2.1 - Human Resource Managemant

Question 1

What is human managements role

Answer 1

They employ the right people allowing organisations to achieve their objective. This involves diverse tasks such as recruitment, selection, training, performance evaluation, motivation, compensations and employee retention

Question 2

What is the ultimate on objective of HR

Answer 2

HRM’s ultimate objective is to maximize the effective use of an organization’s workforce. As the demands of workforce planning continually change, HRM remains an essential and continuous function within the personnel department.

Question 3

What is the role does HR have to achieve in a company

Answer 3

HR managers play a crucial part in ensuring the appropriate recruitment of suitable individuals in optimal numbers, assigning them to suitable positions, all at the right timing.

Question 4

How can human resource planning be defined

Answer 4

Human resource planning can be defined as the management process of anticipating and meeting an organization’s current and future staffing needs. Basically, finding a balance between having to many employees (high cost) or to few employees (low productivity)

Question 5

Why does HR need to take into consideration internal and external factors

Answer 5

Factors that might affect their planning

Question 6

What are examples of external factor

Answer 6

External factor - government regulations, immigration, technological changes, demographic changes, social trends, state of the economy, changes to education, labour mobility and work regs like working remotely

Question 7

What are examples of internal factors

Answer 7

Changes in the business organisation, changes to business finance, changes in labour reaction, changes in business strategies

Question 8

How can an external factor such as tech changes influence HR

Answer 8

improvements in ICT means that more people can work from home, meetings, recruitment and online training is more available and accessible. Also, improvements in infrastructure can help people to commute to their jobs easily.

Question 9

How can an external factor such as government regulations influence HR

Answer 9

changes in minimum wage, hourly working hours, health a safety laws, pensions, age retirement, gender equality, etc. Every new law that the Government imposes will affect the organization’s HR planning.

Question 10

How can an external factor such as demographic change influence HR

Answer 10

retirements, migration, gender equality, aging population or emerging population are all demographic factors. Organizations should understand these factors to adapt their HR plan accordingly.

Question 11

How can an external factor such as social trends influence HR

Answer 11

changes in society such as the role of women, single parents, work-life balance, time for leisure. All these changes will affect the HR plan of an organization.

Question 12

How can an external factor such as the state of the economy influence HR

Answer 12

The economy can experience either a recession (less work available) or a “boom” (more work available); both factors will affect the HR planning, accordingly.

Question 13

How can an external factor such as changes in education influence HR

Answer 13

people getting “more or less” education; different degrees or apprenticeships, “more or less” requirement to start college or university; are factors that will change the demographics of education and hence affect the HR planning.

Question 14

How can external factors such as labour mobility influence HR

Answer 14

to what extent labour could change to different locations (geographical mobility) or flexibility on changing jobs (occupational mobility). Any of these two factors are also affected by: relocation costs, family, the cost of leaving somewhere else, fear of the unknown, language and cultural differences. How people react to these mobility will affect HR planning.

Question 15

How can internal factors such as changes in business organisations influence HR

Answer 15

Any change on the organization’s objectives will affect the HR planning. This can also apply to M&A.

Question 16

How does the internal factor of changes in labour regulations influence HR

Answer 16

any changes that happen inside the organization such as the creation of unions or the Union’s loss of power will affect HR planning and how the organization will react to that. Disagreements between employees can also affect the planning, if some employees suddenly decide to leave the organization.

Question 17

How does the internal factor of changes in business Strategy influence HR

Answer 17

depending on the market, changing in an organization’s strategy is very common, based on the fact that organizations should always adapt to change that will affect HR planning.

Question 18

How does the internal factor of changes in business finance influence HR

Answer 18

an organization’s financial situation is key for HR planning. If for example, the organization can’t afford to hire more people or worst, can’t afford to keep all the employees, that will have a huge impact in HR planning. Paying sudden increases in pensions or income taxes will also increase the costs for the company.

Question 19

Which factors affect working environments

Answer 19

Some other factors that might change the working environment include; increased migration of potential employees, changing educational opportunities, aging population, move from public sector to private sector, increase female participation in the workforce; amongst others.

Question 20

How does changes in work patterns occur and how does peoples preference affect this

Answer 20

This refers to the different jobs that people want as well as what the industry needs or demands.
Organizations, sectors and Governments do their best to attract the employees needed for the job. However, people’s preferences might affect this process since nowadays people tend to be more selective on what they want.

Question 21

How do the changes in work patterns occur

Answer 21

This has to do with the change in work routines since there seem to be a greater demand in more flexible working time. This refers to a range of employment options designed to help employees balance work and home life.
There seem to be a decline in full-time work and permanent contracts in exchange for an increase in part-time work, temporary work, flexitime, freelance, teleworking, casual Fridays , 3 day weekends, shift swapping, job sharing, homeworking and the gig-economy (i.e. Deliveroo, uber eats, etc).
These practices changed even more after COVID-19

Question 22

Define changes in work preferences

Answer 22

how employees want to adapt their work to lifestyle changes (i.e. having children, wanting to achieve more professionally, etc.)

Question 23

What are 4 examples of changes in work preferences

Answer 23

Career breaks – when the employee wants to take some time off to do another activity that might or not be related to his/her current job. This must be formal (i.e. a sabbatical year) or informal, in which case the employees might not come back to work.

Job share – two or more employees decide to share the job, so they have more time for other activities.

Study leave – when the employee is granted time off work to pursue more studies (i.e. MBA, CIMA, ACCA are normally cases that organizations even finance!). This could be paid or unpaid. If it’s paid the employee has a compromise to go back to work as soon as his/her studies finish and normally this is stipulated in a contract.

Downshifting – when an employee gives up a managerial position or a very will paid job to either try a new career or explore another area of interest that will obviously pay less.

Question 24

What is ethical consideration

Answer 24

very important part of HR planning since employees not only should be ethically treated

Question 25

What is an example of ethical consideration

Answer 25

With the advanced levels of ICT and information everyone can have access to all sorts of news. The big scandal on “high self paid bonuses” in banking is one of these examples.There are various ethical issues that might be addressed to HR such as discrimination, redundancies and health and safety; amongst others. HR needs to have a clear strategy to deal with these issues.

Question 26

What are some ethical issues in the HR plan

Answer 26

1. Performance appraisal
2. Right to privacy
3. Salaries and financial re numeration
4. Health and safety
5. Discrimination
6. Lay off and redundancy

Question 27

What are cultural differences and their impact

Answer 27

With the advanced levels of ICT and information everyone can have access to all sorts of news. The big scandal on “high self paid bonuses” in banking is one of these examples. There are various ethical issues that might be addressed to HR such as discrimination, redundancies and health and safety; amongst others. HR needs to have a clear strategy to deal with these issues.

Question 28

What is Gert hofstedes concept and his 5 concepts

Answer 28

Geert Hofstede develop his concept of Power Distance. Hofstede studied the links between international cultures and organizational cultures suggesting that there are 5 dimensions which affect cultural influences.
These are: Power Distance, Individualism vs. Collectivism, Uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs. Femininity and Long–term vs. short-term orientation

Question 29

What did hofsetdes theory achieve

Answer 29

Hofstede’s theory helped to understand how HR should approach a diverse workforce.
Training, for example, can reduce potential misunderstandings or frictions that might arise from cultural differences. Moreover, a diverse workforce can create more innovation since different people from a vast multi-cultural background will bring different ideas.