AssessmentsAssignment 1. Essay
Length: 1800 words (including in-text citations and quotes but not including references).
After interviewing a human resource manager (or other senior manager in an organisation with no HR staff) with responsibility for HR issues, provide an essay summarising the key business issues and people management issues faced by that organisation. Are the business issues and people management issues related? If so, how?
This question will be assessed on the following criteria (also see feedback forms on the website):
1. Does the essay demonstrate an understanding of the concept of strategic HR (particularly in contrast to operational HR)?
2. Does the essay show an understanding of the relationship between the business context and the HR context of the organisation?
This assignment (like all of the assessments in this course) does not have a prescribed minimum number of citations.
However: ideas, facts and concepts that are not your own need to be acknowledged through referencing.
- Students need to demonstrate that they understand the concepts of the course as outlined in course material, the course textbook and readings.
- Googling is not a legitimate research method nor is it a substitute for reading course relevant material.
- Relying on textbooks from other courses, particularly generic textbooks like Stone, Kreitner and Kinicki, Davidson et al or Shields, with no recognition of course concepts or readings suggests that the student does not understand the core concepts of this course. You will be marked accordingly.
- Use a recognised referencing style of your choice, but be consistent throughout the assignment.
The research undertaken in this assignment could contribute towards Assignments 2a and 2b.
In this set of assignments you are a HR manager who has been asked to re-design the HR strategy for an organisation to improve its current performance and ensure its future success.
Your task is to (i) identify an appropriate set of business and HR strategies that will better achieve the organisation’s goals, given the external context; (ii) identify appropriate HR practices that will enable the business to fully implement its business and HR strategies.
