analysis of a book

Running Head: ANALYSIS CHAPTER 5

ANALYSIS CHAPTER 5 2

Analysis Chapter 5

Name

Institution

Introduction

In the 21st Century, recruiting and managing qualified personnel are some of the most important tasks that resource managers must have. The legal environment of the public human resource management is quite involved with court rulings to prevent non-discrimination in the workplaces making the process of timely hiring quite a challenge. The government’s capacity to recruit qualified workforce has been strained by many factors such as economic downturns, budget cutbacks and an ageing workforce. Managers have increased flexibility in recruitment as well as a selection of the decentralised system as opposed to the manager-centred system (Battaglio, 2015).

One of the key features in traditional dismissal-rights procedures is the diminishing public employee feature of deregulation reform efforts. This system is considered much more efficient because it removes the complicated grievances as well as appeals processes that are characterised by traditional civil service systems.

Problem Statement

One of the major reform efforts in the legal environment of public human resource management is the adoption of the decentralization in the process of staffing. This is aimed at giving managers more flexibility in the process of recruitment and selection. This process has taken the form of employment at will that is aimed at increasing managerial efficiency and doing away with the long traditional means of subsequent appeals that followed when employees were laid off or affected by human resource management decisions (Battaglio, 2015). The efforts to continuously reduce the rights of workers have increased considerably. This has however not been taken well by the employees as shown by the attitudes and motivation levels of the state personnel. This, therefore, presents a future problem for human resource directors in the future.

Purpose and Significance

The chapter starts by investigating the legal conditions necessary for recruitment as well as selection and introduces the basics that are involved in staffing in the public sector. The chapter will also analyse the efforts that are there both at the federal and state levels to remove the traditional merit methods and the effect that these reforms will have on the recruitment and selection.

Background (History)

Recruitment used to be carried out by central personnel office that had the sole authority for determining and meeting the needs of the workforce. For instance, a personnel office in the capital of a state might decide how and where to recruit for a regional office or other location across the country. However, back in the 1990s efforts to have a decentralized system of recruitment challenged the conventional method of using central personnel offices in the process of recruitment (Battaglio, 2015). Some of the reasons given for the inefficiencies caused by the central systems include; the process was time-consuming, the process required a lot of time, the question of distance covered to locate the satellite locations from the central areas was touched on. According to the critics of the central system, this system resulted in inefficiencies that were detrimental to the efforts of getting the best and brightest recruits. The critics saw it more efficient to have the street managers conduct the recruitment, as this would allow for adequate knowledge of the recruits. This gave way to the agency-level Human Resource directors to control over personnel decisions and become the primary points of coming into contacts with the recruits(Battaglio, 2015).

Analysis

In efforts to enhance responsiveness and efficiency, decentralization efforts have transferred the responsibilities for the functions of selection and recruitment of the public agencies to the frontline managers. This is in the bid to replace the tedious and time consuming centralised method. Initiatives at the federal level have continued the implementation of decentralized recruitment and selection processes. This has evolved mainly to the online platforms. Federal agencies have resulted into using e-recruitments methods (Battaglio, 2015). A good example of this is Peace Corps, which has moved away from having to send representatives to job fairs to taking advantage of social media. The state governments have also adopted this method by empowering agencies in their personnel decisions.

Research conducted has shown that while decentralization may indeed make the recruitment process more efficient at the agency levels, there are consequences that beg that a better balance between centralization and decentralization be found. The research further suggests that over the past decade, decentralization has not resulted into any unmitigated success with governments being forced to look for other solutions.

Conclusions

Faced with budget shortfalls as well as economic uncertainty, several governments have decided to reform their human resource functions in efforts to make their jurisdictions leaner. Public human resource managers have therefore to come up with a method that guarantees the largest pool of qualified applicants for various jobs. This has presented a challenge for human resource directors who are faced with the challenge of balancing efficiency, cost, and fairness in the process of recruitment. The human resource managers will be required to have the right tools for recruitment as well as selection and a good know how to implement such frameworks.

Recommendations for further Research

Employers have to review their recruitment and selection methods from time to time. They also need to validate such selection process to make sure that they are fair and related to their jobs. In addition, public HR needs to assess the most optimal mechanisms that best suit their organizations

Reference

Battaglio, R. P. (2015). Public human resource management: Strategies and practices in the 21st century.