answer questions

This case group project involves the development of an HR (and/or Workforce) Scorecard. This case will provide you with an understanding of the firm's business-level balanced scorecard. Your task will be to translate this into an HR (and/or Workforce) Scorecard, and to design the associated infrastructure to ensure its successful implementation. 

Please address (at a minimum) the following questions in your analyses.

1. What is the firm's competitive strategy? What are its associated operational goals?

Focus Strategy:

-Apex has a unique product with a specialized market

-Currently leads in this market segment because of their quality of product. 

-Offers customized products to customers

-Can potentially hinder growth due to small size of the company, and the labor intensive work that is put into their products

-Threatened by other larger companies (Microsoft) who are trying to expand into the market.

-Cost cutting strategy is resulting in lower quality standards of the product and unhappy customers

Operational Goals:

-Create a more universal HR organizational structure that allows less autonomy for departments and more teamwork within departments

-Create marketing strategies to stay ahead of new competition

-Update pay for performance initiatives to show accountability

-Improve product quality

-Restructure training

-Create tiered advancement opportunities for high performers

-Improve recruiting practices/“hiring for promotability”

-Improve performance appraisal system to make it beneficial to the employees and less of a chore for managers

0. Create a strategy map for this organization.

0. What are the "A" jobs in this business? What does "A" performance look like in these "A" jobs?

a. A jobs: A jobs in Apex are going to represent the jobs that are going to be important moving forward with their implementation of the new initiative

i. Systems design → 

i. System designer (information technology dept.)

a. This role helps to design documentation for the development and integration of the new computer system and how they relate to the needs of the business

ii. Systems Engineering → 

1. Customer Service System Engineer 

a. Essential for technical management, development of new customer service software, and the acquisition of the software into company practices

iii. Marketing → 

1. Product Marketing Professional → 

a. Helps to promote Apex’s product with relation and help from their new customer service software

1. Market Research Analyst →

b.  Important to research the market for how other companies are promoting their service to customers

iv. Compliance → 

1. Compliance Officer 

a. Helping to ensure that the new customer service and cost-efficiency program is running legally and ethically in ‘compliance’ with industry regulations 

v. Human Resources →

1. Training and Development Specialist

a. One of the most important A jobs because of the direct correlation with training employees (new and old) how to use the customer service software initiative 

1. Based on the firm's strategy and operational goals, how can the HR function help create value for shareholders and other key constituencies? As a senior HR manager, what competencies and workforce attributes will you commit to the CEO to deliver?

From an HR Perspective, there are several ways in which the HR function can help create value for shareholders and other key constituents. First looking at their HR management system by itself, there are many elements that need to be changed or restructured to leverage the key assets of the organization appropriately. How their current HR system is currently defined just so happens to be everything that is wrong with the organization from an operational perspective. To better create value for shareholders and constituents, we need to make a lot of internal structural changes to adjust our trajectory. Knowing that their current HR function and organizational structure is defined as “silos” is the first alarming issue that needs to be fixed. A silo is essentially divisions that operate completely independent from one another and avoid sharing information. This prevents divisions from understanding how their role fits in the overall objective and can lead to having tunnel vision, unable to keep the big picture in their peripherie. It is imperative that we formulate a new function and system that changes this. To create value, we have to work better cross functionally and multilaterally to share information across teams to promote more transparency. This will lead to a natural increase in efficiency as divisions are better equipped with the requisite knowledge to understand how their efforts impact other divisions and contribute to the overarching objective of the firm. 

0. Based on the above, what specific HR policies and practices must be in place how does the HR function need to be organized to deliver the "deliverables?"

1. What will the HR (and/or Workforce) scorecard look like? You can use the approach we've used in class, or any other approach that makes sense to you (the latter is actually encouraged). Be sure to include objectives, measures, and initiatives (don't worry about targets).

2. Who will "own" each of the measures in your scorecard? How often must they be updated?

3. How will you communicate your measurement system throughout the firm?

When communicating the measurement system throughout the firm it is important to start at the head of each department or team and have the information be communicated in that way.  It is important that the employees are utilized as tools to spread this communication.  

0. Measurement systems often highlight the performance of high and low performing managers and units. How will you roll out your measurement system and persuade (often) skeptical managers to use it?