Case Studies On HRM In Organizations: An Essay.

Case 1: Is ‘Fun at Work’ a Part Specific Part of HR Management?

With so many questions and doubts surrounding human resource management in an organization, it is essential to find alternatives and solutions to the internal questions related to it. The aim of this project is to answer the human resource management related questions of three case studies. As per Beardwell & Thompson, Human Resource Management can be described as the way of managing people within an organization (Beardwell & Thompson, 2014).

The HR department looks into this in order to maximize the performance of the employees to achieve the organizational objective. The case studies contain the essentials of managing the workforce, human resource planning and development (Buckley, Wheeler & Halbesleben, 2017). These cases mainly focus on the HR practices followed by successful companies. The purpose of this study is to compare, discuss about job analysis and other HR activities, and identify the cultural factors and similarities of the HR functioning of three companies. Basically, the Human resource process flows in the following manner:-

In today’s world where there is so much of work stress and pressure, it is somewhat important to introduce some sort of ‘fun at work’ activities in order to keep the employees motivated and dedicated towards work. A fun work culture has more to do with the way the coworkers interact with one another and share the job responsibilities other than just formal activities. If an organization wants the employees to enjoy their job and at the same time stay motivated and focused on their work, then this can only be achieved by concentrating on other fun areas. Like, in this case study, the managers of the company Remedy Corporation of Mountain View came up with aggressive employee referral program. In another program, the managers cleaned the cars of their employees as a gesture to show appreciation for the employee’s effort in the organisation.  As per Chelladurai & Kerwin, a ‘fun at work’ environment is thus important to enhance the productivity of the employees for better output, to build trust and improve employee relation, to have increased job satisfaction, to improve employee recruitment and retention and for overall positive customer experience (Chelladurai & Kerwin, 2017).

In the previous company, there were not many fun activities adopted by the managers as work and only work was given the topmost priority. There were not many employees, so as there was a small work force, the manager wanted the work to be completed first by keeping other activities aside. But here at Remedy, one can see that the company’s managers have adopted several fun activities that have helped to improve the employees’ dedication and motivation towards work (Marchington, et al., 2016). For instance, As per Nel, et al, the managers came up with a strong employee referral program by paying a sum of $5000 to the employees for referring new hires to the company. These are not only a strong HR approach by the company but this also shows that the employees are regarded as an important asset at Remedy (Nel, et al., 2014).

Comparison between the HR Approach at Remedy and a Previous Job

Job analysis is a term that describes how one can lead towards a set of job description and job role profile. The job analysis process is a crucial process as the job descriptions and responsibilities form the most important guidelines recruitment and selection, performance management, reward, recognition, career progressions and organization design and restructuring. Due to the continuing growth of the Berthphage organization, the CEO of the company along with the Board of Directors jointly decided that there was a need to re-examine the structure of the organization. (Oke, 2016). Thus, the process of job analysis was conducted as it was important for Dr. Jacox, CEO and the senior managers to understand the jobs in the organization. The corporate change and restructuring process is changed and affected around 15-20 jobs in the company which were redesigned and analyzed before developing new job profiles. Thus, the job analysis process played an important role in the corporate change process at Berthphage as it helped in developing new job description, new compensation program and better evaluation of the performance (Purce, 2014).

Job analysis process at Berthphage was carried out due to the sudden need of restructuring the organization. The process for the organization restructuring took a lot of time. This resulted in an immediate demand of conducting a job analysis at Berthphage to get a better understanding of the jobs in the organization. As the HR staff of Berthphage was small, the role of conducting the job analysis was divided amongst other members of the company (Reiche, Mendenhall & Stahl, 2016).

The work of completing job description and specifications based on job analysis forms the core part for many HR activities like staffing, training, performance appraisal, etc. So after the structural changing process, the job analysis results showed that the HR specialists of the company had to redesign the job profiles of very employees. Thus, it can be said that there is obviously a link between job analysis and HR activities as job analysis has to be conducted to establish a set of skills that are needed to perform duties of a position. The same set of skills is also used to select and get the right candidate for the work (Sparrow, Brewster & Chung, 2016).  

The core values that all units of McDonald’s throughout the world follow are commitment to work, providing same level of service at all units. When the cultural factors form an important part in the training program for food handlers at McDonald’s in Qatar, certain things should be kept in mind. It is important that all the customers are greeted with respect. Be it the food handlers so the waiters working or any other staff member, they should all know the personality of the customer and then accordingly give the right kind of treatment. They should know the local language and communication style (Whetzel & Wheaton, 2016). As Qatar is an Arab country, people there speak Arabic. So it’s best that the staff knows Arabic language. This will be an added advantage as the customers will respect and appreciate the staff more. The Muslims in Qatar do not eat ‘Non Halal’ food. Thus, it is important that ‘Halal’ food is sold at the McDonald’s in Qatar. So the food handlers must be given the training accordingly. They must be trained to build a good customer relationship as this will later help in getting loyal customers to McDonald. They should understand the ethics and the work culture of Qatar. This will help in building a good relationship with the colleagues (Reiche, Mendenhall & Stahl, 2016). They should understand the flexibility that they will be offered if they wish to work at the McDonald’s in Qatar. The motivating factors of different cultures and the ability to manage cultural shocks all fall under factors important in the training programs of the food handlers at McDonald’s.

The similarities that according to me exist among the McDonald’s customers are:

• They have high motivation- the customers have a high motivation drive that keeps the employees working at McDonald’s motivated to do the job with dedication and love.
• The customers have a positive attitude- the customers have a positive attitude towards the service that McDonald’s offers. For instance, if someday a customer gets a wrong meal instead of the actual ordered meal, then in such instances the positive attitude and faith on the service of McDonald’s keeps the customer calm. The customer will just let the team know about this instance so that it does not repeat in the future and will try and push the situation away (Chelladurai & Kerwin, 2017).
• They have a clear perception- the customers have a clear perception about the service and products that McDonald’s offers.
• The customers have an easy and happy go lucky type of a lifestyle that the employees at McDonald’s tend to understand well.

   The Similarities Among McDonald’s Employees are:

• The employees also have a positive attitude- the positive attitude of the employees towards the work and the customers helps in building good customer relationship with the customers.
• The employees are creative and always want to work on providing a new and innovative product and service to the customers.
• The age group of the employees is somewhat similar to the age group of the customers that comprises majorly of younger youths. So, it helps to have similar thinking and attitude towards McDonald’s products and services (Beardwell & Thompson, 2014).

Conclusion:

The above three cases based on human resource management show that how certain factors like fun at work or job analysis or the thinking pattern help to achieve an effective and efficient Human Resource Management results in an organization. The report will help to get an idea on the insight of the various activities associated with Human Resource Management in these three organizations.

References

Beardwell, J. and Thompson, A., (2014). Human resource management: a contemporary approach. Pearson Education.

Buckley, M.R., Wheeler, A.R. and Halbesleben, J.R. eds., (2017). Research in personnel and human resources management (Vol. 35). Emerald Group Publishing.

Chelladurai, P. and Kerwin, S., (2017). Human resource management in sport and recreation. Human Kinetics.

Marchington, M., Wilkinson, A., Donnelly, R. and Kynighou, A., (2016). Human resource management at work. Kogan Page Publishers.

Nel, P.S., Werner, A., Botha, C., Du Plessies, A., Mey, M., Ngalo, O., Poisat, P. and Van Hoek, L., (2014). Human resources management. Oxford University Press Southern Africa.

Oke, L., (2016). Human Resources Management. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies (IJHCS)? ISSN 2356-5926, 1(4), pp.376-387.

Purce, J., (2014). The impact of corporate strategy on human resource management. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals), 67.

Reiche, B.S., Mendenhall, M.E. and Stahl, G.K. eds., (2016). Readings and cases in international human resource management. Taylor & Francis.

Sparrow, P., Brewster, C. and Chung, C., (2016). Globalizing human resource management. Routledge.

Whetzel, D.L. and Wheaton, G.R. eds., (2016). Applied measurement: industrial psychology in human resources management. Routledge.