Koegel PowerPoint Presentation

Evaluating Human Resources Project: Part I

Project Team

Cody Abbey

Nicolaza Ascencio

Rischonda Forsythe

HRM3150

Performance Management of Human Resources

September 6, 2020

Professor

Dr. Rebecca Herman

Company Introduction

The Koegel Meat Company is part of the Meat Product Manufacturing Industry. It processes, packages, and distributes meat to consumers all across the country while being based in Flint, Michigan. Koegel was founded in 1916 by Koegel’s dad Albert Koegel after learning about the meat industry through a program in Germany. He started the company as a retail market to be part of the expanding population resulting from the automotive industry’s startup. The company produces sixty-four products based on over thirty different recipes, including hot dogs, which are the most notable product from Koegel (Adams, 2016). Other products include Italian sausages, franks, bologna rings, Polish sausages, foot-longs, and chicken franks, among others. Koegel supplies meat products to about two hundred Coney restaurants, Kroger, Walmart, and Dairy Queen. Its own product distribution to all its stores gives the company the advantage of giving a shorter shelf-life to ensure fresh product delivery. Koegel uses its 100-year old recipes to smoke meat products with damp sawdust and hardwood for a perfect flavor and a blend of different spices. However, processes have changed over the years due to the existence of new technology shifting from hand stuffing to machine-based operations.

Koegel has a total of one hundred and fifteen employees across its locations and generates a total of $34 million in sales yearly. Workers work on an hourly basis and more hours during the summer. The company’s slogan is “Made up to a Quality,” meaning they value quality and customer satisfaction. The company benefits from its membership in the AMI in various ways as the AMI is an organization that advocates for meat processors while dealing with USDA ("Koegel Inc.", 2020). Koegel’s top competitors include Srodek’s Company Quality Sausage, Kowality, Lila’s Pierogi, and Mac n’ Cheez. One of the problems that the company faced for a long time was staying with the initial formula established by Albert because people enjoyed so much. This was a difficult thing to let go of since competitors were using cheaper production methods. Apart from its original recipe, Koegel Meats also has a competitive advantage because it delivers to every individual store. This gives it a competitive edge by allowing it to give its items a shelf-life of most of its competitors to ensure consumers are enjoying fresh products. The fact that most people count on their products and prefer them to the competitors’ has boosted their business big time.

Being an Employer of Choice

Becoming an employer of choice is something that many organizations strive for, but it not as easy as some may think. Chakravorty-Campbell (2019) explained that becoming an employer of choice means creating an extraordinary workplace environment. It’s fostering a welcoming, positive and supportive culture. This also means giving employees the meaningful benefits and perks, which could include flex time, professional development opportunities, innovative tech tools, or other things that seem to be important and fulfilling to employees. This may look a little different for every organization, but these types of tasks need to be done in order to try to become an employer of choice as it does not just happen overnight. Organizations that have become an employer of choice often demonstrate the value of their employees. This is done by listening to their employees and what they may need or want. These organizations have also put realistic budgets and goals in place for their employees as well as the overall organization. This helps to define what the organization needs to do, but also what they can afford so they are able to make a commitment. Becoming an employer of choice takes strategy, hard work and dedication – but it’s definitely worth the effort.

For Koegel, becoming an employer of choice is more than just bragging rights or something they can post on their career sites. It is about providing for their employees to help attract and retain the best talent. In return, this will allow Koegel to keep their promise and create the best product out there with the quality they know their customers have come to expect. If employees are happy and feel that they are well taken care of they are much more likely to do the same for the organization they work for. This is exactly what will assist Koegel in keeping their value and promise of “Made up to Quality.”

When it come to actually deciding on a strategy to becoming an employer of choice there are several things Human Resource Management can do. One of the most important things is to have a clearly defined strategy to ensure the organization is always focused on a common goal with all that is being done. Ordioni (2017) explained that compensation is more important to established professionals (ages 40-54) than millennials who greatly value the flexibility of working from home. If you are unaware of things like these that may be important to employees then the best thing to do is to find out. While that may seem easier said than done there is a lot of data available to assist in making employees feel valued. While it may not be the same as your organization, looking at general data is always a good start as it could then lead to data collection from your own employees. This should always be done by HRM as they should be taking the lead on finding out what benefits and perks should be given to employees and which ones would be the most beneficial. It is important for HRM to do this to help create brand awareness to help get the message out about the organization. This will not only ensure the organization is on the right track, but it is one of the first steps to becoming an employer of choice.

Evaluating HR Functions

Metrics are an important factor in evaluating the performance of HR functions because they help measure and address how impactful and efficient the companies HR practices are. In order to become an employer of choice, a company must do research to see what the competition is doing, evaluate what type of person they want to recruit, emphasize the benefits that attract and help retain the ideal employee, and recognize and reward employees. This helps the company become a forward-thinking company and one that employees want to choose as a great place of work.

For Koegels to accomplish this, they must use the tactics above as well as collect data from employee surveys to obtain the employee point of view. Research shows that employee surveys provide insight into the workload, role clarity, efficiency, work atmosphere and leadership, as well as detailed information on employee engagement and commitment (Van Dijk, 2015). These surveys help open a dialogue between the employer and employees and allows employees to be heard. The importance of open dialogue is to help employees feel valued, motivated, and encourage retention.

The Employee Human Resources Satisfaction Survey provided serves the purpose in strategic planning as it helps the company evaluate and allocate resources to pursue its most important objectives based on the compensation benefits employees feel are most important. This survey will go out to all of Koegel’s 115 employees, and my hope for the data collected is to find out what employees value the most about our compensation strategy and how satisfied they are with our leadership and opportunity practices. This survey will reveal what areas suffer and what areas are thriving. Being a small business, it is important that we align our mission with our HR functions and do our best to improve HR functions that will help motivate and retain employees and help us become an employer of choice.

These specific services were selected for the survey because they are the strategies that align with our mission and vision. Compensation is one of the largest portions of a company’s budget, as well as employees most valued factor. These HR functions help contribute to not only the compensation strategy but also a guide to help design the performance management system.

In order to gain honest feedback from the survey it must be completed by all employees and remain anonymous and confidential. The best way to accomplish this is by using Google Form to create the survey and disable all options that require sign ins. We can set a deadline to have all the surveys completed, while also emphasizing the importance to employees to complete the survey in order to get data that will benefit them in the future.

References

Adams, D. (2016). Koegel Meats still using original recipe after 100 years. Retrieved 4 September 2020, from https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2016/02/koegel_meats_still_using_origi.html

Chakravorty-Campbell, P. (2019, May 23). Becoming an Employer of Choice Boosts Bottom-Line Business Results. Retrieved September 04, 2020, from https://www.hrtechnologist.com/articles/recruitment-onboarding/becoming-an-employer-of-choice-boosts-bottomline-business-results/

Koegel Inc. (2020). Retrieved 4 September 2020, from https://www.dandb.com/businessdirectory/koegelmeatsinc-flint-mi-13429958.html

Ordioni, J. (2017, January 09). How to Become An Employer of Choice This Year. Retrieved September 04, 2020, from https://www.tlnt.com/how-to-become-an-employer-of-choice-this-year/

Van Dijk, R. (2015. October 19). The key role of HR in employee surveys. Retrieved from

https://www.effectory.com/knowledge/the-key-role-of-hr-in-employee-surveys