Book Review: Julian Randall and Allan J. Sim,Managing People at Work

This book is divided into 12 chapters. Those who want to acquire knowledge about human resource (HR) management, share knowledge on HR management to students of Management Business Administration (MBA) and Executive Management Business Administration (EMBA) and manage and lead at the workplace to grow as a manager and leader, I recommend reading this book.

This book arises from the need of students who have little or no threshold knowledge of HR management but who need to link it to their studies in other subjects. This book encourages readers to examine the underlying concepts that reach out beyond discrete disciplinary boundaries and require connection with theories from different disciplines and their common practice wherever it applies to people within a company. The book also addresses the need to understand and contribute to the strategic discussions which are expected in senior management forums.

The book describes the links among company strategy, HR planning and implementation using cost–benefit analysis to illustrate the hard and soft approaches to HRM. It also looks at evaluating the results of HR in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness in the main management interventions that lie within the HR development activities. Students are aided with their understanding by activities that lie at the end of each chapter. These exercises can be done individually or in tutor-led groups.

It contains case studies with diversified examples to ensure the HRM takeaways to the readers. For instance, a senior officer retired from the armed service and took up a position of chief executive of a local authority. His style was command and control and he tended to send memos and post notices that summoned managers to meetings and indicated that decisions had already been made. This approach was extremely uncongenial to senior members of his staff. After 3 months he lost the cooperation and good will of his colleagues and left the job. He then became managing director of a debt collecting company where his style was a perfect fit and went down well with his staff, many of whom were ex-service personnel themselves.

The book shares Charles Handy’s inspiring story of his time as head of a business school. He was approached by a young millionaire who asked to be admitted to a student to one of the university’s business degree courses. Handy expostulated with him that he already knew how to be successful as a businessman, so what need had he of studying further. The young millionaire answered, ‘I want to discover why I was successful—otherwise I shall not be able to repeat it.’ Handy accepted him on the course.

The book unveils that Geert Hofstede is perhaps the most well-known researcher to devise what was to become part of the staple content of most courses on national cultures. His research into subjects in IBM, a company that at the time was spread throughout most countries in the world, enabled him to come up with his four basic dimensions of cultural difference between nations: power distance; individualism vs. collectivism; masculinity vs. feminity and uncertainty avoidance. He came up with a fifth dimension that he initially called ‘Confucian dynamism’ but that he later changed to ‘time orientation’ (meaning long-term vs. short-term approach to life and work).

The book highlights various new concepts. For instance, it outlines about graduate attributes and explains the definition of Bowden et al. (2000) as follows:

Graduate attributes are the qualities, skills and understandings a university community agrees its students should develop during their time with the institution. These attributes include but go beyond the disciplinary expertise or technical knowledge that has traditionally formed the core of most university courses. There are qualities that also prepare graduates as agents of social good in an unknown future.

It describes the four main areas of graduate attributes as follows: academic excellence; critical thinking and communication; learning and personal development and active citizenship and engagement in the wider world of work and society.

The book explains about Aristotle who taught about the essentialness of three presentation components as follows:

Ethos: The ability of the presenter to establish credibility with the audience.

Looking at these very brief statements they raise some very interesting issues. Let us look at them one at a time. First is Ethos and it is really quite simple: why should I waste my time listening to you if you don’t appear to be a credible person? In other words, if you don’t seem secure in what you are saying why should I listen? Second, we must look at Pathos, why would we want to display and arouse passion? Aren’t we meant to be being professional here? Well the answer is really simple, if you don’t care about the topics why should the audience? One of the hardest parts of presenting is keeping the audience interested. Third, we have Logos, once again it is about why I should spend my precious time listening to you. If you don’t appear to be expert in the field that you are presenting on then exactly why should I listen to you? So Aristotle’s essentials may be old but they are relevant today.

The elements of presentation are purpose, audience, planning, design and implementation. When you close your presentation, you must consider the following aspects: know when to stop; bring all your points together; repeat them for the audience (repetition brings remembrance); and remind them what they mean.

It has been suggested that roughly 24 hours after hearing a presentation, the listener will forget at least 50 per cent of all the information presented. In 24 more hours, another 50 per cent will be forgotten. So if you want people to remember your key points then emphasize and repeat.

Approximately 80 per cent of what we learn is learned visually and only 20 per cent is learned aurally. That makes visual tools such as PowerPoint very useful in presentations. However, do not overload your audience’s brains. Keep the information on each visual aid to a minimum and remember your time limit. You must give your audience time to look at and absorb the information. If every slide is up for 5 seconds they are not going to be able to do that.

In conclusion, tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them it; tell them what you tell them (repetition brings remembrance); answer the questions (it will be easy because you are prepared).

This book is well researched and is written in a conversational tone. The book contains lots of stories and case studies in boxes. It serves as an academic and reference guide for the students of MBA and EMBA. It is useful for students, educators, learners and HR scholars and practitioners.