Possible Human Resource Management Factors

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

You are the supervisor of a group of employees whose task is to assemble disk drives that go into computers. You find that quality is not what it should be and that many of your group’s devices have to be brought back and reworked; your boss says that "You’d better start doing a better job of training your workers."

1) Based on what you learn in BBD 2123, identify and explain the possible human resource management factors that could be contributing to this problem. (10 marks)

Problem by training

First of all it might be lack of the training for the employee and also the supervisor on the operation line in the company; therefore the problem was retaining and preserve in the quality problem cycle. Because if the company has provide the training program for employee and through the training program, it will give the employees the basic requirement skills for handling the machine within the production line even it has a possible for the employee acquire the advance skill in order to increase the efficient and effective for quality production to achieve perfectly job production. Besides that, since all the company has their own culture and direction set by the company to guide the direction for its employee to achieve their goal. If the supervisor himself was lack of briefly in company future planning, then he might be confused with the direction of the company, since we need to know the company direction before we can convinced even motivate the subordinate toward it.

Problem by personnel

However there was one thing need to be highlight, in fact there were various factors influencing personnel performance though many training have been given. Even the training was no problem and it might also result in low performance of employee. Here we classified it into four dimensions of factors for poor employee performance.

The employee

The pay

The job itself

The workplace atmosphere

Poor performance can be result by the employee themselves. The personal problem and the attitude of the employee look upon on their career or job, since if the attitude of the employee was bad, no matter how many potential and relevant training being conducted. The performance of the employee will still remain the same. For example Theory X employee who are inherently lazy and will generally avoid work or even lacking in work basic business ethic, therefore they need to be closely supervised by management level In order to operate according to usual performance at the same time they also avoid responsibility in handling their job in the organization. In additional, there might be some others personnel physical conditions which will also affect the performance of the workers such as the employee themselves have undisclosed learning disability or others medical condition and finally affect the performance of the productivity.

Besides that, as referring to definition of job is to conduct a set of relevant work in order to get pay. Therefore we believe that salaries were inseperatebility with the performance of work conducted by employee. So the employee performance for the work was directly referring to the pay from the company. Although money was not the only motivator, but money was also stand an important part in motivating people. For example, every employee’s performance was different, some conducted better performance but the pay for the overall employee was the same. Therefore it might also influence the employee to reduce their effort on doing better job to the company due to the unfair treatment.

The job itself is also another factor that causing the performance of employees either be good or poor. Employees are not supposed to be blame for every reason of poor performance for one organization. The job itself might be an actual problem to harm an organization and causing low performance.

For a certain situation like, the worker is new and have no experience about the job description but the job volume were too high, and resulted the workers could not able to handle these entire job that he or she should be deal with. It is not because of that person don’t know what or how to do it, but it is because the volume and capable were too high to manage for one beginner.

Apart from this, contain too much irrelevant in his or her routine work that will lead to poor performance. For the example like, an assembly line workers specialist is not in storage management aspects but the management department assigns that person to manage storage. This will not only cause losing focus on his own job routine but will also confine that person potential to performing well and quality standard are impossible to meet.

The work place atmosphere is poor and causes the poor productivity and low performance issued happen. There are several factors that causes bad working environment. Bad treated by the boss and the rude Colleague those lacks of proprieties will definitely resulting in lowering workers motivation level. Good workers never get any single tangible reward or praised from word makes workers losing confidence on work place and workers will not able to give all his or her 100 percent performance to the organization.

Biases of employer toward workers by the race or gender, for the example: employer paid salary by determining "colour" of workers but not their performance or achievement they had made. This will create dissatisfaction in work place. In worst, conflict among employees will be occurs. Secure and safety workplace is not provided, workers risking their life to complete their job in a high risk working place. Accident happen always not only will made organization to pay another cost, but also will delaying the process of working.

Others factors

Furthermore, the problems can be happen because the supervisor’s expectation or company’s expectation does not align with the employee’s expectation. When a big misalignment is really significant, employees will become problems. In order to perform well in the job, communicate and interact with other effectively and to be motivated, employees have to meet the same alignment with their boss or supervisors. When face with serious misalignment, usually it can leads to employees turn off from that job either it is voluntary or involuntary.

During the operating process, it might be the problem that supervisor not lead them and give them a complete guide about the job. The supervisor or leader of the production line should lead them to get the job done perfectly. Without a proper guidance, they might have problems with their proper job and can’t assemble the drive correctly into the computers. Employees who did not get a proper supervision, it will turn them into problem staffers. They might become frustrated of not having a reliable leader and dependable resource and this can bring them to become tension with their job and cannot perform it well as well as the supervisor will lost their respectation from the employee.

In term of recruitment, there might be a problem with the recruitment procedure and selection process. Relate with the problem, we might recruit the wrong employees to work in the production or assembly line. The job requirement for the job was distinguish with the personality and also the skill or knowledge of the candidates. Hence we should analyze and study the job requirement with the employee interest before the recruitment conducted. Since the employee which selected might be in the wrong department which is different with their interest and this will reduce their contribution on the production and lead to the miserable quality control which was affected the reputation of the company and the work that they do does not get done by the way it wanted to be done.. However by selecting the correct employees, the miserable result might not be occurs and It might help us to save cost and time as well. For example, the production line does not need to reassemble the disk drive return by the customer.

2) Explain how you would go about assessing whether it is in fact a training problem

As we know most of the company was hiring inexperienced personnel or worker for the basic production line workers. To assessing whether it is the personnel problem or training problem, the most common standards is to use the need analysis for the training program. First of all, the need analysis has the aim to determine training need. Thence need analysis was stand an important role to identify and assessing for training problem and personnel problem.

Within the need analysis first we need to identify the specific job skill which require by the employee in their job scope in order to well perform in the routine work through job description and specification. As we know any job vacancy cannot be filled without these two documents. Since job description was an essential company’s document which list out the employee role and duties as well as their basic requirement for the job when the employee first in the company, so it might help in determine which training are suitable and needed by the particular employee. For example the employee of operation line and also supervisor in disk driver company would need to ameliorate for technique skill. Besides that, management skill and leadership skill training was also needed for the supervisor in order to well manage with the routine job from time to time toward the quality control of production line and also enhance motivating skill for great productivity toward the product. Besides that, there were several aspect of training including leadership training, computing skill training, problem solving skill and others training. However the most suitable training for the disk driver production line employee would be tendency to techniques aspect course or technology information class instead of doing some of the communication skill and accounting skill programme which is unnecessary for them.

Thence, if the training held by the company to the employee was not related to the skill which required by their job it might waste the time and cost for the training or even become one of the training problems since the significant behind the training was being ignored.

After confirm the scope of training needed by the employee, the next important procedure to assessing the training problem was to analyse the need of trainees. To analyse whether the particular employee was need to be trained. First is to determine and ensure the employee performance was under the criterion of the company appointed standard. With a more detailed description is to do the comparison between the expected performances require by the company with the current performance carry out by the employee. Perhaps the current employee performance was undesirable or under the appointed standard of the company which mean that training program was needed to improve the efficiency of the worker, the standard of the performance which is referring to the job description and specification. If the current performance of the employee was under the assign performance, hence he or she might require for training. However if the performance of the employee was meet the standard of the company appointed performance and yet the training also develop, Thence it might be a training problem.

Based on the situation we can obviously see the whole group of employees in assembly disk drive line was conducted very poor performance to the company. They were failing to provide sustainable performance appointed by the company. Since the quality of the disk driver was not meeting the determinate quality of the company and even thorough Destruction of company reputation.

After the comparison of the performance required by company and current employee performance, next is to determine the outcome of the training provided by company, assume that trainees do attend the training program but they are not managed to achieve the specific outcome appointed by the company after the training. This can be count as one of the problem assessing on training. For the example, if the training was carry out what was the outcome of the training. In fact trainee supposed to able to know and handling certain measurable and specific knowledge or skill from training but in the end of the training, it doesn’t go on that way or the consequences of the training does not went as good as the outcome that should be meet or the result are not as expected. A lot of deficiencies will be shown up like workers lack of skills, low performance, and low productivity and more negative effect on that company. This mean that the training was goes wrong or become training problem

Method used to analyse training need.

Since performance analysis is the procedure used to identify whether there is the performance deficiency on the employees who are needed to be trained. The method used to determine the training need including performance appraisal. Performance appraisal mean comparison between current performance carrying out by employee with past performance relative to the appointed performance standard by company as we are in analysing the need of trainees. Normally the performance appraising process involve three simple steps, setting the standard performance for the employees (KPI) then come to the evaluate the current performance of employee with the standard performance and only come to the feedback toward the employee in eliminating the deficiency performance by training with the referring to the company goal.

Other than that, the observation method was also used by the supervisor or specialist to determine the necessary of training for the employee. Since the supervisor was the one who are more familiar with the weakness and fault of each employee under his scope of management. To find out the employee who are most often making mistake and having no specific skill to handle his work. Therefore he may need to observe the employee and determine who will need to be trained based on his observed. However there was one thing need to be highlight, since there were also some personnel physical conditions which will affect the performance of the workers such as the employee themselves have undisclosed learning disability or others medical condition and finally affect the performance of the productivity. So it might not be the problem of lack of training for the particular employee.

Moreover, The Human Resource Management can choose to interview with the employee or supervisor in order to evaluate the need of training for the employee based on the information obtained during the interview. The best method to know the circumstance of the workers whether they need and hope to be trained. During the interview the specialist could get the feedback from the interviewee on the spot regarding their way of responding to the interviewer question such as contribution to company or their future plan in the company and etc. Since there were various factors which influencing personnel performance although training have been given. Because the poor performance of employee in their job does not necessary mean that was the issue of training. Therefore poor performance can be result by employee themselves and how they look upon their career and job. Since bad attitude of the employee was also the factor to poor performance.

The attitude survey means the assessment of the feeling of the employee toward the particular company. As mention in the interview, attitude of employee was also the factors to affect the performance of the particular employee but not training. Therefore, there was a need to survey the attitude of the employee toward their current job and even their career development. To know well the employee attitude toward their job only and find out whether training was necessary to boost their performance. For example throughout the attitude survey the company can aware that maybe the employee was discontented to the compensation on their effort or over achievement especially in term of individual bonus and purposely to put less effort toward their job.

Based on what you read in Chapter 8 and what you may access via the Web, develop a detailed training program for ANY ONE of the following: production operator

As a production supervisor, the basic responsibilities are maintains staff by recruiting, selecting, orienting, training employees and developing personal growth opportunities. After recruiting and selecting the candidates, the production supervisor has to clearly know their new staff’s strengths and weaknesses before they developed a training program to their employee’s. In this case, there are many possibility employee problems that would cause low quality products and others.

In the Chapter 8 of Human Resource Management Eleventh Edition by Gary Dessler, the first steps of developing a training program is analyzing specific skills that the employee’s needed to improve their future performances in company. In the first and second questions of assignment we analyzed many possibility reasons that causes the employees could not well-perform in production line, it can be the training problem, healthy problem, attitude problem, recruiting problem and salary problem.

We would use the following steps to develop a detailed training program for the production operators:-

Facilitators

First of all to plan a training program for whole operation line employees, we need to assign five facilitators to plan the whole training program in every side and step to ensure the training program runs smooth without any issue. Facilitators can be the supervisor, trainer, manager and experienced employee. We would arrange two supervisors of the production line in the training program because they are clearly understood the whole production line from the beginning to the last. Assign also two training specialist as facilitator to observe the mistaken that employees made before, and improvise them on time. Moreover, one operation manager was also assigned as facilitator to manage whole training program. There are several requirements to assign as facilitators .The facilitators must be patient while training employees and at the same time act as motivator to encourage them for improvement.

The second qualifications of facilitators is, they must have passionate about sharing their knowledge with others, have enough knowledgeable about their subject matter, training methods and other aspect in order able to guide them to become a high potential employees. The third requirement for facilitator, they must skilled in communication. By demonstrate a good communication skill, to able to clearly speak to them the instruction or information to employees accurately. With a good communication skill, facilitator is able to minimize the risk of conflict among employees in work place.

Training Venue

Since we choose on-the-job training as our training method, it can be done either in workstation or within the production line area in organization, with the right facilities and machine provided and ensure essential safety precaution are always fine. Facilitators must always decide the venue efficiently and the training place must always being held in the right time and right place. With it, interruption of operation during training process will not happen. Other than that, the advantages of this method are the trainees would not miss any training and easier for the trainees, they do not have to go to another place to train, because the venue is at their workplace, unless they did not come to work. Moreover, the trainees are already familiar with the training tools, they can receiving the training very fast and no need to waste some times to familiar with the tools. In addition, the venue of training program is at the workplace, the company can save a lot of cost, no need to open another classes at different place and different time.

Duration & Schedule of Program

Day\Time

9-10am

10-11am

11-12pm

12-1pm

1-2pm

2-3pm

3-6pm

Monday

Training hours

Tuesday

Training hours

Wednesday

Training hours

Thursday

Training hours

Friday

Training hours

The above table is shown the working days, the working days are Monday to Friday. The working hours are start from nine to six o’clock per day and the training hours are start from three to six o’clock. The reasons we set the training on three to six o’clock because the time is after lunch break, the employees will have more energy to cover the training and the employees can head back from company after the training. The facilitators will evaluating the job performances every three months, and the training programs will be stopped if the trainees reach the standard performance.

Number of Participants

After the duration and schedule was made, the supervisor has to count the number of participants that involved in this training program. If the supervisor do not calculate the number of participants, it would cause to the facilitator could not know how many trainees are involved, therefore, the training program cannot run efficient. The maximum number of participants we arranged is not over fifty trainees, because we found that there are not a lot of employees having the job performance issue, which can narrow the scope of trainees, and focus on train the trainees who are having big issue. Other than that, the number of participants will also affect the number of facilitators, because the more trainee we having, the more facilitator we have to assign, and all of it are related to the cost of the company.

Training Method:

Job training got a multiplicity forms, and each of them having advantages and disadvantages. One ordinary form is on-the-job training, which arises while a person is actually working at a commerce or workplace. On-the-job training is cost-efficient and helps the employee learn the specific business skills. The advantage of this training method is that the employee is acquiring revenue for the company or business while he is working and the company is profiting while the employee is learning. If the employee were sent off-site, he would not be earning revenue for the company. Also, the employee can be supervised at good enough times while he is training. For the examples, if he is working as a cashier, another cashier or supervisor can be standing by observing and prepared to answer questions. If the employee is training to be a waitress, she can follow a current wait staff and observe and assist with customers.

We chose the coaching method of On-the-Job Training to train the employees because this is most familiar type to make them knows their job clearly. This method is very suitable to train the production line employees since production line employees require specific technique skills to handling the operation machine which cannot be learnt from any other training courses. The facilitators apply this method to the employees who are having training and job-skilled problems.

Step 1: Prepare the Trainees

In first step, the facilitator is required to explain to trainees the reason why they are being trained, so they can know what their problems are. The facilitator has to find out what the trainees already knows about their job, he can simply ask the answers from the trainees and compare their job descriptions. After asking trainees, he has to explain whole job of theirs, how to do at each step, the errors they made in the production line and place them to the normal working position.

Step 2: Present the Operation

The main problem of the production line is inside this step, about the quality of products not reached the standard. In second step, the facilitator has to explain the quantity and quality the company’s requirement to the trainees to make sure that all the trainees knows it fairly. After explaining the quality and quantity, facilitator needs to let trainees go through the job several times and slowly, so the facilitator able to explain all steps of production even the difficult parts and the errors the trainees made before such as the low quality problem.

Step 3: Do a Tryout

In third step, the facilitator has to guide them and correct the mistaken they likely to made. If the trainees are able to do their job in normal pace, the facilitator can starting to let them do some complex task few times. Afterwards, it is time of facilitator to build up their skill and also speeding up their working efficiency. The facilitator must be very patient in this part, because this is the hardest step of on-the-job training. The trainees has to keep on training their job-skill to prove that to facilitator they got the ability to do the job very well.

Step 4: Follow Up

In fourth step, the facilitator would assign the trainees to help some new employees or trainees and get the experience while they teaching. Moreover, the facilitator would decrease the supervision in this step, because the trainees already know how to do the task in every step. There are only one important thing the facilitator needs to do is correcting the work patterns of trainees to prevent those patterns become their bad habit. Lastly, the facilitators should compliment them if they learnt all the steps and did a good work.

Budget

Before the program budget proceed to financial department the probably amount of the training budget has to come out by the evaluation. First of all, the budget was estimate at the final step, since to have a precise calculation on overall budget was needed to concern in all the costing steps which including hiring facilitator, venue, the period of training (scheduling) and participant involvement as well as training method. Since we need to know the number of participants before we can plan to arrange the number of facilitators contributes to the training programs. For example estimate the standard of the facilitator which is the production line specialist who was familiar with handling machine as well as how many specialists should be invited to guide the training program without any issues occurring. Furthermore, to determine which venue as training place was also important in calculating the cost of training program. Since to rent a venue for the training program might be stand a fairly large amount of cost or expenses for the company and different venue chosen will have different cost, since the venue should be chose for on-the-job training was within the production line area in organization therefore it might have a lower cost compare with other training method. The period of training was the key step in calculating the budget of the training program. The period of training for on the job training was longer compare with off-the job training, since they must evaluate the result consistently up to weeks or months depend on the company’s training plan. After that, come to the number of participant, to ensure the number of participant before the budget is because we need to have a precise calculation of cost on complete announcement for all the participant so that all the involved participant can notice the training condition.

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