GB520 Unit 10 Human Resources Strategy Proposal Example

Staffing the CO2 Growth Plan: A Unit 10 Human Resources Strategy Proposal to the Board

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GB520: Strategic Human Resource Management

Unit 10 Human Resources Strategy Proposal

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The contractor, its board and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

Executive Summary

Kestrel Refrigeration Services' management requests about $4.3 million, spread over three years, for its workforce. The growth plan approved last year triples installations of CO2 systems to 42 a year by year three and adds about $21 million of gross margin over three years. The plan cannot be delivered with today's people practices: Kestrel has 9 lead technicians able to commission a CO2 system and needs 26. The investment closes that gap, protects gross margin several times its cost and reduces turnover that already costs about $520,000 a year.

Strategic Context

Federal limits on older refrigerants are pushing grocers to replace their systems, and CO2 is a common choice. Kestrel has a strong reputation with them, and its sales plan rests on that. The constraint is people. Equipment, vans and financing can be bought; qualified CO2 lead technicians cannot be bought in the numbers needed, because the region produces few of them.

Wright and McMahan (1992) describe strategic human resource management as the planned pattern of people practices meant to let a firm reach its goals. At Kestrel, that is not an abstraction: the workforce plan in Unit 3 showed a shortfall of about 10 lead technicians in year two, half the number required. Huselid (1995) found that firms with stronger systems of people practices had lower turnover and better financial results, which is the case this proposal makes for Kestrel.

Initiative 1: Build the Technician Pipeline

Objective: grow CO2 lead technicians from 9 to 26 and apprentices from 16 to about 44 by year three.

Actions: run the CO2 Lead Academy each year for about fifteen participants; expand the registered apprenticeship with a community college from 8 to 22 apprentices a year; hire two or three experienced leads and about 18 journeymen a year through lateral recruiting; use subcontracted crews for the remaining installation-season gap.

Owner: vice president of operations, with the human resources director.

Cost: roughly $1.9 million in total: $648,000 for three academy cohorts, $840,000 for the apprenticeship and $400,000 for lateral recruiting.

Measure: qualified CO2 leads at each year-end; apprentice completion by cohort; time to fill journeyman positions.

Initiative 2: Pay to Compete for Scarce Licenses

Objective: attract and keep licensed technicians and CO2 leads in a market where competitors want them.

Actions: adopt the published pay philosophy; pay licensed journeymen and CO2 leads in the top quarter of regional rates, at about the 75th percentile, and other roles near the median; introduce skill-based steps for apprentices and a lead pay step of about $7.50 an hour for academy graduates who qualify.

Owner: human resources director, with the chief financial officer.

Cost: about $595,000 a year including payroll taxes, or about $1.8 million over three years.

Measure: offer acceptance rate for technicians; departures to competitors; pay equity review results.

Initiative 3: Manage Performance for Quality and Safety

Objective: link crew work to the outcomes grocers buy and end incentives that discourage injury reporting.

Actions: retire the injury-free bonus; introduce a semiannual crew quality bonus built on the measures grocers care about, available only to crews that meet a hazard-reporting floor; move to quarterly check-ins and a year-end calibration session.

Owner: vice president of operations.

Cost: about $150,000 over three years beyond the existing bonus budget, mostly for training leads and the net increase in the bonus pool.

Measure: first-time startup success; hazard reports with follow-up; recordable and first-aid cases tracked together.

Initiative 4: Keep the Crews Kestrel Has Trained

Objective: reduce technician turnover from 19 percent to about 13 percent.

Actions: a regional crew model that cuts most crews' nights away from nine a month to about three; a published progression path to CO2 lead; a first-year mentor for every new technician.

Owner: human resources director, with branch managers.

Cost: about $158,000 a year, or about $474,000 over three years.

Measure: turnover by tenure and crew type; first-year retention; stay interview themes each year.

Each initiative fails without the others: the academy trains leads that competitors will hire unless pay and the career path keep them, and new hires leave within eighteen months unless they see a route up.

The Investment and the Return

The four initiatives total about $4.3 million over three years. Against that, the growth plan's added installations, about 54 systems over three years, would produce roughly $21 million of gross margin. Even if the people investment were responsible for only a quarter of that margin, by making the installations possible on schedule, the return would exceed the cost. Turnover savings of about $296,000 a year from Initiative 4 add to the case.

Cascio et al. (2019) recommend that human resource investments be presented in the same financial terms as other capital decisions, with their assumptions stated, and this proposal does so. The key assumption is that installations are limited by qualified leads rather than by demand; if demand falls short, Initiatives 1 and 2 can be slowed within a year.

Risk Register

Legal exposure. Selection screens, pay practices and the organizing effort in Milwaukee all carry legal risk. Mitigation: the modified screens from the employment law analysis, the pay equity review and labor counsel's review of all communications at the Milwaukee branch.

Labor market shifts. Competitors may match Kestrel's pay. Mitigation: the strategy relies on the career path and regional crews as much as pay, which are harder to copy.

Execution capacity. The nine qualified leads must coach academy participants while running their own jobs. Mitigation: count coaching hours in their goals and limit each lead to two participants a year.

Demand risk. Grocers could delay system replacements if equipment prices rise or rules change. Mitigation: review the plan each quarter and slow academy and apprentice intake if installations fall below 80 percent of plan.

Metrics Dashboard

The board would receive a one-page dashboard each quarter with six measures: qualified CO2 leads against plan, technician turnover, offer acceptance rate, first-time startup success, hazard reports with follow-up, and the people investment spent against budget. Boxall and Purcell (2022) emphasize that a people strategy should be monitored with the same discipline as an operations plan, and the dashboard is designed to make that routine.

Slide Summary

The twelve slides follow this paper's order: the request; the growth plan; the lead technician gap; the four initiatives, one slide each; the investment and return; the risk register; the dashboard; the decision requested; and a closing slide with the three-year milestones.

Decision Requested

Management requests the board's approval of up to $4.3 million for the four initiatives over three years, released annually against the dashboard, with a full review at the end of year one.

Closing Reflection

The most useful lesson of this course for me was that people practices are tested by the strategy they serve. At the start of the term I treated recruiting, training and pay as separate topics. Building this proposal showed that they work only as a system: a training program fails without a pay step, and a pay increase fails if the job still keeps people away from home. I also learned to put a figure on human resource decisions, such as the cost of a departure or the value of a better selection method, so that they can be weighed against other uses of money. That habit will matter most in my own work, where people decisions are often made without the evidence that was available.

References

Boxall, P., & Purcell, J. (2022). Strategy and human resource management (5th ed.). Bloomsbury.

Cascio, W. F., Boudreau, J. W., & Fink, A. A. (2019). Investing in people: Financial impact of human resource initiatives (3rd ed.). Society for Human Resource Management.

Huselid, M. A. (1995). The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity, and corporate financial performance. Academy of Management Journal, 38(3), 635-672. https://doi.org/10.2307/256741

Wright, P. M., & McMahan, G. C. (1992). Theoretical perspectives for strategic human resource management. Journal of Management, 18(2), 295-320. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639201800205