Assignment 4: Human Resource Business Partner (HRBP) DevelopmentDue Week 10 and worth 250 pointsYour previous contributions addressing a variety of important topics outlined in all previous assignment

Running head: RECRUITING AND HIRING 1

Recruiting and Hiring

Name: Gabrielle McNeely

Institution: Strayer University

Recruiting and Hiring

The Selected Strategy and how it could Affect HR

For an efficiency-minded retail organization, the best strategy to work on is differentiation. The primary reason why the strategy was selected is the nature of the markets. Today, international influences and forces have made markets more responsive, which means that producers need to provide customers with products and services that meet their specific needs. The trend is seen in the various markets where the customers are requiring providers to deliver products with a specific quality. For instance, the cereal market is experiencing changes as customers prefer cereal which is cereal grain explaining why organizations, such as General Mills converted all its cereal offerings to whole grains.

The market changes create a market situation where different market segments prefer certain forms of a product. For instance, younger consumers are more selective while older consumers are more conservative. It means the former must be provided with products and services that are characterized by more variety. It is a proven way of establishing a high level of customer satisfaction (Thompson, 2017). To meet such needs, it is imperative that an organization differentiates its product offering.

On the other hand, unlike the 1990s and before, when access to market information was limited, businesses can rapidly access the information in real-time by the use of tools, such as business intelligence tools. Such information can be used to inform the manner in which differentiation is undertaken. It must be done in a way that meets and satisfies the varying tastes and needs of the targeted customers. As such, the organization will need to access the information, which will be applied to the production processes.

At the organizational level, human resources will be impacted in a number of ways. First, they will need to foster a culture of shared learning where information about the markets is shared optimally across the organization. It should be a culture that is adhered to by all the workers in a bid to promote shared experiences and skills, which will transform into evidence-based performance. Also, it calls for the continued access to market information, a task that the marketers need to meet.

Additionally, the strategy will require the human resources to adopt a functional structure that creates teams, which are supposed to work on different aspects of the product. Such an approach will provide faster results as every team is skilled and experienced in the design and creation of a particular product. However, the teams are supposed to work towards a common goal, which is realized through effective leadership at the middle-level (Cokins, 2009). The managers and other leaders need to communicate the vision and make the teams understand the overall goal that is being targeted by the organization.

Further, the organization will need to hire workers who are technologically and data-oriented. The new workers should be able to collect data and translate it into a product meant for a particular market. Technology is now a strategic tool and businesses with technologically skilled personnel are deemed to have a competitive advantage. Such a new team will bring about new awareness and guide the current teams in the adoption of technology as an essential tool that guides the performance of marketing and human resource functions.

Approaches to Job Design and Redesign

Job design and redesign are important processes that ensure that a particular job position is able to realize the set goals and objectives. The first approach is the job enrichment approach. It is based on the premise that workers are motivated to do more if they can be provided with more opportunities for responsibility, growth, and recognition. Every worker needs to feel a sense of personal and professional advancement, which an organization must provide. Mainly, job enrichment entails giving the workers more responsibility, which requires them to make more decisions regarding performance (Mattiske, 2010). An example is the junior marketer position that is primarily about ensuring that market information is gathered through the use of technical support systems put in place. The position can be enriched by providing the junior marketers with a new responsibility that entails the analysis of gathered data that will help them make key decisions regarding the interventions that should be made in the markets. It will provide junior marketers with a new sense of responsibility.

The second approach is the job enlargement, which entails the task of adding more tasks to a particular job or assignment. The goal is to ensure that the job remains the same but has a bigger scale. Sometimes, the workers are likely to experience boredom if they continue to meet particular responsibilities day in, day out. The boredom can be addressed by enlarging the job through a number of measures. The best way of doing it is to assign a group of workers a set of tasks and then allow them to decide who does what. For instance, for a sales team that needs to provide quarterly reports on the market performance, they can be asked to provide the information by a certain date. They will be given the autonomy of coming up with a framework on how they will meet the desired performance goals (Mattiske, 2010). In that sense, the job remains the same, but they are able to address boredom as the individuals can now be tasked with new roles and responsibilities in a manner that appreciated independent performance.

The third approach is job simplification, which refers to breaking down a task into smaller parts. The smaller part is then assigned to the employee who does the task over and over. The goal of this approach is to ensure that proficient workers are tasked with roles they understand best, which lowers the training costs. Also, the approach enables an organization to maximize profits and revenues. However, this approach has a major setback as it promotes boredom, which impedes motivation and may also promote absenteeism. A practical example entails a product design team that is supposed to develop a prototype by a particular date. The task can be broken down into parts, such as material evaluation, data gathering and analysis, and assessment of product suitability to the desired markets. The team will be broken down into smaller parts, which will do the tasks depending on which area a worker is proficient in.

Finally, job rotation is an approach that is taken by many organizations. It implies that a worker is moved from one position to another in a bid to break the boredom, which may impact their overall performance. It is monotonous if a worker does the same thing for months and years. Hence, they can be moved to tasks they can comfortably handle (Mattiske, 2010). The limitation of this approach is that some training costs may be incurred, which increases the overall cost of production. However, the costs can be optimized through moving workers to areas they can meet performance goals with less friction and issues. An example of a rotation entails moving a customer service worker to a data entry position. The latter does not require critical skills or experience, hence the worker will optimally meet the desired performance goals.

Challenges and Constraints of Recruiting Workers

One of the common challenges entails incurring high costs of recruiting and training workers. Today, businesses are using job boards and other channels to advertise positions, which is sometimes costly, especially for SMEs. The approach is important as it enables a business organization to access a wider pool of candidates but it comes with a cost. As such, it is imperative that a budget is allocated sufficiently to ensure that the desired goals and objectives are met.

An additional constraint entails the lack of hiring experience that may make businesses fail to access the most talented candidates. A recruiting panel tasked with hiring candidates should show competence and evaluate additional skills, such as emotional intelligence competencies, among others (Osmani & Maliqi, 2012). Such processes and tasks need to enable the panel to narrow down to a candidate that is best suited to the needs of the organization.

On the other hand, there are issues that are usually experienced when hiring and recruiting. The first issue involves the inability to strictly adhere to employment laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion, age, disability, color, and origin among others. There are several US companies that have faced litigation due to the violation of the law. A recent case involved a company that failed to hire a Muslim woman because she wore her religious attire. The Supreme Court affirmed that the act amounted to discrimination on the basis of the religion.

An additional issue entails the lack of enough resources, which should be used for the recruiting and hiring tasks. Small businesses do not allocate enough resources, which limits the pool of candidates that the panel can access. When such happens, it means that it is unlikely that a panel will select a skilled and competent candidate. Organizations should strive to provide the panels with the needed resources.

Candidate Selection Process Ideas

There are two ideas that should be considered to add value to the candidate selection processes. First, the selection panel need to fully understand the job position before selecting the candidate. The team should spend more time learning about the job position in order to equip the team with information that will guide them during the recruiting phase. On the other hand, the team needs to understand the organizational culture in terms of its attributes. Studies have shown that organizations that hire individuals who match up their culture are likely to experience success. As such, when selecting candidates, those that are more oriented to the organizational culture should be hired. On the other hand, during the selection process, the team needs to avoid asking questions that may amount to discrimination on the basis of elements captured under the employment law. Also, the team should not attempt to learn about any personal information of the candidate.

References

Cokins, G. (2009). Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics. New York, NY: Wiley.

Mattiske, C. (2010). Strategic Training Management: Transforming the Business of Training. Stanford, CA: The Performance Company Pty Limited.

Osmani, F., & Maliqi, G. (2012). Performance Management, Its Assessment, and Importance. Procedia 41(1), 434-441.

Thompson, J. (2017). Principles of Marketing. New York, NY: Larsen and Keller Education.