First Draft-913 words

Introduction

As a student half way through my first year of aiming to reach the goal of becoming a certified Human Resources worker, I am writing this report for a newcomer to this discourse community of Human Resources. What is the history behind this community?  What are the goals? What strategies are used? This report will answer these questions, as well as others based on my analysis of this community. I will include important steps to how solve problems and recommendations a newcomer will take to become a successful member of the discourse community.

Background

Human Resources is the department of a business, corporation or organizations that manages all aspects that is related to its personnel. This includes the recruiting of employees, training and career development, that oversees compensation packages and managing benefit plans and other duties that maximises a company’s business and its employee’s satisfaction. There are four phases of the Human resources movement. Human Resources started back in 1900’s which started out as personnel administrations, hiring, firing, and payroll/benefits processing, that was phase one of the Human Resources movement. Phase two started from 1930’s-1950’s which became more with union liaison, compliance with new laws and orientation, performance appraisal, and employee relations. Phase three was from 1960’s-1980’s, in this phase there became an actual human resources management, outsourcing of many administrative functions, emphasis on contribution and protect and management of people. Then the final phase is phase four, which started in 1990’s- present. This phase is that every supervisor, line manager, business owner must posses’ basic human resources skills. 

Research and Analysis

In this discourse community, Human resources groups share many of the characteristics that make them an effective community, as for the research of john swales in his article “Six Characteristics of Discourse Communities” (COMM202-Communications II. (2019)In this section I will be exploring three of the characteristics and an interview from Danita Brown, whom works in this community.

According to John Swales, that “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.”  (COMM202-Communications II. (2019) Para 1) This statement is true about this community of Human Resources. One of the primary goals in this community is to help an organization reach the goal they have to run an effective business. The community can reach this goal by hiring well- motivated workers, as well as training them effectively for the proper job.

Now, it isn’t really a surprise that to make this community effective to reach their goals they use information and feedback to help. Another on of Swales statements is “A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.” (COMM202-Communications II. (2019) Para 3) This meaning, a discourse community uses techniques to help them to receive and give information and feedback from and to jobholders in this company. Danita Brown has been a member of the Human Resources community for 20 years. In an interview, she spoke about the different techniques she uses to drive results in the company she works for to improve what they look for while hiring, “Our most popular strategic technique we use is interviewing, it gives the best results because we ask questions that we want to improve and learn more about” (D.Brown, personal Communications, January 23rd, 2019) Also, other techniques that are also used are questionnaires, observations and participant diary/logs to help analysis what the worker does, how the worker does it, why the worker does it and the worker qualifications. These strategies help them write job descriptions and how to improve their methods of training and recruiting to reach their goals.

Swale also discusses that “A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.” (COMM202-Communications II. (2019) Para 6) Not from my own experience, but the Business-Human Resources at Fleming college offers a co-op experiences, where they can work under the wing of expert Human resource workers. I believe that this experience would happen at other work places, because it provides the newcomers with knowledge that they did not have before.

Conclusions and Recommendation

In conclusion, the Human Resources community has a set of goals, strategic techniques, and a learning experience. Based on my observation, research and own experience, I would suggest the following steps for becoming an effective Human Resources worker are:

1. Study in the profession and acquire the certification to become a professional Human resource worker in order to provide all of the information and support necessary. 

2. If your school of study offers a co-op opportunity, take it because it will help you in the long run with providing you with information from an existing member of this community

3. Interact with members in this community to learn from their experiences, let them advise you with the pros and cons of the community, but also remember what the pros are.

Even though there is artificial intelligent is improving and there are apps that can be used to help find the right candidate in interview, like HireVue, they will always need an actual person to see the actual skills and potential of people have to help them reach their goals as an organization. Like any other business/job there will be strategic techniques that need to be used to be successful and as you work hard, learn from experience and mistakes you will become an expert in the community you love.

References:

Swales characteristics- COMM202-Communications II. (2019). N.p.: Fleming College, Desire2Learn.

(HMA lecture notes)