations, our concern is with pay differences between jobs. In fact, determining the pay structure of an organization may be usefully described as putting dollar signs on jobs. Decisions on wage relationships among jobs within an organization are largely within the control of its decision makers. Wage level decisions are usually influenced more by forces external to the organization than are wage structure decisions.

Some organizations pay for skills possessed by employees rather than for the jobs employees hold. The rationale is usually serious and continual skill shortages experienced by the organization. But most organizations measure employee contributions first in terms of the jobs employees hold. One interesting analysis of organizational compensation decisions is that pay structure decisions are intended to achieve retention of employees through prevention of dissatisfaction and encouragement of employee cooperation. Pay level decisions, in this analysis, are intended to attract employees. To this analysis could be added the statement that wage structure decisions are intended to encourage employees to make a career with the organization and to accept training in preparation for higher-level jobs.
• Lower-range — pay is between minimum pay and mid-range, is appropriate for employees in the learning and development phase of their job; this range is typically for employees new to a position and whose competencies are not yet fully developed. Entry level pay falls in this range.

• Mid-range — pay is appropriate for employees who are fully proficient in their job. This is the target market-based competitive pay for employees who are fully competent, possess the full skill set necessary to perform their job well, meet job expectations, and consistently demonstrate skills needed and fulfill responsibilities and duties.

• Upper-range — pay is appropriate for employees who serve as role models, exhibiting an exceptional skill set and consistently exceeding all job expectations. These employees exemplify the best way of doing their job, go the "extra mile," share their knowledge, and leverage their strengths to benefit the Organisation.




Q)The Meaning of Pay Level
The compensation and benefit level is the average compensation paid to employees. This has two implications. The first is external: how does the organization compare with other organizations? This question is a strategic one of how the organization wishes to position itself in the marketplace. The second implication is internal. The average compensation is a reflection of the total compensation bill of the organization. Labor is one of the claimants on organizational resources. The size of the compensation and benefits bill is a reflection of who gets what within the organization.
The decision on compensation levels (how much will the organization pay?) may be the most important pay decision the organization makes. A potential employee's acceptance usually turns on this decision, and a large segment of the employer's costs are determined by it.
Compensation decisions are typically micro (individual) or macro (total organization) focused. Although organizations are under no constraint to separate these decisions, a course of study should. In practice, most unsophisticated organizations make the decision on compensation level (how much to pay) and compensation structure (relationships to competitors) at the same time. More administratively advanced organizations realize that individual decisions within a proper administrative structure are more consistent, fair, and cost-effective over time.
The compensation level decision may be considered the most important one for individuals. In terms of both employee attraction and cost considerations, it is often considered by most managers as a primary consideration. Also, it seems essential to recognize that compensation level decisions can never be completely separate from job-mix, hiring standards, personal decisions, and internal labor markets/relationships. For these reasons, compensation level decisions are typically the focus of a manager’s attention. From the organization’s perspective, however, one individual’s compensation decision typically goes unnoticed at the end of the year. Structure decisions (and the level of those structures) are what show up on an income statement.
The term compensation level simply means the average compensation paid to workers at some level of analysis, e.g. the job, the department, the employing organization, an industry, or the economy. The importance of the compensation level decision to organizations rests on its influence in getting and perhaps keeping the desired quantity and quality of employees. If the compensation level is too low, the applicant pool may dry up and recruitment efforts may meet with little success. Equally serious, some employees (often the best ones) may leave. At the extreme, the organization may experience difficulties with state and federal regulatory bodies administering minimum compensation laws and prevailing wage laws. Also, the organization may be confronted with concerted organizing drives if no union is present, or pressing compensation demands from existing unions. It is less apparent, but equally real, that a low compensation level may attract only less efficient workers, with the result that labor costs per unit of output rise.
If, on the other hand, the compensation level is too high, equally undesirable results are likely. The competitive position of the organization may suffer. Turnover rates may drop below some desirable minimum so that the organization tends toward inflexibility or stagnation. Also, if compensation and salary levels are too high during periods of compensation controls by federal authorities, trouble may be forthcoming from these officials. Frequently, compensation and benefit level decisions are hidden in the type and structure of benefit, fringe, and retirement plans.
Changes in compensation levels have the most drastic effects on total payroll. Of course, other compensation decisions have payroll effects, but usually not nearly as great. Substantial sums of money can be involved, and for this reason alone an organization must pay close attention to compensation levels (both competitively and internally).
Nor are employees and their representatives any less concerned with compensation level decisions. It is here that the absolute amount of the compensation or salary rate is determined. Also, it is here that unions exert their major effect, and here that member loyalty is built or lost.
Finally, consumers and the general public have major interests in compensation level decisions, the consumer because wages are a major element in prices, and the general public because wages and salaries represent the major portion of national income. Also, too frequent or too drastic changes in compensation levels affect the health of our economy.


Q) Explain the Concepts of wages.

While evolving the wage policy, three concepts of wages are generally considered, namely,
1. Minimum Wages,
2. Fair Wages, and
3. Living Wages.

Minimum Wages
Minimum wage is the one that provides not merely the bare sustenance of life but also for the preservation of the efficiency of the worker. For this purpose, the minimum wage must also provide for some measure of education, medical requirements and amenities. Minimum wage may be tied by an agreement between the management and the workers, but is usually determined through legislation. This is more so in the unorganized sector where labour is unionised. In the fixation of minimum wages, besides the needs of workers, other factors like ability of the concern to pay, nature of the jobs, and so on, are also considered.

Fair Wages
Fair wage is understood in two ways. In a narrow sense, wage is fair if it is equal to the rate prevailing in the same trade and in the neighbourhood for similar work. In a wider sense, it will be fair if it is equal to the predominant rate for similar work throughout the country and for traders in general. Irrespective of the way in which fair wage is understood, it can be fixed only by comparison with an accepted standard wage. Such a standard can be determined with reference to those industries where labour is well organized and has been able to bargain well with the employers.

Living Wages
Living wage is a step higher than fair wage. Living wage may be described as one which should enable the wage earner to provide for himself and his family not on the bare essentials of life like food, clothing and shelter, but a measure of frugal comfort including education for children; protection against ill health; requirements of essential social needs; and/or measure of insurance against the more important misfortunes including old age. A living wage must be fixed considering the general economic conditions of the country. The concept of living wage, therefore, varies from country to country. In the more advanced countries, living wage itself forms the basis for the minimum wage.
In India, minimum wage is determined mainly for sweated industries under the provisions of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. Fair wage is fixed for other industries considering prevailing rates of wages, productivity of labour, capacity of the employer to pay, level of national income and other related factors.
Tribunals, awards and wage boards play major role in fair wage fixation. Many people are of the opinion that living wage is a luxury for a developing country like India and can therefore be deferred.
 

dk2424

New member
Q) Objectives of Training and Development
Staying ahead in today's business world is more challenging than ever. Building trust and promoting teamwork are just two expectations of any business leader.
Training and development programs are designed to keep an organization at the front of its industry maximize performance and energize every level of the organization. Training and Development is also seen to strengthen the tie between employee development and strategic operation objectives.

The objectives of Training and Development are as follows: -
 Efficiency: Employees become efficient after undergoing training. Efficient employees contribute to the growth of the organization.
 Fewer accidents: Accidents, scrap and damage to machinery and equipment can be avoided or minimized through training. Even dissatisfaction, complaints, absenteeism, and turnover can be reduced if employees are trained well.
 Meeting manpower needs: Future needs of employees will be met through training and development programmes. Training serves as an effective source of recruitment. Training is an investment in human resource with promise of better returns in future.
 Improves quality: Better-informed workers are likely to make less operational mistakes. Quality of products or services will definitely increase. This can be well measured through the reduction in rejections.
 Personal growth: Training programmes also deal with personality development of the employees (through goal setting, motivation, leadership skills, etc.) thus they personally gain through exposure to training programmes.
 Obsolescence prevention: Training and development programs foster the initiative and the creativity of the employees and help to prevent the manpower obsolescence, which may be due to age, temperament, or the inability of the person to adapt himself to technological changes.

• Versatility in operations: Training makes the employees versatile in operations. All rounders can be transferred to any job. Flexibility is therefore ensured. Growth indicates prosperity, which is reflected in profits every year.

• Employee stability: Training contributes to employee stability in at least 2 ways. Employees become efficient after undergoing training. Efficient employees contribute to the growth of the organization. Growth renders stability to the work force. Further trained employees tend to stay with the organization.





















Q) Effectiveness and Evaluation of Training and Development
Effectiveness of Training
Training and Development programmes are most likely to be effective when they incorporate the following principles

1.Employee Motivation-motivation to learn is the basic requisite to make training and development programmes effective. Motivation comes from awareness that training fetches some rise in status and pay. Motivation alone is not enough; the individual must have the ability to learn.

2.Recognition of individual differences
Regardless of individual differences, and whether a trainee is learning a new skill or acquiring knowledge of a given topic, the trainee should be given the opportunity to practice what he is taught. Practice is essential after individual is successfully trained.

3.Schedule of learning
Duration of practice sessions, duration of rest sessions and positioning of rest pauses are the three schedules, which must be carefully planned and executed for an effective training programme.

Besides, Training can be made effective, if action on the following lines is initiated: -

1.It should be ensured that the management commits itself to allocate major resources and adequate time to training. This is what high performing organizations do. For example XEROX, invest 300 $ million annually or about 2.5% of its revenue on training. Similarly Hewlet Packard spends about 5% of its annual revenue to train 87000 workers.

2.It should be ensured that training contributes to competitive strategies of the firm. Different strategies need different HR skills for implementation. Let training help employees at all levels acquire the needed skills.

3.Ensure that a comprehensive and systematic approach to training exists, and training and retraining are done at all levels on a continuous and ongoing basis.

4.Training can be made effective by making learning as one of the fundamental values of the company. This philosophy should percolate down to all employees in the organization.

5.It should be ensured that there is proper linkage among organizational, operational and individual training needs.

6.And finally to make training effective a system to evaluate the effectiveness of training needs to be prepared so that the shortfalls can be easily looked at.




Why Training Fails?
 The benefits of training are not clear to the top management.
 The top management hardly rewards the supervisors for carrying out effective training.
 The top management rarely plans and budgets systematically for training
 The middle management, without proper incentives from top management does not account for training in production scheduling
 Without proper scheduling from above, first line supervisors have difficulty in production norms if employees are attending training programmes.
 Trainers provide limited counseling and consulting services to the rest of the organization.

Evaluation of Training
Organizations are under pressure to justify various expenses. The training budget is, often, not exempted from this purview. There are a number of questions raised on the value derived from training programmes—both directly and indirectly. Business heads and training managers are under pressure to prove the effectiveness of training

Thus it can be seen,
The last and one of the most important stages in the training and development process is the evaluation of results. Since huge sums of money are spent on training and development. how far the training has been useful must be judged/determined.
Evaluation helps determine the results of the training and development programme.
In practice is however seen, organizations either overlook or lack facilities for evaluation.

Need for evaluation: -
• The main objective of evaluating the training programme is to determine if they are accomplishing specific training objectives, that is correctible performance deficiencies.
• Secondly training programme should be evaluated to determine their cost effectiveness. Evaluation is useful to explain programme failure, if it occurs.
• And finally the credibility of training and development is greatly enhanced when it is proved that the organization has benefited tangibility from it.



Principle of evaluation

Evaluation of training programme must be based ob following principles
1. The evaluation specialist must b clear about the goals and purposes of evaluation.
2. Evaluation must be continuous.
3. Evaluation must be specific.
4. Evaluation must provide the means and focus for trainers to be able to appraise themselves
5. Evaluation must be based on objective methods and standards.
6. Realistic target dates must be set for each phase of the evaluation process. A sense of urgency must be developed, but deadlines that are unreasonably high will result in poor evaluation.

Criteria for evaluation.
HR professionals should try to collect four types of data while evaluation training programmes.
I. Measures of reaction.
Reaction measures reveal trainees’ opinions regarding the training programme.

II. Learning
Learning measures assess the degree to which trainees have mastered the concepts, knowledge and skills of the training.

III. Behavioural change
Behavior indicates the performance of the learners.

IV. Organizational results
The purpose of collecting organizational results is to examine the impact of training on the work group or the entire company.

Techniques of evaluation
Several techniques of evaluation are being used in organizations. It may be stated that the usefulness of the methods is inversely proportional to the ease with which the evaluation can be done.
The following are the techniques of evaluation: -
1.Experimental and control groups.
Each group is randomly elected, one to receive training and the other not to receive training.
The random selection helps to assure the formation of the groups quite similar to each other. Measures are taken of relevant indicators of success. (E.g.-words typed per minute, pieces produced per hour etc) before and after training for both groups.
If the gain demonstrated by the experimental group is better than those by the control group, the training programme is labeled as successful.

2.Longitudinal or time series analysis
Measurements are taken before the programme begins and are continued during and after the programme is completed. These results are plotted on a graph to determine whether changes have occurred and remain as a result of training effort. To further validate, that change has occurred as a result of training and not another variable, a control group can be included.

In order to conduct a thorough evaluation of a training programme, it is important to assess the costs and benefits associated with the programme. This is a difficult task, but it is useful in convincing the management about the usefulness of the training.
Some of the costs that should be measured for a training programme include needs assessment costs, salaries of training department staff, purchase of equipment, programme development costs, trainers cost during the training period.
The benefits to be compared to the costs are rupee payback associated with the improvement in trainee’s performance, their behavioral change and the longevity of the period during which the benefit would last.


Q) Follow – Up of Training
Following-up is the last step in the training process. Here, the training program is already completed and the trainees go back to their departments or positions and start doing the work assigned. However, the management feels that training / development is a means and not the end in itself. Training is essentially for achieving certain objectives. Management will like to know actual results / benefits of training. For this, follow-up of training in the form of evaluation training is essential. Management spent huge amount of money on training of employees and this expenditure should give positive return in terms of higher efficiency, productivity, high morale, cordial industrial relations and so on. For this, critical evaluation of training program is essential. This indicates the effectiveness of the training. Even suitable modification / improvement in the training program is possible after analyzing the results available from such evaluation. In brief, evaluation helps determine the results of training and development program. Unfortunately, many organizations overlook this important step in the training process. In some companies, suitable facilities required for evolution of training are not available.
Follow-up is the key to ensuring that interventions improve performance. Various follow-up approaches in the work place are used to support trainers, supervisors, service providers and others responsible for implementing the performance improvement interventions.
The follow up technique will increase the probability that learning and behavior changes will "stick" back on the job. These techniques are easy to use, don't require large amounts of time or organizational integration and cost very little. They can be added on to existing training or designed with new training.
On the whole, follow–up action is required to ensure implementation of evaluation report at every stage of training.


Q) Importance of Training and Development


Training and development programmes help remove performance deficiencies in employees. This is particularly true when
(1) The deficiency is caused by a lack of ability rather than a lack of motivation to perform
(2) The individual(s) have the aptitude and motivation needed to learn to do the job better, and
(3) Supervisors and peers are supportive of the desired behaviors.


There is greater stability, flexibility and capacity for growth in an organization. Training contributes to employee stability in at least two ways. Employees become efficient after undergoing training. Efficient employees contribute to the growth of the organization. Growth renders stability to the work force. Further, trained employees tend to stay with the organization. They seldom leave the company. Training makes the employees versatile in operations. All rounder can be transferred to any job. Flexibility is therefore ensured. Growth indicates prosperity, which is reflected in increased profits from year to year. Nobody else but well trained employees can contribute to the prosperity of an organization.

Accidents, scrap and damage to machinery and equipment can be avoided or minimized through training. Even dissatisfaction, complaints, absenteeism, and turnover can be reduced if employees are trained well.

Future need of employees will be met through training and development programmes. Organizations take fresh diploma holders or graduates as apprentices or management trainees. They are absorbed after course completion. Training serves as an effective source of recruitment. Training and development is an investment in human resources with a promise and it serves as an effective source of recruitment. Training and development is an investment in HR with a promise of better returns in future.

A company’s training and development pays dividends to the employee and the organization. Though no single training programme yields all the benefits, the organization which devotes itself to training and development enhances its HR capabilities and strengthens its competitive edge. At the same time, the employee’s personal and career goals are furthered, generally adding to his or her abilities and value to the employer. Ultimately, the objectives of the HR department are also furthered.

How to identify training needs?

Needs assessment diagnoses present problems and future challenges to be met through training and development. Organizations spend vast sums of money (usually as a percentage on turnover) on training and development. Before committing such huge resources, organizations would do well to assess the training needs of their employees. Organizations that implement training programmes without conducting needs assessment may be making errors. For ex- ample, a needs assessment exercise might reveal that less costly interventions (e.g. selection, compensation package, job redesign) could be used in lieu of training. Needs assessment occurs at two levels group and individual. An individual obviously needs training when his or her performance falls short of standards, that is, when there is performance deficiency. Inadequacy in performance may be due to lack of skill or knowledge or any other problem. The problem of performance deficiency caused by absence of skills or knowledge can be remedied by training. Faulty selection, poor job design, uninspiring supervision or some personal problem may also result in poor performance. Transfer, job redesign, improving quality of supervision, or discharge will solve the problem. Figure illustrates the assessment of individual training needs and remedial measures.
Assessment of training needs must also focus on anticipated skills of an employee. Technology changes fast and new technology demands new skills. It is necessary that the employee be trained to acquire new skills. This will help him/her to progress in his or her career path. Training and development is essential to prepare the employee to handle more challenging tasks. Deputation to a part-time MBA programme is ideal to train and develop such employees. Individuals may also require new skills because of possible job transfers. Although job transfers are common as organizational personnel demands vary, .hey do not necessarily require elaborate training efforts. Employees commonly require only an orientation to new facilities and jobs. Recently, however, economic forces have necessitated significant retraining efforts in order to assure continued employment for many individuals. Jobs have disappeared as technology, foreign competition, and the force of supply and demand are changing the face of our industry.
Assessment of training needs occurs at the group level too. Any change in the organization’s strategy necessitates training of groups of employees. For example, when the organization decides to introduce a new line of products, sales personnel and production workers have to be trained to produce, sell and service the new products. Training can also be used when high scrap or accident rates, low morale and motivation, or other problems are diagnosed. Although training is not a cure-all, such undesirable happenings reflect poorly trained work force.


Needs Assessment Methods: How are training needs assessed? Several methods are available for the purpose. As shown in Fig. 9.4, some are useful for organizational-level needs assessment and others for individual needs assessment.

Group or Organizational Analysis
 Organizational goals and objectives
 Personnel/ skill inventories
 Organizational climate indices
 Efficiency indices
 Exit interviews
 MBO or work planning systems
 Quality circles
 Customer survey/satisfaction data
 Consideration of current and projected changes

Individual Analysis
 Performance appraisal
 Work sampling
 Interviews
 Questionnaires
 Attitude survey
 Training progress
 Rating scales

Benefits of Needs Assessment: As was pointed above needs assessment helps diagnose the causes of performance deficiency in employees. Causes require remedial actions. This being a generalized statement, there are certain specific benefits of need& assessment. They are:
1. Trainers may be informed about the broader needs of the training group and their sponsoring organizations.
2. The sponsoring organizations are able to reduce the perception gap between the participant and his or her boss about their needs and expectations from the training programme.
3. Trainers are able to pitch their course inputs closer to the specific needs of the participants.

Performance appraisal

Q) Give the meaning and definition of performance appraisal and its objectives?

In simple terms, appraisal may be understood as the assessment of an individual’s performance in a systematic way, the performance being measured against such factors as job knowledge, quality, and quantity of output, initiative, leadership abilities, supervision, dependability, co-operation, judgment, versatility, health, and the like. Assessment should not be confined to past performance alone. Potentials of the employee for future performance must also be assessed.

A formal definition of performance appraisal is:
“It is the systematic evaluation of the individual with respect to his or her performance on the job and his or her potential for development.”

A more comprehensive definition is:
“Performance appraisal is a formal, structured system of measuring and evaluating an employee’s job related behaviors and outcomes to discover how and why the employee is presently performing on the job and how the employee can perform more effectively in the future so that the employee, organization, and society all benefit.”

The second definition includes employee’s behavior as part of the assessment. Behavior can be active or passive. Either way behavior affects job results. The other terms used for performance appraisal are: performance rating, employee assessment, employee performance review, personnel appraisal, performance evaluation, employee evaluation, and merit rating. In a formal sense, employee assessment is as old as the concept of management, and in an informal sense, it is probably as old as mankind. Nor performance appraisal is done in isolation. It is linked to job analysis.


Objectives of performance appraisal.

Data relating to performance assessment of employees are recorded, stored, and used for several purposes. The main purposes for employee assessment are:

1) To effect promotions based on competence and performance

2) To confirm the services of probationary employees upon their completing the probationary period satisfactorily.

3) To assess the training and development need of employees.

4) To decide upon a pay raise.

5) To let the employees know where they stand insofar as their performance is concerned and to assist them with constructive criticism and guidance for the purpose of their development.

6) To improve communication. Performance appraisal provides a format for dialogue between the superior and the subordinate, and improves understanding of personal goals and concerns. This can also have the effect of increasing the trust between the rater and the ratee.

7) Finally, performance appraisal can be used to determine whether HR programmes such as selection, training, and transfer have been effective or not.



Q. What is the Performance Appraisal process?
The employee performance appraisal enables you to identify, evaluate and develop an individual's performance. It is a tool to encourage strong performers to maintain their high level of performance and to motivate poor performers to do better.
Other important benefits of a formal appraisal process are:
• Validation of hiring practices — are the right people in the right positions?
• Provision of an objective measuring tool on which compensation decisions, and promotions can be based
• Identification of training needs — individually, departmentally and organizationally
• Identification of employees who have the potential for advancement or who might be better suited in other areas of the organization

1. Objectives Of An Appraisal:
1. Promotion, separation, and transfer decisions
2. Feedback to the employee regarding how the organization viewed the employee's performance
3. Evaluations of relative contributions made by individuals and entire departments in achieving higher level organization goals
4. Criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of selection and placement decisions, including the relevance of the information used in the decisions within the organization
5. Reward decisions, including merit increases, promotions, and other rewards
6. Ascertaining and diagnosing training and development decisions
7. Criteria for evaluating the success of training and development decisions
8. Information upon which work scheduling plans, budgeting, and human resources planning can be used

2. Establish Job Expectations:
Goals should be realistic, i.e., practical and achievable. Realistic goals provide a "balance" between what is hard and what is easy to achieve. Goals should motivate people to improve and to reach for attainable ends. For a goal to be motivational, the person must feel that the goal can be achieved. Impossible goals de-motivate and defeat the goal-setting process. Likewise, easy goals do not motivate any more than unattainable goals. You should review your goals on a quarterly or semi-annual basis to check your progress and to make any necessary adjustments.
3. Design An Appraisal Programme:
(i) Formal versus Informal approach?
• Many organizations encourage a mixture of both formal and informal approach. The formal approach is used as the primary evaluation, where as the informal approach is used more for performance feedback.
(ii) Who are the raters?
• Immediate supervisors, specialists from the hr department, subordinates, peers, committees, clients, or a combination of many.
(iii) What problems are encountered?
• Leniency, severity, bias
(iv) How to solve the problems?
• Train the raters and appraisers
(v) What should be evaluated?
• Quality, quantity, timeliness, cost effectiveness, need for supervision, interpersonal impact.
(vi) When to evaluate?
• Once in three months, once in six months or once a year
4. Appraise Performances:
Use methods of appraisal such as psychological appraisals, assessment centers, ranking method, performance tests and observations, essay method etc.
The formal performance appraisal process is one of assessing, summarizing and developing the work performance of an employee. The performance appraisal process should include at least two meetings convened by the supervisor with the employee.
5. Performance Interview:
Once appraisal has been made of employees, the raters should discuss and review the performance with the ratees, so that they receive feed back about where they stand in the eyes of the superiors. Feedback is necessary to effect improvement in performance. Performance interview has 3 goals:
(i) To change the behavior of employees whose performance does not meet organizational requirements or their own personal goals
(ii) To maintain the behavior of employees who perform in an acceptable manner
(iii) To recognize superior performance behaviors so that they will be continued
6. Use Appraisal Data For Appropriate Purposes:
The Hr department must use the data and information generated through performance evaluation. The employers offer significant rewards to employees in the form of:
(i) Money to purchase goods and services, for luxury
(ii) Opportunities to interact with other people in a favorable working environment
(iii) Opportunities to learn grow and make full use of their potential etc.
Data & information outputs of a performance will be useful in the following areas of HRM:
(i) Remuneration administration
(ii) Validation of selection programmes
(iii) Employee training & development programmes
(iv) Promotion, transfer & lay-off decisions
(v) Grievance & discipline programmes
(vi) HR planning




Q)Methods of Evaluation of Performance Appraisal

Numerous methods have been devised to measure the quantity and quality of employee’s job performance. Each of the methods discuss could be effective for some purposes for some organization as different organizations different methods. Broadly all the approaches can be classified into past oriented and future oriented.


PAST ORIENTED

Rating Scales

This is the simplest and most popular method of appraising employee performance. The typical rating-scale system consists of several numeric scales, each representing a job-related performance criterion such as dependability, initiative, output, attendance, attitude and the like. Each scale ranges from excellent to poor. The rater checks the appropriate performance level on each criterion, then computes the employee’s total numerical score. The number of points scored may be linked to salary increases, whereby so many points equal a rise of some percentage.
Rating scales offer the advantages of adaptability, relatively easy use and low cost. Nearly every type of job can be evaluated with the rating scale, the only requirement being that the job performance criteria should be changed. This way a large number of employees can be rated in a short time, and the rater does not need any training to use the scale.
The disadvantages of this method are several. The raters biases are likely to influence the evaluation, and the biases are particularly pronounced on subjective criteria such as co-operation, attitude and initiative. Furthermore, numerical scoring gives an illusion of precision that is really unfounded

Man to Man comparison method:

This technique was used by the US army, during the first world war. By this method certain factors are selected for the design by the rater for each factor. A scale of man is also created for each selected factor. Each man to be rated is compared with the man in the scale, and certain scores for each factor are awarded to him. So, instead of comparing a “whole man” to a “whole man” personnel are compared to the key man in respect of one factor at a time. This method s used in job evaluation and is called the factor comparison method. In performance appraisal it is not of much use because the designing of scales is a complicated task.

360-degree system of appraisal

Where appraisal are made by peers, superiors, subordinates and clients it is called 360-degree system of appraisal. First developed at GE, US in 1992, the system has become popular in our country too. GB (India), Reliance Industries, Crompton Greaves, Godrej soaps, Infosys, Thermax and Thomas Cook are using the method with greater benefits. The Arthur Anderson survey (1997) reveal the20% of the organizations use the 360-degree method. Here, besides assessing performance, other attributes of the assesse- talents, behavioural quirks, values, ethical standards, tempers and loyalty are evaluated by people who are best placed to do it.

Peer appraisal

Peers are in a better position to evaluate certain facts of job performance which the subordinates or supervisors cannot do. Such facts include contribution to work group projects, interpersonal effectiveness, communication skills, reliability and initiative. Closeness of the working relationship and the amount of personal contacts place peers in a better position to make accurate assessments. Unfortunately, friendship or animosity may result in distortion of evaluation. Further, when reward allocation is based on peer evaluation, serious conflicts among co-workers may develop. Finally, all the peers may join together to rate each other high.

FUTURE ORIENTED

MBO

The Management by objectives concept which was conceived by Peter Drucker, reflects a management philosophy which values and utilizes employee contributions.
MBO wroks can be described in four steps:
1) The organization, superiors and subordinates together or just the superiors alone establish the goals of the employee. This goal usually the desired outcome to be achieved and it can be used to evaluate performance.

2) Second step involves involves setting the performance standard for the subordinates in a previously arranged time period. As subordinates perform, they know fairly well what there is to do, what has been done, and what remains to be done.

3) Then the actual level of goal attained is compared to the goals agreed upon. The evaluator figures out why the goals were not met and accordingly determines training needs.

4) The last step is establishing new goals and, possibly, new strategies for goals not previously attained. If the goals were succeeded the subordinate may have larger involvement in setting of his next goal otherwise the superior may have to do it alone.

However, this method has been criticised for not being applicable to jobs with little or no flexibility, such as assembly-line work. It works well with managerial personnel and employees who have a fairly wide range of flexibility and self control in their jobs. And if this method is linked to employee rewards, the they are more likely to take up less challenging goals so that they are more likely to achieve them. Also if the rewards are semi annual or annual, then the employees may take up short term goals and neglect the important long term goals. L&T follows MBO style of evaluation

Assessment centers:

Mainly used for executive hiring, assessment centers are now being used for evaluating executive o supervisory potential. An assessment centre is a central location where managers may come together to have their participation in job related exercises evaluated by trained observers. The basic idea is to evaluate managers over a period of time, say one to three days, by observing and evaluating their behaviour across a series of selected exercises or work samples. Assesses are requested to participate in-basket exercises, work groups (without leaders), computer simulations, role playing, and other similar activities which require the same attributes for successful performance, as in the actual job. After recording their observations, the raters meet and discuss these observations. The decision regarding the performance of each assessee is based upon this discussion of observations. Self evaluation and peer evaluation are also thrown in for final rating.







Q)What are the uses of Performance Appraisal?

• Suitable Placement: Performance appraisal is useful for evaluating performance of subordinates and also for understanding their potentials. This information is available progressively and can be us purposefully for assigning duties to employees as per their merits and potentials. Thus, placement of staff and periodical adjustment in the placement can be made scientifically.

• Assistance in Self-improvement: Performance appraisal gives the details of plus points and weaknesses of employees. In addition, they are given guidance for removing their weaknesses and also for making their plus points more conspicuous. In brief, performance appraisal assists the employees in self-development. This is possible through performance feedback to every employee periodically.

• Incentive to Grown and Develop: Performance appraisal acts as an incentive to employees to improve their performance, develop new qualities and secure higher positions in the org. the employee with merit may be given special increments or promotion to higher position. This motivates others to improve their performance and qualities for similar benefits.

• Effective training programme: performance appraisal suggests the drawbacks and other weaknesses of employees. It is possible to remove such common weaknesses and deficiencies of employees by adjusting their training programmes accordingly.

• Introduction of Sound Personnel Policies: transfers, promotions, wage rates and dismissal are the different areas of personnel management. These personnel policies are directly connected with the performance appraisal of employees. Such policies become fair, impartial and acceptable to emp. When they are based on performance appraisal.

• Cordial Employer-Employees Relation: performance appraisal avoids or at least minimizes grievances of employees as regards promotions, transfers, increments etc. Employees develop a sense of confidence that injustice will not be done to any employee as performance appraisal system is based on sound principles. Management is also not in a position to make partiality/ favouratism when performance appraisal records are maintained properly and used when required.

• Human Resource Planning and Development: performance appraisal facilitates human resource planning and development. It suggests the type of manpower available. It is also possible to train or develop the existing manpower as per the future needs of the enterprise. This is possible through training and exec. Development programmes.

• Employee Communication: performance appraisal facilitates direct communication with the employees through appraisal interview and post appraisal interviews. Such communication guides emp. And also provides more info. to the mgmt. regarding the expectations and feelings of the employees.

• High Employee Morale: scientific and impartial appraisal gets the support from the employees. They feel that the mgmt. gives due importance to them and is genuinely interested I their career development and well being, this creates positive impact on the mental make-up of employees. They treat mgmt. as their friend, guide and well wisher. This raises the morale.


Q)The meaning of Pay Structure
A company's pay structure is its method of administering its pay philosophy. The two leading types of pay structures are the internal equity method, which uses a tightly constructed grid to ensure that each job is compensated according to the jobs above and below it in a hierarchy, and market pricing, where each job in an organization is tied to the prevailing market rate.
A company needs job descriptions for positions such as executives, managers, technologists, entry-level people, and the like, so that people know where they fall within the organization. A pay structure helps answer questions about who's who, what each person's role is, and why people are compensated differently. It also helps human resources personnel administer fairly any given pay philosophy. For example, a company might want to pay everyone at market; or pay some people at market and some above it. Opportunities for incentives are also dealt with in the pay structure. For example, people with strategic roles will have opportunities for higher incentives.

In most organizations wage and salary rates are still assigned to jobs. The relationships between the pay for jobs involve pay structure decisions. Although organizations often make pay level decisions (how much to pay) and pay structure decisions (pay relationship) at the same time, these decisions and the process by which they are reached require separate treatment.

Actually, wage structures represent wage relationships of all kinds. Analysis of wage differentials of any kind (geographic, industry, community, or occupation) deals with wage structure issues. But because our primary focus is on pay decisions in organizations, our concern is with pay differences between jobs. In fact, determining the pay structure of an organization may be usefully described as putting dollar signs on jobs. Decisions on wage relationships among jobs within an organization are largely within the control of its decision makers. Wage level decisions are usually influenced more by forces external to the organization than are wage structure decisions.

Some organizations pay for skills possessed by employees rather than for the jobs employees hold. The rationale is usually serious and continual skill shortages experienced by the organization. But most organizations measure employee contributions first in terms of the jobs employees hold. One interesting analysis of organizational compensation decisions is that pay structure decisions are intended to achieve retention of employees through prevention of dissatisfaction and encouragement of employee cooperation. Pay level decisions, in this analysis, are intended to attract employees. To this analysis could be added the statement that wage structure decisions are intended to encourage employees to make a career with the organization and to accept training in preparation for higher-level jobs.
• Lower-range — pay is between minimum pay and mid-range, is appropriate for employees in the learning and development phase of their job; this range is typically for employees new to a position and whose competencies are not yet fully developed. Entry level pay falls in this range.

• Mid-range — pay is appropriate for employees who are fully proficient in their job. This is the target market-based competitive pay for employees who are fully competent, possess the full skill set necessary to perform their job well, meet job expectations, and consistently demonstrate skills needed and fulfill responsibilities and duties.

• Upper-range — pay is appropriate for employees who serve as role models, exhibiting an exceptional skill set and consistently exceeding all job expectations. These employees exemplify the best way of doing their job, go the "extra mile," share their knowledge, and leverage their strengths to benefit the Organisation.




Q)The Meaning of Pay Level
The compensation and benefit level is the average compensation paid to employees. This has two implications. The first is external: how does the organization compare with other organizations? This question is a strategic one of how the organization wishes to position itself in the marketplace. The second implication is internal. The average compensation is a reflection of the total compensation bill of the organization. Labor is one of the claimants on organizational resources. The size of the compensation and benefits bill is a reflection of who gets what within the organization.
The decision on compensation levels (how much will the organization pay?) may be the most important pay decision the organization makes. A potential employee's acceptance usually turns on this decision, and a large segment of the employer's costs are determined by it.
Compensation decisions are typically micro (individual) or macro (total organization) focused. Although organizations are under no constraint to separate these decisions, a course of study should. In practice, most unsophisticated organizations make the decision on compensation level (how much to pay) and compensation structure (relationships to competitors) at the same time. More administratively advanced organizations realize that individual decisions within a proper administrative structure are more consistent, fair, and cost-effective over time.
The compensation level decision may be considered the most important one for individuals. In terms of both employee attraction and cost considerations, it is often considered by most managers as a primary consideration. Also, it seems essential to recognize that compensation level decisions can never be completely separate from job-mix, hiring standards, personal decisions, and internal labor markets/relationships. For these reasons, compensation level decisions are typically the focus of a manager’s attention. From the organization’s perspective, however, one individual’s compensation decision typically goes unnoticed at the end of the year. Structure decisions (and the level of those structures) are what show up on an income statement.
The term compensation level simply means the average compensation paid to workers at some level of analysis, e.g. the job, the department, the employing organization, an industry, or the economy. The importance of the compensation level decision to organizations rests on its influence in getting and perhaps keeping the desired quantity and quality of employees. If the compensation level is too low, the applicant pool may dry up and recruitment efforts may meet with little success. Equally serious, some employees (often the best ones) may leave. At the extreme, the organization may experience difficulties with state and federal regulatory bodies administering minimum compensation laws and prevailing wage laws. Also, the organization may be confronted with concerted organizing drives if no union is present, or pressing compensation demands from existing unions. It is less apparent, but equally real, that a low compensation level may attract only less efficient workers, with the result that labor costs per unit of output rise.
If, on the other hand, the compensation level is too high, equally undesirable results are likely. The competitive position of the organization may suffer. Turnover rates may drop below some desirable minimum so that the organization tends toward inflexibility or stagnation. Also, if compensation and salary levels are too high during periods of compensation controls by federal authorities, trouble may be forthcoming from these officials. Frequently, compensation and benefit level decisions are hidden in the type and structure of benefit, fringe, and retirement plans.
Changes in compensation levels have the most drastic effects on total payroll. Of course, other compensation decisions have payroll effects, but usually not nearly as great. Substantial sums of money can be involved, and for this reason alone an organization must pay close attention to compensation levels (both competitively and internally).
Nor are employees and their representatives any less concerned with compensation level decisions. It is here that the absolute amount of the compensation or salary rate is determined. Also, it is here that unions exert their major effect, and here that member loyalty is built or lost.
Finally, consumers and the general public have major interests in compensation level decisions, the consumer because wages are a major element in prices, and the general public because wages and salaries represent the major portion of national income. Also, too frequent or too drastic changes in compensation levels affect the health of our economy.


Q) Explain the Concepts of wages.

While evolving the wage policy, three concepts of wages are generally considered, namely,
1. Minimum Wages,
2. Fair Wages, and
3. Living Wages.

Minimum Wages
Minimum wage is the one that provides not merely the bare sustenance of life but also for the preservation of the efficiency of the worker. For this purpose, the minimum wage must also provide for some measure of education, medical requirements and amenities. Minimum wage may be tied by an agreement between the management and the workers, but is usually determined through legislation. This is more so in the unorganized sector where labour is unionised. In the fixation of minimum wages, besides the needs of workers, other factors like ability of the concern to pay, nature of the jobs, and so on, are also considered.

Fair Wages
Fair wage is understood in two ways. In a narrow sense, wage is fair if it is equal to the rate prevailing in the same trade and in the neighbourhood for similar work. In a wider sense, it will be fair if it is equal to the predominant rate for similar work throughout the country and for traders in general. Irrespective of the way in which fair wage is understood, it can be fixed only by comparison with an accepted standard wage. Such a standard can be determined with reference to those industries where labour is well organized and has been able to bargain well with the employers.

Living Wages
Living wage is a step higher than fair wage. Living wage may be described as one which should enable the wage earner to provide for himself and his family not on the bare essentials of life like food, clothing and shelter, but a measure of frugal comfort including education for children; protection against ill health; requirements of essential social needs; and/or measure of insurance against the more important misfortunes including old age. A living wage must be fixed considering the general economic conditions of the country. The concept of living wage, therefore, varies from country to country. In the more advanced countries, living wage itself forms the basis for the minimum wage.
In India, minimum wage is determined mainly for sweated industries under the provisions of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. Fair wage is fixed for other industries considering prevailing rates of wages, productivity of labour, capacity of the employer to pay, level of national income and other related factors.
Tribunals, awards and wage boards play major role in fair wage fixation. Many people are of the opinion that living wage is a luxury for a developing country like India and can therefore be deferred.
 

dk2424

New member
time to study MOC
imp qb notes proj on MOC


AMUL co operative

official site:http://www.amul.com/

amul.jpg


amul1.jpg
 

Attachments

  • AMUL CO OPERATIVES.zip
    1.2 MB · Views: 181
  • CO OPERATIVES Final Hard Copy good.doc
    304 KB · Views: 107
  • Co-Op_Notes.zip
    319.1 KB · Views: 114
  • coop_project.doc
    117 KB · Views: 84
  • co-operatives (professional mgmt).doc
    62.5 KB · Views: 68
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top