MBA8_SHRM_ASG_2017 © Regenesys Business School 1 MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION DATE: Please refer to the Academic Calendar for the assignment submission dates. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS AND ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS • Ensure that your first name, surname, student number, the course code number and total number of pages appear on the front cover of your assignment. • Assignments must be submitted online via the Turnitin link on your course subject page. Assignments may not be submitted via e-mail. Here is an example of the assignment submission link: • You will find instructions on how to upload assignments in the Turnitin guide to submitting papers here: https://portal.regenesys.net/course/view.php?id=43 • Please answer this assignment according to the guidelines in the Assignment Submission Guide, which you can download here: https://portal.regenesys.net/pluginfile.php/1400/mod_resource/content/10/Assignment_Submission _Guide_Acad_ver7.pdf • We recommend that you start this assignment as soon as possible. You will then get a good idea of the subject content early in your studies. MBA8_SHRM_ASG_2017 © Regenesys Business School 2 Assignment Notes: • Full referencing of all sources including page numbers in in-text referencing is essential.   For example: (Gitman, 2010:15) in-text reference, and then in your reference list: Gitman, L.J. 2010, Principles of Managerial Finance, Cape Town: Pearson Education.   • Extensive and credible academic references are required to demonstrate that you have researched the topics fully and that you can substantiate your arguments critically.   • Please respect the introduction, body, and conclusion format for answering questions.   Assessment Terminology: Ensure that you have a thorough understanding of the frequently used terms in assessments. For an explanation of assessment terminology, go to: https://portal.regenesys.net/pluginfile.php/1400/mod_resource/content/10/Assignment_Submission_G uide_Acad_ver7.pdf INTRODUCTION TO THE ASSIGNMENT • Please remember that this assignment may not exceed 17 pages, excluding the title page. • The font must be Arial 11 and single spacing must be used. • Students are required to use the in-text referencing method prescribed by Regenesys under guidelines and policies on the student portal. Further, students are encouraged to refer to the referencing mark allocation guide to see the minimum number of references that are needed for this assignment. • Please do not copy directly from the text unless absolutely necessary, and remember to put this in inverted commas and include an in-text reference. Paraphrase all the reference comments that you use and include the appropriate reference and page numbers. Plagiarism is a serious offence in the academic field. • The appendices must be a maximum of three pages each and the information must be relevant and summarised. Please provide the relevant links referenced in your appendices, in order for the assessor to evaluate the source further if necessary. NOTE: At postgraduate level, students are expected to substantiate their answers with evidence from independent research. • Responses should be in ESSAY AND PARAGRAPH FORMAT. Bullet type responses should be avoided. • If you decide to work as a group or team in doing your assignment, please make sure that you write your assignment individually and in your own words. o If NOT, you will be told you have copied and you will have to do a brand new assignment, which will be capped at 60% and for which you will have to pay a resubmission fee. MBA8_SHRM_ASG_2017 © Regenesys Business School 3 ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS READ THE CASE STUDY BELOW AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT FOLLOW CASE STUDY 1 SIEMENS BUILDS A STRATEGY-ORIENTED HUMAN RESOURCE SYSTEM Siemens is a 150-year-old German company, but it’s not the company it was even a few years ago. Until recently, Siemens focused on producing electrical products. Today, the organisation has diversified into software, engineering and services. It is also global, with more than 400,000 employees working in 190 countries. In other words, Siemens became a world leader by pursuing a corporate strategy that emphasized diversifying into high tech products and services, and doing so on a global basis. With a corporate strategy like that, human resource management plays a big role at Siemens. Sophisticated engineering and services require more focus on employee selection, training and compensation than in the average organisation, and globalisation requires delivering these services globally. Siemens sums up the basic themes of its HR strategies in several points. These include: 1. A living company is a learning company. The high nature of Siemens’ business means that employees must be able to learn on a continuous basis. Siemens uses its systems of combined classroom and hands-on apprenticeship training around the world to help facilitate this. It also offers employees extensive continuing education and management development. 2. Global teamwork is the key to developing and using all the potential of the organisation's human resources. Because it is so important for the employees throughout Siemens to feel free to work together and interact, employees have to understand the whole process, not just bits and pieces. To support this, Siemens provides extensive training and development. It also ensures that all the employees feel that they are a part of a strong unifying corporate identity. For example, HR uses cross-border, cross-cultural experiences as prerequisites for career advances. 3. A climate of mutual respect is the basis of all relationships within the company and with society. Siemens contends that the wealth of nationalities, cultures, languages and outlooks represented by its employees is one of its most valuable assets. It therefore engages in numerous HR activities aimed at building openness, transparency and fairness, and supporting diversity. MBA8_SHRM_ASG_2017 © Regenesys Business School 4 QUESTION 1 [20 MARKS] 1.1 Based on the information in this case, provide examples for Siemens of at least four strategic human resource outcomes, and four required workforce competencies and behaviours. (10) 1.2 Identify strategically relevant HR system policies constituting SHRM features that Siemens should institute in order to help human resource management contribute to achieving Siemens’ strategic goals. (10) CASE STUDY 2 FINDING PEOPLE WHO ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT WHAT THEY DO Global Software Solutions in the Western Cape is a fast growing software company and provides software solutions to giant global firms for improving sales and performance. It prides itself on its unique and unorthodox culture. Many of its approaches to business practice are unusual, but in GSS’s fast, challenging and highly competitive environment, they seem to work. There is no dress code and employees make their own hours, often very long. They tend to socialize together (the average is 26), both in the office’s well-stocked kitchen and on company-sponsored events, and trips to places like local dance clubs and retreats in the V & A waterfront. An in-house jargon has developed and the shared history of the eight-year-old firm has taken on a status of legend. Responsibility is heavy and comes early, with a “just do it now” attitude that dispenses with long apprenticeships. New recruits are given a few weeks of intensive training, known as Trilogy University and described by participants as “more like boot camp than business school”. Information is delivered as if with a fire hose and employees are expected to commit their expertise and vitality to everything they do. Jeff Daniel, director of University Recruiting, admits the intense and unconditional firm is not the employer for everybody, but it’s definitely an environment where people who are passionate about what they do can thrive. The firm employs 700 such passionate people. GSS managers know the rapid growth they seek depends on having a complement of the best people they can find, quickly trained and given broad responsibility and freedom as soon as possible. CEO Joe Liemandt says, “at a software company, people are everything. You can’t build the next great software company (that is what we are trying to do here), unless you are totally committed to do that. Of course, the leaders at every company say, ‘people are everything’, but they don’t act on it.” MBA8_SHRM_ASG_2017 © Regenesys Business School 5 GSS makes finding the right people (it calls them “great people”) a company-wide mission. Recruiters actively pursue the freshest, if least experienced, people in the job market, scouring university career fairs and computer science departments for talented overachievers with ambition and entrepreneurial instincts. Top managers conduct the first round of interviews, letting prospective candidates know they will be pushed to achieve, but they will be well rewarded. Employees take recruits and their significant others on the town when they fly into Cape Town for the standard three-day preliminary visit. A typical day might begin with gruelling interviews, but ends with mountain biking or playing computer games. Executives have been known to fly out to meet and woo hot prospects who couldn’t make the trip. One year, GSS previewed 15,000 CVs, conducted 4000 on-campus interviews, flew 850 prospects in for interviews and hired 262 graduates, who account for over a third of its current employees. The cost per hire was R20,000; Jeff Daniel believes it was worth every penny. QUESTION 2 [30 MARKS] 2.1 Identify the loopholes and shortcomings of GSS’s unconventional approach to attracting talent and training employees. What particular elements of GSS’s culture are most likely to appeal to the kind of employees it seeks? How does it convey those elements to job prospects? (15) 2.2 Would GSS be an appealing employer for you? Why, or why not? If not, what would it take for you to accept a job offer from GSS? What suggestions would you make to GSS for improving its recruiting process? (15) MBA8_SHRM_ASG_2017 © Regenesys Business School 6 CASE STUDY-3 OLD-TIMERS LEAVE In August 2009, five old-timers were about to retire from Alpha Air Filter Company. The company would need to hire five more employees. The problem was that the old-timers had known their jobs so well, that no one had ever bothered to draw up job descriptions for them. When the new employees began taking their places, there was general confusion about what they should do and how they should do it. Kenny Human, the company’s MD, was at his wits’ end. He had five new employees, the last two old-timers and his original factory adviser, Mia Grace. He decided to meet Linda Lowe, a consultant from the local university’s business school. She immediately had the old-timers complete a job questionnaire that listed all their duties. Arguments ensued almost at once: both Kenny and Mia thought that the old-timers were exaggerating to make themselves look more important, and the oldtimers insisted that the lists faithfully reflected their duties. Meanwhile, the customers clamoured for their filters. QUESTION 3 [20 MARKS] 3.1 Read the case study carefully, and critically analyse how you would have conducted the job analysis. Should Kenny and Linda ignore the old-timers’ protests and write up the job descriptions as they see fit? Why? Why not? What should Kenny do now? (20) CASE STUDY 4 REINVENTING THE WHEEL AT VAN AGT’S DOORS Mac Mabandla, president of Van Agt’s Doors, has a problem. No matter how often he tells his employees how to do their jobs, they invariably “decide to do it their way”, as he puts it in the arguments which ensue between Jim, the employee, and the employee’s supervisor. One example is the door-design department, where the designers are expected to work with the architects to design doors that meet the specifications. While it’s not rocket science, as Mac puts it, the designers invariably make mistakes, such as designing in too much steel, a problem that can cost Van Agt’s tens of thousands of wasted rands, once you consider the number of doors in, say, a 30-storey office tower. MBA8_SHRM_ASG_2017 © Regenesys Business School 7 The order-processing department presents another problem. Mac has a very specific and detailed way he wants the order written up, but most of the order clerks don’t understand how to use the multipage order form. They simply improvise when it comes to a detailed question such as whether to classify the customer as industrial or commercial. The current training process is as follows: None of the jobs has a training manual per se, although several have somewhat out-of-date job descriptions. The training for new people is all on-the-job. Usually the person leaving the company trains the new person during the one- or two-week overlap, but if there is no overlap, the new person is trained as well as possible by other employees who have filled in occasionally on the job in the past. The training is the same throughout the company for machinists, secretaries, assemblers, engineers and accountants. QUESTION 4 [30 MARKS] 4.1 What do you think of Van Agt’s training process? Could it help to explain why employees “do things their way”? (15) 4.2 Explain in detail what you would do to improve the training process at Van Agt’s. Please ensure that you provide specific suggestions. (15) TOTAL MARKS: 100