MGT605 Business Capstone Project Report 1 Sample
Context:
This subject allows the student to synthesise the knowledge and skills gained from all other subjects studied up to that point. The main deliverable in the subject is a major project. In this first assessment, the project is proposed.
Instructions:
In this assessment, you are required to propose how you are going to study in the capstone project. Before you can do that, you first need to identify a project idea on which to develop your project proposal. Your project proposal must include the pain statement or problem statement.
The capstone project proposal serves two basic functions. Firstly, it presents and explains how you are going to study and analyse the issue of your capstone project. This is essential to make clear what you aim to achieve by the end of this study period, what data you will collect and analyse and what MBA subject theory applies to your project.
Secondly, how you will conduct the capstone project. This is an account of the steps you will take until you produce the final report. This includes a timeline. The timeline will help you track your progress. With this information, your facilitator will be able to guide you concerning the suitability and feasibility of your capstone project.
Formulating a project idea
As mentioned above, before you can develop your capstone project proposal, you need to identify a problem or opportunity. Please refer to the “Broad Business Capstone Project Ideas.pdf” file for help with identifying project ideas. You can find the “Broad Business Capstone Project Ideas.pdf” in the learning portal.
Structure of the project proposal
Include all relevant content expected in a project proposal.
Cover page – provide a cover page with identification information including, your name, the subject and code, the capstone project title, date, word count, etc.
Introduction or Context – background information including a description of the country, the industry, the organisation (case unit) and the problem or opportunity (the issue(s)). Discuss the circumstances through which the problem or opportunity has arisen.
Aim/purpose of project – the specific aim of the capstone project is to identify the problem or opportunity and to summarise what your project intends to achieve.
Method – identify the proposed sources of information or data. Also consider how your knowledge from your post graduate program will apply in your project. Ensure that the project is feasible within the available time. Also describe the relevance and significance of your capstone project.
Conclusion – a brief statement about what the project is all about, its suitability and feasibility.
Solution
Research Title
Evolving paradigms of Human Resource Management due to Covid-19 Pandemic: A study on Westpac Bank
Research Aim
To analyse the Evolving paradigms of Human Resource Management due to Covid-19 Pandemic at Westpac Bank
Need of Project Proposal
A project proposal is needed to lay out a basic plan of how the research would go in context of the topic as well as the organisation. It also Lays down the objectives and goals of the individuals and allows the assessor to obtain clarity regarding what would be inculcated in the study.
Background
Due to covid-19 pandemic, the role of Human Resource Management changed a lot. This is so because these things which were earlier not in the scope were added and their set of responsibility diversified. Uni Assignment Help, These Paradigms involved special emphasis to work life balance and considerations of remote working. These elements earlier were not paid the required heed because majority of the operations were in house but as the pandemics startled the business world everyone had to shift their operations on a remote scale and people work from home which brought them a lot of challenges (Caligiuri et al. 2020). Westpac Bank has been chosen as the case study organisation in the present context. It is a financial service provider. It was established in 1817 and is currently headquartered in Sydney, Australia. It has been chosen to understand the impact on the banking industry in a broad level.
Main Issue
The main issue which would be identified in the study was that the human resource management department of the organisation was not ready to handle those challenges and did not have sufficient resources and frameworks to adapt the changes brought in by pandemic readily and instead face a few difficulties before understanding the paradigms which have evolved and understanding that we would need to devise strategies in which they could manage the elements of new normal within the set of processes (Butterick & Charlwood, 2021).
Purpose of the Project
The purpose of this project is to highlight the evolving Paradigms which need to be faced by the human resource management of Westpac bank due to covid-19 pandemic and how it impacted the organisation. This project also aims to provide relevant strategies which could be used in order to handle the situation and ensure that the efficiency of the department is increased and they are able to respond to the challenges in the desired manner (Agarwal, 2021). This is aimed at ensuring that the employees who are not able to keep up with the work life balance and are facing subsequent issues while remote working such as lack of productivity, lack of motivation, lack of interpersonal communication, lack of efficiency, and increased difficulty can also be addressed. Even though the situations are relatively better right now, still a lot of individuals are working from home and it is necessary that the human resource management department of Westpac Bank shows that it is catering to their needs.
Literature Review
According to Adikaram, Naotunna, & Priyankara (2021) human resources have been in crucial action mode for frontline workers and protection of employees amidst the pandemic. The entities within the department were also suffering from the crisis where they were presented with evolving Paradigms within their functionality which was never in their scope.
Aurelia & Momin (2020) human resources have to pay special emphasis on mental health and wellbeing which has now been fabricated as a core element of the HR management. This happened because while people were working on a remote basis their morale was very low and they also displayed lack of productivity. HR managers were not able to deal with the situations because they did not have physical proximity with the employees and found it hard to keep the things afloat. Constant communication and employee engagement needed to be integrated as the goals of Westpac.
On the other hand, Harney & Collings (2021) argued that it was exhausting to implement changes within the working culture because when on one hand companies aiming to improve the productivity and morale of the employees it had to cut their salary percentages or resort to layoffs in order to ensure that the consistent staff survives and the company is able to keep its operations afloat. The employees at Westpac were highly demotivated because of the job cuts in the industry and lack of new customer leads.
Carnevale & Hatak (2020) explained that as the operations were on a remote basis the organisations thought of it as a popular resolution where it is likely that they would integrate it as a permanent feature for some employees. Even when it happened at the starting when the entire world heart day shifts operations it was and has been the responsibility of the HR department to ensure that every employee has been given the required Logistics. This includes a working laptop, steady internet connection, and printers or headsets so that they could complete their day to day tasks and assignments in the desired manner. Westpac faced several difficulties in the same because banking industry requires proximity to function in the desired manner. Due to remote working, Westpac faced delays in deadline and delivered poor work quality due to the same .
Paulet, Holland, & Morgan (2021) highlighted that the department also had to collaborate closely with other operational capabilities such as that of IT and Finance to formulate and execute new rules along with new ideas which could exemplify the work procedure and ensure that everybody is able to fight the pandemic within professional grounds. This became more difficult with the stance of remote working as the departments of Westpac had to schedule several meetings in a day for achieving synchronization in the efforts (St Anne, 2020).
In the views of He et al. (2020) covid-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst for change within the functionality of the Human Resource Department. During lockdown the patterns of remote working and inability to maintain a work life balance allowed the employees to use their own Vigilance and enhance operations. The employees themselves had to work with the activity logs and reports along with identifying complexity which were earlier handled by specialist individuals. This added more into their problems and the HR department was responsible to take care of it all.
Gambe et al. (2020) reported that Westpac flagged thousands of potential issues to the Analysis centre and Australian Transaction reports. These issues stated that the selected organization failed to file about 175,000 threshold transaction reports to the regulating entity. Apart from this, it also filed 365,000 incomplete and inaccurate reports. The key reason behind this is identified to be the demotivated manpower and lesser productivity of the same.
Hence, it can be said that the HR department of Westpac Bank had to encounter various evolving Paradigms within their functionality that were out of their scope which did not allow them to formulate the required strategies to combat the situation.
Data Collection
Within the current context, secondary data and primary data would be collected. This is so because the current situation does not allow the researcher to pursue primary data collection which requires in person communication with the subject and usage of instrument tools such as interviews and questionnaires (Daniel, Kumar, & Omar, 2018). Secondary data will be collected by identifying those researches which have been previously conducted on the topic and relevant to the context which the learner is trying to highlight.
These references will be sourced from Torrens references library, in order to maintain authenticity and reliability. The excerpts of the selected studies would be inculcated within the present investigation so that the learner could present varying perspectives of various authors in reference to the evolving paradigms of Human Resource Management due to covid-19 pandemic. This will also learn to conduct a critical analysis and develop a neutral set of findings which is free of bias and is able to present true analysis.
The data related to the standing of HR challenges of Westpac bank will be collected by reflecting upon the articles and press releases that have been published with the same.
Data Analysis
Diagnostic analysis techniques would be used which allows individuals to gain a contextual understanding of the things which happened. It is necessary because if the concerned entity knows why something happened it is easy to postulate how it happened and then the things would be pinpointed in the exact way for dealing with the challenges (Phillips & Ritala, 2019). It also allows the learner to provide actionable and direct answers to specific questions and formulate strategies to solve the problem highlighted. The collected data from the secondary sources would be analysed in order to develop a conclusive set of findings.
Main Deliverables
The main deliverables of the study will provide solutions to the issues faced by the HR management. This will include development of mental focus groups so that the employees can talk with each other on an interpersonal basis which will curb the issues of lack of morale and lack of connections which is likely to elevate the mood and feelings of the employees which will in turn in half their efficiency and productivity. In addition to this, therapy sessions have also been suggested which will be set up with a licensed psychological professional so that the entity would be able to understand the situation of each individual specifically and provide them with unique solutions so that they can combat the situation in their own ways.
Both of these could be scheduled once a week for the employees of Westpac bank so that their workflow is not interrupted and yet their needs are pertained to. As some of the employees are still working through remote means all of this would be done on video conferencing platforms and will be monitored by HR executive services to ensure streamline flow of activities. It is the responsibility of the HR individuals to integrate these aspects within their working culture so as to ensure that the company has been successful in fighting with the challenges and curbing the gap bundling between the productivity of the employees and their morale due to these heartening situations in the external environment.
Timeline
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Figure 1: Proposed Gantt Chart for the Research
(Source: created by the researcher)
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References
Adikaram, A. S., Naotunna, N. P. G. S. I., & Priyankara, H. P. R. (2021). Battling COVID-19 with human resource management bundling. Employee Relations: The International Journal. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-08-2020-0390
Agarwal, P. (2021). Shattered but smiling: Human resource management and the wellbeing of hotel employees during COVID-19. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 93, 102765. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.102765
Aurelia, S., & Momin, M. M. (2020). Global reverberation and prediction for HRM amid and after COVID-19: A technological viewpoint. Materials Today: Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.11.544
Butterick, M., & Charlwood, A. (2021). HRM and the COVID?19 pandemic: How can we stop making a bad situation worse?. Human Resource Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12344
Caligiuri, P., De Cieri, H., Minbaeva, D., Verbeke, A., & Zimmermann, A. (2020). International HRM insights for navigating the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for future research and practice. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-020-00335-9
Carnevale, J. B., & Hatak, I. (2020). Employee adjustment and well-being in the era of COVID-19: Implications for human resource management. Journal of Business Research, 116, 183-187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.05.037
Daniel, B., Kumar, V., & Omar, N. (2018). Postgraduate conception of research methodology: implications for learning and teaching. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 41(2), 220-236. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2017.1283397
Harney, B., & Collings, D. G. (2021). Navigating the shifting landscapes of HRM. Human Resource Management Review, 100824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2021.100824
He, J., Mao, Y., Morrison, A. M., & Coca-Stefaniak, J. A. (2020). On being warm and friendly: the effect of socially responsible human resource management on employee fears of the threats of COVID-19. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-04-2020-0300
Gambe, R. L. (2020). COVID-19 impacts Asia-Pacific banks' earnings; Westpac flags more breaches. Retrieved From https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/covid-19-impacts-asia-pacific-banks-earnings-westpac-flags-more-breaches-59686848
Paulet, R., Holland, P., & Morgan, D. (2021). A meta?review of 10 years of green human resource management: is Green HRM headed towards a roadblock or a revitalisation?. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 59(2), 159-183. https://doi.org/10.1111/1744-7941.12285
Phillips, M. A., & Ritala, P. (2019). A complex adaptive systems agenda for ecosystem research methodology. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 148, 119739. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2019.119739
St Anne, C. (2020). How Westpac is managing the impact of COVID-19. Retrieved From https://www.rfigroup.com/australian-banking-and-finance/news/how-westpac-managing-impact-covid-19
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