EMPLOYEE RESOURCING - 2024/5

Module Overview

In this module we introduce some of the most significant areas of human resource management responsibility. Anyone seeking to develop a career in HR, in the UK or globally will find it to be both interesting and essential to their professional development. It will also be of interest to anyone with an interest in the management of people or who anticipates building a generalist management career. Our focus is on how organisations achieve the most fundamental HRM aim of mobilizing a workforce. In order to function effectively, all employers need to always ensure that they have the right people in the right jobs.

Increasingly they are also drawing on other sources of skills and expertise accessed from a wider network of people with whom they maintain some form of contractual relationship. It is with the business of staffing an organisation effectively that this module is concerned.

Module provider

Surrey Business School

Module Leader

CIACHIR Constantin (SBS)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 7

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

n/a

Module content

Over 11 three-hour sessions we will introduce and discuss a wide range of topic areas relating to the staffing of organisations; a particular emphasis being placed on contemporary developments and debates in the field. In our sessions we will focus on the following:

• global and contemporary content of HRM


• human resource planning and job design


• recruitment and selection


• induction and socialisation


• employee retention


• employer branding


• retirement and redundancy


• managing individual performance


• strategic aspects of resourcing and talent management


• leadership and HRM (HR role, function and contemporary characteristics)

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

Individual assignment

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate all six of the intended module learning outcomes; which is reflected both in its formative and its summative elements.

Formative assessment will take the form of in-class discussion exercises with in-class tutor feedback.

Summative assessments will be by a group presentation and individual written assignment. The first element of the summative assessment requires students to work in groups on a real resourcing challenge presented by a client, including the analysis of the problem with reference to theoretical frameworks, plus potential solutions. The group will present and engage in a critical discussion with the audience, which will be composed of fellow colleagues, members of staff, and the HR senior professionals from the client organisation. The second element requires students to individually produce a critical analysis that sums up the debate.

Students will receive oral and written feedback on the formative and summative assessments.

Module aims

• To introduce you to the most significant contemporary practices and debates in the field of employee resourcing and to developments that are likely to shape its future evolution.
• To prepare you to manage and to develop organisational policy in the fields of human resource planning, succession planning, recruitment and selection, induction, employee retention, employer branding and basic performance management
• To introduce you to the ways that organisations seek to build reputations as employers and to position themselves strategically in the labour market vis a vis their competitors.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The teaching and learning strategy is designed to enable students to gain knowledge and understanding of key theories and concepts in the field of HRM, to develop an awareness of the use they can make of establishing a meaningful dialogue between theories and practice, and to begin to develop cognitive, professional and transferable skills, such as critical analysis, evaluation and use of evidence, generation of insight and independent inquiry as understood and practiced in the field of HRM, which will prepare them for the higher-level competencies such as argumentation, justification and providing timely and appropriate advice to a range of stakeholders.

Teaching and learning methods include:

• Lectures


• Seminars


• Case study discussions


• Self-directed learning
  
  
  
  • Reading
  
  
  • SurreyLearn on-demand captured content
  
  
  
  

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: MANM466

Other information

This module promotes four of the main five Student Competency Framework Pillars as follows:

Global and Cultural Capabilities

Students on this module work together in groups on a real resourcing challenge posed by a client organisation. Each group is mentored by a senior manager from the client organisation and are coached by an SBS member of academic staff throughout the module. The demographic topography of our students, members of staff, and senior managers of the client organisation is rich and diverse. Therefore, in addition to the expected cultural differences that need to be accounted for when dealing with a multinational corporation’s resourcing strategy and practices, students acquire and develop global and cultural capabilities by interacting with each other in completing the assessments, as well as with the academic members of staff and the client organisation’s representatives.

Employability

The module is designed to equip students with resourcing specialist knowledge, skills, and competencies - a fundamental requirement for a career in people management. Most importantly, by interacting with client organisations, students develop their professional network, as well as have an opportunity to establish a presence and professional identity with potential employers.

Resourcefulness & Resilience

Being faced with a real resourcing challenge and working alongside seasoned resourcing professionals to strict deadlines and with specialist credibility tests the utmost limits of resourcefulness and resilience of our students. Students are randomly assigned to a group and the need to develop rapport with fellow colleagues, adapting to different personality types and ways of working is a challenging environment in which students learn how to devise and deploy successful strategies in achieving the assigned task in a team. Members of the academic team, as well as the mentors from the client organisation provide the necessary support to each student, as well as groups of students, and tailor advice and guidance contingent on each situation.

Sustainability

Resourcing is an area of people management that can enhance, or otherwise, what has been termed sustainable HRM, or sustainable people management. The triple bottom line: people, planet, profits, transcends all topics and activities covered in this module, with a special focus on people. Aspects of fairness, justice, wellbeing, and so on are not neglected, and the resourcing decisions and practices discussed, promoted, and evaluated during this module are tested against the triple bottom line and sustainable people management principles.

This module maps onto the CIPD’s 7HR02 Resourcing and Talent Management to Sustain Success unit. The learning outcomes contained therein are:

1. Understand the impact of the changing business environment on resourcing and talent management strategy and practice

- analyse current developments impacting business environments and their significance for organisational resourcing and talent strategy and practice

- evaluate the value of resourcing and talent management strategies

- critically discuss potential future developments in the fields of resourcing and talent management

- compare ways in which organisations build and maintain a positive reputation in key labour markets by offering compelling employee value propositions

2. Understand organisational recruitment and selection strategies

- research current developments in job analysis, job design and competency frameworks

- evaluate effective recruitment, selection and induction methods in organisations

- analyse the use of technologies to improve attraction, selection, induction

3. Understand the importance of succession planning to support sustainable organisational performance

- evaluate long- and short-term talent planning approaches to meet organisational demand

- analyse a range of analytics to determine talent planning and retention strategies

- justify measures designed to reduce voluntary employee turnover

4. Understand approaches to improving individual and team performance

- discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to manage and enhance employee performance

- evaluate the use of technology to monitor individual and team performance

- discuss management strategies for attendance and underperforming staff in organisations

- critically discuss the legal, ethical, and professional lens in relation to retirement, redundancy, and dismissal practices

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2024/5 academic year.