Processes of human resource management - acquisition (recruitment and selection); development (induction, training, mentoring, performance appraisal); maintenance (employee participation, organisational culture, change management); separation (voluntary - resignation, retirement; involuntary - retrenchment, redundancy, dismissal)

What this dot point is asking

NESA wants you to know the four-stage employee lifecycle (acquisition, development, maintenance, separation), the sub-steps within each, and how a real Australian business runs each stage. Section II often tests acquisition or separation; Section IV extended responses can ask you to evaluate the four-stage process across a business.

The answer

Acquisition

Acquisition is the process of attracting and selecting people the business needs.

Recruitment. Defining the role, the requirements (skills, experience, behaviours), and attracting applicants. Three sourcing models.

• Internal recruitment. Posting the role to existing employees first - promotion, internal transfer, secondment. Faster, cheaper, lower-risk; develops existing staff; signals investment in careers.
• External recruitment. Going to the open market - job boards (Seek, LinkedIn), recruitment agencies (Hays, Robert Half, Michael Page), employer-brand campaigns, university partnerships, referral programs.
• Hybrid. Most large Australian businesses post most roles internally and externally simultaneously.

Selection. Shortlisting, interviewing, testing, reference checking, offer. Effective selection uses structured interviews (the same questions asked of all candidates), skill or work-sample tests (a coding test for a software role, an in-tray exercise for a manager), and reference checks against the role's actual requirements.

Increasingly AI-assisted - candidate-screening platforms (Hudson, SHL, HireVue) can triage hundreds of applicants. The Australian context requires care - AI selection tools must not discriminate on protected grounds (age, gender, race) even indirectly.

Development

Development is the process of growing workforce capability.

Induction. Orientation in the first weeks. Covers the business (vision, strategy, structure), the role (responsibilities, success criteria, key relationships), the systems (HR systems, security, tools), and the culture (values, expected behaviours, norms). A well-designed induction reduces time-to-productivity by months.

Training. Skill-building specific to the role or function. Modes:

• On-the-job training. Learning while doing, under supervision. The default mode for trades and many service roles.
• Classroom or e-learning. Structured formal training - product knowledge, compliance, leadership skills.
• Secondment. Temporary placement in another role or business to build cross-functional capability.
• External courses and formal qualifications. University courses, professional certifications (CPA, CFA), trade qualifications (electrician, plumber).

Australian businesses spend an average of around $1,000-$2,000 per employee per year on training, with knowledge-economy businesses (Atlassian, Macquarie, NAB) spending several times that.

Mentoring. Pairing junior staff with senior staff for ongoing development beyond formal training. Useful for career development, knowledge transfer, and integration of new hires.

Performance appraisal. Structured review of work against expectations. Two modes.

• Developmental appraisal. Focused on what the employee can improve. Useful for ongoing capability development.
• Administrative appraisal. Focused on outcomes for decisions on pay, promotion or separation. Higher stakes, requires careful evidence.

Modern systems often use 360-degree feedback (input from manager, peers, direct reports, sometimes customers) and OKR-based goal setting (objectives and key results).

Maintenance

Maintenance is keeping employees engaged, productive and committed.

Employee participation

Involving employees in decisions that affect their work. Mechanisms include enterprise bargaining (covered separately), works councils, joint health-and-safety committees, employee surveys and town halls. High-participation cultures correlate with higher engagement and lower turnover.

Organisational culture

The shared values, behaviours and norms of the workforce. Culture is shaped by leadership behaviour, recognised behaviours (what gets rewarded), recruitment patterns (who is hired), and physical and digital workspaces. A strong culture is a competitive asset and a major HRM concern.

Change management

Helping the workforce navigate change (technology, restructure, growth, contraction). Established approaches include Kotter's eight-step change model (urgency, coalition, vision, communication, empowerment, short-term wins, consolidation, anchoring) and Lewin's unfreeze-change-refreeze model. We cover change management in more depth in VCE Business Management's Senge dot point.

Separation

Separation is the end of the employment relationship.

Voluntary separation

• Resignation. Employee chooses to leave. Notice per the contract, award or NES.
• Retirement. Employee chooses to retire. Typically aligned with superannuation preservation age (60) or age pension age. Cannot be employer-pressured (age discrimination is unlawful).

Exit interviews from voluntary separations are a valuable source of insight on engagement, leadership and culture issues.

Involuntary separation

• Retrenchment / redundancy. The role is no longer required - because of restructure, automation, business contraction, or strategic redirection. Must be genuine (the role, not the person), the business must consult and consider redeployment, and the NES requires scaled redundancy pay (no payment for under 1 year service; up to 16 weeks pay for 9-10 years; capped lower beyond that).
• Dismissal for cause. Termination because of underperformance or misconduct. Must follow procedural fairness - warnings for performance issues, investigation and chance-to-respond for misconduct. Unfair-dismissal claims can be brought to the Fair Work Commission within 21 days of dismissal (with a small-business exemption and minimum employment period).

Australian legal context

The Fair Work Act 2009 underpins all four processes through the NES, the unfair-dismissal regime, and the General Protections (against adverse action for protected reasons like union activity, complaints, parental leave).

The Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act, the Sex Discrimination Act, the Disability Discrimination Act, the Age Discrimination Act and state equivalents all apply across the four processes.

The Closing Loopholes Acts of 2023 and 2024 affect acquisition (sham contracting penalties, casual conversion rights), maintenance (labour-hire "same job same pay") and separation (small-business unfair-dismissal threshold).