HUMAN RESOURCES

Human Resources: Royal Mail

Human Resources: Royal Mail

Introduction

Royal Mail is a state owned public limited company in the United Kingdom and is one of the three main businesses operating as part of the Royal Mail Group, the others being Post Office Ltd and Parcelforce Worldwide. The company is responsible for the collection, sorting and delivery of mail in the UK. It delivers daily for six days a week to all addresses across the country and provides collection service from post boxes, Post Offices, businesses and organizations throughout the country (www.royalmailgroup.com).

The company carries around 60 million letters and other items daily to some 29 million addresses in the country and beyond. It maintains a retail presence through its Post Office unit which comprise of about 12,000 branches (biz.yahoo.com). With such a large business scope it boasts of being a world leader in postal innovation and one of UK's largest companies.

The company has about 150,000 employees for its operations while additional workload during the Christmas period requires recruitments of thousands of additional seasonal employees to share the workload with the permanent postmen and women. In 2011, it received a record 110,000 applications across the UK for 18,000 seasonal workers who are required to work in mail and distribution centres across the country and help in the sorting of Christmas cards and packets before they go for delivery (Jones, 2011).

Apart from delivery, the company has people who work in operations and modernisation, consumer and Network access, commercial, legal services, Communications, Human Resource, Finance, company Secretariat, Business Development and Technology, regulation and government affairs, Parcelforce Worldwide and GLS (General Logistics Systems). All of them together make up the structure of the company (www.myroyalmail.com).

Task 1(a): Human Resource Management

Human resource Management requires a range of practices and decisions to be taken that directly affect or influence people or in simple words, it the Management of humans or people. It includes a variety of activities and is important for the success of an organisation. It basically requires decisions to be taken on the staffing needs, recruitment of people who match the needs of the organisation, ensuring the performance of the employees, training and development, helping employees perform their works, compensating them for their work and solving problems that arise.

Difference between Personal and Human Resource Management

Although both Personal Management and Human Resource Management focus on people management, there are differences that exist in the functions of the two. The first difference lies in the time frame for which planning is done; Personal Management focuses on short term planning while in Human resource Management, planning is long term. Another difference lies in the contract of the employees. In Personal Management, contract of employment is written clearly defining a set of rules and regulations that the employee has to adhere to during his tenure and has little flexibility. Human Resource Management on the other hand, calls for commitment to the organisation with various ways to encourage the employees to keep their contribution of the skills and ...