HRD : Human Capital management

Research Paper: State-of-the-Art of HR management practices in a Moroccan

SME.

Summary:


This assignment helped me familiarize with the Hr practices existing in Morocco. In this
project I had to choose a Moroccan SME and describe its internal Human Resource
department. This assignment was very demanding in terms of research and engagement.
Thanks to this project I developed a clear understanding of the state of the art of HR practices
in a real work situation. It was very interesting since it provided me with a new perspective
different from what we have studied.

Skills and Abilities:
Professioanlism and Dedication:
In this individual project I had to be very professional in organizing the work flow; I had to
manage to have an interview with CEO of the company. I really appreciated the way I
worked, I was totally dedicated to this project. I had to follow up by calling to get extra
information.

Hard working

I worked hard to succeed in this final project; it was for me an opportunity to use all my
potential. It was also kind of difficult to get an official interview; I had to research on the net
before calling the right person.

Analytical

I had to analyze the information given and adapt them to the course requirement. It was
something new for me to discover the real working environment. It was very demanding in
terms of linking the practices that we studied to a real company.















Research Paper: State-of-the-Art of HR management practices in
Moroccan SMEs


In the last decade, Morocco has known a great development of its organizational
economy, adopting policies imported from abroad adapted to Moroccan context. Still
Morocco remains a Muslim country with a different cultural background that may constitute a
barrier to substantial development and a competitive economy. As is known in public
economic circles, Morocco is dealing with serious problems of illiteracy and unemployment,
which greatly impede our development. Small and Medium Enterprises constitute a great
proportion of the Moroccan economy and therefore contribute to its economic and social
situation by primarily creating more employment in the labor market. However SMEs have
developed major probelems and face enormous challenges with regard to the lack of financial
resources as well as a lack of educated human capital necessary for the efficient management
of the national workforc. The concept oh human resources have been introduced recently by
the emergent multinational companies and is now becoming a major issue to consider even by
small businesses.
There is a wide range of definitions for SMEs. First and foremost it is necessary to
note that there is no exact definition of SMEs since different countries adopts different
criteria, such as employment, sales or investment. For instance, a specific country may define
an SME as an enterprise with less than 500 employees while another country may define it as
one with less than 250 employees. According to Wikipedia, the European Union suggests a
more standardized definition since they classify firms with less than 50 employees as "small",
and those with less than 250 as "medium". In this research paper, I prefer working and
adapting to this definition, which is "charte de la PME" setting a number of criteria that the
company I have chosen respect, which are holding no more than 200 permanent employees
and having realized a sales turnover inferior than 75 millions dirhams.

These small businesses are present in every domain representing representing 30 % of
the commercial and reparation activities, 22% of the real estates and enterprises services, 15%
of the manufacturing industries, 4 % of the transports and communications activities,etc
(www.finance .gov.ma).unfortunately, Many Smes still suffer primarily from a lack of
financial resources and especially of awareness toward the human resources management that
can be the key element to the well functioning of a company. In fact, the failure of a company
is not only due to a problem of money but also to a lack of training, lack of communication,
lack of competency and lack of human talent to ensure the achievement of organizational
goals. Here, it is not matter of money but matter of a rich human capital that can do a lot for
their companies even with poor resources.
As it was stated previously Moroccan Smes are facing many challenges and constraints
that may affect their growth. The first thing to consider when exposing these challenges is the
fact that these small enterprises are very vulnerable to their social and economical
environment. The second is the weaknesses of their structure and way to manage business
issues. The third and most important challenge is that Morocco is experiencing a low human
development (unemployment and illiteracy). All these aforementioned points constitute the
main reasons of the emergence of human resources in Moroccan companies to ameliorate
work environment, work efficiency and work performance, as well as educate people and
decrease unemployment.
The concept of Human resources is not wide spread in Morocco and even less in
SMEs; therefore, it is difficult to find relative information concerning HR practices in the
Moroccan context. First, Moroccan companies are not exploring the field of HR broadly
tending to reduce it or assimilated to practices such as, training, recruitment, selectingetc.
Second, the Moroccan educational system is not given a big importance to this issue; the only
institution offering this program is Al-Akhawayn University. Actually, Moroccan
environment lack of educated people mastering the HR field which can be a real source of
competitive advantage. Another obstacle to the promotion of this practice is the structure of
these small offices in itself. Generally, the owners are also the managers that are not
necessarily educated and therefore are not aware of the importance of having an HR
department. Those people think that it is only a waste of money and time without any
importance. As we can infer there is no real and effective HRM practices in Moroccan SMEs.
Many factors stand in the way of fully implementing those practices. In addition to that there
is a lack in human resources function in the company and therefore a lack of attention given
to human resources issues. The principle of owner manager reduces the efficiency of the
organization, since it is difficult for companies to define their needs.
Human resources management practices and roles in Moroccan Smes:
Human resources management is such complex processes encompassing practices
such as, Job design, recruitment, evaluating, promoting, personal planning, hiring, developing
and compensating. However, not all these dimensions are covered by Smes when treating HR
issues. In fact, Human Resources management practices In Morocco are usually limited to
recruiting, training and evaluation.
Case study: SADET company: ( Societe Arabe de Development Technologique)
To discuss the Human resources Practices that exist in Moroccan companies, I decided
to include this short case study through which I will try to expose the main HR practices
existing In Sadet Company. This case study is based on a face to face interview with
WIDAD EL MAMMOURI who is the HR manager that identified the practices they used in
their company.


Background and structure of the company:
This company started as a family owned enterprise before becoming a Sme. This
company produces materials of construction that get sold all around Morocco. Its main
concerns at the beginning ware to first produce an amount of cement to sell and make benefits
and profits and the right after started importing useful machines, which could help them
produce faster and more efficiently. This means that because it was making efforts in
progressing it was not giving crucial importance in HR practices. This is normal for a starting
enterprise especially a manufacturing enterprise, where employees do not need educational
skills but only task based skills to perform their different jobs. The headquarter of the
company is based in Rabat and has various factories located in cities like Fes, Agadir and
Nador. This company has developed at a great speed and started reaching high levels of
competition. This is when they upgraded to an SME when they reached about 150 hundred
employees and started making a more than 10 million dh annually. The companys objective
was to be recognized and labeled by the ISO 9000, which is a privilege and, which made
administrators use even more motivational features towards the well being of their employees
and enterprise in general.
Structure
This company has a permanent staff of 150 people that consist of 25 top mangers, 80
employees, and 45 workers. In addition to these, 80 non permanent employees are available in
period of high production.
From the observation of the diagram depicting the hierarchal structure of the company,
we can see the Human resources department is minimized comparing to big companies. Once
again, it means that the HR field is not really expanded. From this interview, the HR manager
1
Interview with
CEO
Final Interviews
3
Applicants Remaining
20

has no complete authority when deciding about human resources issues. A collaborative work
is done between the manager and the Hr manager.
Human resources practices:
To develop this research paper accordingly to this case study, I decided to talk about 4
major steps of HR management.
I-RECRUITING:
Recruiting is by definition, the process of generating a pool of qualified applicants for
organizational jobs. From the explanation of the HR manager recruitment is done as follows:
This process is engendered by an internal demand of recruitment coming from hierarchal
superior of a specific department.
In this company they are using in this practice 2 main elements:
Competencies Matrices: It consist of a table that recruiter consult to see the
requirement of a specific job (skills, professional qualities, communication skill,
educational leveletc.)
Table of salaries (grille des salaries): it consists of a table that matches each job
with a certain salary. This table can be useful to eliminate for example people
with high pretensions.
The recruitment methods used in this company are not very developed since they are
not using advanced practices. They have a research channel that use announcement.
However, sometimes they have recourse to a recruitment office in need of non
permanent workers. The HR manager said that these methods are more than enough
and that the use of method like internet is not necessary.


Recruiting Evaluation Pyramid:

IISELECTION:
Selection comes right after recruiting. It is the process of choosing individuals who
have needed qualification to fill the jobs in a company.
In this company a big importance is directed to this stage. It is a step by step process:
The first thing is a skimming process of the rsums and letter of motivation.
A set of pre-established test are available to examine professional and psycho
technique skills.
Small test to see their abilities with numbers.
1
Interview with CEO
Final Interviews = 3
Applicants Remaining = 20
Total applicants = 100
Test on the job itself done usually by a hierarchal superior of a specific
department.
What is important to notice here is that the HR manager is not the only person involved in the
selection, since the hired person should sometimes go through more than one interview; the
first one with the HR manager and the second with the CEO. After the signature of the
contract, the hired person goes through a period dessai. Once the person is hired, he or she
may follow a training program to acquire the skills and performance to achieve organizational
goals.
III-TRAINING:
Once again this process is engendered by a hierarchal superior of the department that
needs to train its employees.
Hierarchal superior ======HR Department ===== Fiche de recueil formation de
leur collaborateur. Then, the HR manager elaborates a global training plan.
In this company the training concern more Top manager and employees than workers
(ouvries). Ultimately, the company top managers have followed a seminar of leadership
training including the HR manager. In Some case the company calls for an external trainer
depending on the training issue. For instance, if a new accountant is hired, he may need a
training to master certain software to perform specific tasks. Another kind of training that
target workers is on the job training. Sometimes workers are not familiar with new machines
and therefore need a trainer that would explain in a simple way (Moroccan dialect) the
mechanisms.
In contrast with what people may think, there is a great assistance of the Moroccan
government in terms of Human development. The OFPPT ( Office de Formation Profession et
promotion Technique) is responsible to finance a part of the training. Each year a report is
made where the company defines its administrative status to this office. If the training is
predicted and delivered accordingly, the company receives 80% of the training costs. While,
if the training is not predicted they may receive 40%. In this case the training is considered as
a contribution to the human resources development and therefore to the Moroccan human
development.
IV- EVALUATION:
Before the evaluation phase a plan of integration is elaborated 3 months later to see if
the employees are well introduced in the work environment.
The evaluation part consists of 2 facets:
Evaluation of the competencies:
In this company this evaluation is done once a year where they see if the objectives described
by the job design (Fiche de poste) are achieved. It is an opportunity for the company to
establish (Fiche de receuil des besoins de formation individuelle), and also to promote
employees.
Evaluation de performances:
This evaluation is done twice; in July and January, based on the achievement of individual
objectives. The Hr manager of SADET explains to me the importance of doing this evaluation
2 times a year to see if the employees respect the deadline and the objectives.
From these evaluation comes out the concept of career management by doing some internal
promotion of the internal competencies.
PERSONAL THOUGHTS:
This case study was only an example of a well integrated SME that have a minimum of
awareness of Human Resources Management issues. Many are the companies who operate
without the existence of this department thinking that is a waste of money, and many are the
owners of SME who think about making money neglecting the rights of employees. Having
an effective Human resources department is far from being cost consuming, it is actually a
source of competitive advantage and revenue. Even more important, Human Resources
management practices are not only meant to assist the growth of Moroccan Smes, but to
develop our human development by educating the active population.