Case Study

In Fundamentals of Resource Management, Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, and Wright stated, "The Supreme Court has held that the selection guidelines in the federal government's Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures also apply to performance measurement" (2011, p. 249). Locate a recent court case or lawsuit related to discrimination or unjust dismissal by a performance management system. Write a paper at least 500 words in length about the selected court case or lawsuit. You are required to use at least your textbook and a court case as source material for your paper.

Be sure to include the following information in your paper:

-Provide a brief description of the selected court case or lawsuit.

Identify the selection criteria and methods, and relate them to the needs of the organization in the case.

-Provide a discussion of the purpose of performance management.

I HAVE ALSO ATTACHED THE STUDY GUIDE FOR THIS UNIT.

- Include an analysis of the criteria and methods used for measuring performance management in the court case or lawsuit.

- Include a discussion of the legal and ethical issues related to performance management in this court case or lawsuit.

-What impact will this court case or lawsuit have on HR management?

* All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations in APA format.

Unit Lesson

When the U.S. jobs report comes out or the president makes a jobs announcement, a majority of people either do not know or do not care. People typically are less interested in the degree to which other people have work and are more interested in their work. However, a small group of the population reads each line and pays attention to each word. These people are strategic human resource managers.

When it comes to executing workforce planning well, there are two domains of information that matter most:

internal business-driven decisions and external market forces.
Internal Business-Driven Decisions

HR guru Jeffery Pfeffer (as you already read in Unit II) suggests that internal hiring or "promotion from within" (Stewart & Brown, 2015) is an optimal piece of any workforce planning strategy. People are more satisfied, and retention is higher for these hopeful people. On the contrary, a common HR heuristic is sometimes you need "new blood" or a "fresh face" in a particular job to drive change. Which will you choose? As an example, the Boeing company hired an external senior vice president of aviation services. Employees were in shock.

He does not know us! He does not know how we work! He does not have the "tribal knowledge" to do the job! In this case, the new VP was an ex-CEO of an airline, and employees soon found that he knew customers better than anyone in the firm. It was a risk but a great hire for Boeing. Workforce planning requires making this decision up front and intentionally, not accidentally. Some firms will have an internal posting system where all existing employees get a "first shot" at a job, while other firms have employees apply to external requisitions. Either is fine and should reflect the preference of the organization.

An additional internal business issue is relationships and planning systems of the HR division. All jobs start with a need. The HR professional must be constantly aware of where these needs come from. What is the turnover rate? What is the number of jobs that need to be filled?

What does the VP of operations say is changing technology where new skills must be acquired? What does the VP of marketing say about sales? If sales are up and continue to trend in this direction, then more operators and engineers will be needed. If sales show a spike and drop, you may want to consider overtime and temporary labor so as not to create a layoff situation when sales decline. Each of these factors requires strong objective reporting systems so HR can know and plan for changes in the workforce. Strong subjective relationships are also needed so HR people can appropriately serve their customers inside the firm.

External Market Forces

In addition to observing what happens inside the firm, HR professionals need to know what the external environment holds for them. In an economic environment where unemployment is quite low, it is likely to take more time to fill positions, highlighting the importance of receiving good information quickly. When skilled labor is more available in a high unemployment rate environment, the pressure is slightly less. In a similar way, when the economy overall tends to do well by economic indicators, this creates two problems: 1) Sales are likely to increase, creating a need for labor, and 2) labor will be harder to find as your competitors will be going after the same group of people.

As stated earlier in this lesson, as sales increase the need for labor increases. On top of that, labor becomes more difficult to employ when competitors are recruiting from the same pool of potential employees. An important lesson learned from the most recent economic downturn, known by many as the Great Recession, is the value of employees. Simon Sinek authored the book Start With Why and interviewed a wide range of people regarding how great leaders inspire people. In his book, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't, Sinek (2014) interviewed an employee of Barry-Wehmiller (a collection of manufacturing companies). The employee made the statement "I never thought you could enjoy a job. When you have people who trust you, they're going to do a better job for you to earn or keep that trust" (Sinek, 2014, p. 12).

In a related insight, Ian Hutchinson (2009), author of People Glue: Engagement and Retention Solutions that Stick, placed a high emphasis on taking care of employees by treating them as your most important customers. Hutchinson implied that when leaders look after their employees first, the production of the entire organization increases.

The world economy has become so competitive that every aspect of the organization has come under greater scrutiny as leaders seek to gain an ethical advantage in their corner of the market. The investment in employees is part of that scrutiny. "Companies that get the most from their people often consider their human resources their biggest investment" (Kelly & Williams, 2015, p. 242).

Proper workforce planning requires more than just effect planning in general. It requires effective monitoring of the internal and external labor market and a sixth sense to be able to predict the future and plan for it.

References

Hutchinson, I. (2009). People glue: Engagement and retention solutions that stick. Warriewood, New South Wales, Australia: Woodslane Press.

Kelly, M., & Williams, C. (2015). BUSN: Introduction to business (7th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

Sinek, S. (2014). Leaders eat last: Why some teams pull together and others don't. New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin.

Stewart, G. L., & Brown, K. G. (2015). Human resource management: Linking strategy to practice (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.