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HRM Case Study-Addressing Severe Performance Issues in a Retail Organization
HRM Case Study-Addressing Severe Performance Issues in a Retail Organization
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HRM Case Study-Addressing Severe Performance Issues in a Retail Organization
Case Background/Introduction
The President of an esteemed and well-established retail giant has tasked a Human Resource Manager with the organization’s training and development. Over the years, the have been concerns about the poor performance of the general organization. One thousand five hundred miles from where the parent organization is based, the retail company has just acquired a new company. The President of the retail organization approaches an HR professional and asks him to help address the problem of lack of skill-set and competencies among employees as a means to address performance issues in the company. The HR professional successfully manages to design a training plan that he proposes to the organization’s present alongside the desired outcomes of the plan. However, while the HR manager was carrying out his assessment, he discovered that there were more issues that required to be addressed to ensure the all-round success of the company. Some of the problems the human resource professional discovered are that senior-level executives lack the capacity to supervise their departments’ employees. The HR also discovered little or no documentation of previous training conducted in departments in all three locations despite insisting that all employees received training. After enquiring about evidence of training, he was provided with a few spreadsheets and documents where some of the employee names were missing. Additionally, in his assessment the human resource manager also discovered that some employees are threatening to file legal complaints against the organization for allegedly discriminating against employees along the lines of age, gender, and cultural background. This discussion centers on the way of improving the organizational performance of a retail company through training and development. Discussed are matters about coaching, legal considerations, training of a diverse workforce, and training in records and information systems in the context of an expanding retail company that has just acquired a new company.
Coaching for Senior Level Executives
In his assessment, the human resource manager discovered that a significant section of senior employees that head a department lacks the skills and competencies required to supervise a team. To see the company become the leading retailer alongside the likes of Target and Wal-Mart, there is a need to incorporate coaching for senior-level executives. In this strategy, the company shall organize coaching sessions for all department heads that will be conducted monthly. The group that will be trained includes department heads from the logistics department, merchandise department, marketing department, personnel department, non-store operations, finance department, and international operations. The best time to conduct coaching for department heads is the last Friday of every month. Towards the end of the month, department heads tend to get overwhelmed with deadlines as so much is expected of them, including monthly reports (Lee, Idris, & Tuckey, 2019). In addition to the many deadlines they are expected to meet, they are still required to g about their normal duty of managing the members of their team. The end of the month is the most ideal time to coach them as it is when their competence on specific goals tends to be low. The coaching needs to be private, such as a retreat center where the department heads are free from distractions from their team members.
As regards the coaching plan itself, the human resource manager should take the department heads through intentional coaching that is meant to improve their management of the team assigned to them. Bersin by Deloitte writes that “organizations with senior leaders coach effectively and frequently improve their business results by 21percent as compared to those that never coach.” Senior executives, particularly managers, are important for the success of the business, but so are effective coaching skills. Consistent coaching assists employees with performance improvement, skill transfer, skill improvement, and on boarding and retention. In addition to these benefits coaching will helps department heads transfer and reinforce learning. To better manage their team members, the coaching professional should encourage department heads to adopt positive approaches. They should always try and maintain a positive attitude towards tough situations. A positive attitude in difficult situations as it helps both the individuals react in ways that cultivate positive change. Coaches should also train department heads to listen and empower their team members. Coaching needs empowerment and encouragement. For improved performance, department heads and other senior executives must collaborate with their employees to develop one-on-one relationships that are helpful for both parties (Zuñiga-Collazos, Castillo-Palacio, Montaña-Narváez, & Castillo-Arévalo, 2020). Department heads must realize that their team members normally have a lot of questions, inputs, and feedback. It is important that they know that their team leaders care enough to listen to their opinions. Department heads should thus encourage their team members to share their opinions openly. Moreover, in their training, coaches should encourage department heads and other members of senior management to commit to life-long learning. In essence, they should invest in continuously improving their own competencies and skills. They should lead their team members by example because if they fail to do it, nobody else will. To become competent in their leadership role, department heads must demonstrate that they are interested in success. Human resource professionals or coaches can tell by assessing how they evolve in their role with the organization or asking them questions about their career future from time to time. If these individuals do not have a laid-out plan yet, the questions will prompt them to think about their career carefully and what they want for the company. It is important for department heads to show their team members that they do not just want them to become better but because that they are actively invested in their accomplishments, career and professional success.
Plan for Training and Developing a Geographically Diverse Work Force.
The Human Resource Manager also discovered the challenge of language and cultural barriers that existed across the three companies. He found that some of the supervisors were not comfortable when dealing with individuals from outside of their geographic location. To address this, the HR professor should develop a plan on how to train the organization to come up with a geographically diverse workforce. To ensure that this retail organization trains and develops a diverse workforce, there are some steps it will be required to take at the individual and the group level. Today’s workforce has become geographically diverse and it is not uncommon to come across employees that do not speak a common language (Rodriguez & Walters, 2017). Language and cultural barriers make it difficult for supervisors to communicate with employees, explain their expectations and provide meaningful feedback. This explains why some supervisors are reluctant and get uncomfortable working with people from outside their geographical location in this situation. It is upon coaches and human resource professionals to curtail language and cultural barriers that are getting in the way of the company’s performance. To make communication bearable, the company should invest in interpreters that will help translate feedback and instruction to team members.
The organization can also invest in translating relevant documents to standards languages that employees understand. Nowadays, tons of free websites translate texts from one language to the next. Additionally, provision of classes for foreign languages for employees would be a viable option. It can equip them with basic language requirements for their workplace. The language classes would teach them warnings, words, phrases, and other important communication elements significant for improving overall company performance. Supervisors should also be encouraged to use simple words for communication. Words that have few syllables are idea as it makes it easy to convey conversations. Another strategy would be encouraging supervisors to avoid raising their voices when speaking to their team members. They should speak clearly and not forcefully and slowly rather than louder. The goal here is to deliver the message without seemingly talking down on them. To deal with cultural barriers, it is imperative that organizations should take time to determine the cultural barriers that the company can tolerate and cannot (Bonham, & Green, 2021). The first step is to assess if a specific attribute or behavior should be considered a requirement for the position. The reality is that if the employees are going to perform well, there are some cultural differences that the company has to accept and avoid trying to change them. On the other hand, there are some which are relevant to the business that employees from a different culture will need to adapt to for them to become successful in the work environment. Examples include arriving to work on time and having a sense of urgency. This training is important and should be conducted on all supervisors at all levels of management. The training can be done one every quarter year, and it can be conducted internally, with the help of an external coaching consultant or expert.
Plan for Training Records and Information Systems
To address the problem of little or no documentation of previous training and missing names across departments in all three locations, the organization should adopt strategies that can help preserve training records. Digitizing the organizational records is one of the ways the company can employ to ensure no data on employee training is lost (Samwel, 2018). Storing data in form of paper takes up huge spaces and needs extensive time for properly filing. Searching for information manually through cabinets on request takes up a lot of company time. If a file is misplaced or misfiled, it could take hours to track it down. Keeping information in digital records eliminates the likelihood of records getting lost. Notably, keeping records and documentation on a cloud-based system also allows the company to save money and time that would have been used to put together physical paper storage. Another way the company can maintain its training records is by designating an employee to the specific role of overseeing training and managing organizational documents and records. The structure and size of the organization determine who gets selected for this supervisory role. An example of an HR Information System (HRIS) is Sapling, a system for a distributed workforce. It is the best operations platform that is best suited for companies that have a distributed workforce. It is best suited for this retailer organization that is the subject of this discussion, seeing that the company has just acquired a new location 1500 miles from its parent’s organization location. This system will automate workflows across the three offices for off-boarding, onboarding, and employee data in all existing systems. The system would function in such a way that the human resource team would need to automatically assign individuals workflows based on department, location, and employment status. This team enables team members to manage and store data and form color-coded organization charts that visualize various teams or departments. Sapling provides native integrations and other software that included payroll software, applicant tracking systems, and even time tracking software (Mishra, Shastry, & Tiwari, 2020). To access further integration opinions of the Sapling System, it offers integrations with various software. In this case, the human resource department and department heads should be the first to receive training on the use of the Sampling System. With time, they can incorporate the rest of the employees seeing that the program will be used by all employees to execute their day-to-day duties. The training should be conducted according to departments for streamlining purposes.
Legal Considerations and Training for a Diverse Workforce
To avoid legal cases where employees take legal action meted against them y the employers, organizations must take proactive action address diversity issues among the employees. The organization must develop a diversity training program with the aim of boosting their employees’ awareness regarding various types of diversity, appreciating the differences hat their coworkers have and providing them with strategies and knowledge to boost their communication and interpersonal skills. This can help foster a positive work environment. Organizations need to invest in diversity training in their workforce across the organizations as it maximizes and errands the organization’s more talents (Clark, & Polesello, 2017). It is also important for organizations to be diverse in their recruitment to comply with organizational and legal standards. To avoid legal matters pertaining to workplace discrimination along the lines of age, religion, gender, race, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, etc., adhere to specific procedures. One of them is having a written policy such as a grievance handling policy that outlines rules and procedures for resolving a discrimination case. Additionally, organizations should establish a process for resolving discrimination issues that is quick and fair. It is important that the organization seeks to address discrimination cases swiftly to avoid legal mishaps. Notably, workplace discrimination cases often lead to a loss of credibility and trust among employees. Consistency and swiftly addressing discrimination issues is an indication of an organization’s commitment to treat everybody fairly and along with the same standards. While there is no single procedure for dealing with discrimination that is right, establishing a process that suits the organization’s structure, size and resources are important (Bonaccio, Connelly, Gellatly, Jetha, & Martin Ginis, 2020). Another way to avoid being at the center of legal battles is for all the wrong reasons linked with discrimination. The organization should consider continuously educating employees on their role in curtailing discrimination. Most organization address discrimination in the employee handbook and during the onboarding process, which is barely enough. Some state laws need employers to carry out anti-discrimination training programs regularly. Whether the organization is required by the law or seek to be proactive about discrimination, organizations need to know about procedures and policies. This way, they are best placed to handle and report discrimination allegations. Organizations are also advised to conduct an enhanced or separate program for managerial ns supervisory employees seeing that they are usually the first in the line of defense against workplace discrimination.
Conclusion/Lessons Learnt
Various lessons are learned from completing writing this paper. Firstly, human resource professionals tend to have difficulty streamlining the workforce in organizations, as dealing with people is not as easy as it always seems. Additionally, in regards to coaching, it is high time organizations invest in employee coaching as it goes a long way in boosting individual performance and organizational performance. Organizations should realize that coaching is not a venture that senior-level executives and undertake. Rather, it is a venture that they should consider for the entire all employees including junior-level entry positions and interns.
Another important lesson drawn from completing this paper is that there need for organizations to invest in employee education on their role in perpetuating discrimination. This is necessary because there is a possibility that some employees might perpetuate discrimination obliviously. Because of the cultural differences of employees, it is possible that what might come off as being discriminatory might not seen the same form another person’s point of view. It is important to take employees through diversity training programs as it helps them become more aware of sensitive around their colleagues.
Furthermore, more lessons from this task have to do with the role that the organization can play in ensuring that language and cultural barriers do not affect employee performance. The main lesson here is that investing funds in ventures such as an interpreter and even proving foreign language lessons can go a long way in boosting company performance. If the supervisors and department heads can communicate with ease with their team members, there is no mix-up of instructions; hence work is carried out effectively and satisfactorily. As such, organizations should not shy away from going the extra mile to invest in resources that make life easy for their employees since they know that the investment reflects in the organization’s general performance.
References
Bonaccio, S., Connelly, C. E., Gellatly, I. R., Jetha, A., & Martin Ginis, K. A. (2020). The participation of people with disabilities in the workplace across the employment cycle: Employer concerns and research evidence. Journal of Business and Psychology, 35(2), 135-158.
Bonham, V. L., & Green, E. D. (2021). The genomics workforce must become more diverse: a strategic imperative. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 108(1), 3-7.
Clark, J. M., & Polesello, D. (2017). Emotional and cultural intelligence in diverse workplaces: getting out of the box. Industrial and commercial training.
Lee, M. C. C., Idris, M. A., & Tuckey, M. (2019). Supervisory coaching and performance feedback as mediators of the relationships between leadership styles, work engagement, and turnover intention. Human Resource Development International, 22(3), 257-282.
Mishra, S., Shastry, N., & Tiwari, T. (2020). Sapling Health Monitoring System. In Advanced Computing Technologies and Applications (pp. 211-221). Springer, Singapore.
Rodriguez, J., & Walters, K. (2017). The importance of training and development in employee performance and evaluation. World Wide Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Development, 3(10), 206-212.
Samwel, J. O. (2018). Impact of employee training on organizational performance–case study of drilling companies in Geita, Shinyanga and Mara regions in Tanzania. International Journal of Managerial Studies and Research, 6(1), 36-41.
Zuñiga-Collazos, A., Castillo-Palacio, M., Montaña-Narváez, E., & Castillo-Arévalo, G. (2020). Influence of managerial coaching on organisational performance. Coaching: an international journal of theory, research and practice, 13(1), 30-44.
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