HR Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

HR Case Study Solution

1. QUANTITATIVE-SKILLS

Working with quantitative data. Conducting and interpreting predictive analytics. Constructing metrics.

Situation

Export Workers is the world's biggest and most famous cargo carrier with over 400,000 working employees moving around five million parcels and packages each day with 200 to 300 flights in a day.

The founder and the current chief operating officer (CEO) of the company, Mr. James, focused on speed and logistics. He was determined to provide excellent services to the customers, but at the same time, he was a firm believer that employees are the key to any business's success. Talking care of their personal, professional, and emotional needs areessential for a company's growth. The company feels that it is necessary to create an environment where employees feel dedicated and drive to deliver efficient performances. Employees' efficient and exceptional performances will help create real value for all the Export Workers' stakeholders. The company feels that something needs to be done to keep track of an employee's emotional needs. HR department started a survey program to collect data from the employees to learn what they think about managing the leadership and the overall company environment. After the program ended, the employee performance and efficiency were increased.

Task

When it comes to quantitative skills, an HR professional should know how to work with quantitative data, the professional should be capable enough to conduct analysis, and construct metrics.

In the above-mentioned case, the HR manager identified the following essential points after the survey program ended:

· Employee productivity was increased, but this productivity needs to be tracked.

· For emotional well-being, it is vital to reward the employees for their best performances.

Action

A quantitative data gathering method to be put in place by HR to track the following:

· Employees' productivity levels.

· Promote or demote the employees based on their productivity.

Sample metrics sheet for productivity is given below:

High Performance:
Employees:	High Performance:	Metric:
Training hours/employee
Training Time:	Employees:	Metric:
Positive assessment of work characteristics
Employees:	Employees who rate related items positively:	Metric:

Results

Implementing the quantitative data gathering techniques will help the company in evaluating employee performances

1. CRITICAL LEGAL-THINKING

Analyzing situations from a legal perspective. Distilling the essential legal issues at hand. Considering & evaluating the relative merit of alternate legal interpretations. Making sound judgments based on regular analysis of situations.

Situation	XYZ Company is in business for more than 50 years. It is known for providing the best raw materials and products that are later used in designing bags and shoes across Europe. The company supplies raw materials to almost all the big names of the fashion industry. Their products can be seen on the Paris Fashion show runway, being used by famous designers. They have around 150 clients. The company manufactures its products in China, and then the products are exported to European designers. At a time, about 300 employees are working in XYZ manufacturing plant in China. XYZ company was established more than 50 years ago, and since then, they have adopted to use technology but to a very minimum extent. The company used modern technologies to maintain its clients' records and products but did not consider givingan equal amount of importance to the employee records. The company keeps its employees' track record in an excel file on a computer in the HR department. To take the backup of that file, the HR department would make multiple copies of the file and save it in different computers across the department. Recently, the company decided to hire Mrs. Shelly Smith for the position of HR manager. The previous manager Mr. Billy retired from the position of HR manager after 30 years of service. When Mrs. Shelly started her job, she immediately identified the depraved practices used to record the XYZ company employees. She decided to change this practice and adopt new technologies to maintain employee records.
Task	It is the responsibility of the HR executive to analyze each situation and recognize areas where the implementation of legal practices is important. Mrs. Shelly noticed that the employee data was easily accessible by everyone in the HR department. If someone misuses this data, the company can be exposed to a hefty lawsuit. Employee data is confidential. Protecting employee's-information is HR's key role in an organization. Employee records contain sensitive data, including social security numbers, dob, payroll, banking,medical records, and much more. The risk of the company's private data being in the wrong hand also persisted in XYZ Company. The HR department is responsible for workplace privacy and data security. Mrs. Shelly knew that, in addition to the risks related tothe theft of proprietary XYZ Company's data, HR departments must work to prevent unauthorized access, unauthorized use, or disclosure of sensitive employee data, or client's data, etc.
Action	Mrs. Shelly decided to investigate-employees' records and match all the backup files to see if their data was changed. Immediate action was taken to backup all the files on the databases and cloud, and the backup files that were made on the systems across the HR department were removed. She also talked to the senior management, hired a technology expert to manage the database, and involved the IT department in protecting confidential data from any insider/malware attack.
Results	Implementing technology and hiring a new resource to manage data and protect it from any type of attack ensured that the confidential data was in safe hands.

2. EMOTIONAL-INTELLIGENCE

Interpreting the emotional state of self and others. Making effect use of this information to guide behavior.

Situation	Export Workers is the world'sbiggest and most famous cargo carrier, with over 400,000 working employees moving around five million parcels and packages each day, with 200 to 300 flights per day. The founder and the current chief operating officer (CEO) of the company: Mr. James,focused on speed and logistics. He was determined to provide excellent services to the customers, but at the same time, he was a firm believer that the employees are the key to any business's success. Taking care of their personal, professional, and emotional needs are essential for the company's growth. The company feels that it is necessary to create an environment where employees would feel the dedication and would be driven to deliver efficient performances.Employees' efficient and exceptional performances will help create real value for all the Export Workers' stakeholders.The company feels that something needs to be done to keep track of the employees' emotional needs. The company wants to empower its clients to speak up and know their rights to develop a sense of security and a sense of being necessary to the company. The company's CEO asked the HR executives to start a program where the employees' needs would be taken care of. It is now the responsibility of the HR department to look after the emotional wellbeing of the employees and start a new initiative to get information from the employees and then to handle the issues if identified. The case mentioned above is loosely inspired by the FedEx case (Freedman, 2014).
Task	HR executive is directly responsible for interpreting the emotional state of every employee. In this case, the HR executiveafter the meeting with the CEO identified the following changes that were required to be made: · Starting a new initiative to gather information from all of the 400,000 working employees. · Measuring leadership performance. · Startinga leadership training program.
Action	To empower the employees and measure leadership performance, the HR executives decided to conduct a survey where every company's current working employeewould provide feedback about the managers and the management. The survey aims to convey the message to the workers that their opinions matter, the company is listening, and prevailing a trust relationship between the employees and the company. This step is necessary to develop a sense of emotional wellbeing for the employees. The company would collect the survey's results, and then it would implement changes according to it.A leadership training program is initiated to train the management about their roles and trainthe employees working under them.
Results	After implementing the survey program and the leadership training program initiative, a considerable difference was observed in the employees' performance.