Lecturer: David Perman
This module will be an analysis of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices and policies in modern companies and organizations. These involve companies maintaining a flow of suitably skilled and qualified employees, motivating, promoting and rewarding them and making sure that all statutory requirements that involve employee welfare are met.
Over the last two decades economic, social and technological changes have forced HR professionals to demonstrate their ability to contribute to the strategic and commercial concerns of companies and public sector organisation. This has introduced a tension into their work as the traditional administrative policies and allegiances to employee welfare have had to be transformed into the language of targets, results, business performance and change.
In the last few years HRM professionals have also developed their concerns with Corporate Reputations and the development of new techniques for identifying and retaining ‘talented employees’. These new developments are also strongly linked with the establishment of Employer Brands and this theme will be a permanent feature of the module as it only sensible, in business terms, to view the past through the lenses of the present.
The relatively new approach to managing the flow of human capital through the organisation is known as Talent Management and it has dominated the literature over the last decade. The key features of this approach will be discussed in weeks 4 and 5 and will be the basis for the critical analysis of the HR functions in weeks 6-9.
The growth of web based HR activities has also encouraged the rapid growth of outsourcing HR activities and has led to a reconsideration of the role HR departments within most organisations, big and small.
Specific objectives are:
To assess the strategic relevance of HRM and Talent Management practices and their impact upon Business Performance.
To assess the role of managerial competencies and capabilities in the development of HR plans and strategies.
To provide a comprehensive analysis of the role of HR metrics and analytics in the delivery of HR practices.
To assess the importance of the new HR practices associated with Talent Management and the creation of Employer Brands.
To understand the implications of using differing methods of selecting, promoting and assessing employees.
To be able relate competencies to performance and to understand the suitability of utilising different type of appraisals.
To re-evaluate the relevance of the concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘learning’ for our understanding of HRM issues.
To appreciate the importance of new ways of classifying jobs and roles in order to enable them to incorporate changes in the knowledge required to do the work in collaboration with others
This module will be assessed by and individual assignment (50%) and a two hour exam (50%)