Essay Instructions: Please respone with 3-4 sentences for each ones comments:
Text: Human Resource Management by Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart and Wright
1. How is the effectiveness of H R measured in their company?
The effectiveness of HR is measured by survey emails that go out to the company. Employees are required to complete them. It is also measured by how quickly and successfully they respond to employee inquiries.
2. How do they do ROI? What is the methodology used? How well are the numbers accepted by management? How has this helped HR’s reputation in the company?
The only way they look at ROI is looking at the length of employment and turnover rates. They do not calculate the cost per hire.
3. How do HR professionals develop the skills to deal with the future business world?
HR employees usually come with prior experience and are required to take off-site classes yearly.
4. Review the trends with the interviewee and ask them which trends are affecting their company and what is HR’s role in helping the company be successful in that environment?
Innovation and technology-they are currently changing processes so that everything is done on the computer and going paperless.
5. Does HR sit at the strategic planning table? If so, how did this come about? If not, what is HR’s role in helping the company meet its goals?
HR does not sit at the strategic planning table. Since the company is so large they are given orders by the corporate office. Their role is to do what they are told as efficiently as possible.
6. What would you most like to change about your current HR department?
HR does not get a lot of input since everything goes through the corporate office. They sometimes feel like they don’t have a lot of authority.
7. What are the main tasks that occupy your day?
The main tasks they handle are training for new hires, payroll, and helping employees with their PTO. For the new hires they are just responsible for the basic orientation.
8. The company recently went from time sheets to a web based payroll, which one is more effective?
The web based system is much better because payroll can be entered quickly and employees can access their information at any time. Employees can go online and print out their old paychecks and check their hours.
9. What is the current procedure in place for employee health benefits?
Employees are signed up for insurance benefits right away, and it is effective after 30 days on the 1st of the month following the hire. This helps eliminate the gap of not having insurance for the new hires and is gracious of the company to do.
10. How are employee complaints handled?
The most common employee complaints are usually personal issues between employees or managers. Usually the complaints are handled through mediation with the two employees and an outside party. ??"
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For this interview I spent an hour and half in our HR department and spoke with our Employment Administrator and our Senior Human Resources Manager
1. How is the effectiveness of HR measured?
A. Our organization doesn’t really have a set of metrics that are used to rate our HR dept the data that is collected for our Affirmative Action plan is very data intensive and does a very good job of showing how our hires reflect our diversity goals related to our recruitment pools. Additional our HR department manages all our employee benefits and because of that our health insurance premiums are not going up next year. Although this is not an official measure of the effectiveness it does show that this group is doing a good job. Another way HR tracks effectiveness is based on how many employees enroll in offered training courses that HR provides. Our HR department is very focused on growing human capital so they pay very close attention to how many employees take additional training and what kind of training is most popular.
2. How do they do ROI? What is the methodology? How well are the numbers accepted by management? How has this helped HR reputation within the company?
A. Mostly because we are not a for profit organization our HR dept does not track its cost per hire. Really the only way they keep track of return on investments is based on employee fed back and if the services provided are used or not. Management is fine with this system and this way of doing things allows HR great flexibility. This flexibility in hiring processes and others has gone a long way towards improving HR reputation within the organization. They are now seen being more responsive to the needs of all the different departments. Although they do still struggle with the image of being the “police”
3. How do HR professional develop skills to deal with the future business world?
A. All the HR mangers are very proactive in reading all the HR journals and attending HR conferences. They also attend many scientific conferences to stay current with trends and topics within our scientific research community.
4. What trends are affecting the organization and what is HR’s role in helping the company in that environment?
A. Diversity is a trend has always been a part of the organization but it has kind of gone in waves over the years. For a year or two it will come to the surface but then fade into the background again. Within the last year it has become a main focus of the NCAR director and he has taken the ball and really run with it. So diversity as a goal has really become more of a way of life then just another trend. Mentoring though our Leadership Academy has also really grown in popularity.
5. Does HR sit at the strategic planning table?
A. Many of our divisional strategic plans focus more on science and research agendas so most of the time HR does not have a place within strategic planning. However, recently NCAR has developed a workforce management plan that outlines plans and goals for developing our future workforce. The Director or HR and the Senior Manager of HR both were on the executive committee that developed the plan but HR provided more of a supportive role rather than a role in planning and finding solutions. HR provided data, demographics and numbers on turnover rates, average age of current employees. They generally provide support for what departments and divisions want to do rather than handing out solutions that are to be followed.
6. How are employee benefits decided on? And do they ever chance based on employee interest/participation?
A. Our benefits administrator has been out of the office so I couldn’t get a detailed answer on this.
7. What are a couple of the biggest challenges facing our HR dept over the next year?
A. Revamping our new employee orientation is going to be one of the biggest challenges just because there is so much information and we are looking at the best and most effective way to communicate it all to new employees. Next the HR dept is working on getting everything on line and reorganizing the HR web site to make it more users friendly.
8. Based on the HR survey I had a few fellow employees complete along with a rep from HR the one things that everyone agreed on was that HR could be more effective communicating with employees what could HR do better?
A. This is pretty much an organization wide problem with how best to communicate to 1500+ employees. Depending on the information HR uses every available means of communicating to staff from our daily staff announcements to updating the web site and sometimes mailing information to people’s homes but there are always people that miss it.
9. Unlike most HR depts. Our payroll and employee safety/comp is handled by two other departments within the organization, is this a better system and why?
A. It is a very good system for our organization because it allows HR to focus entirely on hiring, recruiting and training.
10. What are the main recruiting tools used by HR?
A. Job fairs are used a lot to find student assistants many of which stay on with the organization after graduation especially in engineering and computing specialties. Ads in relevant professional publications are used as well as notices send out to our Member Universities. Networking within the Atmospheric Sciences world-wide community is the most common way of finding higher level directors. Ads in local newspapers are used to find worker for more blue collar positions like food and event services. ANEKA
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1.How is the effectiveness of HR measured in their company?
LL: HR department may have other metrics, but Engineering monitors number of new personnel requisitions each week and total number of outstanding requisitions by each department. Also number of outstanding job offers, number of acceptances, and number of new employees within last 30 days (when an acceptance becomes an employee at the company, then that is termed a “new” employee). We sometimes form ratios of these quantities, but the real indicators are how quickly the department meets the demand. These metrics are the focus for us in the current climate, which is an urgent need to hire technical personnel.
2.How do they do ROI? What is the methodology used? How well are the numbers accepted by management? How has this helped HR’s reputation in the company?
LL: I don’t know the answer to this one, because I do not see the total expenditures by HR per new hire. Retention of employees should be an issue here as well, because when an employee leaves the company, we have to incur the hiring expense again.
3.How do HR professionals develop the skills to deal with the future business world?
LL: Our HR personnel take outside classes and receive within-company mentoring.
4.Review the trends with the interviewee and ask them which trends are affecting their company and what is HR’s role in helping the company be successful in that environment?
LL: Current trend for our company is rapid hiring due to several new contracts--especially of technical personnel with appropriate security clearances. HR helps prepare job descriptions, screens candidates, sets up interviews, makes formal offers. HR attends and sets up job fairs. HR evaluates competitive salaries and benefits for the industry and specific positions.
MF: Large scale downsizing, while trying to identify and retain resources which are crucial for current and future operations.
Third party website software, to manage candidate job applications and resume' information mining.
Learning how to use websites such as LinkedIn, to represent and market their hiring needs.
5.Does HR sit at the strategic planning table? If so, how did this come about? If not, what is HR’s role in helping the company meet its goals?
LL: Yes. The VP for HR is a member of the CEO’s Executive Staff, and participates in strategic planning. The HR VP contributes directly to the corporate strategic plan, which is updated annually.
6.Is there a formal mentoring program at the company? If not, why not?
LL: There are formal mentoring programs at the company, including a fairly brief new employee orientation and assignment of mentors from the new employee’s functional group. Both of these programs are currently under review.
7.What steps are being taken, if any, to mitigate the threat from “brain drain?” (“Brain drain” Is a term used to describe the loss of skilled and experienced intellectual, technical and professional personnel through transfer to other professional environments, or what may be of more immediate concern; the impending retirement of the “baby boomer” generation. )
LL: Some of the steps: 1) Modest amount of in-house training for cross-generational differences, in an attempt to make the company environment more attractive to younger employees. 2) active recruiting of young engineers at selected universities. 3) support of young engineer organizations and activities at the local university. 4) Increased mentoring activity to train young engineers by senior engineers. 5) Some effort to identify qualities of the work environment that appeal to younger engineers??"more net centric hardware and software, for example.
8.What tools/methods are used to increase employee retention?
LL: Employee surveys to identify sources of employee satisfaction/dissatisfaction, and then explicit actions to make changes accordingly. Areas of greatest concern include improved training, more transparent evaluation process, and access to best tools (software, computers, technical hardware).
MF: Benefit packages.
Pay for performance rewards (both individual and company performance), which is intended to reward personnel who are willing to engage and outperform their peers.
Surveys to identify concerns of the workforce, and trends good or bad, for any particular departments.
"360 degree" evaluation, which also reviews an employee's manager.
Assessment of other company benefits in the same class.
9.How has the recession affected the way HRM is performed?
LL: At first, more emphasis on employee retention in the face of uncertain business opportunities. Greatly reduced hiring, and consequently less activity with job fairs, while sorting through larger volume of job applications. Within the last few months, the new business has risen dramatically, so that now the emphasis is on increased hiring, especially of technical personnel.
10. Is there a formal succession plan in place?
LL: Formal succession plan extends to VPs and their direct reports. We expect to include more management levels in the coming year. Critical technical personnel are identified, and cross-training or new hires identified to provide back-up for those critical personnel.
MF: a large part of activity during the recession, is how to manage downsizing of the workforce, and at the same time, comply with government regulations. I can't remember the name, but there is a regulation (at least in CA), that if a company is laying off more then 10% or the workforce, there are certain things they must comply with, such as giving the employee an 60 notice. This becomes an important factor in the treatment and "packages" given to employees. There is a lot of contract work as well, to develop legal agreements for the laid off employees, to essentially waive some rights, and provide more legal recourse for the company, in exchange for severance money.
Sue
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