Reference no: EM132937372
After finishing the university degree in HRM, Jennifer has joined her father's company, which is a laundry and dry cleaning service. After spending several weeks on the job, she is surprised to discover that her father had not formally evaluated any employee's performance for all the years that he had owned the business. For example, the manager of the business Jack's duty is described as 'a hundred high-priority things to attend to', such as, boosting sales and lowering costs, hiring employees, preparing a financial budget, etc. Similarly, in any case, many employees do not continue their job in the company for long enough to be appraisable anyway. Furthermore, contended Jack, manual workers such as those doing the ironing, dry cleaning, and washing, do periodically get positive or negative feedback from Jack in terms of their work performance. This informal feedback and performance evaluation process make Jennifer very worried, as she learned a formal way of performance appraisal and realises the importance of systematic performance appraisal. She believes that there are criteria such as quality, quantity, attendance, punctuality, etc. should be evaluated periodically for all the workers, even for Jack. Furthermore, she feels quite strongly that the managers need to have a list of quality standards for matters such as store cleanliness, efficiency, safety, adherence, to budget on which they know they are to be formally evaluated. While discussing her plan with Jack and to her father, both Jack and her father disagreed with her telling her that, the company is not big enough to introduce such a formal system of performance appraisal. Moreover, the company has been making a profit in all these years despite not having a formal appraisal process.
- Is Jennifer right about the need to introduce a formal performance appraisal system for her father's business? Explain your viewpoint.
- Explain some of the challenges that Jennifer may face while introducing a formal performance appraisal system for the company.
- What is HR audit and why is it important?
- What is strategic about Strategic Human Resource Management? How does the practice of SHRM differ from HRM?