Saint Joan Institute of Womens Study. Human Resource Management Portfolio - Essay Example

?HRM Portfolio Introduction: The portfolio has become the necessary document for all applications in the organization such as selection, promotion, tenure annual professional development review. The term Portfolio is defined as ‘a 'set of pieces of creative work collected by someone to display their skills' (Dictionary.com) and knowledge. The skills and ability of the person are assessed and in an organization it is decided whether his or her skills and abilities are useful for a specific job in an organization. Before selecting a candidate for a particular post, the thorough job analysis is necessary. Through the paper it has been tried what modus operandi the HR department should follow to exploit the portfolio of a candidate. For the paper, the particular job taken into consideration is a job of an ‘academic coordinator.’ The academic coordinators are academic staffs, who have some responsibility for coordinating the activities of other academic staff and interacting with students in large courses or programs. “Typically, these people have responsibility for the ?practical and everyday process of supporting, managing, developing and inspiring academic colleagues.” (Ramsden, 1998, p. 4) The institute considered for this discussion is Saint Joan Institute of Women’s Study. The institute is committed to impart the training to the girls and women. Some of the units such as schools are devoted to train the underprivileged girls. In section 1, the paper discusses about the nature as well as the strategic importance of the job of an academic coordinator a. The Nature of the Job: An Academic coordinator has become a very crucial position in today’s fast growing and sophisticated educational institutions. Academic coordinators find their role to be demanding, complex, and very stressful and are uncertain about the scope of their role. (Ladyshewsky & Jones, 2007) In Educational organization the coordinator is basically associated with teaching, hiring teachers and educators, to administer programs, develop budget, to arrange meetings, and to make changes where necessary. In modern educational institution the post of a coordinator is very important to facilitate smooth coordination between students, teachers, various departments, committee, management and other personnel in the institution directly or indirectly. He plays the role of a liaison between students and faculty members, parents and teachers, teachers and management members etc. The natures of the job includes various following responsibilities which are divided into two parts: Teaching and non-teaching Non Teaching responsibilities Teaching responsibilities To suggest for the recruitment of new staff members according to the requirements of the unit: The coordinator identifies the need of the staff and accordingly he suggests for the recruitments of different positions for full time, part time, adjunct faculty or a resource person for the specific task. To develop teaching procedure and strategies: To arrange training and development programs To revise the existing academic programs and design new programs, curriculum. The curriculum should be developed according to the domains and the requirements of the students. To arrange meetings of line members and staff members of the organization. To solicit students’ as well as teachers’ feedback. To prepare an annual budget and get it sanctioned by the Management committee members with suggested changes. To take review of the effectiveness of the program To arrange strategies for promotional activities. To conduct exams and to coordinate it entirely To conduct extra-curricular activities thus to boost the confidence of the students. To teach the subject allotted to him or her To set exam papers and check the papers b. The Strategic Importance of an Academic Coordinator in an Educational Institution: “Jobs that directly relate to the firm’s core competencies assume greater strategic value.” (Weekley Jeff) The job of the coordinator has a strategic importance as it is related to the institution’s core competencies. The Coordinator’s job in Saint Joan Institute has been positioned to deal with the risk and that is unpredictability and outright threats to existence. Everything is hypothetical. So strategically this is an important task. The competency of the position lies in the survival of such a small unit like foreign language centre in a competitive environment. Being the status of the small unit the responsibility of the coordinator becomes more strategic. Apart from higher study, the institute has a school providing education to the poor and lower class girls. The institution imparts the training of English in a subsidised rate to the underprivileged students of the school. In such case apart from getting substantial number of students, the foreign language unit cannot show good revenue. So this issue is also necessary to be handled. Section 2: Job Analysis Plan of an Educational Coordinator: Before making the job analysis plan, it is important to know the term job analysis. “Simply stated, the purpose of job analysis is to provide an in depth understanding of the competencies required for success in order to select appropriate candidates.” (Eric P. Prien, Leonard D. Goodstein, Jeanette Goodstein 2009) Job analysis is the process, which is used to collect information about the duties, responsibilities, prerequisites, outcomes and the work environment of a specific job. The job analysis is a crucial process when the organization wants to create a new position or to make change in existing position. “Under job analysis the nature of the job is studied and the qualifications of a person to be appointed on a particular job are decided.” (Sinha R. K.) Saint Joan Institute of Women’s Studies is an educational organization which is a huge group of different colleges and schools. These colleges are like small units which collectively shape the organization. Each unit or college has its own educational coordinator. According to the work culture and the specific requirement of the college, the nature of job, of the coordinator differs. Here basically the Foreign language centre of a big organization is taken into consideration. The centre is responsible for conducting various courses in English and foreign languages. As the organization comprises of several professional training institutes such as Engineering, Architecture, IT, Management, Fashion Technology, Nursing college and so on, the responsibility of the foreign language centre is to exploit the in house potential and design a need base training of language for their own students. The job analysis of the academic coordinator may comprise of the following main elements: 1. Job Description 2. Job Specification 1. Under job description, the statistics will be collected regarding the nature of the job. After studying the nature of the job, the types of persons required for the job of the coordinator will be decided. This will include the following facts: a. Job identification: Under this the work and the concerned department will be taken into consideration. The department is foreign language institute of Saint Joan Institute for Higher Studies. b. Job summary: Under job summary, it will be decided in what context the coordinator’s work is to be done and what obstacles can be expected in the performance for example sustainability of the department in competitive educational environment. c. Working condition: The working condition, under which the coordinator is going to perform his job, will be studied. The environment needs to be favourable for the students, faculty members and the coordinator. d. Job relation: The relation of a coordinator’s job with other posts will be decided. It is required for the HR department to have the information about the internal and external relationship of the academic coordinator. In internal relationship, he has to have healthy relationship with students, teachers, administrative staff, and management committee members. In external relationship the academic coordinator needs to have productive relationship with the stakeholders as he is the responsible person for promoting the organization. 2. Job Specification: Job specification also means man specification as it is associated with those attributes which are found in a person and essential for the coordinator’s job. Under the process of job specification, it is decided as to what prerequisites are required in the candidate who will be appointed for the successful completion of the job of an academic coordinator. The prerequisites can be in the form of education, experience, physical characteristics etc. Sample Job Analysis Template The name of the Institute: Saint Joan Institute of Women’s Studies Date of conducting the analysis: 18/04/2012 Position ‘Academic Coordinator’ (Foreign language department) Nature of the job: a. Teaching: The coordinator is expected to take at least 3 lectures of English. He/she is also expected to design the curriculum, to write content for the syllabus etc. b. Administration: The remaining five hours of the coordinator will be allotted for administrative work, which includes: Coordination of students, teachers and parents To take care of admissions and to counsel the students about the scopes of learning foreign language To arrange periodical meetings of Management Committee To arrange events, workshops, staff training and faculty development programs Educational qualifications and Job prerequisites: The candidate must have secured a masters degree in English language. Candidates with BEC, TEFL or TESOL certificate will be preferred He must have 3 years of experience as a English trainer and an academic coordinator Task Involved: [List the specific tasks involved for the particular job position] Teaching English to the students of various domains To design a need base course To counsel and coordinate To conduct promotional activities such as advertisements and other promotional activities To decide budget To arrange periodical meetings To work as an in-charge of the foreign language centre. Salary and other benefits: Rationale for the method chosen for job analysis: A sound job analysis has become the crucial process in today’s competitive environment. Saint Joan Institute of Women’s Study is an educational organization which is committed to impart training in higher professional studies to the students. It started its foreign language institute 6 years back. The organization is looking for the enthusiastic and multi-tasked candidate for the post of an academic coordinator. A multitasking person is a person that can handle multiple different works without decreasing result quality too much.” (Arnold 2006)The foreign language centre of Saint Joan institute is still in its infancy. They have many competitors in the town. The institute is in requirement of a committed person who will have the vision and who can play a strategic role in establishing brand name of the organization in language teaching. The HR department also identified the need of an English teacher for the institute. Currently there are various professional institutes working under the aegis of Saint Joan Institute. Apart from their core field, they want complete grooming of their students. Though the medium of instruction is English, some of the students are very poor in English. Hence the organization is in requirement of a person who will take care of the English teaching in all institutes. The organization has decided to handover the responsibility of overall English language development of the students to foreign language department. All language related activities will be conducted from foreign language centre. The above Job analysis template has been designed after studying the exact requirements of organization. The rationale was basically to modify the position of the Academic Coordinator in the language centre. For that it was necessary to focus on the tasks that need to be done by the coordinator. The method of interviewing through questionnaire and emails also proves to be effective as it is possible to know what are the people’s expectations and ideas regarding the post of a coordinator. Job Analysis, Design and Organizational Sustainability: The process of job analysis, job design is very crucial for the organizational sustainability. Not directly, but indirectly they affect the performance of the organization. It is because if on the wrong job analysis will result into the false way of recruiting the candidate. The main purpose of the job analysis is to analyze the resources and establishing various strategies to accomplish the goal of the organization. The figure is taken from the research "The Sustainability Formula, website: http://tccgrp.com/pdfs/SustainabilityFormula.pdf The ultimate aim of every task in the organization is to attain the organizational goal and job analysis process is one of them. “Sustainable Organizations Exhibit Leadership that is visionary, strategic, inclusive, decisive, inspirational, motivational, and accountable.” (Peter York p.3)In our chosen organization for example, the coordinator is a crucial person and the ultimate goal of the language centre is to obtain substantial number of admission and the strong building a strong image of the organization. According to the figure mentioned above the sustainability of the institution will lie in the simple combination of a good leader, (coordinator) who has the ability to adapt and design the strategies according to the changing environments and he or she should have the program capacity. In which he or she should use the resources effectively and efficiently. Further he or she should have the technical knowhow. All these qualities will result into the sustainability of the institution. In such case the job analysis becomes essential for recruiting the right candidate for the post. It is the major thing for the language centre of Saint Joan Institute of Women’s Studies to hire right candidate for such a challenging task. He or she should suit the work environment and the requirements or else the language centre will end up stagnating The organizational sustainability lies in the accomplishment of the goals. Further the organizational sustainability depends upon the hiring of right quality of workforce. Qualified personnel are the real asset of the organization on which the pillar of organization is placed. The sustainability of the organization lies in its adaptability. For this purpose, the existing workforce needs to be updated and for updating they required periodical training sessions. Job analysis is also used in training to identify or develop the training content. The academic coordinator’s role has become very much comprehensive. In our chosen organization, he has been the whole and sole person for the sustainability of the language centre. SECTION 3 a. Job Description of an Academic Coordinator Job description or position description of an academic coordinator will define where the job is positioned in the organization structure The major content for the job description is as follows: Job Title: Academic Coordinator Reporting Responsibilities: The immediate boss of the academic coordinator will be the convener. He/ she is supposed to report to the convener of the Language unit. Main Purpose: Teaching, coordinating, counselling, and other administrative jobs. Main tasks and accountability: To decide different strategies for short term goals (Admissions) and long term goal (Building the image of the language centre To teach English/design curriculum To define the prerequisites for the appointment of other faculty members To arrange periodical meetings To be a mediator between the students and teachers, teachers and parents, teachers /staff members and Employment condition: It will be a full time job There will be a probation period of 2 years During the probation period the salary will be a consolidated salary. b. Advertisement for the Post of an Academic Coordinator. Saint Joan Institute of Women’s Studies (SJIWS) 162 – 168 , Virginia Street, Opp. Saint Mathew Church, London (UK), telephone: +44 (0)20 78757448 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REQUIRED ACADEMIC COORDINATOR Qualification: Masters degree in English. The age limit: between 25 and 40 years. The candidate should have minimum 2 years of relevant experience of teaching and administration. He/she should have an ability to manage multiple tasks at the same time as well as the ability to handle the situations independently. Remuneration: No bar for right candidate. How to apply: Interested candidates may email their resume along with the covering letter within one week of this advertisement on the following email id recruitmentinfo@sjihs.ac.uk c. Some factors for consideration regarding the advertisement For getting the right candidate for the post, the institution has to give advertisement. There are many options available to reach to the right candidate. The newspapers, Television, Radio as well as the new media like internet. The best way to publish the academic advertisement is online advertisement. The internet or online recruitment is always compared with the traditional methods of recruiting, such as newspaper ads, trade magazines and employment agencies. The growing use of internet: Around 84.8% of UK’s population uses the internet today. The following chart shows the growth of Internet users in United Kingdom. Source: World Bank The following pie chart shows the recent percentage and the number of population using internet: Total Online Population (000’s) in 2011: 52,731 Percentage of Population online in 2011: 84.1% There were 52,731,209 internet users in the UK (representing 84.1% of the population) in December 2011, according to Internet World Stats. (Internet World Stats, April 2012) No Geographical constraints: There are no Geographical limits as long as online recruitment is concerned. The organization can go beyond certain boundaries for getting the right person. It means that the online advertisement is likely to get significant response and the institute will have a wide scope for selecting the most eligible candidate for the post. The Status of Newspaper: Newspaper these days are supposed to be somewhat outdated. The circulation of the newspapers has also dropped down. Rachel McAthy (Thursday, October 13, 2011) has stated that “Worldwide daily newspaper circulation fell by nine million in 2010, according to the World Press Trends report launched today at the World Editors' Forum in Vienna.” It means that for this specific job, the HR department will get maximum candidates and thus they have a wide scope for filtering and short-listing the most eligible candidates. The other advantages of online employment advertisements are as follows: Less Paper Work: Unlike traditional way of employment advertising, the unnecessary paperwork can be avoided. To pile up the bulk of resumes is another headache, which can be avoided in online recruitment process. It is easy, feasible to collect the soft copies of resumes. Consequently the work becomes paperless. Smart way for a strategic position: Online advertisement has become a smart way to reach to the eligible candidates.When it is the question of recruiting the labour force, traditional way of recruiting might be feasible. This kind of labour force might be recruited through various conventional methods. But if the organization wants a candidate to play a strategic role, the candidate has to be skillful. In online process this objective can be attained in a very short time span. Online recruitment is really time-saving process. During online recruitment process, the pre-screening question method can be implemented. Cost-effectiveness: Putting an advertisement in the organization’s website, costs nothing. On the other hand if the advertisement is given either in local or a national newspaper, it can be expensive. The other media like Television and Radio are out of question due to their high rates. According to the Diane Arthur (1998) “the cost of placing a large ad in local newspaper in the Boston area runs between $1200 and $1500. Advertising on the Monster Board, one of the popular Net Job Centres (http://www.monster.com), costs about $150 and the cost for job seeker is free.” (Diane Arthur 1998) Other rationales for choosing internet for advertising are: The internet is the medium which has no holiday and gives you service for 24 hours 365 days. The whole network doesn’t go down. If a particular site is inaccessible, one can find other sites. The computer skill of the potential candidate can also be evaluated during selection process. The usefulness of Employee Job Description: In today’s competitive environment the document like job description has attained a very important position in the smooth functioning of the organization. The job description earlier was a process, used for hiring the employees. In the course of time the role of this document changed and became more comprehensive. Job description is now not just the hiring tool anymore, but it is used as an outline for reporting relationship as well as working conditions. This document can be used in performance management, training and development process, compensation, recognition and rewards, and maintaining discipline. “Employee job descriptions are written statements that describe the duties, responsibilities, required qualifications, and reporting relationships of a particular job.” (Heathfield Susan M.) The organization’s success lies on the effectively developed job description. If the job description is poorly made, it will create confusion. For the effective communication the proper job description is written. It is because of the job description, that the employees get a clear idea about their role and responsibilities. The employees in the organization always like to know the expectations of the organization towards them. Job description is useful to assess the critical status of the job. Doug Sayed (2003) states the following purposes of Job description: 1. Employee Recruitment and Selection: Job description helps in creating advertisement as well as the necessary questions for the interview. 2. Employee orientation: Job description facilitates new employees a better understanding of the job expectations. 3. Employee training and Development: If the job description is appropriate, it helps to give proper training. 4. Establishing job performance standards: The performance standards are essential to set to assess the employees. For this purpose, detail and appropriate job description is very important. 5. Benchmarking your organization’s jobs: 6. Developing compensation program: The appropriateness of the job description, it becomes easy to develop a good compensation program. 7. Performance Review: The periodical performance review is the essential phenomenon. If the employee’s job is described in a good manner, it helps to track their performance. 8. Goal Setting and performance management: Job Description is the assurance to the employees that their performance is tracked by the organization. 9. Meeting Legal Requirements: There are some legal requirements need to be attained by the organization. If the job description is done then it becomes easy to meet the legal requirements. (Sayed Doug 2003) The proper communication is the root of organizational functioning. The job description helps to attain this goal. It is the best way to avoid any kind of miscommunication in the organization. According to Martin Carole “the key benefit to be reaped from this document (Job Description) is to improve communication.” (Carole Martin 2009, p.1) Job description as Margie Mader – Clark (2008, p.2) states job description as a “valuable tool for communicating expectations, evaluating and managing performance, terminating employment if an employee can’t meet your job requirements and much more – all while keeping you and your company out of potential legal trouble.” Sometimes the HR professionals think writing job description to be merely time consuming and waste of time. It also takes a long time to update job description often. Some of them think that they have many things to do instead of wasting their time in such monotonous and irrelevant job. But on the other hand, job description can never be a waste of time. They are one of the most important processes for the employers, as well as the potential employees. From the side of the candidate, he or she wants to know what the exact requirements of the organization are and whether they are fulfilling the requirements. Job description no doubt is very important process as well challenging for HR department. The HR professional may use this effective tool of job description as an advertising tool also. If the job description is not there or if it is not written precisely, it may lead to confusion among the job seekers. For example if the institute is in requirement of a coordinator, and if they have not described the job precisely, the application may come from all kinds of coordinators such as marketing coordinator, or sports coordinator, or event coordinator. But if the specifications are precise then the candidate comes to know in which area or field the organization is looking for the candidate. Post recruitment Job Description: After the recruitment the next process is that the selected employee wants to know about his or her future, and career prospects in the organization. Precise job description makes them aware about the position, entailment and the qualification required for them to increase their career graph. They find a proper direction, a proper track for their professional development. If they lack in a particular area, it becomes easy for them to know their shortcomings and thus to overcome them. Writing Job Description for legal issues: The Job description acts as a legal document. It is important for the employee to understand the legal requirements and ramification related to the job. For that the job description is a appropriate document. The accurate job description reduces the risk of malpractices likely to occur during job hiring process and many other functions in the organization. It also gives details of compensation details, probation period, duty hours, holidays, medical issues, salary issues etc. Conclusion: The successful running and smooth functioning of the organization depends upon many HR activities, and hiring is one of the important processes. It is quite general statement that people are the asset of the organization. But it needs to correct the statement that people are not the asset of the organization but Right People are the asset of the organization. The wrong candidate if becomes confirmed and permanent, it becomes the liability of the organization. So selecting right candidate is the challenge of HR department of any institution. Sources: 1. Arnold 2006 “Being a multitasking person, a blog, http://arnold.wiliem.net/node/11 2. Carole Martin (2009) Perfect phrases for Writing Job Description, published by McGraw Hill Professional, p.1 3. Diane Arthur,(1998) “Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting and Orienting New Employees,” third edition, Published by Amacom, p.82 4. Eric P. Prien, Leonard D. Goodstein, Jeanette Goodstein 2009 “A practical guide to job analysis. 5. Heathfield Susan M. “Employee Job Descriptions: Why Job Descriptions Make Good Business Sense.” 6. Internet World Stats, April 2012 7. Ladyshewsky & Jones (2007 July), Academic leadership and the course coordinator. King pin in the quality process. In Baird (Ed.)Processing of the Australian Universities Quality framework conference (pp. 83-90). Melbourne, Victoria: Australian Universities Quality Agency. 8. Margie Mader – Clark (2008) “Job Description Handbook,” Published by Nolo, P.2 9. Peter York “The Sustainability Formula,” TCC Group, http://tccgrp.com/pdfs/SustainabilityFormula.pdf 10. Rachel McAthy (Thursday, October 13, 2011) “Global Circulation falls as the readers become promiscuous website: http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/global-circulation-falls-as-readers-become-promiscuous-/s2/a546340/ 11. Ramsden P (1998) Learning to Lead in Higher Education, London, Routledge 12. Sayed Doug (2003)”Why Job Descriptions are Important,”taken from the website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/why-job-descriptions-are-important-HA001189471.aspx 13. Sinha R. K. “Business Management” Pg. 14, 14. Weekley Jeff “Strategic Jobs,” http://www.kenexa.com/getattachment/4568a2ae-9f05-430e-8349-220c913003ff/Strategic-Jobs.aspx 15. World Bank, March 30, 2012 Read More