Introduction
Kamuga Motors Company is a motor vehicle manufacturing company based in United Kingdom. The company employs five hundred people who work in different capacities within the company. Among its employees, there are engineers that are responsible for designing and modeling different body parts of vehicles. It has strong sales personnel that are responsible for identifying new markets and marketing the company in the country. The company was established in 1985. Its main objective is to cater to the increasing demand for vehicles in the UK and globally. To achieve this, the company has assembled massive resources that range from human resources to technology and finance. The company also encourages diversity and continuously trains its employees to equip them with the necessary skills. The recruitment process in the company is done based on employee demand. The recruitment team identifies the required workforce and also projects future organizational growth to determine future workforce requirements. This helps the company get the most qualified employees.
Resources available in the organization
In its bid to manufacture quality cars, Kamuga Motors Company has numerous resources at its disposal. These range from technology, finance, and human resource. Having been in the motor industry for decades, the company has come up with a system to help in streamlining its operations. With this system, Kamuga Motors has not only been able to streamline its operations but has also come up with the latest models of vehicles. The system helps it identify the latest models of vehicles and design them to suit its needs. As a result, the company has been known for manufacturing quality vehicles; especially rally cars.
Experienced employees found in the company have been one of the strongest resources that contribute to its success. The company’s staffing policies ensure that it recruits only those staff that are qualified and that will help it meet its ever-changing needs. The company has a team of experienced engineers that are responsible for designing different models of vehicles and assembling them. Apart from the engineers, the company has a team of versatile workers who comprise salespeople and financial officers. The sales team strives at ensuring that the company has an adequate market for its products. This team has helped the company get a vast market through their experienced marketing strategies and analysis. The financial officers in the company have always helped it effectively budget for its operations. It has made it possible for the company to profitably utilize its financial resources.
Unlike other motor industries, Kamuga Motors Company has a centralized system of operations. All its operations are centrally managed to ensure that they are uniform in all its different branches. This has helped the company standardize its operations. Its ability to unit the frontier engineers with engineers from different branches is one of its unique features. This has not been possible for other motor companies such as General Motors. The system has helped Kamuga Motors lay down a strong infrastructure that supports varied applications aimed at helping the company increase its competitive advantage1. Currently, the company is in the process of coming up with strategies to help it support car production in its different production units. This will help it meet the increasing demand for cars in the country.
Company’s dynamic capabilities
Importance of dynamic learning approach to the company
The ever-changing model of vehicles and customer needs call for companies to consistently develop their employees. Despite the company emphasizing recruiting qualified personnel, it uses a dynamic learning approach to equip its employees with the necessary skills. For instance, the company’s engineers are taken through rigorous training to acquire skills in vehicle manufacturing. Apart from identifying the available vehicle models and redesigning them to suit their needs, the team of engineers is also involved in developing novel models of vehicles. All employees in the company are involved in solving underlying customer needs by being given the mandate of coming up with solutions on matters affecting their areas of specialization. This approach stirs up creativity in employees making it possible for them to come up with exclusive models and solutions for satisfying customer needs. The company’s current competitive edge can be credited to its ability to solve customer needs.
Targeted training and development
To overcome stiff competition waged by rival companies such as Ford and General Motors, Kamuga Motors Company continuously train and develop its employees. One of the fields that the company targets to train and develop its employees is in developing environmentally-friendly vehicles2. Every government is calling for motor industries to come up with vehicles that are powered by sources of energy that are environmentally friendly. Consequently, the company aims at training its employees on how to manufacture quality cars that are propelled by other sources of energy such as hydrogen and ethanol. Strategies are on the way to train engineers on how to manufacture the different parts of ethanol-propelled vehicles.
Staffing policies used by the company
Kamuga Motors Company aspires to diversify its market to cover the global market. To ensure that it effectively exploits the global market, the company has embarked on polycentric policies of staffing. Despite the parent company being managed by people from the United Kingdom, the company has started recruiting managers from different countries. These managers are being groomed so as to assume managerial roles in branches that are to be opened in their home countries. Through this, the company will avoid chances of investing in products that will not do well in certain markets.
Organizational learning
The management team in Kamuga Motors Company is very sensitive to its internal and external environments. It regularly identifies the emerging changes in technology and comes up with measures to integrate them into its system of operations. This ensures that it is always at par with changing consumer needs. The company has a team of experts who are responsible for studying the motor industry and identifying the emerging changes. These changes are then communicated to the management that comes up with measures to address them. Apart from external changes, the management regularly monitors its employees to ascertain their competence and equip them with the required skills. The sales personnel in the company sell the company’s policies and products to the public. This creates company awareness to the public thus increasing its market share.
Linking company and human resource strategy
Management of short and long term human resource strategies
To ensure that the company effectively achieves its objectives, the management has come up with measures to cater to both short and long-term human resource needs. The management team starts by identifying company objectives. This helps them identify gross human resource needs in the company. From here, the management goes on to identify all the required skills to facilitate in achieving organizational goals. Eventually, the team comes up with clear information about the net human resource needs in the company. Based on the identified needs, the company develops an action plan to help it ensure that it deploys all its human resources to the right places. Generally, most of its short-term human resource needs are not so vital to the company. As a result, such needs are outsourced to service-providing firms where they are addressed and feedback sent to the company. These include short-term needs such as compilation of employee payrolls.
People as a human resource strategy
Organizational employees have become a strong factor in achieving organizational goals. Kamuga Motors understands that for it to realize its objectives, it has to ensure that it aligns its organizational strategies with those of human resources. Consequently, the company ensures that it has recruited qualified employees and trained them. As customers judge an organization based on how they are treated by its employees, Kamuga Motors Company trains its employees on how to deliver its products and services. Despite this, there is a need for the company to equip its staff with the necessary interpersonal skills and aptitude. This is to ensure that staffs are capable of dealing with all kinds of customers. Accordingly, customers will develop a perception that the company cares for its employees and that it also offers training services to its employees. This will make more customers come to the company as they are assured of quality services.
Organizational rewarding system
As a way of encouraging its employees to work harder towards the realization of organizational goals, Kamuga Motors has come up with a culture of rewarding employees based on their performance. The company conducts employee appraisals and those found to perform are rewarded. To some extent, this culture has helped the company attain its objectives. More employees are becoming innovative to be recognized thus helping the company meet customer needs3. However, the culture has had some negative impacts on the company. With every employee being rewarded based on his or her contribution to the company, it has killed the spirit of teamwork in the company. This has led to a poor relationship between employees as everyone struggles to prove his credibility in the company. It is lowering organizational efficiency as it has become hard for information to be effectively conveyed between the different departments in the company.
The process of human resource planning
Analyzing demand and supply of employees
There are different strategies used in analyzing the demand and supply of employees. The ever-changing responsibilities in the motor industry keep the management team in Kamuga Motors regularly evaluating its operations to identify employees who are likely to be laid off as well as the vacancies that are likely to emerge in the future. This is achieved through coming up with a technique that helps them project future growth of the company4. Business plan formulated by the management team is also consulted to determine the kind of employees required in the organization. To identify the kind of employee to recruit, managers highlight the required qualities of the employees. The available as well as potential employees are evaluated to identify if they have the required qualities. Human resource managers work closely with departmental managers to identify their strategies, objectives and goals. As a result, they are able to identify human resource needs for different departments within the company.
Attracting and recruiting talents
Diversity in the company
With most of the customers opting to buy vehicles with low fuel consumption rate and those that are environmental friendly, motor industries are looking for the most experienced employees. In this respect, Kamuga Motors Company has recruited a diverse workforce with employees having different skills. It has employed people with varied experiences. There are engineers responsible for designing vehicle models and those responsible for assembling. The company also has qualified sales personnel and financial managers. To help it exploit global market, Kamuga Motors has embarked on recruiting employees from different backgrounds. It has started seeking expertise from international employees.
Improving on organizational diversity
Despite the company emphasizing on diversity, it has not been able to fully exploit the potential in the diversity in achieving its objectives. This has been due to its classification of employees based on their background and qualifications. To ensure that all staffs are equipped with diverse skills, there is need for the company to integrate varied skills in its different departments5. This will help them exchange ideas and skills thus improving employee performance. One of the areas where diversity is likely to help the company is in realizing its global expansion. Its current human resource that comprise of engineers and salespersons from different backgrounds will help in identifying customer needs for different countries.
Rewarding system and how to improve it
As a way of enhancing employee performance, Kamuga Motors Company use extrinsic rewarding system referred to as variable pay. The company conducts employee appraisal and the best performing employees are rewarded with money. This method has led to every employee struggling to see that his or her contribution in the company is acknowledged. However, there is need for some changes to be made in this rewarding system. The system is gradually killing the spirit of teamwork in the organization. This calls for the company to come up with intrinsic forms of employee rewarding systems. These are systems such as those that would help employees effectively complete their responsibilities with limited challenges. A rewarding system that will help in employees’ job satisfaction and social interaction will facilitate in reviving teamwork in the company which is vital in helping the company achieve its objectives.
Importance of a strong recruitment process
There are numerous benefits accrued from having a good recruitment process in an organization. One of the major benefits of a strong recruitment process is that a company is able to identify and select the right employees. A good recruitment process identifies all the required employee skills thus helping the recruiting team look for employees with the required qualities. Kamuga Motors use varied ways of advertising for vacancies in its different departments. The company liaises with recruitment agencies whenever vacancies arise. The agencies look for qualified persons who they recruit and forward them to the company6. To facilitate in this, every department within the company has established documents that give a comprehensive description of job specification and the skills that are to be considered during recruitment.
How the company improves its recruitment process
As a way of ensuring that the recruitment process helps the company get qualified employees, management team in the company regularly review the recruitment process. Every year, the company’s recruiting team goes through the recruitment process to ensure that all the required procedures are followed. They assess the method used in advertising vacancies to ascertain that the advertisement clearly stipulates job specifications and the required skills. Besides, the company reviews the elimination and selection processes used in identifying the qualified applicants7. This is to ensure that the selection process is free and fair and that it considers the most vital aspects of the applicants. Apart from this, the team also gives the selected applicants an opportunity to rate the recruitment process and identify some of the flaws they encountered during the process. This helps them take corrective measures to avoid future flaws.
Improvement needed in the process
One of the improvements required in the current recruitment process is in the orientation stage. The recruitment team overlooks some vital aspects of orientation making the recruited personnel take longer to get acquainted with the company. There is need for persons responsible for taking the recruited employees through an orientation program to ensure that they effectively explain to them their responsibilities and help them overcome fear and anxiety.
Need for improvement of its structured interview process
The current structured interview process used by the company has helped it get competent employees. However, there is need for the process to be improved so as to help the company effectively select the right personnel out of the qualified ones. Some of the ways that the interview process can be improved is through working with departmental managers to identify the required competencies. There is need to identify the elements considered during performance appraisal and incorporate them in the interview. The current structured interview does not consider the behavior of applicants8. There is need for it to be improved so as to put into consideration how the applicants behave when faced with challenges during operations. This will reinforce their method of identifying the competencies of the applicants thus selecting the most competent.
Culture and its effects on employees
Definitions
Organizational culture refers to practices, principles and values embraced by an organization and that dictates on how operations are to be carried out. To effectively achieve organizational goals, a company establishes different levels of how its culture is to be observed. These are referred to as cultural layers. Apart from the organizational culture, there are values and beliefs associated with different departments within an organization. These are referred to as sub-cultures.
Importance of organizational culture
The main reason for establishment of organizational cultures is to help an organization effectively realize its objectives. Organizational cultures are normally established based on organizational goals and objectives. The culture of embracing diversity in Kamuga Motors Company has led to new recruits becoming versatile. This is because as they interact with employees from diverse backgrounds they get to learn different skills. To help new recruits get accustomed to the organizational culture, the company ought to organize for on-the-job trainings where employees will be taught on the importance of embracing diversity9. This will make them understand its benefits hence becoming more attached to it.
Key issues driving flexible work in the company
Introduction of technology in both the management and operation of the company has led to a flexible working environment. There are numerous benefits that have been reaped from this. Some of the benefits include reduction of cases of absenteeism and lateness. With flexible working environment, the company has been able to retain most of its employees.
Problems encountered and how to solve them
Nevertheless, there has been a problem when it comes to managing communication between employees especially in those responsibilities that are shared. There have also been incidences where the company has not been able to cover for managers when they are in holidays. This has significantly affected organizational efficiency10. To counter these problems, the company has embarked on a strategy where all managers are involved in coming up with an operations schedule. This is to ensure that there is presence of senior managers in the company at all times. A working group comprising of representatives from all departments have also been established. The team is helping the management in implementing the changes.
Human resource employment laws
Problems encountered during employee dismissal
When an organization intends to conduct a recruitment process, it is required to come up with a clear organizational rules and regulations as well as terms and conditions of employment. All potential customers have to go through these terms and conditions and sign them if they feel that they will be able to comply. When a person is found to have violated them, the organization has the right to discipline or dismiss him or her. There are problems associated with dismissals in Kamuga Motors Company. Some staffs claims not to have been notified in advance while some demand for compensation for the period they have worked in the company. There have been cases where the dismissed employees have sued the company claiming that they were unfairly treated. To overcome these problems, the company ought to always inform its staffs about their dismissal in advance and give them time to defend themselves. This will make staffs view the dismissal process as fair thus not complaining later after they have left the company.
Company’s disciplinary procedure and its problems
As a way of instilling discipline in the company, a disciplinary committee comprising of managers have been established. This team reviews indiscipline cases reported in the organization and decides on the actions to be taken. One of the problems with this committee is that employees are not given time to defend their actions11. As a result, some end up being punished despite them taking their line of action out of good intentions.
Organizational grievances procedures and problems encountered
Human resource managers have been given the mandate of addressing employee grievances. Once employees forward their complaints, the managers evaluate them and look for ways and means of addressing them. One of the problems encountered is that employees are not involved in coming up with strategies to address their grievances. This has at times led to problems not being fully solved. The company needs to involve employees in identifying the most appropriate methods of addressing their grievances.
The role of external agencies
There are different external agencies that work with Kamuga Motors Company. These include Employment tribunals, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Health and Safety Executives and Advisory, Concilation and Arbitration Services (ACAS). ACAS helps the company with respect to improving employer-employee relationship and in arbitrating employee disputes. In addition, it offers managerial training to organizational leaders. On the other hand, Equality and Human Rights Commission promotes and enforces equality and non-discrimination regulations in United Kingdom. Its main objective is to protect employees in the country from being deprived their rights.
Employment tribunals have the role of solving disputes that arise between employers and their employees. Some of the problems addressed by this tribunal are those associated to employee dismissal, discrimination during employee recruitment process and joblessness payments. The company works closely with this tribunal to ensure that employees leaving the company are fairly treated. Apart from the aforementioned commissions, there is Health and Safety Executive. This is responsible for advocating for and implementing workplace health, welfare and safety. The executive also investigates on the possible risks in workplaces and advice the respective organization on some of the measures to take so as to avoid the risks.
Reference List
Arvey, RD & RH Faley, Fairness in selecting employees, 2nd edn, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1988.
Bratton, J & J Gold, Human resource management: Theory and practice, 4th edn, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, UK, 2007.
Brown, SJ & P Duguid, Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation, 1991, Web.
Miller, GE, ‘A method for forecasting human resource needs against internal and external labor markets’, Human Resource Planning, vol. 3,1980, pp.189-200.
Randall, SS & JW Walker, Human resources strategy: focusing on issue and actions, 1990, Web.
Schuler, RS, ‘Personnel and human resources management Practice choices and organizational strategy’, Journal of Human Resource Planning, vol.10, 1987, pp.1-21.
Torrington, D, L Hall & S Taylor, Human resource management, 6th edn, Prentice-Hall, Essex, U.K, 2005.
United States Office of Personnel Management. Structured interviews: a practical guide, 2008, Web.
Walker, JW, ‘Managing human resources in flat, lean and flexible Organizations: Trends for the 1990’s’, Human Resource Planning, vol.11, 1988, pp. 125-132.
Walker, JW, Human resource planning, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1980.
Wilson, TB, Innovative reward system for the changing workplace, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2003.
Footnotes
- RS Schuler, ‘Personnel and human resources management Practice choices and organizational strategy’, Journal of Human Resource Planning, vol.10, 1987, pp.1-21.
- SJ Brown & P Duguid, Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation, 1991, Web.
- TB Wilson, Innovative reward system for the changing workplace, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2003.
- GE Miller, ‘A method for forecasting human resource needs against internal and external labor markets’, Human Resource Planning, vol. 3, 1980, pp.189-200.
- J Bratton & J Gold, Human resource management: Theory and practice, 4th edn, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, UK, 2007.
- RD Arvey & RH Faley, Fairness in selecting employees, 2nd edn, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1988.
- D Torrington, L Hall & S Taylor, Human resource management, 6th edn, Prentice-Hall, Essex, U.K, 2005.
- United States Office of Personnel Management. Structured interviews: a practical guide, 2008, Web.
- SS Randall & JW Walker, Human resources strategy: focusing on issue and actions, 1990, Web.
- JW Walker, ‘Managing human resources in flat, lean and flexible Organizations: Trends for the 1990’s’, Human Resource Planning, vol.11, 1988, pp.125-132.
- JW Walker, Human resource planning, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1980.