BUHRM5912 Human Resource Management
2nd Semester 2018
Write an individual report on any of the following scenarios within a 2500 word limit.
[Choose only one scenario for your individual assignment]
Scenario 1
In Australia, ‘on 1 July, 2017, certain penalty rates in the Restaurant, Hospitality, Pharmacy, Fast Food and Retail awards [sic] have changed. The changes affect penalty rates for some permanent and casual employees working on Sunday, public holidays, evenings or after midnight in these awards (Fair Work Ombudsman, Australian Government, 2017, p.1). Given this backdrop, examine how this change in the legal environmental factor has impacted the HR planning, job design and quality of work practices in your organisation or an industry you are working for or familiar with. As an HR practitioner, suggest a set of justified recommendations for your representative industry body to advance their negotiations with the concerned parties.
Source: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay/penalty-rates-and-allowances/penalty-rates-changes-2017
Scenario 2
Today success of HR practitioners largely depends upon how agile they are in responding to the constant challenges happening in the internal and external environment. Given this backdrop, identify one either internal or external environmental factor from the Environmental Influences Model (see figure 2.16 of the textbook) and examine how a recent or proposed change in your chosen environmental factor can impact or has impacted the HR planning, job design and quality of work practices in your organisation or an industry you are working/familiar with. As an HR practitioner, suggest a set of justified recommendations for your top management on how to respond to the changing environmental influences impacting the given HR practices.
General advice:
To complete this individual assessment, you should start by becoming familiar with the discussions provided in the chapters 2, 4 and 5 of the textbook. With the support of relevant literature and references to the organisation or industry you are familiar with or working for, you need to examine how the recent/proposed changes in your chosen environmental factor is impacting or can impact (positively and/or negatively) on the current HR planning, job design and quality of work practices in your organisation or industry. You could choose any organisation or industry you are familiar with. This does not necessitate that you should be a current employee of an organisation/industry. If you are not a current employee of any organisation, you may choose an organisation or industry you are familiar with by browsing their official website. From your online search, you could still get a great deal of additional information about the company as to its HR practices. Further, more detailed information about the organisation can be obtained from sources such as company annual reports, media release, newspaper reports, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Fair Work commission, HR magazines, and professional bodies such as Australian Human Resources Institute or similar sources available in your country of interest etc. These sources will provide you with adequate evidence to substantiate your claim of how changes in your chosen environmental factor are impacting or can impact the HR practices in the area of HR planning, job design and quality of work practices in your chosen organisation or industry.
The following headings should be followed to prepare your individual report.
1. Introduction: Your introduction should tell your readers about a brief background of your chosen company or industry, purposes of the report and what your readers are going to have in your report, any limitations if any.
2. Impacts of [your chosen environmental factor] on the HR planning, job design and quality of work practices of [ for example, ABC company or industry]:
Using relevant HR related theories, concepts from the textbook and from any relevant HR journal articles, HR industry reports, you are required to examine the potential or existing effects of the changed environmental factor on the given HR practices.
3. Recommendations to address the identified impacts:
Being an HR practitioner, propose a set of justified recommendation(s) for your peak industry body or top management utilising some aspects of your analyses and findings from relevant research and reports.
Research and referencing requirements:
You MUST include a minimum of 12 references. This means you are allowed to use more than 12 references; however, 6 references (5 peer-reviewed journal articles and one textbook) should be used from academic sources. Wikipedia is not peer-reviewed so should not be in your reference list though you might obtain some useful references from Wikipedia. You should use the FedUni library database to download useful academic sources.
Referencing must be in APA format. In-text citations must be included, as well as a full reference list at the end of the report.
Length: 2500 words. Note: There are penalties in place for exceeding the recommended threshold word limit (5% above or below the given word limit is acceptable; references and appendices are not counted towards the total words count). Beyond the 5% threshold, 1 mark will be deducted for every 10% that you exceed the given word limit.
Due Date: This report is due on the Monday of Week 6 by 11:59 PM at your local time. Late submission will attract penalty as per the FedUni’s policies.
How to avoid plagiarism:
As per for the FedUni’s policies, academic dishonesty such as plagiarism and contract cheating have dire consequences that may lead the concerned student to be expelled from the program and/or the university. To avoid being penalised on the grounds of plagiarism for any submitted works, you are strongly recommended to paraphrase every single sentence in your assignment unless using any direct quotes. Direct quotes should be used sparingly. Too much reliance on direct quotes indicates that a student has a limited capacity to paraphrase the core ideas obtained from the cited materials. You are allowed to submit your assignment as many times as you wish before the submission deadline via the Moodle turnitin link. This multiple resubmissions until the submission deadline will enable to you check the originality of your work and allow you to revise and upload the final work into the Moodle created turnitin link.t . Furthermore, if a lecturer suspects a breach of academic integrity has occurred in the form of a contract cheating, i.e. the submitted work has not been produced by the student himself/herself, in this case, a thorough investigation will be carried out engaging the concerned student and a penalty will be imposed as per the FedUni’s policies if evidence of breaching academic integrity is concluded. Finally, for both your in-text citations (i.e. within the texts of the report) and references list (at the end of the report), please, adhere to the APA referencing style. Detailed guidelines on how to use APA referencing are available on the FedUni’s website.
1) Criteria used to grade this task
The criteria for assessment of this task are set out in the Appendix.
2) Task Assessor
Lecturer/Tutor
3) Suggested time to devote to this task
24 hours
4) Submission details
Your assessment is due on the Monday of Week 6 by 11:59 PM at your local time. Your assignment is to be submitted via Moodle using the Turnitin submission link. No personal hard copy or email submission will be accepted. For any further clarifications, please, feel free to contact your lecturer/tutor.
5) Feedback and return of work.
The grade and feedback on your submission will be available on Moodle/hard copy within 3 weeks from the due date.
