Assignment:

Question

Conduct an evaluation of the approaches taken by your own organisation (or one with which you are very familiar) in one of these areas: recruitment and selection, training and development or reward management.

Provide recommendations on what you believe the organisation should do to make improvements in this area and / or maintain effectiveness.

You must evaluate your organisation's practices, not just its policies, and ensure you do so by referring to what is considered good practice from a range of reading and sources.

If you are not currently working for an organisation or if you feel the above question will prove awkward for you to complete you can do the alternative question below:

Identify and explain what are - according to various literature - the main problems organisations in any one country face in being effective in any one of the following 3 areas (a) recruitment and selection (b) managing performance or (c) staff training and development.

Explain what constitutes good practice in the area you have chosen and discuss the measures organisations should take to improve the way they manage and implement this practice.

Word guidance: Your structured essay must be between 2,500 and 2,750 words.

A structured essay is simply an essay that has some sub headings based on what the writer thinks are suitable for the answer. It is a compromise between an essay and a report. It has a clearer structure than a simple essay but not so much duplication or rigidity as many reports have. You should therefore use whatever sub headings you wish and put them in bold or underline them.

Advice

For the first question above

It is not a good idea to do the first question above unless you have plenty of knowledge and information about the company's practices in the area you w rite about. Do not simply find information about the company's practices via the internet. The reason for both the above statements is that you must evaluate the practices they use not the policies. What a company says it does and what its policies say it does is often NOT the same as what it does in reality. This assignment asks you to evaluate the practices not the policies. It is therefore best to do the second question above unless you have worked in a company recently or still do and know its practices.

An evaluation is very different to a description. You will need to briefly describe the HR practices but make sure that most of your essay focuses on evaluating things. In other words try to explain what is good and not so good about the HR practices and give reasons by comparing it to what writers and research say is good practice. What does your organisation do well and not so well and what could it do better?

What are the effects of not doing things well? What can be done to improve things? Be realistic and take into account the context of the organisation. In order to do this question well you need a good understanding of effectiveness in the HR practice you are focussing on. This is gained by reading as much as possible.

Write in an academic manner please. Keep re-reading the question and the assessment criteria. Remember marks are not given for simply describing HR practices - you must evaluate them. This requires a good knowledge of what is effectiveness in the area you are writing about so make sure you read enough prior to starting your essay.

You must include references within the essay itself not just a list at the end. You should use work from reading to add support t your views.

** Important note on good practice in writing essays:

• Do not copy and paste quotations unless you include quotation marks at the start and end of the quote AND you give the reference / source. If you don't use quotation marks then this is plagiarism and you are likely to fail the assignment.

• Secondly it is not necessary to use any quotes if you choose not to.

• Thirdly if you do use quotes do not use more than 4 in an essay of 2,500 words and make sure they are less than 50 words each.

For the second question above

Ensure you read a wide range of sources about the problems that can and do occur in the area you choose to focus on. Don't just list these but briefly explain them and also the reason why they can occur. The consequences of what may be termed weak or ineffective HR practice in the area you have chosen can also be mentioned. Use sources to show you have completed reading and can support your ideas. Read about effectiveness or what is sometimes called ‘good practice' in the area chosen.

You should make sure that the measures you suggest should be implemented are realistic and that you take care in thinking about how new practices can be put into practice. This may require training and communication for instance. Do not just give asimplistic list of what organisations shoulddo - if it was that easy everyone would already be doing it! So think about how they can embed new practices into the organisation.

You must include references within the essay itself not just a list at the end. You should use work from reading to add support t your views.

Write in an academic manner please. Keep re-reading the question and the assessment criteria.