Assessment Task 2 (35%)
Report on HRM Planning Submission Guidelines
Course: Managing Human Resources
Course Code: HRMT 20024, Term 1, 2016 Course Coordinator: Dr Ezaz Ahmed General Guidelines:
• All assignments for HRMT20024 must be submitted through Moodle site. No email submissions will be accepted. All email submissions will be ignored, will not be replied to, will not be marked, and will directly result in a zero (0) score
• All assignments submitted electronically through Moodle must be through the Student Portal http://my.cqu.edu.au
• Failure to submit electronically will be taken as a failure to submit and therefore a zero (0) score will apply to the specific assignment
• No assignment coversheet is needed to be attached while submitting through Moodle
• For Assessments 2 and 3, late submissions without approval will result in penalty in final marks. Five percent (5%) of the total marks allocated to a specific assessment are deducted for each calendar day. For example, Assessment Task 2 (Report) has 35 marks, and 1.75 marks will be deducted for each calendar days of delayed submission
• Students DO NOT have the chance to participate in Assessment Task 1 (online quizzes) after the quizzes are closed, as the system directly prevents students from submitting after the due time
• According to CQU’s policy, students must submit their requests for extension of assignment submission date through the CQU system (“Assessment Extension Request” under the “Support” block of the course website), no email or telephone request will be accepted
• Important to note:
o No extensions will be granted for Assessment Task 1. Failure to participate on time directly results in a zero (0) score for online quiz for that week.
o For Assessment Tasks 2 and 3, requests for extension will NOT be approved without relevant supporting documents (e.g. a medical certificate showing the issue date, recommended number of days off work and the doctor’s contact details etc.).
o All requests MUST be applied through Moodle (or Webfuse) at least 48 hours prior to the due time (Assessment Task 2 and Assessment Task 3).
o Extension requests without supporting documents and those applied less than 48 hours before the due time will NOT be granted. Therefore, you are suggested to submit as early as possible to avoid any unexpected situations.
• As mentioned above, you should prepare and submit your assignments as early as possible and DO NOT wait for the last minute. It is your responsibility to ensure that the assignment is submitted on time.
• When submitting your Assessment Tasks 2 and 3, you MUST complete all steps listed in Moodle site, CQU ID and password are needed to access the Moodle site. Penalty in final marks for late submission applies to drafts that are already on Moodle but not submitted for marking at the due time. Please note assignments which are submitted as draft will be automatically submitted for marking after the due date and time.
• Those drafts which are still not submitted for Marking twenty (20) calendar days after the due time will not be marked and will be directly graded “zero (0)”.
Policies and Procedures for Assessment:
• Students may familiarise themselves with the following policies and procedures at http://policy.cqu.edu.au: Assessment and examination policy and procedures, Assessment of Coursework Policy, Assessment of Coursework Principles and Assessment of Coursework Procedures
• Assignment preparation and presentation Guide for Students, Referencing style links: http://www.cqu.edu.au/current-student/international-students/studentsupport/learning-skills-unit/resources
• From Term 1 2016, School of Business and Law uses the APA style of referencing. More information on the style can be found at https://www.cqu.edu.au/?a=14033
• Applying for assignment submission extensions, Assessment grading and Plagiarism links
http://www.cqu.edu.au/current-student/domestic-students/first-year-students/gettinghelp
Important Dates:
Assignment 1 Online Quizzes (4 Quizzes) Participation Date and Time: Weeks 4, 6, 8 and 10
Quizzes open on Mondays of the week at 9.00 am AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time) and close on Sundays, 5.00 pm AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
Assessment Task 2 Report on HRM Planning Submission Date and Time:
Week 6: 22 April, 2016, Friday, 5.00 pm AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
Assessment Task 3 Essay on Work-Life Balance Submission Date and Time:
Week 12: 3 June, 2016, Friday, 5.00 pm AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
Contacting Teaching Staff
During the course, students should initially contact their local teaching staff to answer any queries related to the course that they may have. Contact details for local teaching staff can be found on the Moodle course website (“Course Contacts” under the “Information” block). If local teaching staff cannot fully answer the query or it is of a personal nature, students can contact the Course Coordinator Dr Ezaz Ahmed. Distance students should contact Dr Ezaz Ahmed with their questions regarding the course, its content, and assessments and here is Dr Ahmed’s contact information:
Dr Ezaz Ahmed
Head of Postgraduate Business Programs
Course Coordinator, HRMT 20024, School of Business and Law
Central Queensland University, Melbourne Campus
120 Spencer Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000
Email: e.ahmed@cqu.edu.au
Tel: +61 03 9616 0638 (ext. 50638) (office), Mob: 0431745329, Skype: ahmedezaz
Student Contact
The university allocates every student an individual email address, the format of which is firstname.lastname@cqumail.com (e.g. john.citizen@cqumail.com). This is the official email address that the university will use for all email correspondence. Student emails can be accessed through http://my.cqu.edu.au
Students are expected and requested to check their official email address on a frequent and consistent basis (at least once weekly). Students are encouraged to review the new Student Email Principles university policy relating to email communication at http://policy.cqu.edu.au which has been introduced to ensure all course and program updates are received. Regular student access to email is required for this course. Regular student access to the Internet is required for this course. Students are expected to follow a self-directed study schedule which meets the required deadlines. Student use of the course website is mandatory. This is provided using the Learning Management System (LMS) which can be accessed through the MyCQU Student Portal: http://my.cqu.edu.au. This course uses Moodle extensively. If you have difficulty logging in, please contact IT Helpdesk on (07) 4930 9233, 1300 666 620 Monday to Friday between 7.30 am to 5.30 pm.
Important Dates
Week 1: March 7, 2016 – - Commencement Week of Term 1 2016 March 13, 2016
Week 4: March 28, 2016 – - Online Quiz 1 opens on Monday March 28,
April 3, 2016 2016 at 9.00 am AEST and closes on Sunday
April 3, 2016 at 5.00 pm AEST
Week 6: April 18, 2016 – - Online Quiz 2 opens on Monday April 18,
April 24, 2016 2016 at 9.00 am AEST and closes on Sunday
April 24, 2016 at 5.00 pm AEST
- Assessment 2 Report on HRM Planning due on Friday, April 22, 2016 at 5.00 pm AEST
Week 8: May 2, 2016 – - Online Quiz 3 opens on Monday May 2, 2016
May 8, 2016 at 9.00 am AEST and closes on Sunday May 8,
2016 at 5.00 pm AEST
Week 10: May 16, 2016 – - Online Quiz 4 opens on Monday May 16, 2016
May 22, 2016 at 9.00 am AEST and closes on Sunday May
22, 2016 at 5.00 pm AEST
Week 12: May 30, 2016 – - Assessment 3 Essay on Work-Life Balance due
June 5, 2016 on Friday, June 3, 2016 at 5.00 pm AEST
Assessment Task 2 – Report on HRM Planning
Due Date: 5:00PM AEST, Friday of Week 6 (April 22, 2016) ASSESSMENT Length: 2000 words ± 10% (including executive summary,
introduction, heading and subheadings, recommendations
and conclusion but excluding title page, reference list and
appendixes) 2
Weighting: 35%
Reference Style: APA Style https://www.cqu.edu.au/?a=14033
Document type: MS Word document only, do not submit in PDF format
Objectives
This assessment item relates to course learning outcomes numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5.
Purpose
The primary purpose of this assessment is to assist students to develop skills in the use of HRM planning, theories and models in the analysis of a typical business situation that has organisational change and downsizing. The assignment requires you to analyse the current situation, identify and specify the organisational issues, and suggest practical and probable solutions. The secondary purpose of this assignment is to give students the opportunity to enhance their research, analysis, critical thinking and written communication skills; particularly in the areas of argument development and report writing.
Before starting this assessment, please read the marking criteria (at the end of this document) and refer to Academic Learning Centre and CQU Library Help pages for the guidelines regarding writing academic reports. The Moodle course website also provides useful information in regard to the development of this assessment task. You should always check the course website for course-specific instructions, which may be updated continuously. Description
Assessment task 2 requires the writing of a Business Report. The report should be designed as a management document that can be used to implement recommended changes. It should include a comprehensive analysis of the current situation using HRM theory, models and frameworks. The report should clearly explain the various options available and analyse the consequences of these. Students are expected to engage in extensive research within the academic literature relating to human resource management. The assignment is based on a case study that describes the impact of contextual change on business activities. The purpose of the report is to identify the roles of change in organisational structure and other challenges in managing dynamic organisations. Students are expected to engage in extensive research within the academic literature relating to organisational structure, HRM planning and downsizing analysis.
Format of the Report:
The Business Report should include following sections and formatted as mentioned below:
Word count and Format: All academic writing is subject to word limits. A general rule of thumb is 10% above or below the recommended word count in accepted. That means, the Business Report should ideally be written within 2200 words. Not all sections of the Business
Report attracts word count. Word count includes words in Executive Summary, Introduction, Headings and sub headings, Recommendations and Conclusions. Please check word count for the above mentioned sections before submission.
As a general rule, the following document settings are suitable for most academic reports.
Font type Use a simple font such as Times New Roman
Font size Use 12 point as the base size
Headings and sub headings Use 14 point Bold for Headings and 12 point Bold for sub headings
Margins Use 25 mm (1 inch) for all margins
Line spacing Use 1.5 line spacing
The writing style and layout should be consistent throughout the document. Creating a consistent and professional looking document is not difficult. Failure to do so is an indication that the writer is either careless, or places no importance on the work being undertaken.
Copy Detection Software:
Copy detection software (TurnitIn) is used in this course and work found in contravention of the copying and plagiarism rules will be investigated. Penalties apply in the case of proven instances of copying, plagiarism and academic dishonesty. For more details about the penalty, refer to the marking criteria for each assessment task
Please check the following links to know more about TurnitIn:
http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/viewing-originality-reports http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/about-originalitycheck
TurnitIn is only a tool and judgement needs to be used when you view your Originality Report. TurnitIn does not make a judgement as to what is referenced properly, it highlights the non-original material in a piece of work. You should use the similarity score as a guide only and must then check the originality report to determine whether or not changes need to be made to the assignment. You may have unwillingly forgotten to reference a quote or you may need to consider paraphrasing if the amount of quoted material is too high. Before submitting for grading of assignments, you are allowed to submit your assignments as draft in Moodle site (as many time as you want) and wait for TurnitIn to generate a similarity report. Please review the similarity report carefully, check copied or plagiarised sections and rewrite those sections to avoid penalty.
Different Sections of the Business Report:
Title page: The title page of a report should be brief and precise. It contains the following information: the name of the report, who prepared the report, for whom the report was prepared, the nature of the report, the date the report was prepared.
Executive summary (ideally be approx. 100 words): The executive summary is a one page (or less) statement of a report’s purpose, findings and recommendations. It is more detailed than a couple of sentences, enabling the reader to see the -big picture- without getting absorbed in technicalities. According to Putnis and Petelin (1999, cited in Dwyer 2006, p. 469), it is 'an acceptable substitute for the whole report'. Referencing is not used in the executive summary.
Table of contents: List the page numbers for headings and sub headings of the report.
Introduction (ideally be approx. 100 words): The introduction consists of two or three paragraphs in which the aims, structure and methodology of the report are outlined. It states clearly the purpose or main task of the report and what the reader can expect to obtain from it. Important background information is included, such as why the report was initiated in the first place. Please include a thesis statement that clearly mentions the main purpose of the report. The introduction may mention previous reports and research projects if the present report builds on, or challenges them.
Headings and Subheadings (ideally be approx. 1900 to 2100 words): The content of the report’s main body should be formatted into logical sections by topic. It may be appropriate to format into sections according to major topics and then outline logical sub-topics with subsections (if needed). The sub-sections may or may not be indented to make them easily identified, depending on the writer’s preference. Each section should be preceded by a heading, and each sub-section should have a subheading. Different headings and sub headings can be used to organise arguments, answers to the assessment questions. Please use headings and sub headings logically to reflect your answers to questions clearly. This section is also called main body of the assignment should present the evidence you have collected to support your arguments for the questions (with headings and sub headings). This is also the section of the report which will be analysed thoroughly by the examiner, so please prepare this section carefully. Some general guidelines also include: all figures (diagrams, pictures, drawings, charts, and so forth), and tables, should be labelled and numbered, do not repeat ideas, arguments in subsequent headings and sub headings, try to maintain equal lengths for all headings and sub headings which also ensures that you have answered all questions equally. Please note that all answers to the assessment questions should be based on arguments, answers developed through research findings (references).
Recommendations (if needed) (ideally be approx. 100 words): Only include if the questions asked in the assessment require recommendations. This section can be in bullet format or descriptive.
Conclusion (ideally be approx. 100 words): The conclusion is a brief section (less than a page) in which the writer analyses the significance of the report's findings and reiterates the main points of the report. These findings must derive logically from material presented in the report. A generalisation is then drawn from the specific findings of the research. New information is not included in the conclusion. Information in a conclusion should not be presented as dot points.
References: A Reference List is a listing of all external resources that were consulted and mentioned during research for the report, and information from which is directly referred to in the text of the report. It is strongly recommended to avoid secondary referencing in assignments. Such as, try to avoid too many mention of Cited in …….. Ricardo (2005) mentioned that ……. You are supposed to read the references before mentioning in reference list. There are a number of different styles of referencing used in academic literature. As mentioned before, please use APA referencing style for reference list. Here is the CQUniversity Australia library link to APA referencing
style: https://www.cqu.edu.au/?a=14033 The word count of the Reference List does not contribute towards the word count of the report.
Appendices (if needed): An appendix is a section containing large amounts of data or information pertaining to a specific topic that has been collected from an external source. It may have been collected from a reference source during preparation of the report, or have been generated from experiments or from field work. It may, for instance, be the technical description of a piece of equipment, or the calibration data of a measurement instrument.
CQUniversity Australia Library has a developed a webpage with generic information on Business Report and can be found at http://libguides.library.cqu.edu.au/writing-reports
Details
The assessment item is based on the case study titled The Perils of Downsizing (pg. 237-238 of textbook: Human Resource Management in Australia (5th Ed.) by Kramar, Bartram, De Cieri, Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, McGraw-Hill Australia). You should read, and carefully analyse, the case and respond to the issues presented at the end of the case study within the context of a business report. You are required to support your argument with appropriate theoretical discussion and references.
The assignment should be a properly constructed business report. The assignment should contain a coherent, critical review of the academic literature on HRM topics in question. The literature review should be integrated into the assignment and not be a separate section. A reference list formatted in the prescribed APA style is compulsory. Further information regarding formatting of assignments and other information is available at https://www.cqu.edu.au/student-life/services-and-facilites/referencing
This assessment item involves researching your assigned topic to enhance your understanding of and utilisation of academic literature. Whilst you should AVOID using only the textbook, the prescribed textbook for the course should be cited in regard to broad HRM principles. You will be expected to present information and evidence from, and cite, at least twelve (12) relevant peer reviewed journal articles (absolute minimum requirement). These do not include other academic references such as books, conference papers, and book chapters and so on. Although you can cite these other academic references in your report, they will not be counted as part of the 12 journal articles. Refer to your recommended readings for examples of academic journals. While you can cite these recommended references, it is expected that you find twelve (12) peer reviewed journal articles not listed in the course materials. The quality and number of citations will demonstrate the breadth and depth of the literature used to support your arguments. Your marker is interested in the analysis that you have developed from YOUR review of the literature and how well you use the literature to discuss the topic. AVOID presenting a descriptive account ONLY of your readings. What is required in this assessment is a critical evaluation of the academic literature as it relates to the specific details of the case study. Your marker is also interested in the conclusions that you reach by evaluating the literature and the case scenario.
Tasks
Case Study: The Perils of Downsizing (pg. 237-238 of the textbook)
Deeply concerned about the level of angst or anxiety and uncertainty among existing staff, the Vice Chancellor tried to reassure employees about the future direction of the university. However, the Vice Chancellor is convinced that more needs to be done and has hired you to provide the director of human resources with some recommendations to improve planning for the university’s human resource needs. Based on the above mentioned case study write a report that answers all the three questions:
1. What are the external factors that are affecting the labour profile needed by the university?
2. Identify and critically discuss the ways that the HR planning function within the university could provide better information to university decision makers.
3. Given the information in this case, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the downsizing of staff numbers at the university?
All the answers must be written with supporting academic references
HRMT20024 – Managing Human Resources
Assessment 2 – Marking Criteria for Report on HRM Planning Case Study: The Perils of Downsizing (pg. 237-238 of the textbook )
Student Name: Student Number:
Your report will be assessed on the extent to which it meets each of the following criteria. Please be aware that for some criteria, unequal intervals between tick marks are used.
Criteria Marks
Content (30 Marks): Does your report demonstrate:
1. A thorough knowledge and critical analysis of the topics expressed in a coherent format and in the language of human resource management? (8.5 Marks) 0.0 ? 2.5 ? 3.5 ? 4.5 ? 5.5 ? 6.5 ? 8.5 ?
2. A critical review of the academic literature relevant to organisational structure, HRM planning,
downsizing theories, models and arguments to analyse the questions asked in the case study? (5.5 Marks) 0.0 ? 1.0 ? 2.0 ? 3.0 ? 4.0 ? 5.0 ? 5.5 ?
3. Appropriateness of responses to the case study topic questions including an effective analysis of the situation along with relevant commentary on the case scenario? (5.5 Marks) 0.0 ? 1.0 ? 2.0 ? 3.0 ? 4.0 ? 5.0 ? 5.5 ?
4. Appropriate use of argument within the report, including a properly structured introduction and comprehensive conclusion? (5.0 Marks) 0.0 ? 0.5 ? 1.0 ? 2.0 ? 3.0 ? 4.0 ? 5.0 ?
5. Relevant and accurate literature is used to develop and support arguments (cited at least twelve (12) academic journal articles)? (3.0 Marks) 0.0 ? 0.5 ? 1.0 ? 1.5 ? 2.0 ? 2.5 ? 3.0 ?
6. A well-structured, concise and clear presentation of appropriate recommendations? (2.5 Marks) 0.0 ? 0.5 ? 1.0 ? 1.5 ? 2.0 ? 2.25 ? 2.5 ?
Presentation (5 Marks): Does your report demonstrate:
7. Clarity of expression, grammar and spelling? (2.0 Marks) 0.0 ? 0.5 ? 1.0 ? 1.5 ? 2.0 ?
8. Strict conformity to APA referencing style (e.g., all in-text references and reference list are correct)? (2.0 Marks) 0.0 ? 0.5 ? 1.0 ? 1.5 ? 2.0 ?
9. Appropriate presentation format (short business report) as required by assignment writing guidelines? (0.5 Marks) 0.0 ? 0.25 ? 0.50 ?
10. Length of 2000 words (± 10%)? (0.5 Marks) 0.0 ? 0.25 ? 0.50 ?
Penalty: Marks are to be deducted because of:
11. Late submission without approval if applicable [(-5% × 35) / day = – 1.75 Marks/day ] – 1.75 × () Days = – ( ) Marks
Important: Plagiarism will result in a “zero” score and will be reported to the Academic Services Centr e of the University. Turnitin will help identify plagiarism through the level of
similarity. A certain level of similarity does not necessarily indicate plagiarism, but you are suggested to judgements about plagiarism case by case. minimise the level of similarity as much as you can. Markers will make academic
FINAL MARKS = The aggregate of all the 11 criteria (0/35 – 35/35)
(Note: marks for 11 are minus; once the calculation produces a minus final mark, 0/35 should be given) /35
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