Career Development Plan - Kudler Fine Foods - Case Study Example

Career Development Plan – Kudler Fine Foods of Phoenix Connie Johnson 3/7 The corporate world has become complex in the 21st centuryas the globalization movement and new technologies such as the internet have integrated societies. The human capital of companies is its most valuable asset, thus investing money and time to develop human resources is good way to improve the performance of an organization. It is important to understand human behavior within organizations in order to optimize the utilization of the employees. Developing employees is a great way to motivate workers to perform better. This paper discusses a career development plan for Kudler Fine Foods Corporation. Corporate profile Kudler Fine Foods is a gourmet food store that operates three franchises in California. The firm was founded in 1998 by Kathy Kudler with the opening of the La Jolla store. The other two locations are in Del Mar and Encinitas. The company offers a great variety of products including bakery, meat & seafood, produce, cheese & dairy, and wines. The reasonable pricing and quality of products are part of its formula for success. As the company has grown there are now greater needs for human resources. The evaluation of the needs of the company concluded the organization needs to recruit five new employees including a manager. Job descriptions A human resource practice that can help companies optimize the performance of its staff is job analysis. Job analysis can be defined as a procedure used to collect and classify information about tasks the organization needs complete (Schermerhorn & Hunt & Osborn, 2003, p.129). Job analysis helps managers and recruiters determine the skills and capabilities the company seeks in its employees. Such information is instrumental in the selection process. The HR department at Kudler’s needs five employees divided into two categories. One position is for a manager, while the other four positions are for floor employees. After the use of job analysis the managers must develop two separate job descriptions. The table below shows a list of things that can be included in each of the two types of job descriptions. Managerial Employees Floor Employees 1. Employees must show superb leadership abilities 2. Good communication skills 3. Excellent communication skills. Preferably bilingual. 2. Ability to prepare written reports 4. Analytical abilities 3. Responsible and good sense of timeliness 5. Excellent critical thinking abilities. 4. Organized 6. Ability to perform multiple task simultaneously 5. Good providing customer service Training program Training and development programs can help employees acquire new skills and capabilities that can be used by the workers to achieve a higher level of performance. Since Kudler Fine Foods operates in a unique food market providing better serve than a typical food market can help the company differentiate itself. All the company employees must undergo a customer service when they get hired. Every employee is required to complete a ten hour online customer service training every year. The delivery method used to complete the training is an online mechanism. There are economic incentive in place that pays the employees twice their hourly rate for the ten hours spend during the trainings once it is completed. Appraisal systems Five popular job analysis methods that can be used to appraise employees are job performance, observation, interviews, critical incident, and structured interviews (Cascio, 2005, p.167). Job performance works well on easy jobs that do not require extensive training. Observation can provide greater insight into the work an employee is performing. When people perform job duties in which thinking is part of the process the utilization of observation is ineffective. An advantage of interviews is that it gives the company a chance to get to know the candidate and test their communication skills. A disadvantage of interviews is that sometimes there is miscommunication between the interviewer and candidate which leads to confusion and to an ineffective evaluation of the candidate. Critical incidents have advantages such as being measurable and observable. A weakness of the method is that it takes time for the incidents to occur. A good attribute of structured interviews is that they are cheap, but an issue with them is that they are time consuming. An appraisal system that can be utilized to evaluate the employees of the company is the utilization of mystery shoppers. Mystery shoppers are good technique because the shopper is able to evaluate an employee without the person knowing he or she is being evaluated. The mystery shopper appraisal system consists of three reports prepared by three shoppers for each employee. After entering the shopper targets an employee and asks for assistance. Eventually the shopper will either buy or not buy depending on the treatment received. After the event the mystery shopper complete a short five question questionnaire about the incident. The questionnaire used is illustrated below 1. Was the employee courteous at all times? Yes or No 2. Employee appearance. Was the employee well dress and groomed? Yes or No 3. Did you like the level of service provided by the employee? Yes or No 4. Did you buy something? Yes or No 5. Would you come back to shop at the store based on the quality of service received? Yes or No Team performance Teamwork has become a critical success factor in the workplace environment of the 21st century. Employees must learn how to work together as cohesive work units. In an effective team unit the sum of the parts becomes larger than the whole. The managers at Kudler could implement wider use of team units to accomplish the goals of the company. For example the manager could create work teams to function as think tanks for specific topics such as product innovation or advertising ideas. The appraisal system to be used during team projects must utilize different criteria than the traditional forms due to the special circumstances associated with the creation of a team. The evaluation should be based more on the ability of the team to meet the desired benchmarks than the individual contribution of a single team member. Social loafing Social loafing refers to the practice of people perceiving the group is easier, thus the worker a lesser effort than they world in an individual task. There are different ways to deal with social loading. The list below provides three effective techniques to battle social loafing. 1. Define member roles and tasks to maximize individual interests of the workers 2. Link individual rewards to performance contributions to the group whenever possible 3. Raise accountability by identifying the employee’s individual performance contribution group (Schermerhorn, et al., 2003. P.174). These techniques could be applied by the management team of Kudler Fine Foods in order to decrease the manifestation of social loafing. A way to reduce social loafing is to communicate from the start the important of the project to the employees. Team incentives are very good motivators that dissuade social loafing. Strategies managing employees Companies have to realize that improve their relations with their employees is a great way to improve their performance. The good use of communication can go long way towards creating an organizational culture in which every employee contributes towards the success of the firm. The use of feedback mechanism can help manager gain insight into the employees psyche. There should be multiple feedback boxes placed around the corporation. These should be short and easy to complete. A prototype of a feedback form that could be used to improve communication between the workers and the staff is illustrated below. 1. What changes would you like to see at work? 2. Are the managers providing sufficient support to the workers? If No explain 3. Is the room temperate adequate? 4. Do you feel appreciated at work? Compensation package The Kudler Fine Foods must recognize that the compensation plan offered to the employees is the best motivator of their work. A total compensation plan combines base pay, fringe benefits, and other financial bonuses to compensate employees. The fringe benefits package that will be offered to the workers is discussed in the next section. The base salary of the workers must be evaluated in order to test if the compensation the workers are receiving is up to par with the industry standards. Due to customer orientated approach that the store will used from now on the best way to provide additional financial incentives is through mechanisms that value the contribution of the entire team. A mechanism that can help distribute money among workers is profit sharing. A profit sharing plan takes a portion of the profits of the firm to then divide it among a group of workers. The Kudler Fine Foods plan will redistribute a predetermined amount of net profits of the company equally among the entire staff of employees. The value of the bonus will be between 2% and 5% of net income. Incentive and benefits packages Opportunities for educational and career advancement are very effective at motivating employee to develop their careers. A good incentive that can be offered to help employees improve their educational attainment is to pay for the college education of the employees. The human resource department must protect the best interest of the firm. If a company pays for a bachelor’s or masters degree of an employee the person must signed a long term labor contract with the enterprise to ensure the asset does not leave the firm after graduation. Offering flexible schedules for dual parents must be provided. A fringe benefit that can help employees deal with the realities of family life is child day care allowances. Maternity and paternity leave are incentives that must be offered as part of a total compensation package. The length of the maternity leave must be hired than paternity leave. A good maternity leave package is a six month package. For men a month of leave is a fair offer. Due to the rising cost in medical expenses another fringe benefit that should be included in Kudler Fine Foods offering is full medical plan coverage. A family medical plan costs more than $11,000 a year. Conclusion The value of a workforce can be enhanced if organizations spend time and resources to improve its human capital. When recruiting new employees companies must clearly define a job description for the positions openings. Job appraisal tools help managers evaluate the performance of its employees. The criteria utilized by evaluate employees change when the workers are involved in a team project. Social loafing can lower the effectiveness of a group of workers. In order to motivate and retain good workers organizations must offer competitive total compensation packages. These packages include base pay, benefits, and incentives. A benefit that has become very popular today due to changes in family life is flexible time. Kudler Fine Foods has an opportunity to improve the value of its organization by implement this career development plan. References Cascio (2005). Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Life, Profits (7th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill Company. Schermerhorn, J., Hunt, J., Osborn, R. (2003). Organizational Behavior (8th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Read More