Hello Gaians!

It is time to provide you with feedback for your workouts! First of all, thank you very much for your participation in all the debates proposed in the deliberation section and for your hard work preparing the workout!

Let’s start by analysing your workouts’ inputs question by question:

A)  You work for a small company (less than 10 workers) that it has been in the tax code and account consultancy business since 1999. Two employees (a man and woman with children) have family responsibilities, which can’t comply with their current working hours. The HR responsible had not had a procedure for this situation, how would you solve this situation?

In this case, the minimum to be done it to review the law about reduction of working hours for reconciling work and family life. The law says that people with dependents up to 12 years old or with any disability, will have the right to reduce hours with the according salary’s reduction.

The employees have to demonstrate such conflict with family life. In case both parts agree about the reduction of working hours, they should reach and agreement with a new schedule and employees’ tasks.

Advanced students have also mention the process by which an employee asks for the reduction of hours (letter) and about the type of reduction that will apply.

The most advanced students have additionally proposed other options like flexibility, working from home, etc. Additionally some of you have taken into account some other questions like if they are father & mother of the same children (as one student pointed out in this case only one of them can reduce hours), or the fact that employee with reduced hours can always choose timetable, etc.

B) During the last months, a telecommunication multinational company has detected a decreasing in the duties and performance of the sales area what lead an overstaffing issue in the mentioned area. What do you think would be the best way to act in this situation?

When we are in a situation like that, what HR has to do is to review the duties and tasks of the department, in this case Sales. Examine if those duties had changed since the department plan was written and to what degree the external circumstances make some duties or personnel are no longer necessary. Having all these factors in mind, the HR department will make a study in order to decide and assess 1) what duties are necessary and 2) who are the more adequate employees to perform and occupy the corresponding positions.

Besides the duties, also it will be taken into account type of contracts, time in the company, etc.

Some students have gone further, suggesting relocating some staff in different departments.

C) We will introduce a startup case in the business of selling electronic items through the Internet and apps. The founders and unique workers are two friends, but in the last few months they have noticed an important increasing in their sales and they need to hire some employees; they are new in the market so they don’t know where to start or what profiles they really need to be more competitive in the electronic market. What would you advise them to do? Where should they look for in order to find candidates according to their needs?

As you have learned in the iBook, the first step would be to do an analysis of their HR needs. Since they have created a start-up, they might know their sector and what Sales profiles in their area they need to be more competitive. They should do a HR plan for themselves to anticipate the human resources they will need in the future.

It would be helpful to do some research and see how our competitors are doing at what assets they have inside sales. Once they have a better idea on what people they need, they should design a clear offer to attract the workers they are interested in for their company.

The most recommendable web pages to look for candidates are LinkedIn, Infojobs, and Jobandtalent. They can also count on people they know and personal contacts.

Some advanced students have also mentioned that job descriptions are needed and that it may be good options to work with external recruitment agencies or counting with HR consultants to help them in the process.

D) This is the case of an NGO, which treats drug addicts with a high risk of social exclusion. In the last months, the directors have been noticing the middle position and collaborators high turnover. This turnover is affecting their results because of the long periods spent in training new people. What actions would you take? 1) In order to obtain more information about the causes and, 2) to reduce the off-works and/or mitigate their harmful effects.

The first thing the HR should do is a study among the employees to assess the level of job-satisfaction. The objective is to discover if the employees are comfortable with the tasks they are doing and if their benefits -social and economic- are enough to make them satisfied.

The main aim of this study is to spot why there is such a turnover among employees. Once they find out why this is happening, they need to find a solution, and mostly the solution will be to change some points of the HR plan. Lastly, it will be equally important to execute this plan as to communicate it to the employees and the stakeholders.

Best answers include using other tools like ‘’exit interviews’’; it is always useful asking the people who leaves why there are living and actually, they are more open to give you bad feedback than current employees

And even better include the use of additional measures like optimizing the training methods. Also, having more feedback or evaluation sessions with employees could help.

Finally, it is great to see that the majority of the students have used all the new knowledge acquired in the HR field!

I hope you all enjoyed these topics!

Kind regards,

Beatriz