The Lack of Strategic Human Resource Planning at Angelos Pizza

1) The problem with Angelo’s Pizza is that it has no strategic human resource planning. Strategic HRM is about planning to meet the organizations human resource requirements well in advance of the actual required date. The high level goals for strategic HRM will be derived from the organizations overall strategic planning. For example, Angelo’s Pizza started out from a single shop enterprise and then expanded three stores. However, there was no plan is place about the enhanced human resources which would be required to support the organizational growth plans.

Because of this, the organizations human resources became the weak link when the new stores were set up. Similarly, if a franchisee is to be established, Angelo needs to have a detailed strategic HRM plan in place.

The first step in Strategic HRM is to determine the number of employees and the types of competencies which will be required by the organization in the next five years. For this purpose, the present and future expansion plans must be considered and the competencies which would be required by the various types of roles in the organization must be developed.

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It is important to remember that the competencies not only include hard skills like qualification and work experience, but also soft skills like communication, manners etc. Consider the importance of a candidate’s temperament, motivation, attitude and initiative (Johnson, Rose). Once the list is developed with various types of roles and the competencies required for each role, the next phase is to begin implementing steps enable the organization to have the required employees.

To implement strategic HRM, the organization must have a recruitment strategy, training strategy, and compensation planning and employee retention strategy in line with the requirements planned for the future. The company must have a stable recruitment policy which should be able to attract candidates with the kind of competencies required. The recruitment calendar should be of a long term nature where candidates are recruited based on the needs developed in the long term plans and not just a knee jerk reaction to resignation or new store opening. Since Angelo’s Pizza does not have any in house recruitment team, it would be a good idea to outsource this to a hiring agency which would select candidates and after a first level screening as per requirement of Angelo’s Pizza, would only send the shortlisted candidates for interview directly with Angelo.

Currently, Angelo’s Pizza has no training facility and all new joiners are expected to learn on the job. This strategy may work for hourly workers such as waiter who come with prior experience; however, for managers and any recruits with no relevant experience, some training would be required. In line with Angelo’s aim of expanding and eventually using franchising model, training manager will be critical for success. To enable this, Angelo should move out of the role of managing any store full time and concentrate of training all his store managers. Angelo should take charge of training and spend time in each of his stores, giving time to train the managers. The store managers in turn will be responsible for training and guiding other staff members in their stores.

For any organization, to retain the best talent, it is important to have a fair and attractive C&B plan as well as other aspects in a comprehensive talent retention strategy. Angelo’s Pizza must have a rating based appraisal where high performers will be given better salary. The company’s talent retention strategy must be focused on trying to keep employees happy at work and offer them career growth opportunities within the organization. For example, having rewards and recognition for good performers will motivate employees to work hard and satisfy high performing employees. Similarly, employees showing high potential can be offered higher education support so that they can move to managerial roles within the organization. 2) After considering the problems faced by Angelo’s Pizza, the following learning objectives seem most suitable:

i) LM 3 (Discuss how recruiting strategies impact the competitive advantage of a firm): Angelo’s Pizza is suffering from high turnover and lack of good employees due to its unplanned recruitment policies. Angelo has a very rudimentary recruitment strategy which does not reach out to the right candidate pool and is not able to select the best fitting candidates. To improve its competitiveness, Angelo must have a well developed recruitment strategy. Advertising in two local papers is not enabling Angelo to reach out to the intended audience. He can take the help of hiring agencies to find the right candidates as per the job profile and put them through a multi level selection process. Employee referrals are also an important tool for recruitment. Also, he must outsource the background verification process to a competent organization.

ii) LM 4 (Comment on the relationship between personality and work performance): It is seen from the case, that the job requirements have soft skill requirements which come from a person’s personality. In the restaurant business it is important how employees interact and treat the customers. Therefore, Angelo needs to consider these requirements which designing the hiring profile and recruitment strategy. Also, stress has to be placed on other personal qualities such as honesty and loyalty. Since Angelo’s is worried about theft, the selection process must also take into consideration the candidate’s personality traits. This means that the selection process will have to be muti-tiered consisting of background checks, personal interview and mock situations where the candidate is given realistic situations.

iii) LM 7 (Develop and evaluate a performance appraisal tool for a given situation): Angelo’s Pizza has a very high turnover and it is noticed that it is the good employees who are leaving the organization. To reverse this trend, a holistic performance appraisal system should be put in place which recognizes high performers and differentiates them from the others. The high performers should not get frustrated at the job and a performance appraisal system is the first step in identifying these high performers so that strategies can be developed to retain them. The performance appraisal system should be fair and evaluate the employee against the targets set by the manager. There should also be a mechanism where the feedback from customers is collected and used as an input for performance appraisal.

iv) LM 8 (Discuss various types of benefits a company could provide employees): Once the appraisal system is in place, compensation and benefits should be variable based on employee performance. As a small organization, Angelo’s Pizza has the flexibility to design C&B as per employee requirements. Small scale, personal involvement and independence all lead to an absence of bureaucracy, creating the SMEs’ reputation of being able to respond readily to changing circumstances (Brand.2002). For example, for hourly employees, assistance for further education can be a lucrative benefit, while at the same time providing the organization with a higher qualified resource for future managerial position.

v) LM 9 (Discuss how corporate strategy can be aligned with HR): The lack of strategic HRM is the core issue affecting Angelo’s Pizza. Corporate strategy should be aligned with HR, so that resource requirements are planned well in advance and there is no shortfall of trained employees when the organization needs them. As Angelo’s Pizza is on a growth track, it must ensure that it has a recruitment and training plan to support the organizational growth.

3) Theft can be a major problem in small organizations because there is lack of control mechanisms and often employees are assigned to multiple tasks which reduce checks and balances. To reduce the problem of material and intellectual theft in the recruitment process, several measures can be adopted. Background verification is perhaps the most important factor which can help weed out candidates who are likely to steal. Angelo’s Pizza can outsource this task to professional agencies which conduct through background checks. These checks should include the candidate’s criminal record, past employment history, credit rating and other social security details.

According to the law, a person cannot be discriminated against just because he has a criminal record. However, if the employer can show that the person’s criminal record will hamper his job responsibility, it can weed out such candidates. Attorney Mark Briggs of the Arizona-based Briggs Law Group said the new law forces employers to have a clear connection for why someone's criminal record makes them unfit for the job they are applying for (Brooks,2014). For example, if a candidate has multiple theft convictions, Angelo’s Pizza may have to show how this would lead to higher chances of theft at job, if they have to disqualify the person. Similarly, a person with regular credit defaults may be under higher financial pressure and hence more likely to steal.

Having a recruitment process to avoid intellectual theft is more difficult. Employers should take time to understand their current high performing employees and see what personal attributes have led them to stay at the job. Take the time to find individuals in your organization that have the same or a similar position to the one you are recruiting for (Wheeler, 2004). The interview must check the candidates future aspirations and see if they are in line with growth in the company or not.

4) To check the employee manners in an interview, Angelo can use role plays, where the candidate is given a certain hypothetical situation and has to respond to that situation. For example, Angelo can pretend to be a customer and the candidate must pretend to be a waiter. In this way, Angelo can create potential difficult situations which may arise when a customer is unhappy and check how the candidate responds in the interview. For example, Angelo can take the role of a customer who is unhappy about the food and is in a bad mood. The candidate must act the role of the waiter who will have to calm down the customer and end the situation in a satisfactory manner.

Another option, which is less time consuming and can be used as a screening method is to give all the candidates a case study reading a difficult situation where an unruly customer must be calmed down. The candidates should be asked to respond to the situation is writing and mention how they would respond to the situation given in the case.

5) To check if the candidate is ineffective, Angelo must decide which would be primary responsibilities for the job and design the interview to check those competencies. For example, for a cashier, numerical ability is important. Therefore, Angelo can give a numerical question which the candidate must be able to respond to quickly. Check of effectiveness cannot be generalized as different jobs require different skills. One good way to check the candidate’s intelligence level is to give him an aptitude test. Aptitude tests are important because they show the persons mental ability. A person with a high aptitude will generally be able to learn and master new skills more effectively. Angelo can also give candidates some specific task to accomplish like for example, building a Lego model to check their effectiveness.

References:

Brand, Maryse. (2002). Strategic HRM for SME’s: Implications for Firms and Policy, retrieved on 10/23 from http://www.rug.nl/staff/m.j.brand/e_tj_2002_strategic_hrm.pdf Wheeler, Kevin. (2004). Good Hiring Starts With A Good Job Profile, retrieved on 10/23 from http://www.ere.net/2004/11/10/good-hiring-starts-with-a-good-job-profile/ Johnson, Rose. How to Reduce Employee Turnover by Effective Recruitment in the Hotel Industry, retrieved on 10/23 from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/reduce-employee-turnover-effective-recruitment-hotel-industry-33538.html Brooks, Chad. (2014). Employee Background Checks: What's Legal, What's Not, retrieved on 10/23 from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6166-why-you-need-to-use-background-checks.html