It is clear that Bleak House got caught in a cycle that many businesses fall upon. The only way to achieve greater productivity within the business is to evaluate and conduct change. Unfortunately this has yet to be done.
Unfortunatly for the owners of Bleak House, the environmental factors affecting the business have changed for the worse. This on top of the drop in morale and productivity has spelt disaster for the business.
To change these problems it is important to understand all aspects of human resourcing and evaluate Bleak Houses current policies.
The following areas should be evaluated:
- Communication
- Motivation & rewards
- Recruitment
- Health and Safety in the Workplace
Human Resource Management
“Human Resource Management or HRM can be defined as a strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organisations most valued assets”
(Quotation: A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practise, M. Armstrong, and 8th Edition)
The people who work in a business who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of its objectives.
Aims of having HRM
The overall purpose of HRM is to ensure that the business is able to achieve success through its people.
It is important to create a climate in which productive and friendly relationships between management and employees are maintained.
Can these problems be changed?
Communication
“Communication takes place when a message or idea is transmitted by one person and received and understood by another, without loss of integrity.”
(Quotation: Personnel in Practise, D. Currie, Blackwell Business)
Good communication between managers and employees sounds easy on paper but it is difficult to do consistently in the workplace. This is key for managers to understand how to communicate effectively with the employees.
How to change
I noticed that work and effort has been declining with the managers being absent through other work commitments. This could work hand in hand with motivation, as the managers need to give the responsibility to an individual to communicate while they are absent.
I feel it is important to create an “Employment Relationship Policy”. This policy is significant to personnel or managers because it can govern much of what the business needs to be aware of developing and applying any new HRM processes, policies and procedures. These need to be considered in terms of what they will or will not contribute to furthering a productive and rewarding relationship with employees.
Benefits to change
The creation of an “Employment Relationship Policy” would ensure that Bleak House has effective and productive communication between managers and the employees. If communication becomes efficient then production will be able to operate to full potential. It is very important for Bleak House to Communicate and Motivate the workforce to ensure maximum productivity.
Motivation & Rewards
“What is Motivation? A motive is a reason for doing something. Motivation is concerned with the factors that influence people to behave in certain ways. The three components of motivation are:
- Direction – What a person is trying to do
- Effort – How hard a person is trying?
- Persistence – How long a person keeps on trying?”
(Quotation: A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practise, M. Armstrong, and 8th Edition)
Types of Motivation
- Intrinsic – These factors include responsibility, freedom to act, a chance to use individual skills and abilities, interesting and challenging work and opportunities for advancement.
- Extrinsic – Extrinsic factors include, rewards, such as increased pay, praise, or promotion, as well as punishments, such as disciplinary action, withholding pay, or criticism.
How to change
Bleak house could introduce a new pay structure that gives extrinsic rewards when the work is done to increase the level of motivation. These extrinsic factors would benefit the business greatly if where added to a new intrinsic work strategy.
Benefits to change
First and for-most is important to create intrinsic rewards in the work place other wise extrinsic factors will not work effectively in the long term. If employees feel they are key to the operation it gives them a sense of purpose and responsibility. This sense of responsibility motivates the workforce to achieve extrinsic rewards, which means the business will become a productive workplace.
Recruitment
“Recruitment is a process which aims to attract appropriate qualified candidates for a particular position from which it is possible and practical to select appoint a competent person or persons.”
(Quotation: Employment Resourcing, M. Corbridge and S. Pilbeam, Prentice Hall)
To have good recruitment and selection is important because well thought out; communicated policies, procedures and practises can contribute positively to the businesses performance. Ineffective recruitment and selection will lead to poor work performance, unacceptable conduct, internal conflict, low morale and job satisfaction in the long term. These are all evident in Bleak House.
How to change
The objective of a recruitment policy is to attract an appropriate number of suitable candidates, at a reasonable cost.
Recruitment Methods
- Employment agencies and recruitment consultants
- Direct access to schools, colleges and University’s
- Government training schemes
- Open days, recruitment fair and careers conventions
The Benefit of Change
It is essential for Bleak House to find the correct type of employee for the job. While the current or previous staff where capable of doing the job effectively it has been noticeable that the standard of work has fallen. This has inevitably resulted in redundancies. Bleak House need to find new staff who have the willingness to get the job done, this could either pump new life into the remaining employees or show how in effective they have become.
Health and Safety in the Workplace
“Each year approximately two million people suffer ill health caused or aggravated by work activities. This affects their quality of life, impairs work performance and gives rise to the loss of millions of working days. Effective employment Resourcing demands that managerial attention be given to health and safety at work.”
(Quotation: Employment Resourcing, M. Corbridge & S. Pilbeam, Prentice Hall)
Common sense should tell us that a healthy and safe workplace would help to produce a pleasant atmosphere, and more productive and profitable organisation.
How to change
Health and Safety at work starts at policy level. All organisations must prepare and keep up to date a written statement of policy relating to health and safety. The policy should include a general statement, along with specific arrangements that are fitted to Bleak House for its implementation. Although assuming that Bleak House has a H&S policy it is vital that the owners make sure that everything is met (“Health and Safety rules were short-circuited wherever possible” Quotation: Case Study). I know that all businesses have policy and try to short cut some aspects so financial or time reasons, I feel that to create the good working atmosphere that is missing now at Bleak House it is important that short cuts are avoided.
Creating an active health and safety culture
Health and safety legislation can only provide a framework and it is the approach and actions of employers and employees that determines whether a safe and healthy work environment is a reality. It is therefore necessary to encourage an active and positive health and safety culture.
At Bleak House is important to have the commitment of the owners, as without this health and safety efforts will be undermined as has been in the past. A framework for organisational health and safety needs to be drawn up. The policy needs to be a statement of intent that clearly give responsibility to supervisors at Bleak House to ensure that regulations are met in specific work areas. The will not be affective unless time and resources for health and safety are not made available.
Benefits to change
If health and safety regulations are consistently met this gives the employees peace of mind in there workplace. As mentioned previously this can only mean that there can be no excuses for low productivity. If these new regulations are met to a high standard and are introduced it must be a new motivation factor for employees.
The continuation of health and safety analysis by supervisors gives them the responsibiliy, which is not only a motivator for the employee but takes some responsibility off the owners.
Training
“Training is the systematic development of the knowledge, skills and attitudes required by an individual to perform adequately a given task or job”
(Quotation: Personnel in Practise, D. Currie, Blackwell Business)
The main purpose of training would be to improve Bleak House by improving the performance of its employees.
The effectiveness of training may be measured by the degree to which it has caused a change of job behaviour on the part of the trainee. Training is essential to improve work productivity. This should be the goal of the owners at all times. The fact that there has been no training since the nineteen eighties (“Training has been non-existent” Quotation: Case Study) means productivity levels have been restricted to that of the decade. Training is needed for personal development and development of new working methods which equals maximum productivity.
How to Change
Although I cant state the exact training needed for the Bleak House employees it is obvious that current and new works receive regular training or re-training to ensure they are the best person for the job.
The responsibilities for training lies normally with a personnel department as Bleak House does not have this at the moment, training is the responsibility of the owners or for the owners to recruit a personnel specialist. Although it is the owners or personnel who organizes training it is up to the supervisors to decide who is to be trained.
Development of a training programme involves the organiser (owners or specialist) to analyse the following:
- Devise the training policy and have it accepted
- Identify training needs
- Plan the training
- Carry out the training
- And, Evaluate the training
Benefits of Change
The obvious advantage of having a training program is to increase to productivity of the employees. Although hiring new employees that are newly trained externally is the best recruitment method it is important that they are always trained to ensure they are the best employees available for the job. The problem at Bleak House has been that the employees have had no training since the company began this would explain a natural decline in productivity over time.
Conclusion
From studying the problems at Bleak House the obvious problems just jump out. The fact that “Recruitment was by word of mouth, training was non-existent and health and safety rules where short-circuited wherever possible” meant that these issues needed to be changed immediately. These three problems on top of a continuing communications problem between owners and the employees means that the business has done well to survive this long. The serious issue is that if these new ideas are not recognised it is unlikely that Bleak House will survive much longer.
- Recruitment is essential to ensure that the best people are appointed to do the
Work.
- Training has to be conducted to ensure that the employees have the potential to be working at their maximum productivity levels at all times.
- The fact that workers can’t only have the potential to do the work they need to be motivated to do it is vital. New ideas about intrinsic and extrinsic rewards need to be thought out and applied.
- Health and safety compliments the motivation factors in that it creates a good working atmosphere.
If all these factors are conducted and maintaind by the owners and managers/supervisors it can only mean that productivity of the business output will increase.
Bibliography/References
Title: Personnel in practise
Publisher: Donald Currie
Other Information: Blackwell Business
Title: Employment Resourcing
Publisher: M. Corbridge and S Pilbeam
Other Information: Prentice Hall
Title: Human Resource Management
Publisher: John Bratton and Jeffrey Gold
Other Information: Second Edition, Macmillan Business
Title: Human Resource Management
Publisher: Ian Beardwell and Len Holden
Other Information: Pitman Publishing
Title: A Handbook Human Resource Management Practise
Publisher: Michael Armstrong
Other Information: The Bath Press, 8th Edition
