The influence of human resource allocation process on the employee satisfaction level : Quality research ALLEGION - an International Manufacturing plant.

Abstract:

The aim of this thesis is to study the influence that the human resource allocation process carried out at ALLEGION has over the employee satisfaction level of its employees. ALLEGION is an international manufacturing project-oriented company based in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, which operates with over 8,500 employees.

Up until the development of this thesis, ALLEGION had never contemplated the job satisfaction level of its employees as a result of the human resource allocation process carried out in the company. Some studies have previously paid attention to the impact that best practices in human resource management have in employee performance, however, to our knowledge, it has never been discussed how the allocation of the human resources in a company can influence job satisfaction. For this reason, we believe is pertinent to conduct a study focusing on this topic.

This thesis is presented as a case study of ALLEGION which follows a qualitative method and an inductive approach, where we as researchers, explored the influence that the current method followed by the company to allocate its human resources to projects has over the job satisfaction level of its employees.

The first section of this thesis is dedicated to discuss the background of our research topic and to examine relevant literature focused in the subjects of human resource allocation and employee satisfaction. As part of this section, we encountered that four factors are consistently mentioned in the literature related to these core topics having an intrinsic relationship among them. We found that these factors were utilised by some scholars in the development of models to optimise the human resource allocation process and also during the measurement of employee satisfaction in different contexts. The four factors are: personal qualifications –referring to skills utilisation and expertise–, personal aspirations –referring to career development and personal growth–, group relationships –referring to personal relationships with co-workers and managers–, and finally, personal motivations –referring to job motivations–. At the end of this section we present a theoretical model that summarises our findings and highlights the correlations of the factors we identified from the literature.

The central part of this thesis focuses on our practical method which comprised nine interviews with employees and project managers of ALLEGION. Our interviews were aimed to discover the relationship and influence that the human resource allocation process implemented in the company had over the job satisfaction level in its employees respectively. As part of our findings we discovered that four elements were contributors to such influence and simultaneously were related to the findings obtained during our literature review. Based upon these four factors, we drew our conclusions for the study.

As a conclusion of this thesis, we found that the human resource allocation process conducted at ALLEGION holds a significant influence in the job satisfaction of its employees working in projects, and that four distinct factors should be taken into consideration during the process that functional managers carry out when they have to allocate their human resources to a certain project. These factors are: skills utilisation, career development, individual relationships of the employees with their co-workers and managers, and finally, job motivations. We concluded that the extent to which these elements are considered as part of the decision-making involved in the human resource allocation process will bring as a result a positive or negative outcome in terms of employee satisfaction among the projects of the organisation.