Introduction
In any organisation, recruitment and selection are vital processes, usually done by the human resource department. This is because these are mechanisms of how they choose possible candidates to fill in job positions that are available in their organisation. Because any organisation’s performance is largely dependent on the quality of its workers, those that do an effective job of managing these “entry” functions are clearly preferred by the managers.
Although training and intensive supervision can transform some undesirable employees, hiring individuals who are already capable and enthusiastic is clearly preferable. Managers can save large amounts of time, energy, and aggravation by placing the right person in the right position. Among the probable benefits of a proper match of employee abilities to particular work requirements are enhanced job satisfaction, greater productivity, lower turnover, and a smaller number of “problem employees” (Condrey 2005, p. 112).
In the recent study of Piotrowski and Armstrong (2006) as they surveyed companies, they found that most companies still use traditional methods in recruitment, which require resumes and reference checks. However, they found that 9.3% of the companies surveyed had online pre-employment screening tests and 21.9% of the companies would want to modernise their recruitment & selection process by using online pre-employment screening. It is also important to note that Piotrowski and Armstrong (2006) found 28.5% of the firms “either screen or plan to screen for Honesty-Integrity while 21.9% of the companies either assess or plan to assess for Violence-Potential”.
In this regard, recruitment and selection are the avenues by which bureaucracy acquires its most important raw materials, human resources. Decentralization, flexibility, agency autonomy, widespread use of information technologies, and experimentation with promising new techniques are being integrated in the human resources department to improve their recruitment and selection. At the end of the day, choosing the right employees for the job should benefit the organisation as a whole.
Group and Group Working
When people work as one, they are more inclined to do the job better than people working separately. In the workplace, groups emerge because organisations want to focus on tasks or solve problems that are beyond the capacity of one individual. In group working, it allows creative and innovative juices to flow through the constant sharing of information. People could also appropriate division of labour among the members of the group so that it can lead to more effective, more efficient and less stressful workplace.
Their high levels of performance with regards to quantity, quality, and timeliness of work results can contribute to their sense of satisfaction, addressing a psychological and motivational need. With incessant exposure to each other, group members and their superiors could ascertain whether they have a group that can continue working together with synergy or their togetherness poses a detrimental effect on their output and interrelationships.
In Blanchard and Parisi-Carew’s One Minute Manager Builds High Performing Teams (2000), they emphasised that “people who feel good about themselves produce good results — and appeal is based on applying techniques that take only one minute to apply”. In this book, they presented seven characteristics of the PERFORM model that identified the desired behaviors of an effective team:
- Purpose. Team members are clear about what the team’s work is and why it is important.
- Empowerment. Members are confident about the team’s ability to overcome obstacles and to realize its vision.
- Relationship and communication. The team is committed to open communication, and members feel that they can state their opinions, thoughts and feelings without fear.
- Flexibility. Members are flexible and perform different tasks and maintenance functions as needed.
- Optimal productivity. High-performing teams produce significant results, due to a commitment to high standards and quality results.
- Recognition and appreciation. Individual and team accomplishments are frequently recognized by the team leader — as well as team members — by celebrating milestones, accomplishments and events.
- Morale. Members are enthusiastic about the team’s work, and each person feels pride in being a team member (p. 9-16).
Group and group working are essential in harnessing organisational culture. As organizational culture has been defined as “the set of shared values and norms that control organizational members’ interactions with each other and with suppliers, customers, and other people outside the organisation” (Jones, 2004), people that are good team members can help lead the organisation to all its goals and visions by uplifting its competitive potential.
Works Cited
Blanchard, Ken and Parisi-Carew, Eunice. One Minute Manager Builds High Performing Teams, The Rev. Ed. New York: William Morrow & Co., 2000.
Condrey, Stephen E. “Chapter 5: Staffing the Bureaucracy: Employee Recruitment and Selection”. Handbook of Human Resources Management in Government, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2005.
Jones, Gareth R. “Chapter 7: Creating and Managing Organizational Culture”, Organizational Theory, Design, and Change, 1st ed. NJ: Prentice-Hall-Pearson Education Company, 2004.
Piotrowski, Chris, and Terry Armstrong. “Current Recruitment and Selection Practices: A National Survey of Fortune 1000 Firms.” North American Journal of Psychology, 8.3 (2006): 489.