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Strategic Human Resource Management(Hrmg 548) Question Paper
Strategic Human Resource Management(Hrmg 548)
Course:Business Administration
Institution: Kenya Methodist University question papers
Exam Year:2013
TIME: 3 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS
Answer question one and any other three questions
Question One
Read the following case study and answer the questions that follow
CISCO COMPANY
Cisco sources have revealed that the company had a policy of attracting the top 10-15% people in the networking industry. It believed that if it could get the best people in the industry and retain them, it would remain the industry leader. According to Cisco vision statement "attracting, growing and retaining great talent is critical for sustaining Cisco’s competitive advantage." Thus effective recruitment was used as a powerful strategic weapon by the company. the company began to use revolutionary techniques like the build the buzz strategy which was centered on the primary market for its products ie the internet. Cisco’s recruiting team identified the candidates whom they felt the company should hire and then figured out the way those potential candidates did their job hunting and designed hiring processes to attract them to the company. Cisco recruiters targeted even passive job seekers people who were happy and successful in their current jobs. Barbara Beck (Beck), Vice President, Human Resources said "The top 10% are not typically found in the first round of layoffs from other companies, and they usually aren’t cruising through the wants ads." Cisco changed the way it posted advertisements in newspapers.
Instead of listing specific job openings, the company featured its internet address in its ads and invited prospective candidates to apply. This move helped Cisco to direct all job seekers to its website where it could inexpensively post hundreds of openings and provide information regarding them. It also advertised its website in cyberspace to reach candidates who surfed the net from around the world. The company was thus able to monitor and measure its recruiting programs through the number of visits to it’s site since most people visited Cisco’s website from their jobs, the company could identify their place of work.
Cisco worked towards removing some of the frustration associated with applying for jobs. The company learned to attract happily employed people through focus groups. These focus groups targeted senior engineers and marketing professionals in other companies and found out how they spend their free time, the website they visited and how they felt about job hunting. These insights helped the recruiters, for example, it was found that most professionals like to watch movies in their free time websites on ’ corporate cartoon Dilbert’ were extremely popular and most professionals hated job hunting. Cisco, thus linked it’s website to the Dilbert web page (ww.dilbert.com) which registered around 2.5 million hits per day, mainly from engineers and internet – sarry managers, it also bought space or websites like travel Quest (ww.travelquest.com), a reservation service provider. These steps turned Cisco’s website into an extremely useful recruiting - cool. The website also offered features through which applicants could feel their resumes online or create one with the help of Cisco’s resume builder. In this way Cisco attracted active and passive job seekers
The focus groups exercise made Cisco realize that a candidate could approach the company if he had been informed by a friend about better opportunities at Cisco. This led to the launch of friends program in April 1996. Cisco also reached out to potential applicant’s through a variety of routes which were unusual in recruiting. It began frequenting art fairs beer festivals and certain annual events in which people from Silicon Valley participated. These places proved to be very ’fruitful hunting venues’ as they attracted young achievers from various successful InfoTech companies. Cisco recruiters mingled with the crowd collected business cards from prospective candidates and spoke to them informally about their careers. More than 1,000 Cisco employees volunteered for the friends program attracted by the referral fee, which started at $ 500 and a lottery ticket for a free trip to Hawaii for each prospect they befriended and who was ultimately hired. In this program, Cisco employees were matched up with people who approached the company as prospects and who shared similar backgrounds and skills. The Cisco employees then called the prospects to inform them in their own words about life at the company Cisco advertised the friends program in movie theatres in San Jose and received around 100 to 150 applications each week. By 1997 about one third of new recruitments were made through the friends program. Cisco launched a tool called profiler on the employment page to accelerate and standardize online resume submission. The profiler asked applicants to provide educational and employment information through appropriate sections from pull-down menus. Cisco also found that applicants and recruiters were not totally comfortable with, time-consuming recruiting process. To speed up the hiring process, Cisco hired in-house head hunters to identify qualified candidates for managers. After streamlining its recruitment policies, 1996, Cisco conducted an employee survey to find out how the new recruits felt on their first day at work. The survey showed that some new recruits felt lost on their first day their phones did not work, their computers had no software and if it did they had no idea how to use it. It was found that most of the employees did not get their email addresses for two weeks.
To address the above problems Cisco launched fast start, employee orientation initiatives. Cisco installed computer software, which tracked the hiring process and alerted the team about new recruit’s arrival. As a result, every new recruit started with a fully functional workspace and a whole day of training in desktop tools. Cisco believed that new recruitment philosophy should also be made a part of the overall corporate culture. By late 1999, Cisco’s job page was recording around 500,000 hits per month. The company generated a stream of reports about who visited the site and fine-turned its strategy accordingly. By the time the new recruitment initiatives were established Cisco, which was hiring appropriately 8,000 people a year received 81% of the resumes were from the web.
Eventually 66% of the new recruits were from the candidates who had sent their resumes through the Cisco website. It was also reported that about 45% of company’s new recruits came from the amazing people program. Cisco’s hiring cycle also came down to 45 day from 68 days. The recruitment costs int his ’direct mode’ amounted to $6556 per capita which was around 40% below the industry average. Referral rates at Cisco were twice the industry norm and that created a performance edge as most recruits were qualified employees with vast experience. By 2001 referrals and the friends program accounted for 50-60% of new employees. Most importantly the retention rate at the company had also increased. The employee turnover figure was 6.3%. in 1999, a very low rate compared to the industry norms which varied from 18-28%. According to company sources on average Cisco employees accessed the corporate e HR site 16 times a day for information about job-cuts. Analysts claimed that Cisco’s innovative and aggressive recruiting initiatives were to a large extent responsible for the company’s expansion at 40% per year and recruiting 250 employees every week despite the global dot.com slump
Questions
According to Cisco’s Vision statement "attracting, growing and retaining great talent is critical for sustaining Cisco’s advantage." Analyze the various recruitment strategies adopted by Cisco.
(15 Marks)
Cisco believed that its new recruitment philosophy should also be made a part of the overall corporate culture. Explain the various key aspects that are to be considered in recruitment philosophy by companies like Cisco. Discuss how Cisco is benefitted by adopting innovative recruitment philosophy.
(15 Marks)
Question Two
Define strategic HRM and what are the main points of difference between SHRM and human resource strategies? (20 Marks)
Question Three
Recognition is most reliable of all rewards. Critically examine the strategic sense of this statement and identify 3 ways organization commonly used to recognize and reward employee through non-financial means. (20 Marks)
Question Four
What are the benefits and pitfalls of HR outsourcing?
(10 Marks)
What are the criteria that firms can use to determine which HR activities should or should not be outsourced?
(10 Marks)
Question Five
Why is training a critical strategic issue for organization
(10 Marks)
What purposes are served by training and development programmes.
(10 Marks)
Question Six
Industrial disputes is increasingly becoming costly to both the employer and the employees, many organizations are embracing the concept of industrial democracy to promote workplace harmony. Explain the term industrial democracy and critically examine industrial democracy concept as a strategic employee relations concept.
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