ANDREW C.

PONTE
Human Resource Management
BA 211

CASE ANALYSIS
“Case 2: ”

I Introduction

1.1 Describe the situation

Maria Luna was a human resource management graduate from the University
of the Philippines, Iloilo City. She has gone through a job search and thereafter,
decided to work in the family owns business named Dependable Cleaners, a
laundry/dry cleaning as human resources manager and has one assistant who
helps her in performing recruitment, training, benefits administration and payroll
and see if she could learn the business and contribute to its success.

It has grown from a neighbourhood laundry service to a major provider for the
Las Pinas, Muntinlupa, Paranaque, and Cavite areas. Wherefore, Maria join
the family business and her father decided to expand their services to the
hospitals, and In seven months Dependable Cleaners was able to obtain
laundry contracts with the major health-care facilities in the three cities and put
up a laundry business in Laguna.
The company now has a staff of 420 employees located in 5 branches, among
the service employees in the company are laundry service employees,
seamstresses and clean up-crew. The staff included receptionist, accounting
clerks, and secretaries. There are supervisors and one manager for each of the
branches. There are also two shifts for the service employees and the
supervisors.

1.2 The main problem of the case

The main problem on this case occurred when Mr. Luna decide on the salaries
of DC’s employees. Even if both men and women perform similar tasks, Mr.
Luna pays the men more since he believes that they have families to support.
Marie also observes that the workers seem to spend a lot of time socializing
and smoking outside of the building which considered non-value added
activities in the workplace.
II Issues Underlying the Problem

 Identify strategic issues/challenges

Marie discussed changing this practice that his father believes in which would
cause to the inequality of salaries of their men and women employees without
really having a clear guidelines in evaluating their performance. Dependable
Cleaners (DC) does not have a consistent performance management policy. If
Mr. Luna believes that an employee has done an extraordinary job, he would
give this employee a cash bond at the end of the year.

 Identify risk factors.

The risk of not having a consistent performance management policy is the

possibility of bias in judging or evaluating the performance of employees since
he only wanted to maintain excellent attendance record and making sure that
they complete their tasks each day without setting a clear performance criteria
and measurable standards in evaluating the performance of his employees.
On the other hand, employees are not guided with basis on how to achieve
excellent or good performance. They do not understand how their performance
is measured, and how the bonuses are decided.

 Classify the factors that influence the problem as internal or external to the
organization.

a) The internal factors that influence the problem is on the financial capability
of the company relative to the use of screening software. Another internal
factor is that not all HR professionals support and rely on resume screening
software, and/or not capable of running the system.
b) The external factors that influence the problem is that unqualified applicants
may have learned to “pepper” their resumes with a job’s keywords to get
past resume-screening software.

III Alternative Solutions to the Problem

 Define the alternative possible solutions

a) Dependable Cleaners to understand and establish an effective performance

management system to ensure that employees whether men or women are
fairly evaluated and assessed on their actual performance in their work.
b) Provide written standards on the basis performance evaluation particularly
on how to achieve excellent performance to address the current concern of
employees and also to provide organization’s policies to limit break time
during working hours for socializing and smoking, thus prevent
unproductive hours of employees that will not add value to the organization
which is the concern of Ms. Maria.
 c) To have Mr. Luna undergo training on the strategic performance
management system.

 Compare the alternative solutions in regard to theoretical grounding, strengths

and weaknesses, risk factors.

The first alternative solution covers all the steps from establishing performance
criteria and standards, clearly communicating them to the employees,
monitoring employee’s performance and provide employee feedback,
completing performance evaluation form, conducting performance evaluation,
confronting employees with performance problems, reducing the element of
bias and identifies problems related to key performance drivers. It includes the
second and alternative solutions. It involves an on-going process of planning,
evaluation and improvement. It considered to be a long range planning but if
effectively apply could have an impact to the company as a whole in strategic
and in attainment its goals and objectives. While, the second and third solutions
may also be employed to immediately addressed the issues. They are short
run measures and may be employed once, thus problems may still arise in the
future because of the absence of feedback and monitoring.

IV Conclusion

 Identify the best solution from the alternative solution.

The best solution is the first solution that is to understand and to establish an
effective performance management system that encompasses not only the
evaluation of performance stage or creating a performance criteria and
standards but to all stages in the performance management system from
understanding the PMS, what the organization needs and what activities to
focus on that impact an organization’s value chain down to correcting
performance problems and eliminating rater bias. Trainings to the HR unit and
the rater (Mr. Luna) is included in the PMS to effectively communicate to his
employees and so that both of them will understand. This system would if
effectively applied, could have a long impact to the company in achieving its
mission, goals and objectives.

V Recommendations

 Identify the courses of action needed to implement the best solution.

Through the HR unit (Ms. Luna and her staff), an effective PMS should be
employed for implementation by their manager and supervisors. Managers and
supervisors should understand first the performance management system, its
objectives and benefits. The HR unit to identify what the company needs and
 important activities specific to each job within the company. Manager,
supervisors and the employees should understand and accept this PMS to be
effective in the execution process. The seven steps, as mentioned in Part III of
this case analysis, should be consistently applied to make sure that employee’s
performance is aligned with the organization’s goals and objectives. In this way
competitive advantage of the business is achieved.

VI Factual Experience

 Relate the case to actual work experiences or any other context. What were
the problem and its underlying issues? How was problem resolved? If not, what
could have been done?

In our organization, we have the Strategic Performance Management System

(SPMS) which serves as an overall guide in managing employee performance.
The performance criteria and standards are created in the central office and
cascaded to the regional level by issuance of circulars, memorandum and office
orders. From the Strategic Performance and Commitment Review (SPCR)
Form of the chairperson and commissioners, a Divisional Performance and
Commitment Review Form (DPCR) is prepared by the regional director,
supervising auditor and audit team leader. And from the DPCR, the audit team
member, as in my case, prepares the Individual Performance and Commitment
Review (IPCR) Form where our performance commitment, expectations of the
organization from us, our output, success indicators, actual accomplishments
and ratings are all incorporated.

All of the employees of our organization had undergone trainings relative to the
application of SPMS. Our audit team agreed with the commitment for the year
and the rating system. Our team leader reviews our IPCR and the supervising
auditor approves such. We have also the Individual Development Plan (IDP)
for our performance that needs improvement and the strategies to take. It is
incorporated in our IPCR form. SPCR, DPCR and IPCR are the basis of
granting performance based bonus, promotion, awards like gawad kahusayan
and others.

Based on my assessment, I believe there is no major problems in performance

management system of our organization, except that in the performance
standards of producing quality audit report. In some audit teams, it would be
difficult to produce a quality report within the deadline set due to insufficient
personnel to conduct the financial, performance and compliance audit.
Excessive workloads and extra tasks could happen that may contribute to a
lower job performance of employees. Currently, our company is on the process
of improving its staffing, recruiting of personnel and initializing succession plan
to achieve a sound organizational design and ultimately achieved its mandate.