You are to assume the role of HR assistant working in a mid-size, private sector, unionized firm. The HR department has been charged with creating an HR plan to strengthen the strategic advantages your department provides for the company. Each week you will use the HR Planning Process to resolve an issue by recommending a new strategy. Use the scenario below to help you create a plan to improve one practice in the Compensation and Benefit component. Scenario: Sarge Industries currently uses a compensation system that uses job grades and steps. The union contract is negotiated every 3 years and includes approved grades and steps used to compensate bargaining unit members. Non-union members also use a similar plan and several managers have complained there is not enough flexibility in compensation to pay the market rates for technology based positions. The current system is up to $20 an hour below current rates for some of the highly specialized positions the company needs. Job descriptions were updated about 15 years ago and are still in use and they do not reflect the current distribution of the duties and managers rely on the “other duties as assigned” part to justify the job requirements when employees inquire. Raises for the bargaining unit members are strictly based on seniority and non-union employees earn merit pay based on job performance throughout the year. All employees have the opportunity to purchase employer-sponsored benefit plans. The plan includes expensive PPO medical and dental plans and the opportunity to purchase additional life insurance above the full-paid $10k benefit each employee receives. Employees have to wait 90 days before being eligible for medical/dental. Employees have expressed frustration at only having an employee-only and family option for benefits as there are many single parents with one child and the family plan is unaffordable. There is a 401k plan without an employer match. Each year open enrollment is processed using paper packets for each employee that then must be converted into a spreadsheet to be sent to the benefits broker.

External Audit: Using your textbook and outside research, describe two best practices for ONE of the 3 issues you identified in the above prompt.