TCP - People Resourcing and Development - Essay Example

People Resourcing and Development TCP According to the article, the 5 reasons for the growth of temping agencies in the public sector are: “Temporary staff shortages” (Overell 2003) Problems with recruitment and retention (the author of the article does not go into detail about this point) – a general reason for all public sector specialities For health service, the main factor is payment and more convenient schedule offered by agencies (Overell 2003). For local government, the reasons are connected with certain global changes in the field and the resulting separation of functions: “Existing staff are needed to absorb the new initiatives. So, agency workers are permanently required to deal with backlogs in matters such as housing benefit administration” (Overell 2003) For public education, push factors are the main reason for employee turnover: teachers quit their workplaces because of bad pupil behaviour, bureaucracy, and poor compensation (Overell 2003). The problem of employee recruitment and retention in public sector in general seems to be clear: this type of work is connected with high stress level (which is significantly prevalent in this sector according to the survey of Trades Union Conference, 2009) that requires adequate compensation. HRM of public sector may be out of control of the costs spent on this and can offer only those rewards that are alternative to the commercial ones. Overell (2003) observes that in such fields as health and education, both push and pull factors are significant, while in governance, extensive use of the agency workforce is mainly caused by internal functional mismanagement, or “functional turnover” (Torrington et.al. 2008, p. 197). One more factor is merely mentioned with only superficial description: it is systematic change that could have balancing impact on public health sector (Overell 2003). In fact this means that an entire culture of service should be changed. Redman and Wilkinson (2009) are more specific about this situation in public sector (which may also apply to education): “a healthcare provision has changed from being a citizen’s right to a customer service …” (p.5). Accordingly, health care specialists show less orientation toward work ethics and more self-evaluation in terms of market than they did before. This tendency may be the main factor that forced the authors of the article to unite so different public sector careers as health care and governance in one “problem”. A 2008 review of the agency working in the UK by EMAR (Employment Market Analysis and Research) reveals that the wages of agency workers tend to be the same or lower than those of full time employees (p.7); that, furthermore, 63% of all agency workers chose this type of occupation because there were no other employment opportunities, and it was only below a third of them that actually did not want a permanent job (p. 13); and that 50% of agency workers “would accept their temporary job on a permanent basis” (p. 16). This means that working for agencies is actually not a privilege, as suggested by the article, but rather a necessity for good many workers. At the same time, according to the EMAR report, Overell is rightly troubled about the national dimension of the problem, as the UK has the highest percentage of agency workers in the total workforce among other European countries (EMAR 2008, p. 19). There is one more outside (global economic) factor not mentioned in the article (and naturally, as the article is of the earlier time): the impact of economic crisis. The Office for National Statistics’s Blue Book of the UK National Accounts (2010) testifies that economic crisis caused “a significant public pay premium” (p. 163). This means that, at least for present situation, the “wage gap” is a bit exaggerated. 2. a. The labour market described in the article fits into the description of “loose” market, as the demand for staff is greater than the supply (Torrington et.al. 2008, p. 112). Torrington et.al. (2009) refer to Mahoney’s model in the explanation of occupational structure of the market; public service professions are mostly of “craft-oriented” labour markets, meaning that for the workers of this field, professional values are preferential and can be more influential than loyalty to a current employer (p. 112). According to Overell (2003), this labour market is characterized by increasing numerical flexibility, which is not necessarily a positive trait (Torrington et.al. 2008, pp.114-115). There is also a distinct gender disproportion in it: educational positions and part-time employments are still dominated by women (Beardwell et.al. 2007, p. 136). Increasing turnover in public labour market is costly (as Overell estimates, it costs London hospitals half a million pounds of overspends for outsorcing nurses). b. The Quality mark for agency teachers that was introduced in 2003 may be attributed to “improving the quality of line management” (Torrington et.al. 2008, p. 205); to be more accurate, this is called “improvement of selection practices” (Foot and Hook 2005, p. 52). The main means of regulation is payment, that is, re-evaluation of health workers and the call for hospital-agency contracts negotiation. This shows that the government itself remains focused on the commercial dimension of the problem, paying little attention to induction and family-related practices (Torrington et.al. 2008, p. 202). The lack of induction is evident in local government subdivision of public sector where the re-arrangement of existing working resources could reduce costs substantially (so-called task reorganisation) (Taylor 2005, p. 44). 3. The first and obvious step in tackling the problem could be the systematic improvement of induction, especially in health care and local governing fields. However, CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) Recruitment, Retention and Turnover survey (2007) shows that the considerable improvement of induction process in 2007 (49% as compared to 36% in 2006) did not change the overall retention difficulties in public service sector (72% and 65%, respectively) (pp. 36-37). This means that induction could reduce turnover costs, but it would not influence the very reasons of skills shortages. One more important trend in the UK labour market is the generational transitions from “X” (“Xers”) to “Y” (“Nexters”). The former need better work-life balance (especially with regard to the gender inequality causing part-time employment) and flexible, non-authoritative working environment, while the latter are sensitive to ethical standards of their employers (Torrington et.al. 2008, p. 113). Some theorists argue for the corresponding shift in motivation from X to Y: instead of reducing various negative impacts of labour market change, HRM should think about affirming new positive values such as flexibility (Buchbinder and Shanks 2007, p. 29). Persistent fear of non-qualified workforce influx is connected with the problem of immigration regulations. In the UK, there is no system of legal regulations for non-skilled workers from outside the EU, and the system of regulations for skilled workers relatively undeveloped (BEPA 2010, p. 107). At the same time, it is important to ensure equal opportunities for public service workers to avoid ethnic inequality. Last but not least, the planned increase of retirement age in public sector and decrease in pension are supposed to lower the turnover rate (ONS 2010, p. 164). Still, this change can also lower the interest of potential employers that would rightly treat it as a compensation decrease. 4. Critically discuss three kinds of appraiser biases/ rater errors that might be found in the performance appraisal process and recommend approaches to address the problems. Torrington et.al. (2008, p. 296) cite Longenecker’s study (1997) of failures in management appraisal. They prefer to focus on the 3 reasons named by the researcher: “unclear performance criteria and ineffective rating instrument… poor working relationship with the boss”, and lack of information about the actual performance of a given manager (Torrington et.al. 2008, p. 296). This is an excerpt from the conclusions which are already narrow, as they apply for only one category of employees. Some additional implications of Longenecker’s study (1997) are the following: lack of performance feedback, perceived reviews, and “ineffective link to reward system” are also the causes of ineffective appraisals (p. 214). These researchers, as many other specialists, relate appraisal problems to the criteria of evaluation or the circumstances in which evaluation takes place. Recently, the very concept of evaluation of workforce has been challenged: it is viewed as a stressful situation that resembles Foucaultian panopticon (Redman and Wilkinson 2009, p. 180) and may increase employee turnover. Instead, researchers prefer to speak of appraisal as of the part of performance management, “the process of identifying, measuring, managing, and developing the performance of the human resources in an organization” (Mondy et.al. 1999, p. 285). So, the first and foremost bias about appraisal is the definition of its function: it should be encouraging and constructive, not limiting and prescriptive. More systematic approach would focus on three other aspects: assessing skills, traits, and behaviours (Torrington et.al. 2008, p. 295). Whereas most of the skills are measurable, traits and behaviours are the maters of subjectivity. Therefore, they may not be appraised beyond the scope of the work responsibilities (Mondy et.al. 1999, p. 293). However, the problematic fact is that such issues are difficult to separate, especially in the case when communication skills are needed. Richards’s blog entries on http://workblogging.blogspot.com/ (2011) under the tag “employee misconduct” tell numerous stories about Facebook misuse, but for the content manager that uses Facebook daily, other rules should be applied. One more core issue is selecting the right appraisal strategy. There are numerous of them: ranking; behavioural anchoring rating scale; graphic rating scale; narrative method; management by objectives; and critical incidents method (Mondy et.al. 1999, pp. 296-300). It is clear that the work of psychologist cannot be measured quantitatively and needs some other type of assessment, for instance, management by objectives. References Beardwell, J., Holden L. and Clayton, T., 2004. Human Resource Management: a contemporary approach. 4th ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall. E-book. Available from: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ [Accessed 14 Nov 2012]. BEPA, 2010. Opening Europe’s doors to unskilled and non-skilled workers: a practical handbook. 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