Bm6301: Strategic Human Resource Management Assessment Answers

Human Resource Management is an important part of  It will aid in the process of management of human activities in the property development project throughout UK.  The human resource plan includes:

1. Roles and Responsibilities of team members throughout the project
2. Staffing Management Plan

The purpose of the HR plan is to help to achieve success through ensuring that right people with efficient skills are brought on board.  Also, the plan ensures that team building strategies are clearly defined and managed.

Roles and Responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities of the staff that will work in the property development project are crucial for the success of the project. Therefore, it is important for team members to understand their roles and responsibilities to ensure that their individual contributions lead to success.  The following team roles have been established for the project:

• Project Manager (1 Position)

This person will be in charge of the overall success of the apartment developments throughout UK.  The person approves and authorizes all the resources spent on the project.  Also, PM ensures that the projects meets all the criteria set out by law. The HR personnel will report the status of the project to the management.  Lastly, he will evaluate the performance of each team member and report to the functional managers.  Therefore, the PM must have effective communication skills, leadership management, budgeting and effective listening skills.

• Public Relations Officer (1 Position)

The Public Relations Officer is in charge enabling and promoting communication between nd its publics.  Specifically, the role of the person is to address and answer all queries of the client.  The Public Relations must possess the following skills: effective communication, effective listening, and conflict resolution and time management.

• Head Programmer (1 Position)

The Head Programmer is in charge of all the programmers. He ensures that the Programmers have access to all the resources needed for coding of the app and integration of the system into the apartments.  Therefore, this person must possess effective communication skills, conflict resolution, scheduling and budgeting skills, effective listening and time management skills.

• Head Engineer (1 position)

The Head Engineer is in charge of supervising the three technical engineers.  He ensures that the technical engineers have necessary resources to install the systems into the apartments.  Therefore, he should be a good team-player, have effective communication skills, conflict resolution, and time management skills.

• Programmers (3 Positions)

They are in charge of coding of the app and integrating the systems into the apartments.  They must be good time managers, able to work under strict deadlines, work with minimum supervision. Additionally, they must be listeners to understand the situation needs of tasks.

• Technical Engineer (3 Positions)

They perform home installation after the programmers are through with coding and installation of the systems.  They must be able to work under strict deadlines and pressure. Also, they should pay attention to details and have effective communication skills to ensure that what has been envisioned by programmers is executed as it was intended.

• Training Lead (3 Positions)

They are in charge of training on the app’s features and maintenance.  Also, they are in charge of coordinating training times and locations. Additionally, they provide training status to the Project Manager.

• Functional Managers (3 Positions)

They provide resources for the team according to the staffing plan.  Together with the Project Manager, they determine skills set required for team members.  Additionally, they conduct performance appraisals based on feedback from the project Managers regarding the performance of the team.

Staffing Management

For the installation of app, the company depends entirely on internal resources. Thus, they will be no contracting or outsourcing within the scope of the project.  To identify and assign resources, functional and department managers will negotiate and approve before any resource can be used in the project work.

Training

The company lacks some personnel who skills will be crucial for the project. Therefore, there is need for recruitment and training of these personnel hence this requires funding.

Performance Reviews

 At onset of the project, the management will review each member’s assigned work’s activities and explain all expectations of the work provided.  Then the Project Manager will evaluate the team members throughout the project to determine if they are executing their designated roles effectively.

Recognition and Awards

A party will be held upon completion of the project. All members who contribute to success of the company will be acknowledged and rewarded through certificates issued by the CEO.

UrPhone4Everything is currently going through the development of Human Resource Management planning process.  This will enable the company to have the necessary structure fairness, consistency and reason needed to conduct business. Also, it will enable compliance with employment regulation and ensure that staff knows what is expected from them.  Additionally, it will ensure transparency in recruitment.  The policy will address regulatory, legal and ethical concerns like living wage vs minimum wage, maternity cover, and equality act 2010 and termination of employment processes.

Living wage vs minimum wage

The law requires that every adult worker is paid living and minimum wage regardless of how small the business is.  The minimum wage is significantly lower compared to the living wage. Currently, the living wage is at £9.15 an hour while the minimum wage is £6.50 an hour for adults. The minimum pay is based on gross pay. Meaning all elements of pay is considered. It includes elements like incentive pay, bonuses, tips paid through the payroll and union subscriptions. This covers employees who are in contract or work part-time.  However, there are workers who are not entitled to minimum wage. They include company directors, workers who are younger than the school leaving age and students on internship.

Maternity cover

Maternity leave is provided in the labour laws. It gives new parents time to give birth and bond with family and newborn.  According to the law, if an organization has more than 50 employees, then the maternity is covered by the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act.  Therefore, since UrPhone4Everything® has less than 50 employees, then it is prudent that there are efficient. The company will provide Up to 12 weeks of unpaid family leave plus 4 months of maternity disability.  

Equality act 2010

The Act protects staff from discrimination at workplace. It ensures that employees are safe and equally access growth opportunities.  It provides different situations that amount to discrimination (harassment, oppression, racial, gender and sex discrimination) and actions one can take should he feel discriminated.

Termination of employment

Including termination of employment policies enables both staff and management to follow order in case one is intending to terminate employment. Termination of employment may be voluntary on the part of employee or at the hand of employers.  Either way, both of them are entitled to a period of notice on the termination of employment.  Terms and conditions of notices are written in employees’ written statement and employees should be paid their normal pay during the notice.

An organisation is a formal grouping of people resources and activities to achieve an objective in an efficient manner.  It has official groupings and divisions which can change upon a decision by a competent person. The structure of an organisation is determined by the nature of activities, leadership, culture, leadership and management styles. All these have impacts on communication, coordination, and performance in the organization.  Therefore, this report provides an analysis of strategic human resource management. This involves examining the impact of management and leadership theories on organisational strategy and structure, impact of organisational strategies, structures and culture on the management of HR, and effectiveness of HRM in organisations and link between leadership & management and HRM.  Then the report provides Leadership strategy for UrPhone4Everything® and HR strategy for UrPhone4Everything®.

Impact of Management and leadership theories on organisational strategy and structure

Members of an organisation work together to meet common goals. As simple as this may seem, there are complexities involved which vary based on the size of an organisation and tasks involved.  These tasks need to be analysed, understood and executed by someone in a specialised way. Therefore, leadership gives one the ability to influence a group of people to achieve organisation’s objectives.  There are different theories of management and leadership. They are categorized based on traits and how power and influence is used. Management and Leadership theories include Traits, Contingency, Situational, Role, Management, and Grid (Northouse, 2009), p. 9).  

Traits theory associates personal characteristics with success in leadership.  It provides a broad range of characteristics in six categories: Physical Characteristic, Background Characteristic, Intelligence, Personality, and Task-Oriented Characteristics and Social Characteristics.  Contingency theory provides that a leader becomes effective if the situational allows. The situation can be in three ways:  if there is a good leader-member relationship, the details of the task are described in the leader’s position and there is authority and control on the leader’s position (Northouse, 2009), p. 22).  Situational theory provides that successful leaders select the right type of leadership style depending on the follower’s readiness and their abilities to accomplish a particular task.  Role and Management Grid theory are behavioural theories based on understanding and analysing the actions of an individual actions and responses by individuals and leaders under various situations (Kouzes & Posner, 2008, p. 11).

Management and Leadership theories have direct cause and effect relationships on the strategies and structures.   They help in shaping institutional strategies, execution, implementation and effectiveness (Northouse, 2009, p. 25). Therefore, the following section provides how different management and leadership theories affect organization structure and strategy.

Traits theories associate success in leadership with personal characteristics. The characteristics range from physical, task-oriented to social characteristics (Brooks, 2009, p. 11). Therefore, this theory empowers leaders to formulate policies and strategies that are beneficial to the organization in their own point view and in ways that they can relate to. For example, a leader of an organization in his mid-50s will likely be successful because he has more experience in the field compared to a leader who is in his early-30s.

Contingency Theory provides that a leader becomes successful if he relates well with employees, knows the details of tasks and has access to a great deal of authority and power.  This theory helps leaders to define goals and clarify them to employees in a way that the latter can understand and execute.  It also helps in streamlining communication between leaders and staff such that the latter knows when and who to report to in the course of projects.  Contingency leadership is favourable when the three situations are favourable  (Kouzes & Posner, 2008, p. 12). However, when the situations are not favourable, it will greatly affect the productivity of the leader.

Situational Theory focuses more on followers than leaders. It enables discipline in organizations and promotes unity of purpose.  This is because it allows leaders to select followers depending on readiness to accomplish tasks within a stipulated period.  Therefore, in situations where followers are unwilling or unable to perform a task, the leader is able to provide direction. Similarly, in situations where followers are not ready to perform a task, then the leader is able to show high degree of task orientation (Kouzes & Posner, 2008, p. 12).

Role theories, behavioural and Management Grid Theories, base understanding of leaders and other individuals on situations, actions, and responses.  Role theory provides ‘model behaviour’ in a particular situation when the leader is not deeply involved.  This theory enables an organization to create objective goals that are aimed at genuinely bringing success to a company.  Managerial Grid Theory provides that leaders are effective when they are able to balance between task and people (Northouse, 2009, p. 10).  This theory enables an organization to formulate strategies that are sensitive of the welfare of employees.

 Impact of these organisational strategies, structures, and culture on the management of HR

Organisational strategies maintain the level of organization in an institution and enable the achievement of organisational goals.  They provide objectives that are used in training, recruiting and orienting staffs that help in organisational growth. For a company to perform well there needs to be investment in recruitment to ensure that candidates that are absorbed have sufficient skills.

The effectiveness of human resource management organisation is based on the fitness of its structure and how the issues of integrations and coordination are handled in different units.  Therefore, organisational strategies enable smooth integration and coordination in human resource management.  Coordination refers to how tasks are interrelated while integration refers to how different units of an organisation work in conjunction with each other.  Thus, through having structures in an organisation enables coordination and integration of units to enable the achievement of similar growth.

Organisational culture makes human resource management effective through ensuring employee creativity; predicting factors or job satisfaction, creating diagnostic assessment and evaluation.  Recruitment and training processes of an organization determines its ability to attract creative and skilled staff. Similarly, organizational culture enables organizations to know factors that motivate employees to want to be part of the organization.  Additionally, it enables an organization to create performance indicators that are used to assess and evaluate the performance of staff.  

Effectiveness of HRM in organisations 

HRM enhances the performance of employees in an organization hence giving it competitive advantage in an industry.  HRM activities like compensation, recruitment, selection, evaluation, analysis, specification, performance appraisal and manpower search enables it to absorb only the qualified and the skilled for the market.  This enables an organization to outdo competitors and retain the most skilled.

Link between leadership & management and HRM

Effective HRM is enabled when there is strong leadership and management in an organization. A leader should balance between tasks and people. He should act as a role model and provide direction for employees (Brooks, 2009, p. 26). Additionally, a leader should know the strengths and specialties, and align them to their tasks and roles. Therefore, leadership and management should work with HRM to strengthen the abilities of the organization to attract the right employees and compensate them according to their contributions to their organization.

Purpose: To support and inspire UrPhone4Everything® clients achieve success by using the app.

Core Values: Be relatable, Understanding and effectively use the human resources in the organization.  

Quantity:  The Company needs 13 employees. Four of them are the founding partners while the remaining will be hired based on skills and competency. There is a need to create new positions: functional manager, Project Manager, and Public Relations Officer. Each of them should be hired based on fair recruitment and selection processes. Additionally, they should serve on a probation period of 6 months. Thereafter, they should be absorbed on a permanent basis.

Qualities:  Project Managers should have effective communication skills, budgeting and scheduling skills, conflict resolution and listening skills. Functional managers should be able to work under minimum supervision and communication skills. Public Relations Officer should have good communication and listening skills. Each of these should be in mid-3os and have an experience of not less than 2 years in their specific roles.

Skills and Behaviours: Staff should be able to fluently communicate in English. Knowledge in another language is quite desirable for the growth of staff in terms of level, location, and units. Also, they should meet the minimum academic requirements, knowledge, and competencies in their specific fields.

Collective Capabilities:  When leaders are acting together, they should demonstrate alignment and generate commitment as a team. They should jointly formulate strategies to be used driving success at

Leadership Culture:  There should a degree of interdependence among different roles and responsibilities to enable teamwork.  As such, UrPhone4Everything® leaders should be both task and people oriented to balance the interest of staff and productivity of the organisation.

Benefits Programs and Strategies

Strategies

• UrPhone4Everything® aims at controlling the cost of operations and creating value for staff.
• Focuses on giving staff alternatives.
• Recognize the critical nature of UrPhone4Everything® in terms of pricing.

Future Implications

• Stabilizing the cost of HRM
• Recognize the role of UrPhone4Everything® staff in a culture that is less paternalistic.

Compensation Programs and Strategy

• Communicate and Implement rationale for performance management and position evaluation.
• Automate and simplify strategic HRMN processes
• Create and implement compensation programs that are based on trends in the market.
• In future, the compensation Program strategies will allow UrPhone4Everything® to make competitive talent choices.

Employee Relations

• Have Employees Relations strategies that are unique and different from labor relations strategies.
• Appreciate the importance of regular salary increment programs.
• In future, employee relations strategies will be used by UrPhone4Everything® to drive productivity through integrating employee engagement and satisfaction.

In conclusion, the purpose of this paper is to analysis of strategic human resource management based on UrPhone4Everything®. Through this, this analysis has provided that leadership strategies positively affect organizational culture, structures, and strategies. Therefore, organizations should invest resources to promote strategic human resource management.

References List

Brooks, I., 2009. Organisational Behaviour: Individuals, Groups, and Organisations. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall.

Kouzes, J. M. & Posner, B. Z., 2008. The Leadership Challenge. 4th Edition, New York: JosseyBass ed. London: CIPD.

Northouse, P. G., 2009. Introduction to Leadership, Concepts and Practice. London: Sage .