UNIT 5

STAFFING
❑ Overview of Human resource management (HRM)
❑ HRM is a strategic and coherent approach to the management of an
organization’s most valued assets–the people
❑ The overall purpose of HRM is to ensure that the organization is able to achieve
success through people.
❑ The tremendous investment made on employees by organizations reflects that
staffing is a necessary part of management and one of the manager's most
important duties .
 5.1. The Nature of Staffing
❑ Is the obtaining of people with appropriate skills, abilities,
knowledge and experience to fill jobs in the work organization.
❑ Pertinent practices are human resource planning, job analysis,
recruitment and selection.
❑ Traditional approaches to selection: match applicants with job
requirements,
❑ Modern approach (David Bowen): primary emphasis in
matching applicants with the characteristics or culture of the
organization, instead of the job.
❑ The staffing function can be viewed as a series of activities
that managers should perform in order to provide the
organization with the right people in the right place.
 5.2. The Staffing Process

Human Recruitment Selection

Resource
Planning

Performance Training and Induction and

Appraisal Development Orientation

Transfers or
rewards: Separation
Promotion
Demotion
 1. Human Resource Planning (HRP)
❑ Determines the human resources required by the organization to achieve its
strategic goals.
❑ Is ‘the process for ensuring that the human resource requirements of an
organization are identified and plans are made for satisfying those
requirements’.
❑ HRP is based on the belief that people are an organization’s most important
strategic resource.
❑ It is generally concerned with matching resources to business needs
❑ It addresses human resource needs both in quantitative and qualitative
terms, which means answering two basic questions: first, how many
people? and second, what sort of people?
❑ HRP also looks at broader issues relating to the ways in which people are
employed and developed in order to improve organizational effectiveness.
❑ It covers three distinct activities:
➢ Conduct manpower inventory (human resource audit)
➢ Forecasting future employee skill needs or labor requirements
➢ Determine the appropriate human resource actions
 2. Recruitment and Selection
❑ The overall aim of the recruitment and selection process should be to obtain
(at minimum cost) the number and quality of employees required to satisfy
the human resource needs of the company.
❑ The three stages of recruitment and selection dealt with in this chapter are:
1. Defining requirements – preparing job descriptions and specifications; deciding terms
and conditions of employment;
2. Attracting candidates – reviewing and evaluating alternative sources of applicants
inside and outside the company, advertising, using agencies and consultants;
3. Selecting candidates – sifting applications, interviewing, testing, assessing candidates,
assessment centers, offering employment, obtaining references; preparing contracts of
employment.
 Recruitment
❑ Activities of developing a pool of qualified candidates from
which the organization may choose the most appropriate
employees.
❑ It is the practice that defines the characteristics of applicants to
whom selection procedures are ultimately applied.
❑ It is an attempt to identify and attract potential candidates to
meet the requirements of the organizations.
❑ Can also be defined as announcing and advertising vacant
positions and developing sources of applicants and receiving
applications.
 Sources of recruiting
❑ There are two major sources of recruiting potential candidates:
1. Internal recruiting or promote-from-within: policies to fill higher-
level positions.
Advantages :
➢ Less costly,
➢ generates higher employee commitment and loyalty,
➢ familiarity with the organization,
➢ development, and opportunities for career advancement
➢ satisfaction to employees that can reduce turnover.

2. External recruiting: recruiting newcomers from outside or the labor

market.
❑ Applicants are provided by a variety of outside sources including
newspaper advertising, state employment services, private employment
agencies, job fairs, professional associations, at colleges and
universities, and employee referrals which is one of the cheapest and
most reliable methods of recruiting.
 Requirements to recruitment
❑ Ensure that recruitment practices conform to the law.
➢ Equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws stipulate that recruiting and hiring decisions
cannot discriminate on the basis of religion, race, national origin, or sex.
➢ Affirmative action: use of goals, timetables, or other methods in recruiting to promote the
hiring, development, and retention of persons historically underrepresented in the workplace.
It is an action taken to correct or redress imbalances that have resulted because of gender or
other social, political, or economic inequalities.
❑ Realistic job previews
➢ Enhances recruiting effectiveness.
➢ Gives applicants all pertinent and realistic information (positive and negative) about the job
and the organization.
➢ It enhances employee satisfaction and reduce turnover because they facilitate matching
individuals, jobs, and organizations.
➢ Individuals have a better basis on which to determine their stability to the organization and
self-select into or out of positions based on full information.
 E-Recruitment

❑ E-recruitment or online recruitment uses web-based tools such as a firm’s

public internet site or its own intranet to recruit staff.
❑ The processes of e-recruitment consist of attracting, screening and tracking
applicants, selecting, and offering jobs or rejecting candidates.
❑ It has been estimated by Cappelli (2001) that it costs only about one-
twentieth as much to hire someone online, if that is the only method used,
as it does to hire the same person through traditional methods
 Selection
• selection is defined as the process of evaluating and deciding the best and qualified
candidates out of the pool of applicants developed in the recruitment process for job opening
based on their abilities, skills and characteristics.
• A good place to start in making a selection decision is job analysis (job description and job
specification).
• Job analysis is the process of gathering, analyzing, and recording accurate and complete
information about each job in a firm through a systematic examination of job content.
• It is performed on three occasions:
(a) When an organization is just starting,
(b) when a new job is created, and
(c) when a job is changed significantly as a result of new technology, additional duties, or new
methods and procedures.
❑ The data gathered and analyzed through job analysis helps to develop job descriptions (job
duties) and job specifications (human qualifications).
Job description lists the important duties to be performed on a job.
❑ It is a series of statements about the job's duties and responsibilities that specify
about the workers duties, how they are performed, and the conditions under which
they are performed.
❑ Whereas job specification is the knowledge, skills and abilities as well as physical
characteristics, experience and other desirable qualifications necessary for successful
job performance.
❑ Information collected through job analysis helps to answer the following questions:
1) What tasks are performed? That is, the performance dimensions on which employees
should be evaluated and the worth of the job for compensation purpose.
2) What knowledge, skills, and abilities are required'? That is, the qualifications on
which the incumbents need to perform a job adequately.
3) What physical activities are required?
4) Under what environmental conditions is a job performed?
 3. Induction and Orientation

• After the hiring decision has been made, the final phase of the
selection process is induction and orientation.
• Orientation is the process that introduces new employees to their
new work environment.
• It mainly involves:
1) Making introduction of the new employee to colleagues.

2) Discussing specific job duties and responsibilities

3) Explaining the organization's history, rules, policies, regulations and

objectives.
4) Familiarizing the products, processes, and major operation of the

organization.
5) Introducing the line and staff relationships in the organization.
• The purpose of induction and orientation is to:
❑ Establish an environment in which the new employee will feel

comfortable & be productive.

❑ Bring the new employee into the mainstream of the organization as

quickly as possible.
❑ Transfer the clear message that the new employees are valued and

the organization is willing to invest in them,

❑ Reduce start up costs that invariably occur when an employee is

first hired.
❑ Reduce the amount of fear of job failure that new employees

experience.
 4. Training and Development
• Training and development represent a planned effort by an organization to
facilitate employees learning of the job-related behaviors.
• Some authors try to distinguish between training and development.
• Training refers to teaching lower-level or technical employees how to do
their present jobs whereas development refers to teaching managers and
professionals the skills needed for bothpresent and the future jobs.
• Training improves the specific skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed by
individuals to perform the present job and development helps to provide
adequate knowledge educate to employees' beyond the current requirements
of the job.
• Taken together, they help to develop an individual's knowledge, skills, and
abilities so as to improve present and future organization performance.
• Training may occur in a variety of forms.
• The following are the most frequently used training methods:
❑ On-the-job training and job rotations:
✓ This is when an experienced employee is asked to take a new employee and show the
newcomer how to perform job duties.
✓ The organizations senior employees often conduct in-house training.
✓ It can reduce costs for training facilities, materials, or instructor fees and easy to transfer
learning back to the lob.
❑ Off-the-job training or classroom training: includes lectures, films, audiovisual techniques
and, simulations such as university management and apprenticeship programs.
❑ Orientation training in which newcomers are introduced to the organization's culture using
company owned training centers.
❑ Programmed and computer-assisted instruction in which the employee works at his or her
own pace to learn from the text that includes exercises and quizzes to enhance learning.
❑ Conference and case discussion groups in which participants analyze cases or discuss topics
assisted by a training leader.
 5. Performance Appraisal
• Performance appraisal is the process of determining the extent to which an employee is
performing a job effectively.
• It is the process of observing and evaluating an employee's performance, recording the
assessment, and providing feedback to the employee.
•
• A valid performance appraisal system serves a number of purposes:
1) It provides employees with feedback so that they will know how well they are performing.
2) It develops valid data for pay (salary and bonus) and promotion decisions.
3) It helps managers make discharge and retention decisions and provides a means of warning
subordinates about unsatisfactory performance.
4) It helps managers counsel subordinates so that they will improve their performance and
develops their future potential.
5) It develops commitment to an organization by identifying career opportunities and
encouraging career planning,
6) It motivates employees through recognition and support.
7) It encourages management-subordinate relations,
8) It provides input to the human resource planning process.
• The most commonly used techniques involved in performance
appraisal includes:
❑ managers appraisal of subordinates using graphic rating scales
and paired comparison methods,
❑self appraisal by subordinates,
❑peers appraisals, and
❑evaluation of the superiors by subordinates.
 6. Transferring
• Transferring is moving a person from one job, organizational level, or location to
another. It includes:
1) Promotion: this is moving an employee to a higher-level position that have more
prestige, higher status, higher pay and greater responsibility based on his or her
good performance.
2) Demotion: is shifting a person to a lower-level position in the hierarchy (less pay
and less responsibility) due to inefficiency or in-competency to meet the assigned
task. Some managers use it as a punishment tool while most refuse it and use
financial penalty and suspension.
3) Lateral transfer: is movement of employees from one position to another at
similar levels (pay and responsibility) within the organization. It is typically used
to fill temporary vacancies, to staff a new operation by a competent and
experienced person (productive transfers'), to replace a person, or to rectify
wrong placement.
•
 7. Separation (Termination)
• Separation is the termination of the relationship between the workers and the organization
due to various reasons.
• Some will retire, others will depart voluntarily from their jobs (resignation), and still others
will be forced out through mergers and cutbacks (layoffs).
• The analysis of the type and quantity of termination helps to maintain an effective work
force in the organization.
• It has the following purposes.
❑ Employees who are poor performers can be dismissed.
✓ Low-performing employees who are allowed to stay with the company and receive pay and
benefits comparable to others can be cutback.
❑ Employers can determine why employees are leaving by conducting an interview with the
departing employees (exit interview).
✓ The exit interview is an excellent and inexpensive tool for learning about the reasons of
dissatisfaction within the organization and hence for reducing future turnover.
❑ When there is voluntary separation such as due to retirement and the natural course of the
business operation, it will help management to determine layoff procedures.