The assessment process of Red Tree - Essay Example

?Running Head: Investigative Report on Assessment Investigative Report on Assessment [Institute’s TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 Executive Summary 3 Introduction 4 Description of Current Procedures 5 Current Analysis of Procedures 9 Recommendations 13 References 14 Executive Summary This report is an attempt to explore the assessment process of Red Tree, a boxed chocolate manufacturer and retailer in California, Washington, and Oregon. The organisation recently hired their regional manager after a long and extensive recruitment and selection process. The regional manager is responsible for the performance of the all the manufacturing sites and retail outlets in its area. The process starts with applications from external and internal candidates, the process moves on to intelligence and personality tests, semi structures interviews, graphology tests, physical examination, substance abuse tests, and then a formal job offer. Use of unscientific and unreliable graphology tests is a concern. Red Tree also needs to conduct tests to evaluate the reliability and validity of these personality tests and decrease the reliance on the same because they can be faulty, unreliable, invalid, misleading, and manipulative. Assigning the task of executive recruitment to headhunters is also an option along with opening the job to all people and not middle-aged males in order to avoid any legal hassle. Introduction Selecting and recruiting the right people for right jobs has always remained at the heart of human resource management. There are three important reasons why selection of the right employees with the right assessment process is so crucial for any organisation. First, employee performance is what makes up the performance of any organisation. Employees with the correct set of skills and behaviours are more likely to perform better and would need lesser training (Hunt and Society for Human Resource Management, 2007, p. 207; Cook, 2009, pp. 320-322). Quite understandably, the right time to evaluate the same is while selecting. Second, the costs of hiring, recruitment, selection, orientation, and training makes up a significant chunk of the total costs spent at personnel (Roberts and Institute of Personnel and Development, 2005, p. 354). This is the reasons why organisations try to decrease the turnover because the selection process is always very costly. Third, the legal implications of incompetent and irresponsible hiring can cause any organisations to lose many thousand dollars. Every now and then, a business organisation is being dragged to the court for discriminatory hiring, negligent hiring, and others (Beardwell and Claydon, 2007, pp. 99-100; Dale, 2006, pp. 241-243). This report is an attempt to explore the selection procedures of the Red Tree Corporation, which is a boxed chocolate manufacturer based on California having many outlets in Washington and Oregon as well. Founded in 1965 based on the insights of Michael Harvey, a local chef, the firm now has grown to be big enough for posting annual revenues of more than 1 million US dollars in the year 2011. Red Tree believes on the business model where it manufactures its boxed chocolates and sells the same mainly through their own outlets and shops where they believe they provide a unique customer experience, which is a part of their competitive advantage. It is a public organisation, which has grown extensively over the past few years despite extensive competitive rivalry, economic recession, decreasing consumer confidence and seasonal demand pattern (Plotnik and Kouyoumdjian, 2010, p. 195). The company is currently looking for a regional operations manager that would look after all the outlets. This regional operations manager would be a part of the middle tier of management where his responsibilities would serve as a liaison between the top management, CEO, COO and other executives and the store managers. Furthermore, the store managers discuss almost all of their operational issues with the regional manager who is then also responsible for their performance and sales targets. The regional manager reserves the authority to make changes in the stores, their staff selling and buying patterns and other operational issues. However, other strategic and tactical decisions can only be taken with the permission of the top management. Since the regional manager has to look after many stores, which are geographically diverse, the job entails many travelling. Furthermore, most of the times, these travelling plans are unexpected and emergency based ones. Therefore, Red Tree also discourages women and old people to apply for the job and believes that middle-aged men are the most suitable for this job. The information for compiling the report was gathered through interviews from HR manager and senior vice president of HR of the organisation. Furthermore, a significant percentage of the information was also available on the website as well. Description of Current Procedures The job analysis for the current job is conducted through a comprehensive and rigorous process, which involves interviews, observation, and questionnaires. Interviews were conducted with the state based managers and local and store managers to understand all the task functions of the regional manager. Furthermore, during the tenure of previous regional manager, HR officials also observed the manager for a couple of weeks in order to understand the daily operational issues. The observation was hurdled because the regional manager had to travel a lot to different outlets in order to keep an eye on everything and stay in control of the happenings. Therefore, the regional manager was given with a diary log to record his actions and operations for an over a month, which continue to serve as an important tool in this regard. The store managers were also provided with a questionnaire to ask about them the areas where they need help or have been receiving help and guidance from the regional manager, which also helped in forming the overall picture in this regard (Foot and Hook, 2005, p. 353). Red Tree followed its usual procedure, which is to place an ad in the leading newspaper and business magazines. Since the organisation also believes in internal recruitment, they organisation also sent an email to all the store managers for the opening so that the interested candidates may apply. Therefore, the interested candidates contacted the organisation about the opening and then they were informed about the tests and the interview. (Arthur, 2001, pp. 85-86) Surprisingly enough, both for internal and external candidates, the assessment process were comprehensive, extensive, and extremely lengthy. The assessment criteria for first level manager and working staff are simple based on interview and some basic tasks. However, as you climb up the ladder or hierarchy, the board of directors Red Tree is extremely concerned about whom they hire for these crucial positions. The hiring process of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), or a Chief Operating Officer (COO) may take six to eight months from the time they first contact the organisation or the organisation contacts to the time when they join the organisation. As usual, the process starts with application form, which can be obtained from the company’s head offices or the company’s website. For the internal candidates, they receive the form with an email. The form can be sent back with an email, fax, mail or any other way as deemed feasible by the candidate. After processing the application and evaluating the fact that the employee is meeting the criteria, the company calls for tests. First, it is the intelligence tests, which are mainly aimed at knowing the IQ and intelligence level of a person. They also include mathematical evaluations, hypothetical situations and others. Second, then the candidates goes on for the personality tests, which are mainly Big Five, 16PF questionnaire, and MBTI (Beardwell and Claydon, 2007, pp. 99-100). Depending on the traffic of the applicants, it may take a week to a month for the company to shortlist the candidates. In this case, it took almost a week to shortlist the candidates, which then arrived for a comprehensive interview. The interviews are semi structured with on representative of the HR department, one member of the respective department where the candidate would go, one senior executive, and a random member from the recruitment and selection team. In this case, there were two executives, one CEO, and the head of the HR department conducting the semi-structured interview. There interviewers conducted extensive discussions on the background, experience and personality of the interviewee and answered their questions (Foot and Hook, 2005, p. 353). A significant portion of the questions was aimed at exploring the possible techniques, methods, and approaches that the candidate would use in finding the solutions to the most common work related problems. This interview held much of the weightage in the assessment criteria. Unlike many other organisations, Red Tree believes in having only one interview but a comprehensive one. Surprisingly enough, for all managerial positions, Red Tree also believes in graphology tests or hand writing analysis in order to determine the job fit. Red Tree also includes a clause in their application and employment form, which allows them to conduct a comprehensive background check, credit history check, motor vehicle check, employment history and references check and others. However, Red Tree has set up a good mechanism not to invade the privacy of the individual and delete the information as soon as examined. The only condition in which the information is ever held or discussed is when the employee has lied about his or her record or if there is something alarming enough, that it becomes inevitable to bring it up before making a final decision (Dale, 2004, pp. 75-76). Just before the candidate gets the final job offer, he or she has to go through physical examination and substance abuse screening as well. Unlike many other organisations, which conduct these two screening tests after the job offer or after when the person had started working, Red Tree does not give any job offer before the results of the physical and substance abuse screening comes. The HR department believes in being extremely sure about the background, health, and drug abuse history of the candidates, which they are hiring (Bohlander and Snell, 2009, pp. 52-54). There is a separate section in the HR department of Red Tree, which oversees the recruitment and selection function. Since this was about the recruitment and selection of a regional level manager, there was direct and active involvement from the side of the CEO and COO of the organisation since the regional manager was going to directly report to these people. In order to assess and interpret the results from these personality tests, the company has employed three people working in their personnel department along side with the recruitment and selection team. All of these three employees have degrees in industrial psychology and human resource management with extensive experience in other industries. Even in their presence, the company sends many of these assessments to the organisations, which are responsible for the dissemination and research on those personality tests such as CPP in case of MBTI and Institute of Personality and Ability Testing (IPAT) in case of 16PF. Current Analysis of Procedures The most surprising is the fact that in the era of technology and modern science, a forward-looking organisation like Red Tree, uses graphology for its managerial level selection process. Just before the interviews, the candidates are asked to write a paragraph, which is then used for the handwriting analysis. The candidates never get a chance to look at that analysis but the HR department uses that to provide quantifiable ranks to the candidates. Red Tree seriously needs to consider about the use of a pseudoscientific tool such as graphology and its impact on the selection criteria (Hunt and Society for Human Resource Management, 2007, p. 207; Gatewood et al., pp. 41-42, 2008; Wood and Payne, 1998, p. 55). The company’s HR department gives the rational that it percentage assigned to hand writing tests in the overall assessment criteria is negligible and it alone cannot become the reason of any one’s rejection or selection. If the same is true then the organisation must immediately lose the process because it must have spent thousands of dollars on this process. Furthermore, it also presents an unfavourable and unscientific image of the organisation to the prospective employees. In addition, there is enough scientific and research evidence that graphology tests are neither reliable nor valid. Their use is also unethical and unreliable (Weekley and Ployhart, 2006, p. 261; Schneider and Smith, 2004, p. 447). The personnel department relies heavily on the personality tests and assessments. Over the years, based on job descriptions, the HR department has been able to come with personality types and traits that they believe would suit the job description and tasks. For example, while looking for executives, top, and middle level managers, Red Tree’s HR department prefers people who match the ENTJ, INTP, and ENFP from the MBTI personality tests. On the other hand, while looking for first level managers and staff people, it prefers ISTJ, ESTJ, and ESTP. For marketing people, it prefers ISFP, ENTP, and INTP (Bohlander and Snell, 2009, pp. 52-54). Dependence on specific personality types shows that the company does not believe in the ability of people to change and improve over the period. By providing extrinsic and intrinsic motivators, organisations can motivate people to change and alter their behaviours, attitudes, and approaches according to the job requirements. Thus, Red Tree is actually limiting the pool for applicants for themselves by only allowing certain personality types to go further with the interviews (Bohlander and Snell, 2009, pp. 52-54; Ployhart, et al, 2006, p. 96). Personality type or traits, by no means, could be an indicator of ability. Furthermore, having the perceived perfect personality type for the job is no guarantee that a person would perform better at any job. In fact, there has been no internal research conducted in the organisation to explore the correlation of job performance, appraisal ratings, and reviews with the closeness to the desired personality type. In other words, Red Tree should make the effort to explore the validity of these tests (Beardwell and Claydon, 2007, pp. 99-100; Billsberry, 2007, pp.105-107; Wood and Payne, 1998, p. 55). Furthermore, with extensive dependence on personality types, it allows job candidates especially the internal candidates to mess with the assessments as well. An internal candidate or someone who knows the tests very well before would manipulate the answers in such a way to get closer to the personality types that suits the job (Whetzel and Wheaton, 2007, p. 33-34; Caruth, et al., 2008, p. 153). Rather than relying too much on personality tests, Red Tree and its HR department should consider that as a secondary assessment tool. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier that personality tests are not really the correct predictor of ability or performance, they merely tell us about the comfort zones or make up of any person (Mathis and Jackson, 2008, p. 36; Ployhart, et al, 2006, p. 96). Red Tree and its personnel department can use them for selection but they cannot allow the results from these tests to influence the overall results to a considerable degree (Hunt and Society for Human Resource Management, 2007, p. 207). A better option here is to use these tests as a training needs assessment tool and determine the proper training or orientation programs for the individual in order to expand their focus and scope beyond their comfort zones as well (Whetzel and Wheaton, 2007, p. 33-34; Roberts and Institute of Personnel and Development, 2005, p. 354). Even if the HR department is convinced about the personality types and their benefits, they should at least try to measure the validity and reliability of these tests within their organisation. Since almost all of the employees of Red Tree, excluding the labours and blue-collar workers take this test, it can easily take the test again to explore the reliability (Evers, 2006, p. 85). As mentioned earlier, in order to test the validity, Red Tree can find the degree of correlation between the job performance and the degree to which a person fitted the personality type (Hunt and Society for Human Resource Management, 2007, p. 207; Schneider and Smith, 2004, p. 447). Red Tree has been expanding over the past few years and it continues to have plans for geographic expansion in the coming years as well. Currently, the organisation has one centralized personnel department, which handles the issues, directly and indirectly, coming from more than 740 outlets all across the three states of US where it enjoys its presence. Although, the store managers handle much of the functional and operational duties of the HR department but they still have to constantly inform the central HR department in this regard (Beardwell and Claydon, 2007, pp. 99-100). Any hiring, whether, permanent, contractual, or temporary goes to the HR department for final verification. Therefore, the HR department has a great deal of workload on their shoulders. Where it allows the organisation to exert control, Red Tree may consider the option of headhunters and executive recruiting through outsiders in order to free up the pressures from the department. Quite understandably, the dynamics of hiring for top and middle level managerial are much different from that of other positions (Whetzel and Wheaton, 2007, p. 33-34; Evers, 2006, p. 85). Red Tree may hire any contingent executive recruiting firm and it will only have to pay the firm if it hires the candidates. It will allow a specialized screening process for their executives and the HR department would focus their resources on recruiting lower level managers and other staff members (Roberts, 1997, p. 55; Guion, 1998, p. 469). Another unusual element in the selection process of Red Tree was that unlike many other business organizations, Red Tree does not have a formal work sampling technique or management assessment centers. In fact, the organization has not even used them once. Performance on job tasks is not highly correlated with performance on intelligence and ability to answer interview questions (Weekley and Ployhart, 2006, p. 261). There are no doubts in the fact that the job of regional manager is such that it requires great deal of travelling, stress, and unannounced assignments, something with which older people and married women might not be able to deal with. This is the reason why the organisation searches for middle-aged men specifically (Arthur, 2006, pp. 55-56). Although the firm has not faced any legal action in this regard but in order to be on the safe side, the firm must entertain applications from all ages and both genders. It must act especially in case of the internal applicants so that it could encourage everyone and avoid any possible legal hassle in the future (Albrecht, 2010, pp. 63-64; Schmitt and Chan, 1998, p. 41). Recommendations Overall, the selection and assessment processes employed by Red Tree are satisfactory; however, it appears that they need urgent attention and improvement as well. Red Tree aims to expand in the near future and in order to do the same, it will have to employ the most talented people, and they can only be obtained through the best possible methods and approaches. Based on the critical analysis conducted above, following are some of the brief and specific recommendations for Red Tree for improving their personnel selection and assessment process. Eliminate or systematically phase out the graphology tests Decrease the reliance on personality tests and pay more attention to the motivational level of individuals and possible training that could be given to them. Create mechanisms to explore and evaluate the validity and reliability of the already used personality assessments if the organisation and its HR department are keen to continue its usage. Consider the option of outsourcing the function of recruitment and selection of candidates for top-level managerial positions to headhunters and executive recruiters. In order to avoid any possible legal complications, allow everyone from all ages and both gender groups to apply for the job of regional manager Include management assessment centers and work sampling techniques in the selection process in order to obtain the candidates that require the minimum possible training. References Albrecht, S. L. 2010. Handbook of employee engagement: perspectives, issues, research, and practice. Edward Elgar Publishing. Arthur, D. 2001. The employee recruitment and retention handbook. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. Arthur, D. 2006. Recruiting, interviewing, selecting, and orienting new employees. 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