Managing People: Fastening Technologies Limited Assignment Help
Executive Summary
The main aim to develop this report is to evaluate the human resource policies of Fastening Technologies Limited. From the origin of FTL, the company has faced many positive and negative situations in the business industry. From the people management perspectives, these issues are
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employment relationships, employee relations/ communication, HR planning in relation to resourcing, individual performance management, reward/ remuneration and staff development. Presently, Phil James is the general manager of the company. Fourteen years ago, when Phil James joined, many changes have been taken place in the company due to the highly changing and competitive environment (Case Study, p. 2). ( Get
Company initially followed the approaches of personnel management but when Ander joined the company, company moved towards implementing human resource management approaches. According to the case study, some of the approaches of FTL to manage people in the organization are quite effective; rest needs some changes as per the industrial and environmental changes. The second part of the report evaluates the reward and performance management system at the company. The repot has also given some recommendations to the company to improve its HR policies. By means of the following paper, the reader would be able to understand the importance of HRM and people management in the success of an organization.
In order to collect the necessary information to complete the report, various books, authenticated journals, academic reviews and internet sources are evaluated. In addition to this
assignment help, the lecture notes, case study and website of the company are used to collect the information.
Introduction
Fastening technology was founded by, Alan Brown, in 1961, by designing his own manufacturing process. In the early period of its existing, the company was very successful due to the contribution of creative, practiced and skillful engineers (Case Study, p. 2). The company manufactures a variety of fasteners to fulfill the requirement of the domestic and international industries (Case Study, p. 2). Phil James, General Manager of Fastening Technologies Ltd, joined the company about 14 years back and after 4 years of his joining U.S. owned Global Engineering Inc. bought the business from Alan Brown (Case Study, p. 2).
When the economy of United Kingdom was in recession, demands for the automotive products and white good decreased, which directly had a negative impact on the performance of FTL. This led to top management of the company to replace existing managing director by Anders van Hoy. Ander brought lot of changes in the way people were managed in the company. Innovative approaches were used by Anders van Hoy, the operation manager recruited by Global in the German Sister Company, FTL (Case Study, p. 2 & p.3).
During the existence of the company various approaches and initiatives were taken to manage people. This repot will assess the approaches used by Fastening Technologies Limit to manage people. This report has two parts. The first part will evaluate approaches to people management by comparing how far FTL’s approach to people management is personnel or HRM and will provide various recommendations to improve its people management approaches as per the innovations in the business industries. The second part of the paper will critically analyze one of the main HR issue faced by Fastening Technologies Limited and evaluate the strengths and limitations of the issue.
Part 1
Approaches of FTL to People Management whether Personnel or Human Resource Management
According to Cole (2002) Personnel management and human resource management are both used, often interchangeably both by academicians and practitioners and it is arguable whether, or what differences separate the concepts Personnel and Human Resource Management (HRM). Story (1989, 1995) mention that there are some radical differences in approach about how people are managed using Personnel or Human Resource Management principles. One of the main differences that is highlighted by Story (1995) is that Human Resource Management is very closely linked and integrated with business objectives and strategy of the business that is not the case with Personnel management. HRM seeks to achieve competitive advantage for the company (Beardwell & Claydon, 2007; Storey, 1995).
Initially FTL’s approach to manage people was more ad hoc and reactive and more toward personnel management approach. Approach to managing people initially before Ander took over was more toward providing support to line activities and coordinate between what management wants and what are the employees concerns that is defined as Personnel Management approach to managing people by Cornelius (1992). It can be interpreted from the case that there was no formal planning to manage people and some employees had to be made redundant when Ander joined the company (Case Study, p. 1 & p.2).
Storey (1995) mention that human resource management approach is more aligned with the business need and is flexible while people management approach stresses more on consistency and control. Applying this differentiation of personnel and human resource management to FTL, it can be concluded that before Ander joined the business as managing director, FTL was following more rigid approach toward managing people as company policy was to retain loyal employees and carry the cost until better times arrived (Case Study, p. 2). Key feature of Ander and Alistair strategy was training employees to perform at the right level and rewarding them when they did (Case Study, p. 4).
According to Cornelius (1992) the approach of personnel management is a traditional way to manage people to accomplish the task On the other hand, the approach of human resource management is a modern way to describe the personnel manager, which leads the company to achieve the competitive advantage (Robins, 2002).
Under the leadership of Ander, human resource management approaches were implemented and team working was promoted to cope with the environmental and social changes. In this concern, he developed teams with young, skilled and enthusiastic people. He appointed Alistair Scott as HR manager, Steve Davidson as operations manager, Phil James as Quality Manager. After this the company got success in very short time. The company also got Ford Q1 award because of its highest quality (Case Study, p. 3). Under the leadership of Ander and Alistair company took first step toward HRM approach. ( You can get your paper according to your
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When Ander was moved to head the new Fastener team of Europe, Steve Succeeded his position. Due to the lack of leadership skills and experience like Ander, he failed to manage the company as effectively as Ander was doing. His relationship with some key employees was not very good and effective (Case Study, p. 6). The relationship between Steve and Alistair was also very weak, thus he appointed Catherine Forrester as the replacement of Alistair. This situation represents that in FTL, Steve has followed a weak approach of personnel management (Robins, 2002).
HRM approach continued during the tenure of Steve as well but human resources policies were not very effective and there was a good room of improvement. Catherine also implemented some new policies and approaches to manage people effectively in the company. Overall, the human resource management policies used by FTL and approaches related to these policies are as follows:
Team Working: This approach was used by Ander to increase the productivity and effectiveness of the employees as well as the organization. This was the first movement of the company from personnel approach to HRM approach. ( now you can avail
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Employee Relations: Under the leadership of Steve, the relations among the employees were not very good. For example, there was weak relationship between Steve and Alistair, Phil is not comfortable to work with Catharine, although he works effectively with Mary, etc. In order to resolve this problem and implement the new approach of HRM, Catherine has used the strategy of developing a council to encourage the harmonious relationship among team members (Case study, p. 15).
Training and Development Programs: FLT had lack of training and development programs. Steve had not recommended any new approach to train its employees and improve the relationship among all of them. This is a kind of personnel approach. In order to increase the efficiency of the employees and retain them for long term in the company, the training and development programs were proposed by Catherine (Case Study, p. 13). The manager has decided to give three days training in a week for two years to clarify their roles and responsibilities and increase satisfaction. This is HRM approach to people management (Xeniditis, Russell & Murphy, 2001).
Bonus: Under the leadership of Anders, the senior manager could get 20% bonus over their salary and the semi skilled and employees could get 5%-16% bonus as per their performance. Catherine has conducted an employee opinion survey and found that the employees are not happy with the current reward system (Case Study, p. 4). She proposed the management that they should use rewards and incentive systems to improve the performance of the employees. This is also the HRM approach.
Communication Process: The communication system used in FTL was also very old. According to Catharine, approximately 47% of information was communicated through grapevine communication, which creates humors in the company (Case Study, p. 6).
Conclusion
Thus, on the basis of above discussion it can be concluded that approaches initially used by FTL to manage people were more oriented toward personnel management approaches but later on it moved toward recommended approaches of human resource management especially after Ander joined a managing director. But still there is a good scope of improvement in human resource management approaches used by FTL. Under the current leadership of Phil, company needs to further implement effective and innovative approaches to human resource managed and align human resource management. It is necessary for both Steve and Catharine to execute new HRM approaches to manage people in en effective and implement fair and honest policies to ensure long term success of the company.
Recommendations
HRM approaches should be used by the company in such a way that company should be able to use both tangible and intangible resources in an effective way and create competitive advantage. The main aim of the HRM approaches is to go beyond the contract means to achieve the hidden objectives to maintain growth of the firm in the highly changing and competitive environment (Tyson & York, 2000). HRM approaches are flexible and increase the productivity of the employee. By using the latest HRM approaches, management of FTL can control the behavior of the employees and utilize their hidden skills and knowledge to achieve the target on time and increase the productivity of the company.
In order to manage the people effectively and create competitive advantage in the industry, FTL should follow following human resource management approaches:
1 Aligning HRM with business objectives: Company human resource management approach should be aligned with long term business objectives of the company.
2 Greater Motivation: Employees in the organization are respected for their own talent, proficiency, skills and working behavior. The management should encourage their creativity by giving them opportunities to work on critical projects (Chapman, 2008). The management should offer them good monetary remuneration and non-monetary incentives (Allen & Kilman, 2001). The increases in productivity and good incentive would also increase their job satisfaction (Xeniditis, Russell & Murphy, 2001).
3 Team Working: In order to increase job satisfaction and productivity, the approach used by the company is working in the teams. This is a very good approach to complete the project on time and improve the relationships among the team members (Harris, 1976). For instance, the management should conduct regular meetings, seminars, conference and parties so that the worker can understand each other very well and establish mutual understanding (Tyson & York, 2000).
4 Interdependency: In a company, it is not possible to do a project at the individual level. All the employees are mutually dependent upon each other to complete the task and achieve the objectives (Nelson & Quick, 2007). Sometime this dependency has increased at the level where the employees don’t wants to do their own work. The company should execute experiential learning programs and coaching networks to increase mutual understanding and decrease dependency of each other. By this way, they can get chance to show their own skills (Mathis & Jackson, 2006). These networks will also help the employee to develop a strong relationship with others.
5 Leadership: Presently, the latest leadership approach is based on the Y theory; participative management style (Managing people in the workplace, 2010). Steve should change his leadership approach. He should use democratic and situational approach of leadership..
6 Skill and Knowledge and Motivate HR Staff: In order to improve the ability of management to manage the people and utilize their strengths in favor of the company, HR should have credible knowledge to influence the behavior of others (Robins, 2002). All the department should be incorporated with each other the manager should use critical decision making process to solve the problems (Tyson & York, 2000).
7 People Focused Strategy: The approaches used by FTL are not people focused. According to the employee opinion survey held by Catharine, most of the employees are dissatisfied with the current reward system, performance measurement policy, leadership style, etc. because the approaches of the company are not people centered (Case Study, p. 12). Steve has focused only on the organization’s growth and ignored the individual growth of an employee. Thus, the company should use people focused approach and provide them facilities to improve their satisfaction level.
8 Bottom Line Strategy: One of the latest approaches to people management is Bottom line contribution. The approaches used by the management of FTL are not based on the latest concept of bottom line contribution. The bottom line approach means a contribution of human capital at the bottom line of the company, means focus on the lower level to higher level management (Boxall, 1992; Knowledge Optimization Services, 2006). In comparison to this approach, FTL’s management focus to increase the profitability of the company only, so the management thinks about the higher point of view and ignores the lower management, which leads dissatisfaction and lack of strong relationships (Case Study, p. 10). According to the modern HRM approach, the management of FTL should implement the strategy of the bottom line to manage people effectively (Mathis & Jackson, 2006).
9 Reward and Incentive System: The approaches used by the FTL are not innovative and based on traditional concepts of people management. For instance, the reward policy provides only monetary rewards and differentiates among employees on the basis of gender (Case Study, p. 15). The management should implement the latest reward policy approach that comprises both monetary and non-monetary incentives such as the employee of the month, employee of the years, occasion gifts, birthday wishes, value cards for good performance, paid leave, casual leave, health facilities, accommodations, etc. (Allen & Kilman, 2001). The company should uses the rewards and incentive structure describe in Appendix 1.
10 Performance Appraisal System: The performance management system of the company is based on grading and opinions of superiors, which is an old concept (Case Study, p. 10). Presently, organizations are using various methods, such as behavioral rating scale, management by objectives (MBO), 360% appraisal method, etc. The firm should use the Appraisals system explains in Appendix 2. The company also use the latest approach of MBO to appraise evaluate the performance of employees.
11 Communication Process: The communication process should be based on latest methodologies, which comprise both online, and offline methodologies and electronic media. The offline communication modes are written documents, notice corporate magazines, etc. (Robins, Mathis & Jackson 2002).The online communication modes are internet, e-mail, etc. In addition, the management can use electronic media resources to manage the proper flow of information and improve the communication level such as telephone, fax, television, etc. (Tyson & York, 2000).
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