HR Issues Faced By HS Furniture Co. – A Case Study

Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of HS Furniture Co.

Discuss about the HR Management Case Study for HS Furniture Co.

The HS Furniture Co. is a small company facing bankruptcy. Before this financial misfortune, the organization was characterized by the following strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Strengths

• The company had a lot of return customers. This is evidenced by the fact that it was the leading furniture business in the area. This also means that they are offering the best customer service which is a direct reflection to their sales hence the leading furture business in the area.
• Customer satisfaction is another strength for this organization. It served the local market well because of its ability to adapt to new trends. The firm also incorporated innovative designs to come up with compact and assembled furniture that met all customer demands.
• Good employee-manager relationship (Truss, Mankin and Kelliher, 2012). This creates a conducive working environment that ensures business success. A manager who supports and empathizes with its employees will definitely motivate and encourage them to give their best at work. Good employee manager relationship also saves costs in hiring new employees every other time and also gives the company a good public relations to the public.

Weaknesses

• Lack of a strategic plan. The perception that having a strategic plan or formal HR policies would make the business inflexible limits the organization because of the insufficient HR functions which are critical to any modern business.
• Inexperienced Leadership. Experienced company managers know the importance of HR department in an organization (Armstrong, 2013).
• Lack of goal setting for employees. Employees should have specific objectives that would translate to company goals. Lack of these goals fails to give the company a sense of direction. Once the management don’t set up limits to where and what they expect from their employees, a lot seems to get lost in terms of company resources.
• Lack of performance appraisal or performance management system. This is necessary for monitoring and evaluating employee performance. Employees feel very motivated when they are appraised every once in a while. Appraisals motivates and makes employees feel important to the company and thus bring their best to work.

Opportunities

• Taking advantage of technological development. Everyone has a phone that has internet with that in mind the company should take advantage. Social media can be used for marketing, networking, and also customer feedback. It plays a major role in the company as its easier to get feedback, both positive and ngative. The social media helps in identifying customer needs especially in the constant change in consumer demand.
• Company’s strong market position is an opportunity for the business to grow.
• Joint Business venture. This was an opportunity for HS Furniture Co. to expand to international markets such as Indonesia.

Threats

• The company faced stiff competition from other furniture companies that incorporated latest technology and had cheaper products.
• The numerous debts owed by the company threatens its survival. Bankruptcy is inevitable with many credit industries demanding payment of their loans.

Many Human Resource departments in organizations face a number of problems either in running the unit or enforcing the policies. HS Furniture Co. is no exception. Some of issues faced by the firm are discussed in this section. One of the primary problem is employee retention issues. Most people perceive that the primary goal of HR is to look for new talents. This is not entirely true because most of the activities of the department involves retaining the already trained workers (Leonard, 2018). HS Furniture Co. faced this problem when its workers contemplated termination of their contracts and as a result went on a strike. The ultimate result would be to train more workers which would cost a lot of money.

Another problem is in the recruitment function of the HR department. Selecting and employing the best qualified personnel was a big issue for the HS Furniture Co. The organization could not get the appropriate professionals for the vacant positions that were available in the Darwin Office. The Human Resource therefore, ended up hiring university graduates for all the 11 positions. This decision was influenced by the weak labour market in the region. It ended up costing the organization a great deal because of the employee’s inexperience despite their high salaries (David, 2018).

Another critical HR issue faced by HS Furniture Co. was on employee training. Training new workers on their job requirements and expectations is imperative. However, Jane, the head of HR, left the new recruits on their own because of her confidence in their skill set. At first, the office worked out fine, but it later ran into major financial problems.

The case study addresses the four primary roles of a HR manager: strategic partner/contributor, administrative expert, employee advocate and change agent. As a strategic contributor, the HR manager of HS Furniture Co. fails to plan for his functions claiming that a strategic plan would make the firm inflexible. Similarly, lack of employee goal setting led to lack of responsibility and accountability in the organization. These cases prove this role of a HR manager. As an administrative expert, Jane was required to be in charge of the new recruits and oversee their training. however, she let them figure out their jobs themselves. As an employee advocate, she was responsible for paying the high salaries to her subordinates. Finally, as a change agent, she was responsible for taking disciplinary measures to those workers who went against the company policies. She fired the worker who violated the internet surfing policy. These cases result in policy changes in the firm.

Problems faced by Human Resource department of the company

Recruitment and selection is a process of attracting, screening through interviews and selecting qualified candidates for a position while incorporating employment equity principles and practices. The primary purpose of selection is to enable the team doing the hiring to apply the best practices of recruitment. Poor selection processes and procedures causes the organization to incur unnecessary costs. Recruitment and selection practices are guided mostly by the changing nature of corporate structures, production strategies, and international Human Resources Management policy orientation.

The process of recruitment and selection, training, development and performance management is critical towards job satisfaction. The recruitment and selection procedure of based on employee’s personality and explicit job requirement is an archaic strategy that used by HS Furniture Co. This method has proven to be unreliable because it overlooks some of the critical areas of considerations such as experience and professionalism. On the other hand, an unreliable method of assuming that employees will carry out what they are supposed to without proper training was used by the HR manager of HS Furniture Co. Special training is key especially for vital departments like the finance and accounting. In addition, Schein (2010) the job analysis procedure needed to clearly state the process of performance evaluation and appraisal.

However, the procedure for recruitment and selection, training, development and performance management used by HS Furniture Co. were effective to some extent. Recruiting and selecting workers based on their attitudes ensures that the employees can relate well with their managers, customers and other colleagues. This creates a good working environment. This explains why the employees of HS Furniture Co. were friendly to each other and their immediate community (Dhar, 2008). Conversely, failure to train new employees and conduct a performance appraisal or management process is an ineffective way of running an organization. It reduces accountability and responsibility of the workers. The consequences of lack of performance appraisal was the employee’s strike that really hurt the business.

As a HR consultant, I would change the nature of recruitment and selection of HS Furniture Co. from that based on employee’s personality and explicit job requirement to include consideration of a worker’s experience and professionalism. I would emphasize on training of new employees by recommending additional investments on training programs. I would also implement performance appraisal and management strategies such as rewards and bonuses to excellent workers to encourage them and others to work hard (Battaglio, n.d.). Having incentives motivates human beings to improve their job performance. Another important change would be to ask the company executives to implement an independent human resource department to handle the recruitment, selection, training, payment of workers, and employee contracts among others. Explaining the benefits of an HR department would be key to seeing this proposal through.

References

Battaglio, R. (n.d.). Public human resource management. 

Dhar, R. (2008). Strategic human resource management. New Delhi, India: Excel Books.

David J. W (2015) Employment Law for Human Resources Practice. CENGAGE Learning

Leonard K. (2018). Human Resources Management Strategies. Personal Management. GRIN Publishing.

G.Aquinas (2009) Human Resources Management – Principles and Practices. Vishal Printer, New Delhi

Schein, E. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Truss, C., Mankin, D. and Kelliher, C. (2012). Strategic human resource management. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.