Salford City Council's Essay On Talent Attraction, Recruitment, And Retention Strategies.

Human Resource Development Theory

Attracting of talents can be defined as the process of obtaining prospective candidates to interview for job posts. Recruitment is defined as the process of attracting, selecting and appointing appropriate human resources to work for organisations. Retention refers to the capability of organisations to retain their employees using methods like promotions in order to benefit from them for a longer period. The essay would deal with the human resource development theory in relation to attracting, recruiting and retaining talents by Salford City Council, the United Kingdom and take lessons from three British organisations namely, Unilever, Barclays and the National Health Services. The human resource development (HRD) theory deals with attracting, recruitment and retaining talents. This is because management of human resources are of utmost importance to organisations because they ensure continuous execution of operations. Salford City Council is the local governing authority of the City of Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The body is responsible for arrangement of civic amenities like health and education within its jurisdiction. The Mayor heads the Salford Council and ruling party is the Labour Party of Britain (salford.gov.uk 2017).

Salford City Council should implement its project of attracting, recruiting and retaining talents of all ages by forming human resource strategies based on the British multinational organisations like Unilever, Barclays and National Health Services. The government can adopt several strategies to acquire and retain human resource of all ages.

The first strategy, which Salford City Council can implement to attract talents of all ages, is by forming a promotion of its brand as an employer of choice. The global companies like Unilever and Barclays attract employees using their international brand equity, which act as signs of job security for prospective employees. Their job advertisements contain the job description in detail, which allows the candidates to judge whether they should join these companies, or not (Tavassoli, Sorescu  and Chandy 2014). The job description has clear mention about the job responsibilities, eligibility criteria, particular area of experience candidates should have, the expectations of the companies from the employees and an idea about compensation packages. This detailed description allows the companies to create a transparent and employee friendly image of itself among the prospective candidates. The Salford City Council is a government body, which gets continuous funding from the Government of England. It vision is to transform Salford as a great work place which would encourage talent and diversity management. The Council envisions promoting healthy employee cultures to ensure that employees work with respect, pride and responsibility. Thus, the Council can form strategies to promote its vision and mission to attract employees from diverse industries of all ages (Khan and Naseem 2014).

Strategies to Attract Talents of All Ages

The second strategy of the Salford Council should aim to recruit employees of diverse ages. The body must form a recruitment strategy, which should applicable in all the departments throughout the organisation. The recruitment stage should follow the employer brand strategies to attract talents by creating desire in them to apply for jobs in the council. The government body can base its HRD policies on the integrated talent management solutions model, which integrates the recruitment with the business needs, visions and missions of the organisations. The body should conduct job descriptions, applicant recognition, scrutiny of their backgrounds and health checkups before hiring them (Tajuddin, Ali and Kamaruddin 2015). The human resource department should mention the job description while recruiting employees. The interview questions should be framed according to the job descriptions and the position for which the candidates are being interviewed. The interview process should be designed to assess the real level of knowledge and experience level of the candidates. The body should scrutinise to gain knowledge about the real background of the employees (Dries 2013). Thus, the recruitment process should ensure the practice of human resource development is aligned to the integrated talent management solution model.

The third strategy, which Salford City Council should adopt, is to retain its employees. The body should retain its employees by facilitating appraisals and promotions. An analysis of the human resource planning of the National Health Services shows that the non profit making government body prepare succession plans for its employees by taking into account the future vacancies and retirements. The organisation conducts leadership development training and mentoring as integral part of the succession plans (porthosp.nhs.uk 2017). These succession plans and appraisals create job satisfaction among the employees, which would help the Salford City Council to retain these employees. The body must follow uniform retention policies in all the departments to ensure equable career development opportunities to the employees (oracle.com 2017).

The Salford City Council can take into account two different practices to obtain highly talented human resources of diverse age groups. They are training development programmes comprising of in-house training and coaching by line managers. According to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), these two practices are the most prevalent in the United Kingdom (cipd.co.uk 2017).

The first approach to talent induction and retention, which Salford City Council can adopt, is in-house training. The concept of in-house training refers to training of employees within the company premises in training rooms where a trainer provides them with knowledge they would require to carry on their job responsibilities. The Salford City can apply this method in all the departments to inculcate the necessary skills the newly hired employees would require to work or receive on job training under a line manager successfully. The method of in house training has advantages for both the organisation and the employees. The first advantage of in-house training to the Salford Council as per Masalimova  and Sabirova (2014) is that, it would be able o offer training to the employees without bearing any extra costs to take them to training centres. Moreover, if an external trainer is hired, the council would just require to pay for the trainer and not for hiring a slot at a training centre. Thus, in-house training can help the council in saving costs. According to Kazis  and Molina  (2016), the second advantage of the in-house training for the council is that the new employed employees can be onboarded more successfully. The human resource department gets an opportunity to introduce the employees to the organisation, its culture and job environment. It gives an opportunity to the employer to induce the new employees to the organisation and groom them. The third advantage of in-house training is that employers can educate the new employees about diversity management (Bafaneli  and Setibi  2015). The multinational organisations like Barclays are successful employees due to their diversity management skills(jobs.barclays.co.uk 2017). This would enable the managers to manage their diverse human resources and lead them towards attainment of organisational goals  (Chancellor and Abbott 2015).

Recruiting Employees of Diverse Ages

The method of in-house training would benefit the newly induced trainees in several ways. Emmanuel (2015) points out the first advantage of in-house training, which is, the trainees would get opportunity to acclimatise with the organisational culture of the body. They would be able to understand the organisational culture and the expectations the Salford Council has from them. Secondly, as Kweka and Sedoyeka (2014) points out, it would allow them to develop the basic knowledge about their job responsibilities. One can also point out that the Salford Council can use the in-house training as a platform to introduce the integrated talent management solutions model and use it to align the trainees with the governing and facilitating goals of the body. However, one can point that the without the second method, the coaching and training by line managers, the in-house training of employees has little actual benefit for the employees. It is not possible to create real job situations in the in-house training centres and the trainers merely simulate the actual job conditions through methods like storytelling, lectures and slide shows. Thus, in absence of actual job situations, the newly hired trainees lose motivation or interests in the training. This limits them from deriving full benefits of human resource development from the training. Secondly, the absence of actual job situations and challenges prevents the trainees from gaining in depth knowledge. These flaws of in-house would call for the Salford Council to apply the second training method, training under the supervision of line managers in real job situations.

 The method of training employees under the supervision of line managers in actual job situation is so effective, that more than half of the personnel in Britain prefer it. The newly hired employees are trained under the supervision of the senior employees, which benefits the new employees, the senior employees and the council. The council through the on-job training process can introduce the new employees brought onboard to the actual working conditions (Wijewantha 2016). The first advantage of on-job training derived from the analysis of the discussion is, the new employees can as a result understand the actual working conditions. Hülsheger et al. (2013) in support of on-job training state that the process allows employees to gain job satisfaction by working under actual conditions. This ensures that new employees having experiences start contributing towards productivity of their departments faster which would allow the council to achieve more effective human resource development.

Retaining Employees with Appraisals and Promotions

The second advantage of on-job training under supervision of line managers is that the managers and the employees are able to establish more cordial work relationship and benefits from each other. Fu and Deshpande (2014) most of the companies like Unilever keep their experienced and talented senior employees onsite. As a result, the newly hired employees while undergoing training by these line managers would be able to learn from them. The senior employees would be able to benefit from the innovative ideas of the new employees. The junior employees as a result feel more important which motivates them to be committed to perform highly(unilever.co.uk 2017). This understanding would enable employees of all ages to work collaboratively contribute towards the performance of the council. Moreover, the employees also perceive this as the company’s positive career planning efforts for them. The Salford Council can integrate the new employees with its working environment (Bonenberger et al. 2014).This analysis clearly points out that on-job training has certain advantages which would benefit the Salford Council, the senior managers and the junior managers. These advantages would help the council to retain the employees because better understanding of the organisational culture and job responsibilities would motivate them. They would be able to get involved in day-to-day operations and contribute to the growth of the company. This would in turn create job satisfaction and they would continue working with the Salford Council.   As a result, the council would be able to retain such employees for longer tenure and achieve long-term human resource development, which would save its expenditure of frequent on-boarding new employees. However, Mathis, (2014) points out the darker aspects of mentoring by line managers. He points out that if the line managers are not expert trainers, the new employees may not develop the required skills successfully which in turn hampers their performance and their job satisfaction. Utete  (2017) points out that transfer of knowledge is important to make employees skilful and retain them. This clearly points out that knowledge to inexperienced newly hired employees can take place best through in-house training. Training under line managers’ supervision would benefit employees with some experience but not the inexperienced employees. This analysis shows that as far as the Salford Council is concerned, the body has to adapt the training methods across departments according to the needs of the employees. For example, the newly hired employees with minimum experience can undergo training under mentorship of the line managers whereas for inexperienced employees, the most appropriate process would be in-house training. Combining these two training methods would allow the body to recruit, train, retain and deploy talents of all ages across departments.

Training Development Programs comprising of In-house Training and Coaching by Line Managers

After analysis of the above discussion, one can conclude that, the human resource department of the Salford City Council should form a multifaceted HR policy to attract, recruit, train and retain employees of all ages throughout the body. The recommended HR policy should be transparent about the job responsibilities of the employees who would be recruited. The body must use its brand value to attract talents to recruit them and benefit from their efficiencies. The job advertisement should be ethical and transparent about the important areas of employment like compensation, amount of job pressure and working environment. The aim of recruitment should be retaining talents and ensure their career growth. The training methods to train the employees should be decided according to the attributes of the employees like line manager training for experienced employees.

References:

Bafaneli, S. and Setibi, G., 2015. The Impact of on-the-Job Training on Employee Performance: The Case of Riley’s Hotel. Journal of Business Theory and Practice, 3(2), p.239.

Barclays Bank Jobs and Careers. (2017). Application Process. [online] Available at: https://jobs.barclays.co.uk/application-process/ [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Bonenberger, M., Aikins, M., Akweongo, P. and Wyss, K., 2014. The effects of health worker motivation and job satisfaction on turnover intention in Ghana: a cross-sectional study. Human resources for health, 12(1), p.43.

Chancellor, W. and Abbott, M., 2015. Apprenticeship training and productivity growth: a case study of the Australian construction industry. Australian Bulletin of Labour, 41(1), p.22.

CIPD. (2017). What is HR and L&D | CIPD. [online] Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/new-hr-learning-development [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Dries, N., 2013. The psychology of talent management: A review and research agenda. Human Resource Management Review, 23(4), pp.272-285.

Emmanuel, S.M., 2015. The Effectiveness of Human Capital Development in Triacta Nigeria Limited (Road Construction Company) (Doctoral dissertation, University of East London).

Fu, W. and Deshpande, S.P., 2014. The impact of caring climate, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment on job performance of employees in a China’s insurance company. Journal of Business Ethics, 124(2), pp.339-349.

Hülsheger, U.R., Alberts, H.J., Feinholdt, A. and Lang, J.W., 2013. Benefits of mindfulness at work: The role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(2), p.310.

Kazis, R. and Molina, F., 2016. Exploring Middle-Skill Training Programs for Employment in the Retail Industry. MDRC.

Khan, M.K. and Naseem, I., 2014. Investigating the power of employer branding attributes.

Kweka, N.A. and Sedoyeka, E., 2014. Labor Turnover in Tanzania–Telecom vs Banking Sectors. International Journal of Computing & ICT Research, 8(2).

Masalimova, A.R. and Sabirova, L.L., 2014. Multi-dimensional classification of types and forms of corporate education. American Journal of Applied Sciences, 11(7), pp.1054-1058.

Mathis, S.T., 2014. Training trends in the oil and gas and petrochemical industries (Doctoral dissertation).

Oracle.com. 2017. Cite a Website - Cite This For Me. [online] Available at: https://www.oracle.com/us/industries/aerospace/018842.pdf [Accessed 14 Nov. 2017].

Porthosp.nhs.uk. 2017. Succession Planning. [online] Available at: https://www.porthosp.nhs.uk/Learning/succession-planning.htm [Accessed 14 Nov. 2017].

Salford.gov.uk. (2017). Salford City Council. [online] Available at: https://www.salford.gov.uk/ [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Tajuddin, D., Ali, R. and Kamaruddin, B.H., 2015. Developing talent management crisis model for quality life of bank employees in Malaysia. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 201, pp.80-84.

Tavassoli, N.T., Sorescu, A. and Chandy, R., 2014, December. Employee-based brand equity: Why firms with strong brands pay their executives less. American Marketing Association.

Unilever UK & Ireland. (2017). Application process. [online] Available at: https://www.unilever.co.uk/careers/graduates/application-process/ [Accessed 15 Nov. 2017].

Utete, R., 2017. The effectiveness of staff training on knowledge transfer and employee retention: a case study of Servcor Private Limited in Zimbabwe (Doctoral dissertation).

Wijewantha, P., 2016. Creating multi-cultural organizations for diversity management.