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At each stage of this course, you blogged and discussed with classmates about various Human Resource Department characteristics that lead to a great place to work. Read and reflect on your class work and weekly entries from The Best HR Department Blog. Then prepare a 12 to 15 page final paper. This final paper should describe your concept of an organization with an “ideal HR department” leading to the creation of a “great place to work.” Be sure to include components from all of the blog topics completed in this course. Include an executive summary and support your reflections from the course and outside readings.
Paper must be:
12-15 pages APA format ( most of the content is attached).
Must pass TurnItIn
Must be receieved on or before 10:00 AM EST.
2-2: Interview Reflections
I felt that my interviewee understood that the job of HR needed to change to stay relevant. According to Grossman, being a “credible partner” is part of the competencies that are required in the new reality that is HR. With speaking to Joe, my interviewee, it appears that he recognized a long time ago that to survive, HR was going to have to make changes and become relevant to the business they are in, which is the moving industry. With doing this, they have looked for ways to outsource the “usual” HR functions and become involved with supporting the staff that they have, getting great talent, and being a source of knowable for the company. Taking an early lead in being a part of the development of their tariff has allowed Joe’s HR division to be taken very seriously within the company. They continue to evolve into the HR of today and even the future.
3.2 The Organizational Culture
After taking the survey, I realize that the organizational culture that I would want at my “Best Place to Work” would be similar to what I have now. My current company believes that HR is the responsibility of everyone. We have a benefits manager but recruiting top talent is such an important part of our cincture, that we receive a $10,000 bonus for recruiting staff.
Credibility- It is important that staff and clients feel that they can trust us. We find that we have repeat customers within the client base and recommendations due to our credibility.
Respect- Clients and staff are treated with prospect. The CEO understands that we make the company run. He rewards the staff with many different gifts and shows of appreciation.
Fairness- Being fair is a hallmark of a good company. Nothing ruins moral faster than favoritism.
Pride and Camaraderie- Staff are happy and proud to tell people they work for the company. This is due to the stellar reputation.
4-4: Leading Change
With my industry, which is hirer education financial aid, change is driven by new policies and regulations that come from the federal government. These changes are inevitable and uncontrollable. Within my consulting firm, we stay ahead of the change by paying attention and participating in negotiated rulemaking, which allows the financial aid industry to have a say in the policies that re coming down the pipe. We definitely use the analyze/think/change model.
The emotional reactions to change that I see very often is fear. Many times, staff is afraid that within the change, they will seem incompetent if they don’t take on the change as quick as other staff. During my current project, which is redesign of the student employment office, the staff involved went through all the emotions in varying levels. They eventual got to renewal and are fully vested in the process.
It is import for HR to take a front seat when change happens. This helps staff to understand that they are supported. It is also important for staff to be able to have their negative feelings openly, as he are appropriate.
5-2 The Best HR Department Blog: Fairness and Comp
For employee training, I would first bring together a group of staff from across all areas. When the group came together, we would discuss the needs of each division or department. We would also discuss the vision for the training and what we would like the staff to take form the training.
We would design a training that also incorporated some team building features and fun activities. Many times, I have been at a training in which team building was part of the training but many of the staff did not like each other so it became a chore. Within the training, I would allow staff to sit together who knew each other. Forcibly mixing in people up does not meet the goals that people expect. Many times, it means that staff is at a place where they are uncomfortable and concentrate on behaving, rather than the content of the training.
My trainings would involve the following topics:
Current Handbook and Procedures
Diversity- What that really means not just “Let me tell you about minorities”.
E.Q.
Customer Service
We would also include the topics brought up by the training staff. Training would happen during the day, as to not require staff to be in the office after hours.
6-2 The Best HR Department Blog: Competencies
Being a HR manager in the process of changing form a “job analysis model to a competencies model” is a daunting but exciting challenge. Competency approach is a method that identifies the necessary worker competencies for high performance. This will allow the recruitment process to focus on worker characteristics that will bring success to the position. Many times, organizations have a hard time with this due to being unable to separate the person from the position. The HR manager could be successful by taking the human capital out of the equation for a short time. This way, it would give them the opportunity to truly evaluate the competencies needed for each position.
These should be tied to the goals of the overall organization and allow for:
· Enhances a manager’s flexibility in assigning work
· Lengthens the life of a job description
· Can allow firms to group jobs requiring similar competencies under a single job description
Competency analysis also gives the organization of the opportunity to look beyond “jobs” to “work that needs to be completed. With looking at tasks and work that needs to be done, it allows organizations to look at positions with similar competencies and requirements for redundancies. It also allows the organization to reassign tasks to others who are more suited to complete due to the competencies they hold. It also allows the originations to look at competencies within each position and evaluate which are requirements and which are optional.
7-2 The Best HR Department Blog: Selection
The key to a successful hiring process is, accruing to Development Dimensions International is one that “finds the right people for the right jobs”. Institutions and companies that they success have specific characteristics that are the same for all of their searches:
· Job interviews in which candidates are asked to describe specific examples of their skills
· Automated resume screening and search
· Assessments that predict whether candidates are motivated by the factors associated with a particular job or a company’s values and ways of doing things
· Simulations that gauge specific job-related abilities and skills
Searches for human capital l have long passed the time when a position is posted in the Sunday paper. Candidate searches now involve social media. Social Media has now become the place to find new talent. Within this search and selection process, companies are still using some traditional methods of finding out about potential staff like background checks and BCI checks.
Once of the biggest but unspoken selection tools that many of us use is “word of mouth. The industry that I am in is large but so defined that “someone always knows someone”. Many times it takes less than six degrees of separation to get some information and opinions about a potential staff person. Within these casual conversations, it is very easy to get information on what someone truly understands within the industry, what they actually did within their previous positions (not what their title says they did), and reason they might have left. Using this type of “word of mouth” can have its drawbacks, which include getting biased information. I have found that in my experience within my industry, the information I have receive dahs been mostly accurate.
References:
The 4 Hiring Practices of Highly Successful Organizations. Inc. Retrieved July 31, 2013. http://www.inc.com/articles/2002/01/23815.html
8-2 The Best HR Department Blog: Retention
As an HR professional who was tasked with retaining Gen X and Gen Y staff, the first thing I would do would be to look at the characteristics of each group. According to About.Com, Generation X was the children born between 1965 and 1980. Many of the generation were latchkey kids of Baby Boomer parents, so as such, relationships and collaboration are important. Generation X is:
· Individualistic
· Technology Adept
· Flexible
· Value Work/Life Balance
Within Generation Y, which is children who were born in the mid 1980’s to 2000, many are now entering the workforce. This generation of children is:
· Tech-Savvy
· Family Centric
· Achievement Oriented
· Team oriented
· Attention-Craving
Within these two groups, typical retention models that worked with Baby Boomers including promises of the corner office will not cut it. These employees value having a work life balance and being part of something greater. As such, as a HR professional, the first thing I would do would be to solicit feedback from the Gen X and Y staff. It would be important to not assume that they all think the same, as the y is an individualistic group. I would then institute polices that would allow for flex time and working from home. This way, staff would not have to choose between work/life when making decisions about their career. It would also be important to allow both groups to see how they contribute to the bigger picture. I would also give opportunities for volunteerism and social concerns.
Ways to retain Gen X and Gen Y staff:
· Offer flextime, telecommuting and other benefits
· Know how to manage Gen X and Gen Y- Command and control do not work with these groups.
· Make the workplace fun
When it comes to both groups, Gen X is more self-sufficient, as many were the product of divorce. Gen Y needs more supervision and reinforcement, as children who grew up as the main focus of helicopter parents.
Reference:
Shaver, Tim. Understanding Generation X and Y Employees. Casagrandepress.com Retrieved August 8, 2013. http://www.casagran
9-2 The Best HR Department Blog: Train and Develop
To create a training and development strategy, we would first need to figure out what the goals are. This would need to be done by a training analysis. The training analysis would be able to tell the institution:
· Performance problems
· Anticipated introduction of new system, task or technology
· A desire by the organization to benefit from a perceived opportunity
· Overall goals of the company or institution
Once the analysis was complete, it would need to decide what would be the best delivery model for the training and development needed. The options would include:
· Online training
· Hiring a consultant to train
· Sending staff to an onsite training
· Creating a in house delivery model
Once it was decided which kind of model or model that would use, the training content would need to be established to fit with the models being used. Within the training, I would also try to ensure that staff was engaged in the trainings with contact feedback form the staff. It would be important to change midstream if needed to ensure that staff would get the most out of the training. Within the training delivery systems, it would also be important to have breakout sessions based on function. This way, you would be able to offer targeted training by functional area, rather than trying to train the whole group in irrelevant topics.
Once the trainings were complete, it would be important to use measures to evaluate the training. This could be feedback from staff, output measures, and ways to measure if the trainings were effective. This information can be sending to tweak the training, so that every time it is offered it will become better and more relevant to the staff. The training could also be offered ad-hoc to new staff coming in, so that they do not have to wait for the training to happen on the schedule.
9-3 The Best HR Department Blog: Performance
Within my performance management initiative, I would use the Net Promoter (NPS) approach for performance. Within my own company, we use NPS score to evaluate performance. NPS is a metric used to evaluate if your customers will be loyal. It is believed that staff can be broken into three groups:
Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.
This question would be answered by asking how likely a client would recommend a consultant to other companies. Within this model, scores that are below 8 are considered zeros for averaging purposes. Within using this process a company must then use the net promoter score for raises and other performance based management. I would give a bonus to ever staff that had a 100 % score at the end of the year. We would also use the scores to look at which staff needed additional help or even potentially needed to leave the company. Within the scores, t was also important to utilize the staff members who displayed consistent scores to promote the company overall.
It would also be important to train staff on how the score are formed, so they understand ways to improve the scores and strategies for improvement. I would institute Best practices breakout sessions every month and allow the staff with the highest NPS to discuss what they are going at a client site. As the staff would all be if defend experiences and segments, it would more be a manner of reviewing what types of interactions that are happening within the client, rather than the actual working getting done.
10-2 The Best HR Department Blog: Total Rewards
In creating a wellness program, Human Resources must sometimes convince management that taking care of the human capital is important. Within the wellness program, a company or institution must look at what types of needs are most relevant to the population as a whole. It would not make much sense to have Weight Watchers come in and do a program, if the office was full of health contentious individual.
Once the overall needs on the institutional population were taken into consideration, a HR professional could reach out to the professionals that work in partnership with the institution, (like the health insurance company) to see if they would be willing to offer the wellness program at a reduced rate or for free as part of their commitment to keeping their clients happy and healthy. Once easy to create program that would touch many in the organization would be a healthier option within the institution and at home. The company could work with their dining company to assist with having healthier options.
The company could also work with the health insurance carrier to provide literature and communication to the employees. The communication should be done in a way that shows employees that the company cares about their health and safety. The company could also set up healthy cooking demonstrations as part of a total package. I would also like the company to go as far as to offer discounted memberships to a CSA. This way, they can ensure that’s staff received healthy foods on a regular basis outside of the office.
To add fun to the program, the company could add incentives that include an end of the year celebration of healthy food, in which the best dish that the healthiest and tastiest will be added to the menu and the person who creates wins a prize or some type of reward.
