NTEBEKA’S MODEL ANSWER
Martha believes that “recruiting the
right people is the best way to improve the effectiveness of Just Desserts Ltd
workforce”. Do you agree?
Just Desserts
2. Recruitment can be defined as the processes
that take place when a vacancy arises in
a business, to when this vacancy is filled.
It includes advertising the job, identifying candidates and interviewing
potential employees.
Martha’s
statement is right to an extent as recruitment can prove to be an effective way
to improve the workforce, given the fact that Just Desserts is growing
rapidly. In 2008 their workforce
increased by 40 people (70 to 110).
Therefore, on the premise that the staff size will continue to grow,
Martha’s idea to focus heavily on recruitment is a reasonable one. Concentrating on recruiting skilled labour
would improve the workforce as it may allow for more managers to be hired. We know from the case study that because of
its increasing workforce size, spans of control for managers have increased
(making them overworked). Recruiting
more managers could spread work more evenly as Martha is not willing to
delegate to junior staff.
This
decision is only reinforced by the fact that Just Desserts Ltd have experienced
poor cash flow from 2007 onwards as stated in the case-study. Just Desserts planned to use some funds on
training for the junior staff. The cash
flow position has made this more difficult, and may warrant the use of
recruitment instead. Just Desserts has
been producing a wider range of products and this, along with general training
could be expensive for the company. Even
though recruitment is costly, it may be less so than training such a large
workforce. It would take time and
various costs which may not be feasible to Just Desserts at the moment.
However
there are reasons to side with the manager who is against the idea. To begin with recruitment could prove even
more costly than training staff. The
recruitment process involves advertising the jobs available, setting up interviews
and contacting various applicants. Costs
of recruitment for a growing business like this tend to be high. As Martha’s main incentive for avoiding the
training programme is Just Desserts weak cash position, choosing an overall
more costly option would do even more harm to their cash position.
So to
conclude recruitment may be a very useful tool in improving the workforce. It brings in new skills and people with fresh
ideas and enthusiasm. In Just Desserts case it can help spread manager’s
workload more evenly and could be less costly than training. But at the same
time it can be a bad decision. This is
especially true for Just Desserts as they already have too large a staff for
their managers to cope with. More
recruits would only aggravate the situation and make work harder for the
current managers. Because of this, and
the fact that Just Desserts staff has already grown considerably I believe
recruitment is not the best way to improve the workforce and Martha may wish to
reconsider her attitude towards training the staff.
