Williamstown Racing Club (WRC) is committed to growing its revenue base, managing its labour costs and assets, maximising long term returns for its membership base, and building a performance oriented culture. It is recommended that the following Human Resource (HR) strategies be implemented such as job analysis and job recruitment; staff development and training program; monetary and non-monetary reward system; and industrial relation strategies. These strategies will be examined as to how they enabled WRC to recruit a highly skilled and effective workforce to meet their race day job roles and responsibilities.
It is the WRC’s objectives to recruit on a bi-yearly basis 300 part time and casual employees in the autumn and spring racing carnival to meet escalating job vacancies and responsibilities need to be met on the race day. “Job analysis information aids the recruitment process by establishing the job requirements to be met and thus identifying who to recruit, helping the HR manager to attract better qualified candidates. “1 Furthermore, providing a summary of the duties and responsibilities with clear selection criteria will help managers and prospective employees to better understand the job demands (Stone, 2002, p.128).
Rather than advertising job vacancies and interviewing applicants for casual and part-time positions bi-yearly, it is more efficient for WRC to maintain a database of employees’ contacts to be called upon when necessary. By undertaking a job analysis of the wide variety of job roles and responsibilities that need to be perform by part time and casual employees, the WRC Department will be better able to match a person’s existing skill base with job requirements.
In evaluating the success of this HR strategy, it is important to monitor customers’ satisfaction of services provided and staff retention rates of part time and casual employees. 1. 2 Rewards and Compensation To achieve WRC objectives, it is one of the main reasons for WRC to have efficient and effective rewards and compensations systems, in both forms of monetary and non-monetary, in “determining the organization’s ability to attract high potential employees, to retain high performing employees, and to motivate all employees to achieve greater levels of performance”.
The current remuneration strategy of WRC consist a list of monetary rewards such as superannuation, salary packaging, insurance, and health cover as well as non-monetary rewards such as career advancement and development, and holidays. This reward system directly creates initiative and motivation among employees, which will increase employee productivity in the club as a result (Cipolla & Trafford, 1995, p. 10). However, there are some imperfections in the system mainly due to its inflexibility as it is completely based on enterprise agreements.
Therefore, the remuneration system is unable to reflect the professional and personal lifestyle of the employees. A systematic remuneration system is important for employers and employees because an unorganised reward system will de-motive, create conflicts and may have negative impact upon workplace climate and attitudes toward WRC (Pritchett, 1983, p12). The use of fixed over award wages or individual or collective performance based pay is recommended as WRC is having an over-riding corporate objective to build a performance oriented culture (Horstman, 1999, p.331).
In order for this objective to be achieved, it is crucial that rewards system emphasise on the employees’ performance. In maintaining the success of this HR strategy, it is important to build a systematic method to evaluate employees’ performance, for example, specific goal attainment. By undertaking rewards and compensations to reflect its corporate culture, WRC is able to create a firm base for successful human resource management which allows potential future development and growth. 1. 3 Staff Development & Training
Investment in employee development and training is a source of sustainable competitive advantage. It advances WRC objectives, which is achieved through 12 months study programs for selected staff to get recognised qualifications by educational institutions. The 5000-hour training program in 2004 is also implemented to improve individual employees’ skills to lead the organisation to success. “In the 21st century, the education skills of the workforce will end up being the dominant competitive weapon”3 (Thurow, 1992 cited in Olian, Durham, Kristof, Brown, Pierce & Kunder, 1998, p. 21).
Thus, training and development is essential for creating readiness and flexibility for a changing organisational environment. By accumulating trainee baseline data before training and development programs are introduced, the WRC department will be able to identify the means to help human resource decision makers develop appropriate and effective programs that focus on specific areas necessary for the organisational success. WRC can collect baseline data through employee self-assessment surveys (interviews or questionnaires), feedback from co-workers and job simulations (Hazucha & Holt, 1991, p. 71).
Organisations focusing on training and development based on established baselines and measured progress offer a matching profile of skills and talents with the organisation’s strategic business objectives. The implementation of this HR strategy will help WRC to fill future supervisory and management vacancies utilising internal candidates of the highest quality. Thus, the WRC ability to select and retain the best employees by offering them the chance to expand beyond their current job tasks will reflect the success of the HRM team in developing and managing the training and development programs (Zahn, 2001, p. 36).
