Gee WK2

Instructions & Paper from Last Week’s

Choose an organization as the focus for a Project Proposal. The organization can be an existing company, nonprofit organization, religious organization, or governmental agency. Avoid an organization that is so large that historical data would be difficult to apply. Firms in the Russell 2000® index may fit well, whereas firms in the Dow 30 Industrial index probably do not.

Select a project that you would expect to occur within this organization for which you will be writing a proposal. Project proposal examples include but are not limited to the following:

· Implementation of a new hiring process

· Construction of a new office building

· Development of a new software system

· Roll out of a new product or service

· Use the Internet to find a project plan template that is appropriate for the project plan you wish to propose.

Write a few brief paragraphs to justify selecting this organization. Include the following:

· The organization’s name

· The purpose for this organization’s existence

· Why this organization is of interest to you

· A description of the project and its relationship to the organization’s business objectives

· Availability of organizational data: Avoid selecting an existing organization for which there is no publicly available historical data.

Organization and Project Plan Template Proposal

Purpose for the Organization’s Existence

The organization that I have chosen for the study is ACCO Brands Corp. ACCO Brands Corp is a manufacturer of office equipment with its headquarters in Lake Zurich, Illinois. The organization offers a wide range of services such as binding and lamination, boards and easels, laptop physical security, notebook, planning products and presentation and storage (Camm, 2017). The common and leading brands and products offered by the company are; Day-Timer®, Five Star®, GBC®, Hilroy®, Kensington®, Marbig, Mead® among others. This organization is committed to ensuring that their customers are all satisfied with the products that they offer to them. The organization’s vision is to accept diversity, teamwork and also to respect each other. It is one of the organizations that have been recognized as a company that cares for its employees as well as the customers. In addition to that, it has shown how it is responsible to the environment since it has done a lot to ensure that they reduce any environmental impact. Therefore, this clearly shows what the purpose of the organization is. It is to ensure that they provide the best products and render the best services to the customers and also to promote environmental sustainability.

Organization of Interest

Through the years, I have been having the interest to know more about ACCO Brands Corp and that is why I have decided to do a project proposal about it. It will help me in researching more about it. I once had a friend who used to work there and based on the information that he used to tell me, I gained an interest to know about its performance, how it relates to the customers and also to know the probability of the company. For an organization to be successful and to produce products of good quality, it should engage its employees and ensure that they feel comfortable and receive some benefit. Good treatment of employees increases the productivity of the company.

Most importantly, ACCO Brands Corp is a company that produces office equipment that is used in many organizations that have offices. Therefore, the products offered by the company affect most people in the society. This implies that there is need to analysis the company through the project proposal so as to understand how it runs its day to day operations before the products reach in the offices.

Project and its Relationship to the Organization’s Objectives

In this project, the topic that I will deal with is the implementation of a new hiring process. One of the objectives of the organization is to ensure that they provide high-quality products. Basically, a hiring process is important because it has a great impact on the company’s production and performance values. Therefore, I think that ACCO Brands Corp should implement a new hiring process to ensure that they meet their objectives easily and prevent further costs that may be as a result of bad hiring.

The organization’s current selection and hiring process need to be improved so as to avoid hiring an employee who is not competent. The integrity test that helps in assessing the personality of an applicant can be easily manipulated. Based on the research that has been done in the past, it was noted that the integrity questions are easy to cheat on (Bullard, 2003)). Of course, an employer will choose an applicant who scored the higher scores than an applicant who scored less. When I look at it in the other perspective, something seems amiss. This is because; the participant who scored higher than the others may have cheated on by filling wrong answers so as to get that position.

ACCO Brands Corp automated its hiring process with iCIMS talent acquisition software. As much as it sounds better and the use of advanced technology, an applicant may manipulate the answers since the process is automated. Therefore, I think that ACCO Brands Corp should implement a new hiring process that will help in doing away with the manipulation of answers and other related problems. There are many consequences of bad hire which in most cases have a great impact on the organization. Job applicants may provide great information and perform brilliantly in their test but maybe they are not the right person to fit for the position. Therefore, this means that sometimes, bad hire may just be unavoidable. iCIMS talent acquisition software may sometimes need an upgrade which makes it face some integration issues hence makes it hard for use (Guffey, & Loewy, 2014). When this happens, it may be frustrating. Therefore, I think that ACCO Brands Corp should implement new hiring process. The use of iCIMS for hiring can make the company face a decrease in applications. This is because the job postings may not be cross-posted to job boards. ACCO Brands Corp being one of the largest suppliers of its products should choose employees who have skills in that particular field so as to continue producing better products with high quality.

The hiring process is a great determinant of the productivity of a company (Bullard, 2003). Therefore, there is a need for ACCO Brands Corp to implement the new hiring process so as to ensure that they get competent employees who are able to utilize the available resources to improve the productivity of the company. ACCO Brands Corp is a company that has great potential in becoming a leading company in the office products. This is mainly because it has products that are known by many consumers. The company recorded 26.44 % in the earnings growth as at September in the year 2017 compared to 12.01% which was recorded in the year 2016. This shows that the company has much potential in growing.

However, its existing hiring process is not fully effective and therefore, reaching the best candidates in the recruitment process becomes difficult. In addition, the iCIMS hiring approach used by the company could be lowering staff morale. A bad hire is likely to cause a negative attitude towards work (Guffey, & Loewy, 2014). This may easily lead to potentially affect employees from working in the organization for a long time. Holding talented employees for a long time in an organization is very important because it enables an organization to fully know understand about these employees. Therefore, the organization can put the employees under working conditions which fit with these employees and therefore improving productivity becomes easy.

In addition, ACCO Brands Corporation needs to implement an effective hiring process. The use of iCIMS is more expensive because there are monetary costs incurred when the company losses an employee especially the talented employees. Therefore, the company must spend more in getting other employees which reduce its profitability. ACCO Brands Corporation has been using e-recruitment (iCIMS) for a long time and therefore it’s important for the organization to try implementing a new recruitment process. This will help to reduce monetary costs and also improve its productivity by reaching the most competent employees. Therefore, the project will help the organization in improving the quality of the products of offers and hence increasing its productivity.

In 2016, ACCO Brands Corp recorded a revenue increase of 3.09%. The office equipment industry has been growing for the past years at a higher level. Therefore, due to this, ACCO Brands Corp should have recorded a higher increase in the revenue. However, the company is not able to express its full potential because its employees are not able to fully improve the productivity. Implementing a new hiring process is a good measure towards increasing the revenue recorded by the company.

References

Bullard, S. (2003). Recruiting Strategies for the New Millennium: A Corporate Guide to Building and Improving Your Company's Recruiting Process. iUniverse.

Camm, J. (2017). Essentials of business analytics. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Guffey, M. & Loewy, D. (2014). Business communication : process & product. Australia: South-Western.

Wolters. (2016). Directory of corporate counsel 2016 - 2017. S.l: Wolters Kluwer Law & Bus.