TSM11121 Business Skills Management Assignment Sample
Introduction
Human resource management is the process of recruiting staff, selecting and hiring the right candidates for managing the organisational activities effectively. The training and development are the second stage for human resource management to deploy and guide the candidates to successfully execute the allotment of work for better outcomes (Michael, 2019). The individual report will be analysed with the help of case study 1. The Edinburgh international book festival each year organise the Best-respected book festival in the Charlotte Square Gardens in Edinburg with almost 260000 visitors across the world. The programme considers almost 900 events across 7 main venues within Charlotte Square Garden. The main purpose of the events is to gather writers and authors to represent their work and discuss writing within the event engaging with audiences. For this big event, every year Edinburgh international book festival employs a temporary staff of 200 that include both short-term and long-term employees with the paid scheme. The temporary staff requirements are mostly been done by Edinburgh international book festival via their own online website and the vacancy is filled with job described for the staff requirements.
In this report, the analysis of the staff requirement in the Edinburgh international book festival will be discussed and as the requirement of the staff, the selection and recruitment process will be developed. The various training and development, motivation, engagement of HR approaches will be formulated to understand the HRM strategy’s importance to fulfilling the temporary vacancy in the festival. Apart from that at last conclusion and recommendation will be guided for an effective Edinburgh international book festival.
Discussion
Analysis and approaches for recruitment and selection
Staff requirement in Edinburgh international book festival
The requirement of the staff in total is 200 employees with the criteria of short-term employees during August period and long-term temporary employees during April/May to September.
Staff requirement: The department of Booksale at the front house of the events consists of Assistant buyers, booksellers, cashiers for collecting money, logistics assistant for front entry management. Another requirement of staff is Box Office that will include the Box Office Assistant, Schools booking coordinator, access officer (Davies, 2021). The Front house staff, programming staff consisting of author hospitality assistant, event logistics assistant, author AV assistant. The site and technical staff for seeing the sites and managing the technical operation via site and venue manager, technical assistant, production assistant. And other staff for marketing support, administrative support, press, and media house assistants.
Payment policy: The type of payment of these temporary operational roles are all in the form of paid with no volunteers and internship.
Current Selection, recruitment, training, and motivation process of Edinburgh International book festival
The applicant’s qualification requirement for the front house job like box office and from book sales can be students, professionals, press and technical staff, production manager, marketing qualification, event specialist. And willing to work in contractual during the festive season for August, April/May till September. The recruitment and selection process in EIBF is given below:
Selection and recruitment: CV are the first process for submitting in the online website of the company and the cover letter is mandatory for completing the online application form. The second process of selection is shortlisting the candidates that match with the job description and specified criteria succeeding for the interview round in the Edinburgh International book festival programme (Weber, 2018). The recruitment process ends with the interview round.
Training: Then the staff training activities are conducted to guide the temporary august staff. And the event of a social group to introduce the groups for performing in the event. The temporary staff is provided the handbook to provide the relevant information regarding the festival.
Engagement: The engagement of the staff with the specific service training through various discussions of equality among the staff and also induction to bring them close together.
Motivational strategy: The only HR strategy applied here for development is the good rate of internal promotion for bringing back the temporary assistant roles to apply and recruit on permanent roles every year with the performance rate.
Approaches for selection and training in Edinburgh International book festival (HR strategy)
The selection and recruitment process need changes as the temporary employees require a more attractive recruitment approach for filling application forms with the right candidates. The steps for approaching the best selection and recruitment process in Edinburgh International book festival are:
Online application form strategy: Provide online ads through websites and social media to bring a pool of candidates that wants to join the team of the biggest book festival. The vacancy of only providing a general job description will not seek the candidate’s attention. The best way to provide online ads about the vacancy with an online application form is to offer event registration and membership for the selected candidates (Dovbnya and Pysmenna, 2017). And prioritise them every year to select without interview after membership.
CV selection strategy: The selection of the CV must be with the online application form and the various staff must be allotted to identify the education qualification, work experience, personal values possessed by different candidates as per the job roles. And compare the standard job description criteria with the skill mentioned for shortlisting the candidates to attain the interview round.
Phone interview: The telephonic interview will help to understand the communication level required to manage and assist the book festival authors. The fluency in English and preferences must be provided to multi-linguistic candidates that can be a help for authors approaching from across the world (Madiistriyatno, 2021). The candidate’s interview by phone will help to minimise the unskilled candidates. All job roles are different as per the department requirement so the telephonic interview must be for 10 minutes asking questions to check the communication and cognitive thinking of each candidate.
Figure 1 Recruitment and selection process
(Sources: Recruitment and selection process, 2021)
Face-to-face interview: The next selection approach is to directly interview the candidates that were selected from the telephonic round. The best way to interview this candidate post-pandemic must be to use virtual video conferencing to minimise the cost of a physical interview. (Salmina et. al. 2021). And this will also help to retain the candidates that must have issues physically approaching on short notice.
Psychological assessment test: The psychological test is required to understand the patience level of candidates and this will help to understand their mindset towards life.
References check: The last must be to check the references of the candidates as this will help to understand their background more effectively.
Job offers: After the screening of the whole process the job will be offered via mail with salary and membership of lifetime that will help the candidates to re-join without interviewing in coming years of Edinburgh international book festival. The salary, legal compliances, duties, and responsibilities, job designation, period of service will be written to make the candidate understand the job offer efficiently (Kyriy et. al. 2017). This job membership offer will cut short the expenses of recruitment in the coming year with membership for temporary staff.
The whole recruitment and selection process mentioned above will help to simplify the complicated orthodox process adopted by the Edinburgh international book festival HRM to date.
Development of HR strategy
Training and development strategy of HR
The training and development process is the educational activities that are created within a company to enhance the skills and the knowledge of the candidates to compete in the industry providing effective work performance increasing the organisational performance as a whole. This is a guidance program provided by the HRM to instruct employees about the importance of the specific tasks to boost their performances (Beatty and Queen’s, 2019). It is a process to enhance career growth internally within an organisation boosting the employees to grow skills that help to promote into a higher position. In this part, the development strategy of HR regarding training and development will be provided to retain the best performance from the temporary staff of Edinburgh International book festival.
Skill gap analysis: The first step after hiring the employee is to analyse the gaps in their existing skills. With the help of the references and skills acquired, the candidate’s future requirement skill must be identified and provided a training program to overcome the gaps in skill (Sharma et. al. 2017). In the operational role jobs, the candidates are required temporarily for various jobs. Therefore, the best way to provide training is to separate the candidates as per the roles and provide training at the individual level with the analysis of the gaps in the employee’s skills for effective training.
Set the objective of each job role and provide strategy: The role of operation in the event is different and each role of the job’s objective must be set by HR. The training is generally provided at Edinburgh international book festival regarding the events information in a day. But the staff must be divided as per the job role and function of each employee with team members must be developed as an HR strategy to retain effective performance outcomes (Bandyopadhyay and Srivastava, 2020). The definition of the objective of each work will help to provide a strategy of training required to let employees understand tasks effectively. For example, the front book sale staff must be provided selling and customer relationship strategy to connect the authors and audiences during the festival. The cash handling and logistic strategy must be provided with the objective of productively handling cash and logistics. The objective will help to build a more relevant strategy for training the staff separately as per the requirements without wasting time.
Figure 2 Training process
(Sources: Training process, 2021)
Investment in the right resources: The training programme requires the right resources to provide training and guidance to the required candidates. Therefore, the instructor must be the permanent staff with an operational job head who will manage the teams as per the function allotted to each department (Lawler and Boudreau, 2020). The production and programme handling team must be provided assistance regarding the event management, assistance towards the author to manage the writers for better performance outcomes. The team head can train and instruct the skills and processes to follow during the management of the work allotted. This will help to enhance the training programme much better.
Test and measure: The training programme must end with an assessment test to understand the level of efficiency in training employees. The staff performance on the test will help to identify the development of training towards employee performances and gaps that needs immediate action for further performance excellence during the big events.
Motivation strategy of HR
The current motivation strategy is the internal promotion of the temporary candidates and also permanent staff roles as per performance rate. However, the staff needs changes as the temporary candidates can be provided the better opportunity by other organisation to switch next year.
The best motivating strategy is to pay them well: The reward is not limited to promotion and permanent roles but it is beyond that. The employee must be provided an incentive for working more than the hours allotted. The employee must be provided an incentive for target fulfilment of each job role separately (Lawler, 2020). This will help to boost their energy to work more and stay loyal towards the programme in coming years. The incentive is a monetary benefit that serves as a motivating factor for retaining staff in long run.
Care about their future: The temporary employee is insecure about their job and they must be provided references towards various events that are conducted in the various seasons to enhance positivity towards temporary and freelancing workers. This will help employees to feel comfortable working with organisation that is providing future opportunities to temporary employees.
Membership for a lifetime: The membership for a lifetime will provide motivation towards temporary employees of job security during the book festival. The employees will feel comfortable re-joining without attending an interview for a second time. The entry of temporary employees with membership will help to provide more growth with similar experience in earlier book-festival programmes.
Listening: Listening is another motivational strategy that helps the staff to work effectively. The listening ability of the team leaders will help the temporary staff to share their problems and point of view that can enhance creativity in events, performance and positivity as well (Naim, 2020). The work culture changes and creativity in programme are required for seeking the author’s and customer’s attention. This motivational strategy will help retain employees’ performance and also retain authors and customers to the event with creativity.
Engagement strategy of HR
The engagement strategy of HR describes the level of enthusiasm and positivity an HR creates towards their job. Dedication and confidence in work is the engagement an HR creates for work performance enhancement (Leaders et. al. 2019). In the Edinburgh international book festival, the engagement strategy is to create social events for interaction with staff for making them feel comfortable to enhance positivity towards work. The strategy of HR requires the various perspectives of engagement to bring more performance excellence. They are:
Communication among staff: The staff has various separate job roles at the Edinburgh international book festival. The employees require separate teams for connecting to the team members that will work throughout the festival (Maheshwari and Yadav, 2019). The office box staff must not be mixed with the production and programme team. Therefore, the social event generally with all staff will bring confusion among staff. So, the best way to stay employees engaged is to daily hold meetings and update growth made by teams separately for better engagement of team members.
Invite feedback every day: The feedback of employees matters to enhance engagement. And the feedback of the teams separately towards the work pressure and level of coordination opinions will help to understand the engagement gaps and engagement success during the festival programme.
Conclusion and recommendation
From the above discussion and analysis, it can be concluded that the Edinburgh international book festival requires changes in HR strategy to develop staff recruitment and performance for effective outcomes. The various approaches of recruitment and selection process of HR development strategy will help to select right candidates with fewer expenses via online interview session. The strategy of online advertisement during the recruitment process and membership strategy will help the EIBF to retain staff for the long run with no fear of losing a temporary job every year during the festival season. The strategy of training in EIBF is providing staff information together without separation of the departments. Every department has separate requirements and the approaches for training and development strategy mentioned above will help to identify the gaps. And measure the training efficiency that will tend to provide the opportunity to the EIBF to enhance performance excellence in various departments separately.
The motivational strategy of the EIBF was to internally promote and provide permanent job with performance improvement. However, the strategy in HR requires the change to provide incentives, references for other events, listening ability to make temporary staff feel comfortable for long-term retainment. The last engagement strategy requires a change in terms of team support as the whole staff generally cannot communicate and engage in a single event. The staff requires separation in terms of work and separate departments with team leaders through various strategies of communicating effectively, feedback that will help in performing better.
References
Books and journals
Bandyopadhyay, C. and Srivastava, K.B., (2020). HR signals in the context of HRM-firm performance relationship: development of a conceptual framework. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management.
Beatty, C.A. and Queen’s, I.R.C., (2019). From HR practitioner to HR leader: Competencies required. Queen’s University Industrial Relations Centre (IRC).
Davies, K., (2021). Festivals post COVID-19. Leisure Sciences, 43(1-2), pp.184-189.
Dovbnya, S. and Pysmenna, O., (2017). Methodicial Bases or HR-Strategy Formation: From Strategic Alternatives to Key Performance Indicators. In Advanced Engineering Forum (Vol. 22, pp. 112-120). Trans Tech Publications Ltd.
Kyriy, V., Liubicheva, O. and Moskavtsova, K., (2017). Strategy of HR development at high-tech enterprises. INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES AND SCIENTIFIC SOLUTIONS FOR INDUSTRIES, (2 (2)), pp.109-115.
Lawler, E., (2020). Activities of the HR Organization. In Effective Human Resource Management (pp. 64-69). Stanford University Press.
Lawler, E.E. and Boudreau, J.W., (2020). Business Strategy and HR. In Global Trends in Human Resource Management (pp. 28-38). Stanford University Press.
Leaders, H.T., Strategy, H.R., Summit, H.R.D. and Summit, E.H., (2019). Recruiting and retaining millennials in an employees’ market: Success of wellness strategies.
Madiistriyatno, H., (2021). The Influence of Procurement and Development Strategy on HR Productivity and Satisfaction. Devotion: Journal of Community Service, 3(1), pp.9-22.
Maheshwari, S.K. and Yadav, J., (2019). The role of HR in leadership development. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal.
Michael, A., (2019). A handbook of human resource management practice.
Naim, M.F., (2020). Evolving face of workplace learning and development: a case of an Indian HR consulting firm. Strategic HR Review.
Salmina, M., Ding, A.Y. and Yu, M., (2021). Human Resources Strategy to Improve HR Competencies. Journal of Worker Competency and Performance (JWCP), 1(02), pp.1-9.
Sharma, I., Singh, M. and Jangalwa, R., (2017). Does Employees’ Designation Influence the Perception towards HR Strategy?. PACIFIC BUSINESS REVIEW INTERNATIONAL, 9(12), pp.86-92.
Weber, M., (2018). Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture. Springer.
Online
Recruitment and selection process, 2021. [Online]. [Accessed through]:<https://www.hr.iastate.edu/employing-units/recruitment-selection>
Training process, 2021. [Online]. [Accessed through] :<https://www.geektonight.com/training-process/>
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