Description of the Company and the HRM Issue - Free Essay

Bank Windhoek Limited is a Namibian-based commercial bank that was established in 1982. It is currently referred as Bank Windhoek. It is a well-established bank and one of the commercial banks that have been licensed by Bank of Namibia to function in the country. The bank was established by a group of Namibian entrepreneurs who took over the ownership of eight branches of the Volkskas Bank. Their primary aim for taking over the ownership of the banks was to establish a financially independent bank for the Namibian citizens. The bank since its inception has steadily grown and has managed to build a strong financial position. The bank has been able to gain global recognitions based on its good performance. For instance, in the recent past, the bank received long-term credit rating of AA as well as a short term credit rating of A1+. The rating was confirmed by an international credit rating company known as Global Credit Ratings. This has made the bank among the leading banks in Africa.

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Bank Windhoek is a subsidiary of the Capricorn Investment Holdings that focuses on the offering insurance services, banking services, investments, asset management and microfinance. Bank Windhoek prides itself in a production of a variety of banking services and products. Currently, it has a distribution network of 50 retail and specialist finance agencies and branches countrywide. The success of the bank is mainly attributed to its well laid down strategies, vision, and purpose. Their corporate values that drive their daily operations include innovation, integrity, teamwork, learning, and excellence. They place a lot of precedence on meeting and exceeding customer needs. Thus their service values include professionalism, empathy, friendliness, competence, and friendliness.

Analysis of the HRM issue

Despite the good reputation that the bank enjoys it faces some challenges in its human resource management. The major human resource issue that has faced the bank has an effective recruitment and selection system in place. The success or failure of an organization to a larger extent is pegged on the kind of employees taken on board. Typically, employees are a vital resource for any business organization thus it is prudent for organizations to have a thorough recruitment and selection process (Sobel, 2006). Recruitment is the process of attracting, selecting and hiring the appropriate candidate to a vacant job position either temporarily or permanently.

The company has been negatively affected by its ineffective recruitment and selection processes in some ways. The greatest impact that the bank has incurred in hiring the wrong candidates are the financial implications accrued appointing the wrong candidate. The bank has sometimes faced internal disruptions especially when the hired candidate does not understand his roles well forcing other employees to pick up extra responsibilities and work due to the inadequacy of the new employee. This results in a fall in the morale of the employees. To mitigate this company has been forced to expend further resources to motivate and retain the previously contented staff. Furthermore, there have been instances of reputational damage when the new colleague is unprofessional to the clients thus breaking the relationship with the potential and existing customers. Moreover, extra expenses are incurred as a result of wasted time in recruiting inappropriate employees (Schwalbe, 2015). Managers spent a lot of time inducting these new employees who are not a good fit; the extra time spent on these colleagues could be spent on much more important issues. The bank also experienced a reduced client satisfaction level which was impacted by an increase in errors and less effective client service. Similarly, the low productivity has a ripple effect on the budget. There has also been an instance, where some of the unsuccessful applicants were unhappy with the process and challenged the recruitment process.

From the description, it is evitable that the recruitment and selection process used by Bank Windhoek has not been effective and needs and greatly needs an improvement to prevent further negative impacts on the bank.

Need for an improvement in the recruitment and selection process in Bank Windhoek

The human resource department of the bank is responsible for the recruitment and selection process thus; they need to come up with strategies that will improve the current process. They need to implement the best recruitment processes that will ensure they harness the best talent in the labor market as well as conduct a thorough reorganization of the current employees. The first need as to why the bank needs to improve its recruitment and selection process is to reduce the over cost that is lost in a poor recruitment process. Having the right employees on board will mean fewer expenses on training and development of the new employees (Salido, 2002). Thus, the extra expenses that could have been spent are used on other essential things. Having an effective process in place will also help in maintaining consistency of the process. The banks human resource team will have pre-determined criteria that they will be using in all the stages of the recruitment process thus reducing the risk of discrimination or bias. The key selection criteria should be determined before the vacant positions are advertised. After that, all the applicants must be evaluated based on the set criteria. Similarly, when interviewing the applicants, the same interviewers should be used, and same pre-determined questions asked to all the candidates as well as giving each candidate equal time to respond. However, treating every applicant consistently does not denote equity or fairness. Thus, other factors such as disability should be taken into consideration. Another need for improving the recruitment process in the organization will be to encourage employee retention. If the human resource manager is not keen in analyzing the resumes, he or she may hire an employee with a tendency of job hopping or have weak work ethics. The banks HR manager should thus be very keen to the lengths of time spent by the candidate in the previous job. They should also assess if there is a gradual decrease in responsibility or job position. Another reason for a need for an improvement of the process is due to legality. Equal opportunities and privacy legislation require that the recruitment process is conducted in a transparent and fair manner (Bird, 2016). The legislation prohibits any form of discriminatory behavior based on gender, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation or religion. Furthermore, the law permits candidates to take a legal action in case they feel the process was not fair or were discriminated (Bloisi, 2007). Finally, improving the process will enhance productivity and loyalty. This is because only the best candidates will have been selected who are passionate about the job and will be dedicated to the bank and will thrive to help it succeed.

Comparison of recruitment and selection practices between Bank Windhoek and Standard Bank Namibia

The Standard Bank is the leading bank in Namibia for the last eight years. It has also been awarded the best innovative bank in Africa and also the best investment bank in the whole of Africa. The good performance has been fostered by its focus on enhancing beneficially mutual investments with the local corporate clients. It is also considered a market leader in the banking sector regarding human resource management in Namibia. Its human resource practices, especially with regards to recruitment and selection processes, are considered to be more effective as compared to its competitors. Bank Windhoek should look up to the standard bank of Namibia to gain insights on how to improve its recruitment and selection processes. It should thus benchmark itself with the bank, by doing so; it can gain a significant improvement and overcome the negative ripple effects accrued from its current recruitment and selection processes.

Bank Windhoek primarily focuses on external recruitment sources as its main source of acquiring new employees. It mainly uses newspaper advertisements. It publishes the vacant positions in the daily newspapers, giving details of the job. After that, it selects best candidates for the positions from the applicants. This is deemed as not a very effective method since it is more limiting the scope of a search. The bank has a relatively rigid organizational culture. They have not embraced the numerous diverse methods of sourcing for its employees (Groner, 2016). On the other hand, the standard bank of Namibia embraces diverse recruitment and selection processes which have been very essential in expanding its scope of search thus having a large of the pool to select from. The standard Bank uses the most current technologies in its search, hence the award for being the most innovative in the country. It uses both internal and external recruitment sources to search for their employees. They also ensure that the processes used are cost effective and still yield best results. For instance, they mainly rely on internal sources such as through employee referrals, employ through internship programs and recognizing internal employees who can best fit the vacant position (Ball, 2012). Candidates for internships once they have gained the requisite knowledge and skills needed in the banks vacant position are hired. However, the due selection process is followed. Standard Bank of Namibia also selects its employees through network-based websites which connect applicants or the job-seekers to the bank. They also post their vacant positions on the banks website and also through the print and mass media. This diversity has enabled the bank to get a large pool of applicants from where it can select the best candidate from. The applicants are then passed through a rigorous selection process to get the best candidate. They have four committees that help in the recruitment process. The first committee consists of the board of directors and the managing director of the bank. They are tasked with the responsibility of recruiting the managing director and the deputy. The second committee comprises of the general manager, the MD, and the board members. They hire the general manager and the assistants. The entry level management positions are done by the third committee which comprises of the general manager, the human resource manager and specific board members (Municipality, 2002). The fourth committee comprises of all the departmental managers. They mainly recruit applicants who have been suggested internally. Through such elaborative recruitment and selection processes, the standard bank has been able to select the best talent in the labor market as compared to Bank Windhoek, which has over the years over-relied on the print media to source for employees and not being very detailed and effective in the recruitment process. Thus, the Bank Windhoek can gain a lot of insights from the human resource practices from the standard bank Namibia to help it improve its current practices.

Recommendations for change

Based on the analysis of the current recruitment and selection process used by the bank, numerous recommendations can be made to enhance the current process to a more effective process. despite establishing and maintaining an effective selection and recruitment process being a major challenge for many human resource personnel, the bank can gain a significant improvement when it employs these recommendations;

Bank Windhoek should develop an effective job advertising database. Currently, the bank does not have a proper advertising database; it can use the spreadsheet to track when and where to post a...