Research on human resouce management in unicef with a focus on management of expert and consultants in unicef viet nam

DECLARATION I assure that the data and research findings in this Thesis « Research on Human resource with a focus on management of experts and consultants in UNICEF Vietnam” are truthfu

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

KHOA QUẢN TRỊ VÀ KINH DOANH

-

NGUYỄN THỊ BÍCH THỦY

RESEARCH ON HUMAN RESOUCE MANAGEMENT IN UNICEF WITH A FOCUS ON MANAGEMENT OF EXPERT AND

CONSULTANTS IN UNICEF VIET NAM

NGHIÊN CỨU QUẢN TRỊ NGUỒN NHÂN LỰC TẠI UNICEF, TẬP TRUNG VÀO HOẠT ĐỘNG QUẢN LÝ CHUYÊN GIA,

TƯ VẤN Ở UNICEF VIỆT NAM

LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ QUẢN TRỊ KINH DOANH

HÀ NỘI - 2020

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

KHOA QUẢN TRỊ VÀ KINH DOANH

-

NGUYỄN THỊ BÍCH THỦY

NGHIÊN CỨU QUẢN TRỊ NGUỒN NHÂN LỰC TẠI UNICEF, TẬP TRUNG VÀO HOẠT ĐỘNG QUẢN LÝ CHUYÊN GIA,

TƯ VẤN Ở UNICEF VIỆT NAM

RESEARCH ON HUMAN RESOUCE MANAGEMENT IN UNICEF WITH A FOCUS ON MANAGEMENT OF EXPERT AND

CONSULTANTS IN UNICEF VIET NAM

Chuyên ngành: Quản trị kinh doanh

Mã số: 60 34 01 02

LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ QUẢN TRỊ KINH DOANH

NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: PGS.TS NGUYỄN NGỌC THẮNG

HÀ NỘI - 2020

DECLARATION

I assure that the data and research findings in this Thesis « Research on

Human resource with a focus on management of experts and consultants in UNICEF Vietnam” are truthful and are my own research findings

Materials and data used in this Thesis were partially collected from functional sections, departments, from specialists and staff who have been working with UNICEF Vietnam, and partially collected by the author through surveys with co-workers and desk review of publicized documents, etc Quotes were cited clearly

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

During the preparation of the Thesis “Research on Human resource with a focus

on management of experts and consultants in UNICEF Vietnam”, I received the

instruction, support, and encouragement of many individuals and collective groups

I would like to express my deepest acknowledgement to all individuals and collective groups who facilitated and supported me during my research

I would like to thank the Hanoi School of Business and Management (HSB), Hanoi National University for facilitating me in all aspects during my learning and completion of this Thesis

I would like to express my sincere thank to the Instructing Lecture, Ass Prof Nguyen Ngoc Thang for instructing and supporting me enthusiastically during my preparation of this Thesis

Also I want to thank for the encouragement, supports from my friends and family for me to complete this Thesis

My sincere thanks go to all of your precious support

AUTHOR

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for topic selection 1

2 Research objectives 2

3 Object and scope of the research 2

4 Research Method: 3

5 Structure of the Thesis 3

CHAPTER 1: THEORIES ON HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 4

1.1 Some relevant definitions 4

1.1.1 Human resource 4

1.1.2 Human Resource Management (HRM) 5

1.1.3 Objectives, meaning of HR management 6

1.2 Basic contents of HR management 7

1.2.1 Recruitment 7

1.2.2 Training 19

1.2.3 Job delegation 21

1.2.4 Health care and protection for employees 22

1.2.5 Work motivation 23

1.3 Factors affecting HRM in an organization 25

1.3.1 External factors 25

1.3.2 Internal factors 27

2.1 Research process 29

2.2 Research design 30

2.2.1 Preliminary research 30

2.2.2 Official research 36

2.3 Sample designing 36

2.4 Data collection 39

2.4.1 Primary data 39

2.4.2 Secondary data 39

2.5 Data analysis method 39

3.1 Overview of UNICEF Vietnam 40

3.1.1 UNICEF Vietnam’s operation viewpoint 41

3.1.2 Organizational structure and function 42

3.2 Recruitment, use and assessment of experts 44

3.2.1 Recruitment process, assessment of performance of consultants, experts and benefits 44

3.2.2 Comments/assessment on the HRM over consultants/experts 45

3.3 Verifying the scale of HRM factors in UNICEF Vietnam 47

Characteristics of surveyed respondents 47

3.4 Descriptive statistics with factors of expert - HRM in UNICEF Vietnam 48

CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 52

4.1 Contribution by the research 52

4.1.1 Contribution in terms of theory 52

4.1.2 Contribution in terms of experiment 52

4.2 Viewpoint on expert management of UNICEF Vietnam 52

4.3 Some HRM solutions in UNICEF Vietnam 54

4.3.1 Improving quality of recruitment work 54

4.3.2 Solutions to improve quality of trainings, fostering professional skills 57

4.3.3 Solutions to improve quality of employee arrangement 59

4.3.4 Solutions on policies to assess work performance 60

4.3.4 Solutions to improve effectiveness of remuneration policy 60

4.3.5 Developing corporate culture 62

CONCLUSION 65

REFERENCES 66

1 Vietnamese materials 66

2 English materials 66 APPENDICES

LIST OF ACCRONYMS

CBPA Competency-Based Performance Appraisal

CR Compensation and Rewards

CRBP Children’s Rights and Business Principles

MOE Margin of error

RS Recruitment and Selection

TD & E Training, Development & Education

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Summarized HRM policies defined 31

Table 2.2: Scale to measure HRM policy 33

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1: Organizational structure of UNICEF Vietnam 43

Figure 3.2: Number of experts/consultants recruited 44

Figure 3.3: Statistical characteristics of respondents 48

Figure 3.4: Descriptive statistics on HRM factors 50

INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for topic selection

Human resource (HR) plays important role in the activities of enterprises or organizations, therefore the good use of this resource to serve the business development and social development is an important task in the management of organizations and enterprises HR management requires understanding of many aspects of human, with a viewpoint that human is the central element of development HR management techniques aim at facilitating human to promote their full potential, at reducing resource waste and increasing the effectiveness of the organization Effective HR management is one of the biggest challenges to each organizations in the market economy Strong fluctuation in business environment, fierce competition and the need to meet increasing HR demand have put great pressure on the managers in Vietnam, requiring them to have new thinking in HR management

In the past years, UNICEF Office in Vietnam has highly appreciated of the role and importance of HR to the existence and development of the organization, thus from its establishment, HR management has always been the top priority of the organization’s leaders As a development organization, UNICEF provides counseling and technical assistance for its partners being Government agencies, therefore, the organization need to develop a workforce of expert and consultants having good professional expertise and experience However, the HR management

is still facing some challenges and difficulties with regards to the expert management With a wish to learn more about the situation of HR management in the past time and propose solutions to complete HR management work, the author

decided to select the thesis topic “Research on Human resource with a focus on

management of experts and consultants in UNICEF Vietnam” as the final paper

for my Master degree

HR is a crucial element to a development organization like UNICEF, and human element, especially experts, play key role to the success of UNICEF in its operation

in Vietnam However, there are three short comings in the management of experts

in UNICEF i.e Recruitment, Use of and Compensation and Rewards for employees

2 Research objectives

2.1 Overall objectives

This research aims at understanding, analyzing HR management work, and also surveying, analyzing experts’ comments and assessments on HR management work in UNICEF, with a focus on the management of experts and consultants in UNICEF Vietnam Based on that, comments and assessments on the effectiveness

of HR management work in the organization could be made, together with recommendations and solutions to complete and improve the quality of HR management in UNICEF Vietnam

3 Object and scope of the research

3.1 Research object: Recruitment, using, retention, and motivation in HRM 3.2 Scope of the research:

Research location: HRM over experts and consultants in UNICEF Vietnam

- Surveyed persons: experts, consultants working in UNICEF Vietnam: assess

on the recruitment, use, retention and generating motivation in HR management in UNICEF Vietnam

- Reference to cases, solutions to complete the HR management in the organizations, enterprises, etc

Research duration: Find out about data, information on HR management

issues (recruitment, use, retention, generating motivation) in UNICEF Vietnam in the period 2016-2018 Data are for the period 2015-2019

4 Research Method:

a Method of document research:

Collecting documents from various sources: Scientific articles, research topics and other related documents Through general theoretical analysis, systematizing classification and generalization of the theory from which to draw scientific conclusions is the theoretical basis for the topic

b Method of sociological survey by questionnaire:

Methods of survey by questionnaire: The questionnaire was built based on the overview of documents to collect information and analyze the current situation of human resource management of experts and consultants in Unicef Vietnam

c Mathematical statistical methods:

Using mathematical statistical methods to process data and test scales

Data analysis process:

- Descriptive statistics

- Assessing the reliability of the scale by Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient

5 Structure of the Thesis

In addition to the introduction, conclusion, list of references, and attached appendices, the structure of this Paper consists of four Chapters, including:

Chapter 1: Theories on human resource management

Chapter 2: Research methodology

Chapter 3: Research findings

Chapter 4: Conclusions and recommendations

CHAPTER 1: THEORIES ON HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

1.1 Some relevant definitions

1.1.1 Human resource

Human resource (HR) is the internal resource of each person, including visible and potential resources HR is reflected by the work capacity, includes health, competence, psychology, level of efforts, creativity, or passion, etc

It has been proved in reality that human role in production is crucial, HR is the key element among all production elements Without human, all other elements cannot be operated, and used in production

“Human resource” term appeared since 1980s when there was basic change in management method which used human in the work economy Previously staff was considered as those obeying tasks who were dependent, whose labor should be exploited at maximum level, at minimum cost, but since 1980, HR management (HRM) with new method has been more flexible and better facilitated laborers so that they could promote their fullest potential accumulated through the work and development

There have been various different viewpoints on HR such as:

“HR is all the knowledge, skills, experience, competence and creativity of human that relate to the development of each individual and of the whole country.” (World Development Indicators, 2000, WB)

“HR is human resource in generating physical and mental assets for the society, reflected as the certain quantity and quality at some certain time” according

to Mai Quoc Chanh (2008) “HR is a category used to show the potential strengths

of the population, the ability to mobilize in the process of producing physical and mental properties for the society, at present and in the future The strengths and ability are reflected via the quantity and quality, and structure of population, especially the quantity and quality of people who are capable of joining the social production.”

According to Pham Minh Hac (2001), “HR is the synergy of all work potential

of a country or a province, i.e workforce prepared (at different levels) to be ready

to take some job, i.e laborers having skills (or capacity in general), by meeting the

requirements of the labor structure shifting mechanism, and the economic structure

in the orientation of industrialization and modernization.”

The above viewpoints approach HR from macro perspective, and from the perspective of an organization or enterprise, there are different viewpoints on HR as follows:

“HR of an enterprise is the workforce of the enterprise, is the number of people in the list of the enterprise, paid by the enterprise” according to Bui Van Nhon (2006)

Hence, from different perspectives, there could be different concepts of HR, yet these above mentioned concepts are similar in basic content: HR is the source to provide labor to the society Human, as an element compositing the workforce takes the leading position, is the basic resource and endless resource for development, HR cannot be viewed merely as either the quantity or the quality perspective, but HR must be the combination of both quantity and quality; HR is not just the population

at working age but they are different human generations with potential and strengths

in renovating the nature and renovating the society

In each enterprise, HR is an important and unlackable resource that determines the success or failure of the enterprise Therefore, managers must care and foster their HR to assure their personnel’s quality and quantity, to ensure that the enterprise can develop not only at present but also in the future

1.1.2 Human Resource Management (HRM)

HRM is a system of philosophies, policies and functional activities to attract, train – develop and keep personnel of an organization to obtain the optimal results for both the organization and its staff

According to Mathis & Jackson (2003), HRM is the design of formal system

in an organization to assure effective and efficient use of human talents to serve the organization’s objectives

According to Felix Migro: “HRM is an art of selecting new staff and use of old staff in a way that the production and work quality of each of them is at maximum level possible.”

“HRM is a system of philosophies, policies and functional activities to attract, train – develop and keep personnel of an organization to obtain the optimal results for both the organization and its staff” according to Tran Kim Dung (2006)

As one of the basic functions of the organization management, HRM includes planning, organization, direction and control of activities to attract, use and develop personnel to achieve the organization’s objectives

HRM can be understood as the recruitment, selection, retention, development, use, encouraging and providing necessary condition for personnel, through the organization, to attract, build, develop, use, assess, preserve and maintain a suitable workforce to the organization’s requirements, both in quantity and quality

HRM is one among important and basic functions of management work, as human is the key part, the most important resource, and the center of development

of each company or enterprise If sale department is considered as the front-line and the spearheaded department that generates all benefits and revenue to the enterprise, then human resource is considered as the firm back to help the enterprise develop Therefore, the attraction, training, recruitment, assessment, arranging personnel of suitable competency and quality to suitable positions, and monitoring, directing, ensuring the compliance with the laws on labor and employment, etc are the leading tasks of managers

However, in nature, HRM is the management of human within an organization, it’s how an organization treats its employees In other words, HRM is responsible for bringing employees into the organization, helping employees do their job, remunerating them for their work, and addressing emerged issues

1.1.3 Objectives, meaning of HR management

* Objectives: HR management studies the issues on human management at macro level with two basic objectives:

– Use effectively human resource to increase production and effectiveness of the organizations

– Meet increasing needs of employees, facilitate so that employees can promote to their fullest potential all personal capacity, so that they are stimulated, encouraged the most in work place, and they are loyal, committed to the enterprise’s work (Tran Kim Dung, 2018)

* Meaning of research on HR management: In modern time, HR management plays increasing important role for following reasons:

+ Due to the tougher competition in the market, in order for an organization to survive and develop, it must restructure itself to be small and neat, dynamic, in which human element plays determinant role Therefore, finding the right persons, assigning them to right tasks and positions is a concern of all kinds of organizations

at this time

+ Advances in science and technology, together with the economic development, force managers to adapt Therefore, the recruitment, arrangement, training, appointing staff within each organization in an optimal way must be the highest priority

+ Research on HR management will help managers learn how to communicate with others, know how to make questions, know how to listen, to find a common language with their employees, and know how to be sensitive with their employees’ needs, know how to assess employees correctly, know how to attract their employees to be enthusiastic at work and to avoid mistakes in the recruitment, use

of employees and to improve quality of work and effectiveness of the organization

1.2 Basic contents of HR management

Recruitment must meet following principles: recruitment must be based on work requirements, must be objective, fair, and conducted based on the number of staff in need; there should also be analysis on the posts to recruit, the recruitment requirements and criteria

In order to have enough staff of good quality, the managers should pay attention to this issue right from the recruitment phase This is an important phase that affects greatly on the quality of the enterprise’s future human resource If this task is well done, the enterprise shall recruit competent staff of good ethics, which

is the basic foundation for the development of quality human resource in the enterprise On the contrary, if recruitment is not well done, then the enterprise cannot select the competent and ethical staff, decreasing the quality of human resource, or even leading to the personnel shortage or even personnel crisis, preventing the improvement of human resource’s quality, leading to more cost and time needed

Good recruitment is one among methods to increase human resource quality

In the recruitment process, attention should be paid to the followings:

- Recruitment should start from the need for personnel, based on the positions to be recruited, and the job requirements, should avoid the redundancy or shortage of staff, avoid the recruitment of staff of poor quality or those who do not fit the needs

- Recruitment process must be specifically developed and planned to assure the implementation as planned Requirements, standards/criteria must be clearly mentioned and publicly published for all candidates to know The process must be objective and fair to avoid the recruitment of “family members” whose capacity and ethics are not good

1.2.1.2 Recruitment process

* Recruitment process

Figure 1.1 Recruitment process

(Source: Bui Hoang Loi,2007)

 HR planning

HR planning is an activity conducted at year-end based on the production and business plan for coming year of the organization, HR need is assessed and identified to meet the work objectives and to make work plans to meet such need

The contents of the HR plan include: estimated number of staff needed with certain skills to fulfill the planned tasks (HR demand); estimated number of staff who will work for the organization (HR supply); selection of measure to balance human resource supply and demand in appropriate time in the future Based on that, decisions on recruitment and recruitment contents are made e.g positions to be recruited, number of staff in each position, technical requirements, etc

 Alternative measures (instead of recruitment)

Once an organization faces financial difficulties regarding the recruitment, following measures could be alternative solutions:

Sub-contract: In case of difficulties and the organization can’t recruit, then

HR planning

Alternative measure

Recruitment

Conduct the recruitment

the organization can hire another organization to do the job in the form of sub-contract However, in order for this method to be effective, different aspects should be thoroughly analyzed e.g work quality, cost and benefits of different parties During the sub-contract, attention should be paid to tasks requiring high expertise so that each part of the task could be sub-contracted Usually the sub-contractors are those who have high level of job specialization, therefore usually the costs for such tasks are low

Overtime work: In production and business, in many cases an organization

must complete in a very limited time some tasks, and such organization cannot recruit immediately new staff but usually they have to apply a common measure that is overtime work Overtime work allows cost saving for recruitment, increased productivity without additional laborers On the other hand, young staff usually like working overtime to have more income Hiring laborers from manpower company: When applying alternative method, we need to care some following points:

- Laborers hired from other companies usually do not enjoy benefits and welfare in such companies, therefore somehow they are not so excited, and actually this is a way of lowering the living standards of laborers, therefore,

we must prevent the idea of “making full use of laborers”

- To improve the link between laborers and the tasks, and to limit the situations where laborers could lose benefits, we need to apply some regulations as below:

Temporary tasks: must regulate the time – number of days or hours

Employers must buy health insurance, contribute social insurance for employees and must apply other regulations on benefits for the employees

Organizations offering leased employees must offer benefits to employees in accordance with prevailing regimes

 Recruitment source

To have sufficient employees of good quality to fulfill the vacant positions, an organization must consider and select, determine that in which position should they recruit someone internally, or externally, based on that, they can develop suitable recruitment options There are two sources of recruitment: internal source from within the organization and external source

Whether it is internal (promoting someone from lower position to higher position) or external source, the following consideration must be made:

Internal source including persons who are working for such organization

With current staff, when we recruit them to take higher positions, we create good motivation for all those who are working in the organization as when they know that they would have a chance for promotion, they would work with more motivation, and they will work better, they have higher satisfaction at work, through which their emotion and loyalty to the organization will be increased

- Advantages of internal source:

+ They are familiar with the work in the organization, they passed the test on loyalty The biggest advantage is to save time for them to get used to the work, and the work can be carried out without interruption, and it can minimize the wrong decision in promotion and mobilization of staff

- Disadvantages of this source:

+ When promoting current staff in the organization, we have to be alert with the establishment of “unsuccessful candidates” group who are not appointed These people will manifest that they do not obey, do not cooperate with leaders, etc This could usually generate psychological conflicts e.g division in groups, or internal conflicts in the organization

+ With medium and small-sized organizations, if we rely only on internal sources then we cannot change the quality of laborers

+ When developing promotion policy within an organization, there should be a long-term development program with a more comprehensive, broader view, and there must be clear plans

External source: these are new applicants, including:

+ Those who graduated from university, colleges, high schools or vocational schools (including those trained in Vietnam or overseas)

+ Those who are unemployed, who quit job

+ Those who are working in other organizations

- Advantages of this source:

+ These are persons equipped with advanced and systematic knowledge

+ They usually bring new viewpoints to the organization

+ They are capable of changing the old style of the organization without being afraid of receiving reactions by other persons in the organization

- Disadvantages of this source:

+ It takes time to guide them, for them to get used to the work

+ If we usually recruit external candidates (especially in promotion, higher positions), then it would generate the feeling of disappointment in the current staff, they think that they would not have a chance for promotion, which would lead to difficulties in implementing the objectives of the organization

+ If we recruit candidates who worked for our competitors, then we have to care about the confidential of competitors, if not they would sue us because there is

an idea that usually when employees move to work for a new employer, they reveal their previous employer’s business secrets

When we recruit from external source, we need to care about some risks as the skills of external candidates are just potential which may not be expressed, therefore the recruited candidates may not meet the needs of the job immediately

 Recruitment methods

For internal source, we can recruit using following methods:

- Posting a recruitment notice on the position in need This notice will be sent

to all staff in the organization and provides information about the tasks and expertise requirements of the post to be recruited

- Referral by the organization’s staff Through this channel, we can detect those having suitable capacity to the job’s requirement, in a specific and fast way

- Using information in the “Portfolio of skills” that each organization usually makes on each employee and stores it in the HR software In this portfolio, there are usually such information as: available skills, educational/training level, work experience, professional experience and other factors on personal qualities of the employees

For external sources, we can apply following methods:

- Referral by an organization’s staff (similar to internal source)

- Posting recruitment advertisement on mass media e.g on T.V., radio, newspaper, magazines and other publications Advertisement contents shall be

dependent on the number and quality of employees to recruit, and the work nature There could be advertisement campaigns with many combined means, or there could be separate ads With this method, we should pay attention to the contents of the ads so that applicants quickly contact the organization recruiting

- Use of brokers and employment-service center This method is being applied commonly in Vietnam, especially with enterprises or organizations having no specialized staff in HRM Such centers are usually located in universities, colleges, vocational secondary school and mass organizations, as well as in the local/central labor management agencies (Ministry of Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs, provincial Departments of Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs, Trade Union, Lao Dong newspaper, etc.)

- Job fair This is a new method being applied by many organizations This method allows candidates to get into direct contact with many employers, offering larger options at large scale At the same time, both candidates and recruiters could receive more information, generating more accurate basis to make the best decisions

by both candidates and recruiters

* Selection process

Selection process includes many steps, each of which is considered to be a fence to eliminate unqualified candidates Number of steps in selection process is not fixed but rather it depends on the complexity of the job/tasks, on the nature of work To be selected, candidates must pass all steps in the recruitment and selection process And each organization has its own ways of assessing a candidate Most of organization will gradually eliminate unsuitable candidates in each step, so they do not have to track all candidates during recruitment process Meanwhile some other organizations let all candidates join all recruitment steps until they can recruit the most suitable candidates It depends on the organization’s financial resources for recruitment, on the rate of applicants over the number of positions to be recruited, and the reliability of information gathered

When designing the steps and contents of each recruitment step, we need to design in a way that can allow gaining the most typical and reliable information, based on that we can make decision on recruitment

Figure 1.2 Selection process

(Source: Nguyen Van Diem and Nguyen Ngoc Quan, 2012)

Detailed steps:

 Step 1: Welcome and 1st round of interview

This is the first step in selection process, the first meeting between recruiter and candidates This step is to establish the relationship between applicants and employer, and also to identify if an individual has suitable qualities and capacity for the job, based on that decisions are made on whether or not the relationship with that candidate should be maintained In the interview, if candidates are detected not

to have suitable capacity for the job, they should be eliminated immediately, however in order to make such decisions, standards/criteria should be developed in

a careful way During interview, the subjective viewpoints of interviewers prevail, therefore arbitrary standards should not be used to eliminate candidates Especially the elements including age, sex, race, religion, ethnic group and congenital

Welcome and 1st round of interview

Screening of application dossiers

HR test

2nd Interview

Health check and assessing candidate’s physical condition

Interview by line supervisor

Verifying information gained during selection process

Visit the company/organization

Recruitment decision

disability should not be used to eliminate applicants Key reasons to eliminate candidates in the first step should be: they cannot meet requirements on education, training, experience, required skills to do the job e.g lack of skills mentioned in the notice, having insufficient certificates or degree, or the interview findings show that the person is too weak in expertise, or has low professional awareness/skills, etc

 Step 2: Screening of applications

In all organizations, in order to have a job, candidates must submit application Application letter is an important content in the selection process Application letter is usually designed by the organization in a certain template, and applicants can fill in the template as requested by employers Application templates are designed in a scientific and reasonable way, they can be considered as an important tool to select right applicants Application form provides us with reliable information about a candidate’s past actions/behavior, as well as their current skills, experience and knowledge, personal psychological characteristics, expectations, wishes and other special competence Application form is a base to support other selection methods e.g interviews Application form provides name, previous workplaces, and other HR profile information

When designing application template, we should consider thoroughly needed information, information that must be gathered to assure comprehension, accuracy, and that applicant will provide exact information in need as requested

In addition, application templates also include open questions, to assess handwriting, etc

Application templates, despite many advantages, have certain limits Application letter is just an objective procedure, it cannot replace the in-person meeting between an applicant and company’s representative On the other hand, application letter could only be used to ask for a limited number of issues, it cannot ask about all experience of the applicant In the form, the applicant cannot explain

in detail the things s/he has done before With the form, applicant always mentions her/his good points only The application form could only describe the current situation, but it does not help us answer the “how” and “why?” With application form, recruiters will have evidence to continue with next steps of selection or to terminate the recruitment with some candidates

 Step 3: HR test

HR test is to help recruiters understand psychological features, capacities, skills and other special competence of candidates when other HR information cannot let us know accurately and sufficiently HR tests bring about objective results on the psychological characteristics of a person e.g congenital capacity, hobbies, personality of each person These tests help understand special characteristics of a person in implementing a job, especially typical jobs

Appropriate tests should be used during selection in order to forecast the work performance of a person Therefore, the tests must be designed by those having good understanding of the job or those who study thoroughly the Terms of Reference of the job In fact, there are currently many types of tests, therefore it’s not easy to determine which type of test to use To assess different angles of a candidate, people can use the test/mock with future work that the person once recruited would do, or a sample test

In HR test, there are many types and many ways to classify They can classify

by group or individual, based on the structure, or the assessment result to classify Usually HR tests are divided into: achievement test, talent and competency test, personality/hobby test, truth test, or bio-test

 Step 4: Selection interview (2 nd

certificates or degrees

Objective of interviews:

- To obtain information about the applicants – because information obtained from other selection tools may not be sufficient, nor clear Interviews provide chances for information to be gained clearer, to be explained in more detail

- To give prominence to the company – interviews help recruiters introduce the company, let applicants understand clearly the strengths of the company This is the best way to advertise

- To provide applicants with the organization’s information During interviews, company situation should be shared with applicants e.g the company’s objectives, management apparatus, HR policies, promotion opportunities, employment opportunities, etc

- To establish friendship relationship, improve communication skills

Types of interviews

- Structured interview: questions are carefully designed/prepared in advance

as per job requirements so that interviewers can ask interviewees

- Scenario interview: Interviewers request applicants to answer how they

would react, do, handle a job in an assumption scenario or real scenarios in life

- Targeted interview: The interviews based on specific tasks which requests

candidates to answer to meet predetermined objectives Questions are based on careful analysis of the job to identify objectives of each position Targeted interview

is the method with highest reliability and accuracy

- Uninstructed/unprepared interview: interviewers do not prepare questions in

advance, but rather let candidates to discuss freely about a task, and the interviewers only provide direction to the discussions

- Stress interview: Interviewers make serious questions, interrogation, with

high intensity This kind of interview is to seek for candidates who can handle the task well in limited time It help us find suitable persons for the stressful positions e.g sales during Tet/holiday occasions, or financial acquittal at quarter

or year-end, etc

- Group interview: Is an interview where many candidates are interviewed at

the same time This kind of interview helps us collect many similar information of all candidates, and we do not have to ask each candidate in person

- Council interview: Many interviewers interview one candidate This is

suitable for selecting candidate for important position that requires the agreement from many people This can help us avoid the subjectivity when only one person interviews, it creates the flexibility and show the reaction capacity of a candidate to many interviewers

For the interviews to be effective, some following issues should be

 Step 5: Health check and assessing physical condition of candidates

To ensure that candidates have good health to work long-term for the organization, and to avoid unreasonable demand of the recruited candidates on health care, then another important step is health check and assessing the candidate’s physical condition This step shall be done by health experts HR department should provide standards on health condition for each position for medical expert to assess This step should be done in an objective way, avoid doing

in a careless way

 Step 6: Interview by line supervisor

To ensure agreement by the recruitment council and the line supervisor and the one who uses the laborer, there should be interviews by the line supervisor to assess in a more specific way the candidates, this is an important step for these persons to assess professional capacity It helps us overcome the disagreement between recruitment department and the departments who use the laborers

 Step 7: Verifying information obtained during selection process (reference check)

To determine the reliability of information gained through selection process,

we have to verify such information There are many ways to verify information e.g talking with the candidate’s previous organization, or the places granted them with

certificates/degrees Reference check is the accurate basis for recruiters to make final decisions

 Step 8: Visit the company/organization

Applicants always have some expectation about the job, then if they are disappointed with the job due to lack of information, it may generate disadvantages for them when they take the job Therefore, to facilitate applicants in making decision on whether they should work for the organization, the organization can let the candidates visit the organization and listen to full explanation of the tasks that they would do if selected This helps employees know in pretty detail the job e.g complexity, income, and satisfaction with the job

Thanks to that, applicant may know what they would do in the future, help them avoid being surprised when later there are things mismatching their expectation

 Step 9: Recruitment/selection decision

After conducting all above steps, and they could find suitable persons based

on recruitment requirements, then the selection council will make recruitment decision This decision is made based on the subjective assessment after many elimination steps from interviews to tests Once the recruitment decision is made, then the employer shall sign labor contract or labor agreement with successful candidate(s) Legal foundation for a labor contract is the Labor Code of Vietnam In the labor contract, attention should be given to following provisions: probation time, wage, overtime work, insurance premium to be paid for the employee

1.2.2 Training

Training is an activity to help employees learn and practice necessary skills to implement effectively their functions, tasks and powers This is an unlackable measure to improve quality of human resource The objective of training is to improve technical expertise and competency, improve work attitude of employees, through which the organizations can use in an optimal way its’ available human resource to achieve planned objectives at present and in the future

Training aims at improving human resource quality, to have more effective human resource, with improved work quality In order to do that, the staff must

understand well their job, must grasp professional knowledge, skills; have certain level of experience and workmanship; have capacity to manage, handle with emerged issues, have suitable attitude and work style, etc Therefore, training is a suitable and effective method to help employees meet all above requirements

Most of enterprises select trainings to improve their HR quality Through trainings, employees are equipped with technical knowledge and skills to better fulfill their assigned tasks Trainings also help employees understand better their job, better grasp their expertise, handle better with emerged cases at work, they can work voluntarily, have better work attitude, have higher adaptation capacity in the future And in turn, their work quality and effectiveness is improved This also means that the HR quality is improved

Notes for enterprises when provide “trainings”: trainings must serve the implementation of the enterprise’s objectives, must start from the training needs Trainings must be linked to the use of personnel after training Training process must not impact negatively the production and business and operation of the enterprise Training plans must be feasible, to assure training quality and effectiveness

Enterprises could select training forms as below:

- Training new staff: When they start new job, most of employees are not

familiar with the job, therefore, this training will help them get used to the work; understand the organization, tasks, functions, characteristics of the production/business, and operation in the organization, understand the relationship

in the organization; help employees gain more needed knowledge, skills to fulfill their assigned tasks

- On-the-job training: This kind of training helps employees overcome their

short-comings in knowledge and skills to better fulfill their tasks assigned And also employees could grasp more knowledge and new skills due to changes in technology and due to new requirement of the enterprise This kind of training is usually applied in following cases:

+ On-the-job coaching

+ Training courses for employees

+ Sending employees to in-depth training courses to serve the work

- Training for future work: this training serves future development objectives

of the enterprise or employees There are two main types:

+ Training to serve enterprise’s objective and development direction: employees will be provided with skills and knowledge that they must have in the future or at present in order for the enterprise to meet its planned objectives

+ Training to serve employee’s development objective: enterprise will train employees with necessary knowledge and skills so that in the future the employees can keep more important positions which are suitable to their expectation

To arrange employees reasonably to improve HR quality in an enterprise, there are many methods such as:

- Employees are recruited to fulfill vacant positions: in this case, their

knowledge, skills and experience satisfy basic needs of these positions, therefore they could be arranged to take the positions to be recruited

- Employees do the jobs not suitable to their professional expertise: if the

work quality and effectiveness of a person is not high, then the organization need to arrange that person to do other task suitable with his/her expertise and strengths Or

if the work quality and effectiveness is not affected, then that person can keep doing the task, but need training to improve work quality

- Internship or apprenticeship in the organization: an organization or

enterprise need to arrange students with appropriate work in the role of assistants to some other positions, should assign them with tasks from simple to complicated level for them to get used to the work Arranging work for students can bring benefits to the training facilities, the students themselves and the organization/enterprise also

1.2.4 Health care and protection for employees

During work, whether in manually or mechanically working condition, there could be potential risks and harms e.g work accidents or occupational diseases that employees could face Therefore, health care and protection for employees, improved work condition, safety and work sanitation are one of key tasks in production development and in increasing work productivity

Employers must periodically organize health examination and treatment for employees, and organize activities to improve health condition of employees e.g physical and sport activities after work hours, sport contests, or retreat events,… in addition, labor protection should also receive attention to minimize employees’ health risk during work

Labor protection reflects the viewpoint of putting human as the motivation and also the objective of development Labor protection has great impacts on the HR quality in the enterprise Good labor protection will decrease the number of employees taking sick leave, decrease the number of employees contracting occupational disease or those having work accidents, which contributes actively to the health care, life protection of employees, so that employees have sufficient physical and mental condition to work In addition, if they work in a safe work condition, if their health and lives are protected, they will love their work environment, they will feel attachment to the enterprise, and dedicate their best to the development of the enterprise

To improve the HR quality via labor protection methods, an enterprise can:

- Guarantee the standards on: environment, work condition, labor protection, work safety and sanitation,… and periodically check on all these

- Develop and well implement labor protection in the enterprise to limit work

accidents, to reduce the possibility where employees contract occupational diseases

- Periodically conduct overall health check for employees to detect and have timely measures when they contract occupational diseases

- Improve awareness of employees in labor protection via annual training on labor protection, via propaganda in the enterprise, contests to learn about labor protection – safety and sanitation, etc

so later they can receive more benefits

Material lever:

- Wage, salary: Wage and salary play important role to employees’ lives,

these are means for employees to satisfy their basic needs in life, are the most effective remuneration tool Wage paid to employees must be based on their final work results The better the work is the higher the wage they should receive, they should be paid for what they contribute accordingly

- Financial bonus and discipline: Bonus is the amount of money that an

enterprise pays to employee for their performance and contribution exceeding the required level according to their functions/tasks Bonus could come from different sources: bonus from salary fund, bonus from profits, bonus for typical activities Bonus regime should be developed based on the objectives set out, and bonus criteria must be clear with quantified criteria, the bonus amount should be big enough to stimulate employees to strive to achieve the bonus targets Granting and considering giving bonus should not be late so that employees will strive to gain more bonus

Disciplinary actions should only be applied in certain cases that impact on the organization’s development to avoid negative impacts on the labor motivation caused by punishment

- Salary allowance: this is the additional salary/allowance based on the

seniority, position, based on work condition and complexity of the task, and when living conditions are unstable In many cases, this is a financial incentive to aim at achieving development objective of the organization

- Welfare: this is indirect payment in the form of supports/allowance for the

lives of employees to overcome difficulties, risks, and to ensure their lives, to improve their material and spiritual life, promoting them to work at higher production, higher quality and effectiveness There are two types of welfare: compulsory benefits (the organization must follow legal regulations) and voluntary benefits including:

+ Insurance benefits (health insurance, life insurance, work incapable insurance, income insurance, pension)

+ Payment paid during off-work time (annual leave, leave for personal purpose, shift breaks, personal hygiene, tourism allowance, etc.)

+ Benefits to support employees due to flexible work hours (employees still receive full salary even their work duration in a week is less than regulations or they are provided/supported with means of transportation to overcome difficulties generated by the flexible work hours)

+ Welfare for employees in the forms of financial services (discounted price, lower price, credit association, buying shares of the company, financial support, social services, professional services, entertainment service, taking care of the elderly/children, housing services and transportation support)

Mental lever: Mental stimulation also plays big importance in stimulating

employees to work, sometimes it can replace material levers, to meet the increasing needs and motivation of employees Mental stimulation in an enterprise could be done through many ways such as:

- Showing respect to employees, respect their contributions to the enterprise Having reasonable compliment form when they make efforts or when they accomplish their work well

- Honoring employees having outstanding achievements (honoring them in the enterprise’s golden book, granting them with noble titles, offering them bonus in front of all other employees, etc.)

- Organizing movements or contests among individuals and groups

- Encouraging, supporting employees in addressing difficulties and obstacles, praising them when they make good achievements

- Creating chances for employees to show their capacity and competency, encouraging them to confirm themselves

- Creating good environment in the collectives, creating environment for employees to meet, exchange, to develop good relationship, and to have stronger bond with the organization

- Caring about employees frequently, timely, e.g when they are sick, when their families have weddings, new babies, or deaths, etc

- Implementing welfare regimes/benefits for employees

Material levers and mental levers cannot be separated Once an employee is offered material stimulation, his/her spirit will also be promoted, they would gain higher performance On contrary, once they receive spiritual stimulation, they will work in

a more comfortable mood, they gain higher achievement and receive higher payment Therefore, these two levers should be combined to generate high work performance

1.3 Factors affecting HRM in an organization

1.3.1 External factors

Political – legal environment: Labor laws relating to employment, use of

laborers,… are necessary element to be used as a legal foundation for an enterprise

to address well the relationship between employees, are a premise for the enterprise

to develop legal standards when they establish, strengthen and develop their HR In addition, the Government also plans on policies to create legal environment for the development of HR both in quality and quantity e.g education socialization policy, policies on renovating the education and training contents and methods, policies on health care for employees, policies on labor safety and sanitation Integration in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) has brought about opportunities and challenges to enterprises In order for enterprises to promote their full potential in the international integration, each must develop its strong human resource to improve its competition when integrating

Economic elements: include economic growth in general and economic growth

in each province in particular, income of residents, price, inflation, purchasing power of money, supply – demand relation of goods, services of each individual, living standard and savings of different classes of people, etc These factors impact directly or indirectly on the HRM in an enterprise/organization

The development of education – training: The level of development of

education – training impacts largely on the quality of HR in an enterprise It does not only determine the level of education, technique, professional level, workmanship skills of employees but also impacts on health, longevity of people through other factors such as income, awareness, handling of socio-economic information, scientific information The higher the development level of education – training is, the larger the size of high quality human resource is, and the higher the work production is

The development of labor market: Open economic policy, globalization,

integration have promoted economic growth and generated many more jobs The employment structure has also changed, from agriculture to industry and services

In that context, labor market development, as an objective element, impacts on the increased quality of HR in enterprises as labor/employment information is comprehensive, and the job competition gets more and more fierce, it’s also difficult to attract laborers of high quality and quantity to meet the production requirements

Health care development: Health facility system once upgraded/invested

would help increase longevity and health of residents as well as of work force If reproductive health, child health, nutrition, disease prevention, etc could be cared about, it would ensure that future generations will have healthy mental and physical health, and Vietnamese stature will be improved This would impact largely on the improvement of HR quality of the whole society as well as of each enterprise in particular

Social, residential, natural environment include: tradition, customs, habits,

rituals, behavior, ideological and moral norms, climate and weather events, solid condition, etc of each province, each group, each class of population and the

country These elements generate life style, culture, social environment of human in general and of employees in particular It helps establish and change not only quantity but also the structure of human resource, change the philosophy and business moral of an enterprise

Development of science and technology: The more advanced science and

technology is, the shorter the distance from science/technology to production is Business and production have continuously changed, and the enterprise’s economic structure is also changed accordingly Non-stop development and advanced science and technology have generated modern technologies that require employees of high quality The application of new technology allows enterprise to select the policy on using more or less employees, and it requires certain condition of laborers This does not only impact the scale but also the quality of human resource in the enterprise

1.3.2 Internal factors

Leaders’ viewpoints: Viewpoints, awareness of leaders in an enterprise of

HRM will impact on the policy, on investment in HR at different level In addition, HRM policies e.g policies on recruitment, training, staff arrangement, remuneration, salary, benefits, bonus, etc have direct impacts on the effectiveness

of HRM If these policies are well implemented, the enterprise will have strong HR

in both quality and quantity to serve its objectives and strategies

Development strategy: Based on development strategy and business/production plans, an organization shall make plan on HR quality, including: needed knowledge, skills, assessment of current HR quality, comparison and estimating the needed number of employees with good skills to meet the requirement of the job, based on that they can make training plan to improve the quality of HR, to finally meet business and production needs of the enterprise

Work environment: Work environment does not only include infrastructure,

technique, or equipment to serve the work, but also include relationship among colleagues, between senior and junior staff, working mood, style of each enterprise

A good Work environment will facilitate good conditions and opportunities for employees to reflect their capacity, to develop themselves, to devote to maximum

level, to stay long in the enterprise In addition, competition also assures the fairness Healthy competition is an element to stimulate employees to develop

Awareness of employees: In order to improve HRM work, firstly employees

themselves must be aware of their suitability to the job, they must know what knowledge, skills, qualities they have and need more, based on that, they learn to improve their own knowledge, expertise and skills In order to improve HR quality

in an enterprise, it can not rely only on the enterprise, but the employees themselves must wish to and have good attitude to learn, only in that case then the quality

would be improved easily and in the most effective way

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHOD

2.1 Research process

To conduct the research, the author applied following research process:

The research topic is human resource management (HRM), to be specific, management of the expert/consultants of UNICEF The research findings will be a basis to propose feasible suitable solutions to improve effectiveness of HRM in UNICEF Vietnam Once the research objective was clear, the author developed relevant theories including major contents of: basic issues on HR, HRM, HRM contents, and factors affecting HRM Based on the previous researches, the author

Descriptive statistics

Crollbach Anpha Interview questions

Interviews - experts Research method

Theories Research objective

Quantitative research Qualitative research

synthetized and proposed a research model on this topic, and developed a research method suitable to this topic

To conduct the research, the author conducted research in two phases including: qualitative and quantitative researches

Qualitative research: With desk review, the author reviewed scales in HRM Then the author interviewed experts to find out the factors truly impacting HRM, especially HRM in UNICEF Vietnam, with a focus on management of experts in UNICEF After qualitative research, the author developed a scale and conducted quantitative research, which is the official research of the thesis The quantitative research was conducted in several steps: testing the scale with the “Cronbach Alpha” coefficient; descriptive statistics of the survey findings on real situation of HRM Finally, solutions were provided to strengthen HRM work in UNICEF Vietnam

2.2 Research design

2.2.1 Preliminary research

2.2.1.1 Desk review, in-depth interviews to develop measurement scale

To conduct preliminary research, the author used a technique of one-on-one discussion This discussion technique is to get data through discussion of the two persons: the researcher and the informant (Nguyen Dinh Tho, 2011) One-on-one discussion helped researcher to clarify and dig deep the contents directly linked to the factors impacting HRM Due to the technical characteristic of this research, the direct discussion with experienced experts was truly necessary In-depth interview with experts helped the author have a more comprehensive overview of the real situation of HRM (expert management) in UNICEF Vietnam In the research, the author selected interviewees including: HR manager, leaders, managerial staff in charge of recruitment, coordinators of activities of experts and consultants of different programs in UNICEF Vietnam Due to limited research condition, the author could only conducted in-depth interviews with seven persons including expats/experts, leaders, coordinators working in UNICEF Vietnam During interviews, the author explained on each factor, provided definition of each factor/element as well as questions of interviewees on the group of HRM factors

To prepare for in-depth interviews, in addition to the objective of identifying the current situation of HRM factors in UNICEF Vietnam, the author also conducted in-depth interviews with the informants on the research measurement scale Regarding the development of research measurement scale, the author

inherited from previous researches including: Billy Whisnant & Odai Khasawneh (2014), Mansor and Kenny (2015), Tran Thi Lam Phuong and Nguyen Ngoc Thuy

(2011), Lin (2007) However, these scales from previous researches are the scales to measure HRM over the direct workers or managers, leaders These scales are not so suitable to the workforce being expat/experts (advisors) of non-governmental organizations In addition, each enterprise or organization shall have different operating lines, with different organizational model, especially there are big differences between NGOs (like UNICEF) and governmental organizations or enterprises Therefore, the author made adjustments to make the scale suitable to HRM in UNICEF To assure objectivity of the factors selected and the adjusted scale, after identifying the factors of HRM in UNICEF Vietnam, the author used the prepared questionnaires to conduct pilot survey on the in-depth interviewees The purpose of the pilot interview was to identify and clarify unclear questions or questions that could be understood in many ways Based on in-depth interview findings, the author adjusted the scale in the questionnaires before conducting official survey on large scale with large sample size

Table 2.1: Summarized HRM policies defined

HR policies Definitions and authors assessed

Recruitment and

selection (RS)

Proposed to be organized, with theoretical and practical works, to look for employees, encourage them apply and select them, for the purpose of harmonizing people e.g value, benefits, expectation and capacity, with the characteristics and needs of the position and organization Authors reviewed: Armstrong (2009); Bohlander and Snell (2009); Dessler (2002); Lievens and Chapman (2010); Mathis and Jackson (2003)

Involvement Proposed to be organized, with theoretical and practical

works, to generate a bond with its employees, contributes

to generating happiness for them at work, about the recognition, relationship, involvement and communication