Category: Human Resource Management

Instructions

See attachment below. This exercise aims to present you with a situation you might reasonably encounter as an HR professional designing a recruitment exercise in the public sector; the objective is to develop the ability to minimize the risk of litigation arising from a recruitment exercise that produces “adverse impact” and/or to be able to defend the exercise as lawful even if it produces adverse impact.This is an Employment Law course and as such when asked to provide references to support your comments, it must be from a reputable legal citation that provides the law [EEOC gov, legal office links with the specific law, a specific state law, etc]. Newspapers are not reputable sources unless they also provide the specific law to support your particular comments. Footnote example below In the body of the paper example: (Healthcare Financial Management Association (U.S.), Ernst, & Young, 2000). At the end of the paper example: References Healthcare Financial Management Association (U.S.), Ernst, & Young. (2000). Health care system reform: A provider perspective : survey results. Westchester, Ill.: Healthcare Financial Management Association.

Assignment 2 – Recruitment Exercise

You work in HR for a medium-sized city of approximately 1 million people.  Approximately 30% of the city’s residents are racial of ethnic minorities, with a significant proportion of African-American and Hispanic residents.

There has been a hiring freeze for several years.  But now the city has some money to expand hiring.  It is going to hire more fire fighters.

The city wants to recruit approximately 1,000 additional fire fighters.  At the present time, the fire department is overwhelmingly white (and male).  Many of the current fire fighters are the sons and nephews of former or current fire fighters.  Many are of Irish or Italian descent; their relatives had taken jobs as fire fighters at a time when the working conditions were considered dangerous and unattractive.  However, over the years, the fire fighters’ union had achieved more and more benefits and greater safety standards.  The jobs are now considered quite attractive, well paid, and flexible.

In the past, potential recruits to the first department learned of the civil service exams through word of mouth from relatives who worked for the fire department; some of them had access to a ‘bank’ of former exam questions that had been collected and stored at fire stations.

The entry exam for the fire department in the past consisted of a series of essay questions, posing hypothetical questions that a fire fighter might encounter in a fire.  They were designed by officers of the fire department one afternoon when they got together and thought up essay questions to put on the exams.  In the past, minorities (many of whom were educated in under-resourced schools in the economically-deprived neighbourhoods in which minorities tended to be concentrated) did very poorly on these essay-based exams.

Generally speaking, while approximately 25% of white candidates scored well enough to be placed on a civil service list from which appointments would be made for several years, and had a good chance of being appointed, only approximately 10% of minority candidates scored well enough to ‘pass’ the exam, and were not placed on the hiring list.

The Fire Commission would like to increase minority representation in the ranks of the Fire Department, if possible.  The Commission has asked the city HR department for which you work to design a recruitment campaign and suggest an entrance exam that might achieve its goals of increasing minority representation in the fire department.

Your assignment is to write a memorandum to the Fire Commission about recruitment practices of the Fire Department and to suggest ways that might achieve the Commission’s desired goals.

In your memorandum, you should cover the following points:

1. Critique the past recruitment practices of the Fire Department in light of what you know about the legal principles of discrimination, particularly the disparate impact theory of race discrimination.  Would you recommend following the same recruitment practices of the past (e.g., word-of-mouth recruitment, essay-based exam questions)?  Why or why not?  If the same practices were followed and approximately the same outcomes achieved, could these outcomes be challenged under the disparate impact theory of racial discrimination?  What would have to be shown to defend the outcome?
2. What changes, if any, would you suggest in the recruitment campaign you have been asked to help design?  What specific recruitment techniques might increase the diversity of the pool of applicants? Are there any approaches to increasing the success rate for minority applicants that you would rule out from consideration?  If so, why (relating your advice to your knowledge of disparate treatment law)?
3. Assuming that, despite your best efforts, the success rate for recruiting minority applicants is less than 80% of the success rate for non-minority applicants.  What would your advice be to the Fire Commission when it had to determine whether to certify the results?  What would be necessary to defend the adequacy of the recruitment/testing methods against a possible challenge?  What steps could be taken to enhance the likelihood of a successful defence of the recruitment/testing methods in the unfortunate event that minority applicants did much worse than non-minority applicants on the test?
4. Finally, there are no women fire fighters employed by the city, although other, similarly-sized cities do have a significant number of women fire fighters.  What general advice might you give as to approaching this issue, in hopes of ultimately increasing the number of women fire fighters?

You can use the above points to structure your memorandum, but be sure  to consider and address the following issues, which are implicit in the exercise:

• What sort of recruitment campaign would you suggest to increase the number of minority applicants?  Discuss advertising and other approaches to this topic.
• Discuss how you might try to achieve the Fire Commission’s desire to have a fire department that more accurately reflects the population it serves, with specific reference to the wish to have approximately 30% of the new hires to be from the minority communities.
• Discuss how you would approach the issue of designing an entrance exam to avoid a much lower pass rate for minority candidates than non-minority candidates.
• In the past, women have done better than any other group of candidates on the written exam, but have all failed the physical exam.   There are no women fire fighters employed by the city, although other cities have them.  How would you approach the issue of trying to recruit women and succeed in hiring women fire fighters?

You may wish to “read ahead” and consider the Supreme Court Ricci decision.

The format for this assignment should be a memorandum to the Fire Commission, using paragraphs and complete sentences. Your paper will be graded according to the following rubric.

What is the impact of employee orientation on performance? (550 words).

Assignments should be submitted as Word documents to the Assignment Tool.
Situation
You work in the HR Department in a large, global enterprise. The HR organization is centralized, with the compensation/benefits, HRD, labor relations, and HRIS functions all located in the
corporate HQ. There is also a corporate staffing department at the corporate HQ, and there are
small, regional HR offices located at each 5 regional locations that handle staffing and limited
benefits services. The locations of the 5 regional offices are: US – Midwest, US – South, US –
Northeast, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe.
You have set up and will lead a team to implement a new HRIS system that centralizes the
personnel records for the first time, and makes all HR information accessible to all HR reps via
the internet. Previously all records were kept in the corporate office and regional reps kept their
own, limited files. This new system is scheduled to be “live” in 6 months.
At the two-day kickoff meeting to launch this project team, the purpose of the team was clarified,
and specific goals and interim target dates were quickly established.
Here’s some information on the team members:
US – Midwest: Harry Starker: Director of HR for one of the Midwest plants, 20 year veteran with
the company, has seen it all, understands the history, was with the company prior to the
acquisition of the European operations, is tolerated by peers and perhaps respected, but
probably not liked.

US – South: Tanisha Downey: Been with the company for 5 years, previously was VP of HR for a
larger organization, currently Director of HR for the Southern operations, probably being
groomed for a higher position. Not well known throughout the organization, but presents a
generally favorable impression.
US – Northeast: Rachel Cohen: Been with the company for 15 years, known as the gal to see if
you want.

Address the following aspects in the context of human resources talent management (3.000 words):

• Who Moved My Cheese
• Working with Emotional Intelligence
• Lombardi Rules

Assignment Question- Write an essay in which you: Demonstrate the importance of ‘Employee Wellbeing’ (Banfield, Kay, and Royles, (2018) p.30-1, 64, 145) as a function of HRM in organisations; specifically, how organisations actively attempt to ensure the wellbeing of their staff, and what benefits the organisation hopes to achieve by doing so. You should also consider what limits there might be to employer interference in individual employee lifestyles. You should cite two examples of organisations in UK that invest heavily in employee wellbeing, giving evidence of what practical steps they take, and the effect that it has on organisational effectiveness. (Please read carefully the attached Assignment Instructions on pages 1 and 2) and do as instructed. Also, you must use the attached reading list pages 1-2 for your citations and Reference list. You will be marked as follows: PLEASE SEE THE ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTION FOR MORE DETAILS.

Required

Fisrt choose an organization, then use the following outline with approzimate word count.

Structure of the Written Report

1. Title page
2. Table of contents
3. Executive summary
4. Problem (Issue) statement (450)
   • What appears to be the problem(s) here?
   • How do I know that this is a problem?
   • What are the immediate issues that need to be addressed?
   • Differentiate between importance and urgency for the issues identified.
     • Important issues are those that have a significant effect on:
       1. profitability,
       2. strategic direction of the company,
       3. source of competitive advantage,
       4. morale of the company’s employees, and/or
       5. customer satisfaction.
5. Data analysis (450)
   • Why or how did these issues arise?
     • It may be helpful to think of the organization in question as consisting of the following components:
       1. resources, such as materials, equipment, or supplies, and
       2. people who transform these resources using
       3. processes, which creates something of greater value.
   • Who is affected most by this issues?
   • What are the constraints and opportunities?
   • What do the numbers tell you?
6. Key Decision Criteria (350)
   • Brief, preferably in point form, such as
     • improve (or at least maintain) profitability,
     •  sales, market share, or return on investment,
     • maintain customer satisfaction, corporate image,
     • be consistent with the corporate mission or strategy,
     • within our present (or future) resources and capabilities,
     • within acceptable risk parameters,
     • ease or speed of implementation,
     • employee morale, safety, or turnover,
     • retain flexibility, and/or
     • minimize environmental impact.
   • Measurable, at least to the point of comparison, such as alternative A will improve profitability more that alternative B.
   • Be related to your problem statement, and alternatives. If you find that you are talking about something else, that is a sign of a missing alternative or key decision criteria, or a poorly formed problem statement.
7. Alternatives analysis (300)
   • This section deals with different ways in which the problem can be resolved.
8. Recommendations (250)
   • Give a justification for your decision(Using Key Decision Criteria). Check to make sure that it is one (and only one) of your Alternatives and that it does resolve what you defined as the Problem.
9. Action and Implementation Plan (250)
10. Exhibits

Notes on Written Reports:

1. Note that restating of case facts is not included in the format of the case report, nor is it considered part of analysis. Anyone reading your report will be familiar with the case, and you need only to mention facts that are relevant to (and support) your analysis or recommendation as you need them.
2. If you are going to include exhibits (particularly numbers) in your report, you will need to refer to them within the body of your report, not just tack them on at the end! This reference should be in the form of supporting conclusions that you are making in your analysis. The reader should not have to guess why particular exhibits have been included, nor what they mean. If you do not plan to refer to them, then leave them out.
3. Write in a formal manner suitable for scholarly work, rather than a letter to a friend.
4. Common sense and logical thinking can do wonders for your evaluation!

Learning Outcomes:

1. Demonstrate a critical awareness of the fundamental theories and concepts of the Organizational Behavior.
2. Apply motivational theories and strategies to solve complex behavioral issues in organizational settings.
3. Critically analyze group dynamics and apply developed communicational skills required for working with/in teams.
4. Synthesize and comment critically on a body of Organizational Behavior literature
5. Recommend innovative strategies to increase managerial skills and competencies.

• Study the people culture at Chipotle and examine its key elements.
• Understand the importance of employee motivation in an organization.
• Understand the issues and significance of developing career path for employees.
• Analyze the career advancement opportunities offered by Chipotle to its employees and how these contributed to its growth
• Analyze the challenges before Chipotle in preserving its culture and helping it evolve as it continues to expand at a fast pace
• Explore ways in which Chipotle could balance growth and preserve its people culture.

Instructions: Discuss HR’s Role and Impact in an Organization

HR professionals are often heard requesting a “seat at the table.”

In other words, they have a desire to be viewed as a strategic business partner who is helping to drive change and implement policy.

What do you see as some of the barriers HR professionals face in their efforts to be viewed as true business partners?

What can the HR professional do to position him- or herself as a business partner?

What is the significance in having that “place at the table”?