Human Resource Management - Natural Knibbies Company - Case Study Example

Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Class Name: Date Assignment is due: Case Study: Natural Knibbies Company HR Challenges to be addressed by Natural Knibbles Natural Knibbles is facing challenges that have emerged due to competition in the market. The company wants to specialize in the niche market of producing foods that have no allergens like gluten, soy, and sugar. This will help them curb the competition because of serving people with special dietary needs. These policy changes will lead to new issues and challenges that the Human Resource needs to overcome. The Human Resource manager needs to liaise with the rest of the management team in order to come up with strategic decisions. The Human Resource manager is mainly concerned with the problems regarding employees. The current situation facing the company means that that it will restructure itself in order to become more resilient to competition. The HR manager must learn to become a strategic employer who creates work diversity in the company. In Natural Knibbles, there is no diversity in terms of new talent because Cherrie has always maintained the 150 staff members. The future of the company will be bright only if they manage a pool of talent. Diversity in the workplace may come in form of age, sex, educational level, culture and work experience among others. The recruitment of new people in the company means that there is room for innovations and ideas that will improve the production of the goods with efficiency. In lieu of this, the company needs to recruit new workers hail from their competitors (Noc 66). Such employees will bring marketing secrets from their past employers that will help the company in achieving its goals of expanding their market share. Natural Knibbles has failed by allowing redundancy to exist in the company. This is because they do not hire any new employees and the usual employees are taught to be multi-skilled. When workers are allowed to work in a company for so many years with the surety of always retaining their jobs, they may lose the psych to learn more. They lose their artisanship because they do not feel any need to gain more skills as their jobs are secure. The management should therefore inform the employees of its plans to recruit new employees and that the old ones must sharpen their skills towards efficiency. Again, the HR manager has a challenge of introducing employee motivation perquisites to increase the efficiency of the workers. At Natural Knibbles there is no form of motivation apart from the fact that the employees are treated like family members. They also have a right to contribute their ideas and suggestions without fear of rebuke. In addition, the company has a no lay-off policy such that it guarantees job security and workers are always assured of keeping their jobs until they get better offers (Sims 20). This is not enough to boost the employees towards efficiency, as it does not enrich their lives in a direct manner. The management should redesign the jobs structure of their employees because there is no room for personal development. The workers do not hold a permanent workstation and are used for various jobs. The problem is that they will never settle in one area of work enough to master the skills and become experts. Job rotation is good to curb boredom but such modified schedules always happen so fast that a worker does not become a master in any area. Again, there are limited opportunities for promotion since the family does the important activities in the company. Workers have no morale to work harder since there is no reward or promotion that will be attributed to their effort. According to Maslow in his hierarchy of needs, it was clear that employees are not satisfied by money alone. Money can only satisfy their physiological needs like provision of food, shelter or other necessities. A worker is a human being with a myriad of different categories of needs that need to be fulfilled before he can be comfortable with being employed. Natural Knibbles has been able to satisfy the security, physiological and esteem needs of its workers (Sneil 98). The workers feel respected and valued by the owners but it has not accomplished the goal of self –fulfilment is a worker. In this segment of motivation, a worker must feel the need to be creative and be proud of his or her job. This is also the stage of self-actualization where a worker has been able to succeed to his or her full potential. This can only be achieved if the worker has many chances of promotion and the employer practices job enrichment. This means that a worker is entitled to more highly ranked responsibilities from time to time where he can learn more skills. The challenge ahead is to form a policy that will motivate the workers to excel in this new endeavour. To add to that, the HR manager faces a challenge in the establishment of training programs to enrich the workers with new skills. Since the company wants to delve into the production of allergen free foods then the workers need refresher courses in production techniques (Steingold 134). The business is set to purchase an expensive equipment that will prevent the cross contamination between various products to save those consumers with severe allergy reactions. The employees need to gain skills to operate the machine to prevent damaging the expensive gadget. Again, they need skills to be efficient in production of the new products hence reduce chances of error. Training will also save up on supervisory time because the workers will know what is expected of them when dealing with the new products. Moreover, it will help to reduce chances of accidents in case the equipment has dangerous parts like sharp blades. The challenge therefore, is to find the most convenient form of training for the company. The training may be on-job, which means that an experienced person will work as the others observe, and gain the experience by observation. The advantage is that it is cost efficient to the company and production will continue (Mathis 77). The other option is off-job training where the workers will be sent to school to learn new techniques. It is the most effective but it is expensive and output will decrease as workers abandon their jobs to study. For those employees that will be newly recruited; then the company should organize induction sources. This is the initial training a recruit is offered to be conversant with the other employees and his workstation. It is very important as it orientates the worker to the new environment to avoid the confusion of being new in a place. Steps in developing an effective HR plan The role of the HR manager is to formulate a human resource plan with keenness. This will ensure that the company has its necessary share of employees at all times. In addition, the plan will allow the business to have employees with relevant skills to match the competition in the industry (Wheelen 55). The plan starts with demand forecasting where the Hr manager will forecast the number of employees needed by the business in future due to the implementation of any changes. Since Natural Knibbles are introducing new foods in the market, they will need new production and marketing employees. Demand forecasting will ensure that workers will not be deficient thus overworked or surplus leading to underutilization. Again, the HR manager needs to carry out inventory analysis to keep records of labour turnover in the company. This may be due to dismissals, sabbaticals, transfers, death or any other reasons. This help to guide the company as regards to the extent in which the forecast has differed with real situation. The third endeavour in planning is to conduct an audit that is meant to reconcile the differences between the actual situation and forecast estimates. It will also help the management to identify the specific work areas that have surplus or deficit workers. After that, the manager should carry out reconciliation, which is making strategies to bridge the gap between the demands and supply forecasting. This may include hiring of new workers, downsizing, changing work regulations, and creating room for succession or promotion. Lastly, the HR manager must monitor and control the way in which the HR plan is being implemented. The plan should be consistent with the company’s objectives in terms f cost and time of implementation. In addition, the HR manager should ensure that the employees realize the magnitude of the plan being successful. Importance of the HR plan for Natural Knibbles in implementing the new objectives The plan is important, as it will guide the company in regards to its labour requirements. After implementing the plan, they will be in a position to find out the abilities and skills of the current employees (Burrow 102). From this information, the management will decide on those workers who need training to manage the new equipment or those who can teach the rest. It will; also allow the management to consult the workers on possible promotions that may arise due to the new changes. Again, the recruitment plan outlined in the HR plan will show how many recruits are needed for the company to perform well. The plan will also help the management to eliminate extra workers in case there are surpluses in some areas of production. The plan will also help the management to know how many workers are going to leave the company due to retirement and plan on ways of filling the emerging gaps. HRIMS and its importance on job satisfaction The HRIMS is a human resource tool that contains all the data about the employees and their performance. The system is computerized and it makes the work easier for the HR manager in planning the work force (Mathis 78). The system is useful in distributing the standard modules across the company in terms of vacation, maternity and sick leaves. It helps in giving each person an equal opportunity for vacation leaves and records all the absenteeism in the company. It also integrates all the payroll information of employees thus enhancing quick payment. This system is important in enhancing employee satisfaction because of faster pay and lack of bias in allocating leaves. Natural Knibbles will benefit from this system in planning for the expansion because of allowing coordination of the records of all the new recruits. It will also help the company to make an efficient Human Resource plan with ease instead of doing it manually. Despite the initial cost of setting up the system being very high, it is very important in bringing efficiency to the human resource department of the business. Australian Employment Law and the company’s objectives Due to the proposed policies in the company, employment arrangements for the workers are likely to change. The workers may be forced to work extra time or even go to work during holidays. According to the law, these workers are entitled to 100% as overtime or more depending on the performance of the industry. Again, if the company decides to hire knew workers then they have a right to negotiate the contract individually (Noc 65). They are liable to be dismissed from work within the first three months but after that, they should be served with a notice. However, an individual is only dismissed subject to his merits otherwise any other irrelevant reason is unacceptable by law. Again, the new business policies may make some workers redundant in that their skills no longer match the job requirements. If the company is not ready to spend finances on training then the law does not protect redundant workers. The law dictates that a good company should keep all records about the employees. A company should provide a statement showing all the duties of a specific worker in case there is no contractual agreement. Natural Knibbles can adhere to these legislations by agreeing to Michael’s suggestion of using a Human Resource Information Management System (HRIMS) that will keep all these records. Again, the company needs to update its knowledge on the employment issues before implementing any policy that would endanger both its reputation and finances. Works Cited Burrow, James. Business Principles and Management. Chicago: South-Western Publication, 2007. Print. Mathis, Robert. Human Resource management. 5th ed. Chicago: South-western Publication, 2008. Print. Noc, Raymond. Fundamentals of Human Resource Management. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print. Sims, Ronald. Human Resource management: contemporary issues, challenges, and opportunities. North Carolina: Information Age Publishing, 2006. Print. Snell, Scott. Managing Human Resources. Chicago: South-Western Publication, 2008. Print. Steingold, Fred. The Employer's Legal Handbook: Manage Your Employees & Workplace Effectively. Detroit: NOLO, 2009. Print. Wheelen, Thomas. Strategic Management and Business Policy. 11th Ed. New York: Prentice Hall, 2007. Print. Read More