JACK NELSON¶S PROBLEM
As a new member of the board of directors for a local bank, Jack Nelson was being introduced to all t he employees in home office. When he was introduced to R uth Johnson, he was curious about her work and asked her what her machine did. Johnson replied that she really did not know what the machine was called or what it did. She explained that she had only been working there for two months. She did, however, know precisely how to operate the machine. According to her supervisor, she was an excellent employee. At one of the branch offices, the supervisor in charge spoke to Nelson confidentially, telling him that ³ something was wrong ³, but she didn¶t know what. For one thing, she explained, employee turnover was too high, and no sooner had one employee been put on the job than another one resigned. With customers to see and loan to be made, she continued, she had little time to work with the new employees as they came and went. All branch supervisors hired their own employees without communication with the home office or other branches. When an opening developed, the supervisor tried to find a suitable employee to replace the worker who had quit. After touring the 22 branches and finding similar problems in many of them, Nelson wondered what the home office should do or what action he should take. The banking firm was generally regarded as a well-run institution that had grown from 27 to 191 employees during the past eight years. The more he thought about the matter, the more puzzled Nelson became. HE COULDN¶T QUITE PUT HIS FINGER ON THE PROBLEM, AND HE DIDN¶T KNOW WHETHER TO REPORT HIS FINDINGS TO THE PRESIDENT.
QUESTIONS 1. What do you think is causing some of the problems in the bank home office and branches?
From what I noticed from the case above, there are four problems that caused the problem in the bank home office and branches. Firstly, the home office does not provide any training for employees. According to the first paragraph, the employee does not know what the machine was called but only to know how to operate it. This shows that, the employee do not have a ny knowledge knowledge about her work. Secondly, ther e are lack of communication among the branches between supervisor and employees.
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This happens when one of the supervisor in charge could not explain to Nelson about the problem occur in the branch but only to know that the employee turnover was too high. The supervisor does not have enough time to communicate with the employees hence; there are no consistent relationships exist between them. Besides that, there ar e also lacks of communication among all the branches supervisors and home office. Lastly, the bank home office does not have Human Resources Department. Most of the problem that appeared in the case is related to employees¶ issue. Therefore, having a HR department can reduce the issue regarding employees among the branches and home office. 2. Do you think setting up an HR department in the main office would help? Can help in: Setting up an HR department could help a lot in the main office because the main purpose of why HR department is available in a company is because they are in charge of all the employees by recruiting, provide training, appraising, and compensating them. Besides that, a HR department can give the employees the sense of belonging to the main office because their health and safety are concerned by the department as well. Additionally, HR department is important to all managers in the main office. There are many advantages of having a HR department in the main office. Firstly, it can help to prevent hiring wrong person for the job in main office. For example, people who have engineering background may not suitable for working in a company but more suitable in a factory. Secondly, whenever there is a high turnover of employees, HR department can help to reduce it because they can tend to recruit employees and train them to be more committed to the main office. Thirdly, when an employee¶s performance is low then, HR department will take action of transferring the particular employee to training or counseling so that, can find out the problem within that employee. This may help the main office for reducing employee 2
high turnover and save cost. Even the most serious issue that can be happen in the main office like, having the company taken to court because of discriminatory actions and cited under federal occupational safety laws for unsafe practices, can be avoid by the HR management.
3. What specific functions should an HR department carry? What HR functions would then be carried out by supervisors and the other line managers? Below are the following functions that performed by an HR department that relates to employees: Planning labor needs and recruiting job candidates Above task is to help the main office to planning labor needs and recruit many job candidates by attracting to work for the office. Thus, this can be easy for the main office because most of the department have their own specific task for example, in finance department, their duties is auditing and accounting for the main office finance. This shows that, each department have their own duties so, for HR department their duties mostly are relate t o employees. Conducting job analyses Job analyses are the procedure through the content of the job for the employees. It produces information for stating the job descriptions and specifications. This could help the main office by recruiting the right people for the right job to assign accordingly. Besides that, supervisors and the other line managers may carry out of the HR functions by stating their departments¶ job description and job specification to the HR to create a job analysis for t hem. Each department have different types of
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employee¶s skill wanted hence, by stating the every description is important because in this way only can get the right employee for each department. Selecting job candidates After the recruitment, choosing the right candidates is the next step which is called selecting job candidates. Therefore, through this process can identify the best employee to hire with the motive of reaching the main office¶s goal effectively and efficiently. Orientating and training new employees After getting the right employees for the main office to work, the HR department will provide training and orienting to the new employees so that, they can l earn to work better and improve time by time. Hence, this can help to motivates and influence the employees to work harder and better for the main office. Appraising employee performance All the employees performance will be evaluate by the HR department in order to identify the issues or achievement by the employees. If one of the employees¶ performances is identify to be low, then t he department will transfer the particular employee to training so that he or she can improve. Meanwhile, if one of the employees identifies to have high performance then the H R department will give a reward to the employee for instance, ³Best Worker of the Month´ to create a sense of achievement for the employee who succeeded. The employees¶ performance will actually evaluated by their supervisor and other line managers. In a main office, t hey are many types of departments hence, a HR department alone may not plays the role of appraising employee performance in every department but the supervisor and other
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line managers can help the HR management to do the evaluation employee performance as well. Managing wages and salaries At the end of every month, the wages and salaries will be calculated and issued by the HR department to the supervisor and other line managers. So, this can be very convenient for the employees to get their payment a nd whom they can refer too since their supervisor and other line managers are clos ed to them. Hence, this HR functions also can be carry out by the supervisors and other line managers. Providing incentives and benefits Besides paying salaries and wages to the employees, they demand for benefits as well for example, EPF, SOSCO, insurance, and so o n. Besides that, employees who performed well in the main office they may get incentives means bonus add-on salaries to the basic pay. Thus, this may motivates the employees to work harder to gain performance for getting incentives. Communicating (interviewing, counseling, disciplining) Basically, HR department workers are the first one who communicates with the new employees by interviewing. They also provide counseling for a ny employees who have come across any internal or external problem when working in the main office. Thus, this is where the HR department receive all the complaints from the employees so that, can solve the problem within the main office. This may builds relationship among each other in order, to work better as a team in the main office. Besides that, it is important to communicate between supervisor and employees in each department.
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The reason why is because, employees will perform better and well since they know their task when their supervisor ask them to do it by communicating. Building employee commitment Employee commitment can be build by having a consistent relationship among others by communicating. Thus, HR department can help the main office to maintain the relationship among the employees so that, they would not have any conflicts and t hey will determine to work harder when they feel committed to the main office.
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