Executive Summary
Good HR practices will allow organizations to have good employees. Having the right employee at the right place will be a definite advantage when it comes to the organizational performance in today’s competitive environment. This report is focusing on the People’s Merchant Finance PLC’s HR practices and how they have contributed to the organizational success. PMF is a loss-making entity due to several reasons, main being not having proper strategies in place to face market challenges, thus the company is not performing well. Major part of this performance deviation is backed with its bad HR practices, which are identified and discussed in detail in this report.
Being a service providing entity, it is expected that the company will have to follow good HR practices in order to face the market competition and provide a competitive and good service it its customers. Initial part of this report will identify the HR related issues for the information of the company’s board of directors. They will then be compared with the industry practices to check what went wrong and how it went wrong. Further the corrective actions will then be discussed along with recommendations on implementation of strategic HR plan within the organization. Conclusion is done as per the recommendations and what I have learnt from conducting this assignment.

1. Introduction
1.1. Background
Peoples Merchant Finance PLC (PMF) is a subsidiary of the Sterling Motors Pvt Limited (Sterling) which is the largest automotive importer and distributor in Sri Lanka. PMF was acquired by Sterling in early 2020, via a private share transfer by offering a value for the ownership of more than 60% of its shares from the Peoples Bank. (PMF, 2021)
The company being operating in the financial services sector have been facing few operational difficulties recently. When inquired, it has been identified that the adverse economic impact prevailing in the country and the bad management practices have led the company to its current position. In order to overcome this situation and make profits again, the company should focus on improving their current operational practices.
The quality-of-service provision will play a key role in the finance business. The customers will expect a good service from the company. Being a service-oriented company, the service levels will be depending on the human resource of the company. However, when closely observed, it could be identified that majority of the company’s employees are dissatisfied about their job and there are no proper control and monitoring mechanism in place to make this correct and take the company back to the right track. (Perera and Aruppala, 2013)
1.2. Scope
This report will focus the human resource management practices currently followed at PMF. Detailed analysis will be conducted to identify the strategic human resource management which should be brought for the attention of the board. Different approaches will be suggested to implement corrective actions and create a performance-based culture. The implementation plan will also be discussed with improvement points for the strategy suggested.
1.3. Purpose
The purpose of this report is to evaluate the current human resource practices followed by the company and provide recommendations to improve such practices in order to serve better to their customers. It is expected that a proper controls and monitoring mechanism along with corrective actions will enable the company to create a good human resource for the company where the profitability targets will also be achieved.

2. Strategic Issues that need the attention of the Board of Directors
While there are lots of areas to be focused in aligning the corporate strategy towards achieving the organizational goals, the focus area will be limited to the human resource management practices followed by the company.
2.1. HR Planning
HR Planning is focused on having right people at right places. It evaluates the current and future human resource requirements of the organization. It also identifies the deficiencies of the organization’s current HR practices and provides solutions to overcome such situations. (Macaleer and Shannon, 2003)
When analyzing the PMF’s situation it could be identified that there is no proper HR planning & implementation process in place. The current HR department only consists of two employees who are below the manager grade. They report to a Deputy General Manager who overlooks Legal, Administration and Human Resource Management of the organization. Given that his scope is wider, the follow up on HR planning could not be observed.