ESSENTIALS OF HRM

ASSIGNMENT ANSWERS

ANSWER 1
Introduction:

Human Resource management refers to the judicious management of people in an

organization. HRM helps to bridge the gap between employees’ performance and
organization’s strategic objectives. An efficient HR management team can help in
overcoming the competition. It is a process of acquiring, developing, motivating,
and maintaining the pool of the capable employees. The main aim of HRM is to
ensure that right people are matched with the right job position in an organization.
The important function of HRM includes recruiting people, training employees,
motivating, ensuring health and safety, managing workplace communication etc.

To expand the electronics company, pan India, it is essential to create a dynamic

human resource department to manage the employee functions and for this matter
the scope of the human resource management should not be confined to the
traditional personnel management, skills, and competencies. It involves making
optimum utilization of employees’ skills and competencies. To retain the talent in
an organization is the more widened scope of HRM.

Concept and Application: -

The human resource management could help in building a company in the future.
To create an organization which grows worldwide, it is crucial to broaden its
retailers and create new branches for a gaining future. To start a second branch or
to expand, it is essential to analyze whether the organization is prepared to open a
second location. It is also vital to fulfill the objectives of the human resource
management which includes societal objectives, organizational objectives,
functional objectives, personal objectives.

Societal objectives refer to the development of the programs that meet the
economic, psychological, ethical, and social needs of employees. For example:
Equal opportunity programs, fair compensation etc.
Organizational objectives: HRM ensures that right number of employees are
available at the right place with the right skills which would help in achieving the
goals and objectives.

Functional objectives: This objective of HRM ensures that the organizational

policies are in accordance with the provisional/territorial and federal laws related
to human rights, employment equity, occupational health and safety, employment
standards, and labor relations.

Personal objectives: It includes developing, acquiring, utilizing, and retaining

capable employees in an organization.

Human resource management can be understood as the process which involves

acquiring, recruiting, and maintaining an efficient pool of employees in the
organization. HRM focuses on issues related to recruitment, selection,
compensation, benefits, training, and development which in turn benefits the
organization by fulfilling their goals and objectives.

Traditionally, the scope of HRM was confined with the selection and recruitment
of employees. However, in modern time the scope of HR has broadened to every
sphere of the employee’s working life from the time they enter the organization till
their exit. Therefore, in the expansion of 'Sundaram Ltd’, the scope of Human
resource management can be categorized into nine broad areas as identified by The
American Society for Training and Development. Let us discuss the scope of
human resource management:

Human Resource
Job Design Selection and staffing
Planning

Training and Organizational Compensation and

development development benefits

Union-management Personnel research and

Employee assistance
relations information system

Figure: Scope of Human Resource Management

Human Resource Planning: It is a systematic process of determining the

required number of employees in the organization to achieve the goals and
objectives without any obstacles.
Job Design: While operating a business, it is essential to define the content and
tasks of a particular job in the organization. Job design includes job description and
job specification. Job description suggests the roles and responsibilities for the job
which needs to be performed by employee. Job specification lists out the required
qualifications, skills and experience required by employee to perform the job.

Selection and staffing: It involve recruiting and selecting the employees for a
particular job position. To achieve this, the skills and abilities of employees are
aligned with the organization’s requirements. The candidate who are the most
suitable match with the requirements of the organization are hired.

Training and development: Human resource management plays a crucial role in

training and development of employees. Training is basically a set of activities
which are aimed to improve employees understanding of goals and as a result
improve their performance. Training and development programs are organized
with the objective to improve the skills of existing employees and developing new
skills among them. It ultimately helps employees to better work towards achieving
organizational goals and objectives.

Organizational development: HRM policies should be well synchronized with

the organizational goals and objectives. Therefore, the successful implementation
of HRM policies leads to the success of the organization combinedly.

Compensation and benefits: HRM involve determining the salaries and wages to
be given to the employees in exchange of services provided by them. Monetary
and non-monetary benefits for ex. Leaves, flexible work hours, retirement benefits,
higher education, career advancements are provided to employees to make them
feel valued and to let them grow in their future.

Employee assistance: Providing employees counselling sessions to make them

capable of making the personal and professional decisions independently, which
will lead to improved performance of the employees.

Union-management relations: Unions are the organizations formed by workers

from similar fields, who work for the common interest of their members. It takes
care of members related to issues like wages, working hours, working
environment, and other benefits. For smooth functioning of an organization, it is
vital to maintain harmonious relation between labor unions and management.
Personnel research and information system: To know the aspirations,
expectations and behavior of employees is important, an organization should be
aware of all the details such as names, address, backgrounds, qualifications,
hobbies, etc.

Conclusion:

As we discussed, human resource department is responsible for the functions

discussed above and to expand 'Sundaram Ltd’, it is vital to create a human
resource department to manage the employee related functions. And in this regard,
it is essential to identify the scope of the human resource department to ensure that
the staff members of the company will succeed and contribute to ensure the
organizational success. The decent approach to succeed is to attach with the
employees and involve them to achieve the objective. The motive of the HR
experts is to develop policies and processes to manage organization’s work
resources, which includes various functions such as hiring, picking, training, and
developing teams. Expanding and opening new branches is a difficult task, but
with proper planning of human resource department and managing employee
functions it is possible to achieve the pre decided goals and objectives as goals,
policies, decisions, and employees are crucial in running the business and to
expand that further.

ANSWER 2: -

Introduction:

Human resource department deals with all the concern and issues related to the
employees. The HR department serves as the point of contact for employees,
manager, governing bodies etc. and help the organization to succeed with help of
its people. Human Resource management is responsible for making, enhancing,
and managing the human workforce of the organization in terms of the skills,
abilities, talents, knowledge, and potential for contributing to the organizational
objectives.
Human resource policies along with the planned business objectives could be used
to implement appropriate culture and plays an important role in enabling the
organization to deal with external environmental challenges.
Fast moving consumer goods market has undergone a tremendous change over the
past decades with the sky-high revenues, urbanization and changing consumer
actions. To work in such a rapid changing environment, it is essential to structure
the human resource department and classify activities which needs to be performed
under new subdivisions in HR department. However, different organizations have
different human resource department structures with respect to their business and
industry.
Let us discuss, the structure of the HR department of an organization: -
Concept and Application:
An HR department handles activities related to the workforce in the organization
and are responsible for finding, screening, interviewing, onboarding, and training
the candidates along with their compensation and benefits.
Human Resource department is further divided into various subdivisions and each
subdivision is accountable to perform specific functions. Let us discuss the
activities of subdivisions under HR department.

HR
Department

Personnel
Staffing Organisational Ethics and Training and
transaction
Management Developement Labour Development
management

Figure: Structure of HR Department

Personnel transaction management: In this subdivision, activities related to
handling the day- to -day tasks, such as formulating policies, recruiting, processing
new employees, and handling benefits administration and workplace activities.
The activities performed under this sub-division includes:
 Time keeping system
 Benefits administration
 Analysis and tracking of HR metrics
 Payment related activities
Staffing management: It comprises of the processes, tactics, and strategies which
are crucial to identify, hire and retain employees in the organization. sourcing of
the candidates, recruiting them, onboarding, transfers, promotion and retaining the
employees are the functions of the staffing management division.
Organizational development: An organization could be successful when the
policies related to employees, talent management, employee assistance and
referral, employee performance and discipline are in place and equal opportunities
are provided to the people irrespective of gender, age, marital status etc.
Operational division takes care of following activities.
 Talent management
 Employee assistance and referral
 Employee performance and discipline
 Equal employment opportunity

Ethics and labor: Ethics are the moral principles and guidelines which are the
standards to be followed in the company. Ethics and labor subdivision is
responsible for activities related to the labor relations, labor contract
administration, ethical conduct, regulatory and statutory requirements.
Training and development: This subdivision in the HR department will be
responsible for providing training to the employees so that the organizational goals
could be achieved efficiently. This subdivision includes activities which ensures
that employees are updated with the required knowledge and skills needed for the
development.
This sub-division includes the following activities:
 Learning the skills
 Providing required trainings and Certifications
 Leadership conferences

Examples:

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) or FMCG (Fast moving consumer goods)

industry deals with the production, marketing and selling of consumer goods. In
today’s time, the competition between FMCG producers is increasing and is
estimated to grow at a very high rate. These industries provide a high variety of
consumables, and a high amount of money is circulated against FMCG products
along with the high level of competition in the industry. For example:
In Nestle, the human resource department has a well-defined structure and
different functions are performed by different subdivisions.
Hence, In Nestle, the hiring, recruitment, selection, promotion of employees is
done based on the pre-defined selection criteria by the staffing department. The job
design, job enlargement, remuneration policy, unbiased hiring etc., all activities are
performed by the staffing management team. The compensation, benefits
performance appraisals of employees are decided as per the capability. To motivate
employees, several rewarding schemes such as ‘Passion to Win’, ‘Long-service
Awards’, ‘Nestle Idea Award’ are initiated in the company. Nestle also has health
and safety department to ensure the wellbeing of the employee and to avoid any
kind of hazard that could occur in the organization. Regular internal and external
audit are conducted to ensure the safety of the workers.

Conclusion:

As discussed above, the structure of human resource department is classified into

departments such as recruiting, HR functions, training and development, health
and safety, administration where each sub department is responsible for
performing distinct functions for smooth running of the organization. In case of an
FMCG Company where the product margin is low and profits are due to the
volume of sale, the structuring of human resource department plays an important
role to perform various organizational functions to survive in the competitive
market and to generate revenues. With proper structuring of various sub
departments and specifying the separate functions will help in smooth functioning
of the human resource department. Along with a structured HR department, other
departments also play an important role for efficiently running the business such as
the supply department in FMCG company should ensure the availability of goods
in the rural regions along with metro cities. The demand analysis department
should forecast the future demand and provide appropriate data to the company's
Stakeholders and Manager to schedule the production and other functions. Along
with these, other areas, and concerns like barrier to entry in the market because of
huge investment, distribution network and competition, bargaining power of the
suppliers and consumers also influence the success of the FMCG companies due to
the stiff competition in such type of goods, consumers look out for the value for
money deals. In this Sector, competition from the Domestic Suppliers along with
foreign suppliers also creates concern for the Company due to the lower price
goods availability and cheap imports from foreign countries.
Therefore, for an FMCG organization to be successful, the structuring of human
resource department with the proper specified functionality should be ensured to
empower the employees and make them capable with the required skills to work in
the sector to overcome competition and generate profits as the talented and
motivated human resource of any company is the real asset for achieving the goals
which could be ensured with proper structuring and allocating duties.

ANSWER 3(A)

Introduction
Human resource planning or manpower planning is a process of determining
the organization’s future workforce requirements to achieve the organizational
objectives, goals, and abilities to perform the job at the specified time. Human
resource planning is necessary to make efficient utilization of the available
resources, monitor the progress of the employees to fulfill the organizational goals,
ensuring the appropriate control measures, to avoid any issue at any stage of the
process and to avoid any conflicts of interest among employees. Let us discuss the
process of human resource planning.
Concept and Application:
Human Resource Planning is a well-ordered and structured process, which is
designed to achieve the most optimum use of an organization’s employee to
achieve organizational goals and objectives. HRP process attempts to analyze
manpower requirements to execute organizational activities for a future period.
The process could be different for different organizations based on their
requirements, budget, size of the business. Although there are some common steps
in the Human Resource planning process which are common in organizations,
these steps are listed in the below figure:
 Reviewing Business
Goals

Scanning the
environment

Balancing manpower
demand and supply

Implementing and
monitoring the HR Plan

Figure: Process of Human Resource Planning

1. Reviewing Business Goals: Prior to analyzing human resource requirements,

it is essential that HR personnel should analyze the organizational goals and
objectives. Based on the results of the study, the personnel come up with the
list of HR activities analysis job that needs to be performed to achieve the
organizational goals and objectives within the required time.
2. Scanning the environment: To forecast the demand of the human resource
required, HR department is required to analyze the available resources and the
gap which is required to be filled and for this the internal and external
environment plays an important role. These factors need to be analyzed before
planning human resource requirements otherwise, the entire process of HR
planning could be a failure.

Internal Scanning: Internal scanning includes identifying strengths and

weaknesses of the organization. Some other factors such as changes in
leadership, organizational structure, operational changes are the internal
factors that affects HR demand and supply.

External Scanning: It involves scanning the opportunities, threats prevailing

in the market that could affect the estimation of manpower demand and supply
including level of competition, government policies, talent available,
technological trends etc.
3. Balancing manpower demand and supply: It focuses on creating a balance
between the surplus and the shortage of the human resource in the
organization. Whenever there is a shortage of manpower, HR personnel
performs various functions such as hiring new resources, promotions,
overtime, and training, whereas in case of manpower surplus, the HR
personnel takes measures such as layoffs, termination, voluntary retirement
etc.

4. Implementing and monitoring the HR plan: Recruiting, selection, planning,

training, and development are the activities which needs to be executed to
implement the HR plan. Once the plan is implemented, the evaluation
regarding the implementation of the plan should be done by HR department.
In case of any deviations, the corrective actions are taken by the HR personnel
and results are recorded.

Conclusion

Above, we discussed the need of the HR planning and the process involved in the
same to achieve and fulfill the organizational objectives. However, in the absence
of human resource planning, there could be several issues related to the shortage,
implementing a plan or excess of manpower which could lead to the losses. For
example: During the year of 1992-1993, many public sector enterprises such as
Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation Limited had 3988 excess staff members, Eastern
Coalfields Limited had 7800 surplus staff members, these enterprises were having
staff in excess which was resulting in difficulty in operations. In such situations,
HRP system could have addressed the problems.

ANSWER 3(B)
Introduction
Human Resource demand forecasting involves predicting the skilled people
and workforce required to perform the job in the organization to meet
organizational goals and objectives. The factors such as organizational structure,
organizational budget, nature of business, technology, business strategy
influences the demand of people in the organization. HR demand forecasting
techniques are classified into two broad categories:
I. Qualitative Methods
 II. Quantitative Methods
The methods used for HR demand forecasting is shown in the figure: -

Trend Analysis
Method

Ratio Trend
Quantitative
Analysis
Methods
Method

Work Study
Methods of Method
Demand
Forecasting Expert
Forecasts

Qualitative Management
Methods Forecasts

Delphi
Technique

Figure: Techniques of HR Demand Forecasting

Concept and Application: -

Qualitative methods of Demand Forecasting: Qualitative methods of demand

forecasting considers factors such as skills, potential levels, and interests of all
employees to suffice the human resource need of the organization in future. This
method of demand forecasting is less statistical in nature in comparison with
quantitative methods. There are following methods of Human resource demand
forecasting which are depicted in the figure below:

Qualitative Methods

Expert Forecasts Management Delphi

Forecasts Technique

Figure: Qualitative methods of Demand Forecasting

Expert Forecasts: Expert HR professional could help in forecasting the human

resource requirements, skills, experience required to fulfill the organizational
goals and objectives. HR personnel seek input from professional HR experts
within the organization or outside the organization regarding the future staffing
requirements of the organization.

Management Forecasts: Management forecasts is an internal HR demand

forecasting method in which managers from different departments along with
other knowledgeable persons are accountable for determining the human resource
requirements. They suggest the number of people need to be hired, skills required,
etc.

Delphi Technique: A pre-selected group of experts are responsible for

determining the future human resource requirement. These experts give their
judgement on HR requirements. The responses given by several experts are
summarized and report is prepared. This process is repeated until all experts agree
on the estimated HR requirements. The result is a representation of what the entire
group thinks.

This is the one of the most efficient methods of forecasting human resource
demand. Delphi method helps in reducing the subjectivity in forecasting. It is
suitable for organizations where technological changes are frequently affecting
the staffing needs.

Delphi method is best suited for ‘'Aztec Tech Solutions Ltd'’ because in this
method, the opinion of a diverse set of experts is taken into consideration who
arrive at a common and best forecast about the demand. The opinions of the
diverse set of experts helps in effective decision making. In the case of ‘'Aztec
Tech Solutions Ltd'’, the demand forecasting task assigned to HR department may
not be performed efficiently because they might lack the required expertise of
forecasting which is possessed by the experts who arrive at mutually agreed
forecast decision. Although the decision-making process and the response time
could be slow, but this method is also helpful in reducing the halo effect of the
experts who are given high priority and would help in determining the best
forecast of the HR Demand.

Conclusion:

Human Resource planning, also known as HR forecasting, is a crucial part of any

organization. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are used to determine
the human resource requirements. As discussed above, quantitative methods
involve the use of mathematical and statistical analysis, on the other hand,
qualitative methods of demand forecasting rely on managerial judgement methods
which includes expert forecast, management forecast and Delphi technique.
Among the available alternatives of the demand forecasting techniques available,
Delphi technique is best suited for such type of forecasts among the qualitative
methods of demand forecasting.