2-Investigating a Business Issue from an HR Perspective

Module: Investigating a Business Issue from an HR Perspective
The assessment for this module is in two parts:
• A 7000 word business report about the business issue that you have investigated and a short reflective report of 500 words.

Business Report
You are required to write a report on the research that you have carried out for this module. As previously explained, the report should be written in the formal academic report style, and you are likely to include the following sections:
• Abstract
• Literature review
• Results
• Conclusions
• References
• Introduction
• Methodology
• Discussion
• Recommendations
• Appendices.

Reflective Report
You are required to write a short reflective report of 500 words about the business issue that you have researched. In writing this report:
• Reflect on the reasons that you chose the topic. Did you manage to meet your original objectives?
• Reflect on the parts of the module that you found most difficult. Why were they difficult? What have you learnt from that?
• Reflect on what you have learnt about carrying out secondary research. How can those lessons be used in other learning?
• Reflect on what you learnt from carrying out primary research. What would you change if you were to carry out the research again? What were the most difficult aspects?
• Think about your own CPD record. Update it in accordance with what you have learnt from this task.
• Think about your career. Have your career aspirations changed at all as a result of your experiences?

In this module, the final assessment is a project that you complete on an HR-related business issue of your choice. As you work through the learning material, you will develop that project step by step. By the time that you get to the end of the learning material, your assessment will nearly be complete.
This means that the pace at which you work through the learning material will be different from other modules. There might be parts that you move through quite quickly (for example, if you already have a clear idea of the topic you want to research, you might move through the section where you choose the topic quite quickly). However, there will be other sections where you need to stop for a while – for example, whilst you carry out your research. Hopefully, this approach of working through the development of the project step by step will mean that you apply your learning at each stage, thinking in detail about each step of the process.
It is very important to note that the project must be a business issue which is investigated from an HR perspective. Hence, it must be based on HR – and it must also be related to a business issue.
Another requirement is that your project must address a specific research question or test a hypothesis. It cannot be a general, but somewhat vague, overview of your chosen topic. We will look at how to develop a research question in the next section.
The final requirement is that the project should make reference to relevant academic work, whether in the form of theory, concepts, models or techniques. Put simply – you must use academic sources as the basis for your research.
Those are the requirements that you must meet. To do this, we are going to follow a logical approach that is summarised clearly in a flow chart on page 10 of your textbook. The logical steps that we are going to follow are:
1. Identify the research topic
2. Critically review the literature
3. Identify the approach that is to be taken
4. Design the research
5. Negotiate access and consider ethical issues
6. Plan the approach to data collection
7. Analyse the data
8. Write the research proposal
9. Reflect on the process.
My main interest areas are employee relations and employment law. Hence, I thought about topics within those two broad headings that are of interest to me. My ‘brainstorm’ produced the following:
• Flexible working
• Stress
• Discrimination.
It is now important to think about how these HR topics relate to a business issue. It is important that your research adds value to the business, and is of strategic importance. So, think about issues such as: