HR ASSESSMENT
Team Project
HR Assessment (Group Project) – Instructions for Project & Report:
Your Teammates
Name E-mail Address Phone Number(s)
General Information about the Project
This project is an opportunity for you to gain experience and insight into Human Resource
Management as it exists in an actual organization. Your perspective will be as an external
observer of the organization’s inner workings. This perspective will allow you to objectively
discuss the organization’s HR practices and comment on what seems to be working, as well as
make recommendations for improvement. In the interest of time and to maximize your learning
from this project, consider selecting an organization for which information readily exists; a
highly secure or secretive organization will make this project very difficult to complete.
However, if you decide to use your own company, make sure that it is permissible for you to
document the company’s HR practices for this project.
Following are the primary components that are needed in your report due on May 8th. Please
ensure that your project is typewritten, double-spaced, and edited for typographical /
grammatical / spelling errors (errors will result in a reduction of points for the assignment). At
the end of your report after the appendices, please attach copies of all articles or resources that
you consulted for your project.
Part 1: Company Overview
The company overview provides the foundation for your report. This overview should include
relevant background on the organization, including the company’s mission, strategic objectives,
competencies and/or other HR-related information. You may want to comment on factors such
as the competitiveness of the industry, shortage/surplus of skilled labor, geographic issues,
turnover statistics, etc. In addition to the company’s strategy, try to find out the HR strategy for
the organization you have chosen. This could take some research, but will help you
tremendously in other portions of your report. Your investigation may reveal specific
competencies and initiatives related to “people” strategies. You will want to investigate the
strategy thoroughly at this stage, as the remainder of the sections build upon alignment with
this strategy. Please attach supporting documentation (e.g., web pages with mission statement,
articles, etc.) as appendices.
Part 2: Staffing
This portion of your report will deal primarily with identifying the company’s recruitment and
selection practices. However, keep in mind what you have learned about job analysis,
employment law, placement, and other staffing issues. You might find, for example, that the
company you chose is embroiled in heavy litigation (e.g., Coca-Cola’s race discrimination
debacle), and you may want to comment on the latest occurrences. Remember to stay focused
on this section of your report. It’s easy to find yourself writing a tome about recruitment and
selection! If you have chosen a relatively large company, I suggest that you comment on the
company’s philosophies about recruiting and hiring and then focus specifically on recruitment
and selection practices related to a specific job or a job family. For example, if you had chosen a
Las Vegas casino, you may choose to comment on the staffing practices of individuals working
in the casino itself, rather than the employees in housekeeping, the concierge, or the front desk.
If you choose specific jobs, include the relevant job descriptions as appendices. If you do not
have access to those job descriptions, you can find generic ones using O*NET (go to
www.dol.gov for access). Many organizations are understandably secretive about their
recruitment and selection practices, but with enough research, you likely will turn over a
nugget or two of information. I am not looking for details such as how many job fairs are held
per year or what specific items are included on selection tests, but would anticipate that you
can find information about the processes used for recruitment (e.g., Internet recruiting, job
fairs, etc.), selection (e.g., behavioral interviews, assessment centers, personality testing, etc.), as
well as the order in which these procedures occur. Please provide supporting documentation as
appendices.
Part 3: Training / Development
Many companies that make it onto Fortune’s list of “100 Best Places to Work” have substantial
training opportunities for their employees. Although the return on the training investment is
often difficult to determine, training and development occupy an important position in HRM.
Summarize your company’s perspectives on training (e.g., do they include training as a primary
focus, etc.) and then, depending on the size of the organization, you may want to choose the
same jobs as you did for Part 2 and discuss the training opportunities available. Remember to
also include the presence of developmental opportunities, such as mentoring and succession
planning. Finally, if you are lucky enough to locate information about how the training is
evaluated, please include it. All supporting documentation should be included in the
appendices, including samples of training materials, if available.
Part 4: Performance Appraisal
Now that you have specified what type of employee the company prefers and how these
employees are trained and developed, it’s pertinent to discuss how the employee’s performance
is appraised and managed. Does the company use appraisals? If so, what type of format is used,
who conducts the appraisal, what is measured, and how often is measurement done? How are
the results used? Remember the old saying that what gets measured is what is done. You may
find that the organization has different types of appraisals for different types of jobs (e.g.,
executive, exempt, non-exempt). If so, mention these distinctions and then focus on one of the
job categories. For consistency, it would be best to choose the job(s) you used for Parts 2 and 3.
Please attach samples of the appraisal forms and supporting documentation in the appendices.
Part 5: Compensation
Similar to selection, you likely will find pay practices to be somewhat protected from public
view. However, this simply requires you to be creative in your research. Perhaps search salary
surveys or find estimated pay for the specific jobs through benchmarking reports available
online. Maybe you are fortunate enough to find articles about the company you have chosen
that detail pay ranges. Although it may be difficult to nail down exactly how much the
company pays, you will probably be able to find the company’s pay strategy, such as whether
the company leads, lags, or matches the market rate. You may find that the company boasts of
paying above market (e.g., this type of information is mentioned on the Container Store web
site!). However, beyond base pay, I would like for you to discuss total compensation, including
the presence/absence of incentives, benefits (including the wild and crazy types of offerings),
etc. Also, please discuss the executive compensation system within the company. You need not
go into great detail here, but please discuss general trends, perhaps outlining novel approaches
the company uses. Please attach all supporting documentation as appendices.
Part 6: Analysis & Recommendations
This section comprises the bulk of your group project. The previous sections simply were
descriptive. Although they require extensive research (and long nights with coffee and Oreos),
they lack integration. In contrast, this section requires you to integrate your observations, from
strategy to compensation, in an analysis of what seems to be working and areas that could
potentially be improved for your organization.
Every group’s report will be different, depending on the company and the situation. However, I
would like to see all groups analyze how well the HR practices align with each other and
ultimately the organization’s strategy. Are the HR practices helping the organization achieve its
goals? Are they consistent with the organization’s direction and with each other? Do you see
any disconnects? If you see disconnects or inconsistencies, delve into these areas deeper; discuss
the problems that could occur as a result of these misalignments, as well as your
recommendations for correcting these issues.
Don’t forget the positive, though! Discuss the HR practices that this company is using that you
feel are making an impact. Justify your responses. And, discuss how you potentially could
measure the impact these practices are making (i.e., how could you demonstrate the return on
investment?).
Remember to always be thinking of ways that HR can add value. Discuss this company’s HR
practices in terms of missed opportunities. Do you see areas in which HR can help the
organization, but the company simply isn’t doing anything about it? Make recommendations
(and include your rationale).
Your analyses and recommendations are limitless, but please justify them as you would any
business case. Also, remember that advice is helpful, but in reality, the HR role exceeds analysis
and includes facilitation; thus, be sure to offer a quick plan for implementing any new ideas.
Rather than go into great detail, it will suffice to outline the stages of implementation (what
changes should be made first, second, etc.), the extent of employee involvement (e.g.,
perceptions of fairness, quality of decisions, etc.), and the communication plan for the changes.
Remember that aspects of HRM such as compensation often require substantially
more employee involvement than changing selection practices.
Project Due: May 8, 2022

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