Financial Services Corporation: Implementing an HR Balanced Scorecard - Example

The paper "Financial Services Corporation: Implementing an HR Balanced Scorecard" is a great example of a report on finance and accounting. The corporation is a large money services corporation with offices throughout the United States, although it is mostly centered on the East Coast of the country. With over 70,000 employees its Human Resources division has an almost overwhelming task in carrying out its daily duties, especially considering the volatility of the American economy and the company itself during the first decade of the twenty-first century, a time for tremendous change in the banking industry.

This was particularly true post-September 11, 2001, when the Patriot Act and its companion Banking Secrecy Act changed and further complicated the way financial institutions did business, by requiring them to detect and stop money laundering procedures. Like many others in the banking industry, in the decade prior to 2006 FSC had acquired and merged with many other like firms. By that year the corporation was in the process of its largest merger to date, which was still some months off. In order to make the merger smooth and efficient, it became evident that most of their divisions needed to be streamlined and HR was one of those divisions that were singled out.

One of those options was the balanced scorecard; an idea that had been around since the early 1990s and had been implemented several times during the decade by the Human Resources of FSC, albeit without much success. Issues Based upon “How to Analyze a Case” from Harvard Business School’s Case Study Handbook, there are four situations that occur in most cases. The first is the problem or in modern speak, the issues involved. FSC needed to develop a balanced scorecard (BSC) for its merger and had begun to identify problems with its Human Resources Division as early as 2002.

That year, FSC conducted an “internal quality process assessment” that was based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, established by the US Congress in 1987 and maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as a means of restoring quality and pride in the American business ethic. Although there is no evidence FSC was vying for the award, the NIST website lists the self-assessment as an excellent tool to see where the company is. With regard to the HR Division, the study revealed several weaknesses.