Hard and Soft HRM Skills

Maintaining disciplinary procedure in an organization is the important to handle the contradictory situation and providing justice. This case study is to evaluate the live disciplinary cion ase of a coffee chain where some conflict situation arose regarding the mistreating of employees by the store manager. The key thesis of this case study is to determine the whole suspension procedure of store manager and to link all the evidences with the theories.

Hard and soft HRM skill is related with the HR management to maintain the relation with the employees and to use them effectively in the business. Hard HRM skill refers to the hard handling with the employees where all the employees are treated as a resources and communication with the management is less (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). On the other hand soft HRM is the procedure where all the employees are treated as the back bone of the company and their demands are also considered.

The main point of this paragraph is the mismanagement of the store manager and due to this employees are unstaified and feel uncomfortable. District manager during his regular visit noticed this situation. In order to understand the whole scenario a meeting was conducted and store manager was accused by several allegations like bullying, shouting at the staff, no proper record of the working hours of the employees and many more. In the case study, few interviews were taken to understand the situation. They reveal that sometimes staffs are also directed to not say anything to the district manager regarding the store’s condition.

According to the McGregor’s in group and out group theory reveals that there are two groups one is inner group to whom leaders have a special relation and other is out group who are not fully commited to their leaders (Lawter, Kopelman and Prottas 2015). In this case study inner groups are employees who are following the SM and out group member are the DM who donot have ant commited relation with the SM. In this case study SM does not have any good relation with the inner group and she shouted infront of the customers and also did not pay the reward for the good job because she did not review the employee performance data for 12 hours. Theory reveals that leader maintain the good relation with inner group. There is some evidence of one employee who supports the SM but still the inner group theory is not applicable to SM.

Mismanagement of the Store Manager

According to the John storey’s theory, the manager wants to create hard discipline around the stores and this is the reason can be linked with the case study of shouting at the employees in front of the customers (Storey 2016). Developmental theory of John storey’s reveals that district manager thinks differently and give the priority to the employees because he thought that the employees are the backbone of the company and they need to be treated properly. This developmental nature supports the theory of John storey. hard developmental skils are treating the employees a sa resource, not providing proper training, authority has been unemotional. Soft disciplines are good communication , proper training, flexible organizational structure.

In this case study, behavior of the store manager with the employees reflects the hard nature of the organization and steps taken by the district manager of suspending store manager is soft because that supports the development and proper implication of the above discussed theories.

Disciplinary hearing latter and final grievance latter were rubbish because all the statements taken were not justified because only few respondents attained the interview procedure and according to the store manager authority only granted those reviews which satisfied their need. Proper evaluation was not done and a decision had been made on the basis of negative response.

Consistency means the rigidity, stability and circumstances is the condition which defines the scenario by relevant prove. In this case study authority showing the consistency by suspending the store manager but circumstances which they evaluated are not justified the situation due to lack of numbers of respondents (Rutz et al. 2017).

 The main point of this paragraph is the suspension of the store manager by taking the interview of few employees and treated the answer as true without proper justification. According to the case study store manager reveals that the authority took the answer which gives the value to their points. There is a respondent who supports the store manager but his information completely ignored and decision of suspension was made. According to the ACAS code, the procedure is to give a chance to the person to explain his side before accusing him regarding disciplinary issues (Bernstein 2017). In this case study all the procedures are followed properly and store manager also invited to attain the hearing meeting to explain his points.

In this case study procedural justice applied as the authority gave the chance to the store manager and also gave the chance to apply against the decision. There is the evidence in the case study that store manager attend the hearing and explain her points. No distributive justice was there because workers did not get the right pay for the time they work. This is also another issue noticed by the DM.

McGregor’s In-group and Out-group Theory

Strength of this situation is that the authority provides the priority to the employees and weaknesses is that, without proper information from every employee store manager was suspended.

Obviously, this decision cannot be taken as a good decision because the number of respondents is low and decision was made on the basis of negative information against the manager and authority can warn the store manager by oral warning before sending the hearing letter.

Performance management is one of the important components to manage the performance of the employees and allows the authority to enhance the performance by providing proper training and guiding (Buckingham  and Goodall 2015).

The main point of the paragraph is to enhance the performance of the employees in the organization by providing proper training. Store manager treated staffs as a resource and focused on the profit. Shouting on the employees, some issues regarding the working time forced the authority to suspend the store manager in order to enhance the performance of the employees. According to the goal setting theory, establishing a goal is much needed to motivate yourself (Mauro 2016). Organization also need to help the employees to reach the goal but in this case store manager did not review the performance of employees for 12 years and also proper training is not provided to meet the goal. According to the espoused management, behaviour of the store manager does not justify the organisational etiquette and enacted theory reveals how an employee reacted in an organisation (Bourne, Jenkins and Parry 2014). In this case study store manager reacted diversely because she treated the employees as a resource and no proper communication was made to develop the behaviour within the organisation.

Strength of this part of case study is that organisation are willing to focus on the development of the employees by managing performance but weaknesses in that no proper evaluation was made and no proper training  is also provided to the employees to develop their performance.

Decision which was taken is good for enhancing the performance of the employees but store manager is also experience and suspension without any notice in holiday is bad for the organization. It can hamper the image of the company.

Leadership can be explained as the concept, which guides the employees and organization to achieve the goals (Nanjundeswaraswamy and Swamy 2014). Importance of the leadership mainly involves in finding the capabilities of the employees and uses these capabilities into right place to obtain the successful result.

John Storey’s Theory

 Point for this part is to develop the leadership nature and finding the leadership style of the store manager as she was suspended on the ground of grievance. Evidences that reveal store manager misbehave with the employees have been seen in the case study but no proper evaluation has been done to understand the situation. Store manager is dedicated and worked nearly 10 years for the company and also got two company awards.  District manager on the other hand has been recently appointed and very unsympathetic person. All the situation can be handled by conducting a oral meeting but suspension has been made when store manager was in holiday. Transactional leadership theory is a style where whole management is leaded by the supervision, performance and organizing in proper way (McCleskey 2014). In this leadership theory leader guided his follower by giving reward and punishment. In this case one interviewer named Rosella De Cicco provided good review and also reveals the support she gave to her. Also some interviewer gave the negative report. This reveals the punishment and reward procedure of the store manager. In the case study, both the store manager and district manager follow the transactional leadership and this is the reason DM suspended the SM as a punishment and rewards the employees by providing support. DM is also follows this rule of transactional theory and evidences are in the case study.

In this case study it is clear that the store manager did not review the employees performance for 12 years and feedback of the employees are also not in favor of the SM (Karkoulian, Assaker and Hallak 2016). All over feedback are also not up to the mark to appreciate the leadership style of the SM.

Strength of the case is that DM supports the employees and her leadership style is transactional in nature. This reward also appreciated by the employees as she suspended the SM due to bad behavior. Regional manager did not show the transformational leadership On the other hand because she did not give any optons or talk with SM before suspension. In order to be a transformational leader RM must need to evaluate the situation, knowing the employees kind hearted.SM is dedicated and experience in this field but without proper evaluation, suspension is not seem to be valuable for the company to hold the proper organizational image.

Decision, which was taken, is good for the employees that they got the support from the higher authority but also the company cannot ignore the experienced person like SM.  Losing the dedicated and experience person who worked for several stores will make the company cost in future.

Conclusion:

From the above it can be concluded that store manager has been suspended due to misbehave and many other issues and suspension is also done by following the ACAS rules and regulation but disciplinary procedure reveals that SM can get the oral warning before suspension on holiday.  Also several employees provided the negative report against the SM but as a reply she raise the issue of not evaluating the whole scenario properly. Several theories and peel structure of the case study are provided in this essay. Performance management and leadership theories are also described with the fact from the case study for better understanding.

References:

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Buckingham, M. and Goodall, A., 2015. Reinventing performance management. Harvard Business Review, 93(4), pp.40-50.

Lawter, L., Kopelman, R.E. and Prottas, D.J., 2015. McGregor’s theory X/Y and job performance: A multilevel, multi-source analysis. Journal of Managerial Issues, 27(1-4), p.84.

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McCleskey, J.A., 2014. Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), p.117.

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Nanjundeswaraswamy, T.S. and Swamy, D.R., 2014. Leadership styles. Advances in management, 7(2), p.57.

Rutz, S., Mathew, D., Robben, P. and Bont, A., 2017. Enhancing responsiveness and consistency: Comparing the collective use of discretion and discretionary room at inspectorates in England and the Netherlands. Regulation & Governance, 11(1), pp.81-94.

Storey, J., 2016. Popular Culture. Materiality and Popular Culture: The Popular Life of Things.

Karkoulian, S., Assaker, G. and Hallak, R., 2016. An empirical study of 360-degree feedback, organizational justice, and firm sustainability. Journal of Business Research, 69(5), pp.1862-1867.