Honesty Testing at Carter Cleaning Company - Assignment Example

Philosophy Essay Honesty Testing at Carter Cleaning Company Introduction Jennifer Carter and her father, Jack Carter run a cleaning company that has a significant number of employees for tasks such as pressing clothes, mixing the cleaning chemicals, operating machines, accounting, among others (Gary 207). Jennifer describes the process of screening job applicants to be both easy and hectic. Reasonably, the technical tasks cover the easy part of the screening since one can be able to determine if an applicant meets the requirements or qualifications within 20 or 30 minutes. However, tasks such as those in the stores make the screening more complex because Jennifer and her father have no idea on what screening tools to use in the evaluation of certain qualities. Typically, this is a frustrating issue for the company management because they experience challenges on employee honesty and employee turnover annually. Apparently, their aim is implementing screening tools and approaches that will tackle the problems on turnover and honesty simultaneously as a foundation for helping the company on saving time and money. On the other hand, employee theft is also on the top of the company’s challenges list. Jennifer is keen to state out that it is not only prevalent in cash accessible areas but also supplies, gas and power because different employees access the stores without supervision. Moreover, some of the employees involve in practices such as taking rush orders and ‘running a route’. This involves pocketing money for orders that take a maximum of one hour and servicing clothes for neighbors and friends without the consent of the management, after which the employees get payment when they return these clothes after work. Jennifer and Jack Carter have implemented strategies to counter the theft cases such as putting notices that every customer should get a receipt but store managers and counter workers still manage to steal (Gary 207. Jack Carter illustrates this through the example of one of the cashiers who had his own cash register and the customers would get the receipts as expected but the cash would not go to the company’s records. Generally, the Carter Cleaning Company has these primal problems and Jennifer feels that the facilitators are the company’s practices for screening job applicants. With this in mind, Jennifer and Jack are in the interest of new screening processes and techniques they can integrate in their company’s system to counter the greater part of the prevailing issues. The queries at hand entail a comprehensive explanation on honesty tests inclusive of the merits and demerits of these tests, screening techniques to counter theft and employee turnover, and background investigation and reference calls on a less-detailed platform. Questions 1. What are the advantages and Disadvantages to Jennifer’s company of routinely administering honest tests to all its employees? Naturally, honesty tests evaluate the applicant’s trustworthiness, dependability and definitely, honesty making them core approaches to countering Jennifer’s problems. In fact, counterproductive behaviors like theft in Carter Cleaning Company need this as more of a remedy. The company’s management has a better chance at handling this issue by implementing honesty tests during interviews as a tactic for eliminating the threats before they become the company’s liability. Typically, honesty tests are more advantageous than disadvantageous as part of the company’s system; however, this obviously depends with the type of test that Jennifer chooses (Pulakos 42). Moreover, factors such as the reliability, validity and usability also count as attributes for the honesty tests. The main disadvantage about honesty tests is that they are not a comprehensive solution to cases of theft or turnover in the Carter Cleaning Company; they do not eliminate these issues but only give an idea on possible suspects from the test scores. Implementing a test that is legally considered, valid and reliable will just create a foundation for Jennifer on tackling the issue of theft or turnover; unfortunately, she will need additional techniques to overcome this completely (Gary 203). All the same, prevention is better cure, which is the core factor in this situation. Predictably, if Jennifer and Jack had incorporated honesty tests as part of the interview, chances are that the company would have less theft cases or even none. Appreciably, honesty tests can also measure attitudes, on top of counter productivity behavior, making the screening process easier during selection. Generally, polygraph tests do not fit Carter Cleaning Company because of the legal and moral demerits; however, ‘paper and pencil’ is applicable but not utterly convenient under the scope of validity and reliability. However, since Carter Cleaning Company is not large, issues on cost and time are not a concern for Jennifer (Gary 200). Assertively, honesty tests will assist Jennifer in making sure every employee knows that he/she is accountable for their actions and practices. 2. Specifically, what other screening techniques could the company use to screen out theft-prone and turnover prone employees and how exactly could they apply? Clearly, honesty or integrity tests do not meet all the requirements to countering Jennifer’s issues hence additional screening techniques will make the new approaches more effectual. The Carter Cleaning Company, as a whole, can also incorporate reference checks and background investigations in their system (Gary 194). This way every employee they select will be legitimate and productive; moreover, they will be able to eliminate any potential threats by looking at the applicants’ backgrounds. Obviously, multiple screening techniques would apply in working environments but in Jennifer’s situation, the employees have the ability to counter almost all initiatives, evidence that they have experience. Even so, reference checks and background investigations can act as secondary screening techniques to the primal honesty tests. Significantly, reference checks are very efficient in the identification of areas that raise alarm on how a candidate behaved in their previous jobs. However, this requires the applicant to provide sincere references such as that of their former supervisor and more than the basic information about him/her (Gary 195). Background investigations are sometimes hard especially if one is unable to access the relevant information about an applicant; all the same, they are the most efficient in regards to circumvention of hiring mistakes. Moreover, they are cheap and very useful since most of the information is on the internet. Jennifer will be able to verify applicant’s information and uncover damaging data on them. 3. How should her company terminate employees caught stealing and what kind of procedure should be set up for handling reference calls about these employees when they go to other companies looking for jobs? Clearly, the theft issues have been a long-term bother for Jennifer and Jack as the heads of the Carter Cleaning Company hence the employees caught stealing should be fully accountable for their acts. The first steps before acting entail a thorough investigation to the point of gathering sufficient evidence; naturally, it might be financial documents or even video evidence. Documentation of everything is always advantageous, especially in the case where Jack found one of the employees in the act. Jennifer should also evaluate the severity of the theft; definitely, her company experiences multiple losses every year under theft so the employee caught stealing should be reliable for most of them (Gary 203). Jennifer should file a police report after completing the above report or consider compromising with the employee. However, it can entail a brief discussion with the employee before asking them to leave the company. At some point, Jennifer might receive a call or a documented reference check on the employee caught stealing. This is crucial because this employee left the Carter Cleaning Company with a bad reputation hence Jennifer has the choice of giving positive remarks or telling the truth about them. Jennifer should follow the company’s established policies as the core step of responding to the reference check (Gary 195). Secondly, Jennifer should make sure that the employee authorized the reference check in form of a signature or other means. Thirdly, she should only answer questions that they are comfortable with or those according to the agreement of the reference check. Finally, since the employee was caught stealing, Jennifer should discuss the matter with her attorney before making any remarks since giving positive or negative answers might put her in trouble. For instance, lying about the employee can lead to their employment and later on, that company might sue Jennifer after they catch the employee stealing (Hunter 18). Conclusion Resolutely, screening tools and techniques facilitate effectiveness for corporations in hiring and selecting new employees; in fact, when properly implemented, they improve the performance, reduce the cost and meeting legal obligations. However, management teams and leaders like Jennifer should ensure that they screening techniques they select are valid and reliable, relative to their respective fields. They should also evaluate their techniques on aspects such as usability, adverse impact and its return on investment to ensure that they make no mistakes when hiring. The Carter Cleaning Company has common employee problems; in fact, employee theft and turnover happens to multiple companies, even international corporations. All the same, the best way to counter them is by implementing honesty/integrity, especially during interviews; moreover, background investigations and reference checks should also apply as secondary techniques (Gary 196). This will give Jennifer an idea on the kind employee they choose hence reducing the theft and turnover issues for the Carter Cleaning Company. Works Cited/ References Gary, Dessler. Human Resource Management (13th Ed.), Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 2012. Hunter, J. Assessment Decision Guide: United States Office of Personnel Management, 3.1(2008): 10-28. Pulakos, Elaine. Selection Assessment Methods: Society of Human Resource Management 15.1 (2005): 31-60. Read More