HRM101 Introduction to HRM and Leadership

Task 1: Application of Human Resource Management Concepts

Company Description

National Australia Bank (NAB) is among the largest financial institutions in Australia. It is ranked the 21^st bank in the globe in terms of market capitalization. It carries operations in around 57 around the world but its major customer base is in Australia and New Zealand.  As of 2015, NAV was operating up to1,590 branches across Asia, New Zealand and Australia and serving up to 127 million customers. The company has around 35,063 employees as per the end of 2016 (National Australia Bank n.d.).

Type of Employees as per Atkinson’s Flexible Firm Theory

The type of employees at NAB according to Atkinson’s flexible firm theory is core groups. The flexible firm theory defines core group members as employees with specific skills, experience, and are hard to replace (Tan, Denton, Rae & Chung, 2013). As a financial institution, NAB relies on the skills and experience to offer financial services to its customers. These employees have specific skills and experience that are essential for service delivery hence they are hard to replace.

Structure, Roles, and Responsibilities of HR Department

The NAB HR department is structured to be headed by the Group Executive, People. The company has branded the human resources as “People Division” that is led by a Chief People Officer (“Executive Leadership Team,” n.d.). The role of the People division of the bank is to ensure that its employees concentrate on work, help others with work, and feel comfortable while at work. The division is also responsible for identifying talent, training employees and develop an innovative and pleasant working environment.

The responsibilities of the division include;

• It oversees the policies of the operations of the bank. The People Division has the responsibility of crafting, promoting and updating workplace policies that are communicated to employees. The division is responsible for enforcing set policies and informing employees of any changes.
• The division reviews human resource policies regularly and ensures transparency is maintained.
• The division is responsible for continuous training of employees. Continuous training will help employees to develop and improve essential skills and experience towards improving productivity and employee turnover
• The division is in charge of recruitment and performance management of employees. It works on recruiting talent for the bank and develops essential performance management policies and strategies
• The division provides support and works with other divisions of the bank on the day to day operations to improve efficiency

The bank employs a flat organizational structure where there is less middle management. Therefore, employee supervision is less allowing for the involvement of employees in decision-making. The division responsibilities are handled at individual branches with the chief people officer being the top manager.

Figure 1: The People Division Organization Structure

HR Approach

NAB takes a consultative and matching staff with business requirements. The people’s division is branded to entirely delve with creating strategies for improving the capacity of the employees through training and development, better working conditions, employee appraisal and motivation towards matching staff with business requirements.  This approach is aimed at improving the productivity of customers through better employee relations strategies.

HR functions

The organization structure of the People Division is divided into various sections as follows;

• Recruitment and staffing- This is involved in the employee recruitment processes by the bank in identifying new talent and staffing to various departments. Functions include identifying potential talent, conducting interviews for selection, placement, and transfers
• Performance management, Learning, and Development-This involves workforce planning, skillset identification and overall employee management process. In addition, the section deals with training and development of employees
• Compensation and Benefits-This is a process of wages and salaries distribution and development of human resource benefit reports. This section deals with developing compensation and benefits policies
• Consulting and workplace relations- This involves the review and creation of policies on industrial versus employee relations, conflict resolution. Policy implementation and organizational change

Task 2: Retention and Development

Retail banks have traditionally had high turnover levels. High turnover has a negative impact on customer services and sometimes can affect company revenues. Many factors lead to high turnovers or low retention rates in the banking sector, including low wages, employee incompetency, and personal performance.

Low Wages

The banking industry offers relatively low salaries, thereby making the employees keep shifting in search for better compensation. For instance, tellers who engage in traditional activities of the bank such as receiving cash checks, making deposits, and handling simple service requests receive a wage that is comparable to hourly paid employees in places such as retail stores and other service-related industries (Hossain, Roy & Das, 2017). Such kind of jobs has a high turnover as workers are working towards transitioning to higher paying jobs. Jobs that have limited hours only attract people who are looking for short-term employment.  This leads to many workers to go for retail banking for short-term employment while seeking better employment opportunities.

Job Requirements

Banks have developed a tendency of employing workers with minimal qualification in the field. Such workers leave the industry due to the perceived lack of future promotion opportunities. At the same time, financial managers or lenders mostly lack sufficient education background at a certain stage. This also contributes to high employee turnover at banks. Seasonal banking also attracts employees who leave after the completion of the project or activities.

Mergers

Merger and acquisitions are common organization restructuring and change practices in the banking sector. During the restructuring period, profitable banks will be looking to expand and grow, hence swallowing smaller institutions while entering new markets. The bigger banks negotiate low-cost deals with small and insolvent banks. This will lead to low wage costs and the elimination of certain segments or departments. Employees will often come in between mergers and acquisitions resulting in disgruntled employees and job costs. Employees who are disgruntled of the process will move out while others will lose their jobs.

Goals

Retail banks raise income from sales. In this regard, many financial institutions have set sales targets for their employees. Those who fail to reach the set targets will contend with limited promotion, compensations, demotions, and even the prospect of entirely losing their job. At the same time, strategic changes in the business direction of the bank may lead to increase in turnover whereby bankers who are focused on investment sales lose lenders while paying higher wages leads to lose of investment bankers.

Task 3

NAB Teller Job Description and Brief Overview of the Company

National Australia Bank (NAB) is a leading financial institution in Australia. It is ranked the 21st bank in the globe in terms of market capitalization.  It operates in around 57 around the world, but its major customer base is in Australia and New Zealand.  As of 2015, NAV was operating up to1,590 branches across Asia, New Zealand, and Australia and serving up to 127 million customers.

Being a NAB teller involves the following;

• Provision of account services to customers by receiving cash checks, travelers’ checks, loan payments and many other services as required by the bank
• Records transactions as required
• Cross-selling bank products
• Comply with specified bank and security operations and procedures
• Reconcile cash drawer
• Complete special reports
• Maintain customer confidence
• Contribute to team efforts

Type of Performance

In order to review the performance of the teller, the grading system is the most suitable review method, (Snape & Redman, T. (2010). A rating scale will provide a review based on an employer-based criterion that involves set traits, competencies, behaviors and completed tasks. With the rating scale, the employer will assign an approach based on a numerical value the review the performance of the employee.

Justification

The rating scale is the most suitable review method to review a bank teller. This is due to the nature of the work of bank tellers based on their job description. Most of the tasks they do are based on set activity targets, sales target and desired behavior (Tangthong, Trimetsoontorn & Rojniruntikul, 2012 ). Therefore, the management of  NAB can employ a rating scale that includes sales target review scale, teamwork scale, and completed tasks performance scale. The teller’s performance will then be measured based on the scale.

Pros and Cons of Rating Scale Method

References

Executive leadership team. (n.d.). Nab. Retrieved from

https://www.nab.com.au/about-us/our-business-at-a-glance/executive-leadership-team/

Hossain, S. M., Roy, M. K., & Das, P. K. (2017). Factors affecting employee’s turnover intention in banking sector of bangladesh: an empirical analysis. ASA University Review, 11(2).

National Australia Bank. (n.d.). Crunch Base. Retrieved from

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/national-australia-bank#section-overview

Snape, E., & Redman, T. (2010). HRM practices, organizational citizenship behaviour, and performance: A multi‐level analysis. Journal of Management Studies, 47(7), 1219-1247.

Tan, K. H., Denton, P., Rae, R., & Chung, L. (2013). Managing lean capabilities through flexible workforce development: a process and framework. Production Planning & Control, 24(12), 1066-1076.

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