Witchcraft Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Witchcraft - Term Paper Example Witchcraft as is evident from its name is related to witches who are interested in making use of supernatural powers for their purposes. Witches gain knowledge of witchcraft in order to practice it. People relate witchcraft with devil forces while different religions have contrasting views about witchcraft and witches. This paper analyzes witchcraft, its different forms, its practice, people involved and the similarities and differences present between different forms of witchcraft. Witchcraft as seen historically was not always devilish or evil as many people benefited by this craft. Witches were also famous for restoring people back to health, which can be regarded as an advantageous feature associated with witches (Moore and Sanders, 2001). Witches also facilitated people with their wisdom and knowledge by giving them solutions for their problems. Although the image of witches as evil and demonic is much more reputed as compared to their good image. Witches exist in different form s due to which, their delivered witchcraft is also different. Pocs categorizes witches into three categories which are magical witches, social witches and supernatural witches (1999). The witches who helped people through different ways were termed as magical witches or sorcerers as they healed people from their physical problems, worked as midwives and fortune-tellers (Pocs, 1999). Social witches were those witches who used to curse people and cause troubles for them for their disapproving actions and supernatural witches were those who made use of supernatural powers for disturbing people and worked as demons. Supernatural witches also connected the natural world with the supernatural world. (Pocs, 1999) In different religions, witchcraft is regarded differently. Islam categorizes witchcraft as devilish and mischievous and all the practices associated to witchcraft or any such category, are regarded as anti-Islamic. Similarly, Christianity also regards witchcraft as an anti-religi ous activity and condemns it profoundly. In both the religions, witchcraft is looked upon as heretic by its scholars. The people following the mentioned religions get frightened by knowing about witchcraft and associated people and try to annihilate it. It is believed that witches get united with malevolent forces and work against the religious people and the religion as a whole to injure it due to which, witches and witchcraft are completed rebuffed in both the religions (Thomas, 1997). After knowing about witches or accused people practicing witchcraft, a major number of killings have come on the forefront historically describing the unapproved status of witchcraft in Islam and Christianity. In Christianity, witches are regarded as supporters of satanic deeds. Any work that is performed under the title of witchcraft is regarded as an anti-Christian work. Satan is thought to be working against Jesus due to which, any involvement in satanic works is again regarded as anti-Jesus (Tho mas, 1997). Christians because of their faith in Jesus and God pay attention to witchcraft as an activity that is against their religion. Like the followers of Christian religion, Jews, the followers of the religion of Jewish faith also regard witchcraft as an anti-religious activity. Such practices are linked with worshipping of gods and deities, which is a transgression from Jewish religion. To practice magic in Jewish religion is a crime as it relates to the rejection of the religion as a whole. According to the Judaism religion, witches should be punished and brought to death for their practicing the magic (Thomas, 1997). To learn about witchcraft

CRS-y Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

CRS-y - Assignment Example 58)Managers in every success-oriented organization are faced with three key decisions to make; First, the decision on the company’s value proposition. Second, the decision on company’s value-driven operational model, and thirdly, the decision on the company’s value disciplines. The company’s value proposition entails the implicit promise to the customers outlining all values combination (Iacobucci 2011, p. 89). The company’s value-driven operational model involves integration of operation processes with the systems of management and culture, required to deliver effective value proposition (Cooper 1999, p. 56). The company’s value disciplines entail the integration of operational models and value proposition to achieve leadership in the market through competitive advantage. The Treacy and Wiersema value disciplines have impacted greatly on CRM as reviewed in the following discussion of the value disciplines. The first value discipline is opera tional excellence which involves provision of reliable products to the customers and pricing services competitively, with less or no difficulties and inconveniences to the customers. A good example of a company that has embraced this discipline is Dell (Egan 2008, p. 83). Operational excellence stresses on a specified strategic approach on production and delivery of products and services. The companies following this discipline strive for leadership in the industry through price and convenience. The companies seek ways on; overhead minimization, elimination of unnecessary production cost and business processes optimization across all organization frontiers (Mukerjee 2011, p. 167). The companies in pursuance of Operational Excellence concentrate on direct sale to customers, sale based on order rather than inventory and low-cost. Dell, General Electricals, Wal-Mart, America Airlines and Federal Express are some of the companies that have had a significant adoption of the operational e xcellence. This has helped them to be leaders in their industries by undercutting their competitors through the discipline. The companies witnessed an increase in their customer base and their sales (Kincaid 2003, p. 48). However, Operational excellence possess key challenges in maintaining a consistency customer loyalty. This is because the discipline does not focus on product innovation and a long-lasting customer relationship. Instead it concentrates largely on price and convenience in products and services. This results to high switching in buyers as they seek more innovative products, hence leading to a low customer loyalty (Kincaid 2003, p. 43). The other discipline indicated by Treacy and Wiersema is product leadership. This discipline entails product excellence through differentiation. The companies that choose to embrace the discipline shift their focus on making the product different from those of the competitors (Rafinejad 2007, p. 58). Customers may be required to pay a price premium on the products which are differentiated from the competitors’ products. Companies on this discipline strive for the ‘’state-of-art products† characterized by high creativity. Product leadership requires increased product innovation, commercialization of ideas, and pursuance of new solutions and risk taking management structure (Rafinejad 2007,

See Assessment criteria below Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

See Assessment criteria below - Essay Example To what extent are they (in)compatible with each other? To what extent do their accounts reinforce, undermine, coincide with or complement each other? To what extent are their accounts (or might their accounts be) combinable into a superior (or at least a more comprehensive) account of these historical dimensions of human thought and understanding? To what extent do their respective insights and oversights help us better to understand or to resolve issues about the historical dimensions of human thought and understanding? Hegel and Heidegger were both eminent philosophers of their respective times: Hegel (1770-1831), the earlier of the two, belongs to the school of Idealism whereas Heidegger (1889-1976) was one of the main exponents of 20th century Existentialism. Hegel sees the development of Being as an infinite development cycle triggered by the intention of becoming something what it is not at present, and this perpetual chain of development is marked by a point of coincidence of being and non-being, which, when united, form a higher entity. The former entity is therefore combined, through the factors of being and non-being, in a higher synthesis of the two. The development of Being therefore consists of three stages: being is the thesis, non-being the antithesis, and the becoming is the synthesis. These stages are repeated ad infinitum so that the new Being is again tested by the non-being and achieves a still higher stage in the melding of thesis and antithesis to a new stage of becoming. Being is therefore in a constant state of flux, it is rebuilding itself ad infinitum to achieve higher stages of itself. The former stages of Being are not nullified but re=evaluated, so in the development of the human personality we pass from one stat e to another, constantly evaluating and developing our personality, passing from state to state without nullifying the previous state, which is constantly dividing and recomposing itself.

Macro5C Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Macro5C - Essay Example The continuous failures may have discouraged the workers therefore they stopped looking for jobs ahead and â€Å"gave up† the idea of employment. In the above calculation, these people were not included in the unemployed workforce as they are not currently seeking job. However, if the Bureau of Labor statistics decided to include these workers as â€Å"Unemployed labor force† then the number of unemployed would go up and therefore the unemployment rate will likely be increased followed by an increase in total workforce, as shown below: Unemployed workforce = 8.4 million + 1.2 million = 9.6 million workers Total workforce = 116.9 + 1.2 = 118.1 Million people New Unemployment Rate = (9.6 / 118.1) * 100 = 0.09129 * 100 = 8.129 % The discouraged workers are not usually taken in to the unemployed workers account as the term â€Å"unemployment† directly refers to people who are out of jobs and actively looking for them yet unable to find them, where as discouraged work ers are workers who have given up on their search. ... Answer 3: Unemployment is a vast term used in economics very frequently; unemployment does not only refers to people without jobs due to limited reasons but has more complexities to it that economics defines. There are different kinds of unemployment including frictional, structural, seasonal, classical and cyclical unemployment. Out of all these, for simplicity in theory, economists often use three types of unemployment for explanations of economic phenomena; cyclical unemployment, frictional unemployment and structural unemployment. Frictional Unemployment refers to unemployment that is a temporary condition caused as a result of â€Å"looking between jobs†. It’s when an individual leaves one job in search of another and this gap of leaving the job and finding a new job is a temporary period of unemployment known as frictional unemployment. On the other hand, structural unemployment is due to mismatch of skills of the workers; they may become obsolete or not appropria te for the job kind. These two are basic levels of unemployment that would ALWAYS be there in any economy as they are natural and inevitable, so economists don’t really worry about these kinds of unemployment. The major cause of concern for economists is the cyclical unemployment; also known as Demand deficient unemployment. This is caused as a result of lack of aggregate demand in an economy putting downward pressure on the economy and increasing the inflationary gap. This type of unemployment can drive the economy out of working condition if it exists for a long span of time without appropriate government interventions (The great depression of 1930’s may serve as an example for such a case). When economists talk about â€Å"Natural Rate of Unemployment† they are reffering to the full

Project Scope and Charter Essay Example for Free

Project Scope and Charter Essay The first phase of any project is the initiation phase. This phase commences when some type of business issue or opportunity is identified bringing about a proposal project to solve or address the issue or opportunity. The main deliverable of this phase is the project charter, which contains a broad view of what the project is about, who is involved, why the project is being conducted and how when the project will be carried out. (Hughes Lecture, 2013) Once the charter is approved the project can move into the planning phase, which is where the charter is used to identify the scope of the project. This paper will examine the relationship between project scope and charter and highlight the benefits of each. Project Charter The project charter is a short document that serves as an informal contract between the project team and the sponsor of the project. (Kloppenberg, 2012, pg 84) This document contains only enough detail to get the project approved so it can move into the planning phase. Project Management Professional, Ritchie Hughes describes the charter as a representation of the â€Å"view from 3000 meters†. The project charter is usually drawn up by the Project Manager and team, or, in instances where a Project Manager has not yet been assigned, the project sponsor will complete the charter. Hughes explains that the functions of the â€Å"why† section of the charter are to ensure: the correct individuals will be consulted (e.g. stakeholders and governance), projects that are linked or dependent on the project in question are identified, the organization has enough resources (internally or externally) to complete the project, a business case for the organization is conveyed and that all the information is provided to support the executive team. (Hughes Lecture, 2013) Approval of the charter grants authority to the project manager to go through with the project and utilize the allotted budget or resources for the project activity. As the charter approval is the â€Å"Go/No Go† decision for the project, a non-approval means termination of the project. (Hughes Lecture, 2013) Scope Approval of the project charter signifies the transition into the planning phase of the project. A critical part of the planning phase is identifying the scope of the project. Project scope is defined as â€Å"the work that must be performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.† (Kloppenberg, 2012, pg. 142) Ritchie Hughes explained that scope can also mean â€Å"the sum of products, services and results to be provided as a project.† The benefits of scope are that the work to be performed is clarified, listed and any work not to be completed (outside the project’s scope) is identified. Scope is also a useful tool in managing expectations and avoiding assumptions among stakeholders and the project team. (Hughes Lecture, 2013) Scope Creep A common issue when managing a project’s scope is dealing with scope creep. Scope creep can be defined as â€Å"the extra deliverables that can creep into a project.† (Collegiate Projects, 2013, pg. 1) These â€Å"project improvements† can be very hard to avoid but may have a major effect on the project’s budget, timing or quality. Projects that may be susceptible to scope creep should have a scope change management plan that contains: a definition of scope change for the project, a process for submitting and reviewing scope changes, documentation needed for the change process and a tool to track change requests and their resolutions. (Collegiate Projects, 2013, pg. 2,3) An understanding by both parties (project team and sponsor) of scope creep and its effects on the project, and an organized management plan will help avoid scope creep that may negatively affect the project’s success. Conclusion In the early stages of project management, two very important aspects are the project charter and scope of the project. Not all projects need a charter but understanding and managing the scope of a project will help the project team effectively complete the project in time and budget without â€Å"Gold Plating†. References Kloppenborg, T. J. (2012). Contemporary project management: organize, plan, perform (2nd ed.). Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning. (2013). Managing Scope Creep. Collegiate Project Services, 1, 1-3. Hughes, R. (Director) (2013, January 31). Project Initiation: Scope Charters. Bus 427. Lecture conducted from Tom Rippon, Victoria.

Intervention Methodology in Education

Intervention Methodology in Education Intervention methodology can be used in various educational streams. It can be used for mathematics, science or language study. One can find problem in learning new languages, mathematics, and science or in any other subjects. One can use Intervention methodology for teaching this stuff to one who cannot learn it easily. Teacher can apply this Intervention Methodology via various styles (Anon., n.d.). It can be applied by teacher via teacher directed interventions, scaffolded interventions, responsive interventions or by a combination of teacher directed interventions, scaffolded interventions and responsive interventions. Teacher directed interventions are those where teacher gives a title, problem to students, helps in constructing way to achieve goal, and gives a response to students directly. Responsive interventions are those where interventions are done upon requirement of students. In this type teacher helps the students to make strategies, gives solution of students questions via questioning only. In this style of intervention students makes their own plan and strategy to achieve goal. Students use reference texts or create analogies to learn topic. It is a responsive invention. If the communication between student and teacher gives a scaffolded response, invention method becomes scaffolded and responsive. Responsive intervention approach is an alternative approach to common other approaches. This approach can give better outcomes if tried logically. Teacher can collect interventions that help students to study deeply, can help students to fulfill their learning needs and also help students to give good performance. Students who learn via basic style where teacher teaches them directly are less skilled than who learns via responsive interventions. Responsive interventions (Anon., n.d.) helps the students to learn self planning, can help students to make subject more interesting. For responsive intervention, one cannot plan that how will he / she teach. One cannot use what him or her plan. One can use trigger to try intervention differently where he or she needed to give particular case and needs to try to get response for that scenario. Here one needs to be contiguous. How to plan for contingency? One can teach students in more interesting way than another one just via using perfect timing of what to ask? For a different one can use scaffolded interventions too. Use of both responsive intervention and scaffolded interventions. Interventions are also depends on some other criteria too like student’s age and their pre-knowledge on topic and all. What is students average age? Some methods can be applicable for younger and some can applicable for older one only. For example, A primary schools student needs to be questioning differently than of student of higher secondary school. For deployment of intervention methods one need to set particular environment (Anon., n.d.). What includes in arranging the environment? It includes structural facilities like good classroom. Good physical environment to provide comfort to students. This environmental change helps student to relate with situation. Social environment (Anon., n.d.) also needs to set according to students. One can also use funny comments or joke to make environment light and can start or continue communication effectively. Playing activities also can be used by teachers to make study more lubricate and interesting. One can sing songs to make atmosphere light. Teacher is supposed use predictable routine and daily routine activities. For responsive intervention one need to follow students’ lead. Student’s lead means in what student is interested, what he / she loves to do or on what topic he loves to talk. What is the need of following these leads? By following this, one can know where stude nt is interested and via this one can respond to student easily. Student’s attention is a big thing in responsive intervention. Students are getting more interested in conversation when teacher follows their lead. One can use labeling and commenting for better outcomes. For commenting, first teacher is supposed to give specification and a particular label to each activity of student and then supposed to comment on that. The benefit of commenting is that student came to know that how well he / she performed. Student will give more responsive if teacher uses commenting and labeling technique. For building student’s vocabulary via responsive intervention technique one can use imitating and expanding methods. Imitating and Expanding is a technique where teacher asks students to imitate his /he words or teacher imitates student’s words. It will help students to pronounce words more clearly and will also help students to understanding the pronunciations of words. One can use open- ended questions to students. Open ended questions are like, â€Å"Who are you?†, â€Å"Where are you?†, â€Å"What are you doing?†, â€Å"How are you doing?†, â€Å"What is this?†, â€Å"Where it is?† and all. Students can give answers of these questions via one or two words too. So, it helps them to start communicating in new language. Teachers are also supposed to motivate students via praising their work, giving those rewards and via positive attitude. Positive attitude and motivation makes student feel more comfortable. Like if teacher poke student on back or praise his/ her work. So, student will pay more attention than before. One can motivate students via providing choices. Provide more than one activity to students. So that they can choose their favorite one and can enjoy it. Providing choices will encourage students to learn new things and to do communication continuously. It will help students to prefer topic, thing o n which he / she wants to communicate. How to provide choices? To provide choices one can use rotation methods. He / she can rotate activities / things within classroom so that with help of less resort he / she can create more choices. One can make gap of few minutes within routine tasks. It will allow students to communicate. Give them playful tasks to do in between. Give them group activities. One can uses these steps like â€Å"Instructional Match (Anon., n.d.), Scaffolding Step-by-Step Strategies, Modeling Demonstration, and Performance Feedback, Opportunities to Drill Practice to Strengthen Fragile Skills, Student Talk-Through Activities, Periodic Review, and Progress Monitoring. Here instructional match is used to verify whether teachers are working at their best level and provide students more confidence and provide them success. Scaffolding is necessary for students to help in learning new things and become more advanced in that particular area. One can use many things to achieve it like giving fewer tasks to students. So that they can concentrate on that particular task / those particular tasks and masters in that task / s. One can divide students in groups so that they can share their knowledge and complete assignments. Step by step strategy: One can use / make strategies step by step for complex task so that task can be done simply and easily. Modeling: Demonstrations and models can help students to learn things easily. It helps students to understand and implement content easily and correctly. Performance review: Performance review is necessary after above tasks as performance review is only measurable thing where one can know who progressed how much? After getting new skills and after sharpening that skills student can work independently and try new things. He / She can try these new skills and can strengthen them via applying it and by practicing those new skills. He / She (student) can practice hard on those things where he / she is interested and become expert of that and meanwhile enjoys that too. Talk Through activities: After successfully completing learning task and sharpen those things by practicing teacher supposed to set up activities for students. Where teacher can ask students to do various talk through activities. Periodic review: After students excelled in particular things, particular skill teacher is supposed to put learning process on next level, where he / she (student) can masters it. Meanwhile teacher is supposed to review his / her progress. So that teacher can know that whether he / she is going in right direction or not? For teaching new language one can also use direct responsive intervention method. In this intervention method teacher is supposed to communicate / talk with students in new language only which they are supposed to learn. Via communicating formal things one can teach basic sentence to students in beginning. Like students were not aware of Italian Language. Students knows the name of the teacher. So, teacher can ask questions like my name is this, (Anon., n.d.)What is yours? â€Å"Il mio nome à ¨ This. Che cosa à ¨ il vostro? (Anon., n.d.) â€Å". Here students cannot understand all these sentence but knows This is teacher’s name. So they assume that he / she was trying to tell his / her name. In addition to this students can also understand that the tone of last sentence was like of question. So they guess that teacher were trying to ask his / her name. So they (students) can answer like My name is Ray (Il mio nome à ¨ Ray). One can also tell that Good morning in very begi nning of class like â€Å"buongiorno† . Here students don’t know the meaning of it but can surely assume that he / she gave morning wish or good wish. And can respond via imitating it. One can ask students â€Å"How are you? Via telling them â€Å"come stai?†. Here students won’t understand what teacher is trying to ask but then teacher can answer himself / herself â€Å"Io sto bene†. Students can understand little here or if they don’t. Teacher can use physical signs to teach them like pointing his / her hand toward black board and can say, â€Å"Si tratta di una lavagna†, (It is a blackboard). Here too students will not understand. But then teacher can try to point his / her finger on window and can say, â€Å"È una finestra† (it is a window), can point finger on door and can say, â€Å"È una porta† (it is a door). Here students can understand â€Å"È una† means nothing but It is. Teacher can try few n ew simple sentences later on. Like How are you doing?, How are you? , What are you doing? What am I doing, What we are doing?, What she is doing?, What principal is doing? In Italian language. â€Å"Come stai?, Come stai? , Che cosa stai facendo? Che cosa sto facendo, che cosa stiamo facendo?, Che cosa sta facendo?, Che cosa principale sta facendo?† . Here students can understand few basic words and able to respond them. Teacher can tell â€Å"bye bye , have agood day, see you† (bye bye avere una buona giornata) at the end of class.It is very interesting and quick learning technique. Here one who is teaches and one who is learning both can enjoy. Both can communicate with each other freely and both can feel comfortable after little time. Prospects of using this method is, it is quick, easy to implement and comfortable technique. In additon to this it technique can help the students to memorize words, sentences for long time, can help student in building vocabulary easi ly.The only disadvantage of this method is, in the starting phase students may get confused. Students may feel boarded or confused in early days as they don’t know much what was going. But a good teacher can overcome this problem via applying proper timing and gestures. So teachers and students all can enjoy study. Proper use of gestures and physical movement plays major part in success of this type of reference interventions. Teacher who use proper timing and gestures can use reference intervention more efficiently than who cannot use it. One can make subject more lucid and interesting with help of reference method. But if teacher don’t use it efficiently may be this reference intervention methodology won’t work as it supposed to be. It is not methodology’s failure but it is failure of particular teacher (Anon., n.d.). One can use Intervention methodology for language and other type of teaching too. For language teaching responsive intervention methodolo gy and scaffolded interventions are mainly used due to their above described features and prospects. One can use both responsive intervention methodology and scaffolded intervention methodology at once. Means one can use a combination of both intervention methodologies responsive and scaffolded. References: Works Cited Anon., n.d. [Online] Available at: http://interventionmethodology.com/types-of-intervention/. Anon., n.d. [Online] Available at: http://www.interventioncentral.org/academic-interventions/general-academic/teacher-strategies-promote-learning. Anon., n.d. [Online] Available at: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/System-of-support-incl.-PLD/Learner-initiated-supports/Language-and-learning-intervention. Anon., n.d. [Online] Available at: https://translate.google.co.in/?hl=entab=wT#gu/hi/. Anon., n.d. [Online] Available at: http://www.asha.org/slp/schools/prof-consult/RtoI/. Anon., n.d. [Online] Available at: http://work.chron.com/responsibilities-intervention-teacher-7660.html. Anon., n.d. [Online] Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16209031. Anon., n.d. [Online] Available at: https://www.apa.org/education/k12/classroom-mgmt.aspx.

Royal Mail Group: Human Resource Structure

Royal Mail Group: Human Resource Structure The Royal Mail group belongs to the UK government. It is a public limited company which has seen lot of success in past years. The degree of success was clearly reflected in the account of its annual turnover.Inspite of its success in the past, Royal Mail group have also witnessed higher degree of competition through its years. As it is not the time when King Henry (eight) established Royal Mail back in 1860s, it was very much necessary for the company to grow with the new advancement and sophisticated technology. The strategy they made and implemented was restructured according to the new level of demand and necessity of their customers. It was in 2006 the company first introduced the online postage system in which the customers can pay online. The stiff competition from the competitors sided by the change in status of the monopoly which the company have enjoyed before 2006 weakened the strength of the company. Modernisation was a major necessity to defend the pressure of competitio n from the competitors but company was not able to procure much fund for restructuring. Company have seen deficits in pension funds too. In 2003, a part of the Royal Mail group was privatised. In 2006, about 14 private operators were allowed to participate in the working of the company. HUMAN RESOURCE STRUCTURE An organisation should hold the unique strength of efficient recruiting which steps it out to a new level of development. It should involve group co ordination sided by developing leading power and talent. Innovative ideas should be given room for development and should create an environment to develop that culture. As this sort of organisation requires lot of effort from their staffs to stick on to their strict time lines, HR management should be the top priority management agenda. A company with good reputation helps it to attract the cream of the labour market. Identification of the core requirements by the Royal Mail enabled them to frame a new set of HR strategies from 2005, HR management in Royal Mail is mainly divided into 3 functional areas. It worked with People and Organisational Development Services. The organisation mainly focused on developing the prior HRM skills such as leadership quality, diversity and developing the organising talent. Business partners were the HR managers and they were assigned to different business locations. Combining with the strength of HR strategy, Royal Mail believed that they can reap the benefits of identification of the areas where the improvements should be made. Current state of the organisation can be closely studied with evidence based HR management approach. Employee assessments have been made and their performance was made into account. The findings were as follows which turned to be the organisations HR strategy; HR functions should include some hard skills relating to finance. It is essentially a quantitative aspect of human resource management.HR manager should be successful in knowing the operations which is being done in an organisation. This focuses mainly on calculative aspects.HR manager should prove his credibility in business development too. He should have the ability to manage the employees in a rational manner. Basic HR function should posses some soft skills which is essentially a qualitative aspect of human resource management. It is mainly confined with employee feedbacks, assessing works and reporting their performance. Good leadership is an essential characteristic of soft skill. Good communication with the workers boosts the relationship of manager to the workers to a great extent. Soft skills help to achieve higher work motivation and commitment. Congruence or a state of agreement should be present in the organisation as the workers in the Royal Mail should be fully content with their positions. MODE OF RECRUITMENT The criteria used by Royal Mail organisation for selecting a suitable candidate are as follows; Through advertisements job vacancies are communicated. Each job has a reference number. In Royal Mail website, using this reference C.V can be uploaded. If the reference number is unknown then candidate can search through and find out the suitable post to apply. If there is no job available at a certain point of time, provision for dropping of email id is given as when such vacancies are open, candidates are communicated through mail. It is cheap, focussed and quick mode of selection. By this method applications are selected, screened and interview is conducted by HR managers for recruitment. Human resource strategies developed by Royal Mail organisation was subtle. Professional development is given more importance with the effective use of business tools and technical skills. Hence training of the employees is done and performance is monitored. Performance appraisal is regarded as one of the top agenda of HR management. Training is structured in such a way that it includes class room training, seminars, teaching and the specialised coaching of encouraging the employees to understand their potential and hence upgrade their skills. They have given many supports and services like performance related pay bonuses and pension scheme. They have failed in the implementation of strategies due to the following reasons; Pressure from the trade unions. Deficits in pension fund. Bad communication. lack of fund to pay salaries. Inefficiency in managing work force. Redtapism EMPLOYEE BENEFIT RELATED ORGANISATIONAL FUNCTION To improve the commitment and psychological satisfaction of the work group, monetary considerations were channelized in such a way that it improved the motivation and role perception. Employees are given opportunity to pursue academic study which is seemed to be helpful for their position. They are paid in their study leave too. Financial support is given for the study. Independent support is provided by the organisation for health of employees in relation to the job, traumas, debt etc. Employee consideration was taken into account while framing the HR strategy. As one of the topmost organisation in UK, employees got discounts and offers in a wide range of products and services. The Royal Mail is located in easy location which helps the employees to come to work very easily.While working, some roles are paid shift allowances and mostly in flexible hours. Pension plan was developed and employees were made to contribute. Based on contribution, employee pension was paid by the organisation. After joining the Royal Mail, an employee is entitled to 4.5 weeks paid holidays per year and 8 bank holidays for the first five years.Option for purchasing extra holiday is given to employee to raise the entitlement upto 6 week maximum. By framing this sort of relaxation avenues, employees are likely to be more productive in work life devoid of stress. Flexible timing is developed by the organisation in which the employee can choose the timings as it allows them to adapt the time to meet their family needs too. The remuneration for the employees was not a standard one as per employee reviews as there was protest from the part of union regarding pay, modernisation and conditions in the organisation. Apart from the HRM core issues, secondary issues like health and safety, employee welfare etc should be taken into consideration while framing the HR strategies of the organisation. For gaining good competitive advantage, the satisfaction of employees should be reaped and this should be attached to the corporate plans while framing a HR strategy. Royal Mail was not very successful in reaping these benefits due to inefficient strategy formulation and lack of finance. For example: deficits in pension fund made the existing employees very much concerned about their future in the company. Belief in the organisation tends to decline which resulted in lack of motivation and commitment to work. Employee relation based on expectation and understanding failed. CHANGES IN HR PLANNING Human resource is the vital component of an organisation. The approach taken for the implementation of HRM should be adapted according to the business environment rather than a traditional defensive mode taken by the Royal Mail organisation as before. According to the economic view of implementation of human resources, Labour input cannot be measured purely in terms of workers employed in a particular job. It is not at all necessary that the labour input is directly proportional to the quantity produced in a production scenario as there is law of diminishing returns. To acquire the full efficiency of human resources in the organisation, there was some HR planning put into effect in 2005.The organisation was very successful in reducing the money spend on human resources by fifty seven million pounds in just 2 years. It was framed as a part of business transformation which included reducing absence rates, slashing head counts in HR etc.There was a significant improvement in HR to employee ratio from 1:75 to 1:130. HR planning was fruitfully implemented in the area of education sided with training and improvement in sickness absence. A three point plan was framed to prevent inefficiencies and introducing HR business partners into each area. The job description development and person specification is found to be the unavoidable part of HR planning. The repetition of tasks were monitored and prevented. A central shared service was created which brought all the experts towards the head office human resource team to point on strategies. The HR structure was restructured with business partnership and management change. In 2008, the Royal Mail organisation has become the toughest arm by employing 200000 plus workers. RIVALS AND COMPETITION Royal Mail was facing competition for many years. Counting from DHL , TNT the Royal Mail organisation has got a long list of rivals. Common complaints about the Royal Mail organisation were the unsatisfaction with the delays of the couriers, very short working hours, low level of customer service and unplanned delivery without a proper tracking system. The competitors in the field utilised these drawbacks and worked on it to made it as their main advantage. They concentrated in building up a business structure which was mainly build upon the basement of customer satisfaction and identification of their need. The work force in the company was trained and developed in such a way that the blend of HR ideas reflected in their working. Group coordination and subtle implementation of business strategy made them more powerful in capturing the market share more easily. Many of large organisations were looking for a better service provider so that their package are delivered in a better and s afe way. This became a concern to Royal Mail. For example, TNT managed to get high profile esteemed customers like Centrica and BT within a short span of just 6 years.It is continuously investing more funds in the sorting and processing technology. The Royal Mail have introduced the online stamp systems as a part of modernisation but the studies on customer reviews made it clear that the idea was subtle but the steps or the procedures involved in the purchase process is horrible. Improper implementation of ideas also counts very bad in the world of business. As now TNT handles more than 270 million items in a month and it is looking for more efficiency by building up a centralised distribution hub. As in the case of Royal Mail, a well established organisation which have a good history is still working on to improve its efficiency in all aspects of its working. Developing a competitive work force was the only solution for Royal Mail to raise from the edge of disaster. New HR strategies were framed and the focus fall upon the workforce. The need of transformation was identified and HR was a priority for them. Recruiting was done to get the competitive work force and training was given to them to make them adapatable to the changing environment. Expert team was employed to know the weaknesses. The main weakness which was figured out was the lack of customer focus and the dissatisfaction of them derived as a result. WITHSTANDING RIVAL COMPETITIONS The quality of work and the scaleability of costs were discussed among the executive committee. The pressure of competition was well known by the Royal Mail groups. To better their current position the trade off between the quality and efficiency were pointed out in the organisation and greater care was invested to perform the task specifically by taking into consideration the scopes and the risk involved in the business. It was leadership which was given importance to asses and develop operational managers. As a reform to introduce more technical tools, a computer based operational organisation simulation was set up.It identified the needs for development and the steps needed for improving the existing plan or replace the current plan with some other advanced plan. Next step was the design of leadership workshops which involved mainly scoping the identification of the current market situation and industrial relation for this time.Changes in the business plan of Royal Mail sided by the change in the management approaches and their practical implication was pointed out. These steps which were taken provided the foundation of the approaches they have taken later. Knowledge about the business and its new scope has to communicated with the managers. Inspite of great competition and regulation, the need for the managers to become more creative and make them ready to face the challenges was necessary. The operation manager played an important role in the management structure. They are actual backbone of performance. For stimulating high performance in the organisation, more concern was given to capability of the managers. Further concern was focussed on whether they are able to work with the surroundings if they are good in doing their job in high standard. So the need of making the workers more supportive with group coordination was also given attention. New performance standard was set up through lot of research and assessment. The prority was given to regain the operational control.they were investing their time to get the best output. Assessment is often a tough task in a management structure. There are various tools and methods to find it out. However, the Royal Mail was very much careful in the process as it wanted to be fit for the purpose and should involve realistic time demand both for the people involving in assessment and the people who asseses. The final step was to develop a selection process to fetch new managers as per vacancies. The key qualities was identified and developed. Performance appraisal was well designed to assess the performance level too. Some sort of changes in approach taken by organisation were as follows, Protection of the universal service   The need of the customers was taken into consideration and covered issues which ranged from the services provided to customers, its affordability to them the quality of service through efficient use of human resources. Market analysis investigation of existence of any failure in operation of organisation. Regulatory safeguards Giving more concern to the necessary protections for the people and the other companies in the same field. OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE Royal Mail made a performance improvement programme which was sponsored by its management and union. Root cause for the operational failure was closely analysed and studied. Based on the studies new methods and approach which has to be used in the three years programme to put in track the new action plans jointly by the Royal Mail group and the union to contribute to greater performance in the working. Training the internal project teams in the working process was made to build up models for efficient working. Strategic HR solutions was developed in the organisational development, learning and managing talent, development which gives light to business plans. Front line managers, staffs and union members were involved in the business meetings. This contributed to make the employees feel like they are the vital part of organisation which in turn boosted their commitment to the organisation and greater motivation level in working with the group. A new corporate strategy function was created and implemented. This mainly involved: coaching of directors. Planning and integration in the strategic programmes conducting capability testing on a pilot basis in divisions of management. Creating more realistic and practical approach to alter the working in various division. EFFECT OF RECESSION Royal Mail had seen a dramatic down trading in its business in the country. Customers began to abandon the first class post as it was not affordable in recession. Even the Royal Mail organisation had admitted the truth. The recession trends shown the volume of customers sending letters began to shrink at a steady rate or switching on from first class services to second class postal services. The situation had become even worse as the customers were switching on to emails and internet based social networking sites. In addition to the chaos created by the strikes, the recession made the organisations position even worse. However a combination of modernisation which accounted in cost reduction and slight price changes sided by good product mix helped the company to increase its profit. As the company was undergoing a very tight financial position, it was not possible to increase the wages. The reward system existed at the time was unlikely to change. In 2008, the mail market in United Kingdom fell by eight percent. Royal Mail was intending to cut up 16, 000 jobs as a part of huge cost cutting plan. Quality of service of the organisation would be hampered by such a plan. WITHSTANDING RECESSIONS EFFECT Royal Mail organisation planned to raise the price of the first class and second class stamps. Another important decision was to cut down the middlemens commission. These decisions were prone to pressure from four walls which made the condition of organisation even worse. The recession had given opportunities for organisational development in the company. The professional development was made possible. Flexibility and the knowledge of the employees was boosted. Training was given to employees at the time of recession so that they got time for skill updating. Many new developed sorting machines were introduced by which more than eighty percent of the mail were sorted automatically. Modernisation was given priority which resulted in installation of intelligent letter sorting machines. New technology was introduced to sort more A-4 sized mail which also included magazines and some catalogues. Hand held scanners were introduced which recorded the confirmation of delivery within a short span of time. Reading of bar codes of special delivery was made possible with these scanners. As a part of nurturing development Heathrow world wide distribution centre was set up which involved high technology facility for the mailing services. The importing and exporting of the mail was done systematically removing the unsatisfaction of the customers which existed before. Flexible working hours was designed so that the workers get greater commitment to work as they get time for their family too. This enhanced their motivation level. SWOT ANALYSIS SWOT is the method used to evaluate the strength, weakness, opportunity and threat an organisation possess. SWOT analysis of Royal Mail carves out the following attributes; Strength Monopoly it has enjoyed for 350 years count its goodwill and brand name. Good location of organisation, good benefits package that is being provided to the employees. Weakness    Inefficient senior management, too much politics, bad communication, bad delivery, delay in delivery due to inefficiency, lack of control. Opportunity Lack of opportunity of business development in post mail market. The number of people depending on mail services decline at a faster rate. Threat High competition from strong competitors like TNT, DHL etc. Modernisation remained as a question mark as there were deficits in fund for paying salary and pensions. The financial position of the Royal Mail has become more worse in the time span of 2005 to 2010.It was in 2008, one of the high profile human resource director, Kevin Green walked away from the Royal Mail organisation. Previously it was Tony McCarthy. Lack of healthy interaction with the trade unions resulted in poor industrial relation. Every employee seeks to improve their returns from the organisation and when such promotional aspects are absent in an organisation it is more likely that the employee move from one organisation to another. This might be the thing what happened in Greens case. Privitisation of the Royal Mail has become a necessity as the mail volumes were falling at a faster pace, low investment, low efficiency and there was huge deficits in the pension fund too. In march 2009 the defecits in the pension had been figured around 10 billion pounds. At the time organisation had about 176000 employees. The sorting and delivery process were decided to be handled by a new independent firm.It was obvious that outside investors maintained majority of share and the rest was given as a share to Royal Mail staff. This was a good practical application of HR strategy as it helped the employees to work more efficiently as they have to work for their own company. CWU trade unions opposed the privatisation decision as they feared that the plan would devastate the services given by Royal Mail. The trade union was even more concerned about privatisation as there were possibility of job losses for staffs and more pricing for the customers. Still chaos continuous in the Organisation.