Based on the following information, please answer the question in bold. Thanks!

Question

Based on the following information, please answer the question in bold. Thanks!

To negotiate whether an employee should be retained or not, the CHRO can design the following line of judgement: Who: Attributes of the person being evaluated, whether they fit in with the core values of the organization or not. What: Skills of the person, i.e., specialized skills that can make a difference to the organization’s revenues should be considered.

Where; The geographical region in which they work and whether they are required there or not need to be evaluated. Why: Major cause for retention should be value-addition or potential for continued value addition to the organization.

How: Instead of using standard Key Performance Indicators (KPI), customized packages for valuable employees based on their unique contributions to the organization are a good place to start. “KPIs are intrinsically linked to a firm's strategic goals and are used to help managers assess whether they're on target as they work towards those goals (John, 2017)”. Since Netflix aims only at retaining A employees, managers at all levels should dedicate time to developing more A employees to keep adding value to the company.

As we see, the types of power the CHRO has for instance, with the positional power she can direct the company as per her own methods due to her designation. this power is very crucial as there are no HR policies in place, there must be a central figure who functions as the model figure to direct the HR functions of the company which usually work as per the model HR policies. Then the information power is where the employees coming in can expect to learn and look up to her as she has an in-depth understanding of the processes and clear about the path she wishes to take Netflix towards (Patty, 2014).

The Reward power adds to coercive power as Sharon has the power to retain a well performing employee as what is been envisaged by the company and with her power to take disciplinary action against anyone who isn't performing to the expectations, Sharon can strike the right balance of maintaining the best of talent. Sharon's people centric approach with her social power helps her exercise the above powers in the negotiation very smoothly as she can identify and select the best employees through negotiation and the incoming employee doesn't feel out of place.

Aiding to all these powers is her charismatic power which makes the employees listen to her, follow her advice or fear her for what she is rather than just her designation and hugely helps during negotiations as her exercising of any power doesn't come across as being impersonal or arrogant but a necessary action.

If an agreement is not reached, the CHRO should look outside for eligible candidates. BATNA stands for Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. “BATNA, Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement term was introduced by Roger Fischer and William Ury in 1981. They proposed that, when negotiating a business agreement, we should work out, in the meantime, an alternative solution to the one currently discussed or agreed with the second party to the contract. This approach should secure us against signing an extremely adverse agreement or when the negotiation is unable to reach an acceptable goal by realizing an alternative approach (Seweryn, 2007)”. For this case the employees may choose to move to another organization where their specific skills will be valued more than at Netflix. ZOPA Zone of Possible Agreement for the CHRO is a probably an increase in perks or incentives that a valuable employee demands to stay back.

Netflix still seems to be working in a startup mode where the organizational culture is quite dynamic. Here every individual is expected to take ownership of his/her task and work independently for the best of the company and contribute constantly. This of course is how every company wishes of their employees but Netflix when it says it wants only the best of talent they are expecting them to start functioning and contributing from day one with not much emphasis on training or orientation which are usually part of the HR policies.

They even seem to be very indifferent of the employees leaving their company. When they say they don't want to put additional efforts in working with the remaining 3% and giving a chance for them to adjust to the new company and culture and that they would simply remove the people who they feel are not a right fit after hiring, shows their apathy towards humans as employees but just considering them as mere machines to do a task.

From what I have gathered so far about this case and the materials involved I have found behind all the organization's policy decisions lies with Sharon who happens to be the Chief Human Resources Officer. her decision is very important and the company wants to recruit only talented individuals in each department and expect A grade performance from each department they don’t believe that much in HR policies but they prefer to retain employees by negotiation (The Woman Behind the Netflix Culture, 2015).

The Company Chief Human Resources Officer Sharon is very talented and good at identifying top performers and talented employees. She does her best to retain talented employees by engaging in a severance negotiation. As discussed in the case, if an employee wants to leave the company, they retain that employee by negotiation. for example, Alice is an asset for the company as she has great knowledge of Excel, Sharon can reward Alice to stay back with Netflix to take advantage of her knowledge. Through negotiation, the company can retain good employees for organizational growth instead of investing in new recruitment and their training.

Five suggested recommendations for Sharon who will be re-evaluating Alice Jones are as follow;

At the end of the three-month PIP time frame given to Alice, if her performance is still not where they want to see it be, give Alice an additional sixty-day extension since she has been a loyal employee to Netflix. I believe that a ninety-day PIP plan is intense and reasonable for Smith to give to Alice, but Alice has also been a loyal employee and deserves an opportunity to reach those goals, hence the sixty days extension.

Follow up or monitor Alice’s performance during that sixty-day extension period on a weekly basis to see how things are going, and if they seem to be either improving or declining.

Based on what happens in the second recommendation, if Alice’s PIP is positive, continue to monitor her on a weekly basis, but if her PIP is negative and she still isn’t improving during that extension period, pair Alice up with another employee who has a better performance plan or request that Alice be given further training.

At this point, give Alive a verbal warning by letting her know that if things don’t improve after her extension period, they will have no other choice but to let her go and hire someone who can reach the goals that have been currently set for her.

Sharon Slade at this stage has already valued the time that Alice has been with them, and has given her an opportunity to improve her performance, but things didn’t work out, so it is time to now let Alice go and find someone who can produce the “A” results that Netflix wants.

ZOPA And BATNA For Alice

A brief definition of a ZOPA is “The zone of possible agreement is considered an area where two or more negotiating parties may find common ground. It is this area where parties will often compromise and strike a deal (Zone of Possible Agreement, n.d)”. ZOPA for Alice could be as follow; four months’ salary and incentives in lieu of notice, Exhaustive performance improvement plan with benchmarking against KPIs for 3 months, and Explore an alternative position at Netflix where her skills can be best utilized.

If Alice were to get fired, the following options would be unacceptable for her in a severance agreement: Agreement to refrain from joining Netflix’s close competitors for the next one year or more, and Accept the salary of two months’ or less in lieu of notice period. She should at least seek for a salary of four months.

Alice could offer the following options that could move severance negotiations toward her goal of keeping her position at Netflix; A salary and incentive plan for six months in lieu of notice, and Exhaustive performance improvement plan with benchmarking against KPIs for 4 months.

As for a BATNA for Alice, I find the following being an option; Alice could move the court in case of conflict and unmet conditions, look alternative job options, where she can assimilate with the culture and is respected for her skills, and Apply for a course with some renowned university.

Put yourself in the shoes of Alice Jones, the executive who is being considered for termination in the Netflix case study. What objections or concerns might you express during the negotiation session if you were Alice Jones? Some examples could be:

Alice claims the action being taken is discriminatory and threatens to sue for wrongful termination.

Alice requests job placement or relocation benefits in order to transition to another job.

1. Share three objections you would make if you were Alice Jones. Then, propose responses from Sharon Slade that would help steer the process to a successful conclusion and help maintain a positive relationship between the two parties.

2.   Discuss Three potential concessions that Sharon Slade, Netflix’s chief human resources officer (CHRO), could make to potentially close the negotiations with Alice Jones.

Explanation / Answer

1. Share three objections you would make if you were Alice Jones. Then, propose responses from Sharon Slade that would help steer the process to a successful conclusion and help maintain a positive relationship between the two parties.

Argument #1 Poor Environment where Learning & Development wasn't encouraged

My first argument would be that if the company expects employees to maintain their performance metrics at an A. then they should've done a better job in facilitating an environment where employees can stay competent through periodical training. coaching and mentorship instead of being subject to coaching at the tail end of a performance improvement program. Training programs ensures that employees stay relevant to the organisation they work for and benefit both management and employees. Employees can stay competent by

- Self Improvement

- Adding new skills and qualifications

- A good learning curve

Benefits to the Management from an Employee's competence

When an employee stays competent, he or she is bound to be relevant to the organisation not just today but also in the long run. This builds trust within an employee that he or she has a place in this organization for the foreseeable future. This incentivises employees to perform better.

Benefits to Employees from their own competence

The benefits stretch right form job security to potential career growth and lateral and horizontal career moves. Employees who stay competent open themselves up to a broad stroke of career opportunities.

However Alice wasn't trained adequately to meet the company's relentless goals for employee performance.

Argument #2 The firm's high attrition rate should make the organisation re evaluate wether the problem lies with the employees or the firm

Alice could argue that firm's with high attrition rates are often the ones with organisational problems that they're in denial about. Alice could always make the argument that this was a good time for the organisation to introspect into the reason why they have such a high attrition. Because if many employees have the same problem with the organisation , chances are that the problem does not lie with Alice but the organisation.

Argument #3 The Firms Performance Metrics only capture qualitative data and does not compromise of appeals or self evaluation

Self rating performance appraisal questions involve questions that try to understand the employee's perspective on his or her professional and ethical performance in the organisation. It tries to capture aspects of inputs or efforts which the employee felt that he or she contributed which may or may not have been over looked by the assessors. This tries to capture qualitative data that traditional performance metrics like the bell curve may have failed to capture. It asks the employee

- What he or she feels their core contribution to the organisation were

- What they feel are their core competencies and skills are and how they've applied them at their job role or how can we leverage those skills at the workplace

- What they think their opportunities for improvement are and why they fell short on certain metrics on their score card.

- Wether or not they think that they've been fairly rated on their performance score card

- What's their feedback and assessment of the organisation , its leadership and their immediate reporting manager.

- Areas where they've felt that they've performed well

Then, given the basic aspects of the 360 feedback, analyze what you could include in each of the sections for the supervisors, peers, and subordinates to help with the identification of individual training needs.

However the performance metrics that Alice was subject to did not leave room for self evaluation and or a method of appealing the performance appraisal results.

2.   Discuss Three potential concessions that Sharon Slade, Netflix’s chief human resources officer (CHRO), could make to potentially close the negotiations with Alice Jones.

Concessions#1 : To Shift Alice Jones Mentoring and Training from reactionary to pro active training

An perfect example of a reactive training needs analysis would be performance improvement in organisations. Since performance can only be improved open when captured, this would call for a reactive training. The best way to conduct performance reviews and to fill in the gap would be to map out opportunities for improvements using a combination of qualitative and quantitative data from the performance review conducted by a supervisor. peers and a self performance evaluation. Since supervisor completed performance appraisals are metric driven, they don't capture other points of qualitative and quantitative data. Which where peer to peer and self evaluation add value to give a better picture. This would help aggregate a much more accurate needs analysis.

The outcome would be a negligible change in performance metrics. This would result in substantial efforts with little or no results in a change in performance. Training helps employees stay relevant to the organisation and up skill themselves. This would result in a a stagnation in performance, growth which would quickly lead to a lack of interest and attrition in the organisation.   

However a pro active training would result in improved performance and better result as far as netflix's organisational metrics are concerned. If Alice Jone's performance improves over a period of 6 months due to the pro active training. then she can stay with the organisation.

Concessions#2 : A new and improved performance appraisal model

Netflix uses traditional performance metrics like the bell curve.The problem with Stack Ranking or Forced Distribution, is that it used broad strokes to classify employees without looking into marginal differences or degree of performance and skill variations within each performance segment within the bell curve. This results in the firm making bad decisions during performance reviews. Employees who could add great value to the organisation could leave or be left out because of forced distribution

Netflix could drop the traditional bell curve for performance appraisals and switch to a new I Count system where individual employee performance has more weightage and it took into account career choices. It also has a crowd sourced feedback system. Crowd sourced feedback gathers employee feedback from their peers and not just their direct reporting manager to get a more holistic picture to eliminate bias. It also has an excellent feedback loop where it's employees can give feedback about the company's performance appraisal systems.

If the new crowd sourced feedback would result in improved performance and better result as far as netflix's organisational metrics are concerned. If Alice Jone's performance improves over a period of 6 months despite of the new performance evaluation then she can stay with the organisation.

Concessions#3 : Netflix could identify Alice Jones Core Competency and then reassign her to a department where her skills can be put to use more effectively

Most organisations allow internal mobility. Where employees can move both horizontally or vertically. Horizontal mobility involves moving from one department to another or moving to a different line of business within the same organisation and grade. So it wouldn't be a promotion or a demotion but simply put a change in the department where her skills and core competencies can be used for the organisation's benefit.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse B
• Subjects

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