Goodwill Industries Human Resource Practice - Research Paper Example

? Goodwill Industries’ Human Resource Practice Introduction Human resource practices are changing rapidly across the globe, due to the variations in the macro and micro economic factors that have an impact on the organization’s functionalities. Due to the emergence of globalized business environment, where organizations engage into fierce competition with their rivals, it becomes essential to be efficient in hiring human resources. This paper evaluates the current human resource practices of Goodwill Industries and then formulates a set of recommendations for the organization, which will be helpful for the business to grow in the highly competitive market. 2. Introduction the Organization Goodwill Industries International is a multinational corporation, having its headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. The company was established in 1902 by Edgar Helms and focuses on providing job opportunities to unemployed individuals, on and off job training programs and other charity programs for individuals with disabilities. Goodwill Industries operates in 25 countries of the world including USA and Canada and its current work force is around 105,000 employees across the globe. 3. Goodwill Industries’ Business Strategy and Market Position The vision of Goodwill Industries is: "We at Goodwill Industries will be satisfied only when every person in the global community has the opportunity to achieve his/her fullest potential as an individual and to participate and contribute fully in all aspects of a productive life." The business level strategy of Goodwill Industries revolves around charity money and donations that it collects through its global network of Goodwill Associates and members. But the major chunk of donations and charity money is raised by the chain of Goodwill’s thrift stores which are operating across the markets in which the company is present as the non-profit organization. The business strategy of Goodwill also compels its management to reserve 82% of the total collected donations and charity money into fulfilling its corporate social responsibility practices, whereas the rest is spent on providing employment opportunities to those who are disabled or lack academic qualification. The customer base of Goodwill Industries comprises of 4.5 million customers and is labeled as a social enterprise whose profits are spent on making society a better place to live. At the moment, the company has designated two persons to carry out the donor relations communication processes and familiarize societies around the world about the noble cause they are serving. These persons are Lorie Marrero and Evette Rios. These two associates are currently working with Donate Movement and ABC Network respectively. Other associates of the Goodwill Industries are also associated with famous organizations but reserve their time to fulfill their responsibilities at Goodwill Industries. Presently, Goodwill Industries has expended to the non-profit market in 25 countries in 5 continents of the world and reports around $ 4.8 billion in revenues each year consistently. 4. Job Pricing and Compensation Packages Job pricing and compensation package is that function of the human resource department of any organization, that determines the salaries and compensations required to be paid to each employee. This practice is done with the help of reviewing industry standards and technology like SAP software. Goodwill industries have received severe criticism for its job pricing and compensation packages that it offers to the associates and executives of the organization. Industry experts has termed the job pricing strategies of Goodwill Industries as “unreasonable” and biased. These experts base their argument on the amount and pay Goodwill’s Oregon branch executive, Michael Miller received, i.e. around $ 850,000. On the other hand, other executive associates received lesser amount in salaries during the same year, i.e. 2004. Critics view Goodwill’s job pricing strategy as unfair as they are not able to meet the purpose of an organization i.e. to serve deprived and disabled people of the societies, cannot afford to pay such heavy remuneration to its employees. Soon after receiving the heavy criticism for its job pricing strategies, Goodwill Industries took a step back and reviewed the strategy again. As a result, the following year, Goodwill’s Executive Associates received 24% reduction in their salaries (Hrabe, 2013; National Federation of the Blind, 2012; National Federation of the Blind, 2013). Another criticism that Goodwill received about its job pricing and compensation strategy is that it pays lower amount of salaries to its middle and lower management staff, against the federal minimum wage rate. In this manner, the non for profit organization is guilty of violating Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards. For this reason, National Federation of the Blind and Disabled termed Goodwill Industries as “Unfair, Immoral and Discriminating” organization. On another occasion, it was found that one of Goodwill’s subsidiary paid $ 53.7 million as salary and compensation to the executive associates whereas the disabled workforce of the same subsidiary was receiving only $ 5.8 per hour (Hrabe, 2013; National Federation of the Blind, 2012; National Federation of the Blind, 2013). These flaws in Goodwill Industries’ job pricing and compensation package strategy, are seem to be as a resultant of not using technology and software in estimating and establishing salary packages that are fair and competitive against the industry standards. In this scenario, it is of pivotal importance for the organization to adopt the usage of technology in its human resource practices and avoid criticism in the future (Hrabe, 2013; National Federation of the Blind, 2012; National Federation of the Blind, 2013). 5. Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Required for Job Placement For job placements, Goodwill Industries cater the market which consists of both young and senior citizens. The ideal candidates for job placement are provided with job opportunities either within Goodwill Industries or one of its donor or associate organization (Goodwill Industries, 2009). People who can apply for job placement opportunities with Goodwill Industries are as following: 1. Retired military personals 2. Individuals with disabilities 3. People with criminal profile and history 4. Widows 5. Immigrants 6. Divorced Women 7. People with specialized needs that cannot be fulfilled at other workplaces. To be eligible to apply in a job placement program of Goodwill Industries, the applicants does not need to possess technical skills and information. Even if the people belonging to above mentioned categories do have knowledge, skills and abilities, they are considered for the job placement opportunity keeping in view the category to which they belong (Funding Universe, 2013). If the candidates do not possess any special set of skills, knowledge or abilities, they are provided with proper training and development lessons so that they may learn to perform the tasks, which lie in their area of interest or expertise. The basic aim of Goodwill towards the people lacking knowledge, skills and ability is to perform a rehabilitation activity to so that their confidence is restored and then teach those specific skills and abilities so that they can perform a job process on their own (Funding Universe, 2013). 6. Use of Technology Currently, Goodwill Industries is using technology to reach potential candidates for job placement, who fulfill the requirements to be eligible for Goodwill’s services. Goodwill Industries make use of its official website and social network forums to attract associates throughout the world, publish profile of job candidates for the interests of employers and publish the profile and review of working environment. Moreover, employees’ salary and compensations and human resource related affairs are also handled with the help of computerized software technology (Goodwill Industries, 2009). Goodwill Industries also established a project for international work force development, aiming at enhancing the skills of disabled, criminals, veterans, widows and immigrants by equipping them with the knowledge of latest technology. For this reason, extensive training programs are offered to the individuals willing to earn for their survival. Moreover, financial assistance to the individuals willing to participate in the developmental program and to their families is also provided in order to develop business opportunities in the society (Goodwill Industries, 2009). 7. Labor Market and Labor Law Due to its complex and corrupt job pricing strategies and compensation strategies, Goodwill Industries have remained under severe criticism of industrial lawyers. The company is said to be violating the Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and its wage certificate to pay disabled employees their pay according to their individual performances (Hrabe, Goodwill Minimum Wage Loophole Will Shock You , 2013). Another allegation that Goodwill Industries is accused of that it violates the potential of the disabled, immigrants, criminals, veterans, unemployed individuals (Hrabe, Goodwill's Charity Racket: CEOs Earn Top-Dollar, Workers Paid Less Than Minimum Wage , 2012; Schecter, 2013). 8. Recommended Human Resource Strategy Following are the recommendations that I as a Human Resource Consultant would like to make to the management of Goodwill industries: Attributes of Pay-Grading and Job-Pricing The first and foremost recommendation to Goodwill Industries’ management is that they should adopt a skill-based pay scale for its employees. Currently, Goodwill Industries pay to its employees on the basis of their designated jobs. In this manner, no one would complain about the unfairness of its job pricing strategy as the workers would receive pay without any differences in the pay category or class, but on the basis of the level of their expertise and skills. This type of pay-strategy is useful as it motivates employees at every level of the organization to enhance their skills and develop their knowledge resources to improve their on-job performance and acquire higher grades of skill sets (Dreher & Dougherty, 2005). Attributes of Staffing Systems Career System Orientation and its implications in the Goodwill Industries’ functionalities would allow the organization to locate and acquire the services of talented disabled individuals. As majority of the organizations depends upon internal labor market to fulfill its requirements for human resource and provides external labor force an opportunity to work in the entry level capacity, adopting a career system orientation would be beneficial for both company and the labor force. This is because it allows the organization to fill important slots for suitable candidates in external labor markets. This is mainly due to the companies might want to change the strategic direction of the company by hiring an individual familiar with external business conducts and techniques which may be beneficial to create differentiation. These external recruits belong along their life long experience working in another organization and change the scenario in the new organization by applying his techniques for efficient business practices. By hiring a key decision maker from external organization also helps the organization to make suitable adjustments according to the previous company’s experience, but this occurs only in case if the previous company was flourishing under the leadership of external recruit (Dreher & Dougherty, 2005). Attributes of Training and Development Systems Another dimension of human resource strategy of Goodwill Industries that needs to be amended is the training and development provided to the workforce. The current training and development systems of the organization are either not functional or if they are functional, they are not aligned with the aims and objectives of the organization. Goodwill Industries is required to systematically arrange training and development systems. First of all, the human resource managers of the company should conduct an assessment survey from the employees, which communicates the level of training and development an individual employee might require (Dreher & Dougherty, 2005). The second step of the training and development should be to develop a training program, keeping in view the individual requirement of each employee. The customized training and development program should start right from the point when the employee is recruited in the company and ends till the point where employee leaves Goodwill Industries. The third phase of the training and development process should be to implement the training and development plan into the organizational systems. Last but not the least, Goodwill Industries’ human resource managers should conduct an assessment of employees’ performance on job and the productivity of the organization over the period of 3 or 6 months after the implementation of training and development plan. The assessment would facilitate the human resource managers to make suitable alterations in the training and development processes to achieve more productivity and enhanced employees’ performance (Dreher & Dougherty, 2005). The best possible training program that Goodwill Industries can provide to its employees is Skill-Orientation which would allow the company to enhance and improve its employees’ functional and technical skills. It would also help employees to improve on communication and negotiation skills, managing resistance to changing organizational systems, resolving organizational conflicts, analytical skills and skills to maximize the revenues of the business (Dreher & Dougherty, 2005). Attributes of the Performance Measurement System Organizations use different strategies to rate the performance of their employees. But the type of tool or technique that an organization might use for evaluating its employees’ performance may vary from industry to industry or one demographic region to another demographic region. It is recommended to Goodwill Industries that it should adopt an employee performance evaluation system that evaluates the performance of the employees against the time taken by the employees to perform a certain task or produce one unit of product. In this manner, adopting a Process-oriented performance measurement system would allow the Goodwill Industries to evaluate the time and technique utilized by the worker to perform a job. Employees would receive regular feedback on the performance and improve it by working on the weak areas (Dreher & Dougherty, 2005). 9. Conclusion This paper evaluated the organization selected for the human resource planning, i.e. Goodwill Industries along with its history, business level strategies and human resource policies. At the end, the consultant presented certain amendments in 4 different attributes of the human resource systems of Goodwill Industries. With the implication of these recommendations, it is expected that Goodwill Industries would be able to answer its critics in a proper manner about the fairness and clarity in its human resource practices. Reference List Dreher, G., & Dougherty, T. (2005). Human Resource Strategy. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill. Funding Universe. (2013). Goodwill Industries International, Inc. History. Retrieved September 29, 2013, from www.fundinguniverse.com: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/goodwill-industries-international-inc-history/ Goodwill Industries. (2009, September 8). Goodwill has committed to serving 20 million people by 2020. Retrieved September 29, 2013, from www.goodwill.org: http://www.goodwill.org/about-us/goodwills-21st-century-initiative/ Goodwill Industries. (2009, September 8). Goodwill's History. Retrieved September 29, 2013, from www.goodwill.org: http://www.goodwill.org/about-us/goodwills-history Hrabe, J. (2012, September 25). Goodwill's Charity Racket: CEOs Earn Top-Dollar, Workers Paid Less Than Minimum Wage . Retrieved September 29, 2013, from www.huffingtonpost.com: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-hrabe/the-worst-corporation-in-_b_1876905.html Hrabe, J. (2013, May 15). Goodwill Minimum Wage Loophole Will Shock You . Retrieved September 29, 2013, from www.huffingtonpost.com: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-hrabe/goodwill-minimum-wage_b_3246824.html National Federation of the Blind. (2012, August 20). Protesters to Urge Boycott, Demand Fair Wages. Retrieved September 29, 2013, from nfb.org: https://nfb.org//americans-disabilities-protest-goodwill%E2%80%99s-subminimum-wages National Federation of the Blind. (2013). The Issue of Fair Wages for Workers with Disabilities. Retrieved September 29, 2013, from nfb.org: https://nfb.org/fair-wages Schecter, A. (2013, June 25). Disabled workers paid just pennies an hour – and it's legal. Retrieved Sepmteber 29, 2013, from investigations.nbcnews.com: http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/25/19062348-disabled-workers-paid-just-pennies-an-hour-and-its-legal?lite Read More