Managing People Flashcards
What is a Hard approach HRM?
Treating employees as a cost of the business. Eg. Amazon
What is a soft approach HRM?
Treating employees as the most important asset in the business and a source of competitive advantage. Eg.
What are the characteristics of a hard approach HRM?
-Pay at a minimum
- Use of temporary/ zero hours contract
- Lack of job security
- minimum investment in training
- minimum additional benefits
-Financial incentive such as commission
- imposing penalties on employees who don’t meet their targets
What are the characteristics of a soft approach HRM?
- Competitive pay structure and benefits with suitable performance related rewards
- Effective recruitment processes eg. Using assessment centres
- Investment in training and development programs
- Permanent contracts providing job security
- The use of non-financial motivators eg. Team working
- Effective two-way communication
- Employees are given responsibility for their work
What are the advantages of treating staff as a cost?
- Easy to adapt the size of the workforce in response to changing business needs.
- Can result in lower costs (especially in the short run)
- Enables managers tight control over employees
What are advantages of treating staff as an assets?
- More skilled, adaptable employees
- Higher levels of staff retention. Reduce recruitment and training costs in the long run
- Reputation for being a good employer (attracts good people)
- a more motivated workforce
What is recruitment?
The process of finding people to work for a company or become a new member of an organisation
What is decentralisation?
Where a business divides up the organisation of its business into areas and have separate budgets for each area eg. North, South, East, West
What is centralisation?
Where a business has its organisation of management and administration at one central head office. The business has one central budget
What are the different types of organisational structure?
Tall structure, Flat structure, Matrix structure
What is a tall structure?
has many leaders and layers of management, and businesses with this structure often use a ‘top-down’ approach with a long chain of command
What are the advantages of a tall hierarchical?
- Supervisors normally have a small span of control so they can get to know their subordinates really well
- Knowing subordinates means they can delegate the right tasks and make sure their team is well trained
What are the disadvantages of a tall hierarchical?
- Lots of layers and a long chain of command can mean that the business is very inflexible
- It can also mean that communications within the organisation are slow
- This is expensive as there are more managers and supervisors
What is the chain of command?
the flow of information power and authority through the organisation
What is the span of control?
the number of people that a manager is responsible for
What is a flat structure?
They have a wide span of control and a short chain of command so information flows quickly throughout the organisation
What are the advantages of a flat structure?
- Fewer layers of hierarchy between the bottom and the top of the organisation may mean that communication is fast
- Lots of delegation means that staff are given greater responsibility, which might mean more opportunities to use their abilities
What are the disadvantages of a flat structure?
- Staff can be overstretched or overworked in a flat structure as there is less supervision, this can cause stress and demotivation
- Can create a power struggle if the manager is rarely around as subordinates jostle for roles and responsibilities
- Wide span of control means managers have too many staff to manage and may lose touch with them
What is a matrix structure?
a combination of two or more types of organisational structures
What are the disadvantages of a matrix structure?
- Possible co-ordination problems between departments
- Conflict of interest across projects
- Staff stretched across different projects, not spending time in their own departments
What are staff?
The employees in a business
What is staffing?
The process of hiring, training and supervising employees in a business
How do staff add value to a product as an asset?
- supporting the manufacturing process
-give great customer service
What are the 6 main costs of staff
- Recruitment
- Training
- Paying minimum wages
- paying staff salaries and wages
- staff welfare
- redundancy
Why can cost of recruitment be high?
- if a business carries out recruitment themselves, they have to pay for an advert, the employee time away from their job to carry out the interview
- if a business use an agency it can cost up to £2000 per employee
What are the advantages of training?
Companies with innovative learning and development programmes are increasing sales revenue and retaining their staff for longer
