HRM302 Human Resource Management Plan for Officeworks: Functions, Challenges, and Strategic Solutions

Table of Contents Summary2

Introduction2

Role of HRM...3

HR Functions..4

HR Techniques..6

HRM plan..8

Recommendations9

Conclusion..10

References..10

Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to design a HRM plan for Officeworks by setting out strategies that will help the company to achieve its missions and objectives. Officeworks is one of the biggest retail company in Australia. They supply office products, and solution for home, business and education needs. As part of Wesfarmers Corporation, Officeworks operates more than 160 retail stores around Australia and employing more than 6000 employees. Officeworks has three strategic pillars that was designed to help the company to become successful. Having these three strategies it provides their team clarity and purpose. It includes lowest price which underlined by the Everyday Low Price guarantee. Officeworks has a team that compare the prices at the other companies. They ensure that customers will get the lowest prices every day. The second one is widest range, they offer huge variety of products for the customer to choose from at a various price. And lastly, great service which is delivered by their employees every day.

Introduction

This HRMP aims to assist the organisation to accomplish the set organisational goals and objectives of the company. Human Resource Planning is the process of systematically reviewing HR requirements to ensure that the required number of people, with the required knowledge, skills and abilities, are available when needed. (Stone, 2016, p. 62) This plan is used to achieve more effective and efficient use of human resources, more satisfied and better developed employees and more effective equal opportunity planning. (Stone, 2016, p. 16) This is a design for Officeworks to attract, retain and develop this workforce plan to meet its present and future needs. This report will examine the roles of HRM, explaining and critiquing five HRM functions being performed, issues that are being faced by Officeworks, and developing a HRM plan which Officeworks can utilised.

Cultural Diversity

During the strategic analysis, PEST and SWOT analysis for Office works were conducted. ( Refer to appendix table 1 and 2) According to the PEST analysis one of the issues that is being face is cultural diversity. Australia is one of the most culturally diverse populations in the world. Cultural Diversity is a group of different people from different cultures or societies. The term managing diversity (MD) came to Australia from the USA as a management strategy. In the USA, the popularity of MD reflects a search by organisations for an alternative to the contentious affirmative action model and as a way to broaden what was seen as a narrow agenda that concentrated on hiring to include issues of retention, integration and career development (Agocs and Burr, 1996, p. 34). Officeworks works with various local employment agencies to employ workers equally from different backgrounds and cultures. Having a diverse workplace promotes a more equal culture among the employees. However, it can create more potential for conflict among the employees. HRM plays an important role when managing diversity at the workplace in three levels. The first one is strategic level where HRM assists executives in gathering diversity management at a strategic level of organisational culture, setting the parameters of the desired culture and developing policies to ensure that the desired culture is more diversity oriented. At the managerial level, HRM supports the philosophical principles of diversity management by formulating, integrating, and implementing HR policies that acknowledge the value of individual workers. Lastly, at the operational level, HRM diversity management involves face-to-face contact with individual employees and the provision of support services such as counselling and grievance resolution. (Stone, 2016, 717-718) Globalisation Another issue that is being faced by HR is globalisation. Globalisation promotes the international flow of goods, services, technology, capital, people, knowledge and information. (Stone, 2016, p. 754) It increases the competition within the companies around the world which leads to fluctuation in prices. The role of HR is to help Officeworks become a real global organisation. They ensure that managers have more extensive training so they know how to face the issue. Companies should be alert to changes in foreign labour markets, government regulations, inflation rates, union pressures and so on. (Stone ,2016, p.754) Globalisation demands new skills and competencies. HR ensures that they choose the best employees, with the right skills for the organisation, or otherwise develops talents via internal training, to be able to compete with other companies.

Technology Advancement Another issue that is being faced is technological advancement. The level of technological advancement and the rate of technological change affect job design, recruitment, selection, training, motivation, remuneration, health and safety, job security, and industrial relations. (Stone, 2016, p. 37) As new technologies arise, HRM start finding a solution on how to downsize and look for ways to save money. Jobs are being operated by computers instead of manual labour which creates automation. Automation creates redundancy within the organisation unless the employees are suitably skilled for operating and maintaining the modernised technological advancements. While the use of emerging technologies provides new realms of opportunity for public sector employers seeking to recruit the best and the brightest, it also raises a number of questions for scholars and 2 practitioners. HR plays an important role by providing more extensive training for both current and new employees to ensure they are appropriately skilled for keeping up with technological changes.

HR Functions

Part of this report is explaining and critiquing various HR functions being performed in the organisation. Functions included in this section will be: safety, recruitment, performance appraisal, employee relations, and compensation.

1. Safety Work place safety is one of the important factors at the organisation. One of the functions of HR is to support workplace safety training and keep track of the workplace injuries reports. Officeworks are offering different work health and safety courses which are designed to be able to assess and control risks, but also keep employees up-to-date with the latest training in safety. Health and safety compliance is a long-term investment for the company, its staff and reputation. HR makes sure that every member of the organisation from top to bottom understands that occupational health and safety is everyones responsibility.

1. Recruitment

Recruitment is the process of seeking and attracting a pool of qualified applicants from which candidates for job vacancies can be selected. (Stone, 2016, p.208) SHRM reports that 84% of organizations use social media for recruiting, and 82% of them use it primarily in the hunt for passive candidates. The purpose of recruitment is to find the best applicants for the required roles in the organisation. This is one of the most challenging task for any HR manager. Before they start the recruitment, they need to know how many employees they need to hire. HR develops the job description, advertised the job postings, source candidates, screen applicants, conduct preliminary interviews and coordinate hiring efforts with managers responsible for making the final selection of candidates. All the hiring managers at Officeworks are required to complete the two-day facilitated Recruitment & Selection Program. This program is designed to help improve the interviewing skills and provide them with a clear understanding of the Officeworks recruitment and selection tools and processes. This program helps to ensure that selection decisions are: consistent with the culture and strategy and compliant with our legal obligations.

3. Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal is a formal, structured system of measuring and evaluating an employees job, related behaviour and outcomes to discover how and why the employee is presently perfuming on the job and how the employee can perform more effectively in the future so that the employee, organisation, and society all benefit. (Kumar, 2011, p. 218) Appraising employee performance demands a considerable investment of the business' time, energy and money. In many instances pay increases, bonuses and promotions hinge on the outcome of a performance review. Because of this, organisations should ensure their appraisal systems and processes are beyond reproach. At any organisation performance appraisal is done at a specific period like at Officeworks they perform it every six months. HR manager are usually responsible for developing and administering performance appraisal systems, although the actual appraisal for the employees are managers and supervisors responsibility. This is very important for the employees development to guide their improvements.

4. Employee relations

Deals primarily with employee attitudes and behaviour and relationships between an organisation and its employees. (Stone, 2016, p. 17) Employee relations is the overall management of employees including their behaviour and their wellbeing. It is the HR discipline concerned on how theyre going to improve the employer-employee relationship through measuring employee engagement, resolving workplace conflict and job satisfaction. This promotes a healthy relationship between the employer and employee which is one of the key for the organisation to be successful. Employee relations is a large part of the human resources managers job function, because employee concerns encompass a wide range of issues over which the manager has influence.

5. Compensation

Compensation is simply the way for the company to provide benefits for the employees. The benefits include work hour flexibility, maternal/paternal leave, One of the HRM duties is to pay the employees and provide incentives for them. HRM professionals are typically charged with developing wage and salary systems that accomplish specific organisational objectives, such as employee retention, quality, satisfaction, and motivation. A good compensation plan reduces the turnover rate of the company. And, also it motivates them to push themselves continually to achieve the organisations goals and objectives.

HR Techniques and Procedures

The next part of the report is examining the HR techniques and procedures and/or systems challenges affecting the organisation. Techniques included: Advertising, providing training, promotions, and health benefits.

1. Advertising

Officeworks adopts the Every Day Lowest Price. This is where they ensure prices in store are guaranteed to be the lowest amongst all competitors by scanning competitor websites, catalogues, and stores, and relaying the price of products down to the pricing team, who then adjust the companies price to match or beat it. This method creates a very strong loyalty base for the customers who understand the concept as they can be certain the company is keeping their promise of Lowest Price, Widest Range, Great Service. Officeworks functions off their values heavily, and promotes them in store, on TV, and in catalogues. However this does have its pitfalls. Considering Officeworks do not always denote their own price, and that the price of products does fluctuate regularly, it is very difficult to appropriately advertise and promote certain products. This causes the challenge of not being able to easily advertise externally to attract customers into the store.

2. Providing Training

The main causes of work injury are dangerous lifting and carrying, trips and falls, and being struck by moving objects. HR deals with this issue by making it compulsory to do the training for health and safety for all the employees in Officeworks. And, an injury care by having an on-call nurse during working hours when theres an emergency. Once a month at Officeworks have their safety meeting which includes identifying the hazards around the workplace. They submit to HR all the hazards that they found and make sure that they review the past hazards has been actioned. HR ensures that they review all the hazards at the company and implement strategies how to provide a safety workplace for everyone. One of the challenges faced is that Office works is a nationwide company and it would be hard for each store a tailored training.

3. Promotions

Promotion means moving into a position with a higher job classification involving more responsibility, higher status and increase pay. (Stone, 2016, p. 213) It builds employees loyalty and boost morale within the company. It drives the employees to work harder and encourages them to acquire other skills and knowledge for all-around development. Officeworks offers a gateway program called Future leaders created by HR. This gives opportunities to the upcoming employees a chance to develop their leadership skills. HR faces the challenge of employees within the company not having appropriate skill set required for the position.

4. Health Benefits

Officeworks have various compensation for employees. One of them is health benefits, this includes dental, fitness, diabetes risk calculator, heart health, mental health, and skin care awareness. They also provide free flu vaccination for all the employees by giving them vouchers that they can use in the designated pharmacy. Having this benefits, it improves the employee morale because they feel that they are rewarded and appreciated. But having such large amount of readily available, and mostly free benefits, means the company incurs quite a substantial costing when employees take advantage of it, including seasonal ailments like the Flu.

Recommendations It is recommended:

That training for employees has both general, and targeted courses available for them to further develop themselves. This could be in correlation with the performance management where each employee, or the store as a whole, can be designated specific learning task that are currently underdeveloped. Learning modules can be posted on the company site GoLearn, or could be held in store over a period of time. This would be highly beneficial in keeping up with the advancement, and adoption of technology within the company. This would also be key in developing employees into certain refined roles, or even potential leadership roles in the future. That promotional advertisement further investigated across all mediums including social media, radio, TV, and flyers. As Officeworks adopts the Every Day Lowest Price model, promotions are not common, and heavily impacts the customers tendency to prioritise Officeworks over anywhere else. Advertisement of Officeworks EDLP across all mediums would largely assist customer awareness of the companys low price. Especially during periods of high stationary needs, like the start of the school year, and end of financial year.

That HR be more proactive with finding talents within the company, and begin developing it further as soon as possible. What this does is reduces the time required to fill a position, and gives employees a greater opportunity to progress in the company. All companies prefer to promote from within, and by having someone with the skills required for a vacant role, it is a simple decision to promote from with over externally hiring. Having different courses developed for employees to do either in their own time, or in workshops hosted by Officeworks, they could dramatically cut the time it takes to fill higher up positions in the company, and keeps employees morale up in the process.

That benefits be obtained upon request rather than blanketed company wide. With this, all the benefits can be maintained, but if the employees go through HR to redeem the benefit instead of being automatically given it, HR can reduce the expenditure as they only order what is needed at any time. A good example would be with the flu shots. The company could have a central task force that employees request the voucher from, and they pay for and procure it as it is needed, instead of simply giving one to every employee. This would reduce the cost incurred by the company but also maintain that benefit for the employee if it is required.

Conclusion

In this report a HRM plan was designed to help the company reach its goals and objectives. Within Officeworks, every employee is valued equally, and HR is the cornerstone for ensuring that every employee contributes to the accomplishment of the companys vision. By examining the roles of HR, critically analysing the techniques, and challenges they face, this plan can be utilised to develop strategies and schemes to combat the challenges that are faced by HR and the company. Leading to a more successful, and more profitable outcome.