Hi, please check to see if answered correctly and provide any suggestions, textbook used is Nelson Education Series: Strategic human resources planning 5th ed.

 

2) Evaluating the effectiveness of HR is an important activity that can illustrate how HR contributes to the success of an organization. Using the various evaluation methods outlined in your book indicate how you would evaluate the following HR programs and describe the statistics that the evaluation would generate. Options in evaluation methods were utility, cost-benefit analysis, benchmarking, balanced scorecard, etc.)

a) a training program for supervisors

The scorecard reveals measure of key factors which allows the employees to see what is important to the organization, and by narrowing down on the desired results makes it possible to achieve them (p. 372). The balanced scorecard is, ‘a set of measures to show contribution to organizational performance’ (392). By evaluating a training program for supervisors, one has to see whether the organizational goal has been achieved through the outcomes of this training program. Determining what you are measuring is important for creating a training program and determining the effectiveness of the training through evaluation.

The balanced scorecard portrays the following (p. 393):

• How do our customers see us? (customer perspective)
• What should we excel at? (business perspective)
• How can we carry on to improve and create value? (innovation and learning perspective)
• How do shareholders see us? (financial perspective)

If your organizational goal is to increase revenues by training supervisors, you need to first look at the balanced scorecard to examine which business performance metrics will evaluate key performance indicators (KPI’s) in order to get an insight of the weakest areas of the business. The idea of the training, if done correctly, is to increase the bottom line of the company. Also, training indicators are vital to figuring out what is making the training successful and what is not. What are the KPI’s that affect effectiveness of training? In our case, the HR goal will be to save costs in work processes so as to increase profits overall. We will look at HR deliverables which are linked to strategy as per the below.

- first of all it is important to have a budget for training so that you can invest in your personnel and improve employee skills, which will create efficiency in work processes and tasks.

- revenue can be increased by being more efficient, i.e. saving costs. When training supervisors to save costs in their work processes, here, increased savings can lead to increase in profits. You can also create incentives for employees who save more or who come up with new and improved methods of saving, this will also motivate them to use their skills provided in training (p. 393).

- cost per employee, if costs per employee do not increase, while profits do, then the training is definitely helping. However, if cost per employee is creasing and profits are not then the training is not effective (p. 382).

- improved skills and lower costs can reflect on increased customer satisfaction and increase customer repeat business (p. 393).

If the above strategy is successful, it will reveal increased profits. Reports from HR will suggest something like, by training _______ number of supervisors (in a particular business area), costs saved were__________$ and profits increased by________$.

 

b) your employee orientation program

In my perspective, the idea of having an employee orientation program is to reduce start-up costs which can assist the employee to quickly catch up to speed rather than learn on the job which can pose to be costlier. It also assists in reducing employee turnover so that the employee is familiar with the job, the environment and the support available to accomplish his/her job successfully. Employee orientation programs also assist the employee to know what is expected of them and what others expect from them, as well get to know the values, attitudes and culture of the workplace. Orientation can also effect productivity levels, performance and job satisfaction, therefore, having an orientation program which is oriented toward the latter measures of performance can be beneficial to the company in saving costs in the staffing process, reduce employee turnover, increase job satisfaction and increase profits overall.

Using the cost-benefit analysis, we can determine the relationship between the costs of the program and its benefits (389). Direct costs can be used to calculate how much it would literally cost to create an orientation program, and indirect costs can be used to calculate costs which cannot be measured easily but can be estimated (389).

If the benefits (increased job satisfaction = reduced employee turnover = higher productivity = increase in profit) is greater than the costs (direct and indirect costs of orientation program) then it is definitely beneficial for the company to implement it. The goals of the company are achieved through this program and are better for the company in the long-run.

 

c) your recruitment program

In order to evaluate a recruiting program, the method of evaluation I would use is benchmarking. Benchmarking is ‘a tool that can enhance organizational performance by establishing standards against which processes, products, and performance can be compared and improved’ (p. 391). By comparing your recruiting program against what is considered best practice, you can get an insight on areas of improvement and thereafter rectify according to get the best results for your organization.

So, what kind of information can you obtain from benchmarking? Benchmarking can inspire an objective analysis or processes, practices and systems; provide a standard which is higher in order to encourage employees to perform better; provide unbiased comparative information with ‘best-in-class’ organizations and lastly, question current performance and incite better ways of operating (p. 391).

What comes next? you need to identify areas of improvement in your recruiting program and assign key measures for comparison, which in recruiting are similar and comprise of target areas of measure such as ‘cost per hire, quality of hire, processing times, and percentage of acceptances from first-choice candidates’ (p. 391). Comparing our metrics to those against best practices allows us to evaluate our performance against the best in the industry so that better practices can be adopted to achieve the efficiencies we require to succeed. You now need to measure the latter areas of improvement to information provided by organizations which provide best practice, and this is via publications, experts, associations and award ceremonies (p. 391).

Where can you get sources of benchmarking partners? You can compare internally, which requires you too look at your past recruitment and compare it to this year’s recruitment, you can compare your program with that of the competitor’s directly, you can contact sector associations who create HR benchmarking subcommittees, or the Human Resources Benchworking Network, and last but not least, best-in-breed organizations (p. 391).

Internal or external consultants may be hired to conduct benchmarking, although internal consultants know more about the organization, external consultants may portray a more objective evaluation where they will use a wide array of references and will more likely provide negative new to management (392).

What statistics will the evaluation generate? After information has been accumulated and compared, for example, looking at recruiting metrics such as cost per hire (CPH), and time to fill, if these are the areas of improvement based on comparison against the benchmarked values, then you need to ask yourself questions such as ‘can the company reach a certain percentage under industry norms (which is what is indicated by best practice)? What can the company do to make internal processes more efficient, if that is not possible, what can be outsourced to create efficiency in this area? Matching targets from what is revealed from best practices can create value for the company (i.e. reducing CPH can mean a greater bottom line for the company), that is why it is important to select the right metrics (392).