Executive Summary
This paper examines the structure, external and internal environment and organizational structure of the company Better Way, and also sets recruiting goals to help the company’s development. Better Way is a consulting firm that provides business analysis services for companies, as well as training for students and entrepreneurs. The analysis has shown that the weakness of Best Way is the lack of specialists, which affects the company’s ability to work with a higher number of clients and increases the cost of services. This disadvantage is also a threat, since, with a lack of specialists in the labor market, the company will not be able to compete with more profitable organizations in the field. Consequently, the paper defines the main recruiting goals aimed at hiring and retaining specialists, as well as the structure of the HR department that contributes to this process.
Introduction
The recruiting of candidates and personnel management are vital processes for the work of any company as without professional and dedicated employees, any business idea fails. For this reason, every company must have an effective Human Resource Department and recruitment plan to hire and retain employees who can and want to benefit from its activities. This paper will study the example of a Better Way company that provides business analysis services for organizations and provides the recruiting plan and goals for improving its performance.
Company Presentation
Better Way is a company that provides a business analysis of companies processes to identify errors in its work that lead to negative consequences. In other words, Better Way’s main task is to identify the problems of unprofitable companies and offer options for their solution. In addition, Better Way works with first-time entrepreneurs and students who want to understand the intricacies of building business in Saudi Arabia. Consequently, Better Way’s target audience is business owners and top executives who want to improve the performance of their company, as well as students and entrepreneurs who want to learn effective management.
Better Way’s vision is to create a socially responsible and efficient business that benefits its owners and the communities in which it flourishes. Consequently, one of Better Way’s business analysis processes’ key features is the emphasis on creating socially responsible management of the company but not just making a profit. In other words, the vision of Better Way is expressed in the desire to see a high level of organization and responsibility in each business company, which will create conditions for a comfortable life and work in society. For example, social benefits and attitudes toward employees will motivate them, and the contribution of each company to the development of society helps its development and comfortable life for every citizen, regardless of social status.
Better Way’s mission is to identify the main weaknesses of business companies in Saudi Arabia and address them to ensure their effective operation and benefit society, clients, and employees. In other words, Best Way’s mission is to change the management approach of companies to a more profitable and socially responsible one, which, step by step, will create the foundation for an ideal business environment conducive to society. Consequently, Better Way sets goals such as expanding business throughout Saudi Arabia, receiving 95 per cent positive feedback, partnering with primary business schools and universities in the country, and increasing investment of business in social initiatives by 30 per cent over the next five years. Thus, in five to ten years, Saudi Arabia will receive a business environment in which there is no place for discrimination and ineffective personnel management, and small and middle entrepreneurship will bring a significant part of income and initiatives of positive social changes in the Kingdom.
Recruiting and Staffing Objectives
The recruiting process has many stages, each of which must be completed with quality to select the best candidate for the job. Better Way is a company that requires specialists with a high level of knowledge or experience in business analysis to take an integrated approach to studying customer problems. Consequently, the main objectives of Better Way are aimed at every stage of recruitment and retention of employees.
Better Way’s first objective is to determine five appropriate bases for searching for candidates within two months. This number of sources should cover recruitment needs for different specialists of the company. Employees of Better Way must have a high level of knowledge to fulfill the requirements of the company; thus, sites that host the resume of all professions can be inappropriate, and recruiters need specialised databases with advanced search algorithms. The second objective is to identify ten channels within two months for posting vacancies, other than its social networks and a website for attracting candidates from external sources. This step ensures that recruiter will get enough job application to select the best candidates, but these channels should be specialised or high-quality to avoid a large number of applications from people who do not fit the position.
The third objective is designed to shorten recruiters’ interviewing time and refuse inappropriate candidate and aimed at determining five main and five additional resume’s criteria and thirty testing questions within six months. For the first goal also need to set possible deviations from standards to avoid missing a potential employee due to minor shortcomings. For example, Better Way can hire a graduate with a high level of knowledge but little experience and train him or her on the job, instead of looking for a better employee for months. The test also aims to refuse candidates who may have exaggerated their skills in a resume or misinterpreted the specifics of the job. The main task of the recruiter is to check the results, which requires little time if the work algorithm is correct. The recruiter needs six months to these objectives since criteria and test need checking and adjusting considering job and candidate specifics.
The objective of determining ten questions and stages of the interview within six months is the fifth goal of selection and clarification of job details. Recruiters should identify interview questions and the involvement of other executives in the decision-making process, such as the CEO or department head. This stage is necessary to avoid misunderstandings about the working conditions and check the candidate’s compliance with the corporate culture of Better Way.
The purpose of determining the payment and reward system within one month is the last objective that requires establishing the optimal conditions in which specialists are ready to work. Since high skills are required from employees, their salaries should also be higher than average. However, small developing companies can have difficulties in providing higher wages than its competitors. For this reason, the company needs to define other employee retention benefits.
Environmental Scanning
The most popular and convenient tool for environmental scanning is SWOT-analysis. This tool explores internal and external factors affecting the business and can point out areas for improvement and error correction, as well as show poor ideas. For this reason, this paper will use SWOT analysis to scan the internal and external environment of Better Way.
Internal Environment
Scanning the internal environment requires consideration of goals, organisational structure, activities, and features. In the SWOT analysis classification, these characteristics are categorised as Strengths and Weaknesses. Therefore, one can note that the strengths of Better Way are the range of business analysis services and the professionalism of the specialists, while the weaknesses are the high requirements for employees and the small number of clients due to the high cost of services.
The main strength of Better Way is that it can offer an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the company’s work to identify all the problems and their interrelationships. At the same time, most consulting companies are focused on one of the areas, for example, personnel management or business process automation and technology implementation. However, if the customer does not know what the problem cause losses, but only sees its result, for example, a decrease in profit, then he or she spends time searching for the right specialist. Better Way eliminates this challenge and provides the customer with the necessary solutions in a short time. At the same time, the second strength of Better Way is the presence of a staff of professional employees who can qualitatively identify the problem or challenges and redirect them to a specific specialist. This approach guarantees the detection, study, and elimination of all the nuances that hinder the development of the company.
At the same time, Better Way’s strengths influence other aspects of its work and create weaknesses. Firstly, the company has a small team of specialists who are required to have broad knowledge and the ability to understand the different specifics of the business. This approach, on the one hand, develops the skills of employees, but on the other hand, creates high requirements and workload for them. In addition, the company must pay high salaries for the services of such employees but cannot take many projects, which increases the cost of the company’s services and decreases the number of clients. Thus, while Better Way provides quality services and earns a professional reputation, its activities are limited due to cost and the ability to work on multiple projects in parallel.
External Environment
Analysis of the external environment requires the study of the competitors, the labour market, legislation and government policies and other factors that the company cannot influence. In SWOT-analysis, these features fall under the classification of Opportunities and Threats. Consequently, the opportunities for the company are increasing the number of business companies and receiving support from the state and foreign investors, and threats are high competition and a shortage of specialists in the labour market.
The first opportunity for Better Way is that current trends cause the emergence of innovative start-ups, an increase in demand in such areas as IT and technologies, and the creation of new business niches. Consequently, business development in Saudi Arabia means more clients for Better Way among owners and managers, as well as students who wish to build a career in this area. The second opportunity is that the Saudi Arabian government supports local business and foreign investors. For example, during quarantine caused by the COVID-19 government provided tax cuts, financial assistance, and other benefits to different companies (Kane, 2020).
Besides, Saudi Arabia has one of the highest levels of foreign investments, which is also supported by government policy (Kane, 2020). Thus, Better Way can get financial or opportunities or benefits from governments for its contribution to the social responsibility of business.
On the other hand, competition in the Saudi Arabian market is at a high level in almost any area, including the business consulting niche. Although today, most companies provide consulting services in one of the business activities, such as automation of production or sales, technology implementation, or the development of managerial skills, they are competitors of Better Way. For example, Elogic is a consulting firm for e-commerce companies, and Elixir is also provides consulting services buy with main focus one management (“The certified Magento development,” n.d.; “Who we are,” 2020).
For instance, if a company is convinced that its problem lies in improperly constructed sales processes, it is easier to contact a consulting firm that deals with these issues for a lower price than hiring a Better Way’s team. In addition, there already exists such companies as Holistic Business Excellence and Accenture, which provide similar services to Better Way and are its competitors (“Holistic Business Excellence,” n.d.; “Accenture cloud first,” n.d.). Therefore, Better Way should consider the highly competitive environment for its future activities.
The second threat is that the requirements for Better Way specialists are high, which limits the number of suitable candidates for the vacancy. For this reason, Better Way can face the problem of a lack of professional specialists, which can deteriorate the quality of the company’s work. In another case, Better Way will have to spend more resources on training new employees, which will also complicate the work process. However, since Better Way provides educational courses for students, this disadvantage can be partially reduced by the best graduates of the training.
Therefore, an analysis of the internal and external environment demonstrates that Better Way faces both weaknesses and threats, as well as opportunities for its development. The future of the company depends on approaches to its management that can minimise risks. In addition, recruiting and retention methods are essential to help Better Way expand its staff and customer service capabilities.
Organisational Structure
Organisational Chart
The organisational structure of the Better Way is relatively simple. The reason for this structure is that the company is at the beginning of its development and has few employees. This organisational structure is presented in a simplified form on the chart (Fig. 1).
Headcount
Better Way company is a small business, and its hierarchical structure is simple and basic. Thus, currently, the company has less than fifty employees. Top management consists of four people and includes President of the company, Financial Director, Executive Director and Technical Director. Departments of Better Way includes the Financial Department, Sales and Marketing Department, Human Resource Department, and Department of Business Analysis and each of them have five to ten employees. Besides, the company use services of a janitor who is a part-time employee of Better Way.
Job Analysis
Human Resource Department
Department Organisational Chart
Better Way company is a small organisation; however, since its primary purpose is to recruit, train, and retain employees to expand activities, the Human Resources Department must be full. For this reason, the HR director leads the department and oversees the work of all employees. Two HR managers should be enough for the internal needs of the department, and the coordination of employees in the company. In addition, for the first stages of company development, the Best Way can have one recruiter and payroll accountant, who can have assistants; nevertheless, over time, the company will need more specialists. There should also be one training and development manager, since two training and development specialists perform organisational and administrative duties. One can see this department structure on the HR department organisational chart (Fig. 2).
The realisation of recruiting and staffing goals requires an effective and well-organised Human Resource Department team. Better Way also needs specialists who occupy traditional HR positions and ensure sufficient work of the department to recruit and train employees and satisfy their working needs. Such jobs in Better Way company include human resources director, training and development manager, training and development specialist, personnel manager, recruitment specialist, and payroll accountant.
Human Resources Director
A person holding this position in the company is at the top of the hierarchy in the department and plays the role of controller, observer, and leader. The main task of a human resources director is to set the requirements for the work of employees in all departments, which must comply with the laws and the general policy and business goals of the company (Beaven, 2019 ). The more specific responsibilities of a human resources director include compliance of company policies with state’s laws, overseeing the recruitment, remuneration and training of employees, reviewing HR records, and handling employee complaints. For example, a director must ensure that the company does not create the conditions for a culture of harassment, discrimination, or abuse of power.
Personnel Manager
A person holding this position has some similar duties with the human resources director, although his or her role and responsibilities are less extensive. The main task of the personnel manager is to communicate directly with employees to make a decision about their promotion, discuss the needs or resolve conflicts between colleagues, and also monitor their compliance with the requirements of internal interaction (Nixon, 2019). In addition, the personnel manager develops and proposes strategies for attracting and retaining specialists, such as increasing pay or providing flexible scheduling. Thus, although the personnel manager carries out most of the interactions with the regular employees, he or she also mediates between them and the management that makes decisions affecting the work of the company.
Training and Development Manager and Training and Development Specialist
The main task of the training and development manager and specialist is to provide employees with courses, pieces of training and challenges to improve their professional skills. However, the level of responsibility and duties of the specialist and the manager differ, since the manager is higher in the hierarchy and has more experience and knowledge. The duties of a training and development specialist are to identify the educational needs of employees through tests and interviews, compose or search for suitable programs, and conduct training for regular employees. In addition, the specialist is responsible for performing the administrative tasks of preparing equipment, scheduling classes, and distributing training materials.
At the same time, the training and development manager is responsible for evaluating programs and their suitability to the company’s goals and employee’s needs, approving training and courses, managing budgets, assessing employee progress and monitoring their development. Besides, development managers provide educational programs for trainers and leaders.
Payroll Accountant
The person holding this position is one of the key figures in the Human Resource Department and the company in general, since personnel job satisfaction depends on the correct documentation and their salary. Hence, the main tasks of a payroll accountant are to prepare documents on wages, benefits, overtime payments or reimbursement of employee costs.
This work requires precision and accuracy in the maintenance of documentation, since any mistake can lead to employee dissatisfaction, company losses or even legal liability due to incorrect reporting. Consequently, the payroll accountant plays a significant role in the financial activities of the company, but at the same time, closely communicates with employees.
Recruitment Specialist
The primary responsibilities of a recruiting specialist are finding candidates for a vacancy, reviewing their resume, conducting tests and interviews, and selecting the best employees for a specific position. For this reason, it is also a recruiter’s responsibility to determine the most appropriate selection and interviewing strategies (Nixon, 2019). Thus, recruiters play an essential role in the company, since the quality of employees’ work and their compatibility with the team, as well as partly staff turnover, depend on their professionalism.
Conclusion
Therefore, the characteristics of the Better Way company and the analysis of its external and internal environment have shown that one of the main current weaknesses of the company and a possible threat is the lack of specialists in the team. This problem can be solved after reaching recruiting and staffing goals, which include identifying the most appropriate mechanisms for attracting and selecting candidates, as well as their retention.
However, the disadvantage of this plan is that with a lack of specialists in the labour market and limited company resources, Better Way will not be able to find candidates for the job. In such a case, a more appropriate strategy is to train inexperienced professionals or students, although this process takes time and resources. However, if the Human Resource Department has all the necessary specialists who do their job qualitatively, this approach will be beneficial for both the company and its employees.
References
Accenture cloud first. (n.d.). Web.
Beaven, K. (2019). Strategic human resource management: An HR professional’s toolkit. London, UK: Kogan Page Publishers.
Holistic Business Excellence. (n.d.). Web.
Kane, F. (2020). ‘Saudi Arabia remains open for business’ as foreign investment rises. Arab News. Web.
Nixon, C. (2019). Global human resource management. London, UK: Scientific e-Resources.
The certified Magento development company. (n.d.). Web.
Who we are. (n.d.). Web.