Discuss the Relationship Between Corporate Human Resources Structure and Operations at Plant Level. What Impact, If Any, Did That Relationship Have on the Situation Described by Newcombe ?

1. Discuss the relationship between corporate human resources structure and operations at plant level. What impact, if any, did that relationship have on the situation described by Newcombe ?

After reading of the case of Mount Ridge Engineering’s corporate human resource structure and plant operation procedures, we can experience a distinct gap between corporate human resource department and plant operations level which shows that there is an improper relationship between corporate human resources structure and plant operations level. Each plant superintendent reports directly to the manager of plant operations and maintenance. In addition, organization structure clearly presents that personnel operations are generally centralized at corporate headquarters, the plant superintendent and shift supervisors of each plant are largely responsible for day to day administration of personnel policies. If there is problem related to human resource in any plant then that problem may not reach to human resource department at corporate headquarter. Plant superintendent has full right to exercise the power of human resources officer and there is sufficient room to play plant superintendent if he/she has ill intention about any subordinates. Although we can say that the human resource department has established a fairly complete set of procedures and policies, the actual implementation of the policies at plant level operations does not seem to be good enough, no employee implement those rules. The Human Resource (HR) Director Joyce Newcombe states that the biggest problem has been to get the plant management understand the legal and governmental regulations affecting the HR procedures. Despite of having a detailed employee handbook and supervisor’s manual, company has faced various situations where the plant supervisors have not followed company’s HR policy. Newcombe herself admits that one of their biggest problems has been getting management- especially plant management to understand the legal and governmental regulations affecting human resources procedures. As a result, reason of dissatisfaction of Bud Johnson, who is very skillful and competent employee, is not addressed or listened properly. Instead, Larry Braxton manipulated the reason of termination of Johnson by stating that Bud Johnson left the organization to take another job which was not true.

No proper linkage is seen between corporate HR structure and operations at the plant level. In other word there is no chain of command kind of linkage between them. It seems that operations office can do the HR functions by themselves like hire and fire which is in fact is the sole function of HR department at corporate headquarter. Even in the termination form there is only Employee’s signature and Plant supervisor’s signature which clearly shows that there is no control of the corporate HR department at all. As stated in the case, the reason behind leave was written by the supervisor not by the employee, this is not logical. In fact, forcing a person to sign on the blank form of termination notice is completely illegal and against the labor act. (assuming that the allegation of Johnson is true). This may create a big legal problem in future. This incident of termination of Johnson shows the unclear relationship between corporate human resource department and operations at the plant level: Johnson would like to have a promotion on the basis of proper knowledge/skill of the equipment operator’s job. But it seems that the standard promotion channel was not set up or Braxton didn’t follow the system when doing annual evaluation. Hence Johnson contributes lots on the job as equipment operator but still couldn’t get the promotion from Braxton. Johnson didn’t follow personnel regulations. Johnson was not satisfied with the annual evaluation, hence, he became absent without notifying and prior approval from his immediate supervisor. Braxton took advantage of his authority to terminate

Johnson as on the termination letter his signature was enough to terminate any employee. Considering most of the facts, several causes found for this situation, some of them might be:

• Lack of proper internal control on human resource procedures of the company,

• Lack of comprehensive