Solution

Task One

1.1 Professional; Meaning of People Professional

Professional

A professional is a derivative of a profession. As evidenced in ACP (2022), a profession comprise people who adhere to ethical standards and hold themselves as and accepted amongst the public as possessing specialised knowledge and skills. Professionals operate in a broad array of areas including research, education and training. They also need to be prepared of using their knowledge, skills and experience to support others. Put differently, a professional is a person being paid/rewarded for pursuing a specific job/responsibility. For their success, Swann et al. (2021) note that their operations are under a regulation of a particular body, profession and occupation. In UK for instance, the National Health Service (NHS) organisation is mandated to regulate operations of the Doctors and Nurses in UK.

People Professional

Considering the findings in the CIPD New Map, people professionals include individuals supporting vision and organisation objectives through strategic individual-backed strategies (CIPD,2022).  The rationale of this is that organisation are made up of people playing a critical role of empowerment in their organisations to thrive individually and collectively. Having their job functions varying, a people professional is important as illustrated in figure 1;

Figure 1: People Professional functions

In order to appropriately define the people profession concept, different behaviours can be considered which are;

Ethical Practice–  In line with the CIPD HR Professional Map, this being a specialist knowledge is important to guide an embrace of appropriate ethics in their operations. According to Sezer et al. (2019). This is by ethics ensuring employees roles are guided  by various principles and embracing values which govern organisation operations and business conduct by management teams and staff. For instance, from an individual experience, this contribute to development of relevant professional standards.

Valuing people– The people practice professions are tasked with a role of balancing overall priorities, compassion and fairness in supporting entire individuals who work in an organisation (CIPD, 2017). Valuing others positively contribute to increased efficiency of people practice professionals as employees feel respected, active listening and being valued.

Taking into account of the activities, they include;

L&D Strategies– For this activity, it identify people practice professionals as being mandated to manage existing skills gap. This is by designing appropriate L&D strategies for empowering their employees to acquire specified knowledge, skills-level and increased productivity. According to CIPD (2022a), after identifying learning needs, people professionals need to ensure they recommend best L&D strategy and include training course, online-based learning, coaching and mentoring processes.

Organisation Design– This is the second activity identified in Forbes (2018) as essential to contribute to a successful practice/operations in an organisation. The mandate of people practice professionals is therefore inclusive of influencing different operations and shaping outcomes.

1.2 Ethical values; impact on work as people professional

Ethical values is identified as “moral-based compass for people lives and ensuring decisions are made, executing the appropriate practice”. Also, in line with provisions presented by CIPD HR Professional Map, the ethical practice represent a main behaviour evidencing the level of impact on people lives and reputation.

The personal values examples are;

Equality– Basically, according to AIHR (2022), this include managing the employees similarly with equal opportunities granted. Equality is assured irrespective of employees possessing varying ages, genders, and demography.  Working in Saudi Aramco for example, as part of my recruitment initiatives, the employees are provided with equal amount of time to execute their roles as a core area for resourcing. This influence a feel of appreciation in their functions and readiness in joining the resourced functions. This is at the same time increasing the employees retention.

Valuing others–  In CIPD Map, this is identified as a practice of core behaviours. This entail valuing the rest and critical to ensure people perspectives are included in organisation decision making. In my position in Saudi Aramco, I make sure that I value others by improving decision making by being dedicated in offering clients with services expected. The outcome of this is sufficient organisation support. I ensure that I empower all employees and encourage them to use knowledge to implement their functions. In Saudi Aramco for instance, after a feel of unappreciation, reduced performance was evident and impacting organisation practices.

Fairness– A process of treating all people in a fair manner is a strategy of balance of stakeholders interests and support. For example, in my role as a people professional for Saudi Aramco, I pursue the process to ensure entire policies and initiatives for reward management fairly pursued. For example, issue employees with rewards, I make sure men and women who work in same job roles are paid the same. This is while gender pay reporting being provided as part of their practice. Through a fair treatment of employees, trust levels in the organisation is harnessed, morale increase, loyalty increased with performance. In cases where fairness is lacking, employees possess less productivity and engage in unwarranted activities leading to increase in their turnover.

1.3 Professionals contribute confidently to discussions

In my role working in Saudi Aramco, after COVID-19 pandemic occurred, my roles involved implementation of a program where the employees would be working from home. This was meant to reduce the rates of infection amongst the employees, manage the performance level and enhance consistency in working.

Informed

To successfully implement the program, I utilised peer reviewed journals and various articles to obtain quality information on strengths and weaknesses of working from  home for an organisation. Further, I embarked in benchmarking process where I acquired insights and data on how other organisation have been implementing home working arrangement. As explained in CIPD (2022), by implementing remote working successfully, it is possible to improve employees voice and engagement level. Therefore, through being informed, I  was able to obtain sufficient evidence on the importance of working from home. This included application of quality data and narratives. The best organisations which had succeeded in this area included Walmart, Google plc, and Tesco which are core for success of flexible working plan.

Clear

Working on clear discussions include implementing detailed communication, working in confidence and with courage (Fernandez & Gallardo, 2020). Therefore, as part of implementing working from home plan in Saudi Aramco, I managed to evidence my capacity for implementing effective communication by evidencing and with concise participating in a discussion and content development. The importance of the clarity obtained is ensuring various players are engaged in a discussion appreciating used content and clear message shared amongst all the stakeholders. Further, through an integration of verbal and non-verbal cues, I was able to ensure non of the messages were distorted but were received in their original form.

Engaging

This include a practice where capacity for being patient and offer an opportunity for others to share their possessed ideas, prioritise on them and eventually come up with the most appropriate decision (CIPD, 2022g). In my practice implementing working from home arrangement in Saudi Aramco, I made sure that I obtained the overall appropriate information and data for success in making decisions. At the same time, I managed to note on existing detailed information which detail on the issues encountered in implementation of working from home arrangement. I also engaged the teams in L&D, Finance and management to understand how the process would be best implemented with less challenges being encountered.

1.4 When and how to raise concerns

In my role working  in Saudi Aramco, I was able to identify a concern which conflicted with legislations set by the organisation. In specific, an issue was noted evidencing on pay disparity of people who were doing the same job. Further, some of the employees had noted that they ended up receiving their payment late while others were receiving it on time.

The noted issue was against Saudi Labour Law and the Equality Act 2010 which require all employees not to be discriminated in pay due to possession of protected characteristics.

From my input to obtain detailed information and data to support the concerns raised by the employees, I used in-depth communication process. Through being able to obtain sufficient data, information and evidence I utilised good communication channel. A case example, considering whistleblowing on the issues of payment offered to the employees despite of executing similar roles, it is important to designate their operations such as suggestion box and assure anonymity. The process which I used to communicate was also made successful since I used social media platforms and technology to communicate effectively.

Example of Unethical Issue

Working in Saudi Aramco, an unethical issue had been identified where there were cases of manipulation of pay reimbursed to employees.

Breaching Ethical Code– Working in Saudi Aramco, after COVID-19 pandemic emerged, employees were offered with a chance of participating in flexible/remote working. The organisation took a holistic charge in facilitating and supporting the remote working process. The areas of facilitation included subscribing for internet, different systems used such as Zoom and Microsoft 365. There were expectations that the entire incurred costs in implementing the remote working would increase significantly. The employees had been identified to have manipulated/altered the accurate amount which required to be paid. Their action of taking money with false pretence represent unethical issue.

The procedure of raising the issue;

• Active engagement of senior admin and management for a discussion
• Documenting entire issues of suspicion, misappropriation of funds
• Approaching all parties professionally
• Initiating a communication plan to be followed in management of unethical issues

2.1 Ethical people practice; business and human benefits of included, valued and fairly treated

Feeling included is identified as a strategy in which the employees who possess differences and disability are involved and valued for positive contribution in the organisation. According to CIPD (2022i) feeling fairly treated include ensuring that pay, benefits, facilitation and maternity and paternity leave provided. This result to assumption of a feeling of highly valued in an entity since their qualities are identified for success in organisation operations.

McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory

For demonstrating business and human benefits, McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory is relevant. According to Johnson et al. (2018), this theory is informed by the view that people have a single or up-to 3 core motivation drivers. These include achievement, affiliated and power-based balance. Hence, for business benefits, they entail reduced turnover levels. Business benefits entail efficiency and effectiveness in roles implementation. In prevalent misunderstanding being evident, it is possible to manage overall disputes and conflicts in-depth. Further, for business benefits, profits would be achieved and leverage on competitive advantage.

Dan Pink Model

For human benefits, individuals positively gain from the provided total rewards/strategic rewards and embrace of successful L&D successfully. An appropriate instance is relevant positioning and large talent pool established, staff wellbeing and motivation attained. Considering of Dan Pink Model, it identify people need to be intrinsically motivated when the internal drivers are a priority. Hence, Saudi Aramco provide total rewards with reduced staff absenteeism. In this regard, for Saudi Aramco for example, by offering total rewards, staff absenteeism are lowered, turnover and entire wellbeing increased. The rationale of this entail achieving a feeling of high-level appreciation and recognition and as such implementing their functions successfully and with less coercion.

In summary, considering my views, by enhancing inclusivity, fairness and valuing others, organisations are able to leverage on competitive advantage. This is since they are able to promote a mutual-based respect and accepting all people despite of their differences.  Further, working as a people practice professional, I feel that this is important to ensure employees feel their input is a priority in different issues and needed respected by all people. Through a fair-based treatment for all, an opportunity to access resources such as rewards is provided. Also, in line with CIPD HR Professional Map, this note scope of employees feeling highly valued and prioritised to guarantee their inclusion in the organisation operations.

2.2 People practice solution for a policy/initiative

For this question, people practice issue selected is employees turnover

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