Interclean Benchmarking

InterClean Benchmarking

InterClean offers institutional and industrial cleaning and sanitation services. As the cleaning and sanitation industry grows and sanitation requirements become more stringent, consumers require more services and solutions from InterClean. To remain competitive InterClean has instituted changes including acquiring a major competitor, EnviroTech. InterClean can look to other companies as guides for successfully integrating EnviroTech while continuing to satisfy current customers. Some areas InterClean must focus on are aligning organizational structure with strategy, evaluating recruiting and selection methods, examining how human capital is developed, and evaluating training and development.

Organizational Structure and Strategy

In Search of Excellence, written by Robert Waterman, states that factors that discriminate best firms from others are not technology, good ideas, or brilliant strategy but rather they are organized to attract better people and their people are motivated to perform at a higher level. Top firms enhance their excellence by knowing how to manage the top people they have attracted (Dreher & Dougherty, 2001). These concepts are critical for InterClean as they benchmark companies to provide guidance in aligning the organizational structure.

Compensation is an important part of aligning structure and strategy. Incentive pay is used to reinforce desired behaviors and is over and above standard compensation (Shnurman, 2007). An astute company will use incentive pay as a means to differentiate employee performance rather than risk negative impact driven from different pay levels across jobs (Dreher & Dougherty, 2001). Stock ownership also serves to reinforce behavior that supports company objectives (Lederer & Weinberg, 1995) and is a viable option for InterClean as they integrate EnviroTech. Both initiatives have yielded positive results at other companies such as Southwest Airlines.

Training employees to be more versatile and is essential to aligning organizational structure. InterClean must focus on training to execute the transition effectively. Toyota's approach to continuous learning and improvement along with aggressive cross-training has yielded tremendous benefits and helped position Toyota as the industry leader (Fane et al., 2003).

After attracting the best people by selectively recruiting and retaining the best employees from both companies in the merger, InterClean must continue to retain them. Effectively management, using a balanced approach that reinforces performance and behaviors that recognize and promote the importance of the workforce are critical. InterClean leadership must recognize and embrace this critical fact. Balanced management approaches exhibited by Southwest Airlines, IBM, and USAA are appropriate role models for InterClean.

Recruiting and Selection

Human resource planning is important to strategic planning. Understanding how forecasting, goal setting, and strategic planning fall in line with InterClean's goals is critical. Human resource planning should include the above as well as implementing, evaluating, and applying the plan.

InterClean should involve human resources early on in the planning and forecasting process. HR Magazine states that to survive corporate changes, "companies must rely on skills that are at the heart of the HR profession: workforce planning, training and skills assessment, and communication" (Kuczynski, 1999, p. 1). Involving the human resources department will keep InterClean competitive while boosting the image of the company.

InterClean must look at the current staff of itself and of EnviroTech. While there will be layoffs to eliminate duplicate positions, InterClean must follow Pfizer's example and focus on employee's competencies rather than just job descriptions (Marquez, 2007). This is especially critical in the sales department as the employees also adapt to the new selling plans CEO David Spencer has planned for the company.

As new employees are needed, InterClean should look to Boeing as a resource for ideas. Boeing uses image advertising, referrals, temporary-to-hire employment, and colleges and universities to recruit new employees. These recruiting methods give various choices based on the experience and skill sets needed by the recruits.

As a final option in recruiting and selection, InterClean can look to a company such as Authoria for managing recruiting, performance management, and just-in-time knowledge (Business Wire, 2006). Companies using such tools have been able to develop pools of internal talent, improve productivity, and increase employee engagement and job satisfaction (Authoria, 2007). Such tools are critical for the overall success of InterClean now and in the future.

Skill Sets and Gap Analysis

Deloitte and Touch, along with General Mills have demonstrated the importance of merging employees. To continue to meet employee needs during the transition period InterClean must reach out to the cultural diversity of both company's staff. InterClean is located in South Florida where the population is extremely divergent. Both corporations contain a high population of Latin American employees. The executive management team at InterClean is not culturally diverse, while EnviroTech's sales staff consists of numerous backgrounds.

InterClean would benefit by creating employee network groups. The groups should focus on areas of interest rather than race or gender. The diverse groups would create a culture that is accepting of diversity and provide additional support throughout the transition period.

InterClean currently needs internal employees to lead departments in training, compliance, and sales. To reach their long-term goal of going global, InterClean must address internal protocols on promotions to increase opportunities for women and minorities. InterClean will appear culturally diverse and appeal to the global market. The risk that is included with such protocols is identifying candidates by their skills rather than gender or race.

InterClean is in a state of transition. The new strategy is to encompass all industry aspects. Their goal is to provide cleaning services, detailed information on services and the industry, and provide product training for clients. The goal is to be set apart from their competition.

Wal-Mart is a leader in their industry, rising above their competition. Wal-Mart had a creative plan and was successful in implementing it. InterClean needs to create steps to achieve their plan using a simple formula similar to Wal-Mart's.

InterClean's strategy is creative and innovative, and can set them