HR Challenges in Organizations

Please finish section 4 in file MGI Written Report according to file MGI Group Project Interview Answers. It doesn't matter how many words used to finish this, as long as things are clearly stated and meets the requirement.

Group Project

This project is intended to expose you to HR challenges organizations face and give you the opportunity to think critically and creatively about how to solve these challenges while collaborating with a group.
Each student will be assigned a group. You will decide how to divvy up the work so all group members can contribute to the project in a meaningful way. You will:
• Identify an organization to research
• Identify a HR Manager, HR Director, HR Generalist, or Manager to interview
• Prepare interview questions
• Identify an HR challenge the company is currently facing
• Develop HR solutions to solve or lessen the impact of this HR challenge
• Send a thank you note to the individual who took time to speak with you
Written Report (100 pts): Your group will submit a well-written 10-page report that includes the following:

• SECTION 1: Cover Sheet
o Includes name and email address of each group member (not included in page count)

• SECTION 2: Executive Summary

• SECTION 3: Company Description

o Includes information about their industry, products/services, org structure, revenues, etc.
o Also includes the name, title, email, and phone no. of your point of contact

• SECTION 4: HR Challenge
o Includes identifying the HR challenge the company is facing and how it impacts the organization (i.e. financial, growth, leadership, retention, job satisfaction, etc.)

• SECTION 5: Solutions
o Includes description of three (3) strategies/solutions to address the challenges o Groups should be creative and offer solutions using their own experience and research

• SECTION 6: Works Cited (not included in page count)
Format 12-point, Arial font, double-spaced, 1-inch margins with correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, word usage, and sentence structure

Interviewee: Jeffrey Crawford, Vice President

Company: Thermal Foams Inc.

1)    What methods of training do you use? How effective do you believe these methods are?

Answer: “The methods of training that we use generally involve a more veteran employee training a newer hire and showing him the ropes. We also hold weekly meetings to help train the employees and also to help answer any questions that they may have. For our office personnel we have webinars and other training methods and such.” 

Note: This is a biel I taught myself how to do most of the g weakness as well as many of our new hires don’t feel they were properly trained or shown how to perform many tasks. I myself don’t feel as if I was trained well and fetasks. 

2)    What is your process for hiring new employees? How effective is this process?

Answer: “We’ve gone to temporary services, giving them a trial run as a temp., and if they work-out; then we offer them employment with the company. Obviously, we are a private, family-owned business, so we try to offer family members jobs to their sons or daughters and etc., so we try to look out for people like that. So, generally we look to temporary services or family members.”

Note: This is definitely the biggest weakness I’ve seen while working there. There’s no set process to hire; it’s basically bringing in a ton of temporary workers and hoping one works out. There’s no pre-test to see if they’ll fit, no pre-training to show them what to do, or no set attributes they look for in a new hire.

Follow up question: Do you think using the temp. service leads to higher turnover then?

Answer: “Yeah, I’m not a fan of using the temp. Service, but that's kind of where today’s day and age has been; but there is a high amount of turnover using temp’s while trying to find the right one. We could go through 10 temporary workers until we find the right one, and then we have to go through that process all over again.”

3)    How do you deal with underperforming employees?

Answer: “We have annual reviews, where we set goals for the employees; and then throughout the year if they’re not maintaining what our goals are for them, we call them in and review the reviews, and tell them they’re not meeting their goals and work with them to help them better achieve their goals. But, we have constant communication, so that’s how we generally deal with underperforming employees and let them know they’re underperforming. Because a lot of times they think they’re doing a fine job, but if there’s five guys working with them saying they’re not doing good work, they’re most likely not aware that they’re underperforming unless we communicate that with them.”

4)    How do you handle conflict between team members?

Answer: “As unpleasant as it is, I usually get them together; whether it be myself and the plant manager, or just myself. And again, sometimes it’s unpleasant, but I try to bring them together immediately to hear both sides of the story, walk them through a couple different scenarios on how it can play out, explain why he/she may not be looking at the situation correctly and the other person is (and vice-versa), and just try to hear their viewpoints, then as adults, we attempt to work through the problem.”

Note: This, in my opinion, is their strongest area as far as HR. Working in a factory setting, there is a wide array of personalities from all different areas of the world, representing many different ethnicities, genders, and races, and bringing in a bunch of people with vast differences in their backgrounds. So as you can imagine, conflict between team members is frequent and they seem to have a very good grasp on how to deal with these conflicts and resolve them quickly without any further problems.

5)    What is your biggest HR weakness in your opinion?

Answer: “Well a couple things is we don’t have an actual HR manual, we just have a handbook, but a lot of companies actually have a HR manual; so that’s an area we’re a little deficient in. And then as far as the hiring process, there’s really only the temporary service and family members, so we really have no set-scale to hire people. It’s generally a ‘hey let’s try this person out and see if they work.’ We really don’t vet our new hires or temps the way that we should.”

6)    What do you look for in a new hire?

Answer: “First thing is what we call pep-in-the-step, if we have a new hire that comes in and just seems to go through the motions and are just dragging; and they don’t seem to have the desire to work at a fast pace or learn, we generally don’t want them. So we generally look for effort, because we can teach them everything else, but we can’t teach them how to have effort and enthusiasm for the job.”

7)    How has the training methods changed since you began?

Answer: “When I first started about 25 years ago, you kinda had to learn on your own and they just threw you into something and you had to figure it out; and that’s changed over time where now people need to be taught. I would have been better if I would have been taught, it took me longer to learn by myself. So now we take our veteran employees and assign them with a new hire to show them the ropes and teach them new things, and basically just try to teach them something new everyday.”

Personal Note from Me: When I began working there three years ago I was just thrown in and not really taught how to do anything either, I was not assigned a veteran to help me out. So this could also be a HR weakness in training.

8)    How has the hiring process evolved since you began?

Answer: “So as I mentioned before, we usually hire temporary workers, but in order for them to get hired, we as a team or a group out in the plant; if there’s 6 or 7 people they’re working with, we have that group vote and see if they’d be a good fit for Thermal Foams. This vote has to be unanimous and we had never previously done that. This has worked in some regards, but in other regards it hasn’t worked, but for the most part it works good. So basically, we give the employees a say in the hire, and we had previously never done that.”

9)    How much emphasis is placed on HR at your company?

Answer: “Again, to be honest, we are a little bit deficient in HR. The focus is we try to handle each incident as it happens using common sense and the best judgement that we can. In certain serious situations, we have to get attorneys involved, and if we had a manual it would probably eliminate some of that, but again because we don't have the manual, we employ common sense and lawyers when we need to.”

Note: Also an area of weakness is the lack of communication as far as HR and he also only sees HR as handling conflicts and such when there are more areas involved than that. Could be something we use.

10) How satisfied are your employees in your opinion?

Answer: “Depends on the day of the week, depends on the volume of the work we have; but for the most part to say that we have over probably 20 employees that have been with us over 25 years, I would have to say that their satisfaction is probably a little higher, because they’ve remained with us we try to treat them well as they treat us well. For the most part, I think employees are satisfied with us. But again if they’re not, they have a forum where they can come in and talk to us and tell us their goals and what they want to do, and we can work with them to do a different job if needed.”

Note: The older or “veteran” employees are definitely more satisfied with the job than the younger employees from what I’ve experienced being out in the plant. I have various guesses as to why that could be, but we can discuss that if need be for the project!

11) How much emphasis is placed on safety and following labor/legal compliance laws?

Answer: “That would be probably our strongest area and the area we’ve focused on the most in the last three years. So maybe five years ago, I would have rated us a 2 out of 10 in that area, where today I would rate us a 9 out of 10 as far as our focus on safety. The money we’re spending to have safety consultants come in and actually train our employees correctly; and a huge emphasis is placed on safety with a monthly safety meeting and constant reminders to employees to practice safety. We also post safety regulations and rules throughout the plant and we strictly follow the Department of Labor’s laws and regulations.”

Note: This is also a very big strength at Thermal Foams. We do have monthly safety meetings, a safety committee, a safety consultant who comes in and trains us/points out unsafe practices, and we also have safety signs and safety laws posted throughout the plant. 

Side Notes:

Potential Strengths: Safety practices, conflict resolution, dealing with underperforming employees

Potential Weaknesses: Hiring, Training, HR communication

-       The Temporary/Temp. Workers and Services I’m referring to in his answers is one of the sources of employment for Thermal Foams. It’s basically a service that takes people that are looking for jobs and gives them temporary work/jobs at a place that will accept them (pretty much places like factories or other places that don’t require prior experience or much education, etc.) and Thermal Foams (place I work and where the guy I interviewed is the current Vice President) takes a lot of workers from the Temp. Agency. If these workers end up being good the factory will often hire them full time.