Best Fit or Best Practice in Employee Recruitment


As per Human Resources Management Organization to function, the concepts of ‘best fit’ and ‘best practice’ are two well-known approaches. These concepts will enhance the company efficiency, effectiveness and the employee’s productivity  (Licentiate,2001). Organizations when they adapting HR policies and procedures they have to outline the recruitment process that the organization will look people in the best fit or the best practice.   
 “HR strategy & organizational strategy & structure and proper cultural background are essential to reach that top-level”. “Thus Best Practice & Best Fit approaches are being used by the organizations in various ways” (Kushner & Company Annual Report, 2014 p.45).
The best fit is a conventional practice which been introduced with Taylorism and this more focuses on people management (Monzon, & Ciommo, 2016) & (Harber, & Samson,1987). Best fit sates that human resource policies and procedures should line with business strategy. In other words, it is important that Human Resource strategies are suitable in different circumstances along with the cultural and operational process of the organization (Armstrong, 2006). Once they implement the best-fit approach at the time of recruitment various HR mechanisms been used to find the intended employee been the best fit for the organization. Practices used are one to one interview, Attitude tests, practical tests, are some of them that vitally used to find the best fit. At the time of recruitment if the selected employees, not the best fit then the organization processes and functions may collapse, if not then the new employee should adapt to the organization culture otherwise he/she may not be able to retain in the organization. Make such employees best fit HR has to ensure that it should be in place within a shorter period of time. When a new employee is adapting to an organization’s culture to best fit a given position, they have to adjust according to organizations' needs and organizations do not conversion according to their capabilities. (Robertson & Smith, 2001). When recruiting people with the best skills for the job this will lead to innovation, quality enhancement then HR can reward people according to their performances and train them if they are not delivering the expected targets.
Best fit innovated from Taylorism, these models have several limitations. One person’s failure will have an impact on hole organization production/service process, numerous irregular practices financial control weakness, lack contingencies and they will be difficult to handle new challenges and not be able to adjust completely (Licentiate 2001).
As per video clip, 1.0 produced by Kushner & Company (2014) elaborate that when an organization need for the best fit to train them to make the best fit.
Video 1.0
The best team wins
HR Strategy: Hire-for-Skill or Hire-for-Fit
Source: (Kushner & Company 2014)
Selective hiring is discussed by Armstrong (2006) when he conferred Pfeffer’s model that relates to best fit model as one of the seven important HR practices. We can see that Sreenivas (2006), giving examples of organizations such as Singapore Airlines, Southwest airline, and Subaru/Isuzu that have selective hiring focusing on employees who perform a high degree of learn-ability, logical ability, cooperation, and management potential, communication and advanced expertise and planned approach for problem-solving. 
Revolution in people management occurred in the 1980s which seemingly overturned personnel management in favor of human resource management (Iain Henderson, 2000). As per Mondy & Noe, (2005) by adapting best practice models to enhance the organization’s work environment, avoiding nepotism, discrimination and adopting equal employment opportunities. The ‘best practice’ highlights the association between ‘sets’ of good HR practices and organizational performance, in return, this will enhance employee commitment and satisfaction.
As per Competitive Advantage Aitken Spence Hotel Management (Pvt) Ltd, adapted the following seven best practices by human resource management. 
Providing Job security to employee.
People come to work to earn money for living and facilitate their families to live.  Having an employer who enables the employee and provides the assurance for you and your family is the number one priority that employee concern. As per best practice, employers have to provide this assurance that the company will exist and salaries will pay on time to the employees. 
Employment security also benefits organizations to remain in the business for the forcible future because it helps them retain their productive, efficient people. When employees are laid off or resigned, for example, it’s usually the organization that pays the price. They are the ones who have invested in the selection, training, and development of these employees. This is an expensive process. If the organization doesn’t work on retaining its people, they are more likely to leave and work for the competition.
This the reason that the HRM announced best practices such as after the probation employee been put on to permanent basis to ensure that your job been secured.  

Selective hiring: Hiring the right people.
HRM introduces selective hiring in this process accordingly advertising the position, shortlisting the applicants, calling and interviewing, testing one to one and selecting best out of the best. In this selection, process organizations conduct IQ tests, personality assessments, work tests, peer assessments, and reference checks to identify the key characteristics of the candidate. These tests can identify the probability of the prospective employee’s ability to do the job, technical and soft skills, trainability, commit to work and to the organization. Companies can’t just hire anyone who are fit for the job, companies do their utmost best to hire exceptional people because they add the most value to the business. This enables an organization to bring in employees who add value and do innovations. 

Self-managed and effective teams.
The incumbent should be able to self-managed himself and adapt to the situational change that he/she may face with the organization with the new working environment and also he/she must be an effective team player. Teams provide value because they consist of people who think differently, organized them and achieving a common goal is the main focus by HRM in the best practice approach. 

Fair and performance-based compensation.
The best practice method is always to everything with compensation and benefits.
Always employees want to compensate them above average, paying people above the norm also has a number of potential disadvantages, to overcome these and pay the employees based on performance-related rewards such as targets, commissions, performance allowance, incentives are some of the key compensation methods that balance the employee and employer. Coupling organizational performance outcomes with individual rewards, the individual is incentivized to maximize this outcome. It also creates a sense of ownership for the employee. Think of profit-sharing, shared ownership or stock options are some of the great ways to create employee commitment to the company’s long-term apparition and retain high potentials.
Training in relevant skills.
HR best practice states that companies should invest strategically in training & development.
After recruiting the best people and trained organizations need HR to ensure that they remain in the organization otherwise the objective and the best practice cannot drive the organizational goals.  
Creating a flat and egalitarian organization.
Every the employee is a valuable member of the organization and should be treated as such. To achieve organization objectives and set goals, from the hierarchy bottom to top all employee’s contribution is needed in the equal form that can be a cleaner, driver, CEO or MD all of them contributing toward the company achievement.
Making information easily accessible to those who need it.
According to Pfeffer, there are two reasons why information sharing is so important.
Firstly, communication with employees about company objectives, goals, strategy, financials, and operations in which people feel that they are trusted and involvement has been appreciated in the business. 
Secondly, Share the information, ideas, they need to have an informed understanding of what’s going on in the business.

Boxall & Purcell (2016), there are pluses and minuses in the best practice model as well.  It confines policies to the extent that they are vulnerable to numerous changing possibilities, and it will be complex to handle new challenges as the HR system might not be altered completely.  
Having defined the two systems, let’s now look at the points of the settlement between ‘best fit’ and ‘best practice’. Some say that the Universal accepted method is best practice, but considering the above facts, it is understood that an organization should make use of the best theories of both models. When recruit employee’s having best fit will be much more prudent to increase productivity and efficiency, on the other hand, to retain them for a period of time in the organization will be the best practice. This confirms that none of the two models are superior to each other have to work both the model equally and paroral. 

 List of References

Armstrong, M. (2006) A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 10th ed. London, Kogan Page Limited.
Boxall, P. & Purcell, J. (2016) Strategy and Human Resource Management. 4th ed.New York, Palgrave.M.
Harber, A, Samson, D. (1987). Japanese management practice.MIR Managment, 33(1),PP82-85.
Iain Henderson Human Resource Management for MBA Students 2nd Edition 2000.
Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka, Chartered Licentiate Study Journal Journal Vol. 1025, 2001.
Kushner & Company Annual Report 2014.
R. W. Mondy and R. M. Noe, “Human resource management,” International Edition, 9th Edition, Prentice Hall, 2005.
Monzon, A., & Di Ciommo, F., (2016) City-HUBs. Sustainable and Efficient Urban Transport Interchanges. Florida, CRC Press.
R. Robertson & W. Smith, (2001) The organization's culture.
Robertson, I. T., & Smith, M., (2001). Personnel selection. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 74, no. 4

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Comments

  1. Interesting article, best fit and practice are important to keep employees long years. Agreed with hiring right people rather spent time for wrong/unmatched people as well as developing current people also will be additional benefits for company. Investing for training and people development segment is totally agreed part of company success.
    Equality is good sign to keep people motivation and for high performances.
    Thank you for sharing this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I do agree, spending time and money on wrong/unmatched people will be a waste to the company. HR should always look for best fit and motivate them by way of best practices.

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  2. Really good article, as you have mentioned both best fit and best practices should work parolally in recruitment if an organization go for best fit it should be in line with their business strategy, also a company can go for best practices as well to get a competitive advantage. Both approaches have limitations on certain points,company should equally make use of both theories to attract and retain best talents in the organization.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, as you stated both approaches have there own limitations, but organization should concentrate on the positive points on both the approaches and balance the employee and employers requirements to achieve HR goals.

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  3. Good point Sinnen, applying recruitment best fit and best HR practices should help to identify, train and retain the best staff needed but best fit must be contingent on changing business strategies and best practice must be configurable to support the business strategy as well. so this will be easy for organization to maneuver the changing business needs.

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    1. Yes Zaharan, best fit must be contingent on changing business, inside it we have to adapt our staff as best-fit based on the business change to sustain, updated and compliance.

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    2. Good point Sinnen, applying recruitment best fit and best HR practices should help to identify, train and retain the best staff needed but best fit must be contingent on changing business strategies and best practice must be configurable to support the business strategy as well. so this will be easy for organization to maneuver the changing business needs (purcell, 1999)

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  4. Effective recruitment and selection methods are vital for an organization in multiple ways as per the article described. In best recruitment processes, employee engagement, sustained job performance, employee retention and low turnover are few of the advantages for an organization. Finally, these benefits are important for the development of organization in different ways. Especially, the set goals can be achieved by the result of selecting correct employee for the correct job.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As you stated selecting correct employee for the job is vital for the organization and to retain them and achieve company objective need the above theory best fit as well as best practice needed for employee engagement, sustained job performance, and employee retention (Armstrong 2006).

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  5. This is a very interesting article. Recurtment and selection system can work to provide companies with a competitive advantage. According to Dr. Gummadi (2015) he have stated limited suitability of manpower will require organization to adopt best practices in recruitment and selection in order to to attract and select the right people to achieve the best fit with the organiztion and job demands.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As indicated hiring the right people will get competitive advantages to hire them as stated above if organizations have already adapted best practices will be easy to find best fit (Boxall & Purcell 2016).

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. Attractive topic you have taken into consideration Sinan. Where as you have mentioned, recruitment and selection process of a company plays a key important role (Nelarine, 2001).
    The recruitment process is the systematical approach on sourcing or attracting the most suitable candidate or candidates who would be meeting the requirement and needs of the employer where as the selection process is all about choosing the most suitable candidate or candidates among the interviewed applicants (Elearn Limited, 2009).
    Effective recruitment and selection strategies would support the whole organizational structure, reduce the turnover, outstanding results by workforce by means of selecting the right people for the right job. Utilizing effective strategies in bedded to the recruitment and selection process would overcome the difficulties faced by wrong decisions (Victor et al., 2009).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes Shakila, as you stated recruitment process is the systematical approach & should select most suitable candidate, failure will have an impact on hole organization production/service process, numerous irregular practices, financial control weakness, lack contingencies and they will be difficult to handle new challenges and not be able to adjust completely & may lead to collapse the organization (Licentiate 2001). I do agree with your statement, Effective recruitment and selection strategies will could overcome the difficulties faced by the organization even reduced the employee turnover.

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  8. Hi Sinan, Indeed it's an interesting topic and much relevant organizational example is used to elaborate on this topic.

    I work for a multi-national organization in the business of micro insurance and their recruitment strategy is more of a 'Best Fit' model. Which calls for the alignment or contingent relationship of business strategy to organization HRM practice (Miles and Snow 1978). This approach is also known as the contingency model and proponents of this approach assert that there is no universal way of doing things as what might work well in one place may be unsuccessful in another place (Fapohunda, nd).

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    1. Yes Shiyamila, As you stated I do agree "there is no universal way of doing things as what might work well in one place may be unsuccessful in another place" depending on the industry best fit will be the most suitable approach, micro insurance/finance, garment industries, telecommunication, power generation is a specialized industries in such a situation best fit will be an ideal. Best fit will be much more prudent to increase productivity and efficiency, on the other hand, to retain them for a period of time in the organization will be the best practice (Boxall & Purcell 2016).

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  9. You have brilliantly debated one of the most arguments areas in the Human resource management domain. The best-fit approach is more like defining the HR polices according to the business objectives (Sparrow and Hiltrop 1994). Since the business objectives and the environment factors often change during the course, the best fit model, therefore, is not reliable to depend on as a human resource management practice. The Best practice, on the other hand, may also hinder the business operation from the lengthy procedures for planning and executing on implementing best practices. Furthermore, diverse legal backgrounds also may have an effect on the best practise approach for global organizations (Milkovich and Newman, 2002).

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  10. Dear Sinan, this is an interested topic to discuss in relating to the human resource management. According to the Croonen & Grünhagen (2016), human resource is the most vital resource in an organization. And in order to manage human resource within the organization, it is definitely required to maintain best practices. Then only the organization aligned with proper functioning to achieve the organizational goals. Thus, it is the responsibility of both HR department and the top management to implement best practices in recruiting and other important HR Managing functions.

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  11. Very Critic article and so realistic in present business context. With the globalization most of the organizations are moving towards the best practice than the Best fit.
    But there are certain disadvantages of it which majority do not openly discussed. But people who are looking for power and control will be more beneficial on their purpose satisfaction than trying to absorb the best from their employees.(Eilertson,2017). further Eilertson (2017) explain that is sometimes like a road block to innovative thinking, creativity uses, and challenge acceptance.

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    Replies
    1. As you stated I do not agree that most of the organization moving forward to best fit, as per Armstrong (2006), most of the organization moving forward to best practices. Some say that the universal accepted method is best practice, as per Boxall & Purcell (2016), that an organization should make use of the best theories of both models to avoid power and control & to increase productivity and efficiency.

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