Improving the Human Resources Conditions at Mel Air, to Achieve the Corporate Objectives - Case Study Example

This is an essay based on the case analysis of an organization named ‘Mel Air’, whose founder has taken certain initiatives towards enhancing the human resourse management there. The essay has been divided into major sections. The first section is a detailed analysis of whether the approach of the founder towards human resourse management is strategic or not. Further, the second key section identifies the various alternatives available in the strategic HR domain, which can help, improve the HR conditions at Mel Air, and also lead to the achievement of the corporate objectives put forth by the founder to compete with growing competition in the airline industry. He has identified that a well trained and committed staff can provide its customers with satisfactory service which along with cost management operations can give Mel Air, a competitive streak. The two main sections of this essay have been followed by a brief, crisp and comprehensive overview of the chief landmarks and indications made in the essay in order to provide the reader with a conclusive summary of the entire document. This first section of the essay will discuss and analyse the extent to which the approach of the founder towards human resourse management was strategic. Strategic human resource management refers to the process of developing practices, programmes and policies that help achieve organizational objectives (Ashwathappa, 2008). The organizational objective for Mel Air was to create an environment of excellent customer service and retain its cost advantage. The founder’s alignment of these organizational objectives with the programmes, policies and human resource practices he initiated indicated a successful first step towards a Strategic Human Resourse Management. The founder started with a strategic mission development of efficient, affordable travel and helpful friendly staff. This indicates an integration of company mission (efficient and affordable air travel service) with the HR mission (well trained and cordial flight crew). This shows that the management (especially the founder) considers the implications of business strategy with all HR systems within the firm. This translation of company objectives into specific people management systems with a consistent integration of all HR programmes and policies within a larger framework helps achieve the firm’s objectives (Mello, 2003, pp. 100). The strategic nature of the HRM outlook of the founder is also validated by the evidence in the case of Mel Air, which illustrates the founder himself introducing the new mission to his people through presentation on specially organized company seminar. Usually, a traditional (non strategic) HRM views the responsibity of people management to be solely with the HR specalists. However, the strategic HRM views every person who interacts and has the responsibility of the people to be an HRM manager. The founders approach has moved beyond the conventional employee relations perpective to a strong focus on parternship with both internal (employees and crew members of Mel Air) and external (Customers of Mel Air) constituent group. This focus on both internal and external entities associated with Mel Air, provides a strategic bent to the approach of the founder (Mello, 2003, pp.102). One of the major barriers to strategic HRM (Mello, 104-105) is a short term mentality and focus on current performance. This barrier has been overcome by the founder through promoting a long term mission and overall holistic development of the quality of human resourse at Mel Air. Moreover, he has moved beyond the general area of low cost operations to serving custors efficiently too which is quite a strategic framework. The founder’s appreciation for the value of HR and the contribution it can make as a strategic partner is commendable. This has given rise to a few enumerated policies and practices to be followed thereon at Mel Air and these policies are to act as benchmarks for comparing and evaluating performance over a period of time. In fact, a strategic HRM outlook and a vision of HR strategies and policies impacting the performance of overall organization has been lucidly depicted in ‘The Guest Model of HRM’ by David Guest in 1997 (Bratton & Gold, 2003) which is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: The Guest Model of HRM Since the founder’s final mission is that of a ‘Cost-competitive’ airlines, it will be the final financial outcome of the HRM strategy implemented at the initiation (by the founder in the form of presentation and company objective carddistribution to all employees and an assessment of existing attitude among the Mel Air staff for identification of problem areas). This would be followed by a set of HRM practices, which would lead to the desired modified behavioral outcomes in the form of efficient, trained, and customer needs sensitive staff. This perspective of final financial objectives of Mel Air being met if a good strategic HRM framework is in place is a significant breakthrough due to the abstract felt but not seen outcomes of HR function. Hence, we have seen in the above section of the essay that the approach adopted by the founder of Mel Air is very much inclined in a strategic human resource management direction. A thorough scan and comprehensive analysis has shown that the founder is mature enough to accept HR function and the contribution of people management operations as one of the crucial strategic partners for the achievement of the overall company objective. His personal attention to the introduction of a new found attention and importance to be accorded to customer relationship and staff efficiency of Mel Air reaffirms his strategic intent. This second section of this essay will deal with recommendations drawn for HR strategy keeping in view the business priorities of Mel Air and its retention of competitive position as the number one ‘no frills’ airline. After having analysed the situation and HR position at Mel Air, it can be justifiably argued that certain strict and sincere efforts need to be expended by the management so as to correct its defective HR environment. From a long term perspective, it is very essential that not only cost-competitiveness but also the quality and human resource aspect is paid a close and equal attention. Although, a lot still needs to be done to keep up cost competitiveness and manage costs, it is imperative that the HR prospects are also strengthened for the company. A system of checks and balances towards HR practices, as is done in case of financial objectives is the need of the hour. Certain prominent HR issues at Mel Air are high employee turnover and an unfriendly, inefficient staff that leads to customer complaints. High employee turnover is a gradual outcome frustrated employees who have to deal with autocratic senior managers, lack of learning and development opportunities, lack of career growth prospects, increased stress and lack of motivation. Moreover, a comparatively low priority mindset for customer service as compared to cheap product and a poor recognition of new customer approach along with lack of skills and knowledge in part-time employees is the culprit behind inefficient and customer unfriendly staff at Mel Air. All the above issues can be effectively handled by implementing a series of strategic HR practices in place for Mel Air, an initiation of which has already been done by the founder. The following would be my recommendations based on my understanding of the scenario and these have been categorized into the following subunits. Firstly, in order to keep a check on increasing employee turnover, a need for effective HRP (human resource planning) is required (Leap & Crino, 1990). A properly chalked out retention plan (Armstrong, 1988) for valued and efficient employees can be developed consisting of a well designed compensation structure and other non monetary benefits. Using tools such as job description and specification analysis (Beach, 1980) in tandem with the strategic choices of Mel Air can lead to a job design (Popplewell & Wildsmith, 1988) better suited to an employees capability and interest and thus would work towards reducing his/her work stress levels. These job analyses need to match human resourse activities with organization’s strategic planning and therefore, should accurately detail the knowledge and skills, which would complement future initiatives of Mel Air and thereby capture both the present and future (Ivaneevich, 2004). Secondly, the induction and placement of new hires so as to make them realize that they are an integral part (Stone, 1982) of Mel Air would need attention. With this a proper Training, development and career management initiative should be started at Mel Air. These would remove performance deficiencies and retain employees. This should however be carried out after a proper need assessment (Goldstein & Ford, 2002). A well structured and planned succession of jobs (DeNisi & Griffin, 2006) by Mel Air so as to develop its staff would be a much needed step towards organizational career planning. This can be achieved through career planning workshops, career counselling, mentoring, personal development plans etc. Third, a regular and consistent performance appraisal system in place for Mel Air can be a tremendous aid for increasing employee motivation and job performance as well as satisfaction (Fisher et al, 1997). Also, the performance appraisal system can prove to be an important organizational mechanism to elicit feedback on the consistency of the strategy-behaviour link at Mel Air. Performance appraisals should be made a benchmark activity, which is to be carried out as an essential practice at Mel Air. The documentation and procedure of appraising the employees should be reported directly to the head office. Fourth, Mel Air’s corporate strategy of better customer service can to be achieved through an HR policy of customer service training programmes. The root cause of the problem with customer complaints has been identified to be a weak, ineffective, and inexperienced airline crew. Therefore, the first and foremost requirement lies on the shoulders of the HR management at Mel Air to recruit and select employees who is well versed with the nuances of services of airline industry to start with. A rigorous and thorough selection procedure should be incorporated in the system of Mel Air. Another alternative strategy for managing the costs so as to sustain as the ‘no frills’ airlines, Mel Air can adopt a policy of balancing the ratio of full and part time (flexible or temporary) employees for better workforce stability. These temporary (Ivahernich, 2004) or “just in time” employees can benefit Mel Air through relatively low labour costs, easy access to experienced labour and flexibility in responding to future changes in demand for airline staff. However, a balance of permanent employees should be maintained to ensure the development of work culture and work flow process at Mel Air and familiarity to organizational goals should be emphasized too. Moreover, a safe, healthy, and cooperative working environment has to be provided along with efforts to improve employee communication to enhance productivity had been set out by the company (Ashwathappa, 2008). Work culture and communication management network are one of the monetarily inexpensive developments but can reap great HR results. Basically, a good corporate culture should promote a lateral and empowered work environment to the employees and minimise instances of autocracy. This would also enhance both upward and downward flow of communication between the people of the organization. Finally, evaluating the effectiveness of the HR system in place, at regular intervals is an equally important activity and needs to be carried out annnually or semi-annually at Mel Air. Constant audit and re-view of the HR practices (Bratton & Gold, 2003), will keep deviations in check. Assessments of the training (Schuler, et al. 1989) provided (not only in terms of hours spend but also an estimation of improvement before and after the training programme) needs to be tracked. The evaluations should to be documented and the managers should be accountable and answerable towards any evidence of negligence showed in this context. The above process of analyses and evaluations towards effective implementation of HR might prove to be abstract and difficult due to its subjective and qualitative nature. Thus, I propose to correct this condition by attaching numbers to HR objectives also. For instance, the headquarters should specify the ratio (or a range of acceptable numbers) of full time employees to part time employees to be put on the payroll of Mel Air. Also, specified could be the number of hours spend at training by each employee under the supervision of a customer training specialist. The achievement of these numbers should be included as a performance target for the managers, which would thereby eliminate the motivations to flout the specifications. Implementing information systems to manage and organize HR activities, tasks (Gueutal & Stone, 2005) can be considered as another viable one-time investment with huge long term returns and benefits. This can also act as an efficient medium for constant monitoring and evaluations for Retailco management. Hence, this would mean incorporating e-HR practices. It might also be helpful in cutting costs (which is one of Mel Air’s corporate strategy) by reducing work force requirements and eliminating errors. Therefore, the above section of the essay has enumerated and elaborated certain key HR recommendations, which can prove to be viable as well as beneficial alternatives to the prevalent problematic HR situation at Mel Air. The above suggestions have been made keeping in consideration the founder’s newly proposed long term corporate mission of an efficient staff which has a customer centric vision and also to keep up the cost competitiveness of Mel Air. Conclusively, this essay has disscussed two vital aspects related to Mel Air’s current status. The first section of the essay was an examination and critical analysis of Mel Air founder’s new found vision towards enhancing the quality of Mel Air’s working staff and the extent to which his approach is strategic in nature, has also been reasoned. From the supported arguments and details, the essay well establishes the fact that the founder’s human resourse management approach is indeed very strategic and tactical. He has moved on to identify certain HR issues at Mel Air’s workplace. These issues can be addressed with the help of structured and properly imlemented HR practices and quite a few recommendations to this extent have been put forward in the second section of the essay. These recommendations encompass job designing, re-defining and restructuring, training and career development, properly structured and monitored performance appraisal systems, balance of permanent and flexible employees, communication management, periodic HR reviews and implementations of e-HR practices to build-in inherent efficiency and cost effectiveness into the HR systems at Mel Air. The above recommendations are aligned to the corporate strategies of Mel Air. Nevertheless, all the HR practices need not be and should not be introduced at the same time. Rather, a phase-wise plan, which prioritizes those issues, which require an immediate attention, can be addressed initially. Gradually, in the later phases of the implementation, the next level of issues can be dealt with. This step-wise and prodecural approach will simpliy the entire prposal and make it more feasible and practical. The follow will also be more simplified henceforth. Read More