people management

University Degree Architecture, Building and Planning

People Mangement

2BUS0230

Lecturers: Liz Whyard

David King

Assignment 1

“Why is effective recruitment and selection important to organisations? Critically examine different selection techniques in terms of their usefulness to organisations.

Prepared By: Mohammad Qureshi

Student Number: 06132867

Word Count: 1950

(excluding bibliography and references)

Organizations are changing to cope with the changing business environment and ‘recruitment’ is considered to be the fundamental step in this continuous renewal of organisations. It brings in new ideas, better skills and different point of views for the organisations that generates a range of options for the appetite of ‘innovation’ of any organisation. In this piece of research, this importance of recruitment and selection would be discussed in terms of its effectiveness for the health and success of organisation. Also, various selection techniques would be compared in terms of their usefulness.

British Airways is the company under consideration for this research. It is the largest airline in United Kingdom and third in Europe serving about 149 destinations in 79 countries around the world. The number of employees working for BA last year as recorded by FAME was about 50,000. The sheer size of workforce depicts the need of efficient recruitment and selection for its health and success. According to Foot and Hook (2005: p 63), “Recruitment includes all the activities directed towards locating employees and attracting application from suitable candidates.” So, recruitment, by attracting a pool of applicants, provides a starting point for selectors to select the most appropriate of them for the organisation. This process of screening, short listing and selecting the best candidate out of the available applicants is termed as ‘Selection’.

Like all organisations, British Airways consider the good employees essential for success as they said: “British Airways places great emphasis on ‘Investing in its people’ (FactBook 2007: p36).

British Airways views their employees different from other resources and use humanistic approach to manage them. These approaches are visible by the Human resource polices of the organisation. “A clear business case and strategy is in place and focuses on creating an inclusive culture that understands and respects the individual differences of our employees and customers.” (FactBook 2007: p 36).Furthermore, “Win hearts and minds of employees” program, which in the middle of 1990s, not only raised the desirability of work among employees but also improved organization’s profits. Also the priority to elder care and maternity provisions by providing flexible working environment and help leads to a very humanistic approach of managing workforce. This approach gives evidences that the Human Resource policies including the recruitment and selection strategies are very much influenced by Harvard Model for managing human resources which views employees as resources and that they cannot be managed as other resources. Motivation and pay act as the basic reward system in this model which is again evident from the recent ‘BA Way’ approach of the organisation. According to the Annual Report and Accounts (2005/06: p27), “The final ‘BA Way’ goal of the year 2005/06 related to employee motivation.”

On the other hand, Michigan Model has a much harder and less humanistic approach to managing employees. According to this model, employees should be obtained as cheaply as possible and should be managed as other resources of the business. They should be used sparingly and developed and exploited as much possible. Some of the evidences of British Airway’s activities explain that it follows this model as well along with Harvard Model. As, discussing the recruitment process in the

Annual Report and Accounts (2005/06 p: 35), British Airways said, “Recruitment is closely monitored to ensure that it is only authorised if ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Annual Report and Accounts (2005/06 p: 35), British Airways said, “Recruitment is closely monitored to ensure that it is only authorised if the Company is confident that the business need is critical …”

So, it can be concluded that BA is following a balanced amalgam of both models in order to maintain efficiency and cost effectiveness by carefully hiring and training employees and on the other hand self satisfaction and betterment of workers by using a humanistic approach.

In the FactBook 2007 BA claims: “British Airways places great emphasis on ‘Investing in its people’”. This investment is always very considerable because of its effectiveness and the unjustifiable consequences if it is not made according to the requirements. There are no evidences that shows accurate investment by BA on recruitment and selection but the following table reveals the increase in the expenditure on Human Resources:

British Airway’s focus on establishment of effective recruitment and selection methods and more importantly on training and development of employees can be understood by this increase of 5% on the employee costs.

Townley (1991) argues that “organisations are increasingly likely to focus on more general attributes and values than narrow task-based criteria.” Barclay (1999) explains the fitness of organisations are expressed in terms of personality, attributes, flexibility, commitment and goals rather than the ability to do specific job for which person is being recruited. Torrington and Hall (5th Edition: p 142) termed these general but valuable attributes as organisational criteria. It now depends on the nature of organisation that what attributes are much valuable for them than other. In case of British Airways, the vastness and expanding nature of organisation requires candidates with flexibility and adoptability and ‘utmost professionalism’. Apart from these, in the FactBook 2007, BA claims that “The motivation and commitment of employees remains key to the success of British Airways.” To be a bit precise, the recruitment for employees is functionally categorised for six departments.

First is Customer Contact which is responsible for delivering onboard services for customers. Employees in this department are further divided under Cabin Services and Passenger Services. BA is looking for candidates having customer service experience and age over 18. The candidates for this department should have calm and warm personality, effective communicational ability with people from diverse cultures, ability to work under stress and team support attitude.

Secondly, there is Commercial Department which recruit people for Sales, Alliance, Marketing and Strategy. The organisation is looking for candidates having ability to work in a dynamic, fast moving environment with excellent communication, organisational and planning skills to work in this sector. Experience of Customer Service here is also desired by the selectors.

e-Business and IT department and Technical and Operations department covers e-Commerce, e-Procurement, IT and e-Working and pilots, engineering, flight training sectors respectively, which are working for the organisation to cope it with the latest technological requirements for success. The employees must have innovative and creative thinking with an ability to think beyond the technology. Good negotiation skills, problem solving skills and considerable experience and qualification in job related technology is required.

Corporate Services includes HR, Finance, Health Services, Legal services, PR & Communication, Safety, Security Community and Environment. This department look for motivative and committed personnel which have same interest as the objectives of organisation. Experience and standard qualification in the related field is usually required.

At the last, there is Graduate Opportunities and Training Schemes sector which hire graduates, students for industrial placement, trainee pilots and engineering schemes. The excitement and challenge of airline industry along with the sheer diversity in company’s structure and opportunity to take the career in desired way by acquiring valuable skills and experience make BA a priority for young graduates.

Organisations have different ways to select the candidates depending upon different factors including time, cost, administrative ease and selection criteria for the post to be filled. A list of selection methods as described by Torrington and Hall (2006) includes, Application Forms, Self Assessment & Peer Assessment, Telephone Interviewing, Testing, Group Selection Methods and Assessment Centres, Work Sampling/Portfolios, References etc. British Airways (http://www.britishairwaysjobs.com/) use CV and Application forms, Interviews, Assessment Processes, Criminal Record Check.

Applications Forms are the written documents which usually reflect personal, educational and employment information of the candidate. Application form has been extended by some organisations to ask much more and much detailed information from the candidates like about their skills abilities and also some situational questions are made to evaluate thinking approach of candidate. British Airways stress more on the CV and directed the candidates to develop a well organised, logical and easily understandable CV. A brief discussion about the related skills is required with no spelling and grammar mistakes. The main objective of Application forms is to shortlist the pool of recruited candidates. Application forms can be used to obtain candidates' signatures as to the truth of the information provided. Application Forms are slightly better and fair indicator of candidate’s potential due to their standardise format making the comparison of the information during sifting and short listing easier and less prone to error

Assessment Process incorporate multiple selection techniques usually involves Leaderless groups, Command or executive exercises, Group Problem Solving, psychological tests, in-basket tasks and variety of interviews and presentations. Due to the multiple measures IRS (2002d) noted that these are the most effective ways of selecting candidates. At the end of the measures, the assessors have to come to cumulative rating for each individual, related to job requirements. This selection method is costly and time taking but provide opportunity to evaluate the candidate by in depth observation. Assessment Process followed by British Airways (http://www.britishairwaysjobs.com/) constitutes Group Exercises, Interviews, Psychometric tests, Presentations, fact-finding and role plays.

Group exercises will investigate the team working abilities and communication skills of candidates. Interviews contain tricky questions and critical situations to do decision. About Psychometric Tests BA claims: “The tests we use most often focus on verbal and numerical skills. We may also include a personality assessment which is another tool designed to find out a bit more-about you.” Fact-finding explores interpersonal skills to gather related information whereas Presentation shows communication skills of a candidate with a group. In Role Plays, one of the assessors will act as a client and the candidate have to tackle him according to the given situation.

Testing is one other source of selecting candidates. It is a sort of alternative for the unreliability of interview as a indicator of performance and potential of the candidate. But views against Testing dislike the objectivity of the technique and the difficulty to incorporate the test indications with the rest of the evaluation. In the form of psychometric testing, role plays and fact-finding, BA uses this technique to evaluate the appropriateness of the candidate with the requirements of the job. The other types of test according to Torrington and Hall (6th edition) are Aptitude tests, General Intelligence tests, Special aptitude tests, Trainability tests, Attainment test and Personality Tests. The detailed nature of Testing may provide a sufficient analysis of one’s capabilities but there are also some problems in using this as a selection technique including a time consuming nature, the inadequate criteria to develop the testing for a good job performance, ability to be sexually, socially or racially biased.

Criminal Record Checks is also a very essential part of BA’s selection process as in the world of International travel; nothing is more important then safety and security. BA is UK’s leading safety critical business () with a well renowned safety record so in order to fulfil legal requirement to check the criminal record if the employee is being hired to work with children and/or vulnerable adults.

The discussion concludes to reflect the immense importance of the effective recruitment and selection strategies for health and success of all the organisation in general and British Airways in particular. The balanced strategy of British Airways to recruit and select employees make BA a happy place for employees to work in without affecting the cost scale much. British Airways should shift the emphasis from CVs to Application Forms in order to get accurate, related and required information about candidates. Assessment procedures followed can be termed as better method to select candidates and BA is following this quite efficiently.

Bibliography and References

Annual Report 2005/2006 [online: URL]

BA Jobs [online : URL]

http://www.britishairwaysjobs.com/baweb1/?newms=info37

Beer, M., Lawrence, P.R., Mills, D.Q., Walton, R.E. (1984) Managing human assets, Free Press.

CCH Online Library [online : URL]

Derek Torrington, Laura Hall, Stephen Taylor (6th edition) Human Resource Management, Prentice Hall

Factbook 2007 (online: URL)

http://www.bashares.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=69499&p=irol-factbook

Fame Online Library [online: URL]

http://www.fame.com

HRM Guide[online: URL]