'Equal opportunities for all in employment Essay\r'

'1. Do you hypothesise that law is recyclable in ensuring that in that location atomic sum 18 bear upon opportunities for solely in employment?\r\nThere has been a deliberate reduction in discrimination through the extend century, rule previous(prenominal) by the government in numerous acts guard acted to tame discrimination in the start place. The friction catch profit effectuation 1970, The conjure up Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relation Act 1976 ar the main legislation that stamp down discrimination.\r\nThe Equal Pay Act 1970 fitd that men and women concentrate the corresponding margins and conditions for deforming a comparable telephone circuit. preliminary to this there were m whatsoalways employers suffering women less for doing the corresponding(p) aggregate of fit as a man.\r\nThe hinge on discrimination Act 1975, do it illegal to come apart in employment on the grounds of hinge upon and military status. This act to a fault b rought to light at once discrimination; where someone is treated less favorably than a member of the opposite finish; and substantiative discrimination; where a particular requirement plainly treats everyone equ entirelyy unless has a disproportionate conclusion on a particular group; the infallible must(prenominal) withal non be excusable (Bratton & vitamin A; Jones 1994).\r\nThe Race Relations Act 1976 made it unlawful for employers to assort on grounds of race, colour, nationality and cultural or national background. This was in an lather to reduce racism especially in the work at place.\r\nThese pieces of legislation atomic number 18 in an attempt to provide ‘equal opportunities’. Employer should only acquit decisions based upon the somebody’s ability to do the chore. though the government tries to tally equal opportunities by giving out legislation that is encouraging, equal opportunities relies on swell working practice. This is highlig hted in capriole analysis where a person judicial admission must non be much affirmative to men than women. Advertising must not discriminate on grounds of sex or martial status, ‘sales person’ as appose to ‘salesman’. Interviews and pick must not ask discriminating questions such as whether a woman intends to have children.\r\nIn conclusion legislation goes a long trend to swear outing equal opportunities, and some cases (Grieg V lodge Industry (1979), Gubala V Crompton Parkinson Ltd (1979)) have been brought a fall uponst employers for discrimination. but touchable equal opportunity relies on the employer’s good practice of this legislation (Pendlebury 1996).\r\n2. Is substantiate discrimination a worth dapple form _or_ system of government for an musical arrangement and for society in general? Is there an overriding honestification for positive discrimination?\r\nPositive discrimination is only worth plot when used to prey noti ce preconceptions. Ethnic groups do not go into the police force generally for vexation of racism and discrimination. UK police have a policy of encouraging recruitment from ethnic groups. This is to help fabricate society, which is multi-cultural; therefore enforcement officers should also be multi-cultural for an equal imitation. Though positive discrimination must not be confused with or lead to preferential interposition on the basis of tokenism e.g. everyone past the recruitment turn out except for the woman, therefore we re- rivulet or just have her in bothway, as we identify a woman.\r\nIn politics, the House of Parliament is hatefult to be a representation of Great Britain’s society this is not the case. The bulk of the House of Parliament is middle-aged, white and male. Steps have been made to positively discriminate to attain a to a greater extent un- warped representation of the population. In this case there is an overriding justification for discrimin ation to help the young, women, ethnic groups into the House of Parliament.\r\n3. Why is the interview such a popular method of infusion, and what ar its advantages and disadvantages?\r\nThe interview is the just some popular method of selection because it allows much to a greater extent detail than any separate form. Questions throne be posed and the responses gauged as they be given. The advantages of the interview are that it has condition face-to-face communication. A rapport net be built up in the midst of chance an interviewer; giving a relaxed atmosphere and much congenital answers. The interview fag end be used to pick up out special details crucial to the patronage and the prospects ability in this area. The outlook is less plausibly to exaggerate face-to-face than they power on an cover form. An interview generally out bloods what the merchantmandidate wrote on an exercise form. It is the best method of thrumting an accurate divination of work carrying out.\r\nThe disadvantages of a interview is that the candidate can deceive the interviewer in specialist areas that the interviewer k at presents nothing much(prenominal) than or less e.g. the candidates knowledge of internal computer circuit boards, the interviewer might not know plenty information roughly them to tell if the candidate is actually the right person for the business sector. The interviewer’s perception may be selective, s/he may be racist, and this lack of objectiveness may go unnoticed. A rapport with the candidate might cloud the interviewers objective judgement.\r\nAn interviewer might dismiss a candidate on first impressions or stereotyping and indeed spend the rest of the interview confirming their decision. Or the halo effect where a wound dressed candidate distorts later judgements. The interviewer can make a logical error just because the candidate has not held down a contrast for to a greater extent than six months doesnâ€℠¢t mean they won’t this time. Interviews place more emphasis on the negatives sort of than the positives. Inexperienced interviewers might make errors of judgement and bias the results (Chambers 1997).\r\n4. Analyse the problems associated with psychometric testing, and the underlying assumptions on which this selection procedure is based.\r\nPsychometric testing has a make sense of drawbacks:\r\nThere is not always a direct relationship betwixt the candidate’s performance in the test and their ability in the undertaking. The job situation may be very diametric from the artificial test scenario.\r\nThe interpretation of the results is normally involved requiring aspireing and experience. It is highly subjective, which belies the apparent scientific character of the approach.\r\nIndividual psychometric tests have their own drawbacks; an dexterity test for arithmetical ability would need to be unendingly revised to en positive(predicate) that later applicants wou ld not know its content. Personality tests are often lead astray as applicants try to guess which result volitioning be viewed most favourably. Intelligence tests do not usually take into account different cultures and attitudes, which equals their chances of tally well. It can be very potent to test for obscure traits such as maturity and creativity.\r\nIt is difficult to erase bias from tests. Many tests are finished better by men than women, tests are usually patterned by men this influences the make-up of the test. It is hard not to discriminate against race or sex in particular aspects of the testing.\r\nThe underlying assumption is that all applicants test on fair and equal terms. If an applicant’s m early(a) is ill in infirmary this pass on weigh on the applicants mind and may distract them in the test. The best applicant may be having an off day, while the worse applicant might be on superlative form.\r\nRewards focusing\r\n1. Analyse the connection amids t indigence and impart using three mainstream indigence theories.\r\nHerzberg’s cardinal figure model of motivation cl captures that bullion is a ‘hygiene factor’ which federal agency it is a dissatisfier if it is not qualified, however money is not a capability satisfier or positive motivator. Herzberg said that money’s impact on favourable lifeings is short term, while not enough be produced long term unfavourable olfactory perceptions.\r\nAdams’s Equity theory of motivation argues that satisfaction from overcompensate is related to the employee’s perception. This is the amount of effort they put in for the amount of pay they take away compared with the ratio of new(prenominal)wises.\r\nExpectancy Theory narrates that motivation leave be strong if individuals can look for their effort to produce worthwhile rewards. Armstrong & angstrom unit; Murlis (1998) give tongue to that ‘the greater the value of a set of awards , the high the probability that receiving each of these rewards depends upon effort, the greater the effort that bequeath be put forth in any given situation.’ For warning to aim a inducement of �100, they may have to reach certain targets, if they think the effort they have to put in would match the �100 they will.\r\nPay is very measurable to spate because they rely on it to satisfy their basic needs. It is also a sign of their worth, it can therefore remedy self-esteem and thus motivate them. Pay is the find to attracting hatful to a new job although other benefits may also be a factor pay is the most crucial. Employees will make comparisons mingled with themselves and other employees, which will relate to equity and fairness. If they feel they’re not world nonrecreational enough they will leave, or work to attain a pay-rise. Pay can motivate (Armstrong & international ampere; Murlis 1998) but to achieve lasting motivation assist has to be paid to other non-financial motivators.\r\n2. When considering their reward systems perplexity and employees will have differing priorities. What might these priorities be and why do they differ?\r\nManagers place to extend productiveness by motivating their staff to get as much work out of them as possible. Employees on the other hand want as much money and benefits for doing their work as they can get. This produces a unwashed ground on which employers and employee’s can negotiate.\r\nEmployees want to maximize their rewards for working which affects their standard of living and their lifestyle. The boldness wants value for money from its employees, to attract and retain staff, to gain allegiance and improve performance, which affects profitability and monetary value- strong point.\r\nEmployees are feeling after themselves and want rewards for doing as little work as possible. Employees are interested that for move a certain amount of effort in they get a justified reward. Management are concerned that the employee put in enough effort to deserve the award. Sale targets are a good example, if the employee meets the managers requirements they get a bonus (Armstrong & Murlis 1998).\r\n3. What do we mean by differentials and relatives, and why are they important?\r\nThe pay social body structure must provide appropriate differentials between ranges to reward significant increase in job size by sorrowful a job to a higher grade. This means that there must be a meaningful pay increase with an increase in workload. If there is not sufficient differential between ranges of pay, then some players will mystify borderline and frequent re-evaluations will be need. In a fibril of command the pay is highest at the top and lowest at the fathom. to begin with being able to move up the filament, the distance of the link must be overcome. Their needs to be at least a 10% pay rise for going from one link of the mountain range to the ne xt, despite small pay rises as the employee moves up the link.\r\nInternal Relatives can be monitored by flavour at the differentials that exist between groups of employees. If it is felt that because of changing roles that the pay does not reflect the new job size, investigations can be conducted to rectify the situation.\r\nWhen looking at pay for an employee, comparisons must be made on other make-ups (monitoring external relatives). This is the competitive stance it has with other organisations; this might be matching others, more or less.\r\nIt is important for managers to look at the pay differences in their own staff to see whether they aren’t being treated fairly; not being paid enough for the work they do compared to another employee. If the employee’s feel there is not enough pay rises to accept extra work they will not. If there is not sufficient differentiation between stages of the chain of command they will not be so keen to advance upon it. Also if em ployees of McDonalds employees learn that Burger nance is relatively paying an extra pound per moment more, they will try to defect to Burger King. (Armstrong & Murlis 1998)\r\n4. What changes has the maturation of HRM brought to oversight of reward systems? Are these changes beneficial to employer and employee?\r\nArmstrong & Murlis (1998) claim that Reward Management philosophy evolved in accord with some(prenominal) aspects of HRM philosophy. This is emphasised by treating people as assets to be invested in, this is HRM philosophy being combine by rewards worry. By rewarding people; putting money in; this should get greater productivity; getting more out.\r\nDemonstrated by gaining employees commitment to the objectives and values of the organisation. Through strategic integration by incorporating HR issues into strategic plans and ensuring that the various aspects of HRM cohere and are mutually puntive. Lastly HRM has enabled employees to fulfil their full po tential and to deliver their maximum contribution to the achievement of organisational goals.\r\nThese changes really benefit both the employee and the employer, the employee gets more out of rewards management, while the employer recognises the employee as an asset. HRM tries to bring the goals of employers and employees closer together, by involving the employee more with the business increasing his loyalty while getting more out for he employer (Armstrong & Murlis 1998).\r\nRestructuring of act upon\r\n1. Why might the structure or protrude of work be important for the individual worker and for the organisation?\r\nThe structure or hierarchy of work may help aid communications from the top level of management down to the lowest worker. An organisation with numerous layers of hierarchy or along chain of command will have difficulty in communications between top and bottom men. communication theory from the top will go through many layers and tend to distort as the message is past on alike Chinese whispers. Communications from the bottom will take ages to reach the top if they ever do. This is why a process of delayering has been happening in many UK businesses to reduce the levels of hierarchy to around quadruple.\r\n clear defined aims and objectives help to ease systems of communication between different parts of the organisation. Rolex want to be sensed as a luxury brand, this is their aim and objective. perspicacious this their marketing department is not going to do a cheap and tacky advert e.g. big bucks Noodle. A good structure will help to remain all aspects of the organisation working in the same direction, for the organisations goals. To have a good structure is important to eliminate mistakes and therefore not scourge time and money.\r\n2. Explain the limits of taylorism as a job design strategy.\r\nFredrick Taylor’s technique of scientific management is based upon the division of labour. This was done by taking a complex jo b and splitting it into its section parts, then train employees to carry out a single designate in the most economic way. This is in effect a production line with each worker doing a bit more to the product.\r\nThe drawbacks of job design by task atomisation are that workers experience extreme repetitiveness. Doing a task with little mental stimulation will result in daydreaming and not paying attention as a result of social interactions and diversions. This can lead to accidents and errors in the task.\r\nStress is related specifically to high-workload, low discretion jobs. Symptoms admit nervous tension, insularity and low morale; this will tend to affect performance.\r\nMotivation will suffer as a result of dissatisfaction with the work and extra efforts will need to be made by the managers. The simple tasks will also build walls between workers and management, as the workers tasks are perceived theirs and under the control of the manager (Mullins 1999)(Marcouse 1999)\r\n3. â€Å" business sector rotation, job expanding upon and job enrichment are patently attempts by managers to control individuals at work”. Discuss.\r\n telephone circuit rotation involves workers changing jobs from time to time. This could mean wretched down a production line or from one department to another. This should reduce boredom and give the employee a wider variety of skills and understanding of the business. An employer will also gain from a more widely develop staff, as it allows for staff being ill and having happy employees who can take over.\r\nAlthough rotation might keep the worker interested, the time spent for the worker to learn new skills in each department would recurrence balance the gains in productivity. In addition moving workers from one boring job to another evenly repetitive is unlikely to motivate them. (Hall, 1997)\r\n cable enlargement gives employees a chance to do a consequence of small-related tasks as appose to just one repetitively. For example they might be able to construct the unit of measurement bicycle, not just the handlebars. This is meant to reduce boredom as the employees have a wider variety of tasks to do and gain satisfaction with a sense of closure.\r\nHowever in contrast it is argued that it reduces efficiency because of a fall in productivity from carrying out a greater number of tasks. Many workers also resent this because they prefer doing a singularly boring repetitive job so they do not need to concentrate as much. hypothesize enlargement works better within a group situation, where each worker has specific jobs and job rotation can take place. (Hall, 1997)\r\nJob enrichment is designed to give individuals a greater license and feeling of responsibility. It focuses on intrinsic satisfaction; by giving employees authority over planning and execution of a task they should gain a greater sense of achievement upon completing the task. It is a more complex and challenging job that should de velop their out of work skills and encourage them to be more productive.\r\nJob enrichment isn’t without its problems though, workers who feel they are unable to complete the required tasks will not react positively to it feeling they have been forced in to it. Also not all employees will react in the same way feeling they should be paid more for the extra responsibility. (Mullins, 1999)(Hall, 1997)\r\nAll these techniques of increasing productivity are designed not to cost the organisation any more money. In some ways it is managers just manipulating the workers, by changing their work patterns in a way to increase output. Job enrichment however gives the employee a sense of responsibility, lessening direct managerial supervision. But ultimately these techniques are used by managers to get the workers motivated and as productive as possible.\r\n4. We are said to be living in a post Fordist era. What does this mean and how, do you think this came about?\r\nWith so much hosti lity to Taylor’s scientific management, despite its benefits for employers, it had to be dropped. However the principles have evolved into a more acceptable model mainly incorporating job enrichment. The using of mass assembly line work was invented by Henry Ford in 1913 (Fordism); this took many of Taylor’s principles. This has been moved on from in an effort to try and increase motivation and productivity.\r\nLittler and Salaman (1984) listed fin points of good job design: â€\r\n1. Closure †ending a product or process\r\n2. anticipate responsibility for quality control\r\n3. Job flexibleness is enabled by allowing training in different skills\r\n4. self regulation of the speed of work\r\n5. The job structure allows social interaction and a degree of co-operation among workers. (Bratton & Gold 1994)\r\nSince this there have been three broad(a) types: job enrichment, shakeup of assembly lines and Japanese-style job design.\r\nJob enrichment as above i s concerned with rotation and enlarging among others. The reorganisation of assembly lines has been associated with increased product differentiation in highly competitive consumer industries and unstable labour relations. This creates more flexible work structures in order to accommodate more rapid product changes. Japanese-style job design has three main elements: flexibility, quality control, and minimum waste.\r\nBusinesses now tend to use one of these three techniques in the post-fordist era this has come about as an evolution of techniques and trial and error. Scientific Management didn’t work but lessons were learnt from it and are still applied today.\r\nThe imagination of HRM in Transition\r\n1. Should humane resources be dealt with any other than from other resources? Justify your answer by referring to the managers control function.\r\nHuman resources need to be dealt with differently than other resources; otherwise they’ll just leave the job. To ensure ag ainst this Human Resource Planning is carried out, this will include how to motivate staff, how to develop an organisational culture and planning how to support or develop employees e.g. training.\r\nHuman resources are not like raw materials where they are purchased and used, a constant understanding is needed. The management want to have as flexible men as possible; this means training staff so they become multi-skilled. This can allow job rotation and covering other employees in the event of illness (Hall, 1997).\r\n2. Discuss the four distinguish elements of the Storey Model of HRM\r\nThe four key elements of the Storey model 1992 are: Beliefs & Assumptions, strategic Aspects, decipher Management and Key Levers. The Beliefs & Assumptions of HRM are Unitarist, the differences between PIR and HRM are that HRM tries to instil commitment and trust in the employee looking to go ‘beyond the trim down’. Therefore employees should be carefully selected and devel oped (Bratton & Gold, 1994). The Strategic Aspects are central to HRM, always move to think of the business and the consumer. HR policies should be compound into the business strategy †stemming from it and even contributing to it (Storey, 1999).\r\nThe Line management is concerned with the critical role of managers. This is because HR decisions are crucial to a business and too important to be left to specialists alone (Storey, 1999). As appose to needing specialist key managers HRM allows the general managers as key players in HR issues. The Key Levers check to Storey (1999) are that: managing culture is more important than managing procedures and systems; integrated action on selection, communication, training, reward and development; and restructuring and job redesign to allow devolved responsibility and empowerment.\r\n3. valuate the possible experience of working in an HRM environment, as opposed to a Personnel environment.\r\nTorrington and Hall state that the nat ure and degree of difference between personnel department department management and Human Resource Management as remaining ‘largely matters of opinion rather than fact, and the similarities are much greater than the differences’.\r\nPersonnel management is ‘ custody-centred’, direct mainly at the employees. Although a management function, personnel are never totally identified with management interests. Personnel managements underlying depicted object is that workers have a right to proper treatment and to make sure this is the case in manager-worker relationships.\r\nHRM is ‘resource centred’; the main aim is to plan, monitor and control rather than mediation as in personnel. HRM is directed mainly at management needs for human resources to be provided and deployed. The underlying theme is that human resource management is much like any other aspect of management and an constituent(a) part. This means that it should not be separated, and o nly handled by specialists (Mullins, 1999)\r\nIn a Personnel management organisation there can be tension between managers and workers, despite the personnel management intervening. The worker seeks to maximise his wages and rewards, while the employer wants to reduce costs, as they are a drain on profits. In a HRM organisation the employee should feel more involved and therefore be aware of the consequences. HRM also allows a more flexible workforce, which can be deployed more cost effectively than an inflexible one.\r\n4. How, if at all, has the HRM allowed managers to increase organisational efficiency?\r\nIf managers get better motivate their staff then they will work more high-octanely and productivity will rise. Alternatively they might produce a higher quality piece of work. Storey (1999) says that it has become widely accepted that motivation is beneficial to the organisation. If human resource management encourages motivation of employees, if this is successful then effici ency will rise.\r\nHowever a explicit link between a cheery workforce and improved performance has never been proven. There is no reason for a workforce to be satisfied if it isn’t relevant to organisational efficiency or effectiveness other than for human reasons.\r\nHRM managers who train their staff get a much more flexible workforce allowing them to be deployed in the best way to reduce costs. HRM managers are much more likely to train their employees as a workforce gaining skills which can be used in a greater crosswise of the business. If last thin orders come-in it is much easier for HRM managers to deal with as they are more flexible than Personnel in contrast who couldn’t make last minute alterations. This makes HRM a much more effective and efficient style of management.\r\n'