Human Resources: Recruitment, Selection, and Employee Management
Human Resources Department
Recruitment: is the process from identifying that the business needs to employ someone up to the point at which applications have arrived at the business.
Key Functions
- Recruitment and Selection: Involves attracting and selecting the best candidates for vacancies that arise.
- Wages and Salaries: These must attract and retain the right people and be sufficiently high to motivate employees.
- Industrial Relations: There must be effective communication between representatives of the management and of the workforce. This may be to resolve grievances and disputes but also to put forward ideas and suggestions for improvements.
- Training Programmes: Involves assessing and fulfilling the training needs of employees. This should be linked to the future plans of the business.
- Health and Safety: The business needs to make sure that it complies with all the laws on health and safety.
- Redundancy (Retrenchment) and Dismissal: This involves shedding employees either because the business changes in some way or because the employee is not satisfactory. The business must be sure to comply with all the laws on redundancy, dismissal, and disciplinary matters.
Job Analysis, Description, and Specification
Job Analysis: Identifies and records the responsibilities and tasks relating to a job.
Job Description: Outlines the responsibilities and duties to be carried out by someone employed to do a specific job.
Job Specification: Is a document which outlines the requirements, qualifications, expertise, physical characteristics, etc., for a specified job.
Internal Recruitment
Internal Recruitment: Is when a vacancy is filled by someone who is an existing employee of the business.
Advantages of Internal Recruitment:
- It saves time and money compared with recruiting someone from outside the business (advertising, interviewing).
- The person is already known to the business, and their reliability, ability, and potential are known.
- The person also knows the organisation’s way of working and what is expected from employees.
- It can be very motivating for other employees to see their fellow workers being promoted – it makes them work harder.
Disadvantages of Internal Recruitment:
- No new ideas or experience come into the business. Other companies may have different ways of working, and these ways may be better in some respects, including making the business more efficient. Internal recruitment does not allow for these working practices to be spread.
- There may be jealousy and rivalry amongst existing employees.
External Recruitment
External Recruitment: Is when a vacancy is filled by someone who is not an existing employee and will be new to the business.
Where to Place Advertisements:
- Local Newspapers: Suitable for positions that do not require a high level of skill and therefore it is likely that many people locally could fill these vacancies.
- National Newspapers: These will usually be used for more senior positions where there may be few, if any, local people who have the right experience, skills, and qualifications to do the job. Many people will read the newspapers.
- Specialist Magazines and Journals: These will usually be used for particular technical people such as scientists. These people will read the specialist magazines and see the advertisements. Again, these can be for jobs in their home country or abroad.
- Recruitment Agencies: These are specialists in recruiting employees.
- Centres Run by the Government: These are places where job vacancies can be advertised.