Mba/530

Running head: RIORDAN MANUFACTURING BENCHMARKING

Riordan Manufacturing Benchmarking

University of Phoenix

Human Capital Development

MBA 530

January 31, 2008

Riordan Manufacturing Benchmarking

Introduction

In order for any company to gain competitive advantage over other companies in the same industry, the management teams need to understand the importance of improving business results through people. Employees are the maker or breaker of any company. Without increased motivation and morale of the employees in a company, the company risks losing valuable employees and will be at a disadvantage in attracting potential top talents. As the economy continues to change and competition continues to increase, businesses have to constantly find ways to satisfy their employees in order to retain the best ones. As Riordan Manufacturing (RM) will strive to meet the competitive needs of the employees within the company and prospective job candidates, they will also need to allure the individuals to the company.

The issue facing Riordan Manufacturing (RM) are; retaining employees, career and training development, human resource philosophy, motivation, and management of restructuring process. Human resources are an integral part of an organization. An organization cannot survive without human resource policies and procedures. "Human resource activities in a company must directly support business strategy and the satisfaction of customer needs" (Walker, 2002, p. 59). For most companies that enter a global market, human resources play a huge role in the companies' success by updating policies to accommodate the new cultures. This analysis will be a problem solving approach for HR to implement and develop a comprehensive staffing strategy to meet organizational effectiveness and make RM a continued market leader through a solution based selling strategy.

Overview

The company has made several strategic changes in the way it manufactures and markets its products and has chosen to adopt a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Unfortunately, as changes have been implemented, employee retention numbers have declined and there has been an overall decrease in job satisfaction, particularly in areas of compensation and benefits. As a global plastics producer, Riordan Manufacturing (RM) employs 550 individuals (Anonymous, 2008). The business has projected annual earnings of $46 million (Anonymous, 2008). The company is a division of Riordan Industries, a Fortune 1000 enterprise. RM has production divided among three plants. Plastic beverage containers are produced in Albany, Georgia. Custom plastic parts are manufactured in Pontiac, Michigan. Parts for plastic fans are produced in Hangzhou, China. Corporate is headquartered in San Jose, California with Research and Development located there as well. Riordan maintains major accounts with the automotive parts industry, aircraft manufacturers, and Department of Defense. Other major customers include beverage makers and bottlers, and appliance manufactures (Anonymous, 2008).

Situation Analysis

The company is now an "industry leader in the field of plastic injection molding" (Riordan, 2008, p. 1). Riordan, a global corporation in the plastics industry was quick enough to acknowledge the issue. However, change without proper planning will have consequences and Riordan is no exception. Main consequences include employee turnover, low moral due to uncertainty, and declining sales. Riordan Manufacturing, Inc. a global corporation in the plastics industry was quick enough to acknowledge the issue. However, change without proper planning will have consequences and Riordan is no exception. Main consequences include employee turnover, low moral due to uncertainty, and declining sales.

Issue Identification

Employee morale is a huge influencer on the businesses productivity. An organization with low turnover and happy employees tend to perform better and contains a workforce full of loyal employees than those companies who have high turnover but unsatisfied employees. Employee motivation, declining morale and work ethics, declining sales, and the restructuring of the sales teams are some of the issues Riordan is currently facing. Employee motivation is currently low at Riordan because the employees are not feeling recognized in their accomplishments, they feel the pay is low, the reward system is not fair to everyone and is not based on individual performance. In addition, Riordan's current rewards and compensation system is focused on seniority rather than performance (Frederick works, 2008).

The pay process is secretive and many do not know how it works and effective communication is not established. "Communication is also a key ingredient in employee satisfaction and loyalty" (McShane & Von Glinow, 2008, p. 10). Employees are not pleased with the pay portion of their compensation package and to further complicate the employee satisfaction issue, leadership is not in agreement to make any changes. One of the other issues is that some of the members of this leadership team are not very cohesive. In addition, when a problem has been brought forward, the leadership team has differences in opinion. To add to this, organization is losing its employees rapidly and the retention rate of Riordan is starting to become a major issue.

Opportunity Identification

With the identification of issues comes the chance to turn them into opportunities. Riordan has many opportunities to discover the real cause of the issues and problems. They can initiate the 9-step problem-solving model to identify the right problem, and develop solutions which would benefit everybody in the company leading to company's overall growth. Installing an effective rewards and recognition program in most cases can be very beneficial to companies.

Riordan has to learn to measure their employees. There should be an effective measurement system for all employees so that this benefit will be non-discriminating and fair for each employee. This provides an opportunity for Riordan and management to motivate their employees by empowering the employees to participate in the decision-making processes and through recognition of their skills and contributions to the organization.