Service Delivery to HR Customers

For this assignment, CIPD HR Profession Map will be used to understand the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to be an effective HR practitioner. It will summarize how the HR practitioners can use the HR profession map the 10 professional areas, 8 behaviours and 4 bands. It will then identify and describe one professional area in detail and describe three activities by giving examples and explain behaviour required for this area. (CIPD Profession Map, 2015)

The CIPD Profession Map on the CIPD website is a self-assessment tool for HR practitioners. It is a great way to determine career progression in HR for individuals. The map shows how HR is linked to continuous organisation’s performance and designed accordingly to suit all sectors and organisations of all aspects. The architecture of profession map covers 10 professional areas and 8 behaviours and 4 bands of competency level starting from band 1 to band 4 for the beginning of HR career and for the most senior leaders respectively. It describes what HR practitioners need to know and what they need to do as per the bands. (CIPD Profession Map, 2015)

One professional area which I identify myself with is Resourcing and talent planning which I have the most experience in. The main purpose of this area is to ensure that you’re able to identify and attract right people with right capability and talent to manage the changing needs of the organisation. This area happens to lie in Band 2 and I still need to gain more experience and knowledge in many areas. The activities that a Practitioner will undertake at either band 1 or 2 are listed below: (CIPD, 2017)

Shortlisting – After discussing job requirements and qualifications with senior, HR practitioner in either Band 1 or 2 needs to identify and shortlist applicants who meet the job requirements along with qualifications and whom you feel like finding out more in a personal round of interview. HR practitioner must possess patience, speed, time management skills, listening skills. Patience and speed to hunt for CV’s, time management skills because some positions might have to be filled in urgently and listening skills to find out more about the candidate in detail. This helps in better decision making. The HR practitioner must also possess great communication skills to create a good image of the company as well as personal reputation.

Assessment and Selection – After having shortlisted CV’s as per job requirements and qualifications, candidates are then called for assessment and a personal round of interview, if shortlisted after assessment stage. At this stage, HR practitioner needs to need to be a good listener and have interviewing skills in order find the best match for the job. The HR practitioner will get an insight on how the candidate thinks by asking questions about any competition they have won or any challenges they’ve faced at work. Etc.

This will help you understand whether they have competitiveness or have problem solving, etc as per the job requirements. Interview skills must not only be limited to job requirements. You also need to know how the candidate behind the CV is. By asking candidates to describe their very first job and how they got it, will give you an idea whether they were earning to just to spend money or to pay for school. It will give you a sign that they’ve developed a strong work ethic early in life (Simon, 2013). You can then decide if the candidate is a right match for the job or not.

Induction – Induction is a new opportunity for a business to welcome the new joiners to help them settle in and ensure that they have the knowledge and support they need to perform their role. (CIPD, 2016) According to (Snell, 2006), induction presents significant benefits to organisations such as a reduction in the amount of time it takes for new employees to adjust in an organisation (Ragsdale & Mueller, 2005) HR practitioner must possess confidence in himself and in the organisation. He must have good communication skills to deliver company information to the new joiner. He needs to have good relationship building skills to create a good network for any references for further vacancies, customer service and problem-solving skills to ensure that the employee comes back to you for all the answers.

For the entire process of hiring the knowledge expected to show by a HR Practitioner is given below: A Practitioner must know the legal, regulatory and policies in relation to recruitment, talent and exit. For example, The Employment Law (CIPD, 2017) He needs to know a wide range of approaches to resource talent – Job adverts, social and professional media, press, etc. (CIPD, 2017)
He should have a sound knowledge on how to execute a recruitment plan in deadlines. For example, Prioritizing (CIPD, 2017) He should know how to conduct assessment and interviewing techniques and know how to induct a new joiner – structured and behavioural interviews, references, psychometric tests, psychological testing, online testing, assessment centres (CIPD, 2017)

HR practitioner at Band 1 or 2 need to show the following behaviours: Personally credible – He needs to build and deliver professionalism through combining commercial and HR expertise to bring value to the organisation, stakeholders and peers. By giving advice and guidance to colleagues he can build a reputation and trust of employees. (CIPD, 2017)

Collaborative – HR practitioner needs to work effectively and inclusively with a range of people, both within and outside of the organisation. He makes time to listen to individuals and builds a sense of team spirit, recognises sensitive or controversial situations and plans how to best handle them. (CIPD, 2017) Driven to deliver – He should demonstrate determination, resourcefulness and purpose to deliver the best results for the organisation. (CIPD, 2017)

Apart from Resourcing and talent planning the two core professional areas Insights, Strategy and Solutions and Leading HR are applicable to all HR professionals. They help you develop an understanding of an overall organisation’s performance, align the strategies and solutions after investigating the potential risks on the business and helps all the practitioners to demonstrate leadership skills and act as a role-model leader by supporting, developing measuring and maximising the efforts across the organisation. (CIPD, 2015)

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a combination of approaches, ideas and techniques that will help you manage your own learning and growth. The focus of CPD is firmly on results – the benefits that professional development can bring you in the real world. CPD for a HR is important because it is an investment that you make in yourself. It is a way of you plan your development that links learning directly to practice. CPD helps you to keep your skills and knowledge up to date and prepares you for greater responsibilities. It boosts your confidence, strengthens your professional credibility and helps you become more creative in tackling new challenges. (CIPD, 2017)

To deliver a good and effective service, it is very much important to understand customers’ requirements. There can be employees who ask about their holidays, salaries or may be even any query regarding their contract terms. Also, some managers might ask for reports for any specific person’s absenteeism or it can be related to expanding business to plan for extra staff. Applicants can be our customers enquiring regarding any job vacancy.

There can be variety of information or service being asked from HR and may have conflicts with our workload, which can be challenging. Therefore, prioritizing is very important to provide exceptional service delivery. You may need to ask yourself that who has asked for the service and when was it asked when planning for the day.

My previous experience as an HR recruiter I will give an insight on how the services are completed in timeline and quality. There can be employees who are currently working in the organisation asking for any vacancy for their own growth within the company. An immediate manager might ask you to handle a recruitment campaign. New applicants may negotiate for a better position, better salary. As a recruiter, I had to obey my immediate manager first and call for new CVs by posting jobs online, through headhunting techniques, etc. Considering the company’s internal talent pool would be next in line. Shortlisting the CVs and the organising the campaign would be next, followed by managers approval or decision to select from the internal or external pool. There are various means of communication used by a recruiter for recruitment purpose which have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Job portals – Another way of communication for a recruiter is job portals. Most of the candidates land up on job portals to search of jobs which is popular these days. You can get access to a lot of CV’s and shortlist candidates based on CV’s. Disadvantage is that you email inbox might get full due to bogus CVs resulting in your time getting wasted on such CV’s. Telephone – Telephone is the one of the useful way of communication used by recruiters. It is easily available and quick to use anytime and anywhere. Distance doesn’t matter if you’ve to get in touch.

Recruiter can get some basic information over the phone about the candidate such as his current job, communication skills and some background of the family as well. There can be disadvantages like network issues or it might get difficult to get in touch with any candidate. More often, they say that this is not a good time to talk which leaves the communication incomplete and the whole objective of shortlisting the candidate is not met.

Email – Email is another fastest means of communication where in you can invite any candidate for an interview or attach important documents like offer letter, contracts, employee handbook, etc. Not only emails are easily available on your personal computers but can be archived and accessed from your personal mobiles. Records of emails can be taken to employment tribunals as an evidence for your case. Disadvantages of emails can be that they can go to the junk folder. Emails can go to the wrong person accidently. Feedback on your service performance is very important as it helps you in decision making and improve your service performance. Feedback can be gathered through following ways:

Surveys – You can ask specific questions to get answers. By reaching out directly in person – It gives you a more personal touch. Monitor social media like Facebook, LinkedIn for feedback since it can be a great way to listen to the customers. Company profit or loss results – It is a great way to measure service performance as it helps you to understand whether employees are happy with their job.

After having gathered feedback, you will be able to identify the trends and patterns of feedback. You can take help from the senior members of specific department and change the way you provide the service. Patiently listening to them on how to make improvements and resolving problems because retaining is better than spending more to obtain a new customer. Monitoring feedback often will help retain customers and keep customers happy. Happy customers are likely to come back and bring in more business to you. Finally, by sharing feedback across all departments can help address concerns and get rewarded back by their loyalty.

References:

Chartered Institute of Personnel Development Profession Map (2015) The CIPD Profession Map. Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/learn/career/profession-map (Accessed: 07 October 2017)
Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (2017) Professional Areas. Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/learn/career/profession-map/professional-areas (Accessed: 07/10/2017)
Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (2016) Induction. Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/people/recruitment/induction-factsheet (Accessed: 07/10/2017)
Simon, L. (2013) Interview Techniques for Effective Hiring. Available at: http://business.time.com/2013/10/09/interview-techniques-for-effective-hiring/ (Accessed: 08/10/2017)
Snell, A. (2006). ‘Researching onboarding best practice’. Strategic HR Review, 5(6), pp. 32–35.
Ragsdale, M.A., & Mueller, J. (2005). ‘Plan, do, study, act model to improve an orientation programme’. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 20(3), pp. 268–272.