Situations, Issues, & Learning Points

Situation – your company is restructuring its corporate strategy which will significantly impact the company's enire workforce planning process.

Issue: Which aspects of workforce planning should be considered?

Learning points:

• workforce planning should examine demand and supply on four different dimensions: current and future demandcurrent and future supply
• internal factors and factors external to the organization need to be considered

Situations, Issues, & Learning Points

Situation – significant training dollars and productivity are being lost due to a restrictive collective agreement regarding training.

Issue: Do we really understand the issue? does more research/discussion need to be involved? Who needs to be involved?

Learning points:

• Employees will never ratify changes to collective agreement language for an issue they do not understand completely
• involving the union eliminates surprise ideas presented at the bargaining table
  

Situations, Issues, & Learning Points

Situation – Your company is adding a new line of business that requires staffing

Key points:

- under a tight deadline

- new organization

Issue: What needs to be involved in developing a recruitment strategy?

Learning points:

Before beginning recruiting, the recruitment strategy needs to:

• be aligned with the business strategy
• include all HR functions (such as job descriptions, compentency profiles, performance measurement, and organization design)
  

Situations, Issues, & Learning Points

Situation – A hiring decision has been made without your knowledge and the salary is not in alignment

Issue: Can you address the salary situation? If so how? How do you address management problem to prevent future occurrences?

Learning points:

• It is critical that internal compensation systems and procedures are followed to ensure consistency of approach and to maintain equality
• Red circles policies are used to withhold increases from individuals who are already earning more than the maximum pay rate for their pay grade until the maximum pay rate catches us to their pay rate
  

Situations, Issues, & Learning Points

Situation – an employee where's an offensive shirt to work. Management doesn't seem to care.

Issue: How large is the Human rights issue? Is it an isolated issue or company wide? How far up does the problem go?

Key points:

• Management has done nothing about it in the past
• President laughs when you explain the situation to him
  

Learning points:

• The solution should address both the specific situation as well as the company wide issue
• The president, management, and the employees need to be educated on basic Human Rights and sensitivity issues
  

Situations, Issues, & Learning Points

Situation 40 – A test pilot training program is being implemented in order to reverse the shrinking market share trend

Issue: how to best evaluate the training program? What comparisons should be used?

Learning points:

An effective evaluation should include:

• the best approach to evaluating the effectiveness of any training program is to follow a pre-test, post-test, control group methodology

• the previous results of those who took the training (pre-test)

• the results of those who took the training (post-test)

• the results of those who didn't take the training (control group)

Situation 41: there is a need to plan for an increase in turnover due to an ageing workforce, however senior management is not current concerned about this issue.

Issue: Do I need management's buy in before moving forward? Do I wait until management says something?

Learning points:

• succession planning needs to be proactive and not reactive

• an analysis needs to take place before the implementation of any programs

• senior management needs to be involved from the beginning

Situation 42: You have just heard that a candidate we are about to hire was given the questions to the interview prior to the interview by one of the interviewers.

Issue: How do I address the allegation? How do I move forward to select a candidate? Who needs to be involved?

Learning points:

• it is important to involve the accused's manager in addressing the serious allegation

• When a selection process goes awry and there are qualified candidates, re-interviewing (2^nd interviews) can be an option. If there are no qualified candidates or the qualified candidate opts out, it is best to start over

Situations, Issues, & Learning Points

Situation 11 – two employee's are caught being unsafe at work

Key points:

• you witnessed the event

• the employees are both conscientious workers

Issue: Should the employees be disciplined ?

Learning points:

• safety is a manager's responsibility

• proving due diligence requires that the employer discipline employees when safety procedures are not followed

Situation 12 – an employee you hired 3-month's ago is not working out. He has been previously warned on two occasions. Another employee who desires to fill the position is also disgruntled and not cooperating.

Issue: Is there sufficient evidence to terminate the new employee with cause? Should the disgruntled employee be given an opportunity to fill the position?

Learning points:

• there must be enough groundwork laid in order to terminate with cause

Situation 13 – After a manager is let go, he claims that his manager said he'd be compensated for overtime, even though it is stated in his contract that he is not.

Issue: Should he be compensated for the overtime? Should the money be deducted from his pay-in-lieu notice?

Learning points:

• first step - substantiate the claim

• a written contract does not override a verbal contract, if the verbal contract is made in good faith

• the pay-in-lieu was provided in good faith and should not be taken away

Situation 14 – you are on an open-ended contract at a reduced rate. You have been paid up front and are charging for the hours as worked. It has been four years and the organization still has a credit.

Key points:

• your rate has increased

Issue: should you charge the company at your new rate?

• It would be unethical not to honour the terms of your contract