VBS107 Personnel Management

IMPROVE YOUR SKILLS IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

This course will develop your ability to manage personnel, such as recruitment, training and controlling. Emphasis is placed on knowledge and methods that will improve workplace morale and productivity.

Employees in any business are it's most important assest. Like any assest employees need to be carefully managed and nutured in order to perform at optimum levels. Topics covered include staff training, workplace conditions, work teams, positve discipline, handling greviances and complaints and much more.

One very important skill for any human resource manager is listening. This is a skill where the supervisor is informed by other team members about any relevant aspects of work in progress. Listening helps a supervisor identify potential problems and find solutions to those problems. An important aspect of listening is attending to how things are said, the emotional content of the message that expresses possible frustration, disappointment, resentment or other negative emotions. The supervisor who notes both the content and the tone of a message is better able to identify potential problems and to resolve them quickly.
Lesson Structure

There are 10 lessons in this course:

Human behaviour
Understand how perception, learning and prior experience influence human behaviour
Workplace communications
Identify and practice communication skills that will improve your ability to effectively receive and transmit messages in the workplace
Workplace conditions
Understand some factors that contribute to overall workplace conditions and can affect workplace culture
Controlling Operations
Explain basic supervising practices for controlling business or department operations
Recruitment and Induction
Identify essential processes in the recruitment and induction of employees
Staff training
Understand the key elements of planning and conducting effective staff training
Work teams
Describe how team processes can be used to improve performance and productivity
Positive Discipline
Identify methods to establish and maintain discipline through positive means, such as reinforcement
Grievances & Complaints
Describe strategies for reducing dissatisfaction and handling dissatisfaction when it arises
Monitoring and reporting
Understand the importance of monitoring workplace processes and performance, and how to report your observations

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.
Aims

Explain how perception, learning and prior experience influence human behaviour
Identify and practice communication skills that will improve your ability to effectively receive and transmit messages in the workplace
Explain factors that contribute to overall workplace conditions and can affect workplace culture
Explain basic supervising practices for controlling business or department operations
Identify essential processes in the recruitment and induction of employees
Describe the key elements of planning and conducting effective staff training
Describe how team processes can be used to improve performance and productivity
Identify methods to establish and maintain discipline through positive means, such as reinforcement and increasing motivation
Describe strategies for reducing dissatisfaction and handling dissatisfaction when it arises
Explain the importance of monitoring workplace processes and performance, and how to report your observations

In order to control (supervise) staff, a supervisor must use three key skills:
• Listening
• Informing
• Leading

Listening
This is a skill where the supervisor is informed by other team members about any relevant aspects of work in progress. Listening helps a supervisor identify potential problems and find solutions to those problems. An important aspect of listening is attending to how things are said, the emotional content of the message that expresses possible frustration, disappointment, resentment or other negative emotions. The supervisor who notes both the content and the tone of a message is better able to identify potential problems and to resolve them quickly.

Informing
This is a skill that allows a supervisor to accurately convey information or instructions to other team members. Clear and timely informing helps the supervisor inform others of a project’s progress, and to communicate what is expected from them. Good informing is free of all ambiguity.

Leading
This is central to both listening and informing, and is recognition of a supervisor’s responsibilities and command. A critical element of good leadership is the ability of a supervisor to make decisions based upon the input and consensus of all involved. Some leading communications are recognition of good performance and rewarding it appropriately; correcting poor performance; and continuously motivating the employees or project team.



Extract from Course Notes

PRODUCTION CONTROL
Production control is one of the many aspects of the control function. There are many definitions of what comprises production control. There is no ideal system. Every enterprise is different, but no matter what method of organisation is adopted, production must be planned and controlled so that products are supplied in the right quantity and quality, at the right time, and at the minimum cost. In small organisations, memory and experience are relied upon, to a large extent, in planning and control. Larger organisations need an efficient, flexible system to plan and control the mass of information, materials and machines.

In manufacturing businesses, two problems are faced which are not necessarily compatible:

• How to keep the works facilities occupied with optimum effect.

• How to meet the requirements of the customers.

Therefore there are major matters which must be kept under observation. These are:

• The maintaining of customer delivery schedules, which also involves compliance with quality standards.

• The achievement of planned production outputs, in term of both volume and product mix.

• Compliance with budgeted cost standards, which involves the achievement of planned efficiencies in the utilisation of labour, machines and materials.

The production control department is responsible for most of the information input which is necessary for the control of these matters, which also concerns quality, materials (stock), machines and labour controls. This, then, can be applied to Food and Beverage Control, Front of House Control or Housekeeping Control.

Production control is often overlooked or under-utilised by catering management. Goods should be carefully controlled from entry to bar, restaurant and kitchen. They should also be controlled during motion from these areas to the customer. Bad control or lack of control promotes wastage of materials and labour, pilferage, over production, and poor menu planning. It is in this area that many control systems are used, such as, restaurant and kitchen checking systems, daily sales analysis, cash handling systems, stores requisitions, kitchen percentage budgets etc. Therefore, the following statements are desirable:

• Daily control - expressed in readily available physical units.

• Weekly control - summarising the daily controls, but using costs as much as possible.

• Weekly control summary - expressing the weekly result from several associated departments in a concise form for the higher management.

Control indices provide a rapid indication of the control situation. These usually express actual results as a percentage of budget or the allowed standards. For example, budgeted bed occupancy for the week may be set at 60%, whereas the actual was 70%, hence 70/60 x 100 = 117% (approximately). Therefore, anything over the standard (100) is good, that is, budget or better, anything below 100 is bad and requires corrective action.

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