How the different forms of capital are supported by the practices of human resources
The mother London has brand teams whose main focus is the creative process. They are charged with managing the company’s relation with customers and also run campaigns. The brand teams are composed of mothers who are in charge of co-ordinations of activities of the teams, “creatives,” strategists whose task is to develop strategies and nannies are responsible for the management of teams’ logistics and relationships. The teams are committed to specific brand and customers and they work with various external and internal parties to provide quality work for customers.
The members of these teams work in collaboration with the representatives of the clients in focusing on the problem facing them. In his speech one of the departmental head was quoted saying, “our way of working is designed to work with the client rather than for the client, agencies are often seen to be at the beck and call of clients whereas we are not afraid to turn around and say no” (Armstrong 2007, p 73).The organization holds the notion that the organization’s clients are part of the solution and not a problem.In development of creative out-put, mother London make use of the various forms of capital at its disposal. These include social, organizational and human capital.
Human Capital
The mother uses the approach of people centric and they rely on the quality of human capital. They enjoys a good reputation that it has built over the years and their staff are highly experienced and with necessary skills, attributes that are behind the immense success experienced in this organization. Managing the uniqueness and values of human capital need various human resource management in practice in each case. The company employs people who have acquired experience from other institutions and later becomes attracted at working at mother London because of its superior reputation. One member of senior management was quoted saying, “they need to have a passion for creativity, they need to be inquisitive, be up for a challenge, have an edge about them and a conviction about what they do” (Kinnie and Hopper.2003 p 64). Similarly the staff needs to be ambitious, tenacious and take the responsibility to have work done in a proper way. However, they must also be humble.
Social capital
The company holds on to key core principles that represent the mother London fraternity. This principle has a significant impact on the way the organization is managed, its structure and how it relates with staffs and customers. The principle of holy trinity for example emphasizes on the quality of output, it is for this reason that we can say the success of mother London is attributed to its culture. According to the founding partners, “it is what comes out of the door that matters." The organization culture makes the company’s staff to give top priority to creativity and their commitment to achieving their goal is what keeps the organization together as a leading organization in creative output in the advertising industry. The conversion of the employee’s ideas into valuable creative output for the company’s clients would have been very difficult without the culture exhibited here. In return the team members have emotional attachment to the end results of their efforts.
Organizational capital
Mother London has a unique way of organization and working with its customers that is opposed to their rivals in the advertisement field. Unlike other agencies, where account handlers are used as a link between the customers and the staff, at mother strategists, creative staff, and producers contact the clients directly. Although the company’s structure is flat with three levels of command, there is interaction between junior staff and partners. “Not only is the work space open plan, but many staff are not physically located within what is a more traditional organization would be their function or department” (Kinnie and Hopper.2003 p 63). The HR instead interacts freely with the staff in the same room. There is a rotation of staff after a period of every eight weeks to enhance relationships among the employees and this enhances social capital.
Mother London Approach to Recruitment
At mother London, the responsibility of the management of workers is carried out by the human resource team, staff and the department heads. This practice of shared responsibility plays a vital role in the success of mother London.
Recruitment
The process of recruitment is a responsibility of heads of departments in collaboration with the partners. In the resourcing process the main focus is put on the portfolio of the applicants. In addition to this, they also consider the cultural fit of these applicants. The human resource at mother prefers dealing with internship and unsolicited applications. The allocation of internal creative employees is done by the head of creative HR in collaboration with other partners (Edenborough, 2007 p 32). The role of the departments is balancing the needs of the staff for challenging and interesting work and those clients working with the best possible staff.
Recruitment Training and Development
Mother London does not have a training program that is formal and they rely on bespoke training program that is arranged for the new recruits. A lot of emphasis is put on the team teaching where new employees have to work alongside senior members of the experienced staff. Through this program the new staffs are able to learn from their seniors. To achieve its goal, mother London “take great care to find out what they want to do and what their aspiration are” (Kinnie and Hopper.2003 p 63). The company determines the development and training needs of individual employees and ensures that all of them have been catered for.
Draw backs to mother London’s approach
The company of mother London faces high risk of having their top performing members of staff poached by their rival companies who may offer better terms to the mother’s employees to lure them (Caliskan 2010, p 113). Since the company mainly make use of unsolicited application method of recruitment, it may be impossible to determine the quality of candidates.
HR practices implemented at mother London’s approaches to SHRM.
In the current world organization are facing challenges of catching up with the rapid development. We are witnessing the result of globalization in the competitive market. These businesses are adopting new strategies for them to remain relevant and maintain their competitive advantage. Mother London in addition to expanding their business empire, creating new processes and products their emphasis needs to focus more on the human resource. In the current world human resource has taken a leading role as the most essential resource that should receive the highest attention. At mother London its success is directly attributed to the skill, experience and the knowledge of the human capital they posses. Since the company ventures in developing creative ideas the values and ideas that its employees bring on board are the driving force behind its immense success.
Mother London employs strategic human resource management (SHRM) in planning its human resource activities as well as deployment to help the company achieve its goals. SHRM establishes a link between HR strategy and implementation and the strategic business goals. According to John Dudoyskiy the goal of strategic human resource management is “ to ensure that human resource management is fully integrated into strategic planning, that HRM policies cohere both across policy areas and across hierarchies and that policies are accepted and used by line managers as part of their every day work” (Dudovskiy
2013, p4).
The approaches of strategic HRM are classified in to three categories that include configuration approach, universalistic approach, and contingency approach. “Configuration approach emphasizes the importance of the practices that are contingent with the circumstances in the organization” (Dudovskiy
2013, p4). This approach recognizes that best practices are valid, however, it also accept the significance of adjusting the policies of the HR with the general organizational strategy. Universalistic approach also referred to as best approach to human resource management state that there exist best human resource management practices and by adopting them positive results will be generated in spite of the nature of what other aspect might exist in the organization (Regis, 2009, p12-45). Lastly the contingency also known as “best fit” approach do not agree with existence of prescriptions to human resource issues that are universal and instead it emphasizes the importance of integrating HR issues with other wide range of policies in an organization.
Mother London makes use of best fit (contingency) approach where the company’s focus is mainly on how suitable the strategies of HR department are to the varied situations of the entire company in respect to operational process, culture and external environment. Specific types of strategies such as quality improvement, cost reduction and innovation need to be matched with specific employee’s role behavior (Perry, 1993, p 63). Whenever the required employee role behaviors are identified to match the strategy, the practices of HR can then be used to make sure that those behaviors function. The approach of best benefit focuses on the idea of internal and external fit. The external fit aligns the company’s practices of HR with its strategies while internal fit aligns the practices of organization with one another, that is, it ensures the existence of consistency between a set of human resource practices.
The approach of best fit has an assumption that the strategy of human resource will be efficient when it is connected to the business environment. The main disadvantage of the approach of best fit is that it does not focus on the business strategy that helps in adapting to the practices of human resource. The other limitation of this approach is that it is based on the concept of external fit. Sometimes the structure of best fit may be inflexible.
The sustainability of the mother London’s competitive advantage is influenced by efficient management of the resources of the organization. These resources include: human, technological, financial, physical, know-how and reputation. The company’s distinct competence is determined by how valuable and unique its resources are. Mother London is outstanding in the advertisement industry because the kind of human resource at its disposal poses unique valuable skills and experiences and is rare.
How legislation affect selection and recruitment at Mother London
The recruitment and selection of human resource in the United Kingdom is governed by a set of laws. Companies operating in nations where these laws have been enforced such as in Europe and the united state need to abide by them for them to operate smoothly without having to face any legal issues as a result of non compliance. Breach of such legislations may have adverse effects on such firms. The equality act of 2010 came in to force to harmonize and reform the discrimination law (Devanna et al,. 1984, p40). This law provides a framework that is simple, effective and consistent for prevention of discrimination law. This act also takes care of a group known as protected characteristics that include disability, age, race, gender reassignment, religion belief, civil partnership and marriage, sex, pregnancy and maternity. Another legislation that is of importance to mother London is the “immigration, asylum and nationality act of 2006.” This act prohibits illegal immigrants from being employed in the United Kingdom. The company of Mother London need to be cautious when carrying out their recruitment and selection and a careful due diligence should be carried out to ascertain the genuine nationality of those they will be hiring (Sparrow et al., 2004, p67). Going against the immigration, asylum and nationality act will have legal repercussions where the mother London may be subjected to civil penalties amounting to 10,000 pounds for each illegal employee the company might have hired.
In addition to this all companies have an obligation to observe and comply with all laws that govern recruitment and selection to avoid possible civil punishments that might arise as a result of non-compliance. These laws include: safeguarding children and vulnerable adults, criminal records checks, fixed term employment as well as employment of Ex-offenders.
Reference
Armstrong.M.(2007). Strategic Human Research Management:
A Guide to Action. Kogan Page. London. p 73-74.
Caliskan.E.N. (2010). The Impact of Strategic Human Resource Management on Organizational Performance. Journal of Naval Science and Engineering, Vol. 6, No. 2, p 100-116.
Devanna. M.A., Fombrun, and N. Tichy (1984) A Framework for Strategic Human Resource Management. Human Resource Management. New York: John Wiley. P 34-45
Dudovskiy. J (2013). Approaches to SHRM p 4
Edenborough, R. (2007). Assessment methods in recruitment, selection & performance. London: Kogan Page.p 32
Kinnie. N and Hopper.L(2003). Mother London. New York. P 60-68
Perry.J.L. Strategic Human Resource Management. Transforming Federal Civil Service. Fall 1993. p 59-71.
Sparrow, P.R, Brewster, C. & Harris, H. (2004) “Globalising Human Resource Management” Routledge p 67-69
Regis, R. (2009) “Strategic Human Resource Management & Development” Excel Books p 12-45
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