Importance of Human Resources Management

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Guneet Wadhwa
AVCE Business Studies
UNIT-4 Human Resources

Unit-4 - Human Resources Management

Introduction:

I have been asked to choose a particular business, which assesses the management of a Human resources department. For this report, I have decided to choose Ford Motor Company. I will be looking at how Ford Motor Company looks at its employees and how it focuses on the four functions of this department, which are Human resource planning, Recruitment and selection, Training and development and Performance management.


Methodology:

This report discusses on how a company plans and carries out the Human Resources department therefore it would be better to carry out the Secondary research where the research is carried through different standards such as Internet where it will be useful to extract information about the functions of the Human resources in depth. It would be efficient enough to carry out the advertisements through the leaflets, newspapers, brochures etc.

Primary research is the research that is original and is obtained manually involving range of methods, such as questionnaire and surveys. For Ford it is important that they find out the rate of high unemployment in a certain area. They can carry out this by creating surveys but it is not the Company’s duty to find this particular information out they can obtain this information from the National Statistics Office (NSO) and they can use the information to carry out the planning for the future but this again is a form of secondary research.


Ford History:

Ford Motor Company entered the business world on June 16, 1903, when Henry Ford and 11 business associates signed the company's articles of incorporation. Few companies are as closely identified with the history and development of industry and society throughout the 20th century as Ford Motor Company.

 

Ford Human Resources Department:

Ford has different associations around the world. A global diversity program was created to support the employee’s community around the world. All the needs and resources are accomplished for the employees to give them a bright future at Ford. Leadership development is promoted through mentoring, coaching, which means training is very important for Ford. Ford is looking for a better way to encourage the employees, where they can measure the performance of each employee and reward them to push their confidence.

There are very less companies which adopt non-discrimination employment policy, where they treat everybody with same respect and give the same benefits. More about sexual and other acts are stated below in brief.


E.1) Human Resources Department:

Human Resources department is concerned with the employees who work for the organisation. In human resources, staffs play the most important part, other than staff there are many other resources that are considered for example money (capital), equipment, buildings and materials. To fulfil its purpose, human resources staff is involved in specific activates. The Human Resources Dept would usually be dealt with by the Head Office when providing Guidelines to the Managers, these guidelines would provide the skills needed for the job, and the job description, and from there it would be the manager’s job to find the suitable person for the job. In order to carry out this department well, it has to focus on the four functions which have been listed below:

Human Resources Planning:  

Human Resources Planning are concerned with the process of forecasting the workforce requirements of the business for future years. It looks at how many employees the business will require in the future as well as the type of employee that will be required, it is also concerned with getting the right people to make sure that maximum efficiency and effectiveness of the workforce. This also helps the Company to achieve goals that are set by an organisation.

Responsibilities:

In order to achieve the goals Ford must identify the means of using the effectiveness of people and also to identify the problems which can occur and the responsibilities of this department.  Human Resources planning must recognise as an overall part of the strategic plan the planning can either be implemented or carried out as short term or long term. Short term planning of human resources aims to meet the immediate needs of Ford, such as filling job vacancies e.g. as a result of staff turnovers or maternity leave what positions are vacant what kind of skills are required for the management. Long Term human resources planning attempts to plan for the future e.g. if Ford was aiming to change its distribution techniques in the next few years, it would need to plan out the number of employees, the training required and any incentives or motivation that workers may require.

It is very important for the human resources department when planning the employees and their representatives should be consulted, it should be based on everyone’s decision.  

The business planning must work as per their employment trends for e.g. Ford’s Human resources department uses the statistics of the number of employee’s increases in past 5 years, as per the growth Ford would require new people who would fit into those criteria. If more people have left then there should be an action taken maybe more appraisals should be introduced. It will also mean that if Ford decides to invent more models then more mechanics and machine workers would be required where they should plan considering these statistics.

Ford is globally formed it has its companies all over the world. So employing can be taken at global level that means more people can be employed from poor areas which can decrease the level of unemployment and also the competition form the rivals.  

Importance:

Planning is very important because it helps the company to achieve its objectives more easily by realising the importance of attracting and managing talented and qualified workforce. The realisation has pushed the rise of Human Resource Departments and the all-important managers managing it. The forecasts must be constantly reviewed and updated where necessary where it must be prepared by skill/job level rather than stating an overall total human resources records must be up to date, ideally computerised and easy to access for the employees, Ford has kept those up to date with the accurate number of results.  

The most important part is the Labour turnover, this is used as an important measure while considering Human Resources Planning, the business will need to identify groups that are likely to leave and be ready to fill vacancies that occur. An Employee may leave because they are ill, retiring or having children. In some cases, they may be dismissed. All these cases are unavoidable. However, some workers leave voluntarily because they are not satisfied with the job. It’s these workers that a business should be most concerned about.

Knowing about the existing labour force enables Ford Motor Company’s Human resources department to make the most of the skills and potential already at present within the organisation because then they are able to replace those who are leaving.  However, consideration of the availability of people from the local and national labour markets is also vital.

Impact on Resources:

While planning for the future it is important that Ford’ human resources department is also being able to predict any redundancies, where they can also find the ways of preventing them. They also need to classify the employment costs that involves training and development programmes. In order to plan well there is a need to spot the accommodation requirements in form of recreational facilities. A logical set of personnel policies and practices geared towards effective organisational performance is a necessary requirement for the company to make the best use of resources when motivated to meet business objectives. Other technical and financial costs should be considered as well when planning, it will be very important to calculate the costs of recruiting staff, with the desired skills which should be undertaken. The costs of training programmes, installation costs, performance appraisals and the other ways of measuring performance should be carried out to compare with Ford’s budget for these expenses, to see whether Ford can afford that many expenses or not.  According to the targets set by the managers should be achieved by their employees in a period of time. All these three functions (Recruiting, training, measuring performance) should be well performed to let the employee to achieve those targets within the time of period given, the time shouldn’t be wasted.

Demand Side:

The demand for labour depends on the plans of the organisation.  According to Ford’s plan, where Ford is thinking about opening a new branch within a certain area where there is a high rate of unemployment. As per the plan, Ford Motor Company would require checking the vacancies for each department and the type of skills. Using this information they could think about expanding, and in order to support this expansion plan it needed to recruit a large number of employees. More new car models will be produced this will increase the demand, this would lead to more employees that would be needed to produce the cars, this would also increase costs, but at the same time it will increase the rate of production. This can affect the costs of the Ford pretty by large amount. The Human resources plans could really help this situation because they tell us the overall financial position of the company whether they can afford more employees or not and also the perfect location where most unemployment is. In order to forecast the demand there are two ways of applying these that are stated below:

Management estimates:

In this case the managers are asked to forecast their staff requirements. They will do this on the basis of past, present and future requirements.

Work study techniques:

Work study specialists work out how long various jobs take using available machinery and equipment. If Ford is aware of their sales then they can easily calculate the numbers of employees are required and the hours they will need to work in the company.

Supply Side:

If the organisation is to work out the supply of labour available then it must examine the numbers of people available to work, their ability to work, how long they can work for and their productivity in desired location.

Internal Supply:

The internal supply looks at the statistics and the basic information that is required to be collected on employees within the organisation. It needs to cover the main areas which include:

  • The number of employees in particular job categories: Where the figure gives a broad overview of the numbers in an organisation who already posses certain category of skills. In Ford they count the amount of managers and workers in their organisation.
  • The skills available: Ford needs to identify the skills held by their labour force because then they can easily work out how much more effort needs to be inputted and also they should be able to divide the work according to the ability, which can make performance measurement more convenient in terms of promotion.  

  • Skills analyse: The timing is important so Ford keeps up with the importance of their employees needed at the right time so they need to identify the skills which are already adapted and the skills which are needed for the future.
  • Performance results: Ford will have to gather information about the level of performance of various categories of their current employees.
  • Age distribution and length of service: If there is a knowledge and information  

      about workers then it is easier for them to evaluate and focus on the different age                                    

groups. So if there are older people employed then they need to take the   retirement process in mind where they will have to employ more people to replace them.

  • Staff turnover: In order to prevent from future losses and to analyse why people leave jobs Ford will have to analyse their staff turnover. Staff turnover can be beneficial for Ford because as new and fresh staff can be recruited, promotion channels can be opened.

- Recruitment and Selection:

In Human Resource Planning Recruitment is very important. People are very essential resource in a business which means they have to be managed well. The aim of this function in the Human Resource department is to acquire a large number of employees through the process of recruitment and selecting.

Responsibilities:

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In all businesses, people are a vital resource - and they need to be managed as such.

Ford Motor Company looks its way of recruiting in three main stages:

1. Identifying and defining the requirements. This involves the preparation of job descriptions, job specifications and person specifications

2. Attracting potential employees - there are various methods for doing this - which are described in a separate revision note

3. Selecting and employing the appropriate people from the job applicants

Recruitment is becoming more and more important in business. In particular, this reflects the increasing ...

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