Payroll expenses are usually the highest expense at most firms. If you lead the market, this expense can be taxing.

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The purpose of this assignment is to choose a compensation philosophy that is appropriate for your chosen firm and articulate a rationale for this selection.

 

 

 

There are two aspects to this assignment. First, describe the risks and benefits with leading, meeting, and lagging the market in overall compensation and benefits. Next, choose the appropriate strategy (lead, meet, or lag) for your firm, and provide rationale about why this is appropriate.

 

 

 

There is a minimum requirement of 600 words for the compensation purpose and strategy document.

 

 

 

Consider some of the following factors in your assignment:

 

 

 

1. Payroll expenses are usually the highest expense at most firms. If you lead the market, this expense can be taxing.

 

 

 

2. If you are pursuing top talent in human capital rich industries (e.g., software engineering), lagging the market may keep you from competing for market share against your competitors.

 

 

 

3. If you meet the market, paying average will generally not attract top talent, and in addition, you will not have the labor-cost savings of a lag-the-market strategy.

 

 

 

 

 

Any sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations in APA format.

 

 

 

 

 

Textbook:

 

Stewart, G. L., & Brown, K. G. (2015). Human resource management: Linking strategy to practice (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Union Avoidance And Ethics

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One of the stated objectives of the National Labor Relations Act is to provide a framework where workers can, if they so choose, organize to collectively bargain with their employer over wages, hours, terms, and conditions of employment.

Wal-Mart, as the largest retailer in the United States, has been criticized for its approach to unions. A reading in this module highlights Wal-Mart.

Link:

https://consumerist.com/2014/12/11/nlrb-judge-rules-that-walmart-illegally-punished-california-workers-for-participating-in-protests/

After reading the article, do you see any ethical issues raised by Wal-Mart’s approach? Please explain. Does Wal-Mart (or does any employer, for that matter) have any ethical obligation to its employees and/or society when confronted with a union-organizing effort? Why or why not?

Hewlett Packard Enterprise- Creating An Effective Communication Plan For A Succession Planning Policy

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Internal communication plans can educate employees, relieve stress, and inspire open conversations about an organization’s future. Most importantly, communication plans can help to identify and overcome common succession barriers. Although an effective communication plan is only a small piece of the overall succession puzzle, it is the first proactive step toward laying the foundation for stakeholder collaboration and the alignment of a cohesive, systematic process. If done correctly, communication plans can increase organizational buy-in, reduce resistance, and strengthen succession planning initiatives.

In this week’s Assignment, continue to examine barriers to succession planning by applying your analysis to the organization (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) for your Course Project. In addition, use Chapter 6, “Starting a Systematic Program,” of the course text Effective Succession Planning to formulate a company-wide plan to change the culture of an organization.

To successfully complete this Assignment, review Chapter 5, “Making the Case for Major Change” of the course text Effective Succession Planning to determine the strategies human resources (HR) can use to change the succession planning culture of an organization. Finally, synthesize the information from these resources, as well as from the other articles provided in the Learning Resources, and apply them to the scenario below.

Scenario
Assume that you are the HR manager for Hewlett Packard -Enterprise that you chose for your Course Project. After the recent earthquakes and tsunamis that have impacted industries around the world, the scholarly conversations on the benefits of succession planning have reached an all-time high. In fact, because of this, your organization has asked you to develop such a plan to safeguard the company’s knowledge and hierarchy of internal workings. The board of directors would like you to set this plan in motion before any changeovers occur due to necessity or as a result of an unforeseen disaster. You are excited about this change in culture, as you have long been a proponent of establishing a succession plan for your organization. You are worried, however, as you know many executives might see this plan in an unfavorable light.

As you leave your meeting with the board of directors, you have your first and arguably most difficult step ahead of you. You are to come up with a communication plan that will help both the executives and mid-level employees become comfortable with the idea of succession planning. Your communication plan must educate the organization on mentoring options, as well as possible growth opportunities. You must also explicitly state that HR will use both internal and external recruiting methods to find potential successors to fill the company’s future positions. Finally, the last emphasis of your communication plan must include a positive message, ensuring all employees of the benefits that succession planning can bring, as well as encouraging them to “get involved.”

To complete this Assignment, respond to the following in a 3 page paper:

  • Develop a company-wide succession planning policy and communication plan that effectively changes the organizational culture.
    • Create a list of the top three implementation barriers associated with your organization’s succession plan.
      • Outline the way in which you would address each of these barriers.
    • Solidify the role you would like each member of the triumvirate (HR professional, CEO, and board of directors) to play in this succession plan. For example, should they continue to play the roles you identified in last week’s Assignment, or should their roles be strategically refocused?
      • Support your response by writing a role description for each player.
    • Include a mission statement for your succession plan. (Note: This mission statement should not be the same as the organization’s public mission statement. Instead, it should reflect the purpose of implementing your succession plan. Use Exhibit 6-3, “Worksheet to Formulate a Mission Statement for Succession Planning and Management,” on page 143 of the Rothwell text to guide you during the creation of your mission statement.)
    • Propose two to three goals you hope your plan will achieve. For example, what cultural changes would you like to see?
    • Describe three long-term procedures that support the policies you will need to put into place to help change the organization’s succession planning culture, for example, Dormant’s ABCD model described on pages 124-129 of the course text Effective Succession Planning.
  • Develop the key pieces (noting this is not a full-fledged communications plan) of an effective communication plan.
    • Explain the rationale behind your succession planning initiative.
      • Why are you implementing a new process for identifying successors?
      • How can this enhance the organization’s sustainable, competitive advantage?
      • How will each person in the organization be involved? In addition, how might this new process affect individuals working in the organization?
      • Describe mentoring options, as well as opportunities for growth.
      • Outline at least two internal and two external recruitment methods you aim to use.
      • Include a positive sentiment that will increase buy-in through all levels of your organization.
    • Identify at least three communication methods (e.g., internal memo, town hall meetings, outside news releases, etc.) you would use to underline the importance of both the succession plan and the needed change in organizational culture.
      • Justify why you would use these communication methods over other available options. For example, how would these specific communication methods fit the needs and culture of the organization and its employees?

Note: Your Assignment must include three new references to support your writing.

Human Resource Management Case Study Writing Assignment

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Prepare a three-page report (not including cover and reference page) on the following:

Read the closing case study (Attachment) at the end of Chapter 7, “The Temptation of Temping” and answer the question 1-3 at the end of the case.

closing case study?

1.You’re a senior man- ager at a growing business, and you’re ready to manager has recommended a temp-to-perm policy. You know the advantages of this approach, but what might be some of the disadvantages?

2. Assume that you’re a prospective job seeker (which you may very well be). What do you personally see as the advantages and disadvantages of taking a temp-to-perm position? Under what circumstances are you most likely to take a temp-to-perm position?

3. What sort of challenges are likely to confront a manager who supervises a mix of temporary and permanent employees? In what ways might these challenges differ if the temporary workers have been hired on a temp-to-perm basis rather than on a strictly temporary basis?

Although this is a case study, it should still be treated as a writing assignment. Please follow guidelines to research, read and report on current HRM issues or case studies related to Recruitment & Diversity. Provide research supporting your position. Be sure your paper has proper APA citation.

“HR 4th Edition” Authors: Angelo DeNisi, Ricky Griffin (Chapter 7)

 

 

Closing Case

The Temptation of Temping

 

Several years ago New Yorker Diana Bloom logged on to Craigslist, an online network that posts free classified ads, and offered her services as a tutor, editor, and translator. She’s been making a living on the short-term jobs that come her way from the website ever since. A former English profes- sor who couldn’t find secure long-term employment, Bloom works out of her home in order to take care of a young son. Temp work is also appealing, she says, because “I’m not very outgoing, and getting my foot in the door to companies would have been hard.”

Craigslist works in the other direction, too, with employ- ers posting openings for jobs both permanent and tempo- rary. Another New Yorker, Simone Sneed, scours the Craigslist “Gigs” section for jobs that last for perhaps a day, often for just a few hours. Whether as a backup singer or a grants writer, she’s turned the strategy of patching together “gigs” into a convenient way to supplement the income from her full-time job. “I’ll use the extra money to pay off my school loan,” she says. “Every little bit helps.”

In the current economic climate, unfortunately, overall job postings are down on Craigslist and everywhere else, ex- cept for short-term jobs—gigs that usually include no health benefits, sick days, or paid vacations. If you’re employed short term or part-time for economic reasons (probably because you got laid off ), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) classifies you as “underemployed.”

Naturally, most people who are “underemployed” are, by definition, overqualified. In fact, they often have years of professional experience but are willing to take jobs that don’t call for their levels of training or experience. Take the case of Gloria Christ. As national project manager for an information- technology company in the Chicago area, Christ used to co- ordinate the installation of Wi-Fi hotspots all over the country. She has several years of managerial experience but is also been willing to put it to use as a temporary office manager. Of course, she’d like something with a little more long-term promise: “At this point in time,” she says, “I think even if there was something that was temporary, it could become full time later on. . . . Sometimes,” she explains, “you can go in at a low level to interview just to get your foot in the door.”

It may be small compensation (so to speak), but because of the recent economic situation, although many companies are reluctant to add costly permanent jobs, they are increas- ingly willing to open up temporary positions to tide them over. Often, of course, you’ll have to take a job that isn’t ex- actly what you’ve trained for or set your sights on, but as one

employment-services manager observes, job seekers today “are more than willing to try new occupations—much more willing than they were even a year ago.”

Interestingly, for a lot of people, the adjustment to cur- rent labor-market conditions isn’t necessarily as traumatic as you might think. A recent survey conducted by the tem- porary-staffing agency Kelly Services found that as many as 26 percent of employed American adults regard them- selves as “free agents” when it comes to the type of job that they’re willing to take (up from 19 percent in 2006). Of all those polled, only 10 percent said that they’re doing tem- porary work because they’ve been laid off from permanent jobs; 90 percent said that they’re doing it because they like the variety and flexibility that temping afford them.

Kelly client Jaime Gacharna’s first assignment was pack- aging products for a light-industrial wholesaler—“putting doorknobs into little bags,” he recalls. Since then, he’s worked for eight different employers, working at a job for a few days, a few weeks, or a few months. He doesn’t mind the constant adjustments because the variety in his work life compen- sates for the drawbacks. “If I want to try something out, and I like it,” says Gacharna, “I can stay with [the company]. If I don’t, I can always just call up Kelly and say I want something different.”

In fact, temping offers several advantages. It can, for example, provide income during career transitions, and it’s a good way to exercise a little control over the balance between your work and the rest of your life. In 1995, for ex- ample, when she was 7 months pregnant with her first child, veteran retail manager Stacey Schick accepted a two-week data-entry job with the Orange County (New York) Associa- tion of Realtors. “I didn’t know how to turn on a computer,” she remembers, but “they needed bodies.” Now the mother of two, Schick is still with the Association as its education coor- dinator. “I would never have considered it,” she says, if a job in her field had come up, but the job she landed in has turned out to be a much better fit with her lifestyle: “It’s afforded me the opportunity to have a family and be able to have time with them.”

The path taken by Schick is called “temp-to-perm,” and it offers employers several advantages as well. Companies that are hesitant to make commitments to untested employees can try before they buy—they get a chance to see employees in action before finalizing hiring decisions. Because there are no fees to pay when an employee goes from temp to perm, trying out temps is also cheaper than paying an agency outright to find a hire. The big savings, of course, come from ben- efits, which can amount to one-third of the total cost of compensating a permanent position.

Then there’s the economy. While many employers have laid off full-time workers, many have tried to compen- sate by turning over some of the work to temp staff. Ironically, of course, many of those who’ve been laid off are highly qualified, and as they hit the job market willing to accept lower-level positions, the ranks of job hunters are being joined by a substantial number of highly qualified (which is to say, overqualified) workers. “The quality of candidates,” says Laura Long of Banner Person- nel, a Chicago-area staffing agency, “is tremendous. . . . As an employer, you can get great employees for a great price.”

As a matter of fact, if you’re a U.S. employer, you’ve always been able to get temp workers at a relatively good price. As of December 2015, according to the BLS, the aver- age cost of a full-time worker in private industry was $24.19 per hour in wages plus $10.95 in benefits, for a total of $35.14 in compensation. By contrast, the average wages for

a temp were $14.59 and the average benefits were $4.31, for total compensa- tion of $18.90. One of the results of this cost differen- tial has been a long-term increase in the number of temp workers, which, over the past 25 years, has far outstripped the increase in jobs occupied by full-time workers. 61

 

Case Questions

1.You’re a senior man- ager at a growing business, and you’re ready to manager has recommended a temp-to-perm policy. You know the advantages of this approach, but what might be some of the disadvantages?

2. Assume that you’re a prospective job seeker (which you may very well be). What do you personally see as the advantages and disadvantages of taking a temp-to-perm position? Under what circumstances are you most likely to take a temp-to-perm position?

 

3. What sort of challenges are likely to confront a manager who supervises a mix of temporary and permanent employees? In what ways might these challenges differ if the temporary workers have been hired on a temp-to-perm basis rather than on a strictly temporary basis?

 

 

“HR 4th Edition” Authors: Angelo DeNisi, Ricky Griffin (Chapter 7)