Literature Review

Write a Management report on whether to employee individuals in contractual or permanent terms.

The report will demonstrate how Doshi Group of companies needs to make proper plans for the employment for the production of good quality hardware components and electrical industrial products. The report will be prepared to focus on employing the individuals either ob a contractual or permanent basis for meeting the needs and requirements of the people and sustain both locally and globally (Green and Leeves 2013).

Purpose

The purpose of the report is to prepare a management proposal regarding ways of employing individuals on contractual or permanent basis.

Background and significance

The current management problem is faced due to the complexity in understanding the availability of talents for the competitive job market and those who like to work as freelancers. Due to this, problems can arise regarding the employment opportunities permanently or contractually, considering their skills and knowledge and their interest in working permanently or contractually. It is important for investigation, because if the employees’ interests are not considered, then they may not feel like working for the company and on the other hand, the company’s sales will decline too (Minelli et al. 2013). There is also need for selecting and recruiting the best talents, which can allow the organisation to grow and develop, furthermore handle business problems easily and negotiating the terms and conditions in the contractual freelance pattern as well.

Doshi Group feels that there are both advantages and disadvantages of employing individuals on a permanent or contractual basis. The recruitment of individuals in contracts could be a good solution for finding the different sets of skills that are needed for managing key products and business initiatives. The freelance pool of talents can help in engaging people from anywhere in the world according to their skills sets, knowledge and expertise. Many technological platforms have created ease to engage the individuals in contracts, which can be crucial for competing in the freelance market as well (Bosio 2014). If the problem is not addressed then it can create a huge challenge for the organisation to understand whether to offer contractual term or for permanent terms (Chadi and Hetschko 2013).

Research question and objectives

• To identify the impact of employing individuals on permanent and contractual basis
• To evaluate the benefits that can be obtained by enabling a talent pool consisting of freelancers
• To assess the probable effects that can be caused on the individual offered with permanent employment opportunity
• To recommend necessary measures, which will allow to understand whether to employ on contractual terms or permanent terms at Doshi Group, Australia

Research questions

What is the impact due to the employment of individuals on contractual and permanent terms at Doshi Group, Australia?

How could be the organisation be benefited by forming a workforce to engage people interested in freelancing from all over?

Research Methodology

What are benefits achieved by an individual who is offered with employment on permanent terms?

What suitable recommendations could help to make a decision regarding employment in contractual or permanent terms?

Research boundaries

Doshi Group of Companies have innovated its business activities within the building and construction industry in Australia that meet the business needs, still the company has not entered the Indian market. There are many states and provinces there which consists of established and reputed construction companies, but Doshi Group has yet not been successful in the Indian market. Thus, it can be geographic boundary for the organisation (Sestito and Viviano 2016).

Report outline

Introduction – The introductory chapter illustrates about the purpose of the research and its objectives, based on which questions have been prepared.

Literature review – The literature review will combine the various aspects related to the research and identify the gaps in literature.

Research methodology – This chapter will define the various methods and approaches of the research, how data and information have been collected and analysed.

Introduction

This particular section of the research will review the literature on these major research topics including Benefits of hiring talents on permanent and contractual terms and the second topic would illustrate the drawbacks of these two kinds of employment trends nowadays. The third topic would present the decisions that should be taken about whether to choose one from any of these and even provide justification on how could it be beneficial for the individual and business itself (Buddelmeyer, McVicar and Wooden 2015). The project discusses about the various aspects of employing in a contractual and permanent basis. Business organisations within the building and construction industry have nowadays become more cautious about maintaining a steady workforce and overcome problems like lack of skilled and knowledgeable workers whenever required immediately. With the continuing trends of employment, many people are choosing the field of freelancers as their career paths (Brinkley 2013). Thus, there are many questions that have arisen regarding whether to hire an employee on contractual or permanent terms.

Benefits of hiring talents on permanent and contractual terms

Various benefits could be achieved by a business by hiring talents under contractual terms. The individuals were easily attracted due to lucrative job offers within the building and construction industry and this make many of them feel interested in getting paid for work only for the time they worked. There are fixed term contracts that are considered as amendments managed by the Labour Relations Amendment Act. This included illegal abuse of fixed term contracts and made people get their wages properly for the time they had been working (Sola et al. 2013). The employment trends started to grow and it got permitted once it specified termination of the fixed term contracts only when an event had occurred, the task was completed and a fixed date based on the agreed retirement age. The employees employed on contractual terms must be permitted by statute, sectoral determination and the collective argument. One of the most important benefits of hiring a freelancer on a contractual basis could be that they are good at what they do. Freelancers are manageable at lower costs than the permanent employees and even the individuals get paid for the work they did and this prevent wastage of money on downtime (Flint et al. 2013). There would be short-term commitments, and thus employment should be possible in contractual pre-project basis. According to many of the companies in Australia, the talent pool is unlimited based on location and with contractual hiring, the talent pool should expand. The freelancers give their full energy on the project in hand while the permanent employees focus more on managing the organisational values. The company does not need to provide training to them as the regular permanent workers, which reduced the time consumption and sped up the business performance and work quality (Cappelli and Keller 2013).

Benefits of hiring talents on permanent and contractual terms

On the other hand, the empl0yees hired on permanent terms could feel more interested in the business success because they would no longer have to think about their career for the next few years. The job opportunity would make them gain enough skills and afterwards use thee experience to achieve long terms goals (Buddelmeyer, McVicar and Wooden 2013). The individuals employed permanently had been working on a project altogether and had invested more time and energy than the freelancers. There were slight differences between the way organisations treat the employees selected on contractual basis or permanent basis (Findlay and McCollum 2013).

Disadvantages of employing individuals  kinds on permanent and contractual terms

In spite of the benefits of employing individuals on a permanent basis, there are still some drawbacks such as huge amounts of expenses incurred, lack of enough ability to find out the right talents, rights and responsibilities of the employees along with lower employee morale due to lack of motivation, which does not happen for the freelancers. The permanents employees were always paid monthly along with additional tax o be paid. To hire an employee from a competitive job market, good perks, offers and benefits should be included along with fair wages to influence the individual to work for the organization. The selection process, interviewing, negotiations made along with the training programs offered to them required huge effort, time as well as money (Kazi et al. 2014). If not done properly, it could deteriorate the efficiency of human resources’ management; create an inappropriate culture and working condition too.

The freelancers hired have faced certain difficulties such as lower amount of money paid, extremely tight deadline for work and bad working conditions. This often can be costly for them, as for any wrong work, penalty could be imposed and the employees could be terminated from the entire project. The individuals hired on contractual terms focus more on short term goals and objectives, due to which, they could disappear anytime, The quality of work dropped in many cases and deadlines were missed and even the freelancers failed to respond to the mails and disappeared any time (Gollmitzer 2014). Freelancers need training as well, which had been a daunting task for the company due to the expected huge cost and poor HRM strategies to attract skills set from all over. Many freelancers do it just for money and focus less on the task, which made them exaggerate their skills and knowledge level. This deteriorated the work and so it might be essential to check for the samples of the freelancers’ existing works and testimonials.

Drawbacks of hiring talents on permanent and contractual terms

Impact of these employment trends on organisation’s success

Both these employment trends were doing the rounds at the present century within the building and construction industry. Both these approaches had many advantages as well as disadvantages. The organisations must focus on their business needs and then choose to make a decisions about whether to employ an individual on a contractual or permanent term. Impacts of freelancers employed could be expansion of skills set, better management of tasks and completion within tight deadlines (van Stel and de Vries 2015). The freelancers get paid for only what they work while the permanent jobs provided to the employees were found to be more secured from the competitive job market perspective. The budgetary plan must be prepared because while employing an individual on a contractual basis would tend to incur lesser costs, permanent employment to an individual could bring more reliability and openness to teamwork, coordination and communication. The selection depended on the business needs and by studying the literature review, it could not be concluded about whether to choose employment in contractual or permanent terms (Bögenhold, Heinonen and Akola 2014).  

Implications – the research gap

One of the most important gaps was the inability to found a proper conclusion about choosing the right employment trend among the contractual and permanent basis employment. Few secondary sources included websites and journal articles that were not authentic enough to justify the information obtained. It would be essential for conducting the research methodology to determine the research designs, methods and approaches determine whether the objectives could be obtained or not.

Figure 1: Conceptual framework (Bögenhold, Heinonen and Akola 20914)

The research methodology is another important chapter of the proposal that defines the various research methods, approaches, designs and ways of collecting and analysis of data and information too. This should help in gaining an appropriate conclusion and achieve the research objectives with ease and effectiveness.

Introduction

The section would demonstrate the designs, approaches and strategies adopted during this research conduction, which should help in addressing the research goals and objectives too as it was stated in section 1.3. The section 3.2 demonstrates the entire methodology by using which the research shall be conducted and positive outcomes will be derived (Neuman 2014).

Research approach and justification

Both primary and secondary sources have helped in addressing the research questions and research objectives. The sampling methods suitable here could be the probability and non-probability sampling method. Though the probability random sampling would select few candidates randomly, the most amounts of tasks were to be done with the use of non-probability convenient sampling method. A convenient time for the managers of the organisation helped in providing useful responses and opinions regarding the two employment trends of contractual and permanent employment. The sample size could be chosen as 20 employees and 6 managers as quantitative sample and qualitative samples respectively (Palinkas et al. 2015).

Recommendations on making suitable decisions

There are other ways of collecting data and information such as the assessment and evaluation of secondary sources for collecting relevant data and information related to the research topic. Sometimes, it become difficult for the researcher to select the right time when the managers could provide the responses considered as qualitative data and in such cases, the secondary data could be beneficial. The secondary journals, articles and websites should be analysed thoroughly to obtain necessary data and information that should be analysed and interpreted afterwards to obtain a good outcome (Ritchie et al. 2013). Thus, the secondary data collection could be more suitable than the primary data collection method or technique.

Details of specific data collection techniques

For the primary data, qualitative method is mainly needed for this research. The qualitative method would allow for conducting interviews with the managers, based on which, their responses should be collected and a idea could be generated about whether to employ individuals on permanent or contractual terms. The sampling used here could allow for selecting the managers from few of the organisations within the building and construction industry while few survey questionaries were distributed among the employees selected from a heterogeneous group of people. The focus group discussions among the respondents and interviewing the managers and few of the employees could also assist in obtaining relevant data and information required to conduct the research efficiently (Cleary, Horsfall and Hayter 2014).

Quantitative questions

• What according to you could be more effective among the employment in terms of contractual terms of permanent terms?

Agree:____      Strongly agree:_____   Neutral:_____  Disagree:_____ Strongly disagree:_____

• How could you be benefitted by working as a freelancer for the construction industry?

Agree:____      Strongly agree:_____   Neutral:_____  Disagree:_____ Strongly disagree:_____

• Are the payroll activities based on permanent terms secure and convenient for the individuals?

Agree:____      Strongly agree:_____   Neutral:_____  Disagree:_____ Strongly disagree:_____

• Do you believe that employing individuals permanently cost a huge amount of money?
• What benefits could the business obtain by hiring talents on a contractual term?
• How would you rate employment on permanent terms and freelancing based on business outcomes?
• Which could be more relevant for the business according to you?

Research Objective	Data Collection Method/ Technique	Specific research questions or sources
RO1: To identify the impact of employing individuals on permanent and contractual basis	Secondary data and primary data	Secondary articles, journals, websites and even through survey questionnaire distribution
RO2: To evaluate the benefits that can be obtained by enabling a talent pool consisting of freelancers	Primary data – interviews with managers Secondary data too	What according to you could be the most reliable employment trend among the contractual and permanent basis employment?
RO3: To assess the probable effects that can be caused on the individual offered with permanent employment opportunity	Primary data – Collecting responses from the employees	How do you think that permanent employment can shape your career and gain long term success?
RO4: To recommend necessary measures, which will allow to understand whether to employ on contractual terms or permanent terms at Doshi Group, Australia	Primary data – interviews with managers	What decision would you like to make on regard of selection of individuals in contractual or permanent terms?

Table 1: Analysis of research objectives

                                                                                            (Cleary, Horsfall and Hayter 2014)

The analysis of data, both primary and secondary should be analysed and interpreted to ensure achievement of the research objectives and deriving positive outcomes. The quantitative data collected could be analysed by using the SPSS tool, Excel Spreadsheet and were represented in graphs and tables for understanding it easily. The qualitative data should be analysed by presenting those in question answer format based on the responses of the individuals. The secondary data was obtained from sources, which must be checked for authenticity, reliability of data and information contained in it and its genuineness (Sestito and Viviano 2016).

References

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Bosio, G., 2014. The implications of temporary jobs on the distribution of wages in Italy: an unconditional IVQTE approach. Labour, 28(1), pp.64-86.

Brinkley, I., 2013. Flexibility Or Insecurity?: Exploring the Rise of Zero Hours Contracts. Work Foundation.

Buddelmeyer, H., McVicar, D. and Wooden, M., 2013. Non-standard ‘contingent’employment and job satisfaction: A panel data analysis.

Buddelmeyer, H., McVicar, D. and Wooden, M., 2015. Non?Standard “Contingent” Employment and Job Satisfaction: A Panel Data Analysis. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 54(2), pp.256-275.

Cappelli, P. and Keller, J.R., 2013. Classifying work in the new economy. Academy of Management Review, 38(4), pp.575-596.

Chadi, A. and Hetschko, C., 2013. Flexibilisation without hesitation? Temporary contracts and workers’ satisfaction (No. 04/2013). IAAEU Discussion Paper Series in Economics.

Cleary, M., Horsfall, J. and Hayter, M., 2014. Data collection and sampling in qualitative research: does size matter?. Journal of advanced nursing, 70(3), pp.473-475.

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Flint, E., Bartley, M., Shelton, N. and Sacker, A., 2013. Do labour market status transitions predict changes in psychological well-being?. J Epidemiol Community Health, 67(9), pp.796-802.

Gollmitzer, M., 2014. Precariously employed watchdogs? Perceptions of working conditions among freelancers and interns. Journalism Practice, 8(6), pp.826-841.

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