Human Resource Management Assignment 2

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7 Training, Learning,

Talent Management, and Development

Case 7.1. The Need for Training and Development: Should You Use Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Such as Coursera and Udacity to Recruit and Retain Talent? Juan Salmeron graduated from Small-Town College two years ago and was excited to land a job in customer service with AT&T. He rose quickly in stature at the local AT&T office and became the go-to guy when someone needed to understand some new technology.

After 2 years, Juan figured he was marketable and wanted to see if he could land a larger position with another firm. He worked hard on his résumé, cover letter, refer- ences, and copies of his college transcripts.

Juan interviewed well at California Mutual Insurance (CMI), and his dreams came true! Juan was hired as a corporate trainer. His job responsibility was to teach the insurance employees at CMI about how to use the latest technology to improve their own performance on the job.

Thus, Juan had to develop a process to help teach the insurance employees about technology in the workplace. The obvious option was to actually hold courses at CMI’s headquarters. Realistically, Juan could offer two or three courses a week. But each employee would have to leave desk and job duties to attend the face-to-face (F2F) training courses.

Juan could also try to hire experts in technology topics, and they could then develop a course to train the insurance employees. However, this would require extra financial costs to hire the expert and videotape the lectures. Juan could also decide to hold courses in a synchronous or asynchronous distance learning format. Synchronous

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Chapter 7 • Training, Learning, Talent Management, and Development 3 7

distance learning occurs when the trainer/teacher and his employees/pupils interact in different places, but during the same time. Thus, students and the trainer might select Tuesday night as the time when they hold the training class. The trainer could be on his or her laptop computer at home, and the employees could access their training course at night. On Tuesday night, there would be a specific class where the trainer and all the students would meet online and discuss the material to learn. Synchronous learning would require the trainer and employee to meet at a specific time.

Asynchronous distance learning occurs when the trainer and the employee interact at different times. Students enrolled in an asynchronous course are able to complete their work within a certain time period. Thus the employee would access the learning site within a time period such as one week. The employee would review the material, watch videos, and take any exams, as necessary. Thus, the trainer and employee would have more freedom to complete assignments within a pre-established time period.

As a third option, Juan could use massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by online providers such as Coursera and Udacity. MOOCs are free online courses offered by experts at no cost. MOOC course topics range from law, education, engineering, management, and all areas of technology. As Coursera explains: “Coursera is an edu- cation platform that partners with top universities and organizations worldwide, to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Learners can choose from hundreds of courses created by the world’s top educational institutions. Courses are open to anyone, and learning is free.”1

For example, Juan could encourage his employees to take a course on Gamification. Gamification is a course offered at the University of Pennsylvania, through Coursera, and taught by Associate Professor Kevin Werbach from The Wharton School of Business. The initial section of the course had 80,000 students followed by a section of 63,000 students.2

Gamification is taught in four to eight weekly modules and is offered in different languages. Gamification is the adaptation of digital game technology applied to human resource and other business issues. Thus, Juan’s employees could learn to develop a game, whereby their customers are rewarded points or in-game rewards for checking their insurance policies, investment accounts, and so forth on a regular basis. The goal is to make “the game” addictive so that customers check their own accounts on a more regular basis. The idea is to simulate games such as Angry Birds where customers actually want to check their accounts.

Many people in HR feel MOOCs could be a major part of recruiting, training, and developing employees with online degree certifications.3 Udacity has a program that allows employers to review the student résumés. Over 350 large organizations, such as Facebook, have paid Udacity and Coursera to match them with high performing students.4

MOOCs can have thousands of students sign up for a course online. Students often earn a certificate for completing the course. HR departments can also develop their own certificate or reward for their employees that complete a MOOC. Companies such as AT&T are using Udacity’s MOOCs to train their employees in new areas of science and technology. Starbucks offers employees free tuition to participate in Arizona State University’s online courses.

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Case Questions

1. Would Coursera or Udacity be a viable option for all human resource departments to train their employees?

2. Would HR be eliminating themselves from their own job if they use Coursera?

3. Would MOOCs be a good recruiting method for attracting top talent?

4. Should Juan use a synchronous or asynchronous training format if he decides to use a MOOC to train his employees?

5. What are two advantages and two disadvantages of gamification of the HR functions?

Case 7.2. Talent Management and Development: The Talented Harry Saunders’s Career Development at the Big Buy Supermarket Developing talented employees requires planning on the part of human resources. The career of Harry Saunders is a good example. Harry progressed in his career by using three options: formal education, experience, and employee assessment.

Harry’s father worked in the marketing department at The Big Buy Supermarket chain in Florida. With a little help from his father, Harry was able to get a job as a bag- boy during high school. Harry enjoyed using the cash register since he liked numbers. Harry also displayed social skills since he liked talking to customers.

After high school, Harry went to college and tried different business majors until he concentrated on accounting. Harry knew he had knack for numbers, and account- ing came easy to him. After graduating from college, Harry was offered quite a few positions to work for local and national accounting firms. At such a firm, he would go on the road and conduct audits of his clients’ accounting books. He would travel quite a bit—but he would be well paid and eventually would become a certified public accountant (CPA).

However, the HR Department at The Big Buy had no desire to lose an employee it felt had the potential to be a top-level manager. Thus, HR offered him a position in the accounting department at a competitive salary with the CPA firms. Since Harry liked working at The Big Buy, and even followed in his father’s footsteps, he accepted the position.

HR departments are also interested in recruiting people who have completed MOOCs. They were originally interested in students that completed a science- or technology-related course. Tech-oriented companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google have paid Udacity and Coursera to match them with their top students.

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Chapter 7 • Training, Learning, Talent Management, and Development 3 9

Harry enjoyed organizing the accounting department at The Big Buy for nearly a decade. The supermarket chain grew to more than 100 stores. Harry felt he needed to get a graduate degree in marketing to help further his rise in management. The Big Buy offered 100 percent tuition reimbursement. It took Harry 2 years to complete his MBA in marketing.

After 20 years in accounting, Harry felt he was tired of running the same old accounting data. He was not as marketable as he once was because he had never become a CPA. He also missed working directly with customers.

Thus, Harry contacted HR, and they worked closely with him to find a new spot in the organization. Harry took a psychological test, which is a series of multiple choice questions about what motivated Harry in a work environment. The test results indi- cated Harry was equally happy working with data and people.

Harry was promoted to the new position of database marketing manager. In that position, Harry would work with large amounts of sales data that were being generated by the computer systems at the 100-plus stores Big Buy owned. Harry’s job would be to analyze sales data to find products that were selling unusually well or poorly at each of the stores. Harry hired two young computer science majors to run the computer programs, sort the data, and help Harry make a weekly presentation to senior manage- ment about the results of the data.

Harry felt a strong resurgence in his career. He was thrilled to be working with cus- tomers again. He often visited stores to ask customers about various food items. He felt this boots-on-the-ground strategy would help him to better understand the overall sales data produced by his two employees back in the home office.

Harry became a popular speaker at supermarket conferences, as mining the data from large computer systems was an increasingly important task for all supermarket chains. Harry used his mathematical skills honed by a decade in accounting to under- stand the trends in food shopping. Harry was the first person to create a grocery store customer loyalty card, where shoppers paid $20 a year for the right to get lower prices on selected products. The idea of shoppers paying for a membership to buy groceries at a traditional supermarket was unheard of at the time Harry tested the idea. The result was that the customers of The Big Buy loved paying for the card so they would get lower prices on selected items throughout the store. Harry and his team could better track customer purchases and buying habits because shoppers were using their Big Buy card.

Harry took a few quiet moments to review his career by using the four stages of career development: Exploration, Establishment, Maintenance, and Disengagement. He felt fortunate to have started his career in the exploration stage by considering different job opportunities after he finished college. He experienced the establish- ment stage in his career by working in the accounting department for what felt like a long time—20 years. He feels refreshed to have transferred to marketing and has found the whole process of tracking customers a great part of the maintenance stage in his continued career at The Big Buy. Harry also felt he was in no rush to disengage from the company anytime in the near future. With the full support of his wife, Harry plans on working at The Big Buy instead of taking any type of early retirement offer.

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Case Questions

1. How did Harry and HR use formal education to further his career?

2. How did employee assessment help Harry to advance?

3. Explain how Harry went through the career stages of Exploration, Establishment, Maintenance, and Disengagement.

4. What are some of the individual and organizational consequences

that occurred as a result of the organizational career planning process at Big Buy?

5. Why did Harry’s attitude and performance dramatically change after changing from the accounting to the marketing department?

Notes

1. https://www.coursera.org/about/. 2. McWilliams, Julie, “Coursera at Penn Surpasses One Million Enrollees,” Penn Current, May 9,

2013.

3. Quinn, Jody, “Mining the MOOC: HR Looks to Online to Recruit and Train Employees,” Skilled Up.com, August 25, 2014.

4. Wheeler, Kevin, “Why MOOC’s Might Change Your Recruiting Methods,” ERE Media, March 4, 2014.

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8 Performance Management

and Appraisal

Case 8.1. Why Do We Conduct Performance Appraisals? Jennee LeBeau and the Case of the Missing Performance Appraisal System Jennee LeBeau was very excited to be hired as the director of human resources at Sunshine Hotels. Her office was located at the Main Island Hotel. Jennee spent her first year at Sunshine Hotels getting used to the processes used by HR. She spent most of her time in her office at Main Island Hotels. She didn’t get to visit the other two Sunshine Hotels very often. Jennee’s employees in HR like her hands-off supervisory style. However, they also feel she would be an even better supervisor if she left her office and interacted with the employees more often.

Jennee had spent the last 7 years as the assistant director of human resources for a chain of 10 fast-food restaurants. She figured being in charge of HR for a growing chain of three hotels would be similar to her experiences working in the fast-food industry.

While working in her office, she noticed Sunshine Hotels didn’t conduct perfor- mance appraisals. Jennee thought performance appraisals (PA) were a common pro- cess in all companies. She was quite shocked at finding such a review process was not in place at Sunshine Hotels since they have nearly 30 employees. She decided the hotel chain was not overly concerned with evaluating employees in their first two hotels since the employees were mostly family and friends. But the addition of a third hotel has forced the Sunshine Hotel owners to create more HR policies, rules, and forms to make sure they are following all the laws of HR.

Jennee did some research and found that a performance appraisal is an ongoing process of evaluating employee performance. However, it is also a tool of the large

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process of having a performance management system, which is the process of identify- ing, measuring, managing, and developing the performance of the human resources in an organization. Thus, a PA is really a mechanism to help evaluate employees so they can develop into larger roles and to ensure the success of the company going into the future.

The good news is that Jennee figured out she could start from scratch and develop her own performance management system (PMS). She figured she could set up an entirely new PMS. PAs of individuals could be part of an ongoing process of evaluating employees.

Jennee has to decide what will be included in her new PMS. She wants the PA to collect valid information. That means what she measures must be true and correct. She wants to be sure to measure the performance process. Although Jennee wants to col- lect valid information, she also has to be concerned that the process isn’t overly long or costly. She figures she can keep costs lower by emailing the PA to each employee to reduce mailing costs. She also wanted to use a multiple choice style PA so she could easily quantify the results.

The PA also has to be reliable. She has to trust that the performance data collected are consistent and that the PA works the same each time she uses it.

Jennee wants the employees to accept the process as important to their own career development. Acceptability means that the use of PA is satisfactory or appropriate to the employees that will use the PA to improve their work performance.

Jennee also wants to develop a process that would not be overly expensive or time consuming to implement. If the PA is overly long to complete, then the manager and employee will not use the PA as a tool to improve performance.

The PA has to be specific about an employee’s job performance so that it is a useful instrument for improving areas that need development for that specific employee.

Another important goal is the PA has to help achieve the mission and goals of Sunshine Hotels. Completing the PA process should help employees better understand what Sunshine expects from them and how they can complete their own job to help the company fulfill its mission.

Jennee is starting to realize that she has walked into a very large project in design- ing a PMS from scratch. She is starting to realize she will need to organize a committee to help develop the process, especially the PA form. In answering her own questions, she realized she will be putting together a PA that Sunshine employees will be using for the first time. Employees currently receive a straight raise across the board. If the owners of Sunshine Hotels determine everyone deserves a 3 percent raise, then all employees get the raise irrespective of their own work performance. A new perfor- mance management system and performance appraisal process will most likely make it easier to administer raises based on the rating each employee receives as part of the process. However, the employees might prefer the across-the-board raises rather than having to personally earn their raises.

Jennee decided to create a first draft of her performance appraisal form. She can show this draft to her committee. The following is Jennee’s performance appraisal:

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Chapter 8 • Performance Management and Appraisal 4 3

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL FORM

NAME:

HOTEL:

DEPARTMENT and JOB TITLE:

DATE OF APPRAISAL:

FROM: TO:

Employee Signature

Employer Signature

Exceptional Successful Needs

Improvement Unsatisfactory

Demonstrates Required Job Knowledge

Quality of Work & Productivity

Makes Effective Decisions

Builds and Maintains Relationships With Others

Communicates Effectively

Exhibits Supervisory Abilities

Overall Performance Appraisal Plan of Action

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Case Questions

1. What is the real goal(s) of a performance appraisal?

2. How can Jennee be sure to collect valid and reliable data with her new performance system?

3. How can Jennee get the employees to accept the process as important to their own career development?

4. Can Jennee develop a process that is not overly expensive to conduct with employees?

5. Complete the performance appraisal form in the case using Jennee LeBeau as the employee you are rating. Assume you are Patrick Staal, who is the chief financial officer (CFO) who is rating Jennee’s first year of performance.

EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL FORM

NAME: Jennee LeBeau

HOTEL: Main Island

DEPARTMENT & JOB TITLE: Director of Human Resources

DATE OF APPRAISAL:

FROM: January 1, 2016 TO: December 31, 2016

Employee Signature: Jennee LeBeau

Supervisor Signature: Patrick Staal

Exceptional Successful Needs

Improvement Unsatisfactory

Demonstrates Required Job Knowledge

Quality of Work & Productivity

Makes Effective Decisions

Builds & Maintains Relationships With Others

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Chapter 8 • Performance Management and Appraisal 4 5

Exceptional Successful Needs

Improvement Unsatisfactory

Communicates Effectively

Exhibits Supervisory Abilities

Overall Performance Appraisal Plan of Action

Jennee LeBeau has been the Director of Human Resources for the last year. She has excellent knowledge of the human resource concerns at Main Island Hotel.

As the Director of HR. Jennee is well liked. However, there is room for improvement since she spends most of the time in her office.

Jennee needs to develop better social skills. Developing better social skills will help her to improve her communication and supervisory abilities.

Jennee will participate in team building sessions to improve her communication and supervisory skills.

Case 8.2. Performance Appraisal Problems: The Trouble With Performance Systems It is unfortunate that employees fear their performance appraisal since the goal of a performance management system is to help employees develop. However, sitting across a table from your manager and discussing your performance record is most likely going to be a high-stress situation.

Janice Flahive didn’t look forward to her performance appraisal. As an advertising salesperson for her local newspaper, the Miami News, it was Janice’s job to sell adver- tising space in the newspaper. Her performance was mainly based upon how much ad space she sold. Janice felt she should have also been evaluated on customer satisfac- tion, creating new accounts, or developing relationships with prospective businesses that could lead to future sales opportunities. Instead, Janice’s performance appraisals usually ended up being a one-way communication process where her employer criti- cized her for not selling enough advertising space.

The PMS process is full of potential problems if it is not administered properly. Many of these problems occur because managers are not properly trained to administer

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Part III • Developing and Managing4 6

a performance management system. The lack of training can lead to “rating errors,” where one manager grades employees easier than a fellow manager who is a tougher grader. The result of inconsistent grading can lead to star employees receiving the same grades as weaker employees.

Poorly trained managers do not provide continuous feedback to their employ- ees. Feedback is provided only during the performance appraisal meeting. Managers need to provide performance feedback more often and document their interactions with the employee. It cannot be stressed enough that managers need to document, document, and collect even more documentation on each employee under their supervision. Documentation is needed to support strong employees for raises and pro- motions. Even more important, documentation is critical if an employee needs to be reprimanded or fired as a result of the performance appraisal.

Much in the manner of Janice’s experience, performance appraisals often fail to critique the employee in all areas of performance. Janice’s job is in sales, which makes it easier to evaluate her in that area since sales can be quantified—she either makes her sales quota or she doesn’t. However, Janice still deserves to be evaluated on qualitative areas such as customer service skills or leadership ability, which are often not able to be quantified.

Janice’s performance appraisals should help her to develop into a better salesper- son and potential management leader. It appears that Janice’s performance appraisal is a meeting that tends to discuss her past performance. Instead, the meeting should help Janice to develop a performance plan with specific goals for the coming year.

One of the more controversial rating systems is the ranking method. Ranking is a performance appraisal method that is used to evaluate employees from best to worst. At the Miami News, Janice’s office is evaluated using the ranking system. Since the rank order is posted in the office, Janice knows she is currently seventh on the list of 10 employees. The list is as follows as it is displayed outside the human resources office:

1. Samuel Garcia

2. Rosa McGowan

3. Meghan Shotland

4. Albert Smithfield

5. Jerry Jones

6. Samantha Barron

7. Janice Flahive

8. Karreem Rush

9. Monique Wayne

10. Sarah Badlementi

Janice is concerned that her company will decide to keep the top three star employees, try to develop the next three employees, and try to lay off the bottom four employees.

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Chapter 8 • Performance Management and Appraisal 47

Although there are many potential problems with a PMS that is not well organized, such a system is still very much needed in all organizations. Dr. Samuel Culbert, pro- fessor of management from UCLA, does not believe in the performance review; he supports a performance preview. This would be where Janice and her manager would sit down and together discuss how they can each help improve her overall performance. Janice can write “I” statements such as, “I will increase the amount of time I spend actually selling my products.” Or, her employer might say, “I will check in with Janice on a monthly basis, instead of every six months.”1

Another option for improving the performance appraisal system is to develop a team of people to review the employee. The traditional method is for the direct super- visor to evaluate his or her own employee. However, a more comprehensive 360-degree evaluation will analyze individual performance from many sides—from the supervi- sor’s viewpoint, from subordinates’ viewpoints, from the customers’ viewpoints, from peers’ viewpoints, and from a self-evaluation. Unfortunately, it will take extra time and money to collect data from all the different people who would be involved in that type of evaluation. However, the 360-degree evaluation might be worth the time and effort to help the employee develop under the guidance of multiple stakeholders instead of just the supervisor’s.

Case Questions

1. Why are there problems with most performance management systems?

2. What is the potential problem with a performance review conducted by a team of managers?

3. Why is an “I” statement a good method for developing a positive PA?

4. What are the positive and negative aspects of using a ranking method at Janice’s office at the Miami News?

5. What type of PA do you or did you have in the company you work or worked for?

Note

1. Culbert, Samuel A., “Get Rid of the Performance Review! It Destroys Morale, Kills Teamwork and Hurts the Bottom Line. And That’s Just for Starters,” Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2008.

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