Functional Areas and Communication Essay

Manchester airport must be able to recruit the best employees and make sure they work effectively and safely. The responsibility for these tasks lies with the human resources department. HRD is involved with staff development. The department is divided into five different areas; recruitment retention and dismissal, working conditions, training development and promotion, employee organisations and unions and health and safety. Recruitment is getting the right people for the jobs, retention is keeping them and dismissal is where the employee is required to leave their job. The staff in the ‘working conditions’ department assesses everyone’s working environment within Manchester airport and decides if it needs improvement and how to do it. The ‘training, development and promotion’ department deal with the quality of the employees work; if they need to go on a training course to refresh their skills or find out how the job and company works or to get promoted because their standard of work is excellent. The ’employee organisations and unions’ department deals with care groups within the work life. The ‘health and safety’ department deal with the health and safety of everyone’s working environment and make sure that all the regulations are complied with. All businesses such as Manchester airport need to manage all the incoming and outgoing money. They also need to understand this information in order to plan what to do next. The finance department deals with these three areas; preparing accounts, paying wages and salaries and obtaining capital and resources. There are three types of account, financial accounts, cost accounts and management accounts. Financial accounts are usually found in large organisations such as Manchester airport, it deals with how much has been spent and how it has effected the profits. Cost accounts calculate the cost of the businesses services and products. The management accountant deals with the actual income and expenditure of each of Manchester airports activities. The work of the finance department affects other areas within Manchester airport because it funds them for improvement expansion and development. The administration and IT support function helps Manchester airport run smoothly from day to day. This could cover a number of different tasks such as clerical work, cleaning and maintainance, health and safety, security and support for software applications, electronic communications and electronic transactions. IT might be used to cut costs and improve Manchester airports services. This might be achieved by use of electronic communication between departments such as e-mail and the Internet or different facilities to share common data like employee records and financial data. Security systems, external communications, online support for customers and electronic transactions might also help to achieve this. Clerical work deals with administrative tasks such as mail, keeping records, logbooks, references and organising meetings. Mail can be delivered two ways, by direct delivery or private box. Direct delivery means the post is sent directly to the firms business address. In large firms such as Manchester Airport the delivery will be to the reception desk. The disadvantage of this is that work cannot begin on the mail until a delivery has been made. Alternately firms can rent a box at the local post office each box has a number that is part of the firms address. Mail addressed to the firms Post Office box (PO box) number is stored until a representative of the firm arranges to collect it. The collection time can be arranged for before most of the employees start work so as soon as they arrive they can start work on it. The procedures of opening mail vary according to the size of the firm. In small organisations the people to whom the letters are addressed will open them and deal with them directly. This system will be used for the individual branches of McDonald’s. in larger firms the unopened mail will be sorted into piles for each department or to people to whom they are addressed. Then the letters will be opened. In all but the smallest of organisations a secretary or manager will open the letters and in the larger firms there will be a mail room to deal with incoming and outgoing mail. Manchester Airport will have a mail room. Businesses store their records in a variety of ways, for example as photocopies or on computer disc. IT makes this process easior and faster. Filing is very important especially in large business such as Manchester Airport where the amount of information increases at a more rapid rate than in smaller businesses for instance the individual branches or McDonald’s. documents can be filed in a variety of ways, alphabetically, chronologically (on order of date) or geographically (according to county, town or country they were sent). Logbooks is used to record chosen activities. The most common use of logbooks in businesses is probably the post book. They can also be used to record who has taken which document to which department and visitors are often asked to sign in and out of a log book. Logbooks are a useful way of recording actions so that information can be tracked down easily. They will be used more in larger organisations which have a lot of valuable information rather than a small business which receives and creates only a small amount of documents.