Recruiting and Retaining People
Introduction to the subject
Getting and keeping staff!
• A major part of HR specialist role
• Also and increasingly, a key part of line
manager’s role
– Who ‘does’ recruitment in an organisation you are
familiar with?
• Recruitment and retention also referred to as
employee resourcing
Recruitment and retention
• CIPD (cited by Taylor, 2010: 2) define purpose of
people resourcing, retention & planning:
• “A major and fundamental objective of the HR
function is the mobilisation of a workforce.
Organisations can only function if they are able to
assemble together teams of people with the
necessary skills, attitudes and experience to meet
their objectives. A further objective is then to
retain effective performers for as long as possible.
From time to time it is also necessary to dismiss
people from organisations.”….
Key HRM objectives
• Staffing
• Right people, right place, right time
• Performance
• People are present, motivated, able – exhibit discretionary effort and
likely to stay
• Administration
• Ensure people are managed efficiently, lawfully, ethically – requires
policies, procedures, rules
• Change Management
• Mechanisms used to attract and retain staff can as change agents
Guidelines for action
• Is the organisation achieving its objectives as
effectively as possible?
• Is the organisation achieving its objectives as
efficiently as possible?
• Is the organisation achieving its objectives as
fairly as possible?
Does HRM add value?
•
•
•
•
Deliver business objectives?
Deliver administrative excellence?
Act as a champion for people management?
Operational – nuts and bolts
– Examples?
• Also strategic(?)
Viewpoints on strategy
• Military perspective (classical approach)
– Aims
– Evaluation of available options
– Decision and implementation
• Alignment perspective
• Future oriented perspective
• Employment market perspective
Aligning HR practice with business
strategy – i.e. ‘best fit’
• Miles and Snow (1978)
–
–
–
–
Defender
Prospector
Analyst
Or, reactor
• Porter (1985)
– Cost leadership
– Differentiation
– Focus
• Schuler and Jackson (1987)
Aligning HR practice with business
strategy
• Developed from Miles and Snow – Sonnenfield et
al, 1992
–
–
–
–
Academies
Clubs
Baseball teams
Fortresses
• Which of the four types matches with Miles and Snow
categories?
• Raises question of ready made or home grown
talent?
– Advantages and disadvantages of each option?
Alternative views of the HR/business
strategy link
• Best practice (e.g. Pfeffer, 1998)
– defined set of initiatives that will help all
organisations, whatever their business strategy or
market position, to maximise their financial
performance.
• Resource based view (e.g. Barney, 1991)
– business strategies which reflect their existing
human resource base
Alternative views of the HR/business
strategy link
• Labour market strategy (Higgs, 2004)
High rewards,
low culture
High rewards,
high culture
Employer
of cash
Employer
of choice
Low rewards,
low culture
Low rewards,
high culture
Employer
of churn
Employer
of values
Alternative views of the HR/business
strategy link (Taylor adaptation, 2010)
Tight market,
career
opportunitie
s
Tight market,
Developers
High payers
Loose
market,
career opps
Loose
market, few
career opps
Selectors
Involvers
few career
opps.
Queen bee resourcing strategy
• E.g. Hiltrop, 1999, Woodruffe, 1999, Pfeffer &
Sutton, 2006
– individuals who have particularly rare and soughtafter skills which give them the capacity to ‘make
a real difference’ to an organisation’s performance
– strategy involves lavishing particular attention,
development opportunities, perks and often
money on these select individuals
• Advantages and disadvantages?