You are hired as the HR director for the fictitious XYZ Company, a business-to-b

Question

You are hired as the HR director for the fictitious XYZ Company, a business-to-business sales company, manufactures small motors and accessories for industrial and home products. The industry is highly competitive, and the company follows a prospector strategy. The objective of a prospector strategy is to find and exploit new products and market opportunities (Gomez-Mejia, Galkin & Cardy, 2001). A prospector wants to be first to market. To respond to competitive and rapidly changing markets, prospectors have flexible, flat and more decentralized organizational structures.

XYZ Company is headquartered in a small southern town of 28,000 people, with a low unemployment rate of 3.1 percent. This means that demand for workers exceeds the labor supply. There is a technical school and a community college within 50 miles of XYZ Company. XYZ’s President is former military and is highly patriotic. He is committed to staying in the community. Recently, several other local companies have experienced labor organizing activities.

XYZ Company employs 116 people. Until you were hired, there was no HR department. Recently, the organization’s employee turnover rate has been higher than normal. The marketing and sales department continues to sell products to an expanding market. Because of this increased product demand, output must be increased by 96 percent.

Eighty-eight percent of XYZ employees are Caucasian. With the exception of one female supervisor in the customer service department, the president and all other managers are Caucasian men. Management promotions have been based on seniority. The local labor market population is approximately 48 percent minority. There is a growing Hispanic and Kurdish population that have not been accepted into the community.

All the employees in manufacturing (including quality control), customer service and operations (responsible for shipping and receiving; distribution of raw materials, components parts and finished goods inventory; and maintenance and cleaning) have at least a high school degree or GED. The organization provides some skills training courses. Please refer to the organizational chart in Figure 1 for more details.

You are required to align HR initiatives with corporate strategy by developing a job design and staffing plan for each job category (e.g., finance & accounting, manufacturing, quality control, operations, customer service, and marketing/sales) for the fictitious company entitled XYZ Company.

Developing the Job Design Plan

What are the HR challenges?

Which job design approach will you use and why? What will that approach entail?

Prepare a job description for one key position in the area of manufacturing, operations, or customer service

Developing the Staffing Plan

Given the increase in product demand, forecast your workforce needs to determine how many people will you need to hire in each

job category? Explain how you determined your numbers as well as your rationale. Be sure to consider turnover, retirements, etc.

What are the job specifications for each position that you are recruiting for? (Hint: you will have to determine them)

Develop strategies (e.g., identify sources) to recruit the ‘most qualified’ applicants for each job category. (Try to be as realistic as

possible based on the case) What are the pros and cons for each strategy? Be sure to provide clear justification for your choices.

What selection tools/methods are appropriate for each job category and why?

How will you assess the effectiveness of your staffing efforts?

President ManufacturiQuality 1 manager and Control 69 employees3 HR Director Finance and Operations Customer Service-Marketing Sales inbound only 3 employees 14 employees |1 female supe Staff (TBD) Accounting 1 manager rvisor1 manageir 9 salesmen 1 manager, 5 professionals and 1 hourly (includes payroll) 5 CRS Maintenance and Cleaning l leader 3 employees

Explanation / Answer

--

--

Key facts:

Challenges faced by the XYZ Company:

--

HR Plans and initiatives - key resource personnel:

Job Design for Finance and accounting professionals:

Operations manager and Quality control professional:

Customer service representatives:

--

Forecastin an HR plan for the next 3 years or so:

Head count estimated for the next 3 years:

The primary focus is on the diversification - employee diversity ratio per se.

Pay rise:

The company XYZ operates in an area in United States where the inflation rate = 1.6% - hence the salary must increase at least by 2 to 4% so as to cushion the effects of the inflation and the employees would not feel the burden from inflation.

Job enlargement and job enrichment are suited for this XYZ Company

This added with simplification of the job, Quality of work and life balance will lead to exhibition of the citizenship behavior

In order to recruit the most qualified applicant for each job category, the recruitment process must be very strong - screening, testing, interviewing, and other filtering will recruit the most competent candidates

The effectiveness of the staffing efforts can be measured by the quality of staff recruited and their performance output produced

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse Y
• Subjects

---

---

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.