Reference no: EM133504994

For a little more than 2.5 years you have been a human resources manager at a mid-sized company that specializes in specialty wood products. The business has 250 employees, most of whom have been with the company for nearly 25 years. Retirements are afoot, as is the need to rescale the company to align with the global marketplace. You have been tasked by the vice-president of operations to map out a comprehensive HR strategy that supports three key business objectives -- 1) sales growth; 2) employee productivity; 3) organizational culture. You have noticed that there seems to be opportunity to enhance the operations, but it may mean retraining, layoffs and introducing artificial intelligence. Before proposing solutions, you created a HR strategy checklist to inventory current practice against industry standards. With that in hand, you launched a coaching and mentorship program as many of your less-seasoned employees are culturally-adverse to change and stuck in the old ways of doing things.

The progress toward achieving your goal has been solid, but your team still does the majority of work manually. You lack skills inventories, job fact sheets and any tools that are automated to track employee progress. The manual work is hindering your measurement functions to gauge success. It is budget time, and you have to present to the senior team your desire to purchase an expensive human resources information system.

For discussion:

A memo one page that you will send to the senior team, outlining the rationale for your request to spend $100,000 on a HRIS. Include perspectives that support the return-on-investment that they will be seeking by linking the system to your ability to deliver on an HRM strategy. Suggest a timelines, budget, and a project team to steward the initiative. Outline how it will improve efficiency and effectiveness.