HR assignment report on: case study of Kimberly-Clark Andean region

1. 1.      Executive Summary:

Intend of the report is to assess the case study of Kimberly-Clark Andean region: creating a winning culture and provide the insights for aspects of hiring people in an organization, the leadership within, organization’s way people to work together or in a team, the work evaluation, and then development of individuals. Therefore, to organize the entire report, it has been continued in several segments defining each point precisely. First, it talks about the recruitment, selection and retention procedures to be adopted and carried out in an organization. Next, report highlights the identification of various leadership styles and their impact on work, organization and individual as well. Afterward, it has continued to explore the effective working in a team, their benefits, and defining a strategy to manage the resistance to change. Finally, report attempts to assess the work and development requirements of individuals by over viewing the case study of Kimberly-Clark.

1. 2.      Introduction:

Before embarking to the recruitment, selection & retention procedures description that can be taken upon and implemented in an organization, it is obvious to present the outline of case-study and to brief the company’s introduction, so that a general idea can be taken out for further work evaluation and explanation.

Kimberly Clark is an American personal care company that mainly produces paper-based customer products. It has branches in Mexico, Germany, United Kingdom and Andean Region. Here case study demonstrates Andean region’s management and leadership which consist of five countries that are Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Columbia. Overall study of case-study revolves around aspects of hiring, leadership style, and management of organization, teaming, culture and work development of Kimberly-Clark (K-C). Apart from this, it talked about Sergio Nacach who joined K-C after working with Unilever from about 1992-2001. The thing which attracted Sergio to join K-C was that it was somewhat decentralized and still in its entrepreneurial expansion stage. Furthermore, study reveals that Sergio basically worked for three areas such as, sub-optimization, hiring the right person and increasing employee engagement. Besides, it represented that Kimberly-Clark has come up with some core values of its business which proved to be fruitful for them.

So, the next part of the report will discuss about recruitment, selection & retention process and the aspects of hiring.

1. 3.      Recruitment, selection & retention procedures:

An effective and successful staffing is, searching the right person, for the right job, at the right point of time and retaining them as well in the organization. An assessment can be done that, where the organization is right now, where it wants to be at and space between the two. While taking care of the appropriate hiring and resources to be selected, strategies can be taken into care, like utilizing associations, universities professional bodies should be targeted for the recruitment and selection process. Use of the technology can be a successful strategy like, using websites to target larger audience (McEntire & Greene-Shortridge, 2011).

3.1  Aspects of hiring process:

There are a number of aspects which may be considered in an appropriate hiring and retaining process. The best way to evade problems whilst recruiting new members or a new staff is to implement an organized and practical approach to the procedure. This includes following aspects:

• Define the organization’s requirement- what is the post?
• Agree on and confidence on the hiring panel members
• Next, recognize a job description that is to be performed by an individual or a team
• Design an individual specification
• Decision on both internal and external advertising the vacancy
• Create an advert
• Set timescales for the hiring process such as closing date for applications
• Shortlist candidates
• Interviews
• Obtain reference/checks
• Plan induction and training session

Following this, Sergio of K-C Company in Andean region hired the right person by hiring both skilled, experienced people and people who fit well with the organizational culture. Earlier it used to select the candidates not having any graduate degree, and just gained the experience through interaction with clients and in the field. But recently they started hiring the sales force with the graduates from the best Peruvian universities.

3.2  Documentation involved in the recruitment process:

Before starting recruitment process, one should make a list of documentation involved in that process. It includes job description, purpose of the job & performance, standard formats, job title, department and location of the post. Moreover each broad term of job should be well defined by the recruiters so that applying candidate can grip the idea that whom he/she would be responsible to and what would be the all responsibilities. Next, it should comprise scope of the post, education & qualification required, name of complier and approver, date of issue of the job as an advertisement.

Afterward, documentation also requires the person specification that would encompass the essential & desirable attributes, previous experience required, general intelligence, special attitudes, temperament and personality, interests and personal circumstances. Finally, in the form of application documentation there should be a letter or an application form through which an applicant may apply and a curriculum vitae (University of Sunderland, 2005).

3.3  Impact of legal, regulatory and ethical considerations to the process:

To present the overall impact of regulatory framework and ethical considerations, acts such as Civil Rights Act of l964, age discrimination act 1967, race relations act 1992, equal pay act 1970, disability discrimination acts 1995 and 2005, working time directive, employment act 2002, national minimum wages, data protection act 1998 can be concerned in term of legal and regulatory system. Moreover, these acts can be in terms of either direct or indirect discrimination. Direct discrimination is where a person is taken care of less favorably than another because of sex, marital status, colour, nation basis, disability etc. While, indirect discrimination is where every individual is treated equally but there are requirements that unreasonably impact the members of a group confined from discrimination (e.g. women, members of a particular religion or race) (The university of York, 2009).

Impact of these discrimination acts can be pointed out like if direct or indirect discrimination occurs during the hiring process, both the employing entity and named personnel may be charged.  Employers are responsible for acts of employees in course of employment unless they took realistically practicable steps to avert the employee from doing that act such as having an equality and diversity policy and making all members sure of appointing committees have appropriate training (University of Glasgow, n.d).

Afterward, ethical considerations such as asking candidates the same questions, interviewers those are not related to the candidates, gender and ethnic balance on panels can be brought forward during hiring process. In this context, asking non-job related questions to the candidates may result in an appeal and moreover information from such questions cannot be used to evaluate employee’s potential (Thomas, Schermerhorn & Dienhart, 2004).

3.4  Assessment of own participation in selection:

Three key points included in recruitment & selection process which are pre-interview, interview and post-interview stages. Pre-interview included selection criteria for short listing the candidates, application forms and information for them. Further, various types of interviews like group, individual, team, panel, telephonic, multi-stage have been taken into care. In pre-interview aptitude tests, attainment tests, psychometric tests, assessment and interview questions and finally procedure for informing candidates of interview decisions and further rounds have been taken (John, 1988).

Next include part was interview stage that encompasses interview protocols, confidentiality, and agreed questions, checking of personal information, interview checklist, decision criteria and documentation. For that, questionnaires were prepared to scrutinize the candidates effectively.

Next in this process, candidates are examined on the basis of their communication & listening skills, body language and knowledge of the subject. This phase of recruitment analyzes and summarizes the accurate capability of an individual. Afterward, it led to post-interview stage during which candidates are finally informed about the decision. A job-offer has been made including the job start date, wage or salary rate, hours of work. Other job related terms & conditions are also conveyed to the candidate. At the end of the process, feedback has been taken from the candidate and all the checking and references are taken up (Plank, 2012).

After this, the next section of the report demonstrates the leadership styles and its impact on the organizations by studying Kimberley’s case-study.

1. 4.      Styles and impact of leadership:

When leadership is concerned, it’s not a gift that some people have and others do not have. It includes the knowing and understanding yourself and others, understanding the situation and facts of the matter and then pertaining appropriate skills and techniques accordingly. Consequently, a good leader is a person who approaches a little more than his/her share of the fault and a little less than his/her share of the credit. As per the case-study, it can be observed that Sergio was the leader in Kimberley-Clark and approached the participative leadership style. He gave his full time to each employee, listened to them; spoke to them regarding the matters they are dealing difficulties with (The wall street journal, 2012).

There are three types of leadership styles which are adopted by the organizations on the basis of business’ nature (Howard, 2005).

• Authoritarian or autocratic
• Participative or democratic
• Delegate or Free reign

Leadership styles

(Source: Nwlink, 2010)

Leadership style refers to the manner and approach of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people.  However superior leaders use all three styles, with one of them generally prevailing, bad leaders likely to stick with one style (Howard, 2005).

Furthermore, leaders impact organizational culture, increase the productivity, engage the employees more in organization’s effectiveness. Moreover, different styles approached by the different leaders bring consistency in pursuing and achieving organizational goals and objectives. Likewise, leaders build the team aiming at achievement of common goals (Bohn, 2002).

4.1  Skills and attributes needed for leadership:

On the basis of case-study analysis, it can be noticed out that Sergio acted as a dedicated, flexible, friendly, open and creative leader which led the company providing higher productivity and the best results. Therefore, it can be said that a leader must be capable enough to correspond his or her vision in terms that cause admirers to buy into it. He or she must communicate visibly and single-mindedly, as passion is transmittable. Apart from this, a good leader must have the discipline to work toward his or her vision single-mindedly, as well as to direct his or her actions and those of the team toward the goal. He/she must have the ability to take fair and impartial decisions. A leader should have the power of magnanimity, openness, creativity, assertiveness and sense of humor (International educational leadership community, 2012).

4.2  Difference between leadership & management:

Leadership and management is not the same thing but they are inevitably related to each other and complementary as well. Where the manager’s job is to forecast, organize, coordinate and control, the leader’s work is to encourage and motivate as Sergio did by engaging employees more in work and by sub-optimization. Following differences between leadership and management present a clear picture of the task performed by the managers and leaders on the other hand (Ricketts, 2007):

• While, the manager oversees; the leader innovates the management system.
• The manager emphasizes mainly on systems and structure and on the other hand, the leader focuses on people/employees.
• The manager relies on power & control; the leader instigates conviction.
• Next, the manager has a short-range sight; the leader has a long-range viewpoint.
• Where, the manager has his/her eye constantly on the bottom line, the leader’s eye is on the scope.
• The manager does things right but the leader is the one who does the right thing.

4.3  Comparison of different leadership styles for different situations:

Furthermore, different leadership styles can be exercised for different situations to manage the conflict among the employees within the organization. As per the case-study, it can be demonstrated that if assertive leader’s behavior and abolish submissive and authoritative behaviors from the style inventory, in turn it optimizes the organizational effectiveness for influencing others (Cohen, 2010). Moreover, to assist employees become more self-sufficient by cheering them to think through the problems and to teach them to take upon their individual responsibility, leaders should use low-assertive or caring approach. Besides, to communicate the state expectations precisely and to deal with a procrastinator, they should           use high-assertive or compelling leadership style (Cornelius, 2006).

4.4  Ways to motivate staff to achieve objectives:

Sergio Nacach motivated Kimberly’s employees by introducing and arranging celebrations on occasions and conducting meetings. He arranged the cascade of information sharing and implemented new strategies and involved the staff in decision-making frameworks. Therefore, it can be perceived that objectives provide employees an outline for excelling in the workplace, but some staff members may require support in reaching those goals. In that case, they need to be motivated by the leaders (Shore, 2010).

For this, involve employees at all levels, make sure that they understand the goals, strive for improvement instead of judging past performance, challenging them to perform immediately and lastly enable them to monitor and evaluate the results (Human resources, 2012).

1. 5.      Effective working in a team:

Teamwork is a position of agreement attained within a group of employees working for toward an explicit profitable benefit. Therefore, several benefits associated with team work can be discussed in terms of team’s effectiveness.

Further portion of the report highlight a few benefits of team work in an organization.

5.1  Benefits of team working in an organization:

On the basis of analysis of case-study, benefits of team working can be perceived as K-C Corporation’s end result in terms of profit maximization. Teamwork is not applicable in business but also pertinent in all areas of life. With a team in place, there is apparent division of labor across the corporation because each team member becomes responsible for certain tasks. Next, teamwork entails that every team member contributes properly to activities at hand. Subsequently, there would be no risk of ineffectiveness because every member of the team is equally responsible for the performance of that team (Brodie, 2012).

Moreover, teamwork leads to adequate end results and quality delivery of the project due to their different specialization of skills. Alternatively, it represents the high level organizational interest (Salas al, 1999).

5.2  Leader’s role towards achieving goals and dealing with people:

Taking Sergio’s role as a leader in Kimberley, it can be perceived that how he dealt with the people and involved them in work by motivating and introducing a new culture in the organization. Therefore, it can be said that effective teamwork merely depends on effective and efficient leadership skills. In this, leader’s role is to what project could in terms of its success. He/she is responsible to structure the team formally or informally. Here a justification can be provided based on case-study that Sergio framed an informal culture for the employees and made norms to wear informal dress for everyone from the top level to the lower level of the organization (Ballou, 2011).

To deal with the conflicts a leader should increase the understanding among employees as Sergio did in Kimberley.                       

5.3   Review of effectiveness of the team in achieving goals:

Afterward, team’s effectiveness is reviewed to assess their contribution in achievement of goals. It is appraised because when team get to act there is no doubting the value and benefits that they bring out for the organization. During the review phase, clear goals and objectives status can be defined and assessed. Further, role of each team member in achieving common goal is monitored and in turn bad decision making and drawbacks are identified (Slechta, n.d).

5.4   Creation of a strategy for managing resistance to change:

Change is a permanent part of life. No matter that the change is implemented is important for the effective adoption of new strategies. Subsequently, first, self-interest can be generated concerning with how changes will affect their own interests instead of concerning the impacts for the success of the business. Next, education and communication technologies can be introduced in the organization to manage the resistance of change. Then, employee’s participation and involvement can be encouraged as Sergio made a pillar to work upon the active participation of the employees.

Further, facilitation & support can be provided in order to attract them toward work’s effectiveness. Negotiation & agreement can also be taken into consideration as a part of strategy to manage the resistance to change (Lorenzi & Riley, 2000).

1. Assessment of the work and development needs of individuals:

It is also necessary to assess the work performance so that loopholes can be identified at the work place. Moreover, it is also essential to identify the development needs of individuals because some training needs will be collective, and will apply to many, if not all, of the team members. Nevertheless, everyone in team is distinctive having different skills, different levels of understanding, and different responsibilities and goals. Therefore, forthcoming section of the report highlights the factors involved in planning, monitoring and assessment needs of individuals (Sandqvist al, 2006).

6.1  Factors involved in planning, monitoring and assessment of work performance:

Factors involved in planning and assessment of work performance are basically performance appraisal system, capability, knowledge & skills, environment and motivation. These aspects are considered to be the best to evaluate the individual’s work performance because these all reveal the positive and negative characteristics with respect to their competencies and to reinforce good performance at workplace. After examining the performance through various means available, need for training & development program is sought in order to make the workforce capable enough to accomplish the organizational objectives (Krivanek, 1999).

6.2  Assessment of development needs of individuals:

The assessment of development needs of individuals involves reviewing team members’ job descriptions, meeting with them, and then observing them at work, gathering additional data, analyzing and preparing data, and finally determining action steps (United Nations development programme evaluation office, 2002).

6.3  Evaluation of the assessment process’ success:

There are many well- established methods available which can help evaluating the success of the work performance’s assessment process. In this data obtained is analyzed, summarized and interpreted. Apart from this, frequency analysis and Chi-square analysis methods can be adopted to know the end results and the success of the process (Assessment analytics, Inc, 2012).

Chi-square test is usually taken into consideration to evaluate the fitness and independence of any particular process or method. To know the success of process used for evaluation of development needs of individuals, a sample size of workers can be picked having a normal distribution. Rather defining any problem briefly a process acknowledging the level of high productivity, qualitative performance, better and advanced output demonstrate the success of process applied (Biz Ed, 2008).  

1. 7.      Conclusion:

A decisive description can be made out of the overall description. Entire report talked about the recruitment & selections procedures and aspects of hiring on the basis of case-study’s analysis which represented the documentation involved on the hiring process such as application forms and curriculum vitae. It also demonstrated the pre-interview, interview and post-interview techniques.

Furthermore, it discussed about various leadership styles and also talked about the style approached by Sergio in Kimberley. Next, report explores the impact of styles and the ways to motivate the staff as Sergio followed openness, creativity and assertiveness with the employees. Further, report talks about effective team working in an organization following Sergio’s role as a leader in K-C Corporation. Leader’s role in team effectiveness has been evolved as a part of the discussion and strategies also have been explained for managing the resistance to change. At the end, it demonstrated the assessment of work performance and development need of individuals so that the success of the process can also be taken in to care for further performance. 

If you want hr Management Assignment Help study samples to help you write professional custom essay’s and essay writing help.

Receive assured help from our talented and expert writers! Did you buy assignment and assignment writing services from our experts in a very affordable price.

To get more information, please contact us or visit www.myassignmenthelp.Com