Diversity at InterClean
Management must educate all employees to recognize the diverse value of different races, cultures, sexual orientations, different physical abilities, family structures, religions, languages, and ethnic groups. “Such teams incorporate practices that provide their members with the information, skills, incentives, and responsibilities to make decisions that are essential to innovate, to improve quality, and to respond rapidly to change” (Cascio, 2007, p. 124). Therefore, management should monitor individuals who are being hired, retained, rewarded, and promoted on a quarterly basis to ensure this is being done in a fair and consistent basis. Some other practices that management should consider are to (1) hire employee placement firms that have a solid track record that will provide the organization with diversity, (2) build relationships with colleges that have minority students to recruit for job placement, (3) ensure that minorities are in the channel to have the opportunity to obtain a leadership role with any proper training that may be required for this to be obtained, (4) have management performance reviews and compensation set with regard to diversity issues within the organization, (5) set goals for the organization in areas that may need a certain percentage of minorities and women hired and promoted throughout the organization and outside the organization, and (6) ensure all employees have confidential channels to vent and settle disputes (Cascio, 2007). These practices will also help the organization with equal employment opportunity laws to ensure no lawsuits are brought against the company.
Management Actions at InterClean: In Line with Employment Laws
State and federal regulatory agencies, civil rights laws, judicial interpretations of laws, and state and regulatory agencies have outlawed discrimination of employees and applicants for employment based on age, sex, physical disability, race, seniority, religion, and national origin. Most open positions in an organization have more applicants than positions available. Management must ensure that when selecting to retain and hire employees for a position that the decision is based on what can be confirmed to be job-related measurements. Unlawful discrimination exists if the employee was hired or retained based on any discriminatory factors not related to the job. EEO implies at least two things:
- Evaluation of candidates for jobs in terms of characteristics that truly do make a difference between success and failure (e.g., in selection, promotion, performance appraisal, or layoff).
- Fair and equal treatment of employees on the job (e.g., equal pay for equal work, equal benefits, freedom from sexual harassment) (Cascio, 2007).
Training and Development at InterClean
When organizations help salespeople develop their careers, it benefits the salespeople, the sales managers, and the organizations which from they are implemented. The first step for InterClean to accomplish this development process is to assess the salespeople’s strengths and weaknesses. This needs to be done with self-assessment and organizational assessment. Gallan, Hollmann, and Jackson (N.D.) state that the key steps that need to be taken for the career development program to be a success are psychological testing, which develop written tests to help salespeople determine their occupational interests, personality and other personality characteristics that provide insights not supplied by other planning activities”; performance appraisal, which is primarily concerned with assessing salespeople’s performance on their current job and career development; succession planning, which preparing people to fill executive positions; direction, which is the information salespeople receive on career opportunities within their firm; socialization, which provides salespeople with the information about their company, their work units, and their specific jobs that will allow them to be successful; career workshops, which incorporate elements of assessment, direction, and development that help salespeople manage their own careers; individual career counseling, which allows salespeople to discuss his or her personal and career interest goals, their personal skills and abilities, their preferences, their values, their life concerns, and their career development objectives with their sales managers; career information services, job posting systems; skill inventories, which list the interests, talents, and experience; career paths, which show possible directions and career opportunities; career resource centers, and, finally, developing on strengths and overcoming weaknesses (Gallan et al, N.D.).
Career development programs at InterClean are to consist of assessment, direction, and development for the team being developed. This program is a planned process that connects the career desires of salespeople with the needs of their organization. The career development plan helps salespeople to be successful with the duties and gives them more self-confidence. On the other side of the table, the organization understands the benefits that they gain too. This will improve the performance of salesman, identify and address weakness in the organization, develop a plan for success, and retain skilled employees while reducing turnover for a strong merge between InterClean and EnvironTech (Gallan et al, N.D.).
Performance at InterClean
Performance and career management are two essential factors that organizations must take serious consideration in order to establish a clear business strategy. InterClean is aware that a performance and career management plan is essential to ensure employees understand their responsibilities, are motivated and aligned with their new business strategy. Cascio (2006) compares performance management to a compass; one that indicates, a person’s actual direction as well as a person’s desired direction. Like a compass, the job of the manager is to indicate where that person is now, and to help focus attention and effort on the desired direction (Ch. 9, p. 328). Management at InterClean must follow this fundamental guideline so he or she can build a strong foundation on the relevance and value of the performance appraisal, which is more focused on the strength and weaknesses of the individual or team being appraised. Without the strong performance management of an organization, management and the overall company is going to struggle to stay competitive with its competition.
The job-relevant strengths and weaknesses of individuals and teams that are evaluated by managers are done so with performance appraisal. Many managers only do this once a year. “In a recent international survey of 8,000 employees and managers fully one-third of employees reported that their manager provided little or no assistance in improving their performance and those never had a formal discussion with their manager regarding their overall performance” (Cascio, 2006 Ch. 9, p. 328). One thing that managers tend to forget, or lack, is that this type of management can not be done on an annual, bi-annual, or even a quarterly basis. This will to be done on a daily basis with employees at InterClean. Employees will appreciate this, stay motivated, and encourage them to get more involved. The benefits to having a strong management performance system that provides employees with the performance appraisal system they deserve are extraordinary.
“Performance management requires willingness and a commitment to focus on improving performance at the level of the individual or team everyday” (Cascio, 2006 Ch. 9, p. 329). Three things that management must focus on are:
- Define performance.
- Facilitate performance
- Encourage performance (Cascio, 2006).
The way that managers define performance is to ensure individual employees and teams have a clear understanding of want is expected out of them. They must also stay keep their center of attention on the effectiveness of the performance. All evaluation of performance and expectations of employees can only be set and expected if clear and sound goals are structured.
Career Development at InterClean
“No matter what happens, employees often blame top management or “the company” for their lack of career growth, and those who want to be top contributors at their current level often feel pressured to move up” (Cascio, 2006, Ch. 10, p. 373). The bottom line is that the employee must take responsibility to manage his or her own career. So, what can the InterClean due in order to alleviate this lose-lose mentality of the employee. InterClean will provide employees with the knowledge where it wants to go and how it plans to get there, provide the employee with all the information he or she needs about the business, and respond to an employee about career initiatives he or she in interested in accomplishing while working for the company with complete information (Cascio, 2006). The best way an organization can assist an employee with career development is by providing him or her with direct performance feedback on his or her current job performance. This will allow the employee to make adjustments, continue the same path, or enhance his or her skills to put him or her on the path he or she is trying to develop.
Compensation and Benefits at InterClean
InterClean will need a well-structured compensation and benefits program that will support the merge that took place. This compensation program will need to be built around incentives that motivate sales and encourage salespeople during the transition from selling cleaning products to full-service cleaning solutions. The program will have to be one that is going to help increase sales and the productivity of salespeople while servicing customer demands and services. One way this will be done at InterClean is with the performance management a of team-based environment.
Team Performance Management
“Teams have become a popular way to organize business because they offer companies the flexibility they need to meet the demands of the ever changing, competitive business environment” (Zobal, 1998, p. 235). Many organizations are aware of the benefits of structuring a business in a team based environment and have been quick to change their workforce into teams. However, these same companies are not so quick to implement a team-based compensation system to motivate and increase productivity from these same employees. When organizations continue to use the same pay system before the team environment was formed they will not fully understand the benefit of highly cooperative work teams (Zobal, 2008). Organizations are realizing this and exploring the many different strategies that can be used to accomplish this. Zobal (1998) illustrates that one way to accomplish this is to support and reinforce this team concept through a compensation system. However, conventional, individually-based compensation systems do just the opposite. These compensation systems oftentimes are not effective and even work against team-based work environments that are collectively working together. As a consequence of this counter productivity, organizations are frantically looking for new and healthier ways to compensate their teams.
Many benefits result in implementing team compensation systems, organizations are:
- supporting the new environment;
- encouraging cooperative, team oriented behavior;
- emphasizing the importance of effective teamwork; and
- providing incentives for improved team performance (Zobal, 1998).
The results of these efforts will include:
- improved productivity;
- improved employee job and pay satisfaction;
- reduced absenteeism and turnover; and
- improved product or service quality (Zobal, 2008).
Compensation systems do have a major impact on team effectiveness and team productivity. Based on this article by Zobal (2008), he suggests the ideal team-based compensation systems are based on the principle of customization. Initially, organizations must understand the structure and context in which their compensation systems will function. This includes making certain that the compensation system is mirrored with the organizational structure, the business strategy, the performance management system, and even within itself (Zobal, 2008). The next step is for organizations to pay attention to both critical components and other related operational deliberations. Critical components include the compensation system's level of focus (the team level, the individual level, or a combination of both); the compensation mixture (i.e. base pay and base pay adjustments, other financial rewards, and, or non-financial rewards) and the employee factor (i.e. conditions that facilitate the motivational relationship). Compensation can be broken down into (1) base pay and base adjustments, (2) other financial rewards, (3) and non-financial rewards (Zobal, 2008). Management must be weary that compensation systems can unintentionally fail to motivate the desired behavior by:
- narrowing the compensation focus to a couple of important things causing individuals to stop doing other important things and, or
- failing to measure the right things altogether and motivating all the wrong behavior (Zobal, 2008).
In the article by Haring and Myers (N.D.), special incentives are those incentives that are not part of the regular compensation plan. The surveys reported favorable results from sales contests. In fact, over four-fifths of the sales executives that provided information for the study reported significant success from sales contest and honor rewards. A point that needs to be noted is that no more than one quarter of the sales force used these types of incentives as a tool for motivation. Therefore, InterClean will also incorporate such an incentive plan into the compensation and benefits plan the organization offers with the merge of EnvironTech.
In order for the honor reward to be effective, the organization must couple the reward with material recognition of accomplishment. The reason for this is because salesmen can not eat honor rewards. The results were then proven to be very effective and, in fact, motivate the sales individuals and teams. “Sales contests and honor rewards are important stimulants to improve salesmen’s performance and that many sales mangers are effectively using these techniques today” (Haring and Myers, N.D., p. 159).
The basic compensation is the primary motivator of salesmen. In fact, out of 396 respondents, 243 listed basic compensation as first to result in above standard performance from the average salesman. Sales contests ranked second, which was only three percent higher than the third place votes that went to bonus payments. Friendly relaxed relationships with supervisors ranked forth and equitable quotas had the fifth place votes. The results reflected that sales contest and honor rewards are significant factors to improve sales performance and motivation and that many sales managers are successfully using these practices today (Haring and Myers, N.D.). These will be the five honor and reward benefits offered at InterClean.
Conclusion
This paper has discussed and recommended strategies that are ethical and legal and that will allow the merge of InterClean and EnvironTech to have a competitive advantage in the new market it will be entering. The paper will recommend employment and selection process, training and development, performance and career management, and the compensation and benefits at InterClean. The EnvironTech and InterClean merge has what it needs to determine the future workforce needs of the two merging organizations. Job analysis and job selection are the critical foundation for HR management to ensure they have the right people with the right skills to be competitive and implement their new business strategy. The performance management of these employees requires commitment and compliance from management at InterClean to center on improving performance of the individual employee and the team-based structure of an organization.
These same employees come from a diverse background that requires best practices from management at InterClean in order for the teams to work successfully together within a diverse work environment. This is especially important with the switch of a manufacturing environment to a service environment. In addition, choosing the appropriate compensation and benefits plan that satisfactorily motivates salespeople to achieve higher performance, managers at will achieve their main objective, a higher profit margin for InterClean. This all must be accomplished with regard to EEO for all employees without discrimination to employment or retention based on age, sex, physical disability, race, seniority, religion, and national origin. InterClean management must understand their impact and responsibilities in managing people during this merge.
References
Cascio, W. (2006). Managing human resources: Productivity, quality of work life, profits
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Gallan, A., Hollmann, T., and Jackson, D. (N.D.). Examining career development
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Haring, A. and Myers, R. (N.D.). Special Incentives for Salesmen. Journal of Marketing,
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Zobal, C. (1998) Team Performance Management: The “ideal” team compensation
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