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Xaviers Institute of Business Management Studies

 

 

Effective HR Training and Development

 

 

Note: (i) There are three Sections A, B and C.
(ii) Attempt any three questions from Section A and B. All questions carry 8 marks each.
(v) Section C is compulsory for all, and carries equal marks for each case study.

SECTION A

1. 'The nature and objectives of the organization determine the role and type of HRD processes to be chosen for developmental intervention.' Comment on this statement and discuss underlying concepts with suitable examples.

2. What are the salient causes of dissatisfaction and frustration? How is frustration passed on to others? Explain with example, how a supervisor can cope with the frustration of the employee working with him.

3. Identify the major areas of integration between the development of HRD and IR in an organization. Describe various pre-requisites for successful HRD-OD approach to IR.

4. Define and describe HRD climate. How are HRD climate and organizational climate related to each other?

5. Write short notes on any three of the following:
(a) Task Analysis
(b) HRD Instruments
(c) Approach and Avoidance aspects of management
(d) HRD in voluntary organizations
(e) Developmental Supervision

SECTION B

1. Define and discuss the concept and objectives of coaching and mentoring. Briefly discuss their applications in the organizational context.

2. What is Action Research? How does it differ from OD? Discuss the important factors to be considered in the development of internal self renewal facilitators, with suitable examples.

3. Define and describe the objectives and advantages of Multisource Feedback and Assessment Feedback Systems (MAFS). Discuss what are the indicators of an organization’s readiness to participate in MAFS.

4. Discuss the means of managing technological changes in work organization. Briefly describe the factors which facilitate developing the change mind-set. Explain with suitable examples.

5. Write short notes on any three of the following :
(a) Designing Reward System
(b) Operationalising HRD for workers
(c) Career Transition and Choices
(d) Developing Business Ethics
(e) Horizontal Re-skilling

 

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SECTION C

1. XYZ Limited

Read the following case carefully and answer the questions given at the end.

The eleven workers whose annual increments were stopped made a representation to the management of XYZ Limited that the action taken was not justified and that they wanted to know what their fault was. The management which acted upon the recommendation of the department head concerned, Mr. Rog, felt guilty because such an action was taken for the first time in the history of the company.

XYZ Limited was a large paper manufacturing company in South India. The major departments of the factory were:

1. Chemical processing: The raw material was mixed with certain chemicals for making pulp.

2. Pulp department: Pulp was mixed with other ingredients according to specifications for each order of paper.

3. Paper machine department: This was the heart of the factory where processed pulp was fed into the paper machines. At first, a wet weak paper was formed which was subsequently dried and rolled.

4. Finishing department: The paper rolls were then moved to the processing department where the required coating was given.

5. Grading, winding and packing departments.

6. Quality control department.

Twenty eight workers worked in the paper machine department in four groups - each group attending one machine. The nature of the work on each machine was such that all the seven workers had to work in cooperation. Because no individual tasks could be specified, the group was made responsible for the work turned out by them. All the workers working in the paper machine department had been with the company for over ten years.

The company did not have any incentive wage system for any class of its employees. They were all given straight salaries with normal annual increments. The annual increments were sanctioned each year in a routine way. It was the policy of the company that the increments should not be stopped unless the department head concerned recommended such an action.

Mr. Rog was placed in charge of the paper machine department a year ago. Though Mr. Rog was a newcomer in the organization, he proved himself to be a very competent man. The management noted that he was very aggressive and enthusiastic and that he knows his job well. At the end of the year when increments were due to be sanctioned, he recommended to the management that the increments due to eleven men in his department should be stopped, for, in his opinion they were lazy and inefficient. The eleven men concerned belonged to all the four groups operating in the department.

The management, though puzzled about the action recommended by Mr. Rog, acted upon it and stopped the increments due to the eleven men concerned. The management was aware that such an action was the first of its kind in the history of the company. Most of the employees were with the company for a fairly long period and there was never an instance of strained relations between the management and the employees.

Soon after the action was taken, the eleven employees concerned made a representation to the management requesting them to let them know what was wrong with their work as to warrant stopping of their increments. The management were in a fix because they did not have specific reasons to give except Mr. Rog's report in which he simply mentioned that the eleven men concerned were "lazy and inefficient".

The management were naturally concerned about the representation and therefore, they tried to ascertain from Mr. Rog the detailed circumstances under which he recommended the stoppage of increments. When Mr. Rog could not pin-point the reasons, the management suspected that Mr. Rog's recommendation was based on his "impressions" rather than on facts. They, therefore, advised Mr. Rog to maintain a register from then on noting the details of day to day incidents of "lazy and inefficient" workers and obtain the signatures of the workers concerned. Mr. Rog was to make the final appraisal of each worker in his department on the basis of this register and recommend each case giving specific reasons why increments should be stopped.

Mr. Rog started maintaining a register as suggested by the management; but he found it difficult to report satisfactorily any case of laziness or inefficiency for want of specific reasons.

The management were convinced that their action of stopping increments of eleven men on the strength of Mr. Rog's report was not a proper one. They realized that no similar action in future would be taken based on inadequate information. But, they were wondering whether the suggestion made to Mr. Rog was the proper course of action to prevent occurrence of similar situations.

Questions:

(a) Identify and discuss the core issue in the case.

(b) Was management of the company justified in implementing the recommendations of Mr. Rog, in the absence of proper report?

(c) How would you view the action of Mr. Rog, if you were the M.D. of the company?

(d) Do you think the reward system instituted by the company needs to be reviewed? Substantiate your answer with logic.

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2. SEWA

Please read the case and answer the questions given at the end.

SEWA - The purposeful beginning

SEWA (Self Employed Women's Association) was started in 1972, by Ela Bhatt, in the form of a union of the unorganized sector, which was to be incorporated into the mainstream. It was observed that most of the production of goods and services in the country was, at that time, done through the informal sector, and hence the decision was taken to unionise this informal sector.

SEWA was not like a typical union i.e., unlike the usual union of workers, it (SEWA) spoke about the solidarity of the workers themselves. Its purpose was fight for the mega system which exploited the vast working force through its labour contract systems. The whole system typically involves the middlemen and money lenders and the mindsets of the urban middle class, the educated, the upper castes, their perceptions of development. Thus, through SEWA, efforts were made to question the whole system of policy making, the census (which had not recorded them as workers), the definition and purpose of a trade union and the definition of 'worker'.

After the registration of SEWA as a trade union, it was found that the union activity stopped at a certain level and the informal sector workers were hardly covered by any protective labour legislation. Added to this, profit making, handling of cash etc., even sometimes caused conflicts of interest in the union. Hence, over a period of time, a strategy of joint action by union and cooperative - a member based, democratic organization, beneficial to the unprivileged of society with networks at the state level, national level and international level was chosen.

It was felt that through a cooperative presence, SEWA would be able to obtain bargaining power for all those who are members as well as for those who were not a part of the co-operative. On the one hand, the producer's labour value goes up and she enjoys a better bargaining power. Alongside, the other workers in the villages also have wider choices in taking decisions related to who and how many have to go for work on the farms, whether the workers should migrate or concentrate on home-based crafts and so on. And, on the other hand, for all those who were not a part of SEWA, their wage structure (for both men and women) goes up. For instance, in case of the agricultural workers: the new jobs create a shortage of labour in the region, so they also get higher wages. Similarly, artisans also get higher wages. In this way SEWA is able to bring about economic changes in the villages through the joint action of the union and cooperative.

'SEWA Bank' - A subsidiary

Inspite of unionizing the self employed workers, it was found they faced two common problems:

Shortage of capital, forcing the workers to pay a heavy interest (often paying 10% interest per day).
Absence of owning their own means of productions (like handlooms, push carts etc.). They had to pay rent on these from their own meager income.

These two reasons prompted the decision at SEWA to have their own bank. In a period of six months, the necessary share capital was collected, and SEWA tried for registration. But many objections were raised - How can SEWA have cooperatives and a bank? How to form a bank for workers who were women, undependable, unreliable and who cannot even sign?

Inspite of these inhibitions, the strongest point in their favor was that the workers were all economically independent and generating cash every day. Thus, it was necessary for them to save money and also be able to avail of credit, whenever necessary, rather than depending upon private money lenders. This necessity finally led to the birth of the SEWA Bank.

The SEWA Bank is about one of the 10 co-operatives in SEWA with five kinds of primary co-operatives - dairy, artisans, traders, services and labour. The SEWA Bank has a working capital of about Rs. 26 crores; while, the other co-operatives registered under SEWA together have a working capital of Rs. 20 crores. When SEWA discovered that many of its workers were unable to absorb more loans because of the many risks and outside forces which did not allow them to expand their business, it decided to offer another form of financial services like insurance schemes - against maternity risk, group insurance scheme to link all member workers with their deposits and integrated social insurance bank service covering a wide range of services.

Other Activities and Vision for the Future

SEWA has attempted to create co-operatives of various services provided by the labour community especially in the areas of domestic labour, health care, child care and video production. So as to enable these persons' to market their services, efforts are being made to provide them training on a continuous basic.

Another effort on the part of SEWA is to build a management system which will help the labour force to stand firm in the market. Such a system should not only help these people to have access to credit but also help them to be literate enough to have a basic understanding of accounting, the interest rates and accessibility to market infrastructure.

Another attempt of SEWA has been at coming together of women on a common platform, on the basis of work in the form of co-operatives/union/federations or as workers or producers or economic agents, cutting across barriers of caste, region and language.

SEWA's Attempt at Empowering Employees

The vision of Ela Bhatt, who started SEWA, has always been to ensure that the informal sector is in the mainstream of labour movement with a leading role to be played by the rural women. SEWA'S aim has been to empower such women who are poor and illiterate to become economically active through the process of empowerment. This view is slowly becoming a reality, when, after joining SEWA and attending formal training programmes, such women have become bold, realized their sense of self through participating, facing, managing situations and other people and thus learning to become 'leaders' in the true sense. Thus process of empowerment has enabled them to develop an inbuilt strength to do liaison with the police, take up the causes of fellow workers, actively participate in the decision making process especially while sitting on committees, travelling and meeting people for the growth of the organization.

At SEWA, there is no formal organization structure as such. In the words of Ela Bhatt, "SEWA is like a banyan tree, it grows and takes root, then these roots grow and take root...." i.e.. SEWA's growth is totally dependent on its members who become owners, managers, beneficiaries and a truly empowered organization in the long run.

Questions:

(a) What are the unique features of SEWA?

(b) Discuss the worker oriented development approach of SEWA affecting the performance.

Can you suggest ways in which private corporate organizations can also be involved in developing management programmes along with SEWA for the upliftment of the rural people?

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3. MICRO ELECTRONICS

Read the following case carefully and answer the questions given at the end.

Training for Whom?

Microelectronics, a California-based electronics defense contractor, has enjoyed a smooth growth curve over the past five years, primarily because of favorable defense funding during the Reagan administration's build-up of U.S. military defenses. Microelectronics has had numerous contacts to design and develop guidance and radar systems for military weaponry.

Although the favorable funding cycle has enabled. Microelectronics to grow at a steady rate, the company is finding it increasingly difficult to keep its really good engineers, based on extensive turnover analyses conducted by Ned Jackson, the human resources planning manager, Microelectronics problem seems to be its inability to keep engineers beyond the "critical" five year point. Apparently, the probability of turnover drops dramatically after five years of service. Ned's conclusion is that Microelectronics has been essentially serving as an industry college. Their staffing strategy has always been to hire the best and brightest engineers from the best engineering schools in the United States.

Ned believes that these engineers often get lost in the shuffle at the time they join the firm. For example, most (if not all) of the new hires must work on non-classified projects until cleared by security to join a designated major project. Security clearance usually takes anywhere from six to ten months. In the meantime the major project has started, and these young engineers frequently miss out on its design phase, considered the most creative and challenging segment of the program. Because of the nature of project work, new engineering often have difficulty learning the organizational culture - such as who to ask when you have a problem, what the general dos and don'ts are, and why the organization does things in a certain way.

After heading a task force of human resource professionals within Microelectronics, Ned has been designated to present to top management a proposal designed to reduce turnover among young engineering recruits. The essence of his plan is to create a mentor program, except that in this plan the mentors will not be the seasoned graybeards of Microelectronics, but rather those engineers in the critical three-to-five year service window, the period of highest turnover, these engineers will be paired with new engineering recruits before the recruits actually report to Microelectronics for work.

According to the task force, the programme is twofold: (1) it benefits the newcomer by easing the transition into the company, and (2) it helps the three-to-five-year service engineers by enabling them to serve an important role for the company. By performing the mentor role, these engineers will become more committed and hence less likely to leave. As Ned prepared his fifteen-minute presentation for top management, he wondered it he had adequately anticipated the possible objections to the program in order to make an intelligent defense of it. Only time would tell.

Questions:

(a) Identify the salient issues from HR point of view for this case.

(b) lf you were to study this turnover problem, how would you conduct a needs analysis or evolve a counseling programme ?

(c) What are the causes of dissatisfaction and turnover in Microelectronics?

(d) Do you find the mentoring programme suitable to reduce turnover? Justify your answer.

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