Human Resource Management Practices And Organizational Effectiveness

Brief description of the BHP Billiton, Australia

Discuss about the Human Resource Management Practices And Organizational Effectiveness.

The following report provides a portfolio of a set of activities related to human resource management. The purpose of the report is to derive an in-depth understanding about human resource management and its functions impacting the organization’s operation.  In order to meet this stated purpose, the discussion in the report includes different theories and models of HRM. More specifically, the first task of the report considers the organization BHP Billiton- a mining organization performing operation in Australia. In order to review the human resource management at BHP Billiton, different function such as types of employees, type of HR approaches  and types of functions used, have been critically reviewed liking with theories and models. Similarly, the task 2 includes the same industry to describe the staff retention and development policies of BHP. Based on the assessment of HR management, a suitable performance management plan for BHP has been developed in the report.

BHP is leading global resource organization; it deals with minerals, gas and oil extraction. BHP’s products are sold across the world, due to high sales and innovative marketing approaches the firm is leading through the Singapore market, Huston and United State (BHP, 2018). The organization runs the operation under a Dual Listed Company Structure. The corporate of purpose of BHP is to create a sustaining and share holder value by discovering and marketing natural resources. Another significant approach of the firm is to acquire and operate large, sustainable and upstream assets, which is diversified by market and regions. On the other side, the organization ensures a sustainable access to education, training, healthcare and quality and opportunities support the social inclusion as well as deliver the opportunity for the people to realize their full potential. The employment structure of the company shows that BHP respect the rights of indigenous people and knowledge their rights to maintain their capture, tradition and customs.

Describing the type of employees with reference to Atkinson’s flexible model

The organization values its members and encourages the growth of key employees to build and to support persistently stable performance as well as the growth of its diverse operation (Albrecht et al., 2015). BHP strives to develop an understanding about the purpose and achievement among its organizational members in the operation. Organization attracts hire, employee and enhance the skills of its workers who could share and understand organizational values. The human resource department at BHP encourages members to extend their capabilities as well as utilize their functional skills to help the firm to implement its strategy and create a sustainable future. In order to gain success in a diversified business, the organization is trying to build   workforce that effectively reflects the communities in which the organization performs. This means the organization is trying to build a flexible workforce maintaining diversity in its approach. Similarly, Atkinson’s model for labor flexibility also talks about the “core” worker as well as the peripheral workforce (Atkinson & Storey, 2016).

Describing the type of employees with reference to Atkinson’s flexible model

BHP, for building a full-time employment, provides train and development program to shape its workforce needs. In Atkinson’s flexibility, the core group stands for the full time employees, which would provide the organization with the functionality flexibility (Atkinson & Storey, 2016). The purpose of building a flexible workforce of BHP is quite similar to the benefits associated with Atkinson’s flexibility model such as efficient matching of staff levels to business structure and volumes, long-term competitive advantage and improved customer service.

Reinforcing business through the energy of one team

BHP tends to use prominent HR approaches, where through operation both employees and the originations rain benefitted . In order to fulfill the business needs, the organization strengthens its operation with the emery of one team. Through training and development programs, BHP’s trying to build a workforce that reflects the communities in which organizational Assets are located and its employees live (BHP, 2018).

The employees at BHP tend to hold themselves accountable for operational the organizational functions. However, the leaders in the organization must have to follow the principle of keeping safety and making people a priority and developing integrity.

As the organization is running a diverse operation including mining, gas and oil, worker safety at BHP is always a first priority. The organization is committed to a range of global safety priorities in FY2016 that continues to lead BHP’s decision-making and approach to safety (BHP, 2018).  There are four different forces related to health and safety at BHP such as “reinforcing that safety comes before the productivity, the focus on the field of verification of materials as well as fatal risk, improve its internal investigation process as well as broadly share, and apply lessons.

According to Nankervis’s strategic HRM model, the organization should generate a strategic capability, skilled, committed and well-motivated employees. According to Delery and Gupta (2016), strategic human resource management tends to provide a unifying framework, which should be developed based on contingency and integrative phenomenon. However, the present HR framework of BHP indicates that organizations pay attention to integrity and flexibility, which must include the needs for a skilled and committed workforce.

As BHP is performing its operation in a global environment with its products and services, it builds a diverse workforce in which recruitment and selection has been done a talent haunt programs. As the organization tends to perform a set of risky operation, it maintains good working conditions such as flexible work hour, adequate leave facilities, and managing employee relations with both full time and part-time employment contracts. In order to build a diverse workforce, it provides suitable training and development program (Hornbeck et al.  2011).  

Types of approaches to HR observing about BHP

As put forward by Brewster et al., (2016), in a business sense, the term “high turnover” can hold the two meanings. However, particularly, in human resource, employee turnover is referred to the rate at which employee tend to leave their job position in an integration and replaced by new employees.  BHP has a large workforce with extending job positions but its mining department is presently facing a growing employee turnover challenge. Particularly, the employee turnover rate in 2016 was around 19%, which is 6% higher than the turnover recorded in 2014 (BHP, 2018).  On the other side, the turnover rate observed in oil and gas is around 11% of which is again 2% higher than percentage recorded in 2012. Latorre et al., (2016) mentioned that in mining and oil and gas industry, the people tend to look for long-term employment and suitable career growth opportunities, as the industry is always remains in the growing stage despite the fall in the global economy.

When digging into this fact, it is found that Nankervis, Rowley and Salleh (2016) mentioned despite the fall the in economy, the industry is in the growing stage, as the demand of mining, oil and gas is always increasing in the global environment. The increase of demand is also influencing the employees in the sector. The people, developing career in the sector look for flexibility, adequate pay, career growth opportunities and required motivation for work where they learn the skills and gain industrial knowledge.  Following theory of motivation proposed by Herzberg helps to identify how motivation and other stated elements influence employee retention and development.

According to Herzberg, motivation factors can be divided into two factors such as hygiene factor and motivation factor.

Hygiene factor: Hygiene factors are those factors, which are mandatory for bringing motivation at workplace (Alshmemri, Shahwan-Akl &Maude, 2017). Thus, if BHP has to control its high staff wastage, the following elements should be considered by the organization itself.

Pay- BHP needs to provide its employees with appropriate salary structure, which needs to be appropriate and reasonable. The pay structure in BHP’s all department (mining oil and gas) needs to be equal and competitive.

Company policies and administrative policies: As the purpose of BHP is to build a flexible workforce, organization‘s policies should not too rigid and they should be fair and clear.

 Fringe benefits- The workers at all department of BHP need to be offered healthcare plans, benefits for the family members and employee help program.

Health and safety approaches for the employees

Interpersonal relations: The employees in mining and oil and gas industry often deal with large set of operation; thereby, the relationship of employees of should be effective with the peers and leadership.

Likewise, BHP also needs to pay attention to the motivation factor.

Recognition: The employees in the mining sector tend to undertake large project; thereby, they the leaders or the supervisors at BHP needs to praise their workers.

Growth and promotional opportunities:  The employees in BHP work under a long-term contract; therefore, the organizations should provide appropriate growth and career development opportunities to its employees.

Developing a performance management plan for a mining manager at Mining department at BHP Billiton, Australia

The mining manager needs to maintain and encourage a positive safety as well as environment culture throughout the operation. The managers have to lead the mine operation management team as well as deal with mining personnel and resources. Apart from these responsibilities, the proposed mining manager has to perform the following responsibilities.

• Suggest a capital expenditure projects to expand the capacity or enhance the operation
• Prepare production or the operation budget and supervise and report performance
• the manager has to contribute to business planning and organization strategy to enhance competitiveness

Self-Evaluation: To implement this self-evaluation method, the mining manager needs to judge his/her own performance against pre-determined criteria. Latorre et al., (2016) mentioned that typically the self-evaluation is considered when an official performance review is developed to  allow a more detailed discussion and to make sure that employee understand how they will be judged. This method could be little subjective to reflect work performance properly because workers could rate themselves too high or too low; however, the discrepancies between the staff and organization can be perceptive.

360-degree feedback: 360-degree feedback review method helps to deliver a comprehensive look at a staff’s performance by pulling feedback from the outside sources. Hence, the mining manager and BHP’s leader will still have to complete an assessment of employee’s work performance and technical skills. However, Bracken and Rose (2011) on their article of performance management mentioned that this review method also involves the feedback from peers, direct report and non-direct supervisors with whom the proposed manger has to work regularly.  In addition to this, this review method includes an evolution of proposed manager’s character and leadership skills.

Rating scale: Rating scale is the most commonly used performance review method and this method is base on a set of organization- developed criteria (Harms, Clifford & Cryer, 2014). This can further include traits, behavior and competencies –against which the staff could be judged or evaluated. Hence, the human resource department of BHP has to assign each criterion with a numerical value, generally on a ten-or five point scale.  However, the organization has to be sure that employee understand where the achievement or success and failure fall on the scale. When the employees know about the scale, they can perform accordingly.

Considering strategic human resource management model proposed by Nankervis et al

Among these three types of performance review method, 360-degree feedback method should be selected as the most suitable performance review method.

Justifying why 360-degree feedback method is the most suitable one

360-degree method will be a suitable one because, in this particular method, several parties such as the supervisors, peers and team’s managers review the employee’s performance. Thereby, when the performance of a staff is rated by three different outsider sources, state of transparency is automatically established.  This method does not create a biased result.

Pros and cons of 360 degree feedback method

Table 1: Pros and Cons of 360-degree feedback method

(Source: Author’s Note)

An article conducted by Stone and Deadrick (2015) on challenges and opportunities affecting the future of human resource management, reveals the fact that the field of human resource management is observing several pressure for change. Particularly, the authors have mentioned that shift in the economy, domestic diversity and advancement in the technology have created new domains for the organization and strengthened the HR field with some new direction.  In addition, the findings of the article also indicate the fact that technology and talent management are considered as two significant drivers of changing the human resource scenario of present century. However, Albrecht et al., (2015) arguably mentioned that technology is indeed a driver but what changes the field of human resource is the dynamic business environment, where each day, the marketers are facing new challenge or approach, where the need for change remains as the certain fact.  This means that the organizations in the recent time are planning to develop a workforce that is flexible to the changing nature of market.

Firms in each sector tend to make large investment on their human resource. Nonetheless, the author of the article on “challenges and opportunity affecting the future of human resource signifies the fact that change in the field of human resource is caused by globalization and  expanded interest in particularly in innovation and sustainability. On the other side, Kavanagh, and Johnson (2017) mentioned that one of the significant challenges affecting the future of HR processes is the change from a manufacturing to a particular service as the fundamental of economic base. Similarly, the service economist arguably mentioned that service activities today tend to dominate the economies of some industrialized nations. Consequently, the businesses are considered as the subset of overall service economy. Thus, the increase in knowledge economy places new demands on organizations and it is bringing about changes in firm’s goals and HR practices.

Types of HR functions performed

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be ascertained that human resource management is a broad element of organizational function. The establishment to human resource can determine the performance of the organization. Likewise, the change in HR management can influence the overall performance of the organization. However, one of the basic functions of HR department of the organization is to always monitor and supervise employee performance, need, skills and characteristics to lead the workforce towards a desired direction.

References and Bibliography 

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Alshmemri, M., Shahwan-Akl, L., & Maude, P. (2017). Herzberg’s two-factor theory. Life Science Journal, 14(5).

Atkinson, J., & Storey, D. J. (Eds.). (2016). Employment, the small firm and the labour market. Routledge.

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BHP. (2018). BHP Billiton | A leading global resources company. [online] Available at: https://www.bhp.com [Accessed 29 Mar. 2018].

Bracken, D. W., & Rose, D. S. (2011). When does 360-degree feedback create behavior change? And how would we know it when it does?. Journal of Business and Psychology, 26(2), 183.

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Delery, J., & Gupta, N. (2016). Human resource management practices and organizational effectiveness: internal fit matters. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 3(2), 139-163.

Harms, T., Clifford, R. M., & Cryer, D. (2014). Early childhood environment rating scale. Teachers College Press.

Hornbeck, P. V., Kornhauser, J. M., Tkachev, S., Zhang, B., Skrzypek, E., Murray, B., … & Sullivan, M. (2011). PhosphoSitePlus: a comprehensive resource for investigating the structure and function of experimentally determined post-translational modifications in man and mouse. Nucleic acids research, 40(D1), D261-D270.

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Johnstone, S. (2018). Employment practices, labour flexibility and the Great Recession: An automotive case study. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 0143831X17748370.

Kavanagh, M. J., & Johnson, R. D. (Eds.). (2017). Human resource information systems: Basics, applications, and future directions. Sage Publications.

Latorre, F., Guest, D., Ramos, J., & Gracia, F. J. (2016). High commitment HR practices, the employment relationship and job performance: A test of a mediation model. European Management Journal, 34(4), 328-337.

Nankervis, A., Rowley, C., & Salleh, N. M. (2016). Introduction: Human resource management and organisational effectiveness–an overview and synthesis. In Asia Pacific Human Resource Management and Organisational Effectiveness (pp. 1-13).

Stone, D. L., & Deadrick, D. L. (2015). Challenges and opportunities affecting the future of human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 25(2), 139-145.

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