e-HRM - Human Resources Interview Questions & Answers

What is the nature of e-HRM?

When the HR Department makes use of the Internet and related technologies to support their activities, the process becomes e – HRM. Fully developed e – HRM can be responsible for the data gathering tools, analysis competencies and decision support sources for HR Professionals to hire, pay, promote, terminate, assign, develop, appraise and reward employees in ways that completely engages them in working on their own consequences, maximise the involvement of each employee, and sustenance in implementing the organization’s stratagem.

What are the implications of e- HRM?

With the internet age taking over a lot of things, the e – HRM area is also quickly picking up its implications, especially used in recruitments for hiring people. Below mentioned points are the implications of e – HRM

- Employees in geographically dispersed locations can work together in virtual teams using video, e mail and the internet.
- Posting jobs online and receiving the applications as well online.
- Online simulations, including test, videos and e – mail can measure candidates’ abilities to deal with real life business challenges.
- Online training can bring employees anywhere and everywhere.
- Employees can review salary and bonus details and seek information about and enrol in benefit plans.

Discuss about e- Recruitment.

Today e – recruitment is widely used in most of the companies. Statistics show almost 70% of large firms are bringing e – recruitment into practice. As it is commonly quoted every coin has two sides, so does the e- recruitment also has, let’s have a look into the benefits and dysfunctionalities of e – recruitment.

E – Recruitment offers several facilities like, applying online, having a wide reach of prospective employees, barring the national barriers are a few of the benefits that e – recruitment portray.

The unintended consequences of e – recruitment are, replacing the traditional recruiters with computerised systems and hence making the entire process impersonal. It is not that flexible for the applicants and hence leaves a negative impact on the retention rates of the employees. Also today as well a lot of people cannot afford to have a computer or for that matter any electronic device on which they can access internet and hence they lose the opportunity to apply for job and the company might lose a prospective good employee. There could be also chances of the personal information being misused by hackers.

The most common practices observed in e – recruitment are:

- Adding recruitment to existing organisational websites
- Using special recruitment websites
- Developing interactive tools for processing applications
- Using software for online screening of applications.

List the cautions to be practised while using e – recruitment.

While using the e – recruitment practices, a recruiter should keep in mind the below mentioned precautions:

- Aligning the e – recruitment needs with the organizations strategic goals, i.e. the recruiter must be able to identify if the individual and his skills will help in accomplishing the company’s strategic goals.

- If your organization carries a good repute in the market then it will be easier for you to recruit through e – recruitments, as applicants will not be sceptical in applying in your company.

- E – Recruitment should not be the only source of recruitments as you will limit your options for people who lack access to the internet. Hence you should use other options like referrals, campus hiring, head hunting as well to recruit.

- E – Recruiting tends to attract more of job hoppers, which in turn the organization will face troubles in retaining the employees.

- The recruitment website should be designed in a way that it is easy to use and that the applicants can apply easily.

- Online screening systems should also be developed based on job analysis and ensure that the inferences made from the system are reliable and valid.

- Adequate information should be mentioned on the website not only about the company but also about the job opportunity.

- Organizations should promote values that can help in attracting employees rather than selecting those who fir the traditional culture. By this the company will be able to have people with different thinking and may help the company in achieving success.

- Take feedback from the employees on the website and if any changes can be made in the website.

- See to it that your company’s website should have no legal hassles around it.

- The last and the most important thing that your website should have is that it should be secure enough to protect the useful information of the applicants.

What is e – selection?

E – Selection includes activities like scheduling interviews, web based testing, face to face interviews and job offering.

The purposes of e – selection are:

- Achieving cost reduction – This is the first and foremost objective of e – selection. There are a number of ways in which e – selection can cut the costs. For example, a lesser amount of rates involved in between the selection process, administrative costs are abridged, and cost of sourcing candidates into employment process becomes less.

- Maximum utilisation of human capital – This is attained through high retention rates, increased percentage of candidates who meet employment requirements and improved productivity after the new hires.

• Sustainability – It is the capability of the organization to maintain the e – enabled system and gradually advances into the system to satiate the changing requirements. Sustainability makes sure that the business endures to acquire profits from the e – enabled system.

Discuss about e – performance and motivation, how are they linked?

The use of technology in performance management tends to increase productivity, enhance competitiveness and motivate employees. This is possible if technology facilitates measuring an individual’s performance via computer monitoring activities or technology becomes a tool to facilitate the process of writing reviews or generating performance feedback.

There are several ways in which technology can be applied in performance management, like:

- Monotonous or low discretion jobs can be subject to computerised performance monitoring system that assists in generating performance data.
- Software’s are available that help generate appraisal forms and their complementary descriptions as well.
- Performance management system can be cohesive with an overall enterprise resource planning software system. This approach helps the HR Professionals to ascertain high performers, spot skills and competency gaps and to evaluate the pay relative compared to performance.
- Along with this information available to the HR Professionals, it helps them plan for training, coaching and education of the employees.
- Firm intranets and internet may also help performance management system. Some of these packages are relatively inexpensive and easy to use.

The benefits of appraisal software’s are:

- Elimination of paperwork
- Simplification of logistics for evaluators, workers and administrators
- The appraisal package facilitates the automation of the tedious parts of evaluation. This enables the managers to focus on contents of the evaluation process rather than on the forms.
-There are a lot of appraisal softwares that contain psychometric features.

The disadvantages of appraisal softwares are:

- The performance appraisal is person centric and however advanced the machines are they cannot substitute one on one interaction.
- Face to face interaction is imperative for objective assessment of anybody’s performance.
- E – Performance Management and Motivation are linked in such a way that, the e – performance system is transparent and unbiased in its evaluation system. With this feature employees are evaluated based solely on their performance and not any reference. Hence it will motivate the employees to perform effectively, be it anyone.

What is e – learning and what are the requisites for e – learning?

E – Learning refers to the use of internet or an organisational intranet to conduct training on – line. With the company’s expanding and the training needs is also increasing day by day, hence with the advent of e – learning huge number of employees can be trained effectively.

E – Learning is not replacing the traditional methods; in fact if e – learning is blended with traditional learning methods then it becomes all the more effective, for example: using e – learning before classroom training is an example of blended training.

Requisites of e – learning:

- The top management should be supportive enough and there should be proper funding to develop and implement e – learning.

- Managers and HR Professionals need to be also trained on the usage of the e – learning system.

- If you compare the traditional training methods to e – learning, the traditional training methods are not equipped enough to meet the organisational training needs.

- Access to internet for both the trainer as well as the trainee.

List down the advantages as well as disadvantages of e- learning.

The Advantages of e – learning are:

- It is self - paced. Trainees can proceed on their own time.
- It is interactive, tapping multiple trainee senses.
- Allows for inconsistency in the delivery of training.
- It enables scoring of services / assessments and the appropriate feedback.
- It incorporates built in guidance and help for trainees to use when needed.
- It is relatively easy for trainers to update content.
- It can be used to enhance instructor – led training.

The disadvantages of e – learning are:

- It causes anxiety to the trainee.
- Not all the trainees even in today’s time are comfortable with e – learning.
- The availability and accessibility to computers is not there for all the trainees.
- E – Learning cannot be used for all the training content, like leadership or cultural change training.
- A lot of cost and investments are involved in setting up the e – learning system.
- The top management has to be supportive enough to make this system successful.

List down the advantages and disadvantages of e – HRM.

The advantages of e – HRM are:

- It is beneficial for routine tasks.
- It helps in improving the record keeping.
- It helps in improving the accuracy and reduces human bias.
- It maintains anonymity of staff in evaluation.

The disadvantages of e – HRM are:

- Not apt for employees who need personal support.
- Reduces face to face interaction between the management and the employees.
- Risk to losing data to hackers.
- Unless the correct evaluation is not done on the basis of the organisational goals and employee support it would not be a success.