Dissertation Proposal Sample - “Importance of employment agencies in recruitment and selection process in UK"

1.0  Title "Importance of employment agencies in recruitment and selection process in UK" will be the working title of the dissertation. 2.0  Rationale Outsourcing, or the process of delegating one or more business processes to an external provider, had experienced an upturn in the UK. What makes the process plausible is on improving quality, cost restructuring and capacity management. Training and development, recruitment and selection and outplacement are just few of the processes being outsourced today. Achieving congruence and realism is important during recruitment and selection and thus the organisation must thoroughly plan the process. There are three crucial steps to follow. The first step points on planning whereby job analysis, hob qualifications and job description as well as the recruitment and selection objectives and strategies are carefully designed. The second step deals with locating prospective candidates from internal such as employee referral programs and internships and external sources that include advertisements, private employment agencies, colleges and universities, job fairs, professional societies and computer rosters. The third step directs on evaluation and hiring. The UK market perceived the employment agencies as useful source of temporary and in some sectors of permanent employment. These employment agencies operate both as temporary work agencies and as recruitment agencies that directly place workers with employers. With the recent trend of extensive business operation and expansion, the growing demand for manpower is compensated by the growing numbers of employment agencies. As such, employment agencies have grown in order to respond to market demands for more flexible and temporary work arrangements. Proactive responsiveness regarding the process of recruitment and selection is vital for organisations since it will determine the efficacy of the process and how it could contribute to the overall performance of the organisation. When done externally, however, the organisation may put its future in jeopardy as external forces would have access to key information of the company and that these agencies may not prove to be effective in the long run. The rationale behind the research is to analyse and evaluate to what extent employment agencies add value and quality to the organisations.                  3.0  Objectives of the Research The main aim of the research is to determine to degree of importance of the employment agencies to the service industry. The service industry is chosen because this industry requires manning over time. To accomplish the general purpose, the research will seek to answer the key research question which is: How important are employment agencies to the service industry when it comes to outsourcing recruitment and selection processes? To wit, employment agencies are providing organisations with various recruitment and selection services including applicant tracking, screening, employment verification, pre-employment testing, employment offers/selection, background investigation, employee orientation and deployment. The issue on the other hand is the recruitment as business whereby the motivation of employment agencies is to make profit. As an investment on the part of the organisations, the nature of the employment is too tedious, losing the sense of ownership and employment security. There are also criticisms on the value of services provided by these agencies as well as taking advantage of the immigrants seeking workers in UK.       4.0  Provenance There are specific books and journal articles that the paper will going to incorporate so as to add depth to the research. These are: Drucker, J. 2003. Employment Agency Workers and Employment Standards: Regulation and Liberalisation in Europe. Paper presented at the International Employment Relations Association Conference. University of Greenwich Business School, London, 8-11 July. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions 2002, Quality of work and employment in Europe: Issues and Challenges, Foundation Paper No. 1. February. Forde, C. 2001, Temporary Arrangements: The Activities of Employment Agencies in the UK, Work Employment Society, 15(3): 631-644. ILO (International Labour Office) 1994, The Role of private Employment Agencies in the Functioning Labour Markets, Report from International Labour Conference 81st Session, International Labour Office, Geneva. Watson, T. 1994, Recruitment and Selection. In Sisson, K. (ed) Personnel Management, Oxford: Blackwell.     5.0  Design According to Saunders (2003), research perspectives usually consist of three parts, the perspective of the positivist, interpretivist and the realist approaches. In my research I will be using the Interpretivist approach, (in between the continuum), as my research is exploratory, wherein, I will be exploring the degree of pertinence of employment agencies to service industry. I will be also exploring the practices of these employment agencies when recruiting and selecting people for organisations. Thereby, using an Inductive approach to form a theory as to how the organisations perceived the effectiveness of employment agencies to their operations. My research will operate within the Cross-Sectional Design, as I will be collecting data on more than one case, using questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, structured observation, and document analysis. The benefit of this would be that Ì would be able to focus on the breath of the research. Moreover, by exploring the breath of the topic, I am increasing my validity and the truthfulness of my research, and thereby minimize the confounding variables. There are two sources of data: primary and secondary. For my research I will be conducting semi-structured interviews, I would be selecting five companies randomly from a database of all companies which meet my inclusion criteria. My inclusion criteria will consists of organisation belonging to the service industry doing business to employment agencies for 5 years and above. Secondary data in the form of books, policy papers, journal articles, organisational reports and Internet websites will be utilised.