Employee Testing at Jennifers Company - Report Example

What would be the advantages and disadvantages to Jennifer’s company of routinely administrating honesty test to all its employees? Jennifer’s company would be urged to do honesty tests as it would be commercially quite important for the company to check and completely stop the acts of stealing. This process of cross checking is not easy as the stealing is happening not only in the form of direct cash stealing but also by running route. It is quite vital for the sustainable profitability of the company to have honest approach towards the job. The screening process during the inception of employees will have to be made strict so as to ensure that no anti-organizational elements get into the fleet of employees. This is very important because even trace elements of dishonesty among the employees can prove detrimental to the whole organizational structure. The honesty test in generic language is a kind of personality test. It can be ideally used by Jennifer’s’ company during the selection process. Holding honesty tests during the inception process can be good tool to assess the ethical quality of the staff. The company can extensively include these tests in all its recruitment process as has gained legal status after the introduction of Employee Polygraph Protection Act in the year 1988 (USDLETA, 1999). This act banned the use of polygraph tests and resultantly honesty tests gained much popularity. In the case of Jennifer’s’ company the two resources of honesty tests including overt integrity test and personality based measures can be used (USDLETA, 1999) The advantage of overt integrity tests are that they critically checks the attitude of the potential applicants in involving activities like theft. This also checks the delinquency of the proximities of an individual getting into theft and other anti organizational activities. The severity and leniency towards such activities can also be checked. This test has a direct methodology involving the awareness of the employee that he or she is being tested for the personal integrity and honesty (USDLETA, 1999). On the other side, personality based measures involved disguised methodology to check the integrity of the employee’s personality. The attitude for theft and other negative personal attributes are assessed indirectly through the analysis of a number of other counterproductive employee behaviors. (USDLETA, 1999) With reference to the case of Jennifer’s company, the major disadvantage in carrying out the honest tests is it can only be feasibly undertaken during the recruitment process. This is because it would demoralize the actively working staff, if they are made to undergo honesty tests very often. In the case of Jennifer’s company the fact is that the employees who are already in the working team have been involved in theft both direct and indirect. The trends as shown by the staff of Jennifer’s company points towards a need for the clear distinction between honest and dishonest elements within the working team. Jennifer Carter and her father is no position to clearly distinguish between the good and the bad in the workforce. So the only option is to check the integrity of all the staff with no inclusion criteria. Along with this scenario it must also be understood that Carter Cleaning Centers has been successful in the cleaning industry of the area with the relentless efforts of some of its employees. The hardest fact is that these employees will also be automatically involved in the bracket of the population to be involved in the honesty test. This would unfortunately highly affect the morale of ethically hard working employees. In turn this would result in the loss of honesty of the till then honest staff as well. Another serious disadvantage of honest tests is that it can involve privacy issue. The tested ones may not be interested in revealing some of their personally relevant information. This should be read together with the fact the honesty test will be based on the analysis of the critical personal information of the employees. The legal requirement for this privacy factor demands the documentation of the whole test procedure. This would involve huge quantum paper work and the involvement of experts. For a company like that of Jennifer’s this would be a task involving high expenditure of time, resources and money. Added to this complexity is the requirement that the test takers would need some kind of training for correctly participating in the test. This again would demand energy and resource from the side of Jennifer. The most serious among the disadvantages of the test is that it has the chances to have prediction errors. Such errors can be in real terms detrimental to a healthy work environment. If an employee who is highly involved in maintaining the market performance of Carter Cleaning Centers is certified to be dishonest, it would be worst thing that the management can do to its human resource. The other side of the scenario is that if a thief among the team is certified to be honest, other too will be demoralized and encouraged to be dishonest. There are governmental regulations existing on the usage of honesty rest as well. Specifically, what other screening techniques could the company use to screen out theft-prone and turnover-prone employees, and how exactly could these be used. The primary measure that Carter Cleaning Centers should initialize is to mop-up the existing dishonest elements within the working system. It should be understood by the management that any small traces of unethical factors can pollute the whole work environment. As an initial step towards this the company can have more managerial supervision to super check the performance of its employees. This would create a fear of being caught in cases of theft and turnover. The fear of being expelled however would stop anti organizational activities to a higher extent. However so as for each employee to be closely monitored, this would demand high count of manpower requirement which in turn can cause financial burdens for a small company as that of Jennifer, An ideal solution in this case is the installation of a surveillance camera. Each and every corner of the institution can be closely watched through this system. The benefit of such system is that the management can not only check the possibilities of theft and overturn but also can monitor the productivity of each employee. The best thing in these systems is that images of a number of days can be securely stored in the storage system. This would mean that even if a discrepancy is noted after a number of days, the images of the past days can be over checked to precisely find out the responsible element. Another important measure towards the screening of theft prone employees would be to have a close monitoring over the inventory and the supply (Tatum, 2008). It must be ensured that every tem being used in the operational routine must have entities in the stock. Detergents and other consumables must be allotted to each staff as per the exact functional requirements. The management must standardize and calibrate the resource requirement for a particular quantum of work to be done (Tatum, 2008). For example the monitoring authority of each unit of Jennifer’s company must have an exact estimation on how much detergent and other consumables would be required to clean a particular quantum of clothes. When any mismatch is continuously occurring with regard to a particular employee, the case must be closely monitored. However, proper confirmations must be made before assuming that a particular employee is dishonest towards work and the management. It has been observed in Jennifer’s company that the employees are running a route by carrying out unaccounted business. A log of the materials being brought in and out of the premises of the company can clearly check the possibilities of unaccounted entities going in and out of the premises (Tatum, 2008). This would further mean that the management will have access to the number of clothes which was taken in. On the other side the data on the number of clothes which were taken out will also be recorded. If the receipt is crosschecked at the gate, the exact comparison of the clothes registered and the clothes checked out can be done. Any mismatches in this account would indicate possible chances of dishonest deals by the employees. However it should be noted that mismatches in this accounting can occur due to a number of other reasons as well. Thus it becomes quite important to cross check each and every credentials before assuming a particular employee as dishonest. Added to this system, if an electronic system is established to register the check in and check out times of each employee, the decision taking process over situations of crisis can be easier. An employee inclusive approach in the screening process can be a very effective tool in checking employee overturn and theft (Tatum, 2008). If representative organizations or the whole strength of staff is convinced on the need of checking theft and overturn for maintaining the sustainability of the organization, they would help the management in the screening process. Moreover, this is the best opportunity for the management to clearly distinguish the dishonest employees from the ethically hard working manpower of the company. If the management of Carter Cleaning Centers can mange to constitute a squad involving the active participation of the employees, the screening process becomes much easy. Democratic forums to post complaints of such sort must be established so that the honest employees would get a chance to help the management screen out the dishonest ones. These forums must be confidential in nature so that the employees are actively encouraged to participate without revealing their identity. How should her company terminate employees caught stealing, and what kind of procedure should be set up for handling references calls about these employees when they go to other companies looking for the job? With reference to increasing number of thefts in Carter Cleaning Centers, it must be ensured that very strict measures are taken against the employees. This is necessary because this should be a strong message to the other employees who may possibly get engaged in theft and overturn. The punishment must be no less than termination because maintaining such dishonest elements will pollute the setup of the whole work environment. However, before finalizing the decision for termination, it must be ensured that proper investigation is done over the accusations made on the employee. The concerned employees must be heard to and proper legal requirements must be ensured. In cases of minimal involvement in theft and other unethical activities, the management of Carter Cleaning Centers can resort to the issue of warnings. However, the further performance of such employees must be closely monitored. The consensus from the trade unions and other organizations related to the employees would make the disciplinary measures easier in implementation. While dealing with the reference calls for the cause of employees caught and terminated for theft, the prime factor which must influence the policy is the corporate responsibility and the corporate culture associated with Carter Cleaning Centers. It is important for the company to be responsible in maintaining the culture of the whole industry. If a person while being with Carter Cleaning Centre has proved to be detrimental to any organization which he or she would work with, it becomes the duty of Carter Cleaning Centre to clearly communicate with the enquiring organization on the performance of the particular employee. If this is not conveyed, Carter Cleaning Centre would be ethically responsible, in case the particular person gets into the enquirer’s company and continue doing theft. Works Cited Tatum Malcolm, “How To Stop Employee Theft”, 2008, How to do things, 22 Apr 2009, U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration, “Assessment Tools and Their Uses”, 1999, HR guide, 22 Apr 2009, Read More