Strategic Human Resource Management Evaluation

Question: Discuss about the Strategic Human Resource Management Evaluation. Answer: Introduction This report focuses on the evaluation of the issues related to human resource management in the organizations. For this purpose, Billabong International is selected, the main emphasis will be on the issues relating to recruitment and selection in the company. Billabong International Limited was established in the year 1973 with its headquarters in Burleigh Heads in Australia. It deals in the marketing and distribution of accessories, hard goods, eyewear, apparel and wetsuits in different regions of the world such as Europe, Asia Pacific and America (Billabong International, 2016). It also offers snow and sport apparel, hardware products and accessories, skate and surf under different brand names such as Billabong, Kustom, Palmers, Xcel, Von Zipper and so on. It operates approximately 400 retail stores across the globe under different banners such as Amazon, Surf Driven Ski, Two Seasons and so on. The company employs approximately 5000 staff across its stores in the world. The company distributes its products in approximately 100 countries in the world. The distriubution is done through specialized board sports retailers. Majority of its revenue is generated from its wholly owned operations in Japan, New Zealand, Brazil, South Africa, North America and Australia (Billabong International, 2016). Human resources are the vital resource of the organization as it facilitates in directing their efforts towards the optimum utilization of the available resources to meet the common goal and objectives of the organization. There are many issues related to human resource management that are faced by the organization such as issues relating to performance management, recruitment and selection, pay structure and training and development. This report emphasizes on the recruitment and selection issues faced by Billabong International (Affirm Software Group, n.d.). Companies make heavy investments to recruit and select new employees in order to meet the changing needs of the business environment. Different challenges faced by the companies include brain drain, scarcity of skills, unemployment, expertise in labor market and high labor turnover. Along with this, at the time of recruitment and selection companies also faces difficulty due to presence of lack of effective human resource planning, usage of information technology, geographical locations of jobs and many more (Zinyemba, 2014). Such challenges have an adverse impact on the operations carried out by the organization. This results in lack of transparency in the organization Besides this, it also leads to occurrence of untrustworthiness of employees and involvement of favoritism in the external and internal recruitment. Effective management of recruitment and selection process in the organization facilitates in making efficient decisions related to a prospective candidate. Proper human resource planning helps in achieving the goals and objectives of the organization in an effective manner (Affirm Software Group, n.d.). Analysis of the issue Billabong International makes recruitment and selection of the new hires on a seasonal basis. There is a requirement of large number of employees during Chirstmas as there is a heavy load of customers buying products. In order to handle large pool of customers in organization, the company recruits casual and permanent employees during peak periods. Causal employees are recruited for a fixed period of time and a contract is signed between the Billabong and the employees. The company provides information related to their contract, policies, forms and information about the company prior to their joining in the organization (Affirm Software Group, n.d.). When employees join the company then they return the material received to the human resource team of the organization. The manual system used to store information encounter different errors due to the reason that the candidate provided incorrect information. This results in affecting the performance of the human resource team as they hav e to devote lot of time in getting and recording the information ((Storey, 2007). This is due to presence of the records in paper which might cause problems due to missing of the papers from candidates and stores. It is a time consuming process and require large number of labor for the purpose of maintaining the records of the candidates intact. Nowadays, candidates prefer to use technology for the purpose of getting information related to different policies and procedures carried out in the organization. Rapid changes in different business factors force companies to adopt to the changes in order to remain competitive in the environment ((Fottler, Khatri and Savage, 2010). In the context of Billabong, there is a need to make changes in the processes adopted by Billabong as it results in providing inaccurate information related to candidates which results in making ineffective selection of the employees in the organization. For effective recruitment and selection procedure, there is a need of effective human resource planning for the purpose of determining the requirement of the human resources in the organization. It also facilitates in getting information related to the job responsibilities and authorities to be executed in a particular job. Besides this, the company felt that the manual system of recruiting potential candidates through the use of manual system does not aligned with the policies and procedures carried out by the business and results in increasing the competition from its rivals ((Perkins, Shortland, 2006). The main reason behind bringing improvement in the recruitment and selection process is that the adoption of the manual system results in increase in the cost and time to be devoted in the process. Besides this, it also results in requirement of large number of human resources to maintain the information recorded manually. Besides this, there is an occurrence of the dynamic changes in the business environment such as technology which might help in reducing the time to be devoted in maintaining the records in an easy manner. Bringing improvement in the existing system of recruitment and selection process of the candidates facilitates in improving the overall performance and productivity of the human resource department. This also helps in improving the overall productivity of the organization (Baker and Doran, 2007). Besides this, it also help in attracting large number of skilled candidates which helps in achieving competitive advantage over its rivals. Besides this, implementation of the new technology in the organization helps in creating a common communication platform that helps different stakeholders of the company to communicate with each other. This helps the employees to discuss their problems with other employees so as to take proper decisions in less time. In addition to this, implementation of the new technology also helps new hires or employees to get knowledge regarding Billabong in advance so that they understand the working processes before joining the company. Along with this, it also facilitates in providing information related to their employment contracts in an electronic form so that they can store it in a safe place (Mathis, et al 2016). Along with this, introduction of the new system in the organization helps in elimination of the entry of the data twice and the time required to process the paper work. In addition to this, it also reduces and eliminate the need to courier the documents to new hires and stakeholders as all the relevant information is provided in an electronic form (Mathis, et al 2016). A case of change Billabong International plans to adopt Affirm Software for the purpose of providing onboard experience. Employees have the tendency to resist change as they are not familiar with the objectives that are fulfilled by the system. The company has adopted transformational leadership style which takes into consideration the thoughts views and knowledge of the employees to implement the change in a successful manner. When employees and other stakeholders take part in the implementation of the change in the organization, the change will be implemented in the successful manner. The developer of the system asks employees regarding the problems faced by them in the manual system of providing information to potential candidates (Deb, 2006). In addition to this, leaders provide clear information related to objectives, policies and procedures required to be adopted to implement the change in a successful manner. The leader acts as a change agent and provides information related to the benefits of the adoption of the new technology in the organization. The leader has organized training programs in order to provide training to existing employees regarding the skills required to perform the task in an effective manner. This help employees to adopt the changes bought in the organization (Deckop, 2006). Affirm Software is adopted by the organization in order to provide online business process solutions to the organization. Besides this, it also facilitates in overcoming the problems faced by the employees regarding on-boarding challenges. This software help candidates to provide accurate information which in turn facilitates in storing and recording of the information by the existing employees of the organization. The company has taken 6 weeks to accept the change in the organization in the form of Affirm Software (Perkins, Shortland, 2006). Adoption of the affirm software results in the increase in the performance and productivity of the existing employees as it eliminates duplication of the data entry by the use of paper. It has also provided a facility to new recruits to complete their on-boarding by the use of i-pads and mobile phones (Stredwick, 2005). Feedback has been received from the human resource team and hiring managers regarding the adoption and implementation of Affirm Software. There is a receipt of positive feedback from the human resource team and it is implemented in a successful manner. Along with this, the company has also received positive feedback from the new hires as they can retrieve important and relevant information about the company such as overview of the company, different practices carried out by the company in relation to work (Fallon and McConnell, 2007). Comparison of human resource practices in Billabong and Quicksilver Quicksilver provides information related to the vacancies available in the company on its website. Potential candidates can submit their resumes on the website by viewing the desired responsibilities and eligibility criteria and then the applications are shortlisted and candidates are called for interview for the purpose of carrying out the selection procedure for the candidates. Besides this, the potential candidates can view information related to the company on its website before joining the company which help them to understand the working environment (Anderson, 2004). This helps them to achieve the common goal of the business in an effective manner. Along with this, it also help the human resource team to shortlist the resumes of the potential candidates due to the use of advanced technology which saves time and cost of executing the operation. It also results in the elimination of the duplicate entry of the data received from the candidate. The execution of the technology helps in enhancing the speed of the execution of the business operations and helps in improving the productivity and performance of the team and the whole organization (Burke and Cooper, 2005). Along with this, human resource team takes a preliminary interview via telephone or video conferencing before the final selection of the candidate which also helps in screening of the candidates in a quick manner. In addition to this, the company provides employee benefits by executing different programs such as work/life quality programs like discounted health insurance, paid maternity leave, social club and so on which helps in increasing the commitment level of the employees and helps in retaining them for a long term (Fottler, Khatri and Savage, 2010). Besides this, there is also an occurrence of different training programs which helps in upgrading and developing existing and new skills in the employees. Along with this, the company also provides financial well being initiatives for those employees who are working with the company for more than 10 years. This results in reducing the employee turnover and absenteeism of employees in the organization. Along with this, it has also e stablished a common communication platform through which employees can easily interact with each other and make decisions in an effective manner (Hall and Hall, 2003). In contrast to this, Billabong International before the implementation of Affirm Software has to collect the information related to potential candidates in a manual manner which results in the occurrence of human errors. Besides this, it is considered to be a time consuming process as there is an occurrence of lot of paper work. The information related to different policies and procedures is sent by post to the onboard employees (Storey, 2007). Now, the company provides a facility to different potential candidates to gain information related to different vacancies from the website and can submit their resumes which can be shortlisted by the human resource team of the company in an electronic form. This results in save of time and cost incurred in the execution of the tasks. Besides this, different training programs are organized by the company for the purpose of upgrading the skill set of the employees. This motivates them to take challenging tasks and complete it effectively (Price, 2011). Recommendations For the purpose of implementing the required change in the organization, first of all, there is a requirement of assessing the reason for implementing the change. The human resource team faces many problems while performing their tasks in a manual manner. It is recommended that the managers of the organization should provide full information related to the benefits of adoption of the new technology (Sims, 2007). There is a presence of high resistance of employees towards change because they are not familiar with the skills that are required to perform the tasks using the Affirm Software. The company should provide adequate training to its existing employees so that they can perform the tasks of recruitment and selection in an effective manner. It is also recommended that the company should also provide a common communication platform in the organization so that employees can interact with each other regarding the problems faced so that effective solutions can be communicated to them instantly which in turn facilitates in quick decision making by the employees (Amos, Ristow, Pearse and Ristow, 2009). It is also recommended that the managers of the organization should allow full participation of the employees in the development of the system by taking their views and opinions related to the problems faced by them in providing excellent on board experience. This help the developers of the system to include those features which make the software user friendly and results in the improvement in the performance and productivity of the employees in the organization. Engagement of the employees in the change process helps in increasing the motivation level of the employees to perform the challenging task with ease. The adoption of the Affirm Software helps in making selection of the casual employees effectively as there is no occurrence of the mistakes in recording information due to the presence of automated system during Christmas (Dransfield, 2000). It is also recommended that before bringing change in the organization, there is a need to evaluate different factors that affect the performance of the employees and the organization. After the analysis of the factors the best suited system should be selected that aligned with the goals and objectives of the organization. It is also recommended that increase in the performance and the quality of the services provided by the organization should encourage improvement in the pay structure by entitling the employees to performance benefits to recruit large number of candidates to meet the demand of manpower in the organization (Armstrong, 2006). 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