INTRODUCTION
Business growth and development is directly correlated and depends upon the practices and performance of employees. So it is becomes very essential for every organization to develop and enhance the skills, knowledge and attitudes of their employees in order to attain competitive advantage. It is essential for the top level management to identify and provide necessary training to employees for developing their knowledge, skills and abilities to perform best at their specific tasks. Developing and training employees at workplace helps organisation in achieve retention of competent employees (Ford, 2014). This report mainly covers about the case study of Whirlpool, a multinational company of United Kingdom. This organisation deals in different countries and has manufacturing sectors that serves various home appliance electronic products in various countries. This report mainly emphasis on different various types of required knowledge, skills and behaviour that HR managers of Whirlpool should have to guide the roles and responsibilities of employees. Further, difference between learning, training and development to enhance performance of firm is specifies. This report also covers various HPW practices as well as various approaches that is used for performance management.
TASK 1
P1.Importance of Knowledge, Skills and Behaviour in HR practices
To achieve high profitability and effectiveness of business, it is crucial for the organisation to focus on developing skills, attitude and knowledge of employees that are directly associated with organisation achievement. In context with human resources management, to improve the performance of organisation and handle the manpower in proper manner, it is very essential to train and develop employees to enhance their skills, attitude and knowledge According to give case study, Whirlpool deals in electronic home appliance which requires an updating in their overall organisation structure. In this aspects, HR managers is out looking to represent a report at Confederation of British Industry workshop. This workshop allows to show how performance management, better communication channels and collaboration support of employees helps to create high-performance culture. So therefore, it is necessary to possess required skills, behaviour and knowledge to perform best at their duties and tasks allotted.
Skills of HR professionals: It is important to have skills and abilities as this qualities allows an individual to perform best at their jobs. With the help of effective abilities and skills employees are able to perform their roles and responsibilities. To sort out the issues and problems, HR managers of Whirlpool should follow and possess appropriate skills that is discussed below:
Good Communication Skills: Communication evolves with appropiate channel by which an individual express and conveys ideas, thoughts and views. HR managers should try to implement effective communication channel in the organisation through which employees feels free to express their views with others. Employees get freedom to share their ideas and knowledge with top level management that helps in decision-making and build strong employee relationships.
Multitasking: As a HR manager, an individual has to handle and perform various roles and responsibilities which includes formulating strategies and policies, managing manpower. HR managers should be able to perform various roles and responsibility to become dynamic.
Knowledge of HR professionals: Knowledge includes information, his own learning from surroundings, facts and skills that an individual obtain from the experience and education. To run organisation in an effective manner, HR managers of Whirlpool should have following knowledge:
Taxation: One of the primary role of HR manager is to generate compensation or salary structure for the employees working in the organisation. It is very essential and crucial for HR managers to have adequate information and knowledge that are directly related to tax redemption. In relation with case study of Whirlpool, managers has dense knowledge and information about taxation through which HR managers are able to manage and guide employees about various policies, rules and schemes of taxation.
Cognition of government's rules and regulations: HR managers should have proper and dense knowledge about laws and legislations implemented by Government. Whirlpool is operating in various countries, therefore; to run business in legal manner HR manager should have good knowledge about the government laws of various countries (Schaubroeck, Lam and Peng, 2011).
Behaviour of HR Professionals: This deals with the attitude of an individual through which they perform their specific tasks and duties. In context with HR managers, they should carry positive attitude to guide the employees for different roles and responsibility. Some of the behaviour adopted by HR managers are as follows:
Ethical Behaviour: To run organisation it is essential to adopt and implement ethical behaviour so that they HR managers can directly or indirectly influence employees to follow the appropriate rules and regulations. The ethical behaviour implementation helps in formulating useful strategies that profits customers, stakeholders along with working employees.
Adaptability: This behaviour deals with flexibility and adjustability of an individual at workplace. It is very important for HR managers to have the quality of adaptability to manage in different culture of organisation in effective way.
P2 Personal Skill Audit
Personal skill audit deals with the process by which it is easy to determine an individual strengths and weakness in an appropriate way (Pinjani and Palvia, 2013) By this process, it is easy for an individual to find that in which area they need to emphasis to develop skills through training programs. Personal skill audit help employees to perform better by conducing roles and responsibility in effective way. Auditing skills varies with the different profession of individuals. HR managers of Whirlpool needs to evaluate their own skills that is related to decision-making, presentation skills, IT skills, conflict resolution and leadership.
According to the performance requirement, I have prepared a business plan for evaluating own strength and weakness. A sale is developed below in which skills and competences is self scored as well as by others (out of 10) to identify the differences
Skills and competences |
Self assessed score |
Score from others |
Difference |
Decision making |
8 |
9 |
-1 |
Conflict resolution |
7 |
9 |
-2 |
Presentation skill |
9 |
7 |
2 |
Leadership |
8 |
8 |
0 |
The main benefit from the personal audit is that I am able to identify the strength and weakness in different era which mainly involves decision making, conflict resolution, and leadership skill along with presentation skills. The disadvantage without skill audit is that an individual will lack to identify its weak performance in order to improve it for achieving goals and objectives of the organisations.
Strengths: I have strong and good decision-making skills that allows me to make overall judgements that will be beneficial for organisation growth and development. This also help me to manage manpower for attainment of business objectives. Besides this, I have good communication skill which aid me to interact with team members and inform them about tasks that is required to be accomplished by them.
Weakness: Personal skill audit determine that I have lacking in presentation skills. Along this, I am also not able to manage people properly. Multitasking is skill which affect on my activities and also on functionality of system.
Professional development plan: This document is prepared for improvement of weakness for execution of tasks effectively.
Skill |
Objective |
Current proficiency |
Target proficiency (2 months) |
Development opportunity |
Presentation skill |
Inform team members about tasks and target require to be accomplished by them. |
2 |
5 |
Watch videos of expert on YouTube to acknowledge their presentation way. |
Multitasking |
I require to conduct recruitment, maintain employee relations, training for having skilled people. |
2.5 |
5 |
Frame plan and monitor whether activities are conducted in systematic manner. Past experience help in execution of tasks properly. |
TASK 2
P3 Difference between Organisational and Individual Learning
Individual learning: Individual learning deals with the capacity to build skills and knowledge through self-reflection. In this learning session, training as well as separate development programs are framed on the basis of need of an individual.
Organisation learning: In context with the organisation learning session, training and development problems are designed and framed accordingly to acquire skills and knowledge to work in team or group.
In order to attain competitive advantage, Whirlpool generally conducts both types of learning sessions in order to enhance the skills of the employees in order to become more skilled to upgrade the level of performance.
Difference between individual and organisational learning
Individual learning
Organisational learning
· Individual learning mainly involves and deals with development an individual at the individual level.
· Helps in improving individual performance. Time is not fixed under individual learning courses.
· Organisational learning deals and emphasis on all the requirement that is crucial for employees to perform best at their roles and responsibilities. In involves with providing training to workers in order to work in team or group
· It is generally based on learning within a fixed time duration with a particular time frame.
Training and development
Training is referred as systematic group of activities that mainly emphasis on providing appropriate instructions to employees in order to increase their level of performance to achieve organisation goals and objectives.Development involves with all rounded development of an individual so that no issues arises in future to handle the working situation. (McCormack, Manley and Titchen, 2013). Both training and development plays important role to improve skills and knowledge of employees. Training is continues learning process through which an individual person gets an opportunity to develop their skills, knowledge and opportunities. Development is usually done for high executives and it is concerned with overall growth and development of a person. HR managers of Whirlpool conducts and implement both session for enhancing the overall abilities and knowledge of employees.
Difference between training and development
Training |
Development |
· The main objective and intention of providing training to employees is to improve performance of employees at work or specific tasks. · It is a job oriented process with fixed time frame. · Training scope is narrow in compare to development programs.
|
· Development programs are generally conducted to prepare an individual for present as well as future challenges. · It is a career oriented process with long time duration throughout life span. · Developing program has wider scope in compare to training sessions.
|
P4. Analysis of the need of continuous learning and professional development to drive sustainable business performance:
Learning can be referred to a change in the behaviour of a person due to the experience that person gains overtime. It is a transformative process of building and enhancing a person's knowledge.
Professional development: This process can be defined as a lifelong assessment of the qualities and skills of an individual, which allows it to maximise its potential by consider their life goals and set targets to achieve them. These activities help an individual to improve their identity and awareness, enhance the quality of their life and realise their aspiration and work towards it (Sessa and London, 2015).
Whirlpool, seeing the current competitive environment, needs skilled employees and would want to retain those who are enhancing their talents overtime and contribute to the organisational success.
Relevance: Continuous learning would enable the employees to keep updating themselves overtime and be relevant according to the trends and market preferences. This enhance their adaptability in the dynamic environment with continuous innovations in technology, changes in market schemes, political scenarios, etc.
Performance Enhancements: Professional development overtime would help the employees to improve their performance in areas that are difficult for them to succeed. Through regular performance reviews and training, one can achieve sustainability and even improvement in their workplace. This would help the firm set new targets for other employees and would facilitate healthy competition in the firm (Mone and London, 2018).
Competence: Whirlpool needs employees that can set the firm over its competitors in the market. Continuous learning would help them developing perfection in their work and they can become more competent by exploring new ventures and taking new challenges. That would make the effective while dealing with their competitors in the market as they would possess advance set of skills which would also in return,
Innovation: When an employee continuously learn from its business environment, it allows them to experiment more and modify their methods of working. As a result, the employee would introduce innovative ideas and skills in the company which would make it more effective in achieving its objectives and would enhance the productivity of others. In context with HR managers of Whirlpool they allow their employees to share and implement their ideas in order to enhance the performance of the organisation.
TASK 3
P5. Contribution of HPW to employee engagement and competitive advantage:
High Performance Working or HPW is referred to an approach implemented towards management of organisations that focuses on stimulation of effective involvement of employees and their commitment to attain higher performance levels (Jiang and Liu, 2015).
A report was presented by the HR consultant at the annual Confederation of British Industry workshop highlighting different ways in which high-performance culture and commitment are supported by performance management, collaborative working and effective communication. Whirlpool must adopt high performance working as it is of immense importance when the firm needs to engage its employees more and to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors.
These contributions of HPWs are as follows:
Shared Commitment to the company's vision and extraordinary goals: The vision of the company should be articulated clearly to its employees along with proper knowledge of the expected pathway by which company wishes to accomplish those goals. This would engage the employees to fulfil these visions as their goals are clear and would enhance their performance in order to do so. Moreover, this would help the firm to gain a competitive advantage as the employees will be putting their best efforts to achieve these extraordinary goals (Anitha, 2014).
Shared Accountability for results: Whirlpool must share accountability of their work and result with their employees. The employees must be rewarded for their innovative and effective work. This would help in encouraging the morale of workforce which would contribute towards enhancing their performance at workplace, thus, achieving better results.
Transparent Communication: At all the levels of the organisation, employees should be aware of the strategic direction the company's taking to overtake its competition. Whirlpool must introduce flexible methods and systems of communication in an organisation so that the information between the levels of the company could flow with ease and each employee be aware of its operations and what is expected of them. This would make their performance more effective which would facilitate the employees to be compete with company's rivals.
Constructive Conflicts: Conflicts are a result of different ideologies towards achieving similar goals. These conflicts in the company should be constructive, i.e., the end goal should be to derive the best possible strategy to achieve the plans. All the members should be equally consulted and firm should consider their ideas. This would help employees come up with different and effective strategies that is necessary for their performance growth.
Mutual Respect and Solidarity: It is crucial for the employees in the company to work with unity, sharing unified goals which would develop its inner strength. Managers at Whirlpool must consider each employee as their equal so that the employees also feel their responsibilities towards the goals of the organisation. This would increase their engagement in the company and would enhance their work performance.
TASK 4
P6. Evaluation of different approaches of performance management:
Performance management of employees is one of the most critical aspects of the working of a company. In Whirlpool, this management should be made on the basis of employee's contribution towards the growth of the firm (DeNisi and Smith, 2014). Since Whirlpool is a large organisation, it is essential that it retains its skilled employees and strengthen its internal relationships. Performance management would help the firm achieve that smoothly. There are different approaches by which the HR of Whirlpool could manage performance of employees. These approaches are:
Different Approaches Of Measuring Performance
Comparative Approach: It focuses at ranking performances of employees belonging to a group with each other. The comparison is made on the basis of intensity of performance. Whirlpool could use forced distribution technique, graphic rating scale,, etc. to measure employees' performances. For instance, Whirlpool can divide their employees in groups based on their performance. While they could ensure certain rewards for top performers which would motivate them to work harder, the low performers can be given a chance if there is a scope for improvement, or they could be dismissed. This would enable the firm to hire fresh and skilled talent that would increase organisation's performance and better commitment of its employees.
Attribute approach: In this, certain attributes of employees like innovation, teamwork, problem solving, etc. are taken into consideration while rating their performance. Methods like Mixed rating scale could be used by Whirlpool to measure attributes. This is because it is more layered than other similar techniques. This would help its employees to adapt the attributes necessary to increase their work performances and effective achievement of organisational goals.
Behavioural Approach: Whirlpool could use Behavioural Observation Scale (BOS) or Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS) to measure different dimensions of their employees' jobs. These methods also determine frequencies in regards to the behaviour of the employee for effective performance. The scales in these measurements are decided with employees' consents, so this gives them a clear idea about their behavioural strengths and weaknesses. Also, this would encourage more efforts from the employees and they can achieve high performance standards.
Result Approach: Under this, employees receive training based on their performance result. Whirlpool can use tools like Balanced Scorecard Technique and Productivity Measurement and Evaluation System (ProMES) for this approach. This approach would encourage the employees to increase their productivity and to measure the feedback. The firm can calculate its productivity as a summation of various factors. These factors include the objectives of the company, their competency, their effectiveness towards evaluation of employee performance and its feedback. This approach helps converting the strategy of the firm into operations as it takes the external environment into consideration and not just financial indicators. This, allow the employees to learn more about their work and be more effective in their job.
Quality Approach: This approach aims at customer satisfaction. It achieves so by reduction in the errors and regular service improvisations. Both system and personal factors are taken into consideration in this approach. As the employees know what customers expect from them, they work towards enhancing their performance levels to fulfil these expectations.
Collaborative Approach: It uses a blend of all the approaches mentioned above. Whirlpool can combine the approaches according to their organisational needs and use them make their employees more competent. Using different combinations and revising these strategies would help the employees to maintain and sustain the level of their performances even during drastic changes in business environment. (O'Neill, Sohal and Teng, 2016).
CONCLUSION:
Thus, it is concluded by the above report, that appropriate knowledge and skills of HR professionals of Whirlpool would invite new talents in the firm and enhance the existing workforce. Also, the firm gives emphasis on individual learning as well as training and development of its employees. HPW would enable Whirlpool in maximising its employee performance and to gain a competitive edge in the market. The managers should conduct more training programs for the personal growth of the employees which would engage them in accomplishing the vision of the company. The company can use several approaches to evaluate the performance of their employees. The employees, in turn, could have a reliable feedback on the basis of which they work towards their shortcomings and increase their level of performance in the organisation.
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REFERENCES
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