HRM100 Human Resources : Performance of the Employees

· Talent Development & Retention

· Performance Management

· Transition

2. Choose a company from one of the following sectors:

· Hospitality/tourism

· Events

· Sport

· Business

3. In a business style report, address each stage of the Employee Life Cycle using examples of HR best practices from researched examples.

4. A minimum of 6 references should be used for a Pass grade in this section of the assessment.

5. The report should be submitted through Turnitin and a hard copy handed in to your lecturer during class.

Answers:

Introduction

With increase in organisational complexity, importance of Human resource management has grown a lot. Similarly human resources like employees have also become vital resources. The function of HR departments starts with searching for better candidates in jobs followed by their recruitment and selection. Several other steps are induction programs and training, services of employees, talent augmentation and retention, performance management and transition which altogether ensure a better HRM in a company (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). This report has been prepared thinking on the perspectives of hotel Hilton UK regarding better HRM practices for making differences in the performance of the employees and the overall organisational performance.  

Recruitment and selection

Hotel Hilton is operational in United Kingdom wherein competition is high and tourism industry needs performance of better manpower to compete with other competitors. The main focal point of HRM of the hotel essentially includes better selection of talented manpower with a view to get the best performance delivered by them.  The company wants its manpower to stay abreast of   knowledge and service requirement for ensuring satisfaction among the customers. Therefore the selection needs proper backing of the most effective functional area like recruitment (Meredith Belbin, 2011). The company must have the long term objectives and vision and in accordance with these recruitment and selection need to be done. Recruitment should accompany the evaluation of several options of hiring like through news paper ads, from place firms, through social media advertisements. But as per the nature of the business of the hotel, it is more required to recruit candidates through several steps like advertisements in news papers, shortlisitng of bio data, and face to face interview for selection. This is likely to have more quality in the recruitment and selection as the hotel can check the credentials of candidates and also they can be properly known from verbal conversation during interview.

Orientation and onboarding

It is another vital aspect in the employee life cycle.  Orientation serves as a factor in onboarding. Onboarding denotes some processes which are needed to be fulfilled by candidates before getting into payroll of the company as regular employees. So onborading is structured process. Candidates are obviously supposed to know the objectives and vision, mission of their organisation. Thus they must have a series of knowledge that gets developed through training as a vital component (Subramony, 2009). This requires immense attention of the Hilton hotel so that candidates come to know about the working ethics, their performance standards and expectations from them by the hotel. Some additional aspects are information regarding policies of the hotel regarding benefits and compensations they are entitled to (Wright & McMahan, 2011). These all are viewed in a structured procedure for attaining equal level of concentration from the management. The hotel needs to have their clear priority regarding employee performance and overall performance of business in industry. These need to be strengthened during orientation and onboarding. The process of onboarding includes orientation as a single day event for the employees and management of the hotel. It generally works better in improving the motivation among level as they get a clear idea about their firm they are willing to join in. In this structured process aspects of hotel industry and the service criteria from the point of view of the hotel must be laid for inspiring employees to perform well in their company.

Employee services

The hotel Hilton must cares for its employees as they are deemed to be the most vital internal stakeholders of the company. The hotel must know that without the performances of its employees the hotel business may experience loss as customer services for guests will be affected. Therefore a design of employee services are of huge necessity for keeping employees motivated. The hotel must ensure that the staffs have free access to the cafeteria and they if commute from far off places can avail the transportation facilities to and from the hotel. It is beneficial aspect for the hotel as the employees will be more satisfied (Jackson, Schuler & Werner, 2011). Additionally the company must not deduct any charges for the proposed services to be offered to the employees. Also the hotel should think for providing their employees with laundry services. This can also boost customer service quality as due to their job responsibilities each guest asks for laundry service and this can be better offered to them when employees can relate this service requirement to a need of their own.  The hotel must know that the benefits for employees and employee services are not having same meaning and sometimes services to employees happen to be more effective to achieve service from employees in return.  

Talent development and retention

This is another phase in employee life cycle which is helpful for employees as well as the Hilton hotel. Talent development needs proper nurturing of talent and its build up strategies depending on effective learning and training for employees. The Hilton must include training and development plans mandatorily for each employee even they do perform better. This is considered as tool for helping performers to fulfil self actualisation needs by showing better performance and poor performers get opportunities to uplift their performance level (Harzing  & Pinnington, 2010). Thus there is no risk of poor level of motivation and additionally the hotel can be more assisted in terms of better performance of the employees and improved organisational effectiveness, The needs of training and development has higher level of necessity as employees of the hotel are direct interface of communication with customers or guests and brand reputation gets built up.  HRM can increase its trustworthiness among employees by several good HR practices including work and life balance, diversity management, employee engagement, better evaluation of performance (Guest, 2011). On the other hand some bad practices reduce the credibility of HRM and these include no focus on grievance handing, improper performance management, less cooperative attitude, preferential treatment for some employees. Hospitality sector demands quality in services, better quality in food and beverages which need support of culinary skills. Soft skills are required so that to make customers feel more special by the staffs and management of the hotel. So here lies the essence of training and development needs for the employees of the Hilton hotel and the management must focus on this (Gagné, 2009).  It’s needless to say that talented employees are always resources of the hotel. The training costs behind their development of knowledge and skills suitable for the hotel involve cost. Thus the hotel must try to retain the employees in their jobs so that there will be lowest employee turnover and the hotel will not suffer loss.

Performance management

The hotel Hilton UK is set to thrive on performance of employees which earn reputation for the hotel in the industry. Therefore the hotel must necessarily show importance on performance management of employees. Performance management has dual facets for the company as performance can be assessed properly and best performer can be rewarded accordingly (Daley, 2012). The Hilton hotel needs to include 360 degree of performance appraisal as it will be a all round performance appraisal and overall inter personal skills can be also known besides performance of the employees. This creates improvement opportunity as inter personal skills are very close to that of required soft skills in this industry (Chen & Huang, 2009). This performance management tool is more perceptible as performance achievement can be ensured and performance gap and accordingly training needs can be ascertained and training planning can be arranged (Bratton & Gold, 2012). As the hotel operates in the sector that is full of competition therefore the performance and factors like reward for good performers increase motivation and willingness among employees to keep performing better on regularity basis. The HR department of Hilton hotel needs to incorporate this performance measurement framework for developing an ideal performance management capacity to help the hotel prospering in this sector that is tourism.

Transition

In scope of HRM practices, transition is not a practice but a phenomenon involving managing employees to get them used to process or any change so that this becomes less difficult for the employees to adapt to the required modification (Bratton & Gold, 2012). In organisational setting this is often related with change management and Hilton being a reputed brand in hotel industry in United Kingdom must include exercises to ensure that transition is managed properly and employees are not dissatisfied. Awareness of transition among employees need to be grown by the hotel and its HR team and there must be adequate level of communication among the staffs and the management to reduce any type of confusion (Boxall & Purcell, 2011). Employees often require proper emotional support and in this respect the company must delegate responsibilities to senior employees or managers who will make them learn about the needs of transition in their job roles and the cultures of their company. Proper counselling will be adequate to demonstrate a better level of cooperation by the company to the employees.

Conclusion

Organisation like Hilton hotel in UK cannot survive without satisfaction of their human resources. No matter the level of reputation in the hotel industry, the hotel has, the HRM of the company needs better approach towards the human resources. The responsibility of the HR department includes recruitment and selection, proper performance management, training and development along with retention, orientation and onboarding for keeping motivation of employees high.

References

 Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

Boxall, P., & Purcell, J. (2011). Strategy and human resource management. Palgrave Macmillan.

Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2012). Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave Macmillan.

Che, C. J., & Huang, J. W. (2009). Strategic human resource practices and innovation performance—The mediating role of knowledge management capacity. Journal of business research, 62(1), 104-114.

Daley, D. M. (2012). Strategic human resource management. Public Personnel Management, 120-125.

Gagné, M. (2009). A model of knowledge?sharing motivation. Human Resource Management, 48(4), 571-589.

Guest, D. E. (2011). Human resource management and performance: still searching for some answers. Human resource management journal, 21(1), 3-13.

Harzing, A. W., & Pinnington, A. (Eds.). (2010). International human resource management. Sage.

Jackson, S., Schuler, R., & Werner, S. (2011). Managing human resources. Cengage Learning.

Meredith Belbin, R. (2011). Management teams: Why they succeed or fail. Human Resource Management International Digest, 19(3).

Subramony, M. (2009). A meta?analytic investigation of the relationship between HRM bundles and firm performance. Human resource management, 48(5), 745-768.

Wright, P. M., & McMahan, G. C. (2011). Exploring human capital: putting ‘human’back into strategic human resource management. Human resource management journal, 21(2), 93-104.