Alternative Solutions To Strategic Human Resources Problems

Strategic Human Resource Research for Alternative Solutions

In attempting to generically research for alternative strategic solutions to InterClean's human resource problems, Team-C found some plausible best practices which should help align their organizational structure with its goals. The industrial cleaning and sanitation industry is evolving around changing trends and driving forces that are causing InterClean to reassess their competitive advantage of human resource development. InterClean's recent acquisition of EnviroTech needs an accelerated solution of strategic planning and organizational design involving its management of HR processes. Team-C's efforts in reviewing and analyzing human capital development alternatives entail the topics of recruitment, diversity, selection, skills sets, training, and HR management techniques within the context of domestic and international settings. These generic benchmarking solutions may help to satisfy InterClean's marketing agenda for increased market share, 40% profit, and global expansion.

Patric L. Pettegrew: Aligning Organizational Structure with Strategy

The recent merger of InterClean, Inc. with EnviroTech, Inc has created a change in the organizational structure and design of the business. The vision and strategy for InterClean is to provide a full spectrum of cleaning services and solutions and to become an industry leader in the institutional and industrial cleaning and sanitation industry.

With the recent merger, the HR department has been tasked to review and assess the current staff so decisions can be made as to what strategies should be implemented. Theses strategies should assist in creating and sustaining a competitive advantage, reducing costs, and increasing financial returns. The HR departments will determine the current strengths of InterCleans sales team, areas of needed development, future staffing requirements, and fit the right people with the correct jobs. Several of the issues the HR department has to consider, are the changes in cultural values between the two companies, creating new sales teams, developing a compensation package to be more attractive than the competitors, and training the staff on the full-service solutions package. The leaders and HR managers must provide the right incentives to empower employees such as rewarding new ideas, providing resources for training, and allowing time for the organization to learn together and make mistakes. This necessitates the whole organization coming together at the right time and place.

A benchmark study found that the merger of Private and Trust Banking experienced similar organizational structure and design changes. The alignment strategy was to achieve strategic goals with economies of scale and the leveraging of existing customer relationships. When the private and trust banking groups merged, several factors were considered. Steps taken include the alignment of organizational design and structure, merging key systems and technologies, adapting sales and marketing approaches, and considering cultural implications (Errett, 1992).

Benefits of the banking merger are the marketing and operational efficiencies (making the customer aware of the products and services) and successful implementation of the marketing strategy (to efficiently and effectively sell and deliver multiple products to the same customer groups). Other benefits are cross-training personnel in a continuous improvement program, motivating the sales staff through a combination of training and rewards, a simple but aggressive compensation system, and centralizing back office operations and combining technology and databases (Errett, 1992).

The Private and Trust Banking merger found that through strategic shifts in the organizational structure and alignment of the various products, a positive cultural change occurred. The overall implementation strategy should serve as a management model that can be referenced in future alignments (Errett, 1992).

Rock Carte: Evaluating Recruiting and Selection Alternatives

Comparable to InterClean's recruiting and selection agenda regarding its HR strategic planning predicament, most entities such as the City of Phoenix Fire Department (PFD) must generally forecast how to meet their goals and "make decisions in three areas of recruiting".... The various identification and attraction alternatives in the recruitment of potential employees for the PFD, involves "personnel policies, recruitment sources, and the characteristics and behavior of the recruiter" such as the PFD's oral interview board.... Relevant "personnel policies" that generally "influence the characteristics of the positions to be filled" involve either "recruiting [internally from] existing employees to fill vacancies, or hiring from outside the organization".... Normally, the PFD reaches the "kind of job applicants" it needs for firefighters, computer-aided dispatchers, and management positions through internal "job postings" which "generate applicants who are familiar to the organization".... This attractive internal recruiting policy "motivates other employees by demonstrating [lateral moves or promotion] opportunities for [growth and] advancement".... "However, internal sources are usually insufficient for all of an organization's labor needs" such as with InterClean's human capital goals and PFD's affirmative action steps initiated to recruit minority and women subgroups when regulatory forces affect the hiring processes (Noe, Hollenbeck, Herhert, & Wright, 2003).

Schools have affirmative-based scholarship programs which provide opportunities for underprivileged students. Usually, eligible PFD candidates are inexpensively recruited from "pre-employment-tested applicants" who have already passed their "CPR training" and "emergency medical technician" EMT-certifications provided through "local community colleges" which would somewhat justify less external and internal affirmative action pressures (PFD Recruitment, 2006). In a similar sense, the 60 newly-acquired EnviroTech sales staff recipients are also pre-trained experts and ready to go as InterClean's added workforce. This channel gives the PFD "access to topnotch entrants to the labor market" (Noe et al., 2003). However, even though the PFD's criteria for employee selection fits its "vision, mission, goals, and policies of that particular organization," the "political jockeying" and "advance coaching" is considered unfair (Ripley & Ripley, 1994).

"Firefighter candidates would make certain they