Reference no: EM132885287

Question

Jack Newman had recently been appointed regional director of Boomerang Water Corporation, a major service utility in Australia. Jack's previous appointment was with a large manufacturing company in the United States, where he had made a reputation for himself as a visionary specializing in customer service and performance management. Jack was the youngest person and only non-Australian ever to be appointed as a director at Boomerang Water Corporation. This particular region of the utility employed approximately 2000 workers engaged in the customer service and maintenance provision side of the business. These employees operated in groups of about 30 workers. One supervisor managed each work group. These groups were located in five departments across the region, with each department specializing in a particular customer service or maintenance function. The region serviced about 500 000 customers.

A central division controlled the human resource management functions for the region. This division was located in the region's main town. Elaine MacVain headed the HR division. Elaine had been with the utility for nearly 25 years and over these years had developed a reputation for running a strong, controlled division that provided the customer service and maintenance department with a diversity of HR services. Elaine considered the main focus of the division to be to process day-to-day HR transactions and maintain employee records. Elaine managed a staff of 10 HR professionals who processed employee data that included workers' pay, leave entitlements and requests, and shift work entitlements. The HR department was responsible for recruitment and selection, the performance management system, occupational health and safety records, and career planning. Ron Locat, a member of Elaine's division, had developed a stand-alone HRIS to maintain the HR department's records. Ron had little formal IT training but had undergone in-house training in the use of Microsoft Access and had used Access to create the division's database system. Elaine and the other members of the HR division did not have a high level of IT literacy, but they could operate the Access system that Ron had developed. Elaine was grateful for the work Ron had put into the database system and felt indebted to him for the support that he gave to the HR staff.

A major focus of the utility was training the customer service and maintenance employees. The utility had a promotion system based on the employee's level of technical skills. Employees were promoted to higher levels of competency and pay scales on completion of skills training. Peter Noall, who had been with the utility for about four years, headed the training division, which had three staff in addition to Peter. One staff member was an ex-technical college teacher, and two had been technical supervisors in the organization. Due to the small size of the training division, Peter was forced to outsource much of the organization's training needs. Work safety was a major responsibility of Peter's, and he was very proud of the organization's safety record. Peter had contracted the purchase of an expensive, dedicated training database system to support the organization's training function. The system provided the training division with a powerful tool with which to profile the total skills base of the organization, identify present and future training needs, track employees' competency levels, and evaluate training outcomes in relation to productivity gains. The training division was proud of its use of high-level technology to support strategic training initiatives.

On commencing his appointment, Jack Newman decided his immediate focus was on improving the organization's customer service. He engaged the Fast Track-Immediate Success consultancy group to run a number of focus groups and conduct a strategic analysis related to the delivery of customer service. Eddie Wanton from Fast Track organized focus groups within the HR division and the training division and ran three focus groups of 20 randomly selected supervisors. Eddie's report to Jack Newman included the following concerns and recommendations aimed to improve customer service.

1. How can the assignment of a champion facilitate the introduction of the new HRIS? Is Jack Newman the best person to act as champion?

2. Why have the HR and training divisions built quite different database systems? What are the difficulties involved in integrating the functions of these divisions?

3. What are the advantages of integrating the functions of the HR division, training division, and those of the work group supervisors?

4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Boomerang Water Corporation buying an off-the-shelf integrated HR database system?

5. In what ways may the transfer of some HR functions to work group supervisors improve the efficiency of the HR division? In what ways may work group supervisors be advantaged or disadvantaged by the transfer of HR functions?