Major Human Resource Management Issue Affecting an Organization - Case Study Example

Major Human Resource Management (HRM) Issue Affecting an Organization Name Professor Institution Course Date Major Human Resource Management (HRM) Issue Affecting an Organization Executive Summary Effective hiring strategies lead to enhanced organizational performance. How recruitment is conducted can be used to determine how an organization manages its employees and whether it can be successful. With regards to this human resource management, this report will discuss recruitment and selection as an issue which affecting an organization and why there is need improving it. To put this discuss into context, the report focuses and compare the recruitment and selection strategies between NISGUA and Google Inc and describe how their approaches have brought efficiency or inefficiency within the organizations. The finding demonstrates that Google Inc has a better recruitment and selection strategies compared to NISGUA since it emphasizes on attention on talent, problem solving and technical skills, innovation and creativity, and diversity. The report will provide recommendations which NISGUA and other companies can use to improve their recruitment and selection approaches. Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 Table of Contents 3 Introduction 4 Overview of the case Study 4 An analysis of the HRM issue 6 Comparison analysis between NISGUA and Google 10 Conclusion and Recommendation 12 References 13 Introduction As a HRM function, recruitment and selection has been categorized one of the major practices which critically influences the organizational performance (Richardson 2012). Whilst it is argued that unformed recruitment decisions affects the performance of an organization and reduces goal attainment, it takes so long for some companies to recognize and adopt new and effective recruitment and selection strategies. Sinha (2009) argued that until modern companies realize that getting and retaining top talent is vital to their success, they are will continue to be losing competition and market share to other market players. Caligiuri, Lepak and Bonache (2010, p.31) stated that companies which do not have effective recruitment have to learn from their counterparts which have the best practices. Therefore, this report will analyze recruitment and selection at NISGUA which has not been effective and compare it with it with that of Google Inc which has been rated as one of the best. In addition, the report will make a case for change and provide recommendation to enable improvement. Overview of the case Study NISGUA is a short form of The Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala and a non-governmental Organization based in the U.S (NISGUA 2015). The company was first established in 1981 has several networks in the US and Guatemala. According to NISGUA (2015) the objective of this organization is to promote human rights and to strengthen the need for justice globally. Its expansion has seen it open several offices in the US and Guatemala and therefore needed more staff to help run the organization. In the recent past, NISGUA appointed Jennifer DeLury as an Executive Director. NISGUA was in the process of change and needed to create new alliances or partnerships, and new constituencies with younger immigrants (Gallo 2010). This issue revolved around customer diversification and was handed to Jennifer to handle. Jenn was serious about the role and wanted to hire someone with the knowledge and skill to help meet the new demands. Gallo (2010) claimed that even though the new roles were not defined, Jennifer understood the type of employee she needed, particularly the technical skills. The company hired a person who stood for the future yet the company had not reached that height. Some of the requirements for the new employee was being able to bridge between old and new. This means someone who could spend his or her time with traditional supporters on phone and also attending occasions which connects the younger audience to the company (Gallo 2010). The role necessitated cross-cultural knowledge and skills which the new employee did not pose. After sometimes, Jennifer realized she had hired a person who had activist skills than the relationship manager the organization required. Fortunately, the company had put the new employee on probation for 90 days and had to dismiss him after performance review (Gallo 2010). Comparing to Google, there is much difference. Google has one of the best recruitment and selection policy (Logan 2008). The company considers employee diversity in the hiring since it offers great talents and wide range of skills which can benefit the company in its quest for entry into the new markets. The company policy on hiring also pays much attention on problem solving and technical skills unlike NISGUA (Sullivan 2005). In addition, creativity and innovation of a candidate play an important role in Google hiring. The major progressive factor of Google Inc’s recruitment and selection practice is the mentioned objective of hiring somebody smarter than interviewer, who will challenge the panel, and the company will learn from (Logan 2008). The first mistake made Jennifer more careful and professional in her replacement. During the replacement process, she defined the needed capabilities for the new employee. The advertisement was also made which explicitly portrayed cross-cultural competencies as one of the requirements. The new employer was an asset for the organization and guided the company into transformation (Gallo 2010). The process depicts various flows of poor recruitment and selection policies within organization which keeps on costing the organization in terms of time and money. An analysis of the HRM issue Recruitment synonymous with the word "hiring" implies to the general practice of attracting, picking and appointing proper applicants for the jobs in an organization (Kumari 2012, p.35). In normally cases, human resource managers or officers are tasked with conducting recruitment and selection of the best candidates for the organization. However, with competition for the talents and speed, human resource department now outsource such process to human resource consultant firms to conduct hiring. Anyim, Ekwoaba and Ideh (2012, p.71) contended that there are two types of recruitments which companies have continued to use depending on what they are looking for, and they consist of internal and external recruitment and selection. With the recent advancement in technology companies have adopted internet-oriented technologies in quest of supporting every area of the recruitment (Sinha 2009). Despite the development and competition, many companies including NISGUA are to get it right. The human resource experts believe that companies which has the poor hiring practices often miss on the whole process or just one of the processes such as defining the requirements of the candidates, attracting, selecting or placing the candidates on the job (Sparrow 2007, p.849). The case of NISGUA depicts lack defined roles and capability in their advertising. The process left the opportunity wide open for everybody to apply even those are incompetent. In addition, globalization has prompted the companies to look for individuals with cross-cultural competence which can help the organization reach other new markets (Sparrow 2007). Failure to conform to this requirement makes the company less competitive in the global market. Another noted failure the company made was to ignore evaluating technical skills and problem solving skills hence they ended up with the wrong candidate for the wrong job. In fact the company ended with an activist rather than relationship manager. Gallo (2010) stated that at the end of the propagation after 90 days the performance did reflect the expectation of the company. The situation left a lot of questions about the hiring procedure of NISGUA. Anderson et al., (2004, p.491) posited recruitment and selection has a significant role to play to make sure a new employee improves the performance and bring positive results to the company. Expert argues that selection of workers takes place not just to take the positions, but rather intends to bring in employees who may perform at a higher level and show commitment (Armstrong 2009). The best practice of hiring dictates that the company defines skills required of the new candidates and the roles he or she is going to perform in the company. It makes easy for the company because it automatically rules out people with no required skills not to apply and increase in speed of short listing. Furthermore, the process also reduces the chance of high rate of turnover in the organization. When the company has many incompetent employees, they may get it tough to cope when the results needed, hence would opt to resign (Ofori & Aryeetey 2011). Appropriate selection gives HR planners a chance to evaluate potential employees' personality and character. This makes sure that only staffs with the most appropriate skills and personalities are offered the job. The company takes certain notice of the individual flexibility and malleability of a candidate, which reassures that such a person can change rapidly to the harsh needs of the job (Collings & Mellahi 2009, p.307). Recruited workforce contented with their jobs result into a low degree of employee turnover. Human resource managers must also learn to cut down cost by either recruiting internally or just recruiting externally and getting it right. Employing the wrong person made Jennifer and the whole NISGUA wasting not only time, but also resource in getting the replacement. Excess funds used in the replacement could be used in other areas like employees’ motivation or training and development. Kumari (2012, p.37) asserted that employee retention is significant to the organization, as the costs of recruitment and training of new employees tend to be high. With external hiring, the company have to inform the potential candidates of the organizational goals and culture and give them time to adapt. Even after carrying out the interview exercise to the external candidates there is no guarantee that they would be fitting within the organization. However, external candidates also have a merit. Raybould and Sheedy (2005, p.261) affirmed that external hiring brings new individuals with innovative and fresh ideas to the company. Workforce diversity is also enhanced through bring new talents from external hiring. This may help the company to penetrate new markets. Another advantage of hiring multicultural employees is based on wide array of perspective on challenges and issues. According to Anyim, Ekwoaba and Ideh (2012, p.73), the study conducted in 1999 dubbed the "Fortune” supported the idea of having diverse employees within the organization because they perform better. Ofori and Aryeetey (2011, p.49) opined that individuals from diverse backgrounds offer unique cultural knowledge and skills to the conditions they undergo with the organization and the wide perspectives tend to enable an effective decisive solution. As a company which promotes human rights and justice for people in Guatemala and the US, having diverse improves it image and makes it more legitimate. Diverse workforce unites different communities and reduces the chances of discrimination not just in the organization but the whole society (Sinha 2009). Therefore, good practices create a platform of acceptance and tolerance within the organization. The application of the good selection tools will increase the chances that the right individual will be picked to fill the vacancy. While staff selection is just like a science, some companies fail to create their selection mechanisms in order to maximize the probability that the right candidate-job suit will be realized (Richardson 2012). When mistakes are made, the picked candidate’s performance could be less than adequate. Training could be required to enhance the candidate’s expertise. Maybe Jennifer could have offered the new employee some training before during probation and monitor her progress. The company could have a good candidate who just lacks a little polishing in terms of training to turn to what the company wants. Hiring is a critical step in ensuring survival of the company. However, Aguinis and Kraiger (2009, p.455) argued that the process is not an end in itself as the new employees requires continuous development and evaluation so as to familiarize with the challenges and new trends. When staff becomes developed, it assists in sustaining growth and increasing their performance within organization. A research done by Anyim, Ekwoaba & Ideh (2012, p.73) held that efficient hiring can also offer considerable enhancements in the employee morale and productivity, and enable the companies to build labour force who can jointly offer a better-quality product and service. The productivity and survival of a company relies on the workforce caliber. In fact, management theories claim that the cost of ineffective business viability can frequently be blamed on the years of poor recruitment and selection policies or practices (Ofori & Aryeetey 2011, p.51). Inapt selection and hiring decisions decreases organizational efficiency, quash development and reward strategies, are regularly unreasonable on a recruit and may become stressful for human resource executive who must handle unsuitable employees. Comparison analysis between NISGUA and Google A case between the two organization present worst and best human resources practices. While NISGUA is characterized by poor hiring practices, Google has thrived over the year because of proper recruitment and selection policies. Despite the differences, one thing experts can give credit on is the fact that both companies are recognizing that the environment is rapidly changing look for multicultural talents which can meet the new customer demands. However, Gallo (2010) claimed that the problem lies with NISGUA which is yet to fully adopt change making certain issues we go hand in hand with change complex. As much as the company is looking for someone who can help in creating new constituency with the young people, the person must be all-round and understands how to reconcile the traditional target with new targeted people (Gallo 2010). The situation is different at Google, which embraces both old and new generations. In a nutshell, the company has both younger generations called the Generation Y and older generation called the baby-boomer. Sinha (2009) argued that the baby-boomer provide the experience needed to handle pressure and working on complex tasks. On the other hand, generation Y brings the new trends in the market needed by the company to survive (Sinha 2009). Comparing the two companies, one realizes that Google is better off in terms of policy on talents, diversity, technical skills, and creative and innovative recruits. Google focuses on the intelligence, potential, experience and past performance, an approach which has made the company to get the best talent in the market and enable them become the best search engine company in the world (Bharat 2007). Best talent means someone who is determined to get the best for the company and himself. Similarly, it means someone who understands his role and has technical skill linked with their area of specialization. Gallo (2010) contended that this is so different at NISGUA because the company interview does not dwell in a practical interview as Google Inc. Since consumer new look for innovative companies can provide superior products and services, Google provides its employees with various challenges to demonstrate their innovative skills (Sullivan 2005). The process characterizes past performance and future potential to improve. The company has perfected this process by collaborating with various universities where they get the potential talents and groom them to best managers and techies. Logan (2008) reported that the company has a program called “Innovation Time Off” in which it encourages its engineers to spend 20 percent of their time to work on the projects which they desire. NISGUA select people on one-dimension interview based on oral interview which in most cases can be misleading and can enable the company to hire a wrong employee (Gallo 2010). The differences between is an indication that NISGUA still has a long way to compete with organizations both in same and different industries. Conclusion and Recommendation In conclusion, it is obvious that NISGUA could experience significant human resource problems in future because of the change process of a present competitive business environment. Thus continuous changes require to be adopted to deal with such gaps that could lead to challenges in future. Therefore the report recommend for the following changes at NISGUA to improve hiring and performance in future. Just as the highly performing companies, NISGUA needs to define its job requirements and responsibility for every function to enable the company pick the most suitable candidates. The process reduces the redundancy of using recruitment funds and time on the wrong candidate. NISGUA must offer training during the probation period which is followed by evaluation to certain if the recruit is actually up to the task and have potential to perform the required functions. It also recommended that NISGU must balance its recruitment process to be both internal and external so as create sense of motivation, professionalism and experience among the existing employees and the newly hired employees from outside. The external recruit needs time and training to adapt to the roles, culture and organization. The discussion evidently shows the hiring strategies behind Google success over the years. NISGU must borrow a leaf offer a hiring environment which initiates creativity and innovation both on recruiting personnel and candidates. References Anderson, N, Lievens, F, van Dam, K & Ryan, AM 2004, Future perspectives on employee selection: Key directions for future research and practice, Applied Psychology: An International Review, Vol.53, pp.487-509 Armstrong, M 2009, Human Resource Management Practice, 11th Ed., Kogan Page Ltd, London Anyim, F.C, Ekwoaba, J.O & Ideh, D. A 2012, The role of human resource planning in recruitment and selection process, British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No.2, pp.68-78 Aguinis, H & Kraiger, K 2009, Benefits of training and development for individuals and teams, organization, and society, Annual review of psychology. Vol.60, pp.451-474 Bharat, M 2007, The Google Way: Give Engineers Room, The New York Times Caligiuri, P, Lepak, D & Bonache, J 2010, Managing the global workforce, Wiley- Blackwell, Chichester Collings, D.G & Mellahi, K 2009, Strategic Talent Management: A review and research agenda, Human Resource Management Review, Vol.19, No.4, pp.304–313 Gallo, A 2010, How to Prevent Hiring Disasters, Harvard Business Review Kumari, N 2012, A Study of the Recruitment and Selection process: SMC Global. 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