3.6.3- Making human resource decisions: improving organisational design and managing the human resource flow Flashcards
3.6 Human resource management
What are the 4 organisational structures?
- Functional
- Product-based
- Regional
- Matrix structure
What is a functional organisational structure?
Its a team structure that groups employees into different departments based on areas of expertise. This structuer is very common..
What are the advantages of a functional organisational structure?
- Coordination is estabilished: All employees work withing a department are specialists, coordination is straightforeward
- Training is easier: It facilitates the training of employees as it focuses on a limted set of skills. E.g. marketing department are trained in marketing issues
- Specialisation: It allows employees to develop their skills rapidly as they repeat the same tasks
What are the disadvantages of a functional organisational structure?
- Decreased morale: Employees tend to feel bored when work is monotonous
- Narrow scope: Employees from individual departments may possess little knowledge of how their roles ralte to the business’s objectives.
What is a product-based structure?
The business organises based on what they sell, each product will be under a different division. They all have there indivisdual functions like marketing, finance, etc.
What are the advantages of a product-based organisational structure?
- It allows each division to focus on its own customers
- Can monitor product performance- monitor performance and profits for each product unit
- Allows businesses to adapt different products to customers needs
What are the disadvantages of a product-based organisational structure?
- There can be competition for custoemrs between different product divisions
- Poor communication between product units may result in the business missing market opportunities
- There can be wasteful duplication of management functions for each product division.
What is a regional organisational structure?
When a business structures itself around a region, so staff from function working in a team is assigned to each region.
What are the advantages of regional organisational structures?
- Close communication with local customers
- Strong collaborative teams at each location
- The ability to better sevre local needs and tailer to the local market
- The ability to encouragr positive competition between differemt departments
What are the disadvantages of a regional organisational structure?
- Potential duplication of jobs, resources and functions, which is costly
- Some economies of scale may be lost
What is a matrix organisational structure?
Its a combination of two or more organisational structures.
What are the advantages of a matrix organisational structure?
- Improve decision-making, since there are two chains of command
- Improves communication across the business
- Help share best practice and ideas acrros teams
- Increases efficiencies due to sharing resources across deppartments
What are the disadvantages of a matrix organisational structure?
- Difficulties in coordinating tasks or functions
- Power struggles between the project managaer and functional managaer
- Large overhead costs, on account of having multiple manager
How is an organisation divided?
- Board of directors
- Managers
- Team leaderr
- Supervisors
- Shop-floor workers
What is a tall structure?
An organisation with lots of levels in their hierachy. They have long chains of command which is the path for communication and authority.
What are the advantages of a tall structure?
- Role are transparent, objectives are clearer and costs are easier to control
- Ecah levels managers have their own clear and seperate responsibilies
- Each manager has a small number of employees, therfore they’re closely supervised
What are the disadvantages of a tall structure?
- Decisions take a long time to make as long chain of command
- Employees have less freedom/ responsibilites and must rely on direct managers
- The company isnt as flexible and responsive to change
What is a flat structure?
They only have a few levels of hierachy in the organisation. People are given more responsibilites and freedom.
What are the advantages of a flat structre?
- Employees are more motivated to give their best and are more productive
- Communication chain is shorter so theres greater clarity
- Employees and managers are morelikely to share their ideas and opinions
- More cost effect, fewer management levels means fewer people to pay to get the same amount of work done
What are the disadvantages of flat structure?
- New employees may find the lack of leadership demotivating
- Due to the collaborative approach, decision making might take longer, due to votes or consensus
- Generally more suited to smaller operations
What is delayering?
The action of reducing the number of levels in hierachy of employees
Give a advantage and disadvantage
What are the impacts of delayering?
- Delayering can lower costs, saving money in salaries
- In the short term it can be costly due to employeers being retrained in new roles which can lead to stressed and overworked employees
What is delegation?
Shifting responsibility and authority for certain tasks from one person to another
Give a advantage and disadvantage
What are the impacts of delegation?
- It boost the motivation and morale of juniors, as they’re given responsibilities and duties
- If employees fail to complete tasks, they can feel overwhelmed and stuggle
What is centralisation?
It keeps authority for decisions at the top.
What are the advantages of a centralised stucture?
- Business leaders have lots of experience of making business decisions
- Senior managers can make big decisions quickly without consulting anyone
- Senior managers arent baiased towards one department
What are the disadvantages of a centralised structure?
- Not many people are expert enough to make decisions about all aspects of a business
- Excluding employees from decision making can be demotivating
- If the organisation reacts slowly to change, competition can rise
What is decentralisation?
They share out the authority to make decisions
What are the advantages of a decentralised structure?
- Involvement in decision-making motivates employees
- Employees can use expert knowledge of their sector
- Day-to-day decisions can be made quickly
What are the disadvantages of a decentralised structure?
- Junior employees may not have enough experience to make decisions
- Inconsisttencies may develop between divisions in a business
- Junior employees may not be able to see the overall situation
What is the purpose of HR planning?
To make sure that the business always has the right number of staff with the right skills to meet its needs
What is HR planning?
- It helps prevent a weak workforce that will dry up the income go out of business
- It allows companies to plan ahead so they can maintain a steady supply of skilled employees
What is recruitment?
The process of finding, screening, hiriing and onboarding qualified job candidates
What are the advnatages of internal recruitment?
- Canididtaes already know the business
- Short and cheap process
- Motivates workers to go for a promtion
What are the disadvantages of internal receruitment?
- Leaves vacancy in another department
- Can cause resentment among colleagues
What are the advantages of external recruitment?
- Brings in fresh new ideas
- Brings in experience from other organisations
- Larger number of applicants
What are the disadvantages of external recruitment?
- Long and expensive process
- Longer induction process for candidates
What are the advantages of on-the-job training?
- Easy to organise
- Lower costs of training
- Training is job specific
What are the disadvantages of on-the-job training?
- Training and trainee are not productive during training
- Bad practices are passed on
- No new ideas are brought into the business
What are the advantages of off-the-job training?
- Trainers are specialists
- New ideas are brought o the business
- No job distractions during training
What are the disadvantages of off-the-job training?
- Can be expensive
- No benefir to the business while training
- Training might not be specific to their day-to-day job
What is redeployment?
When an employer moves and employee from one role to another, often to avoide redundancies.
What is redundancy?
A dismissal from your job
What are the internal factors that influence HR plans?
- Corporate, marketing and production plans
- Changing in production style may lead to retraining, recruitment or redeployment of staff
What are external factors that influence HR plans?
- Employment legislation protects emplyees rights and resticts companies to dismiss workers
- New technology might change the number os staff and the skills needed
- Labour market trends like migration and the ageing population have an effect on the supply
