Module 006: Introduction to

Human Resources
Management
Module code: NCC/WB/006
CPD Points: 1.6
Guided learning hours: 16
Developed for NCC by:
Mr S. Sanga
Prof. M. Muya
Dr L. Matakala
Dr. E. Mwanaumo
Ms B. Mwiya
Mr C. Kaliba

Aim and purpose

To provide the basic human resources skills to the small and medium scale contractors
registered in the NCC grades of 6-3.

Learning outcomes
On completion of this module a learner should:
1. Know the basic human resources management skills
2. Understand the legislative requirements related to labour in Zambia
3. Be able to understand basic recruitment and selection criteria
4. Build training and development planning for the organisation
 National Council for Construction
Training Manual Human Resources Management

Module Overview
Although construction is one of the most labour-intensive industries, human resource
management (HRM) issues are given inadequate attention. Furthermore, the focus of
attention with regards to HRM has been as a centralised head-office function - yet most
problems and operational issues arise on project
The ability to attract, retain and develop talented employees is a key feature of successful
businesses. People are an organization's most valuable asset and this is especially true in
relatively low-tech, labor-intensive industries such as construction. However, people also
represent the most difficult resource for organizations to manage. Unlike physical assets,
people have their own individual needs which must be met and idiosyncrasies which must be
managed if they are to contribute to organizational growth and development. People are
individuals who bring their own perspectives, values and attributes to organizational life, and,
when managed effectively, these human traits can bring considerable benefits to
organizations .However, when managed poorly they have the potential to severely limit
organizational growth and threaten the viability of a business. There are countless examples
of corporate and project crises in the construction sector which have arisen as the result of
people's behaviour, and it would seem that human resource management (HRM) has the
potential to eliminate more construction risks than any other management approach .

Designed for Large, Medium and Small Scale Contractors. The Target group includes:
Owner/Managers;Site Engineers;Site Agent; Foremen;Works Supervisor; andAdministrators.

Course also appropriate for: Clients; Client’s Representative; Technical Consultants; and
Local Road Authorities.

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Human Resources Management Training Manual

Course Contents
1 Overview ............................................................................................................................ 5
2 Staffing the Organization: Job Analysis and Description .................................................. 5
3 Recruitment and Selection .................................................................................................. 5
4 Training and Development/Career Planning ...................................................................... 6
5 Performance Management and Measurement .................................................................... 6
6 Compensation and Benefits ................................................................................................ 6
7 Safety and Health................................................................................................................ 7
8 Labour and Employee Relations......................................................................................... 8
8.1 Labour relations........................................................................................................... 8
8.2 Employee relations ...................................................................................................... 8
8.3 Efficiency .................................................................................................................... 8
8.4 Equity .......................................................................................................................... 8
8.5 Interpersonal relationships .......................................................................................... 9
8.6 Ethics ........................................................................................................................... 9
9 HUMAN RESOURCE AND THE Labour LawS OF Zambia........................................... 9
9.1 The Employment Act, CAP 268 of the Laws of Zambia .......................................... 10
9.2 The Employment (Special Provisions) Act ............................................................... 10
9.3 The Industrial and Labour Relations Act .................................................................. 10
9.4 The Industrial and Labour Relations Amendment Act ............................................. 10
9.5 The Minimum Wages and Conditions of Services Act, CAP 276 of the Laws of
Zambia .................................................................................................................................. 10
9.6 The National Pensions Act ........................................................................................ 10
9.7 Statutory Instrument No. 46 of 2012 General Order................................................. 10
9.8 Statutory Instrument No. 2 of 2011 Minimum Wages .............................................. 10
9.9 Statutory Instrument No. 2 of 2002 Minimum Wages .............................................. 10

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National Council for Construction
Human Resources Management Training Manual

1 OVERVIEW

The Human Resource (HR) department in an organization is a staff department that serves the
needs of line managers and all employees. The work of HR professionals is integrated with
the work of managers in “the line.” Many procedures are designed to meet the HR functions
of:
1. Planning, attracting, recruiting, screening, and selecting,
2. Developing employees through orientation, training, and other professional
development support,
3. Maintaining the HR force through job analysis, wage and salary administration,
employee evaluation procedures, managing the collective bargaining process (if
applicable) and as needed.
4. The separation of employees needs to be managed.

2 STAFFING THE ORGANIZATION: JOB ANALYSIS AND DESCRIPTION

Now that you understand the core components of strategy as applied to managing human
capital, learn how to identify the right human capital by properly assessing and defining all of
the jobs within an organization. Identifying the right people for a firm can be very difficult.
To make things more challenging, job descriptions often do a poor job of detailing the
employment environment. By conducting a proper job analysis of all roles within a firm,
hiring managers can better identify the traits they need a future employee to possess for a
specific job.

Employers seek employees with traits that fall into one of four categories: Knowledge, Skills,
Abilities, and Other Characteristics. Collectively, these traits are referred to as KSAs. The
keys to success lay not in an individual’s experience with Microsoft Office or his or her
ability to work in a high stress environment, but rather in his or her capacity to learn on the
job, humility in admitting fault, and temperament in a stressful situation

3 RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION

Identifying the traits one will need for success in a position is relatively easy compared to the
daunting task of identifying those traits within an applicant. Given the cyclicality of
unemployment, you will likely receive a pile of resumes simply by posting an opening on a
company website or job board. But how many of those resumes will be worth looking
through? How many will be worth interviewing? And will any of them be the right person
for the job? You do not want to just select the best person in the applicant pool; you want to
find the best person for the job. Sometimes this means going beyond the normal labor market
and recruiting people currently employed at other firms.

Please note that interviews are still very important and that there are “right” and “wrong”
ways to conduct interviews, all of which will be addressed here.

One of the key points to remember when recruiting and selecting human capital is that you
should identify individuals who share the company’s ideas about the goals and objectives of
its business. You should work to identify unique individuals with shared and complementary

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Training Manual Human Resources Management

skill sets in order to build an effective team. Recruiting and selecting human capital should
be carried out in order to provide the organization with a strategic advantage

4 TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT/CAREER PLANNING

Once you have completed the recruitment process, it is crucial that you properly train and
develop your human capital. As you go through this unit, think of training as a process used
to inform new members of the specifics associated with the jobs that they have assumed.
Development should be thought of as a continuous process of improvement and as an
opportunity to provide human capital with the updates and insight needed to be successful on
the job. Career planning refers to the process of mapping the career growth of your human
capital and building strong relationships between human capital and the management team.
Note: Career planning is sometimes referred to as succession planning.

5 PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND MEASUREMENT

In the last unit, you learned about human capital development and training. Mastering and
applying this information is crucial to helping you become more effective at identifying and
creating a performance management and measurement system. Firms often use performance
management systems in order to properly identify the success of their employees. “Success”
in the workplace is often defined by an individual’s ability to live up to the demands of his or
her position.

With proper job analysis, it should be easy to quantify the level of success or failure that each
employee has reached. However, it is important to recognize that all humans are subject to
certain biases – leniency and the halo effect are good examples – when asked to provide
feedback. (Leniency refers to a manager’s tendency to be “too nice” out of fear of hurting the
feelings of his or her employee.

The halo effect refers to a situation in which a manager focuses on one positive aspect of an
employee’s performance as opposed to the performance as a whole over the evaluation
period. The manager might, for example, fixate on the fact that an employee obtained a high-
profile client or made a profitable sale, despite poor performance in all other aspects of the
job.) Employees should be made aware of such tendencies in order to strive toward a more
balanced evaluation process

Firm managers should explore various types of appraisal systems in order to determine which
fits best with the firm’s culture and strategy

6 COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

When an employer is making a hiring decision, he or she must consider a number of factors,
including the cost of compensating human capital. In most cases within a business, this is the
highest overhead cost consumed by an organization. Because poor financial planning is one
of the top 10 risk factors associated with business failure, it is extremely important that an
employer understands the many elements associated with the development and application of
a compensation program. An employer must also be aware of compensation, as it is a tool
used to attract and retain human capital. At different stages of an employee’s life, he or she
will have different workplace needs. An organization may have some employees who value

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Human Resources Management Training Manual

direct financial compensation and others who have an immediate need for other, more
indirect benefits, like tuition reimbursement or child care. The key is to understand the
dynamics of a compensation program and develop an organizational program that serves the
needs of the organization, as well as the human capital employed by the organization.

In times of recession, there is usually a larger labor force in search of work. This gives
employers leverage when hiring; some can drive down the associated human capital cost of
employment due to the high supply of labor. However, the key to retaining good people in
any environment, including in periods of high growth, is usually compensation.
Compensation is not just about a salary or bonus – it is about work/life balance, perks, and
contentment. The happiest employees are not necessarily the ones in the highest pay grade.
Often times, the most successful companies pay less than their competitors because they have
created an environment that is pleasant to work in.

Much of the chatter surrounding compensation today revolves around executive pay, as the
disparity between executive pay and employee pay has grown dramatically over the decades.
This widening gap is largely due to the fact that firms have been aligning executive
compensation with firm performance. For publicly traded companies, performance is often
measured in terms of profitability or stock price performance. This system is problematic in
that it incentivizes executives to take on too much risk, as they are guaranteed compensation
no matter what happens. This unit will explore this issue as well as others pertaining to
compensation and benefits

7 SAFETY AND HEALTH

By now, you should more fully understand the significance of managing human capital as a
strategic part of any business platform. It is important that you recognize how all of the
human capital management concepts come together to support an organization that enjoys a
competitive advantage over others within its market. It is also important that you understand
that the employer is responsible for making the job attractive to potential human capital
candidates and enticing them with an environment that incentivizes employees to work and
grow with the organization. While you have covered a lot as this course has progressed, there
are still some key factors to be addressed as you develop an understanding of how to manage
human capital. One of those key areas is the safety and health of human capital.

At a most basic level, the employer is responsible for sending its employees home in the
same manner in which they arrived. The concept of safety is so important that the
government has created a special department – the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) – whose sole focus is the safety and well-being of employees within
the workplace. Every single workplace environment must comply with OSHA regulations.

Employers must also be concerned with the health of their human capital. Healthy
employees boost workplace performance and productivity, use fewer sick day benefits, and
are more likely to build stronger and longer-lasting relationships with their employers. When
an employee or potential employee sees that an employer is concerned about his or her
personal well-being, he or she is more likely to become and remain a part of that
organization. Note: Employee Health is sometimes referred to as employee wellness.

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Training Manual Human Resources Management

8 LABOUR AND EMPLOYEE RELATIONS

In this final unit of the course, we will discuss labor and employee relations and conclude
with a brief perspective on how ethical concerns pervade all aspects of human resource
management. As mentioned earlier in the course, an employer wants to create an
environment that is attractive to potential and current employees. As you have already
learned, the relationship between employer and employee can be a bit tricky. The employer
has specific expectations when it makes the decision to bring a new employee on board. The
employee has or should have an expectation of the employer when he or she decides to join
and/or stay with an organization. Sometimes, there are significant discrepancies between
what the employer needs/wants and what the employee needs/wants. In these situations,
labor relations – or more specifically, labor unions – can help strengthen the
employer/employee relationship.

8.1 LABOUR RELATIONS

Labour relations is a subfield of Human Capital Management concerned with labor unions in
the workplace. Labor unions are independent third parties that represent the collective
interest of the employees within a particular industry. Just as a marriage counselor serves as
a mediator between a husband and a wife, a labor union seeks to balance the differences
between employer and employee.

8.2 EMPLOYEE RELATIONS

Employee relations is a subfield of Human Capital Management concerned with the
prevention and/or resolution of workplace problems. This subfield encompasses poor
performance and disciplinary action, the identification and promotion of policies/procedures,
and the communication and promotion of awareness of the laws and legislation that impact
the managing of human capital. These activities ensure that efficiency, equity, and voice can
be achieved in the workplace for both the employer and the employee. But what exactly do
we mean by efficiency, equity, and voice?

8.3 EFFICIENCY
Efficiency relates to the ability to achieve a workplace goal with a minimal or minimized
investment of resources. An employer seeks to achieve efficiency by engaging the most
productive human capital and using the least amount of business resources. An employee
seeks to achieve efficiency by asking for a specific balance between his or her time
contributions to the organization and the economic outputs provided by the employer. Both
an employee and an employer want workplace processes to be structured in such a way that
each feels there is value for what they are contributing. Efficiency addresses the questions of:
am I getting an equal or opposite response to the amount of work I am putting in? Are you
motivated to help me be successful? Can I trust that within our relationship, you have my
best interest in mind?

8.4 EQUITY
Equity relates to the partnership ideal in the relationship between the employer and the
employee. The key to understanding equity is identifying with the fact that the business
environment is typically not a democracy. An employer creates and enforces the workplace

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rules and processes that it considers necessary to conducting business. If an employee works
for this organization, the anticipation is for them to comply, as employers typically make
them aware of these expectations. Is the workplace environment stable and fair? Is there
room to grow and do more? Am I treated like a subordinate or a true partner? These are just
some of the questions asked when assessing the equity in the relationship between the
employer and the employee.

8.5 INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

There are times when one person feels that the other is not listening. The same applies to the
relationship between employer/employee. Employees typically want to work for an employer
who enables them to be heard and to contribute to the functioning of the organization. An
employer wants an organization in which employees have actively listened to and engaged in
the proper application of any workplace rules, processes, and procedures, with minimal to no
infraction. In both cases, the employee and employer are looking to “achieve voice” in their
organizations. Most, if not all, organizations try to assist in the achievement of voice by
providing hotlines for employees to communicate, implementing suggestion boxes for the
anonymous submission of ideas or comments about the workplace environment, and
establishing an open door policy. Because the employer is the more dominant partner in this
relationship, the balance between efficiency, equity, and voice can appear to be a bit one
sided; this is where labor and employee relations step in.

8.6 ETHICS
Ethical conduct requires us to ask difficult questions. Firms need to make the distinction
between legal compliance and ethical decision making. Ethical lapses have been responsible
for U.S. companies losing billions of dollars in class action law suits. Individual employees
must also take responsibility to adhere to their firms’ codes of conduct, codes of ethics, and
various policies written to protect the employee, the company, the community and other
entities their organization serves Articles below describe some of the issues and challenges
faced by human resource professionals today to ensure these codes of conduct, codes of
ethics and company policies are disseminated, acknowledged and followed and accurately
reflect the values and mission of their firms.

9 HUMAN RESOURCE AND THE LABOUR LAWS OF ZAMBIA

Zambia has the following labour laws:
- The Employment Act, Cap 268 of the Laws of Zambia;
- The Employment (Special Provisions) Act;
- The Industrial and Labour Relations Act;
- The Industrial and Labour Relations Amendment Act;
- The Minimum Wages and Conditions of Services Act, Cap 276 of The Laws of
Zambia;
- The National Pensions Act;
- Statutory Instrument No. 46 of 2012 General Order;
- Statutory Instrument No. 2 of 2011 Minimum Wages; and
- Statutory Instrument No. 2 of 2002 Minimum Wages.
What follows is a summary of some of the provisions in the above laws which SMEs as
employers must be aware of.

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9.1 THE EMPLOYMENT ACT, CAP 268 OF THE LAWS OF ZAMBIA

Section 12 prescribes the minimum age for employment. It states that it is a criminal offence
to employ a person who is below the age of fifteen years. Also, every employee who has
worked for six months continuously is entitled to a holiday with full pay at a rate of two days
for one month’s service (Section 15(1)).
Section 15A provides that every female employee who has worked for at least two years
continuously is entitled to maternity leave of twelve weeks with full pay. An employer is not
allowed to terminate an employee’s services just because she is pregnant (Section 15B). To
do so would be an offence punishable by law.
The law recognizes oral contracts of service (Section 17). This means that a contract of
employment can be entered into verbally. That notwithstanding, Section 24 obliges every
employer in this section the following provisions of the act will be discussed

• THE EMPLOYMENT (SPECIAL PROVISIONS) ACT

• THE INDUSTRIAL AND LABOUR RELATIONS ACT

• THE INDUSTRIAL AND LABOUR RELATIONS AMENDMENT ACT

• THE MINIMUM WAGES AND CONDITIONS OF SERVICES ACT, CAP 276 OF THE LAWS OF
ZAMBIA

• THE NATIONAL PENSIONS ACT

• STATUTORY INSTRUMENT NO. 46 OF 2012 GENERAL ORDER

• STATUTORY INSTRUMENT NO. 2 OF 2011 MINIMUM WAGES

• STATUTORY INSTRUMENT NO. 2 OF 2002 MINIMUM WAGES

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ZokhiSenyucel (2015), Managing human resource in the 21st century 1st edition published
by bookboon.com. www.bookboon.com, accessed……………..
Eric Ganer (2015), Recruitment and selection, published by Bookboon.com,
www.bookboon.com, accessed……………..
Tony Greener (2015), Whatdo HR people do. Published by bookboon.com,
www.bookboon.com, accessed……………..
Pieter A. Grobler, SuretteWarnich, Michael R. Carrell, Norbert F. Elbert and Robert D.
Hatfield (20..), Human Resource Management in South Africa,
Jac Fitz-Enz, and Barbara Davison (20…), How to Measure Human Resource Management

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