OS 352 Strategic Human Resources Management

Strategic Human Resources Management (OS 352)

Clarkson University

Rohan Crichton
Team Portfolio Project and Associated Deliverables: 30 points

Goal: As a team of 5 (students are free to form their own groups), assess the functioning of one aspect of HR (e.g., workforce planning, recruiting, selecting, compensation, performance management, career development, training, legal compliance, diversity management) in a real organization and make recommendations for improvements.

Your team will identify a client, conduct your research, present your findings to another team of students and prepare both a consulting-style report and a faculty report. Below, I describe the deliverables and major steps necessary for successfully completing the project.

OS 352 Strategic Human Resources Management

The deliverables and due dates are:

1. Team Contract: September 7th
2. Executive Summary: October 30th
3. Presentation of your findings for team project: Nov 2nd and Nov 4th
4. Critique of colleagues’ project: November 6th
5. Final Team Project Portfolio: November 9th

It is likely that you have completed several projects in teams during your undergraduate career and that you will continue to do so at school and well beyond. I also expect that some of those experiences have been more successful than others. Assuring that teams function effectively is often considered an HR function and a priority for those who manage teams. Consistent with this emphasis on team effectiveness, you will be required to submit a two to three page paper discussing your teams concerns and your plans for addressing these in the form of a team contract. The concerns you address should go beyond the simple logistics of teamwork (e.g., how are we going to schedule meetings, assign tasks, write the final paper, do the presentation and write the critique). It should begin with descriptions of what your goals are and what your concerns are related to your team functioning. You should focus on the internal functioning of the team, how you will assure effectiveness, how you will communicate and manage conflict, and a plan for what will do if all team members do not contribute adequately, a plan to evaluate your effectiveness along the way and in the end. This will not be graded but you will be required to revise the contract until it is deemed satisfactory and you will lose points from your overall project grade if it takes you more than one revision to get it right.

A preliminary version of your Executive Summary is due in advance of your presentation so that the team you present to will know what to expect. A good executive summary serves as a concise overview (1 page single-spaced maximum) and draws the reader in. It is very important that this be clear, informative, and well-written. It should explain what you examined and learned and create excitement about the entire project. This must be sent to me and to the team (on the respective deadline) you will be presenting to.

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OS 352 Strategic Human Resources Management

Deliverable 1: Team Contract

Deliverable 2: Executive Summary

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Deliverable 3: Presentation of Findings

Each team will be presenting their near final findings and recommendations to one other team from the class. Your work should be nearly complete at this point so that you can get the most valuable feedback possible. You will have half of a class session in which to do your presentation, answer questions, and gather verbal feedback from your colleagues. This is not a formal PowerPoint presentation. Instead, it should be an in-depth description of your findings in the form of a more conversational presentation, much like what consultants provide to clients. It is up to you to determine how you can best communicate your findings to this point. The two groups will have one entire class period for both presentations. The presentation portion for each should be designed to last for about 25-30 minutes which allows time for questions and verbal feedback for both groups. You will not be graded on the presentation itself. However, you will be receiving detailed feedback from the team you present to (described below).

Each team will be responsible for providing a brief written critique of the presentation that they saw. This is meant to help the team to improve their final project. This critique is worth 5 of the 30 project points and will be graded on how complete and constructive they are in their comments: to what degree will your comments make their paper better. (Your critique will not affect the grade of the team you evaluate). These must be sent to me and to the team (via email) being critiqued. The critique should be at most three pages and contain the following sections:

OS 352 Strategic Human Resources Management

Part 1: How would you improve the objectives description?

• Was the focus of the project appropriate (e.g., HR, not too broad, not too narrow)?
• Was it clear what they were studying and why?
• Was it clear why it was important?
• What issues and problems should have been included but were not?

  Part 2: How would you improve the methods?

• Did you understand the methodology and why it was appropriate?
• Did they bring in data from multiple perspectives?
• What additional data/explanation is needed?

  Part 3: How would you improve the findings/analysis?

• Did they make clear either:
• The nature of the problem being examined and the causes
• What did they do particularly well in their findings?
• Were their findings convincing?
• What struck you as particularly insightful or useful in the analysis?
• Did they use data to convince you of the issues (e.g., quotes and anecdotes)?
• What arguments needed more support, and what additional analyses were needed?

  Part 4: How would you improve the recommendations?

• Overall, what is your assessment of the recommendations? Would they help?
• What was particularly good in the recommendations?
• Did the proposed recommendation seem to address the problem(s) identified?
• Are the proposed recommendations realistic in scope?
• What suggestions do you have concerning the execution of the recommendations?
• To what degree did the recommendations consider what could go wrong, costs, contingencies?
• Did the recommendations include a plan to assess whether these actions are working?

OS 352 Strategic Human Resources Management

Deliverable 4: Critique of Colleagues’ Project

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Deliverable 5: Final Report

The final paper should contain two parts: a report written in a format appropriate for the client and a faculty report for me. Both portions should be sent directly to me via email.

Client Report (Please use APA 6th Edition, which includes in-text citations, reference list etc.)

Write this portion of the report as you would write a consulting report to a client. It should be clear and direct, written in a non-academic style appropriate to your main audience, using tables, figures and bullet points when appropriate. It is not necessary to include a description of the client as they know what business they are in. You can address this to the client (e.g., you…). This portion of the report should not be longer than 8-10 pages and should include:

The paper should contain the following sections.

Executive Summary. This should be an updated version of the executive summary produced for the presentation (described above).

Introduction: What were the objectives of your project? Methods: How did you collect data?
Findings: What did you learn about the area you examined? Recommendations: How would you make things better?

I discuss the content of each section below:

Introduction: Provide a description of the scope of your project. What is it that you were trying to accomplish for the client? What area of HR were you examining and how did you decide on that as your focus? What did you know about this area before you began your investigation? You should also include a description of why this area is pertinent to this organization and to any organization.

Methods: How did you collect data? Describe how you collected data to meet these objectives and how you made sense of it. Did you talk to anyone? If so, for how long? Why did you choose these people? What questions did you ask? Did you use, secondary sourced interviews? If so, why? What other data sources did you use? You will also want to use this section of the paper to convince your client that this is an effective way to do this

Findings: In this section, you will provide a description of how the function you studied currently works (what does it do and how?) and your analysis of the effectiveness (what works and what does not work) in this HR area. You should discuss the problem(s) that you identified with current practice in some depth: What are the gaps between this function of HR as delivered and what is needed in the organization? What is causing these gaps?

Your analysis should be based on what you learned from the customers of HR as well as what you know about how HR should function from class. In your discussion of the problems, you should provide some evidence that this is an issue that truly matters for this organization. What are the consequences of the problem(s)? What will happen if the problem(s) go unsolved?

Throughout this section it is crucial that you support any claims, positive or negative, with concrete evidence from your data collection. I want you to demonstrate to me what you learned, not simply tell me.

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Recommendations: Build a specific recommendation or set of recommendations about how to remedy the problem(s) you identified. For instance, if you identified problems with the interview process (part of selection), describe the process that you would put in place. If you are suggesting that HR should work to strengthen the culture of the organization, discuss the specific activities that they should engage in to do so like hiring people for organizational fit and developing an extensive orientation program. You should also describe what those programs might look like. What tools would be needed to hire the fit? How would the process work? What would be the key elements of orientation? If it is not entirely evident how your actions address the problem(s) identified, you should include an explanation. What is the reasoning behind your suggestion?

This section should also include an action plan that addresses any obstacles you might face in implementation, consideration of the costs (direct and indirect such as time spent) and political issues that you may face in putting this recommendation in place. Where might you experience resistance and how would you overcome it? Who will win and lose if this recommendation is implemented? How will you know if you are successful?

Faculty Report

The purpose of this report is to put the Client Report in context and to summarize the wider learning points from the investigation. There is important information that you will not want to include in the Client Report but that will help me to understand your client organization, why you took the approach that you did, and what you learned in doing this project. Do not repeat material from the client report. This portion of the report should not be longer than 2-3 pages and should include:

Description of the Client. Provide me with a brief (one-paragraph) description of the client so that I can make sense of the rest of your project.

Method. Critique your method. If you were to do this project over again, what would you change and why? What was good and bad about your data? What did you learn about the pros and cons of different data collection tactics?

Issues Encountered: Here you should describe any other issues that you encountered along the way, with the client, getting access to data, with the team, or with writing the report. Are there things that you simply couldn’t say in the report to a client (e.g., you need to fire the recruiting manager)? Did you have difficulty with your data collection, if so, how? Was your team able to enforce the contract? Was there conflict in the team? Or any other issues you encountered.

Learnings. Try to extend your learnings beyond the specific context of your client. How does this apply to other companies? What key issues from the materials from class are highlighted by your inquiry? Why are there gaps between theory and practice? This section may also include learnings about working together in a team and about doing consulting work.

OS 352 Strategic Human Resources Management

Assessment

In grading these papers, I will consider the following:

Overall

• Is the scope of your project appropriate and clear from the start?
• Is the paper professional in its presentation, including style, appropriate use of headings, grammar

  and spelling.

  Methodology

• Do you use appropriate methods to gather data? My minimum expectation is that you will have collected data from multiple sides (e.g., both sides of conflict, customers and users of HR).

Findings

• How much insight do you provide into the function or problem you examine?
• Do you provide an adequate description of how the HR function you examine works and does not

  work or of the problem you are analyzing?

• Is your description and analysis supported by data?
• How well do you integrate materials from class? I am not looking for recitations from the

readings or lecture but a deep understanding. The questions I will ask here are:

• Do you show understanding of course concepts, for instance in the questions you ask and the

  recommendations you make?

• Do you apply them appropriately?
• Do you do more than just name the theory or concept (e.g., do you make it clear how this

  applies in your case)?

  Recommendations

• Are your recommendations feasible and specific? Specifically,

• Is there sufficient detail on how to solve the problem?
• Do the solutions connect directly to materials discussed in the analysis sections of the paper?
• Do you discuss some of the obstacles, constraints, costs, risks that you will face in

  implementing your solution?

• Do you include a plan for assessing whether your plan is working?
• Is this a feasible solution, given constraints identified?

OS 352 Strategic Human Resources Management

Project Steps: What you need to do in order to succeed in this project?

In order to complete the project, there are several steps you will need to take. I have organized the steps around a set of questions that you will be answering as you complete the step:

1. Who is the client? This could be the hardest part of this project and I strongly recommend that you put all of your effort into getting this settled by the end of week 3. To identify the client, I recommend that you start by discussing the type of organization that you would like to study: e.g., is there an industry that is of particular interest to group members? You might also take a more pragmatic approach and focus on any contacts that you might have.
2. What is the scope of the project? In determining what area of HR you will be examining. Discuss with your group, do preliminary research to determine availability of data. Finally, come to a consensus, and stick with it.
3. What data will you gather? Early on you need to create a data collection strategy. Remember data collection should involve both sides of the conflict or all who will be affected by this problem. In either case, this may be managers or lower-level employees in the organization or outsiders who are in some way affected by what you are examining.
4. What does the data tell you? At this stage in the project, you should be analyzing the data to understand: how the HR function you are studying works. You need to look carefully at the data to uncover this: are there patterns in the data; are you reading certain things consistently or is there variation in what you reading; are there quotations, observations or other data that illustrate the points you would like to make?
5. What should the client do? Based on what you learned in your research and what you know about HR from class, create a detailed recommendation and action plan for the client. For this section, you may want to do additional academic research.
6. How can you most effectively present your findings? The content of the report is described in detail above. The presentation should be based on what you will be putting in the report.

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