4. Human Resources Flashcards
What is External recruitment?
Filling a job vacancy from any suitable person not already employed by the business
What is Internal recruitment?
Takes place when a job vacancy is filled from within the existing workforce
What is selection?
Choosing the right employees from among those who have applied for a job
What is an organisational structure?
The way a business arranges itself to carry out its activities
What is an organisational chart?
A plan showing the roles of all the employees in a business
What is a line manger?
An employee’s immediate superior/boss
What is authority?
The power to control others and to make decisions
What is span of control?
The number of employees managed directly by another employee
What is levels of hierarchy?
The layers of authority within a business
What is delayering?
The removal of one or more levels of heirarchy from a business’s organisational structure
What is delegation?
The passing down of authority to more junior employees
What is a flat organisational structure?
Has wide spans of control and few levels of hierarchy
What is a tall organisational structute?
Has narrow spans of control and a larger number of levels of hierarchy
What is communication?
The exchange of information between two or more people
What are the three types of communication?
Downward, upward and horizontal
What is Decentalisation?
Allows employees working in all areas of the business to make decisions
What is centralisation?
Occurs when a small number of senior managers in a business take all the important decisons
What is diversification?
Occurs when a business starts selling new products in new markets
What is retention?
The proportion of a business’s workforce who reain with the business over a period of time, usually one year
What is recruitment?
The process of finding and appointing new employees
What are the stages in the recruitment process?
- Business needs new employees
- Job descriptions and person specifications drawn up
- Job positions are advertised internally or externally
- Applications are received and kept until the closing date
What is job analysis?
The collection and interpretation of information about a job
What is a job description?
States information about the duties and tasks that make up a particular job
What is a person specification?
Sets out the qualifications and skills required by an employee to fill a particular job
What is a curriculum vitae?
Provides information about a person e.g. qualifations, employment history and interests
What is the selection process?
- Match application forms or CVs against the job specification
- Draw up a shrtlist of candidates
- Invite applicants to attend the selection process
- Selection process: interviews, psychometric tests, assessment centre
- Choose the best applicants on the basis of perfromance in the selection process
- Inform all candidates of the decision taken
What is productivity?
The quantity of goods or services produced by an employee over a period of time, such as one year
What is quality?
The extent to which customers’ requirements are met
What is customer service?
The part of a business’s activities that is concerned with meeting customers’ needs as fully as possible
What is a contract of employment?
A legal document stating the hours of work, rates pay, duties and other conditions under which a person is employed
What is full-time employment?
Occurs when someone works a number of hours equal to the normal betweem 35 and 40 hours
What is part-time employment?
Takes place when an employee works for fewer than the normal number of working hours per week
What is job share?
Exists when two or more employees agree to share the responsibilities of a single job
What is a zero hour contract?
Hireing staff without any guaranteed hours of work
What is Motivation?
The range of factors that influence people to behave in certain ways
What is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
- Self-actualisation
- Self-esteem needs
- Love and belonging needs
- Safety needs
- Physiological needs
What is a retention rate?
keeping employees working for a business (not making them leave)
What are the benefits of a motivated workforce?
- Productive workers
- Few people leave (high retention rates)
- High levels of sales
- Easier to attract new employees
What is job enrichment?
Designing a job to give interesting and challenging tasks
What is Fringe benefits?
The ‘extras’ that employees may receive in addition to their pay, for example, a company car
What are non-financial methods of motivation?
Job enrichment,
Training,
Managers who retain authority,
Managers who allow junior employees freedom to make decisions,
What are financial methods of motivation?
- Salaries
- Wages
- Piecework
- Commisson
- Profit sharing
What is piecework?
A method of payment under which employees are paid according to the quantity of products they produce
What is the national living wage?
An hourly rate of pay which is set by the government. All employees above a certain age must receive at least this rate of pay
What is training?
A range of activities giving employees job-related skills and knowledge
Why is training important?
- Improvements in productivity
- More motivated employees
- Improved rates of employee retention
- High-quality goods and high levels of customer service
Types of training
Off-the-job
On-the-job
Induction
Induction training
The training given to an employee when he or she first starts a job
On-the-job training
Given in the workplace e.g. work shadowing, formal training sessions and computer- based training
Benefits and drawbacks of on-the-job training
- Can be cheap
- Targeted to exact needs of business
- Unlikely to bring new ideas into the business
- Can result in more employees being unavailable to work
Benefits of indution training
Helps new employees to intergrate with existing workers
Off-the-job training
Provided outside the employee’s place of work
Benefits and drawbacks of off-the-job training
- Can help to bring new ideas and approaches into a business
- Can be used to motivate employees
- Is expensive
- Business that do off the job take a risk
