Managing Human Resources

QB5018 Managing Human Resources
Assessment 2 – Individual Essay
(This essay comprises 70% of the total course marks)
Submission deadline
For full time students completed essays must be submitted by Sunday 25 September 2022, 09:00 Doha Time
Assignment Question
Employee engagement strategies are considered a source of competitive and sustainable
advantage for any organisation. Explore the concept of employee engagement and identify
employee engagement strategies that can improve individual and organisational performance.
This is a 2000-word assignment (plus or minus 10%).
Submit your essay online through SafeAssign on MyAberdeen
What are you being asked to do?
• You should offer one or two definitions on the concept of employee engagement.
• Refer specifically to the impact of HR interventions such as selection, reward, performance and
talent management for employee engagement.
• You should discuss the benefits of employee engagement and its potential impact on the
organisation and employees with examples.
• You should note the impact of national and corporate culture on employee engagement –
similarities and differences.
• You should construct an argument based upon your critical analysis of the issues involved,
to support your recommended strategies for employee engagement.
• Your argument should be supported by citation. You must give due credit to the works of others
that you use (see the Essay Guidelines and the material on Citation on MyAberdeen). Also
remember that any work you cite must appear in your bibliography and that works you don’t cite
should not be in your bibliography (see Essay Guidelines and material on Bibliography on
MyAberdeen)
Recommended Reading
Redman T. & Wilkinson A. & Dundon T. (2013) Contemporary Human Resource Management: Text and
Cases. Pearson (Recommended Textbook for Course)
Albrecht, S.L. (2010) Handbook of Employee Engagement. New Horizons in Management (ed. Cary L.
Cooper). Publisher: Edward Elgar
Bridger, E. (2015). Employee engagement. London: Kogan Page.
Carucci, R. (2021) To Retain Employees, Give then a Sense of Purpose and Community, Harvard Business Review,
October 11, 2021
George, J.M. (2011). The wider context, costs, and benefits of work engagement. European Journal of Work
& Organizational Psychology, 20, 53-59.
Goler, L., Gale, J., Harrington, B., & Grant, A. (2018) The 3 Things Employees Really Want: Career,
Community, Cause. Harvard Business Review, February 20, 2018. https://hbr.org/2018/02/people-want-3-
things-from-work-but-most-companies-are-built-around-only-one
Groysberg, B. (2008) The Royal Bank of Scotland Group: The Human Capital Strategy. Harvard Business
School Case Collection
Guest, D. (2014a). Employee engagement: a sceptical analysis. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People
and Performance, 1, 2, 141-156.
Guest, D. (2014b). Employee engagement: fashionable fad or long-term fixture?, in Truss, C., Delbridge, R.,
Alfes, K., Shantz, A. & Soane, E. (Eds.), Employee engagement in theory and practice (pp. 221-235). London:
Routledge.
Kibum, K and Park, J. (2019) The Life Cycle of Employee Engagement Theory in HRD Research, Advnaces in
Developming Human Resources, 1-19. Sage Publications
Schaufeli, W.B. (2014). What is engagement? in Truss, C., Delbridge, R., Alfes, K., Shantz, A. & Soane, E. (Eds.),
Employee engagement in theory and practice (pp. 15-35). London: Routledge.
Sull, D. Sull, C. and Zweig, B. (2022) Toxic Culture is Driving the Great Resignation, MIT Sloan Management
Review, January 11, 2021
Truss, C., Soane, E., Shantz, A., Alfes, K. & Delbridge, R. (2013). Employee engagement, organisational
performance and individual wellbeing: exploring the evidence, developing the theory’. International Journal
of Human Resource Management, 24, 14, 2657-2669.
Interesting Company Reports for background information
https://www.adpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/29032921/R0110_0520_v5_DSEE_ResearchReport.pdf
Bersin (2015b). Employee Engagement.
http://www.bersin.com/Lexicon/Details.aspx?id=1438
Undertake further reading by; consulting relevant academic texts available within the library, accessing
journal articles through Google Scholar (see https://scholar.google.co.uk/) and other sources (e.g. those
available online). Avoid the use of Wikipedia as this does not always contain accurate information. It can be
useful in pointing you towards other resource’s, but it is not a good one in itself.
You should submit your assignment answer in essay format, including a word count. You must cite and
include in your bibliography a minimum of five works, including at least one academic textbook. You
may use headings to help structure your essay if you wish but be aware that this is an essay and not a
report.
Your work should adhere to the following basic structure – see below.
• Title and word count.
• Introduction
• Main section
• Conclusions
• References
You should try to adopt an impersonal writing style by writing in the third person. For example, this
would involve using the phrase ‘the author’ as opposed to ‘I’ or ‘me’.
Please take special care with your spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Your answers to the question will be assessed on the basis of:
Focused response to essay topic – Does your essay answer the question asked or go off the topic into
irrelevant arguments?
Theoretical/ conceptual model emphasis
Do you refer to existing theory/ies model/s in developing your arguments?
Critical and analytical ability
Do you analyse existing arguments and think what is good/ bad/ missing/ limiting about them?
Writing style and flow
Do you use appropriate English, paragraphs, and linkage sentences? Is your essay structured and
organised to aid comprehension? Introduction and conclusion? Academic style of writing?
Sources
Do you reference quality sources (e.g. books and research articles) and include a wide range of relevant
sources? Are your references cited appropriately?
In terms of the Structure, students are reminded that essays should be written in a business like, professional
style with an executive summary, and points and ideas clearly enumerated and explained. Think about the
structure of the note with particular focus on the sections that you think are important. Don’t forget to include
a conclusions and recommendations section. You may also want to include an appendix section for additional
and supporting material that may be of use to the reader.
In terms of the Content, students must demonstrate: [i] knowledge of the Business Management
model/concept in question; [ii] the ability to search out additional (relevant) material to that given in lectures;
[iii] the ability to collate material into logical and coherentlines of reasoning in a critical and analytical fashion;
and [iv] the ability to inform the reader whilst answering the question.
General Instructions
As noted above, your essay should be 2000 words in length (±10%), using 12 font, Ariel, 1.5 line spacing and a
4 cm margin on the right-hand side of the page. All pages must be numbered. Do not exceed the maximum
word limit. This excludes Table of Contents, References and Appendices. Word count should not be exceeded
(an allowance of +/ – 10% of the stated value is allowed).
• Include a total ‘word count’ at the start of your essay (excluding your bibliography but including any
footnotes or endnotes) immediately after the title of yourwork.
• Figures & Tables: All figures and tables should have a number, clear description and note any source
reference(s) used in their creation.
• References – When you directly or indirectly refer to an academic source within your essay it is
imperative that use the Harvard System of Referencing. Consult the following guides:
Harvard Referencing Standard Guide.
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/documents/guides/bus/qgbus003.pdf
Submission Guidelines
Submit your work before the deadline. The grade for in-course assignments will be reduced by one CGS
mark for each day (or part thereof) that the assignment is late, up to a maximum of seven days. After
seven days a grade of zero will be awarded. Assignments submitted more than seven days late will be
regarded as a non-submission, and your class certificate is liable to be removed (denoted by C7 on your
student record).
• Please note that the seven days includes Saturdays and Sundays.
• Extensions for in-course assignments must be approved by course coordinators before the
submission deadline.
Submit your essay via MyAberdeen – QB5501 Managing Human Resources – SafeAssign Submit.
• Please note that essays not submitted through SafeAssign cannot be marked.
Assignments that are not submitted in the form as detailed above will not be accepted. Only in
exceptional circumstances and with the permission in advance from the Course Coordinator may other
methods of submission be accepted.
Please ensure that your work is written in your own words. A written piece of work cannot be a simple
‘cut and paste’ of material found on the web or in journals or books. Moreover, you must accurately
acknowledge the contributions of others (i.e. your work must properly reference quotes, ideas etc.). A
full list of the references you use (listed alphabetically and by surname) must be included at the end of
your work.
Assignments will be marked with reference to the University’s Common Grading Scale (CGS).
Useful Resources
1. Essay Structures https://www.abdn.ac.uk/medical/humanities/file.php/46/Essay_structure_-
_arts_subjects.pdf [Accessed 21st June 2018] 2. Note Taking Skills https://student.unsw.edu.au/note-taking-skills [Accessed 21st June 2018] 3. Connelly, J. & Foryth, P. (2012) Essay writing skills essential techniques to gain, London: Kogan
Page [Available through University Library as an online book] Please note that these are just some helpful resources to get started with. More resources are available
through the Library or through Google Scholar.