Complementing New Business Strategy - Essay Example

Extent to which HR strategy will complement the business strategy: Since being a business partner of Billy's Big Boy is significant for Southern Foods Limited, it is important to bring about certain changes in the working pattern of the workforce. By shift planning, and applicable training of the employees the HR and business strategy can be aligned. The changes in the working pattern will not be presented as a bunch of priorities set by the HR department, rather it should give a feel to the work force that the company is serious about the business and the work force is the back bone in enhancing the growth of the company. This means that McGregor's Theory Y is used as a model to over come the recent challenges faced by SFL. Hence in this case the HR policy should be to increase the weight of pay packet of the staff in B's unit and recruit the additional 6 employees from the remaining work force. This way the morale of both sections of the work force will be uplifted. The HR model based on McGregor's Theory Y is further evident in this case study as Theory Y assumes that "under the right conditions, people are motivated by the desire to realize their own potential." (Barker 2000, p. 33) Therefore, assuming that employees working capabilities can be molded positively by being attentive to their desires, HR of SFL uses soft strategy. If the shortage of 6 employees in the larger unit of SFL is felt then recruiting staff from outside on a contractual basis can overcome it. This HR policy would help the business strategy by getting extra employees in minimum costs without affecting the work of SFL's premiere client. The HR planning should focus on three levels of training. They can be termed as fresher's training, specialized training and mix and match training. The fresher 's training should be designed to enable the newly recruited employees (if any) in developing the skills required to work in SFL. The specialized level training will be for those employees who have been transferred to the B's unit. The mix and match training will focus on removing the slowing down of productivity of B's unit by imparting training to all the employees of B's unit (old and new) on every area of production. The last level of training planned by the HR is especially help the business strategy as its main aim is to maintain the same level of production even if some one is sick or on leave. Though the Big Boy quality inspectors drop by frequently unannounced, the business strategy of SFL should be to not wait for Big Boy people to come and gather information. Sometimes it can be the other way too. This strategy will do wonders for the business. The client may even praise the effort of the employees of the SFL, this way the employees may feel motivated and their level of motivation will result in achieving the business goals. However, whichever way information is being presented to the Big Boy people, "effective partners need to be very tactful about how information is presented. A good approach is to invest as much time working on how to communicate and on the engagement strategy as the activity itself." (Kenton and Yarnall, 2005, p.143) The HR will also plan " a frame work for working collaboratively with" with Billy's Big Boy. The following checklist: "CONSULT" can be followed. "CONSULT" stands for: Context Overview Needs of the client Symptoms Underlying issues Long-term likely effects Tasks and timescales" (Kenton and Yarnall, 2005, p.143) By paying attention to all these factors planned by the HR the business of SFL will further flourish. As it is difficult to make any investments because of the unstable nature of the new order, an easy to follow work schedule has been designed to avoid as less conflict with the work force as possible. Evaluation of how HR strategy will impact HR operations and potential problems of introducing this strategy Shift Planning: Currently B's Unit operates 16 hours a day in two shifts with 7 workers in each shift. As it has been decided that B's unit will operate 24 hrs. With additional six workers only, shift planning has to be done in the following manner. The factory will operate in three shifts of 8hrs each. Each shift will have two Mixers, 3-machine operator, 1 palleting employee and one unit leader. All workers will have 8hrs of normal duty as before except for the unit leaders who will have 12 hrs working time instead. This can be a potential area of dispute for the unit leaders. Extra reward package, which will be discussed later in the report, may solve this problem to a great extent. Shift (8 hrs each) Mixer Machine Operator Palleting Employee Unit Leader A 2 3 1 1 (also takes charge of first 4 hrs of shift "B") B 2 3 1 C 2 3 1 1 (also takes charge of last 4 hrs of shift "B") Shift Timings: The three shifts will be Morning shift, Noon shift and Night Shift. Each group will change shift in a rotation pattern every week. Hence there will be no complaints from any group about partiality in timings. The workers should also be given the freedom to choose their groups as working with like-minded colleagues help in increase of productivity. This idea can be linked to the Mayo's theory of social needs that states, "workers are not solely concerned with economic needs and material comfort. Human factors play a very significant part in motivationWorkers are likely to be more responsive to the influence of colleagues than to attempts of management to control them by material incentives." (Tyson and York 2000, p. 13) Recruitment and Training Internal Resource: Experienced and performing employees to be identified and shifted from the other unit to B's unit instead of recruiting fresh ones. These employees will feel motivated, as they will be transferred to a prestigious unit within the company. Based on their performance evaluation, after six months they will get some cash reward. This way the organization will not be over staffed and if the new relishes doesn't workout in the market and rollback is planned then these employees can be shifted back to their original unit. The decision of performance evaluation can be linked to the Porter and Lawler's model which emphasizes that " performance achievement is mainly determined by the effort expended, the individual's understanding of the task requirements and self assessment of ability." (Tyson and York 2000, p. 16) Training: New employees shifted to B's unit or recruited from outside will get exposed to rigid standards on both the production process and employee behavior. They will be strictly briefed on the quality expectations of the premiere client. In addition to this they should be introduced to the " Safer food, better business" which is a food safety management pack. "This pack has been developed by Food Standards Agency working with catering business, to be practical and easy to use. Using this pack will help to: comply with the new regulations show what you do to make food safely train staff protect your business's reputation improve your business e.g. by wasting less food" Details are available from the Food Standards Agency . Training will be imparted to all employees of B's unit on cross-function activity so that if any employee is absent for any reason, his job can be taken care by another employee. This training will ultimately help in achieving the business starategy as "Links between training and development activity and the business strategy depend very much on whether training is an integral part of the HR strategy and whether this is itself fully aligned to business needs." (Holbeche 2002, p. 99) Emphasis on training regarding regular relishes will be given more to new employees, as current employees are more or less aware of the different processes due to daily interactions among themselves. Target Oriented work environment: Clear focused production target will be given to each group and a competitive environment will be created within the groups. Daily productivity charts will be put up in the factory giving details of target, month-to-date of production, current run rate, and required run rate. MONTH: Group Target Achievement Current Run rate Required Run rate A B C Total The daily updated chart will help each employee to access where his/her group is and when to pull up the socks. Since each group will be able to see the other group's performance there will be an urge to prove one's group best. The display of updated chart will also convey to the employees that the company is open and that they are not kept in dark about their performances. Unit leaders will be responsible for overall targets as they have overlapping shifts. These group targets will also be criteria for Performance Linked Incentive (PLI) calculation. Increasing of Productivity The B's employees generally regard themselves as the best in the organization and are highly committed and intrinsically motivated. This needs to be maintained and strengthened. Employees of B's unit will be taken off from the factory floor for one hour every month and the management team will discuss productivity and how to improve them, any complaints etc.directly with the workers. In this way the HR will be able to gather feedback regarding its policies. The other benefit will be upliftment of the dropping morale of the employees of the B's unit because with this activity they will feel important and an integral part of the company. Unit leaders will be trained additionally so that they are able to create a good inter personnel relationship among the employees working in B's unit and maintain a cheerful working environment. Thus the team leaders' duty should not only be " setting and maintaing team objectives.'' and "maintaining the identity of the team" but also " communicating effectively with the team and helping team members communicate with each other" (Barker 2000, pp. 44-45) Management will design exercises to create a sense of belongingness among the employees working in B's unit. The atmosphere of Can Do feeling will be created among the employees in the beginning of the month, which would be later, turned to Will Do by the middle of the month. There is zero investment in it but this strategy would not only help to increase productivity and business of SFL but also lend a favorable impact to the HR operations by lowering employee dropouts. Employee dropouts from B's unit will be monitored carefully as each dropout means cost to the company. The new recruit has to be trained and by the time he/she gets experienced, there is substantial effect on groups' productivity. System of overtime not exceeding 4 Hrs. can be implemented if there is more than one worker absent in any shift. Compensation for overtime will be calculated separately on monthly basis. Appraisal system will be implemented based on individual and group target vs. achievement to monitor each employee and group. All these measures will automatically remove potential dispute within the workforce and with the unions. Compensation & Benefits: Monthly wages will remain the same for all workers except the Unit Leaders. Unit Leaders will be compensated with 1.75 % of their present wage for proposed 12hrs work schedule. Performance Linked Incentive (PLI) plan will be implemented. These incentives will be based on monthly individual appraisal. Extra wage structure for over time working can be 1.25 % of normal working hours. Quarterly incentives will be released based on Group target achievement; this can be partly in cash and partly as gift items for employees' family. In this way the employees will feel that the company shares part of the profit with them and their families will also develop a sense of belongingness. There may be some operational problems in the beginning like discontentment among some members of the work force especially those who thought they should be chosen for the position of additional staff in the B's unit or those who thought they were capable enough to become unit leaders. The union may also try to settle their old grievances in the light of this small turmoil in the company. However if the management and HR work like hand in glove then these teething problems can be combated easily. Word Count: 2148 'References' a) BARKER, ALAN. 2000. How to be better at managing people. London:Kogan Page Limited. b) HOLBECHE, LINDA. 2002. Aligning Human Resources and Business Strategy. New Delhi:Butterworth-Heinemann. c) KENTON, BARBARA, YARNALL, JANE. 2005. HR - The Business Partner: Shaping a New Direction. Oxford:Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann. d) TYSON, SHAUN, YORK, ALFRED. 2000. Essentials of HRM. New Delhi: Butterworth-Heinemann. e) The Food Standards Agency 2000, viewed 3 May 2006, . Read More