Talent attraction and retention is a crucial prerequisite for organizational success; however, Kelecton is facing a significant challenge in attracting experienced employees because of the specialized skill sets that the company needs. An employee survey conducted by the outgoing HR Director, Paul, revealed a number of HR issues to be addressed, including issues with workplace safety, employee professional development and growth, performance management, benefits, and favoritism. This paper presents a conceptual plan for addressing the concerns highlighted by the employees in order of priority.
The first issue that Kelecton should prioritize relates to the lack of promotion opportunities to the employees of the company. Although providing employees with promotion opportunities can impose a huge financial burden for Kelecton, its long-term problems are significant to be avoided. If Kelecton fails to offer advancement opportunities for its workers, low retention will be documented. Studies have reported that the majority of employees claim the lack of advancement opportunities as the most common reason for commencing looking for new job opportunities in other organizations (Armstrong, 2006). The lack of promotion opportunities also leads to low employee morale, which in turn decreases the overall organizational productivity (York, 2009). In other words, the impacts of the lack of promotion opportunities are far reaching for Kelecton. Given the size of the company, there are relatively fewer open positions, which implies that it is difficult for the organization to internally promote its employees at a rate that is capable of negating the issues attributed to the absence of promotion. In this case, the scope of the advancement plan for employees is limited to scheduled pay increases, extending the responsibility of employees, and training employees for new skills. In this way, employees develop the feeling of advancement within their job positions even in the absence of full-scale promotions. With respect to scheduled pay raises, York (2009) indicates that good job offers make employees perceive promotion as being less important. Therefore, scheduled pay increases can be helpful for Kelecton to circumvent the promotion constraints in order to motivate its employees within the company with scarce promotion opportunities. The second approach that the company can use to create the perception of promotion among employees is through increasing the responsibility levels of employees (Banfield & Kay, 2012). In this regard, the essence of promotion is to increase an employee’s share of duties or pay, or both. Through the use of performance appraisals, the responsibilities of competent employees can be broadened together with scheduled pay increases (Armstrong, 2006). Moreover, training new employees for new roles can aid in eliminating the perception that the employee is in a dead-end job. Kelecton requires specialized skill sets, which its employees can be trained on.
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The second issue of priority in the case relates to the performance-based pay. In this regard, the majority of Kelecton employees are of the view that little or no link exists between pay and performance. The survey indicated other issues in performance management, including untimely performance appraisals and favoritism. Addressing this issue requires restructuring the performance management processes and systems used within the organization in order to enhance the overall effectiveness of the process (Armstrong, 2006). Taking this into consideration, the four components of an effective performance management should be incorporated into the process, which include goal setting; feedback, review and appraisal; development; and reward and recognition. Defining goals is concerned with outlining the major job responsibilities as well as functions. It entails specifying what is expected of the employees. The progress toward the achievement of these goals should be tracked and reviewed on a weekly or monthly basis (Banfield & Kay, 2012). The appraisal process is an important consideration which should be timely and fair. The appraisal process should also offer feedback in order to highlight the areas that need improvement through training (Armstrong, 2006). Lastly, the performance appraisal process should also include a performance-based compensation structure, whereby employees exhibiting exceptional performance are rewarded.
The third issue to be addressed entails the poor or below average benefits. The benefit packages that can be offered by Kelecton are constrained by finances. Nevertheless, there are some benefits that the employees feel that they can be entitled to. The must-have benefits for employees are medical insurance, disability insurance, and retirement plans. Although employee benefits are costly, they contribute to the growth of the business (Armstrong, 2006). An important consideration is to provide employees with the benefits that they value. Rather than adopting a uniform benefits approach, the company can offer different benefits for different employees, depending on their preferences. The recommendation is to adopt a lean approach to the benefits offered in order to minimize the costs of offering employee benefits through eliminating unwanted benefits (Banfield & Kay, 2012). In this respect, employees can be surveyed to rank the benefits that they desire. Lastly, the plan should address the issue of workplace safety as expressed by 45 percent of employees who stated that they would feel safe in the utility plants. Workplace safety can be enhanced by training the employees, emphasizing safe work practices, building the culture of workplace safety, and rewarding safety (Armstrong, 2006).
In conclusion, in order of priority, the plan for addressing the HR issues should focus on the lack of promotion opportunities for the employees of the company; performance-based pay; poor or below average benefits; and workplace safety. With regard to promotion opportunities, the proposed approaches include scheduled pay increases, extending the responsibility levels of employees, and training employees for new skills. Regarding the performance-based pay, the appraisal process should incorporate goal setting; feedback, review and appraisal; development; and reward and recognition. In the case of benefits, the company should adopt a lean approach by offering benefits valued by employees and refraining from providing unwanted benefits. Lastly, the issue of workplace safety can be tackled by training the employees, emphasizing safe work practices, building the culture of workplace safety, and rewarding safety.
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