Reference no: EM132876269

Case Study: "ProCoffee"

Read the following case and answer the questions listed below comprehensively. ***Explain comprehensively your answers (provide introduction, body, conclusion for each item being answered). Avoid bullet format.

ProCoffee is a Canadian Company. Established in 1999 which has grown quickly these last ten years. Headquartered in British Columbia, Canada, Procoffee is now one of the largest specialty coffee companies with almost 600 company-owned stores and over 8,000 employees. The company emphasis on customer satisfaction. The high management of the company believes that customer service was the reason that brings back customers to their stores. They decided to invest in this service and to create unique experience for their customers.

Julia Johnson has been recently hired as an HR manager. She is graduated from a Canadian Business school, with more than 6 years of experience in the industry. One of the first problems Julia faced at ProCoffee was the inadequacies of the firm's current HR management practices and procedures. One problem that particularly concerned her was the lack of attention to equal employment matters. Each store manager independently handled virtually all hiring; The last job position posted by one of the store managers has shocked her (**see the job posting below). She has also discovered that managers had received no training regarding such fundamental matters related to the staffing process (recruitment and selection) as the types of questions they should not ask of job applicants. It was therefore not usual -in fact, it was routine, for female applicants to be asked questions such as "Who's going to take care of your children while you are at work?" Or " do you intend to have kids ? " or "are you pregnant?" and for applicants whose age is above 50 years old are asked questions such as " considering your age do you think that you can work?" "do you think that you are still young to apply to this position?" "What is your origin? How many times do you go to your home country?...Non-minority applicants-three store managers were white males and three were white females-were not asked these questions. Based on discussions with the Company's General manager, Julia deduced two reasons for the laid-back attitude toward equal employment: (1) The General manager lack of sophistication regarding the legal requirements and (2) the fact that, as the General manager put it, "Virtually all our workers are women or minority members anyway, so no one can really come in here and accuse us of being discriminatory, can they?"

Julia decided to mull the question over, but before she could, she was faced with problems. during a fact-finding trip to one of the company's stores, an older gentleman - he was 73 years old - complained of the fact that although he had almost 50 years of experience in the business, he was being paid less than half people his age who were doing the very same job. Furthermore, women working in two company's stores complained that they are working in the company for the last 4 years and they have 8 years experience in the industry, but they have never got any promotion. They have no chance to be chosen for any open position internally. They have informed Julia that two of their coworkers who have recently joined the company have got a promotion, but they have only one year of experience in the industry.

**Job posting

Question 1:

a) From a legal standpoint, analyze and discuss the principal issues that represent an obstacle for effective human resource management in Pro-coffee.

b) In reference to Pro-coffee's situation, recommend solutions to Julia to address the problems that the organization is facing. Present clearly your arguments. Your recommendations have to cover all HRM aspects that you consider dysfunctional. You need to present clear actions supported by clear arguments.