THE ASSOCIATION OF BUSINESS EXECUTIVES

DIPLOMA PART 2
HRM(Dip)

Human Resource Management

morning 8 June 2005

1 Time allowed: 3 hours.

2 Answer any FOUR questions.

3 All questions carry 25 marks. Marks for subdivisions of questions are

shown in brackets.

4 No books, dictionaries, notes or any other written materials are

allowed in this examination.

5 Calculators are allowed providing they are not programmable and

cannot store or recall information. Electronic dictionaries and
personal organisers are NOT allowed.

6 Candidates who break ABE regulations, or commit any misconduct,

will be disqualified from the examinations.

7 Question papers must not be removed from the Examination Hall.

 Answer any FOUR questions

Q1 Andrew Mayo has pointed out that when people are asked
to list the five most powerful learning experiences that
have truly affected their lives and influenced their
performance, only rarely do they mention any training
courses they have attended. In his own case, he can only
think of one course that made a deep impression on him,
and that was a two-day programme in presentation skills.

(a) What does this finding tell us about the way people
learn? (10 marks)

(b) What can organisations do to overcome the barriers to

productive learning on the part of their employees,
and also create maximum opportunities for them to
learn effectively? (15 marks)
(Total 25 marks)

Q2 Many organisations now try to secure a level of

commitment and engagement from their employees which
goes beyond straightforward compliance with the formal
obligations of a job description.

(a) Why has this change come about? (10 marks)

(b) Illustrating your answer where you can with practical

examples, examine the ways in which organisations
can seek to create and sustain a high level of
commitment and engagement within their workforce. (15 marks)
(Total 25 marks)

2
Q3 Imagine that you have been asked to produce a human
resource plan for an organisation.

(a) Outline and justify what information you would need

before you could produce the plan. (15 marks)

(b) Indicate what kinds of measures you would

incorporate into the human resource plan in order to
cope with an expected surplus of staff in the near
future. (10 marks)
(Total 25 marks)

Q4 Many organisations have explored and implemented new

patterns of work in order to provide themselves with more
flexibility at lower cost. Briefly describe and evaluate the
principal methods available, under each of the two
headings below:

(a) Flexible forms of employment. (10 marks)

(b) Flexible forms of working (both time-based and

location-based). (15 marks)
(Total 25 marks)

3 P.T.O.
Q5 At a future meeting of your organisations management
team, you are required to deliver a presentation
incorporating proposals for creating a more flexible
workforce.

(a) Outline the factors you would take into account when
preparing your presentation. Note that you are not
required to comment on the content of the
presentation. (10 marks)

(b) After your presentation you will be involved in some

negotiation with your colleagues about your ideas.
Explain the phases of negotiation that are likely to
take place, and indicate broadly how you intend to
conduct yourself within each phase. (15 marks)
(Total 25 marks)

Q6 As the newly recruited Human Resources Officer for an

organisation that has never had a Human Resources
function before, you have been asked to produce
checklists for managers which guide them in the conduct
of various people-related scenarios that they are likely to
encounter in the performance of their duties. Summarise
the main points you would want to make in relation to
each of the following:

(a) Grievance-handling;
(b) Counselling;
(c) Coaching;
(d) Discipline;
(e) A return-to-work interview for an employee who has
been absent because of sickness for the past two
months.
(Total 25 marks 5 per checklist)

4
Q7 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a cause of
growing concern for organisations in terms of their
relationships with various stakeholders, including
employees, shareholders, customers, suppliers and the
wider community.

(a) Why has CSR become such a high-profile issue in the

way described above? (5 marks)

(b) In what ways can organisations create and implement

policies and programmes that demonstrate their
commitment to CSR? (10 marks)

(c) What are the implications of CSR so far as the

conduct of a professional HR practitioner is
concerned? (10 marks)
(Total 25 marks)

Q8 The ABE Study Manual for Human Resource Management

poses the challenging question, Do organisations need
management?, which could be coupled with the equally
challenging question, Do organisations need leaders?
With these thoughts in mind, produce your responses to
the following:

(a) To what extent do organisations need management,

and employees need managers? (10 marks)

(b) To what extent do organisations need leadership, and

employees need leaders? (15 marks)

(You will receive credit for the inclusion of relevant

examples to reinforce the arguments presented in
your answer.)
(Total 25 marks)

5
 Diploma Part 2

Human Resource Management

Examiners Suggested Answers

INTRODUCTION

These Specimen Answers have been written largely in the form of key points
which students should incorporate into any responses that would satisfy the
standards appropriate to the ABE Diploma in Business Administration. It would
normally be expected that within the examination itself, candidates should
supply more comprehensive treatments than those suggested here for example,
where possible they should introduce practical examples and citations from
authoritative third party sources (such as the ABE Study Manual, other
textbooks, and relevant articles from newspapers) in order to illustrate and
reinforce their arguments and answer content.

Given the nature of Human Resource Management, it is not always possible to

generate Specimen Answers that are definitively correct, with the implication that
all other answers, if different, must be wrong to a greater or lesser extent.

Question 1

How people learn, and the value of training courses

(a) How people learn

There are several theories about learning, and it would be appropriate to

provide a very brief review of these alternative approaches:

Behaviourism, classical conditiong (Pavlov) and operant

conditioning (Skinner) all these models assume that learning
occurs as a result of positive and/or negative reinforcement.
Cognitive theory learning is an holistic process involving the mind,
the body and the spirit. Cognitive theorists believe that humans have
the ability to learn and think, store this learning and thinking, and
then apply it to specific situations.
Experiental learning (Carl Rogers) this view equally regards
learning as an holistic process, with the emphasis on learning-by-
doing.
Kolbs experiential learning cycle reflecting the fact that learning
is an ongoing and continuous process, with four elements:
Experience, Reflection, Conceptualisation and Application.

Experience: we use our experiences (or, to be more precise, our

recollections of them) to further our learning. These experiences may be
structured, or planned, or random.

Reflection: the next stage of the Kolbs cycle is about examining an

experience in order to be able to identify what actually happened, to
understand what the experience meant, and how it could affect our future
behaviour.
 Conceptualisation: the individual begins to generalise from the individual
experience in order to decipher opportunities for the learning from that
event to be applied in other, future scenarios.

Application: the phase of active experimentation, in which behaviour is

modified in order to test out whether the earlier phases of the learning cycle
have made sense.

This cyclical process needs to be completed in full for effective learning to

take place. If one is tempted to jump from Experience to Application
without fully analysing and conceptualising the experience, then it is
unlikely that any new behaviour will be effective or helpful.

The process of learning varies between individuals, too, because of their

individual learning-style preferences. To this end, Honey and Mumford
have developed a diagnostic process linked to their classification of four
learning styles (Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist), the argument
being that if people know their preferred styles, they can then seek to
structure their learning more productively.

(b) Overcoming the barriers to productive learning

Some of the barriers to learning are within ourselves, and some are within
our external environment, including the organisation.

The barriers within ourselves include:

The lessons learned from earlier attempts at learning, which may have
suggested to us that learning is a waste of effort;
Our own inability to utilise the Kolbs learning cycle systematically, or
even to be aware of it and its benefits;
Our lack of knowledge about our learning style preferences, and
therefore our inability to structure situations to permit us to create
learning potential from them.

The barriers within our environment include:

The dismissive approach to learning exhibited by others in our peer

group, especially immediate group members;
The lack of encouragement for learning displayed by our immediate
seniors (managers in the work environment, parents in the home);
The absence of any learning organisation culture in the workplace;
The existence of a blame culture in the business, which therefore
inhibits experimentation with new solutions and implicitly encourages
the continuation of the status quo;
The absence of learning resources courses, literature, and so forth;
The continued reliance of the organisation on outdated and inefficient
methods of learning within its training programmes, i.e., using
lectures instead of hands-on techniques.
 Creating opportunities for employees to learn

The introduction of a learning organisation culture: role modelling from

the top, creating learning resource opportunities, rewarding, recognising
and celebrating any group or individual achievements that dramatise
learning.

Job design: if consideration is given to creation of tasks that are inherently

challenging, where employee problem-solving skills are regularly required,
then personal development takes place automatically. As an example,
empowered customer-service employees answering customer queries,
complaints and problems may use their initiative in resolving the issues
and will gradually become more versatile as they do so.

Continuous improvement: where organisations embark on quality

initiatives, the establishment of cross-functional project teams will create
chances for learning for the individuals involved.

Replacement of training by learning: this entails the design of

in-company programmes around the realities of learning and the benefits of
learning-by-doing followed by feedback and more practice, (in other words,
the model that Andrew Mayo indirectly experienced when he attended a
two-day presentations skills workshop).

Question 2

Securing commitment and engagement from employees

(a) Why organisations now try to secure commitment and engagement from
their employees

Commitment has been defined as the relative strength of the individuals

identification together with involvement, in a particular organisation. It
consists of three factors, according to Michael Armstrong [A Handbook of
Personnel Management Practice, Kogan Page, 1995, p. 173]:

A strong desire to remain a member of the organisation;

A strong belief in, and acceptance of, the values and goals of the
organisation; and
A readiness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation.

Commitment and engagement have come to be seen as important for

organisations because committed and engaged employees:

Are much more willing to engage in positive discretionary behaviour,

going beyond the mechanics of their job descriptions in order to
deliver customer satisfaction;
Are much less likely to leave the organisation and go elsewhere;
Will contribute more effectively to the organisations overall
performance measured by key indices such as profitability, resource
utilisation, innovation and so forth;
 Will work together more synergistically in the pursuit of overall
organisational objectives.

Many of the benefits to be gained from securing commitment and

engagement among employees are articulated in terms of the clear
disadvantages of a traditional command-and-control structure, at least
when evaluated against the aspirations of todays workforce. A command-
and-control mentality often produces employees who are psychologically
detached, alienated and even hostile.

A belief in the positive value of commitment has been confidently expressed

by Walton [From control to commitment in the workplace, Harvard
Business Review, 1985] who states that Underlying all these [human
resource] policies is a management philosophy, often embedded in a
published statement, that acknowledges the legitimate claims of a
companys multiple stakeholders owners, employees, customers and the
public. At the centre of this philosophy is a belief that eliciting employee
commitment will lead to enhanced performance. The evidence shows this
belief to be well founded.

(b) Ways in which organisations can seek to create and sustain

commitment/engagement from their workforce

High-level goals: the Big Idea. Commitment and engagement presuppose

the ability of the organisation to unify its employees behind a single
encompassing vision. This Big Idea may be mutuality in the case of the
Nationwide Building Society, customer-first for Tesco, and quality in the
case of Rolls Royce.

Communication programmes. Commitment and engagement can only be

secured if people understand what they are expected to commit to. The
messages from management, however, have to be delivered to the
employees using language which employees regard as familiar and
acceptable, and all available media, both short-term and long-term, must
be exploited (i.e., bulletin boards, mouse-mats, screen-savers, company
magazines, and so forth).

Education. In all the organisations support activities, the importance of the

Big Idea must be emphasised.

Training. Although most training is intended to develop specific

competencies, the training must be underpinned by its alignment to the
aspirations for commitment and engagement. This applies to all training,
including induction, managerial/supervisory seminars, team-building,
sales skills workshops, and so forth.

Developing ownership. In 1985, Peters and Austin [A Passion for Excellence]

wrote: Trust people and treat them like adults, enthuse them by lively and
imaginative leadership, develop and demonstrate an obsession for quality,
make them feel they own the business, and your workforce will respond
with total commitment. Ownership in this sense does not necessarily
mean the literal process of share ownership, but goes further to embrace
the perception by employees that management accepts them as a key part
of the organisation. So the concept of ownership extends to participating
 in decisions on new developments and changes in working practices which
affect the individuals concerned: they should be involved in making these
decisions and feel that their ideas have been listened to.

Developing a sense of excitement in the work itself. This can be created by

concentrating on the intrinsic motivating factors such as responsibility,
achievement and recognition, but it also requires that managers
especially firstline managers and team leaders communicate their own
leadership capabilities, their concern for their people as human beings, and
their willingness to reward, recognise and celebrate success.

Performance management. The performance management system, if

properly designed, can help to cascade corporate objectives and values
throughout the organisation so that consistency is achieved at all levels.

Reward management. Reward management processes should make it clear

that individuals will be rewarded in accordance with the extent to which
they achieve their objectives and uphold corporate values. This can then
reinforce the messages delivered through other channels of communication.

Question 3

Information needed to produce a human resource plan, and how to cope

with a staff surplus

(a) Information required in order to generate a meaningful HR plan

Human resource planning consists of six inter-related areas of activity,

which themselves indicate the information needed if these activities are to
be undertaken efficiently:

Demand forecasting estimating future needs by reference to

corporate and functional plans and forecasts of future activity levels;
Supply forecasting estimating the supply of employees by reference
to analyses of current resources and future availability, after allowing
for wastage;
Determining human resource requirements analysing the demand
and supply forecasts to identify future deficits or surpluses;
Productivity and cost analysis analysing productivity, capacity,
utilisation and costs in order to identify the need for improvements in
productivity or reductions in cost;
Action planning preparing plans to deal with forecast deficits or
surpluses of personnel, to improve utilisation and productivity, or to
reduce costs; and
Human resource budgeting and control setting HR budgets and
standards, and monitoring the implementation of the plans against
them.
 According to Torrington and Hall [Human Resource Management, Prentice-
Hall, 1991], the soft approach to HR planning involves the assessment of
four categories or areas:

Defining where the organisation is now;

Defining where it wants to be in the future;
Analysing its external environment, influences and trends; and
Formulating plans to implement necessary changes

Whereas hard HR planning is more concerned with a simple sequence

between forecasting, analysis, monitoring and review.

Putting these different perspectives together, it then appears that a typical

HR plan will require the following pieces of information:

The nature of the business in which the organisation is engaged, and

likely changes in the foreseeable future;
Other features of the external environment reflected as Threats and
Opportunities;
The organisations vision, mission, values and higher-order strategic
goals;
The organisations leadership: its flexibility, openness to new thinking,
its political dimension, and so forth;
The future demand for employees: numbers, skills, competencies,
attitudes;
The future supply of employees: demographic features of the relevant
labour market;
The existing workforce: attitudes, motivation, age profiles, absence
levels, ethnic/gender composition, labour turnover and trends;
The productivity of the workforce: overtime working, labour
efficiencies, and so forth.

(b) Measures to cope with an anticipated surplus of staff

A recruitment freeze.

Natural wastage.

Redeployment and/or transfers especially as employers in the UK

have a statutory obligation to seek alternative employment for
employees threatened by redundancy.

Early retirements but this can be expensive and may create

organisational conflict if some individuals wishing to retire early are
prevented from doing so because their skills are needed in the
immediate future.

Reducing or eliminating overtime.

Short-time working this means putting the workforce on a reduced

working week for a limited period, in the hope that business will
improve and redundancies can be avoided.
 Redundancy which may be a last resort, yet unavoidable if the
organisations poor results continue.

Reducing or eliminating subcontracted work.

Reducing the cost profile of the business across the board, so that the
organisation can afford to retain staff over a longer period even when
it would otherwise be operating at a loss.

Seeking the co-operation of suppliers (through asking them to accept

payment on deferred terms) and customers (through asking them to
pay more quickly, or place advance orders sooner than they would
otherwise have done).

Question 4

Flexible employment and flexible working

(a) Flexible forms of employment

Part-time working. Part-timers are often cheaper and can be more flexible;
they are easier to dispense with during slack periods. However, in the UK
their legal status is now more or less equal to that enjoyed by full-time
staff, and part-time employees may be less loyal to the organisation which
employs them.

Fixed/short-term contract workers. Fixed-term contracts can provide

useful flexibility, but they do require careful planning, otherwise the
organisation runs various risks, including the possibility that it over-
specifies the period of the fixed term contract; clearly, too, the fixed-term
contract worker is not highly committed to his/her temporary employer.

Outsourcing through the use of external contractors or sub-contractors.

This presents several advantages:
(i) The business only has to pay for what it gets;
(ii) Contracts can be written precisely to reflect the organisations needs,
including the quality standards applicable, and can include penalty
clauses in cases where the delivered performance falls below what is
required;
(iii) The outsourced activity may be peripheral to the client organisation,
but a major specialisation for the outsourcing supplier, so the latter
has every opportunity to develop valuable expertise;
(iv) Long-term relationships can be built up between buyer and
contractor.
However, outsourcing also incorporates some serious problems, including a
potential loss of control by the business that uses outsourcing suppliers,
and occasional customer resistance once they become aware that, say, the
customer service function is being undertaken by a subcontracted agency.

The use of self-employed people. Many businesses now have people working
for them who work on a self-employed basis. The practice is common in life
assurance, where self-employed persons operate as direct sales personnel
earning commission. The employer has to take great care to ensure that
 quality standards are maintained and that the self-employed person does
not have any conflicts of interest. Once again, the issue of loyalty to the
employer is problematic.

Agencies. Another way in which an organisation can give itself more

flexibility is by using agency labour. This is an approach widely used in the
National Health Service, where agency nurses can supplement a hospitals
own nursing resources. Yet again there are obvious dangers with quality
control, since the agency may be more concerned with finding people to fill
vacancies than with the quality of the people recruited. Labour turnover
among agency personnel is often high, so there are difficulties about
continuity.

Getting the customer to do the work. Technology has been used to enable
customers to perform tasks that were once undertaken by an organisations
own employees, such as scanning goods in supermarkets, filling up the car
with petrol at a garage, and Internet shopping.

(b) Flexible forms of working (time-based and location-based)

1. Time-based methods

Shift working. Though still necessary in many production environ-

ments and in call/contact centres offering customer service 24 hours
a day, seven days a week, shift working is quite unpopular amongst
employees, except those who value the premiums normally associated
with unsocial hours. Night work creates psychological and
physiological problems, reduces the quality of decision-making, and
means that the productivity of a night shift team is almost always
lower than that of its daytime equivalents.

Flexitime. In a flexitime arrangement, employees can organise their

own working hours, within limits. Characteristically, organisations
specify some core hours (usually between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.) when
workers must be present, but in other respects individuals can
determine their own routines to suit themselves to avoid the
morning rush-hour, for example, or to fit round the necessity to take
children to school. The cost of mechanical or electronic time recording
systems has to be taken into account when installing a flexitime
model, and occasionally there are difficulties associated with tasks
that involve a sequential process, if one or more of the people in the
team are not physically present to perform their allotted roles.

Job share. Here a full-time job is shared between two employees

working on a part-time basis. This is ideal for individuals who only
want to work for a proportion of the typical working week, and
although it can operate successfully if the two employees relate to
each other closely, it can generate problems of liaison. Job sharing is
popular partly because of its equal opportunities relevance, since it
provides a route enabling women with child responsibilities to
continue working. Evidence indicates that job sharers work harder
and better because they are doing what they want to do and are thus
more motivated.
 Annualised hours. Annualised hours present a useful strategy for
businesses that have a demand for labour that is predictable, but
unevenly distributed throughout the year because of seasonal
fluctuations. Annualised hours allow people to work more hours in
busy periods without the necessity for paying overtime or taking on
extra short-term recruits. However, annualised hours systems can
become administratively expensive; their other disadvantages include
a reluctance among employees to pay back hours and some
difficulties that occur when trying to schedule holiday periods.

2. Location-based methods

Teleworking. Organisations encouraging at least some of their

employees to work from home includes LloydsTSB, Scottish Widows,
the Nationwide Building Society and the Britannia Building Society.
Obviously teleworking is only suitable for certain types of work, and
only appeals to those employees who can exercise self-discipline and
who are relatively self-contained as individuals. Though it typically
enables workers to become much more productive, and leads to a
reduction in corporate overheads, there are health and safety
implications, and the lack of face-to-face contact with colleagues at
work can cause difficulties.

Hot desking/Hotelling. Under this arrangement, employees no longer

have their personal workstations or desks, but simply sit wherever
they can find a space on the occasions when they do visit the office.
The savings for organisations can be considerable, but again, as with
teleworking, there are psychological disadvantages for employees: they
lose their sense of territory associated with having a space which
(however erroneously) they can call theirs, and they may find it
harder to relate to colleagues.

Question 5

Presentation and negotiation skills

(a) Factors to take into account when preparing a presentation

The objective. All presentations must have an objective, otherwise there

would be no point in preparing and delivering the presentation. In the
circumstances outlined for the question, the objective must be to persuade
the management team to accept your proposals for creating a more flexible
workforce.

The content. You need to know how much time you have at your disposal,
though in any case you should not schedule any presentation to last for
more than thirty minutes otherwise you begin to lose the audiences
attention. When considering what you can usefully say in half an hour, it is
a good idea to separate out your possible content into three groups: (A) that
which is absolutely essential, (B) that which supports the essential
elements, and (C) that which would be nice to say but which adds little to
 fulfilling the objective. It is also a good idea to limit the number of key
points in your presentation to no more than five but to keep repeating
these five in order to drive your message home.

Structure. The presentation has to follow a logical sequence, but to

maximise your impact you should stress the key points at the beginning
and at the end, when your audiences attention levels are likely to be at
their peak. Your introduction should preview the main body of the
contents, and your conclusion should highlight the main points that you
have been seeking to get across.

The Presenter. You need to look at yourself: your appearance, your body
language (especially your eye contact), how to cope with your anxieties, how
you handle interruptions, objections and questions, how you position
yourself so that your audience can see your visual aids. You need to appear
professional, which means that your clothes should reflect the values of the
audience. If you are speaking to managers in a dress down organisation,
you can be casually dressed, but a more conservative and hierarchically-
sensitive group calls for you to probably wear a suit.

Visual Aids. The visuals have to be appropriate to the audience and to the
size of the physical environment. Nowadays almost everyone uses
PowerPoint, but this can be overdone, especially if the technology begins to
take over and your visual aids look as if more effort has been expended on
wizardry than on the content. Pictures tell stories more than words, and
the material on each slide should not be overdone (thus no more than six
lines of print).

Rehearsal and Delivery. Rehearsal helps to build self-confidence when the

actual presentation begins, but it also means that problems of sequencing
and time management can be ironed out in advance. Any notes used
should be in the form of bullet points on small cards, not as a verbatim
script (seldom do people sound natural when reading from a prepared text).

Be Prepared. Given that your purpose is to persuade, you must be prepared

for questions, objections and any other signs of resistance so you should
have some answers ready, so that the thread of your argument is not
undermined.

(b) Phases of negotiation and associated behaviours

According to the ABE Study Manual, there are seven phases of negotiation,
and each requires the negotiator to adopt different behaviour styles.

(i) Research. You need to find out all you can about the managers whom
you are trying to persuade: what are their likely requirements, their
attitudes, their values, and so forth? Are they likely to react as a
group, or act as a collection of separate individuals? Can you use
some of your audience as allies in an effort to influence their peers?

(ii) Preparation. Having defined your overall objectives, you need to

establish the degree to which these can be flexible, i.e., where is there
some room for give and take, if you have to make concessions away
from your ideal aim?
 (iii) Discuss and Signal. In opening the negotiations, it is a good idea to
point out the issues on which you are all agreed (such as the fact that
the organisation has to reduce its labour costs whilst simultaneously
looking after its employees), so that you emphasise the common
ground between everyone. This initial phase, too, can be used to test
assumptions, exchange information and establish the extent to which
you are ultimately likely to be successful, with or without compromise.

(iv) Propose and package. Proposals are suggestions which advance the
negotiation, but they should not be articulated dogmatically; instead,
you must act hesitantly and non-committally, as if you were
generating ideas spontaneously (What if , Why dont we consider
and so forth). The negotiator at this stage never interrupts, and
avoids entering into an argument, but instead will focus on creating
proposals which move the entire group nearer to a solution.

(v) Your tactics of bidding. The more you ask for at the outset, the more
you are likely to end up with by the time the negotiations have been
completed, because if you ask for a lot, you have more opportunities
for compromise and concession.

(vi) Bargain and agree. It is at this point in the proceedings that you can
use the tactic of the conditional offer, namely, if you then we.
Should the other side fail to respond, then you can withdraw the offer
without loss, because technically it was not an offer at all. Once a
compromise acceptable to all parties has been produced, then it
should be repeated, summarised, and written down before anyone
starts to introduce qualifying elements and conditions.

(vii) Closing negotiations. As the agreement is reached, it is important to

summarise, to establish whether any follow-up is required, to
determine how the agreement is to be worded when it is
communicated to other interested parties, and to sort out what
happens next.

In general terms, it is always better for both sides in a negotiation to believe

that they have done a good deal, than for one side to see itself as the victor.
If that is the outcome, then the defeated party will generally find ways to
sabotage the agreement, and will also seek opportunities for revenge.

Question 6

Checklists for various situational scenarios

(a) Grievance-handling

In theory, the best way to settle a grievance is to get the facts and then seek
out an equitable solution. However, this may be difficult when emotions are
running high and where, therefore, the facts are obscured by opinion, self-
interest and prejudice.
The first thing for the manager to do is listen sensitively as the grievance is
articulated, to remain silent when necessary and allow the aggrieved
employee to explain what is wrong and why.
 Then the problem needs to be defined and this requires listening skills
plus some brief, well-directed questions.
During this information-gathering and information-evaluating phase, the
manager needs to be alert, flexible, and resourceful, able to peer behind the
words in order to detect the realities underneath.
If a non-directive approach of this kind is being pursued, then the manager
will try to conclude the meeting by getting the individual to summarise the
problem himself or herself, and suggest a possible solution.

(b) Counselling

The British Association of Counselling defines counselling as helping

people to help themselves, and counselling is intended to bridge the gap
between the current situation (as perceived by the employee) and the
desired one.
Counselling may be directive or non-directive, depending on whether the
manager is viewed as the expert or merely as an empathetic listener.
Directive counselling involves three stages:
Phase 1: Responding when the problem is articulated;
Phase 2: Stimulating when the problem is clarified and looked at from a
variety of perspectives; and
Phase 3: Helping to act when the manager suggests solutions, actions,
and ways of coping.

Non-directive counselling operates by the employee reaching his/her own

decisions, as the manager does not impose solutions instead, the purpose
of the exercise is to enable the employee to work through the problem,
generally with the aid of the manager, so that a course of action finally
emerges by common consent. There are two phases:
Phase 1: Establishing rapport through listening, showing empathy,
showing respect, etc; and
Phase 2: Exploring the situation through examining the underlying
problems, reflecting, clarifying, summarising, pointing to emergent
solutions and action plans.

(c) Coaching

Coaching is a person-to-person technique designed to develop individual

skills, knowledge and attitudes. Essentially, it consists of three elements:
1. Setting tasks which stretch and challenge the employees;
2. Monitoring progress typically via regular meetings; and
3. Reviewing performance to assess what has been learned.
It is most effective if it can take place informally as part of the regular
activities associated with appraisal.
The manager can undertake coaching in order to help people to become
aware of how well they are doing and what they need to learn in order to
prepare themselves for the future or even to become fully competent in the
exercise of their current accountabilities.
The mechanisms of coaching include controlled delegation, face-to-face
discussions about learning opportunities from everyday work situations,
and placing employees in positions where they have to stretch their existing
skills, knowledge and attitudes (e.g., by requiring them to act as temporary
team leaders or to join cross-functional project teams linked to continuous
improvement).
 Coaching presupposes the willingness on the part of the manager to act as
a listening post and to help the employee reflect on his/her experiences. As
the ABE Study Manual points out [p. 181], the attributes needed in the
manager as coach are a friendly approach, an informed attitude and an
acceptable level of experience, in order to obtain and retain the necessary
respect and loyalty from those on the receiving end of the process.

(d) Discipline

Disciplinary action should only be initiated where there are good reasons to
believe that it is appropriate, and where clear evidence exists that some
breach of organisational rules and procedures has taken place (to the point
where action should be taken).
Disciplinary action has to be appropriate to the nature of the offence; it has
to be demonstrably fair and consistent with previous action in similar
circumstances (i.e., precedent).
Disciplinary action is only justified when employees are aware of the
standards that are expected of them and the rules to which they are
expected to conform.
Employees accused of disciplinary offences must have a full opportunity to
defend themselves, to answer the charges, and to appeal against any
disciplinary action, and to this end may be supported by a representative or
colleague during any formal proceedings.
In disciplinary interviews, the following general guidelines should be
helpful:
Open by explaining the problem as you see it;
Ask the subordinate to respond;
Listen with an open mind;
Decide whether indeed there is a gap between what the employee
should be doing and what the employee has actually done;
If there is a gap, explore the reasons for the gap;
Agree a timetable for eliminating the gap and an action plan for doing
so;
Keep a note of what was agreed;
Remember that punishment is a tool for helping to restore normal
behaviour, not an opportunity to exercise vengeance or managerial
power.

(e) Return-to-work interviewing

Return-to-work interviews are designed to establish that the employee is

indeed fit enough to return to his/her original role and, if not, whether
alternative duties can be specified, either permanently or temporarily.
The returning employee should be welcomed and briefed about any
changes which have taken place during his/her absence.
It is possible that some training or retraining will be necessary; if so, this
has to be arranged as quickly as possible.
All other administrative issues should be resolved, though of course the
nature of these issues will be situation-dependent.
Question 7

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

(a) Why CSR has become a high-profile issue for organisations

Shared values. Many organisations have chosen to produce and

disseminate their corporate values, the aim being to enable people
throughout the many departments and locations, especially in large
corporations, to make decisions based on common principles. Also,
organisations believe that espousing a set of values can bring commercial
advantages, especially if the values are widely admired, such as honesty,
respect for life and property, fairness and loyalty.

Multiple stakeholders. The concept of stakeholders remains the most

powerful, yet basically simple, tool to help identify the range of ethical
issues facing an organisation, and the reasons why organisations may
begin to take CSR seriously, especially if some of these stakeholders have
the power to make a significant impact on the organisations operations.

Organisations in flux. When everything around us is experiencing change

new technologies, new structures, new information flows, new ways of
working, new relationships, new business processes one of the sources of
stability can be the organisations interest in behaving responsibly.

A shrinking world the impact of globalisation. The ethical issues arising

from instantaneous communications are enormous, and no organisation
can escape the implications. A company selling sports shoes in the West
has to consider the ethical aspects of its use of child labour in the Asia-
Pacific region; an oil company has to take account of the environmental
impact of its drilling activities in Nigeria.

Customer pressures and concerns. Increasingly, customers are showing an

interest in the ways in which organisations produce their goods, and the
responsible organisation enjoys an advantage if it can show that it balances
its own need for cost-effective operations with the need to treat its suppliers
fairly.

(b) Ways in which organisations can create and implement CSR policies and
programmes

Broadly speaking, there are three dimensions to this topic: to motivate for
change, to manage the transition, and to shape the political dynamics of
the change.

1. To motivate for change

Pressure for a CSR programme has to come from somewhere. The

source may be the appointment of a new Chief Executive with a strong
commitment to CSR, or a crisis precipitated by the companys evident
failure to take account of social responsibility. Surveys may show high
levels of disgruntlement among significant and powerful stakeholders.
 Even if the inspiration for CSR comes from a high-level leader, this
does not mean that CSR can simply be imposed: some elements of
participation in the change will reduce resistance and build ownership
among the workforce as a whole and even with suppliers and
customers, if appropriate.

Unless CSR is being implemented in a climate of imminent

organisational death, then providing time to adjust is highly desirable.
People need to disengage from existing ways of behaving, and the
process of disengagement needs strong communications about:

The importance of CSR;

Why the organisation has chosen this moment to introduce a CSR
programme; and
What CSR means for managerial and employee actions.

2. Managing the transition

A comprehensive vision of the future must be linked closely with the

CSR programme. It is important where feasible to show that the CSR
initiative builds on what has gone before and is not a radical break
with the past (unless a radical break with the past is itself important
to signal that the factors culminating in some recent disaster will not
be repeated).

During implementation, the organisation should appoint an individual

with sole responsibility for driving CSR forward. This individual may
be the HR director, but there are good reasons for it being someone
else, especially in companies where the HR role has been
marginalised.

It makes sense to seek active, hands-on contributions from every part

of the organisation. Key ingredients are:

Ensuring support from individuals and groups with significant

political power;
Using credible and influential figures within the organisation as
persuasive communicators about CSR;
Incorporating symbols and stories into the CSR programme in
order to bring it to life and give flesh to what otherwise may seem
to be nothing more than bland generalisations;
An incessant communications exercise through all the channels
available to the business, to dramatise progress, success and
achievement;
Creation of loose-tight approaches to the CSR initiative, i.e.,
strict central control over the fundamentals, but the opportunity
for local enterprise to find routes for implementation that are
relevant to the immediate circumstances in which they find
themselves.

The rewards for conspicuous CSR compliance, and the sanctions for
improper conduct, need to be clarified.
 Education and training programmes to reinforce CSR must be
introduced: they must show respect for the experience and intelligence
of the delegates, but at the same time must be professional and
serious.

(c) Implications of CSR for the conduct of an HR professional

The HR function is often perceived, at least partially, as the conscience of

the organisation, and perhaps this is why many organisations naturally
view the HR professional as the most appropriate person to implement the
strands of CSR. Certainly this makes good sense, because the activities of
the HR function clearly do have ethical implications, so far as recruitment,
selection, employee development and the like are concerned.

At the same time, there are dangers, especially in organisations where HR

lacks political clout, where the CSR programme is perceived as anti-
commercial because of its links with the HR department, and where the
involvement of HR causes other functions or individuals to breathe a sigh of
relief and take a back seat.

However, HRs contribution to the effective implementation of a CSR

initiative can typically take three forms:

The deployment of professional expertise to develop and communicate

the CSR activity, holding training sessions about CSR, and monitoring
the effectiveness of CSR;
A contribution to forming corporate strategy in the CSR arena;
Role-modelling across the organisation through its own policies and
practices.

Question 8

Whether organisations need management/leadership, and whether people

need managers/leaders

(a) Whether organisations need managers and employees need managers

1. Do organisations need managers?

From a corporate standpoint, managers are necessary to bring system,

order, predictability, logic and consistency to the organisation as a
whole, so that the activities of people in the organisation are
co-ordinated and aligned together.

Henri Fayol defined the main processes of management as follows:

Planning deciding on a course of action to achieve a desired

result;
Organising setting up and staffing the most appropriate
organisation to achieve the aim;
Motivating exercising leadership to motivate people to work
together smoothly and to the best of their ability as part of a
team; and
 Controlling measuring and monitoring the progress of work in
relation to the plan, and taking corrective action when needed.

Though this seems very neat and tidy, in practice the activities of
managers are much less coherent. At the same time, it seems that the
need for managers becomes much more insistent as organisations
grow in size and there are increasing numbers of people whose
contributions have to be linked together.

2. Do employees need managers?

From some points of view, the response to this question has to be No,
because experiments with job design have shown that if individuals
are given autonomy and freedom to make their own choices (about
working hours, the way tasks are performed, the performance
measures, and so forth), they often behave responsibly and the
results are better than those typically achieved under an arrangement
where theoretically managers exercise control.

Clearly, too, many of those who constitute the managed in

organisations are people who are perfectly capable of managing
themselves in their personal lives they can, left to themselves, plan,
organise, motivate and control (to use Fayols language), so why can
they not do these things whilst at work? Perhaps this is because the
situations encountered at work are different from those which the
employee experiences in his/her personal existence: more complicated
variables are involved, and wider strategic considerations. Yet the
uneasy thought remains that, as one writer recently expressed it,
most work is easy what makes it difficult is the presence of
managers who feel an intense desire to control, to supervise and to
constrain, presumably in order to justify their existence. At the same
time, there are situations in which employees are likely to need the
guidance, advice and mentoring which can be supplied by a wise and
mature manager. These situations include the establishment of
priorities when two or more tasks appear to be simultaneously urgent,
and assistance with personal development or career planning.

(b) Whether organisations need leadership, and employees need leaders

1. Do organisations need leadership?

Management is concerned with achieving results by effectively

obtaining, deploying, utilising and controlling all the resources
required, namely: people, money, facilities, plant and equipment,
information and knowledge. Leadership, by contrast, focuses on the
most important resource: people. It is the process of developing and
communicating a vision for the future, motivating people and gaining
their commitment and engagement.

An organisation may do without leadership if (a) it employs no people

or very few people, (b) its processes and operations are dictated by
technological routines, and (c) there is no pressure for continuous
improvement or necessity for change. This is an unlikely scenario.
Once people are required in any numbers, then performance becomes
 problematic and the presence of what Purcell calls a Big Idea (a
unifying culture) can make the difference between corporate success
and functional mediocrity.

2. Do people need leaders?

Theoretically, people dont need leaders because they can determine

their own actions themselves. In practice, however, successful leaders
(and they are the only leaders who count) make a positive contribution
to the enthusiasm and commitment of their followers, enabling
people to achieve more than they would ever have thought possible.

As Michael Armstrong and Tina Stephens write [A Handbook of

Management and Leadership: A Guide to Managing for Results,
London: Kogan Page, 2005, p. 17], successful leaders have followers
who want to feel that they are being led in the right direction; they
need to know where they stand, where they are going, and what is in
it for them. They want to feel that it is all worthwhile, and specifically
they have three requirements of their leaders:

Leaders must fit their followers expectations they are more likely
to gain the respect and co-operation of their followers if they
behave in ways that the followers regard as appropriate. Typically,
for example, followers want leaders who are friendly and
approachable, but at the same time psychologically distant.
Leaders must be perceived as the best of us they have to show
that they are experts in the overall task facing the group. This
does not necessarily mean that they have more expertise, but that
they have to be able to get the group working purposefully
together so that the intended result is achieved.
Leaders must be perceived as the most of us they must
incorporate the norms and values that are central to the group;
they may influence these values by visionary powers, but will fail
if they move too far away from them.

Kelley has suggested that leaders need followers, but that followers
also need leaders and one of the tasks of the leader is to develop
what Kelley calls followship qualities. These include the ability to
manage themselves well, to be committed to the organisation, to build
their competence, and focus their efforts on the things that make the
difference. What this indicates, therefore, is that the relationship
between people and their leaders is one of mutual dependence, and
that the one cannot do without the other.