People management. Management Coursework Assignment

Jemima Ltd 1
JEMIMA LTD: CASE ANALYSIS & RECOMMENDATION
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Jemima Ltd 2
Jemima Ltd: Case Analysis & Recommendation
I. INTRODUCTION
Jemima Ltd is a small, Plymouth-based retail enterprise employing 60 people. The company, as described in current case, has not formalized work system and is managed mainly under guidance from managers in each department. Th seasonality of work, a characteristic of retail industry, shows in different organizational, employment and management activities at Jemima Ltd. Organizationally, Jemima Ltd is structured and operated such as to meet intermittent market demands: particularly stressful during high seasons and remarkably sparse during low seasons. For employment, hiring and retention practices Jemima Ltd are typical of retail industry with a generally high turnover, particularly by more experienced and non-permanent staff. For management, formalized workflow functions, processes and operations are, given current case, are lacking including, for current purposes, an HR Manager position. The combination of industry patterns, company-specific situation and employee-related matters contributes to a state of organizational instability most evidently noted in high turnover rates among non-permanent sales assistant staff and unacceptable conduct of Estates and IT Managers. The compensation of shop staff, at a fixed hourly rate, is, for one, a symptom, not a root cause, of current organizational situation at Jemima Ltd. The absence of a clearly defined, policy-wise, performance-and-compensation system is yet a second significant symptom of underlying, simmering challenges at Jemima Ltd. To put matters into more perspective, a deeper and more systematic analysis of Jemima Ltd’s HR challenges is required. commissioned by Chief Executive Office at Jemima Ltd, current report aims to identify primary challenges at Jemima
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Ltd in order to improve human resources practices at Jemima Ltd and, ultimately, performance
by proposing a number of recommendations.
II. ANALYSIS
The current state of HR affairs at Jemima Ltd are problematic from a general human resource management (HRM), resourcing, talent management, performance and reward, and employees relations and engagement perspectives. From a general HRM perspective, Jemima Ltd has no HR Manager. Instead, line managers appear to manage, each to her own discretion, day-to-day and strategic people management issues. The question of whether Jemima Ltd should have on board an HR Manager is one essentially about a different approach to people management – for completely different sets of outcomes. From a talent management perspective, Jemima Ltd appears to have no formalized training and talent management policies or programs. Given current situation, more experienced staff, particularly in sales, leave for competitors only to cost Jemima Ltd large amounts of time recruiting and training replacements. From a performance and reward perspective, Jemima Ltd has no formalized performance-and-reward system to promote well-performing staff and reward high-skilled performers. The outcome is evident in high turnover, lost talent, unacceptable senior staff behavior and low morale among existing staff. From an employees relations and engagement perspective, failure to establish an effective and healthy organization-employee communication strategy has evident outcomes such as in apathetic senior staff (physically present only when CEO is around) and emotionally stressed and increasingly disaffected staff. These five perspectives merit a more detailed discussion under current organizational situation and in future anticipation of more enhanced performance should sound recommendations are duly implemented as follows:
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II.I. HR MANAGER AT JEMIMA LTD: TO HIRE OR NOT TO HIRE?
At Jemima Ltd, lien managers, each at her own discretion, manages and guide staff to perform routine day-to-day and strategic activities. Moreover, Jemima Ltd does not have in place a staff guidelines manual, in as far as evident in current case, a people management policy gap making administration of personal and/or specific cases left to each manager’s own judgment and, more importantly, in isolation from any organizational considerations of department-specific and/or company-wide consequences. The departing sales assistance staff, experienced and non-permanent, is, for one, a case in point of a state of people mismanagement, leaving complaint as one and only means for senior staff, including CEO, to lament losing staff to competitors. In addition, non- permanent staff leave on short notice only to make managers scramble for replacements. Together, such organizational pattern sounds an alarm about a much needed coordination in and across departments in order pull in, as opposed to push away, staff by means of more effective organizational management. That is, a more formalized, systematic and professional HRM function might be needed in order to manage people at Jemima Ltd. For one, hiring a professional recruiter, or an HR Manager, is a fairly common and widely practiced option. Indeed, a professional HR Manager can, as opposed to line managers only, align overall organizational goals to each department’s goals using numerous ways such as developing effective people management policies, securing CEO support, and motivating staff (Trullen, Stirpe, Bonache & Valverde, 2016). This is a significant organizational function line managers do not typically have enough resources and/or professional knowledge to perform. By pulling all people management requirements, practices and policies under one umbrella, Jemima Ltd might be on a right track to navigate away from current organizational disarray perhaps due to
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ineffective coordination of efforts in and across departments to manage staff. The choice of an HR manager should, moreover, be informed by considerations beyond conventional criteria to hire an HR Manager. In recent years, IT has come to assume a central role at organizations. The IT competences are not, however, always clear in hiring HR managers. Despite hiring practices of HR managers emphasizing IT skills, actual application of and integration of such skills into actual organizational contexts is at best schematic. In a content analysis study, Poba-Nzaou, Uwizeyemungu and Clarke (2018) find out unique interrelationships between IT ans non-IT competencies making selection criteria of HR managers more accurate and effective. Similarly, hiring an HR Manager at Jemima Ltd should be informed by best-in-industry practices to ensure solid outcomes.
II.II. RESOURCING: RECRUITMENT & SELECTION
At Jemima Ltd, hiring practice is rooted in an informal, negotiated form. Instead of a formalized hiring process, staff, particularly seasonal staff in sales, are solicited – and discharged
– on a short notice to fill in a pressing need during seasons. The outcome is a sense of “disposability” not only among junior staff, leaving on short notice, yet among seniors, such as shop managers, extending sick leaves due to stress. Clearing, resourcing right candidates is an issue at Jemima Ltd. Despite using non-IT hiring procedures, shown to be valuable in gaining insights about job candidates (Hoffman, Kahn & Li, 2017), Jemima Ltd fails to develop actionable insights to build a history informing any future hiring procedures. That is, given current resourcing process Jemima Ltd does not account for numerous innovations undergoing in people management, particularly in resourcing phase, including sourcing knowledge, skilled workers (necessary to leverage in-house skills and knowledge) (Hamilton & Davison, 2018) and
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using chatbots (automated resourcing apps and platforms used to perform routine and time consuming HR activities) (Sheth, 2018). Importantly, Jemima Ltd fails to capture a pattern increasingly emphasized in retail industry: career expectations. In weighing a diversity of variables candidates consider to join a retail job, Oh, Weitz and Lim (2016) show that a five-year salary outweighs all different variables including starting salary, training, benefits, and work-life balance. In current case, many staff members, particularly non-permanent sales assistants, choose to leave due to low pay and, deeply, a sense of job insecurity. The career expectations, as opposed to job benefits, should be met and managed in ways radically different from current situation. By consistently pushing out, not pulling in, staff Jemima Ltd also fails to maintain, let alone enhance a positive, employer’s brand image. Indeed, Jemima Ltd is hiring and dismissing staff at will so much to a point old staff are more likely to spread a negative atmosphere among new ones who, on a short notice, simply leave and are more likely to spread a negative word of mouth about Jemima Ltd – an exact opposite of a positive employer brand consistently shown to enhance resourcing practices at organizations (Russell & Brannan, 2016). Then again, Jemima Ltd is a small enterprise which, in adopting informal resourcing practices is consistent to industry patterns (Butt & Zeb, 2016). The caveat in Jemima Ltd’s case is, perhaps, senior sales staff are promoted internally into shop managers yet no formal procedure is followed to ensure such promotion is adequately vetted or not. That is, whilst lower positions are, as in industry practice, filled in using informal, interviewing methods, higher positions are usually filled in by more formalized procedures. There is not evidence in current case, however, Jemima Ltd has any formalized resourcing processes for any job positions. This is a major resourcing gap Jemima Ltd
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needs to pay attention to and address to avoid knowledge loss due to departure of more experienced and skilled staff and, in worst case scenario, organizational instability. II.III. TRAINING, DEVELOPMENT & TALENT MANAGEMENT
Today, professional development is central to overall organizational competence.
Training is, for one, one most common method to leverage knowledge and skill sets of existing
staff. Talent hunt and retention is, moreover, a second important way organizations maintain a
competitive edge in market and against competitors by hiring most skilled and knowledgeable
workers. The importance of high skilled workers cannot, in fact, be overemphasized. Indeed,
people management practices have undergone a shift from human resource management (HRM)
to talent management (TM) (Cascio & Boudreau, 2016). This shift is, in fact, a reflection of a