Human Resource Management: A Case Study of HSBC Bank

Human Resource Management

Executive Summary

This report describes about the importance of workforce planning within the organisation and the way it helps the company to make a specific strategy. This report even elaborates about the role and responsibility of the HRM in order to make a specific planning for the development of the organisation. The context even focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of recruitment and selection. In addition to this, the report even discuss about the benefits and limitations of HRM practices within the organisation. The study even describes about the importance of employee relations and the way the HRM takes the decisions for the organisation.

Introduction

For the development of the organisation, it is very important that they have different departments so that they can manage the employees and organise the working condition. Especially talking about the human resource department within the organisation, then it can be said that they play a very crucial role in developing the employees (Cesário et al., 2017). It is the responsibility of the HR department to create the business communication, and manage the performance of the employees then train them. The aim of this report is to elaborate about the importance of workforce planning and the way it is meeting the goals of the organisation. For this purpose, HSBC bank is taken into consideration, to describe about the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches of recruitment and selection.

Company Background

HSBC is a multinational bank established in 1865 by Sir Thomas Sutherland and headquartered in 8, Canada Square, London, England, UK (HSBC. 2021). HSBC provides its services mainly in the UK as well as throughout other parts of the globe. The main aim of the HSBC bank is to become the leading financial services company in the world. HSBC has a net operating income of more than 8 billion US dollars during 2019 and it has more than 0.2 million employees all over the world. The company becomes an efficient provider of financial services like private banking, corporate banking, retail banking and others.

Section 1

Assess the importance of workforce planning to the goals of the organisation, and consider the role strategic HRM plays when considering resourcing needs for a global business.

Most of the organisation must organise the work so that they can build the prosperous future for the company and even for the employees as well. It is very vital for the organisation to plan the goals and objectives so that they can make the specific strategy for the long term growth. Considering, the workforce of HSBC bank, then it can be said that the human resource department of this organisation tries to achieve the aim of the organisation (Papa et al., 2018). This will help the organisation so that they can work on the limitation and improvise their working condition. As HSBC bank is the multinational, British investment bank that helps in the financing services and help the people in settling the finance of the customers.

• The role played by the HRM department in making the strategic planning for the organisation so that they can offer the flexible working condition it can fill the gap and make the employees more efficient for the organisation.

• Especially talking about the automated electronic trading machine that is powered by AI and the other machine learning are frequently coming in the market.

• In order to be in the market and give the rivals tough competition, then the HSBC bank needs to increasingly adopt the technological changes so that they can remove the obsolete machinery from the organisation.

• The HRM department of HSBC bank are very active in making the innovative strategies so that they can provide the range of support to both the employees and the customers (Baptista et al., 2017).

• This department always work to improvise the skills of the employees so that it will help the employees to set their goals that will ultimately help the organisation to fulfil their requirements.

Evaluate, using specific examples, the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to recruitment and selection.

Recruiting and selecting the new candidate has become the most important work of the organisation as it helps in fulfilling the required job that is vacant within the organisation. In order to continue the efficiency of the HSBC and to achieve the higher goals, the company aims to recruit or select fresh talent for the company (Boitan et al., 2019). Here the HR of HSBC plays very important role in hiring the best talent for the betterment of the organisation.

• Recruitment refers to the short-term process of searching the right candidate for the right job. For instance, it is the responsibility of HR of HSBC bank to recruit the right applicant of the organisation; it is done in two forms that are internal and the external form.

Strengths and Weaknesses of recruitment are as follows:

Internal recruitment: This type of recruitment is very cost-effective, as it helps the organisation to promote his or her own staff or to give the permanent position to that employee who was working as the half time. However, considering the other side of the hiring process then it limits the option from taking the potential candidate (Bogatova et al., 2017). Apart from this, it also creates the conflicts among the employees.

External recruitment: Here the HR hires the candidate from outside the organisation, though the organisation is getting the new mind within the organisation. However, this process is quite very expensive and time consuming at the same time.

• Selection refers to the long-term process of taking the candidate for the organisation. Every organisation tries to select their employees by doing this long process and hire the fresh talent for the organisation. For example, the HR team of HSBC bank have always tried to select their staff after the long process of doing the three set interview.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Selection are as follows:

The strength of the selection process is the one that helps the screening those candidates who are not suitable for the organisation (Acikgoz et al., 2019). The drawback of the process is that selection is quite a very long and time-consuming process and it fails to give the clear picture about the candidate.

Section 2

Explain the benefits and limitations of two of the following HRM practices for HSBC and the employees

There are several HRM practices like recruitment, selection, performance management, training & development, compensation and others, which have advantages and drawbacks for the organisations. Therefore, here the discussion will be about two HRM practices- performance management and recruitment and its advantages and limitations regarding HSBC.

Performance management

Benefits: The performance management system of HSBC is supporting the organisations to identify its potential employees and under-performers effectively. Besides, it assists the employees with their personal and professional growth through the overall process. The performance management of HSBC will help the organisations to maintain effective documentation regarding employee performance. It also ensures the improvement of the employee performance day-by-day. The employees are motivated with rewards and benefits through the performance appraisal system. HSBC implemented Performance Through People (PTP) initiatives by collaborating with Accenture for providing engagement programmes such as meetings, workshops and other activities for the employees (Chromatic Brands. 2021).

Limitations: The performance management system is quite time-consuming methods for the employer to evaluate the employees’ potential capacity. However, the companies manipulate the process sometimes and provide an appraisal to intended employees. Therefore, the ethical work environment will be disturbed because of the irregular performance appraisal system. Performance management affects the efficiency of the employees, as through this system, not every employee will be benefited. Such a system can negatively impact collaboration among employees for creating irrelevant competition between them. HSBC always reduced its employees whenever it faced deduction in its profitability and it announced almost 35,000 job reduction in 2019 (Kelly, 2020). Therefore, the performance appraisal remains ineffective for the employer and employees due to such complications.

Figure 1: Performance Management

(Source: Influenced by Kelly, 2020)

Recruitment

Benefits: The recruitment process always generates benefits for the employer organisations as the right candidate for the job role can be selected through the process. The process also provides several opportunities for the selected candidates for ensuring their enhanced professional growth. HSBC follows various steps such as the selection of CV, online assessment, online or face-to-face interview and so on for recruiting the right candidates. Such a process of recruitment supports the company to hire the appropriate candidates among several applicants. Recently, HSBC has moved to digital recruitment process with video interviews, which will be fruitful for the candidates in this COVID-19 situation (Kalra, 2020).

Limitations: The recruitment process through company HRM is quite a time consuming and disturbing for the daily work schedule of the company. In addition, this recruitment process will not provide a large number of candidates to the company, therefore, candidates with proper skills and ideas may be missed through this method. Also, this process can be influenced by internal factors of the company like staff complaints, salary issues and so on. In 2015, HSBC has faced several issues in its recruitment process due to internal issues of the companies like unbalanced salary structure, power of the existing workforce and all others (Lloyd, 2015).

Evaluate how relevant HRM is to organisational efficiency, effectiveness and profitability

The human resource management of the organisation is that one department that helps in developing the strategic planning so that they can they can make the operation more effective. Planning the effectiveness helps the organisation to identify and understand the requirements of the organisation whether it is related to the skills, quality that is lacking within the organisation. In the modern times, many technologies are coming in the market to make the working of the organisation more effective and to reduce the workforce of the employees (Elsbach et al., 2018). Organisational effectiveness not only means the performance of the entire company but it also refers to the overall increasing working volume, the increasing share of the company in the market. Taking the example of HSBC bank then it can be observed that the HRM of this organisation they make sure that they effectively work and the effectiveness and the profitability of the company increases with time.

• The human resource management of HSBC bank focuses on identifying the gaps that makes the employees ineffective and making the barriers in their improvements.

• They try to involve the employees so that they can become more innovative in their work and increase the productivity of the organisation.

• In order to make the organisation effective the HRM make the assessment of the employees, then they prepare the organisation to bring some of the changes.

• After monitoring, they implement the alteration so that they can increase the profitability of the company this will helps in sustaining the organisation in the market and improvise the effectiveness (Tarafdar et al., 2018).

• In HSBC bank, their HR practices some of the organisational performance so that they can improve the employees and inspire them to work with the free will. Just to make the organisation more effective the HRM comes up with different training programmes that will help the employees in their development.

• In this competitive time, it is very essential for the every organisation earns the required amount of profit in order to sustain in the market. Especially taking the examples of the banks in the United Kingdom, they have to make themselves very active in adapting the new technologies (Uzunca et al., 2018). The HRM of HSBC bank has always made sure that the company is earning the ample of profit in the market.

Analysis

The human resource management of HSBC, have tried most of the work that helps in encouraging the employees, the team have develop some of the programmes that will help the employees in their own personal development. Considering the role and responsibility of HR in making the organisation efficient, effective and more profitable, it can be said that it is very much relevant (Saha et al., 2017). It is the only because of HRM of the organisation that helps in driving the workforce of the organisation with full efficiency among the employees that ultimately helps the company to increase their profitability in the market.

Section 3

Critically analyse the importance of employee relations with respect to influencing HRM decision making

It is very essential for both the organisation and for the employees to maintain the good employee relations as it directly helps the company to earn the higher productivity and the working staffs’ gets job satisfaction. It is one of the responsibility of the HR to deal with the employee relation so that they can avoid eliminate the issues among the working staff and build a good working environment (Kim et al., 2019). The HRM department of HSBC follows some of the steps to create the job satisfaction among the employees are:

• Equal treatment: The HRM of the chosen company has always tried to provide the fair and just treatment to the employees so that the working staffs feel there is an equal treatment among the employees and no favouritism is happening.

• Making groups among the employees: Segmenting the employees in particular groups helps them to communicate with each other; this will help in increasing the interaction among the working staff. For instance, the HR of HSBC bank has tried to involve their staff with each other so that they can prevent the conflicts among the employees.

• Giving rewards to the employees: Praising the employees helps the organisation in boosting the morale of the employees (Sukawati et al., 2020). The HRM of HSBC influence their employees by timely giving incentives and other benefits in order to boosting the morale of the employees.

Figure 2: Steps to create the job satisfaction

(Source: Created by Author)

Evaluate the key elements of employment legislation and the impact it has on HRM decision-making.

In recent times, it has become very essential for the organisation to ensure that they are following the policies and especially the employees law legislation that has a covering of different contracts related to employment. Considering HSBC, then it can be said that the HRM department of this organisation makes sure that they are providing the proper security to their working associates (Willcocks et al., 2017). The HRM of the chosen organisation makes sure that they follow the ‘Employment Right Act 1996’, apart from this the company also uses ‘National Minimum Wage Act 1998’

The ‘financial conduct authority’ (FCA) helps the banks of the United Kingdom to regulate the financial services of the people (Butor-Keler et al., 2020). The HRM of the chosen company makes sure that they include this so that it can protect their customer and promote good competition among the rival banks. It is the responsibility of the HR of the HSBC bank to regulate and protect the rights of the employees.

Illustrate the application of HRM practices, and provide a rationale for its application in the organisation. Design the following documents: one job advertisement, with a job description and person specification, a sample interview questionnaire, and an appointment letter.

Rationale: The organisation is facing a huge problem in the performance management and due to this the productivity of the bank has declined. In order to reduce the problem in tracking the income, expenditure and managing the financial services so there’s a vacancy in the accountancy department. The organisation is possessing for that candidate who has the analytical and critical thinking ability. The organisation wants an accountant who possess the technical competencies to deliver exceptional results for the bank.

Job Advertisement

Sample Interview Questionnaires

Appointment Letter

Conclusion

From the above discussions, it can be concluded that for the success of any organisation they must have different departments so that the working goes in the functional manner without any restriction. It context focuses about the role of human resource management of the organisation and the way they operate the entire functioning of the company. The background of the report has described about the HSBC bank, and the way the human resource department of the organisation is working to improve the employee relation. It is the duty of the HR department to create the smooth working culture so that they can satisfy their employees and engage them in the working of the organisation. At last, it can also be concluded that it is only with the help of the HR of the organisation that helps them to regulate the working of the company while considering the employee legislation.

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