The Role of Recruitment and Selection Strategy in Supporting Employee Retention - Research Paper Example

Assignment on the Role of Recruitment and Selection Strategy in Supporting Employee Retention within a Complex International Labour Market Table of Contents The Role of Recruitment and Selection Strategy in Supporting Employee Retention within a Complex International Labour Market 1 Significance of the Recruitment Process 1 Importance of the Selection Process 4 The Role Played by Recruitment and Selection in Supporting Employee Retention 8 Role of Hard and Soft Approaches in Changing the Recruitment and Selection Strategy of an Organisation 10 Reference 12 Bibliography 12 The Role of Recruitment and Selection Strategy in Supporting Employee Retention within a Complex International Labour Market Significance of the Recruitment Process Businesses have evolved a long way since the 2nd World War, and Human Resource has emerged to be the most critical component that determines the success of a business organization. With innovation being more of a necessity and less of a luxury, companies are looking forward to attracting, retaining and motivating the best of the professionals. Recruitment has become an area of major concern for employers across the world. With the international labour market getting flooded with talented multi-skilled people, recruiters are facing increasing challenges in attracting the right candidate for the right job at the right time. With the change in the way the business are conducted today and the elevation of educational standards in the different parts of the globe, there is no dearth of talented people in the international labour market. However, the requirements of most job positions require specific skills, and in most cases, there is a scarcity or uneven distribution of talent and experience. This has made the task of recruitment a major challenge for the recruiters. Finding out the most suitable candidate from a pool of highly qualified and experienced professionals is a tough task. Moreover, these days employees do not show loyalty to their respective employers as they are confident about their expertise and are aware of the fact that they would get better opportunities in the market. Recruitment is the process of identifying the pool of talented people who would meet the job specifications and adopting suitable techniques to attract those people to apply for specific job vacancies in an organisation. So the preliminary job of the employers is to communicate the information that they have job vacancy(s) for which they need people with certain qualifications and experience. Ideally, a company needs to undergo a thorough job analysis, thereby underlying the specific job descriptions and job specifications. This would help them to attract the potential candidates by providing them with detailed information about the job profile and the exact qualification and experience that is required to meet the same. Attracting the right candidate is mainly done by giving advertisement in newspaper or in the electronic media or through the online job portal sites. Sometimes, depending on the criticality and scarcity of talent, recruitment consulting firms are hired a vendors who source profiles and send them to the company. Candidates for entry level positions are generally recruited through campus recruitments. Employee references has also emerged as a major source of profiles and many companies now recruit people through their employee references. This helps them to ensure that they are recruiting people who would be trust-worthy and would also take the responsibilities that come along with the job in an efficient manner. This also helps in controlling the attrition rates. Reputed international organisations also take the help of recruitment consultancies to recruit their people. This helps them to gain access to those candidates who have undergone a round of screening in these consultancies. This leads to speeding up the entire process. Though this process enhances the entire cost of recruitment however, it also acts as one of the best methods of recruiting employees. In certain instances a company prefers to recruit candidates internally. For instance, it may so happen that a company anticipates that there will be a vacancy in the middle or senior level of management due to the retirement of a certain manager working in that position. Keeping this in mind, a company may conduct performance appraisal of the employees to identify the potential candidate(s) who are suitable for higher managerial position. After selecting the suitable candidate(s), the company can adopt succession planning to train the potential candidate accordingly so that they can meet the job requirements of the higher position. It may also happen that to fill a higher position, the company decides to promote candidate(s) internally. Job rotation is also adopted as one of the means to fill inter-departmental vacancies in an organisation. For example, a candidate having strong background in finance may have been recruited as an administrator in one of the departments within the company, but when the company finds that there is a vacancy in the finance department and the candidate in question meets the job specification, he may be transferred to that department to meet the urgent requirements of the job. So, it has been found that recruitment strategies that are adopted by the companies change with time and with the demands of an organisation. However, there is no guarantee that the company will adopt the same strategy everytime while recruiting candidates. It depends on the urgency, the cost involved and the type of experience and skills that the company is searching for. With changing times, it is the companies who are feeling the pressure rather than the candidates who are seeking jobs. This is largely because with experience, candidates become more confident about their career objectives and the availability of jobs. In such conditions, the recruiters have to design a proper recruitment and selection strategy in order to attract and subsequently select the right candidates. They also have to ensure that they are able to adopt the recruitment and selection strategy in such a way so that it leaves a positive effect on the minds of the candidates about the organisation and makes them keen to join the organisation. Importance of the Selection Process Selection has a very profound effect on the profitability and growth of an organisation. One should not forget that an organisation is known globally for the performance of its human resources. Without a proper selection strategy, it is not possible for an organisation to get the best employees. To remain competitive, a company cannot go on training its people to reduce the gap between the skills desired by the organisation and those possessed by the candidates. This would also add to the total cost borne by the organisation. So, a company needs to understand the significance of adopting a proper selection strategy and the role played by it in determining the productivity of the employees. While designing a proper selection strategy, some of the things that should be remembered are that it should not be a lengthy and complicated process and the employer should have a clear understanding about the job requirements and the type of candidates they are looking for in order to fill these positions. The steps that must be followed in a selection process should be wisely chosen. It would also help in minimizing redundancies and unnecessary processes. The ideal selection procedure should aim at choosing the right candidate to fill a particular job vacancy. It is basically the process of matching a candidate to a job. For low ended jobs, selection procedure need not be so rigorous but for highly skilled and managerial jobs, selection procedure needs to be chalked out properly. This would not only help in saving time but would also not frustrate the candidates going through the selection procedure. Though selection procedures vary with jobs and organisations, an ideal selection procedure would generally consist of a preliminary screening conducted by the HR executive, followed by filling of a form where the candidates have to fill the required information and then a round of tests and interview, which depends on the type of job (Exhibit I). Selection tests can be framed to check the aptitude and intelligence of a candidate or a candidate’s personality. These tests can also test the ability of a candidate to perform within strict deadlines or a definite time limit. For example, in a typing job, a candidate’s selection would largely depend on the speed of typing a given data in a definite period of time. Analytical tests, intelligence tests, aptitude tests, achievement tests and personality tests are some of the common selection tests. This step is generally followed by an interview. It should be remembered that the method of selection is the process of choosing the best from a talent pool, so it also refers to the elimination of other candidates. Hence, not tall candidates go through the entire selection process. Elimination takes place at each step. If a candidate qualifies in a process, then the person moves on to the next step in the selection process. Candidates who have successfully qualified the selection tests are generally called for interview. The type of interview that would be conducted depends on the job description. Based on the job requisites, interviews vary from being structured interview, unstructured interview, stress interview, and panel interview. Different techniques such as role playing, simulation methods, solving business games and assessment center processes are adopted to test various skill sets of an aspiring candidate. The candidates qualifying the interview process have to undergo medical examination in some cases and if they are certified to be in good health they are finally inducted. Reference checks are conducted for candidates having prior experience. Finally, selected candidates are intimated by the concerned HR manager and the offer letter is subsequently handed to the person. This is one of the processes that should be conducted carefully to ensure induction of the best candidate. The Role Played by Recruitment and Selection in Supporting Employee Retention Recruitment and selection plays a vital role in deciding the retention of a candidate in an organisation. One of the most Retention not only depends on the monetary benefits an organisation is offering to its candidates but it is also driven by the non-financial incentives such as recognition and motivation. To retain the skilled workforce, a company needs to redesign the job profiles and make the job challenging. It is found that organisations offering challenging work targets are able to retain their workforces for a larger span of time than the organisations offering routine work. Organisations should not emphasise on building norms but should identify them as objectives. The change in this connotation determines whether it would have a positive or a negative effect on the employees. For example, Continental Airlines decided to ensure that it meets its landing and takeoff schedules on time without having a single delayed flight. The then president of the airlines, Gordon Bethune, gave the full flexibility to the employees to take suitable measures which would help them to meet their objective. Within years, the airline was found to rank amongst the top ten international airlines and with this continuing progress the airline became the leading airline in the global arena the following year. This way a de-motivated employee force was gradually transformed into a loyal force (Arthur D., 2001). So, it becomes increasingly apparent that to retain employees it is not just sufficient to offer them a lucrative salary but to help them understand the career growth opportunities that the company would offer on a long term. Moreover, the company should identify motivating factors which would at least lower the employee turnover rates in an organisation. An experienced employee gets a holistic view of what the company plans to offer him in the initial stages of recruitment and selection. He/she understands whether the company has a well-defined career planning option for its employees or not. With the competition becoming fierce day by day, employees of today are just not satisfied with the financial motivators. To retain the talented people, organisations should offer its workforce a stake in organizational future growth and profits. Various stock option plans and bonus schemes would make the organisations able to retain a greater workforce. For instance, to retain its workforce, UPS introduced a stock option plan for not only the full time employees but also for the part timers to generate higher employer loyalty amongst the employees (Arthur D., 2001). If an organisation takes the necessary measures to upgrade the skill and knowledge base of its employees, then it can retain more of its workforce and also keep them motivated. This has been found to be done by AT&T which has introduced an AT&T knowledge center. This center helps the employees having similar skill-base and expertise to group and collectively handle a project (Arthur D., 2001). This leads to the formation of strong interpersonal bonds between team members and also generates an intellectually stimulating environment which helps the organisation in retaining an increased percentage of employees for a longer period of time. It should be remembered that recruitment, selection and induction plays a vital role in lowering the attrition rate within an organisation. Most of the new employees take their decision of whether to join the organisation or not during the process of selection or on the very first day in the new organisation. With the change in employee perception from viewing an organisation as having a paternalistic approach to being just a place where they can hone their present talents, it is quite a big challenge for organisations of today to retain their workforce. But if a company can successfully build its image at the initial phases of the selection process, then chances of vast number of employees leaving the organisation within a shorter span, can be reduced to a significant extent. Role of Hard and Soft Approaches in Changing the Recruitment and Selection Strategy of an Organisation Hard Human Resource Management (HRM) generally aims at prioritising the organisational goals and includes punitive measures which the organisation can deploy to enhance the productivity of its employees. According to the hard approach, employees are regarded as units of production, totally disregarding the human aspect. On the other hand soft HRM approaches aim at creating a motivating work environment which would increase the morale of the employees and they would become loyal to the organisation. It is a debatable issue as to which of the approaches would be able to change the way recruitment and selection processes are carried in an organisation and the effect of these strategies in retaining the workforce. Adopting hard approaches during the selection process would only make employees uncomfortable and they would not be eager to join the organisation. On the other hand, being too friendly during the selection process would lead to total confusion and the employers would not be able to identify the right candidate. So, neither can a total formal approach nor a too friendly approach can lead to a better selection process. To meet the ultimate objective of retaining its workforce, organisations should adopt a proper recruitment and selection strategy by combining the hard and soft HRM approaches, according to the need of the situation. It is always advisable to frame a unique and integrated strategy which would help the company to develop a good recruitment and selection strategy. 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