Recruitment and selection are at the fundamental level of staff management. It is building a pool of potential candidates to enable the organization to select the best among them. It states what the job is, what it requires, and the kind of person it requires. This activity begins by drawing up job specifications, job descriptions, and person specifications. A job specification is a statement of the work that a job holder will be expected to do. It also lists the conditions under which work will be performed. The job specification derives the kind of person required to do the job. The job description is a broad and general statement of the purpose and duties of the job. A person specification is a list of qualities, skills, and experience an ideal job holder will need to do the job. The recruitment and selection for any particular job involves identifying potential candidates either within the organization through internal job postings or outside the organization. This is followed by assessing the candidates and making the selection. Staff selected should match with the job and be willing to work at the set rate of pay.
Staff management is an essential function of office administration and involves effectively managing the office’s human resources. Staff management is required to enable other systems to function smoothly. In the absence of adequate staffing, many conflicts and issues exist, resulting in inadequate performance in any system. The three essential concerns of any organization are recruitment and selection, training and development, performance evaluation, and feedback; when effectively dealt with, it will bring in the best performance from staff and also serve greater job satisfaction. Staff management is an ongoing activity that aims to improve the performance of individuals and their contribution to the organization’s best interest.
Recruitment and Selection
To explain staffing, it is necessary to understand the strategic purpose of the HRM function. HRM strategy can be defined as the goal and plans for achieving the intention and mission of the organization (Rynes et al., 2004). Typically, HRM lacks strategic intentions, with personnel departments primarily having administrative remittances. Today, it is realized that HRM and its functions can be essential to organizational effectiveness. The HR function and activities are tactfully linked to various marketing, financial, and operational strategies. Still, at its core, HRM strategy is the practice of using the functions of HRM in a forward-thinking manner for staff who are essential to the organization’s success. To understand their principal needs, they must plan to acquire and maintain a productive workforce.
Recruitment and selection are two of the most crucial HR functions. Still, they are often conducted with minimal understanding and appreciation of the skills and techniques necessary to find the right person for the job. These skills and techniques are increasingly being studied under the broader heading of staffing. Staffing is identifying, assessing, placing, evaluating, and deploying individuals and groups within organizations to achieve short- and long-term objectives (Heneman et al., 2012). Staffing can be thought of as a cyclic or continuous process of connecting individuals’ talents and skills with the job positions available within the organization. Staffing involves activities such as recruitment, selection, and decisions as to whether to retain individuals or to move them into different positions.
Recruitment is searching for and obtaining potential job candidates in sufficient numbers and quality so that the organization can select the most appropriate people to fill its job needs. The recruitment process includes linking those looking for work with the job vacancies within the organization. Before an organization recruits, it must know the requirements for filling a vacancy. It has been common in the past to treat recruitment and selection as a single process. Today, it is widely recognized that the two are separate though interdependent processes. Selection is the process of choosing from a group of applicants the individual best suited for a particular position. In essence, it is the process of matching the qualifications of applicants with the requirements of a job (Leon et al., 1963). Selection activities are usually preceded by a recruitment process, which we know is utilized to place a pool of job applicants from which new employees can be selected. In internal recruitment, the selection process will be familiar to those interviewing. Still, how they match applicants to jobs may be different because they may already know the candidate.
Training and Development
Establishing training and development programs is an effective way of training new employees and teaching old employees new skills for the same or different jobs. This process can be adaptive, training for various skills for various situations, or active, training specific skills to be used immediately. Training and development bring a higher quality to an organization. This is key in helping an organization obtain and maintain a competitive edge. This can also have indirect benefits in that the training and development process can be an opportunity for employees to communicate and work towards shared goals. Training helps employees increase their knowledge or skill in a specific area, thus improving their performance. Development is a long-term educational process utilizing a systematic and organized procedure by which managerial personnel learn conceptual and theoretical knowledge.
This method is for future managers. Although there are many more benefits for employers than employees, increased skills training and development are the primary ways employees move from one job to a better one. This requires one to acquire skills to get a promotion at their current place of employment or learn new skills for a different job with a new employer. Increased job mobility can be a double-edged sword for employers who lose high-performing employees, but the company will have employees with higher skills.
Performance Evaluation and Feedback
Performance evaluations provide a formal, recorded, regular assessment of an employee’s performance and a planned method of monitoring results. This is the formal review of the performance of the employee in the job in terms of his requirements. It allows the employee and the reporter to discuss the positive and negative aspects of the employee’s performance. The result should be an agreement between the employee and the manager on the improvements required; an action plan can then be formulated, setting out what needs to be done to facilitate these improvements. This system is very much linked to pay in that an employee can receive a pay rise upon achieving his objectives.
A recent study of UK performance-related pay in 2005 found that 44% of the total payments in the employee’s salary are at risk of being related to his appraisal. Firestone and Pennance (1978, p.502) suggested that monetary payments reinforce positive behavior and increase performance. This, of course, depends on the evaluation system type and the data’s validity. For example, objective data can be measured accurately and reflect the job being done; however, rating an employee on his personality is ambiguous and unreliable. High levels of motivation have been related to the expectancy of a reward. This is directly linked with the employer’s aim to motivate the employee to perform to his highest ability. This will be compared to an employee who is not doing too well and failing to reach the required standards; some employers may suggest another more suitable position in the company, or it may lead to dismissal.
An effective performance evaluation system is a key element in helping managers monitor and evaluate an employee’s progress and effectiveness. This evaluation helps to provide valid information on the employee’s performance. For the employee, it can help clarify what is expected of them. It can help define an employee’s role and give the employee a clear understanding of whether or not expectations are being met.