Employee Resourcing

The biggest lie told by most organisations is that ‘people are our most important asset’ Total fabrication: they treat people like raw material. If we’re serious about treating people as an asset, we’re looking at a dramatic increase in investment in them.
Michael Hammer (inventor of business process reengineering)

social bonds take time to develop, slowly rooting into the cracks and crevices of institutions
R. Sennett (1999) The Corrosion of Character, Norton, London: 24

Firms, anxious to meet their shareholders’ requirements for high returns, have taken advantage of the deregulation of the labour market to impose more casualised, part-time, ‘flexible’ patterns of work and so increase their capacity to modify their costs to the changing pattern of demand. Only around 40 per cent of the work-force enjoy tenured, full-time employment or secure self-employment… another 30 per cent are insecurely self-employed, involuntarily part time or casual workers; while the bottom 30 per cent, the marginalised, are idle or working for poverty wages... the wider economic and social impact has been disastrous.

W. Hutton (1996) The State We’re In, Vintage, London: 14

A Time and Motion Study
Frank Gilbreth studied bricklaying, analysing the movement, speed, and tiring rate of the bricklayer… He developed the exact positions which the feet of the bricklayer should occupy in relation to the wall, the mortar box and the pile of bricks. He studied the best height for the mortar box and brick pile then designed an adjustable scaffold to hold the materials. He asked that the bricks be sorted and packed in an orderly pile before being brought to the bricklayers, so that they were placed with their best edge up on a simple wooden frame; each brick could be lifted in the quickest time in the most advantageous position. He was thus able to reduce the motions of bricklayers from eighteen per brick to five. He also taught the bricklayers to pick up bricks with the left hand while at the same time taking a trowel full of mortar with the right hand. In this way 350 bricks per person per hour could be laid rather than the previous 120 bricks per hour. For this the standards and the cooperation have to be enforced; the duty of enforcement lies with management. If the workforce agree to this enforcement, they receive higher pay.

From F. Wilson 1999, Organizational Behaviour: A Critical Introduction, Oxford: 20

Could this approach work for any other task? Think about the task of a programmer who is debugging lines of code. In pairs or groups of three, consider these two questions.

In what ways could a time and motion study help?

In what ways could it not help?

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Employers’ attitudes to race discrimination have been called lazy, benignly ignorant, and complacent by the Commission for Racial Equality (Personnel Today, 31 Jan 1995). While 88 per cent of organizations have equality policies on race, fewer than half put their words into action. Racism is not difficult to demonstrate. For example the head of the Department of General Practice at Manchester University showed that doctors with Asian names were less likely to be interviewed for jobs than those with English names. In a controversial research project, he sent off fake CVs, identical in terms of sex, education, and training; all the doctors had trained in Britain. Half the names were Asian and half were English. Doctors with English names were twice as likely to be called for interview as those with Asian names (Guardian, 3 June 1997).

F. Wilson (1999) Organizational Behaviour: A Critical Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 114

Applicants and 360° Interviews
An intriguing form of interviewing senior managers was instigated in the London Borough of Havering in 1996, when applicants for directorships and the post of chief executive were interviewed by their future subordinates. The thinking behind the innovation was that these people, were they to be successful in their posts, would have to lead and motivate the organisation. How better to do so than by getting the staff to interview them? In this case, trade unions were also involved in the process, which lasted three days.

Perhaps more common is the practice whereby members of a team interview future colleagues, a form that could perhaps be labelled 180° interviewing. It is most commonly associated with the selection of board directors, but is also used in other situations where effective team membership is crucial to success in a role.

From S. Taylor 1998, Employee Resourcing, IPD

In pairs or groups of three, consider these two questions.

What are the advantages of this method?

Why do you think this method is rarely used?

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What is recruitment?

What is selection?

What is an assessment centre?

What are the advantages and limitations of assessment centres?

What considerations would you use to assess selection methods?

What is managing diversity? Why is it important?

Self Test Questions

What is human resource planning (HRP)?

What are some of the difficulties involved in HRP?

How could a time and motion study help with HRP?

What might be the limitations of a time and motion study?

What are ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ HRP? Do they have to be completely separate?

What types of flexibility could enable more effective HRP?

What, if anything, is wrong with the phrase, "human resource"?

Describe the ‘flexible firm’. How would different groups of employees be affected if an organization followed this model?

The current business context means that organizations now have to focus on managing people, not managing resources. Discuss.

Why is it important to get recruitment and selection processes right?

How could you use recruitment and selection to support business strategy?

Outline four methods of selection. Discuss the advantages of each method, as well as its limitations.

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