A few months ago, Washington Doris accepted her new job as a human resource director at the XYZ Company. The company focuses on the development of software. The company has 350 employees. During her first three months, Washington has noted that several anomalies in the company’s culture. As such, the bosses generate their own interview questions for preferred workers, managers determine the employees’ compensation, and the company employs a number of new employees from the college the president of the corporation graduated.
Identify the three key issues or potential problems Doris is likely to face as HR director
Based on the above illustrations, it is apparent that a number of challenges will affect Doris in her new position. As a human resource director, Doris will be responsible for the overall supervision, coordination, and assessment of the human resource responsibilities in the company. The first challenge that is likely to be encountered by Doris is changing the organizational culture. Now, the organizational culture of the company is inappropriate.
The second challenge that will be encountered by Doris in her new position will be rejection. As such, her role requires her to command, coordinate, and evaluate all functions with respect to human resources. Given the current skewed condition of the administrative system in the company, she will be forced to come up with new suitable administrative rules. The rules will ensure that ethical and legal requirements with respect to work adhere. In her bid to implement the new rules, Doris will face immense rejection from both the managers and the employees.
The third problem that will be faced by Doris is related to recruitment, retention, and motivation of employees. As indicated in the case study, the company has been recruiting new employees without adhering to the standardized procedures. Similarly, the employees have been compensated based on their relationship or influence with the managers. In this respect, Doris has to ensure that in the future, the required recruitment laws have adhered. Through this, the company will attract qualified and competitive new employees to fill the new positions (Terera & Ngirande, 2014). Similarly, Doris has to ensure that employees are compensated based on their training, productivity, and experiences. By doing so, the company’s employees will be motivated to work hard to be amply compensated.
Select two of the above potential problems and address the factors of these difficult challenges, identify their complexities, and the concerns that are most important
In this section, two of the three challenges identified above are selected for analysis. The challenges selected are organizational culture and recruitment, retention, and motivation. There are a number of factors that are attributed to these difficult challenges. The factors that contribute to the current organizational culture are the employees’ and managers’ values, vision, norms, systems, beliefs, and habits (Chen, 2014). On the other hand, the factors that contribute to recruitment, retention, and motivation of employees are related to employees’ training, productivity, and compensation (Terera & Ngirande, 2014). With respect to the above challenges, Doris is required to deal with a number of difficulties. The difficulties include coming up with new recruitment guidelines, compensation guidelines, and adopting an appropriate organizational culture.
The above issues have some complexities. Concerning organizational culture, it should be noted that every organization has a unique organizational culture that every new employee is expected to embrace (Chen, 2014). It will be a challenge for Doris to change the existing culture in the company as she is also expected to adopt. Regarding the recruitment, retention, and motivation of employees, Doris’ major challenge is to ensure that new employees are employed based on their qualifications. The above initiative will be a challenge because it will imply employing new employees from diverse backgrounds instead of relying only on the college, the president of the company graduated.
Compared to other challenges, the above concerns are the most vital challenges to consider. Organizational culture is important because it determines the basis for strategy. If XYZ Company wants to implement a particular strategy, it must ensure that it completely aligns with the existing organizational culture. Because of this, Doris has to come up with appropriate initiatives and objectives aimed at enhancing organizational culture, which upholds the company’s strategy. Recruitment, retention, and motivation of employees are important because it determines the productivity of the company (Terera & Ngirande, 2014). Similarly, the challenge is very important because recruitment, retention, and motivation factors are very dynamic. For instance, human resource managers should adopt modern methods of posting job vacancies and recruiting new employees.
Possible alternatives to dealing with the problems
To address the problem related to organizational culture, Doris may be forced to win the hearts and minds of the managers and employees through persuasion for them to accept the changes (Chen, 2014). Similarly, Doris may address the problem by engaging a respectable and influential employee to assist her in building an alliance and plans for change.
Similarly, to address the problem related to the recruitment, retention, and motivation of employees, Doris should offer the employees a positive working environment, equal opportunities, and identify and reward the appropriate behavior (Terera & Ngirande, 2014).
Through this, limited funds will be spent on recruiting and training new employees as the turnover will be managed. The money saved may be used in enhancing the employees’ welfare. Similarly, Doris may address the above problem by training the managers and supervisors on appropriate means of recruiting and managing employees. Usually, a number of companies promote loyal staff members to administration positions without training them about management techniques and policies. The companies fail to recognize that the management of employees is a very challenging task that requires trained and experienced individuals. Therefore, Doris may apply this approach to solve the challenge associated with recruitment and retention.
The best solution for the problems
In the above section, alternatives for dealing with the identified problems are identified. As such, this section identifies the best solution among the alternatives. Of the two alternatives identified in the above section, offering employees a positive working environment, equal opportunities, and identifying and rewarding the appropriate conduct is the best solution to solving the problem related to recruitment and retention. Through this approach, the employees will be engaged and will feel appreciated as being part of the company. Similarly, rewarding the employees on merit motivates them, reducing the increase in turnover.
The best solution to solving the problem related to organizational culture is persuading the managers and employees to accept change. Therefore, Doris has a huge challenge of ensuring that the organization adopts an appropriate organizational culture. Her first role should be aimed at educating the managers and employees about the importance of adopting appropriate behaviors. She should also demonstrate the benefits of adopting the change. During the change process, managers should lead by example.
Conclusion and recommendation
Corning the case study, Doris is faced with a number of challenges in the new company. The problems include organizational culture, rejection, and recruitment, retention, and motivation of employees. It is recommended that Doris should persuade the managers and employees for them to accept changes. She should also offer employees with a positive working environment, equal opportunities, and identify and reward the appropriate conduct.
References
Chen, S. (2014). Organizational Demography or Organizational Culture? The Determinants of Knowledge Transfer Performance. Journal of Business Management & Economics, 2(6), 1-6. Web.
Terera, S., & Ngirande, H. (2014). The Impact of Rewards on Job Satisfaction and Employee Retention. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 5(1), 4-8. Web.