Mgt600 | Human Resource Issues Assessment Answers

Your group is from a well-regarded consultancy firm and has been engaged by your client, ComSyst Technologies (CST) to provide advice on addressing a variety of challenges. CST is a multi-national communications software and systems developer serving the defence and emergency services industries. CST has offices in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Philippines, India and South Korea. CST has recently lost three major tenders to competitors and their market share has declined substantially in the last two years. This has been attributed to some significant people related issues including poor employee performance, low employee engagement, a decline in staff retention and resignations of some key specialists. Technological advancements elsewhere have highlighted a gap in CST’s technical skills and capabilities.

Your brief from the client is to prepare a report with recommendations to achieve the following objectives over the next two years:

1. Ensure CST is well positioned for the future by attracting and retaining the best talent possible
2. Create a team based high performance culture
3. Build employee capability and performance 

Answer:

Introduction 

Human resource management can be said to be a strategic approach which is essential to the organizations as it is the workers which assist the organization to gain a competitive advantage. The Human resource management is also defined as the HR department and is designed in a manner such that it can help the business to maximize the performance of the employee and achieve the objectives of the business (Bratton & Gold, 2017). The primary aim of the Human resource function is to manage the people, focus on formation of policies and form systems which will help in the functioning of the organization. The Human resource department of the organization has the given functions:

• Designing employee benefit schemes
• Recruitment of employees
• Training and development of employees
• Appraisal of performance
• Reward designs and benefit system
• Organizational change and industrial relationships

Human resource management is often considered to be the most crucial aspect of the organization. The human resource department looks after the people management in a firm and tends to ensure that the employees present in an organization are well aligned with the strategy of the organization (Alfes, Truss, Soane, Rees, & Gatenby, 2013). This alignment will ensure that the firm is successfully able to harness the key activities of the firm and  that the organization is able to implement the correct policies and processes which help it to achieve the best in the business environment. The aim of the given report is to provide recommendations based on the case study of the ComSyst Technologies (CST). The organization has been facing turbulent times based on which it needs to have certain solutions need to be given to the organization which will help it to achieve the desired objectives as elaborated in the following sections. The report will be discussing the background of the case study, discuss the key theories by taking examples from the real world and also highlight certain recommendations which may be provided for the organization to adopt and succeed.

Background 

The ComSyst Technologies (CST) is a multinational communications system developer as well as a software organization which tends to provide service to defense and emergency service industries. The company has been going through a range of challenges due to the increased competition in the chosen industry. The company has its offices in various countries like the New Zealand, United States, India, Philippines, India, Australia and South Korea. The business environment is highly competitive and for this reason the company has lost various contracts in the past two years along with a declining market share. These problems can be contributed to the poor condition of the people management in the company and other problems which can be stated as follows;

• Low employee engagement- The management has a poor leadership layout which tends to lead to a poor employee engagement for the company and lowered Morales of the different employees.
• A decline in staff retention- Due to the poor management, the staff retention rate has also been declining considerably which leads to a poor employee structure.


Resignation of specialists- The different specialists who had key position in an organization have also been declining and one of the key positional members in the organization have also declined from their job.
Gap in technical skills and capabilities- The industry requires key skills and techniques, which most of the employees in the organization do not possess.

The given objectives have been stated to be achieved by the organization;

1.Ensuring that the company is well positioned for the future by attracting and retaining the best talent available

Through the stated objective, the company wants to prepare for the competitive future which it faces and wants to attract as well as retain the best talent which is available in the organization. The company knows that the achievement of the given stated objective shall only be possible in case the company is successfully able to ensure that it has a well-defined recruitment policy in place which will ensure that the company is able to attract the right employees. Furthermore, the company needs to have a retention policy in place with proper procedures to help the employees in their needs.

2.Creating a good team of high performers and cultured employees

A good team goes a long way in assisting the organization to achieve its goals. It is very important for the organization to see to it that the team has high performers which will help the organization to achieve its goals. However very often the employees lag skills and not all of them can be high performers. However, in this aspect the organization needs to ensure that it has various training and employee skill building sessions in place so as to ensure that the performers can become highly skilled. Furthermore, in order to make the employees present in the organization, cultured in nature, the organization needs to ensure that the firm is successfully able to envision the culture of the organization into its members and is able to bring about a good group of cultured employees who will then contribute towards the welfare of the organization.

3.Building employee capability and performance.

The organization wants to build the capabilities and skills of the organization thereby removing any technical gaps which exist in the organization.

Hence, it can be stated that the organization has a long way to go and it needs to ensure that it is able to achieve its objectives easily by employing certain techniques and methods which will be discussed in the following sections. The given section will be discussing the theory associated with the objectives and give real life organizational examples.

Main Discussion 

Attracting and retaining employees

With the increasing competition and difficulty to find the right kind of people for the right job, attracting and retaining the right kind of employees has become increasingly difficult. The issue is just not related to the attraction and recruiting of employees but also retaining of the employees in the organization. Earlier, the different companies expected job loyalty out of the employees, but this is not the case at present (Aswathappa, 2013). The employees are being accepted in the organization just after a short period of time. However, even then the employees are not getting impressed with the firm and tend to leave the organization. This often takes place because, many segments of the economy tend to have an overqualified employee which then tends to make them leave the company. Hence, if the organization is able to retent the different employees in a sound manner, it will be able to successfully ensure that the employee retention increases and that the firm ca build a workforce which will contribute towards the success of the organization in the long run.  Hence, in order to ensure that the attraction and retention of the different employees becomes better in the organization, the firm needs to employ a wide variety of strategies which will help the firm to motivate, recruit as well as retain the committed employees as present in the organization.

Figure 1: The employee Lifecycle

Source: (Brewster ., 2017)

In today`s age the high performing employees tend to look out for better packages and benefits. Hence, the first step to ensure that the employees stay with the organization is better compensation and growth. In order to ensure that the employees remain retained in the organization, they will be required to come out with innovative and creative techniques in order to ensure that the employees are willing to stay in the organization (Storey, 2014.). Furthermore, engagement is the key to success in the given organization and the different employees will be required to ensure that they take active participation in the different activities and that there exists different committees which look out to improve employee conditions in the organization and plan social functions as well. The primary objective needs to be to improve the work environment where the different employees are rewarded and recognized for the good performance (Brewster, Chung, & Sparrow, 2016). The organization needs to have a good communication system where all the employees are equally devoted towards the firm.

Example

The Fed Ex post services has one of the best employee recruitment and retention method around the globe (Fedex.com, 2018). The company is known to follow a systematized method of hiring the employees whereby it follows a referral system of recruitment and using various creative solutions, the company has been able to maintain its workforce. It has often been stated as the best company to work in.

Creating high performance culture 

Company culture can be described as the set of behaviors in an organization which determine the manner in which the procedures are carried out in an organization. A high performance culture demands for the employee to be respected in the firm but this is not the only aspect of company culture. It discusses the manner in which things are done in an organization and the reasons why they are done (Briscoe, Tarique, & Schuler, 2012).  When the culture of the company is high performing in nature then they can have a long impact on every corner of the organization. When the high performance culture exists in the organization then it tends to have a long impact on the firm and tends to increase the engagement, productivity as well as the retention. According to Purce (2015), the job turnover rate at companies with good cultures is 14% whereas with the ones without a proper culture is 48%.

A high performance culture can be said to be a culture which can lead the organization and assisting them in achieving between results. This becomes possible only when a trusting organization environment can be built by encouraging employees and providing them opportunities to grow (Teh & Girardi, 2015). The culture can be stated to drive a high performing organization and any company which tends to have between cultures has better financial results.

There are various methods, using which an organization can build a strong company culture, these are as follows:

Collaboration: This can be done by encouraging the different employees to cooperate, share and work together as a team to achieve success in the long run. This shall ensure that the different employees tend to collaborate well with the organization and feel a part of the firm.

Innovation: Innovation also forms a crucial part of the organization and any firm who tends to innovate regularly achieves success in the long run (Cascio, 2018). Hence, the company needs to encourage new ideas and individuals need to be able to engage well with the organization as well.

Agility: The Company needs to see to it that the employees are agile in nature and are able to adapt to the different opportuntieis easily

Communication: Communication is the key to success and all the employees should be able to send, receive and understand the necessary employees (Pudelko, Reiche, & Carr, 2015).

Wellness: The organization needs to have adequate resources and policies which should assist people in maintaining mental as well physical health as well.

Mission and vision alignment: The organization needs to ensure that the vision as well as the mission alignment is provided to the different employees in order to ensure that the culture is maintained in the organization.  

Figure 2: A high performance culture dimension

Source: (Harzing & Pinnington, 2014)

Example 

The ANZ bank understand the importance of a high performance culture and takes accurate measures continuously to ensure that the culture of the firm is upheld along with the performance. Hence, it comes up with a unique plan regularly to eschew the growth strategies and recast the culture back to the earnings and efficiency (Anz.com.au, 2018). This resulted positively for the firm and it was able to achieve long term success.

Building employee capability and performance

Not all employees who tend to be a part of the organization comprise of the various capabilities that are required to be present in an individual. Hence, it becomes considerably important for all the employers to ensure that the capability building needs to form a crucial aspect of the organization and that companies need to have a positive approach towards skill and learning development which is commonly referred to as on the job training.

The capabilities that companies need most have evolved, but methods of building those skills have not. Our survey finds that the most effective companies focus on sustaining skills and linking learning to business performance (Fenton-O'Creevy, Gooderham, & Nordhaug, 2008). With the growing age of technology, companies today prefer the evolving need of more skill based approaches like that of digital or experimental learning methods. However, there tends to exist a lack of the learning based metrics which go a long way in assisting an individual and in ensuring that the person is able to take in the training provided and how successfully the training has been imparted.

Figure 3: The different components of Capability Development

Source: (Furusawa & Brewster, 2016)

According to Tarique, Briscoe and Schuler (2015), the new trends in capabilities and capacities are now based on functional capabilities as well as front line (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2016). The capability building needs to be a top priority of the companies whereby the organization needs to ensure that the gaps which exist in the skills are to be covered and also match it accordingly with customer depends and strategic importance of the various skills.

Example

The Apple Inc. organization gives high importance to the capability and skill building o the employees and often comes up with various training and skill building seminars and programs which assist in ensuring that the firm is able to gain a competitive edge (Apple.com, 2018).

Recommendations 

Although the objectives as set by the company CST seem to be very difficult, there are various ways in which these objectives can be achieved. Certain recommendations have been provided for the same whereby the methods to achieve the objectives have been elaborated in details:

Recommendation 1: Acquiring and retaining talent

Recruiting through referrals

Although there are various avenues available to recruit the new employees. It is highly suggested that the organization always recruits new employees using recruitment through referrals. This is because recruitment through referrals is backed by a backup whereby the organizational employee will be easily able to assist the new employees and provide guarantee as well. Identification of new candidates and a procedural formal system needs to be put to place to keep the hr pipeline full (Hrvoice.org, 2018).

Other recruiting methods

Another effective method which can be used to recruit new employees is searching for people in the area (McGraw, 2014). The primary aim is to find quality people rather than quantity and hence, the managers should work along the recruiters in order to be able to provide them with a list of skills and qualities which shall assist the given hr manager to recruit the right employees.
Selecting employees

The second step of selecting the right employees. When the new employees are being hired, a proper selection criteria needs to be followed effectively by the CST Company which shall help in ensuring that the poor performers do not drain the productivity. Better hiring decisions can be made by the managers of CST such as the behavioral interviewing and the pre-employment assessment tools (Joshi, 2014). The behavioral interviewing allows the recruiting manager to spend quite some time with the employees, in order to ensure that they are at the right track and the pre-employment assessment tools help the organization in avoiding costly hiring mistakes by assessing the knowledge of the employees and their proficiency.

Reward systems 

After the employee has been selected, attracting them in the organization is also very important and hence, proper reward systems need to be present in the organization which shall help in ensuring that the compensation costs are managed well. There should be creative steps taken by the CST to ensure that the company success. Performance based systems need to be kept along with traditional merit systems which will increase participation and retention of employees.

Non-monetary rewards can also be provided to the employees so as to ensure that the employees perform well (Kang & Shen, 2014).

Communication

To retain the employees, the communication aspect of the organization needs to be very strong which will then assist the employees to communicate their problems wisely to the management. The best way to communicate with the different employees is to have a proper feedback system. To modern employees, communication is crucial and transparency in the system can be described as the biggest and the most crucial communication tool which CST can make use of.

Figure 4: The Performance Management forms an essential aspect of retaining employees

Source: (Lazarova, Morley, & Tyson, 2014)

Recommendation 2: Creation of high performance culture

Investing in a high performance culture can be described as a crucial procedure for the organization as it assists in ensuring that the company is able to attain competitive advantage (Marler & Fisher, 2013). For CST the following can be done to incorporate a high performance culture:

The establishment of the understanding of culture along with the metric description plays a key role in deciding for the firm so that the employees get the message of the organization easily.

The next step which is to be adopted by CST is ensuring that the employers concentrate on a few crucial areas and make just the relevant changes as required and lastly it is important for the firm to integrate the cultural change methods as adopted with business improvement initiatives. Once these steps have been taken, the firm will be able to perform well.

Recommendation 3: Improving capability

Lastly, if the CST Company looks out to improve the capabilities of the different employees, then it will successfully be able to ensure that the organization performs well. In order to do so, CST needs to conduct regulate training and skill gap building sessions so that its employees work hard towards ensuring that their skill grades improve. Moreover, providing performance incentives way also assist in achievement of high performance.

Figure 5: Inculcating Capability in the Organization

Source: (Marler & Fisher, 2013)

Conclusion

Therefore, from the given analysis on the case study based on the CST organization it can be reflected that the human resource department forms an essential part of the organization as it goes a long way in making the different employees understand that their goals and the organizational goals are same and if they wish to achieve the goals of the company they will automatically be able to achieve their personal goals. The case study reflected how the CST organization was finding it difficult to retain the employees and the existing ones lagged skills. Hence the agency was given the task of adopting three measures as objectives to improve the condition. For this, extensive analysis has been undertaken and recommendations have been provided accordingly. The report highlighted the problem, provided the background overview and recommended certain solutions for the improvement in the same aspect.

References

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