Topic: human resources employee relations

the exam prepared to write your answer under exam conditions. 

 

NB This is a closed book exam. 

 

Section A: read the case and answer the questions at the end of Section A.

 

You are asked to prepare an answer to the both Sections A & B and come to

CASE STUDY

 

The Development Council is a Quango set up to ensure effective distribution of development funds in Britain. The Headquarters are in London where 135 people are employed. The Regional Offices are quasi – autonomous. Ninety people are employed at the Scottish HQ in Edinburgh and sixty at the Welsh HQ in Cardiff. The Council has just been informed that it is to have a small but significant cut in its ‘real’ level of funding. A re-organisation is due at the Cardiff HQ which may lead to some job losses.

 

All three Headquarters operate a common Job Evaluation Scheme. Historically staff had been mainly on Civil Service gradings but it had been felt appropriate to develop an in-house job evaluation scheme geared to the particular needs of the Council.  This also enabled the staff to be involved in determining initial job gradings and the outcome of appeals. Membership of grading and appeal panels is shared evenly between the Council and staff sides (two members each). Meetings are chaired by the part-time consultant who helped design the scheme and who has been retained to operate it. The staff side members belong to the MSF Union, which has a recognition agreement with the Council. Employer-union relationships are harmonious and the bulk of the work force are not very union conscious.

 

Job gradings are determined in accordance with a points rating scheme. There are ten factors with varying weights, sub factors and factor and sub factor definitions. The definitions determine what points are allocated under each factor (and sub factor). When new jobs are created the HR Director arranges a provisional grading pending the job evaluation. A job evaluation questionnaire is completed indicating the demands of the job in relation to each factor. The completed questionnaire and job description are given to the members of the grading (or appeals) panel. There is a range of incremented salary points in each grade. The job descriptions are each agreed with the job holder, line manager and the Divisional Director. Panel members do not evaluate jobs in their own department.

 

The scheme has been running for five years and various problems have begun to emerge. These include:

 

1. The process is time consuming. It can take up to a year for a grading issue to be finally

 

2. It is difficult to convene panels – mainly because of the difficulty of getting two management members from the pool of trained

 

3. Management has been concerned about the extent of grade drift. This has however been reduced by informal means. The HR Director recently instituted a vetting procedure so that new or altered jobs are scrutinised by her. The grading implications of writing a job description in a particular way, or answering the job evaluation questionnaire in a particular way, are explained to the relevant line manager. If this is likely to lead to an unplanned increase in grade level the line manager is warned that this may have to be financed out of his or her b

 

4. Some are concerned that the Council has no control over a procedure that can, and does, lead to a qualitative increase in One view is that it is the Council who should determine the number of posts and their grade levels. Supporting arguments are that whilst no one should be paid less than the level of work they are engaged on that some managers have unnecessarily allowed people to work at a higher graded level than is needed. There is also some criticism of the need for such a participative scheme in the light of the now relative ease with which staff are recruited and retained. There is also the view that job descriptions should be made more standardised and staff expected to work, as requested, within the responsibility levels of their grade without having an over-personalised job description.

 

5. There is no HR representative on the panels.

 

6. There is no provision for resolving evenly split panel decisions. So far this has however not caused any great practical difficulty because of the skill with which the part-time consultant chairs the

 

7. A job can be given a provisional grade, a person appointed to that grade, and the evaluated grade be lower (this has recently happened).

 

8. There is a tendency for some jobs to be orientated to the needs of the job holder which doesn’t always fit with the needs of the organisation. Even if the duties are all agreed job holders may spend more time on those tasks that interest them most. However it is accepted that most of the staff are well motivated and hard

 

9. There are staff complaints that the scheme should be more open. Job grades are only publicised when jobs are advertised and even then the grades may be provisional only.

 

10. Panels may evaluate the grade of people of a much higher grade than many of the panel

 

11. Although the grading of many jobs is perfectly obvious the full process still has to operate.

 

12. It is claimed by some members of management that too much opportunity is given to people to write their job descriptions in such a way as to enhance their prospects of upgrading.
13. Another management concern is that if there was no such scheme some line managers would exploit their ‘freedom’ to overgrade jobs in their

 

14. Some managers are more pro-active than others. Consequently subordinates in similarly graded jobs may have quite different job pressures put on

 

15. There is little in the way of career structure at the Council. Staff at officer level need to have specialist expertise in their development area. They are more likely to look for promotion into a specialist area outside the Council than within the Council bureaucracy. Lateral movement is difficult because of the different specialisms in the various divisions. The lack of promotion opportunities for the Secretary: Admin Assistant grade causes pressure for upgrading to Assistant Officer level when Secretary: Admin. Assistants outgrow their

 

QUESTION – answer ALL PARTS of the question, worth 50% of the marks:

 

A1

 

1. Identify the problems that you feel need addressing in the above case.

 

1. Discuss possible ways of tackling these problems, explaining how you have taken into account the surrounding context.

 

1. What advantages would you hope to accrue from having a job evaluation programme?

 

 

Section B: Answer ALL THREE (3) questions in this section.

 

In respect of an organisation with which you are familiar, or which you have been able to research:

 

1. What are the key corporate objectives of your chosen organisation? To what extent do these match with actual practice?

7.5 marks

 

2. What are the key corporate values and culture? To what extent do the stated values match the actual values?

7.5 marks

 

3. In what way/s are the Corporate objectives, values and culture reflected in any HR policies or strategy? Explain the ER choices that have been made and the reasons for these choices in respect of TWO of the following:

 

• Employee Representation and union recognition
• Management of conflict and dispute resolution
• Employee involvement and participation in decision making.

35 marks

 

BRIEFING FOR SECTION B

It would be most beneficial for students to research their own organisation, or one in which you have been involved in the past.  In the event that you do not have an organisation to investigate then the alternative would be to investigate another organisation of your choice.

Any large corporate will have online company reports, websites, press releases (and newspaper articles in FACTIVA) to answer the above questions.  If you take a UK focus then there is no particular company in the FTSE250 that has richer information than others. But if you want direction, then John Lewis has a different employee ownership structure and Amazon is always in trouble over HR issues.  We also talked about British Airways, Sports Direct, the University of Westminster and Marks and Spencer during the module).

 

If you cannot find out about the organisation’s Employee Relations policies, then you should suggest what policies might appropriately be adopted, with a rationale for each of your suggestions.

 

READING

I would refer you to the week by week reading identified in the module handbook – section 7 pages 17 & 18.  Everyone will need to remind themselves of what they have read relating to the nature of Employee Relations and Strategy in Weeks 1 & 2.   Re-read the case study the Research Institute used in week 2.  Then you should decide which two aspects of Q3 above you would like to specifically examine and concentrate on the reading identified for those weeks in the module calendar.

 

TUTORIAL SUPPORT – this is available in class or via a one to one discussion with the tutor.  One face to face discussion per student.