Reference no: EM132778450

Question: Ready the case study below and answer the practice questions that follow.

You were recently hired by Apparel Producers, a manufacturing company as an assistant HR officer with direct responsibility for managing the compensation and benefits policies of the company. You were hired on the basis of your HR degree, which you worked particularly hard to attain and how well you demonstrated an understanding of HR functions and practices. Not only are comfortable with your understanding with HR functions, you also feel confident and ready to assess what has been occurring at the company and look forward to getting straight to work to utilise your HR knowledge gained over the years.

Apparel Producers has been in business for the past 15 years and has achieved reasonable success. They have outlived several competitors and have even expanded to three geographic areas across the country. They currently employ 150 production employees and 50 office employees who are responsible for various in-house office functions. You were called to your first meeting in which you learnt from the upper management of the company, that they are interested in updating the compensation practices in the company in order to boost productivity. You understand that employees are all paid a base salary and based on the number of years working at the company, they receive an increase in pay every so many years. Management has informed HR that they would like to change that strategy and believe that introducing another type of compensation system would be effective.

You asked when was the last time job descriptions were updated and were told, seven years ago and many employees don't have copies of their job descriptions. You also asked about their performance evaluation process and you were told that performance evaluations are done once a year by supervisors. You were informed of where to find the records of performance evaluations. At the meeting you were also told that you had three months to bring a business case to management indicating the suitability of introducing an alternative compensation system to the company.

Days after the meeting you were looking through performance evaluations and found the following. The company used a very simple appraisal form - the form was one page long and asked supervisors to evaluate each performance against other employees. Based on what you saw, you realised that supervisors had varying ideas of how to evaluate performance and there was no standard approach. It was not clear on the form what functions and objectives employees were being rated for. You realise this way of evaluating performance will have to change.

You return to your office thinking about what needs to be done in order to successfully implement a a suitable compensation system.

State which compensation system (Merit Pay, Incentive Pay, Person-Focused Pay) you would recommend for this type of organisation and why.

Explain how you would go about getting the organisation to change to compensation system you are recommending.

Explain how job analysis and performance appraisals are linked to the compensation system you are recommending. Link your answer directly to the case study above. This answer should showcase a good understanding of job analysis and performance appraisals as it relates to the compensation system you are recommending.