Question 1

Lean Hin Company is an established local company that manufactures household products in Singapore. While the pandemic has affected business as much as other industries, Lean Hin’s business was not growing as much as they would hope for. The senior management of Lean Hin has sought advice from some government agencies who have provided them with proposals to improve their productivity as well as digital strategies to increase innovation in their products and organization. With government support, Lean Hin has sent their staff for reskilling and upskilling of their staff in the midst of the pandemic so that they will be prepared for new opportunities when the economy has picked up.

After training had been completed, Lean Hin’s staff proposed several new ideas to improve productivity in their organization as well as a new line of innovative products that can grow and attract new sales and customers for Lean Hin. However, to do this, Lean Hin is required to grow their company to include more headcount, especially in manufacturing, research and development, and sales and marketing.

The HR team has also undergone upskilling and has recently embraced digitization in their processes by implementing a human resource information system (HRIS). HRIS has enabled a lot of the administrative processes to be automated especially in payroll and leave management. Lean Hin HR is also incorporating HRIS into their recruitment process which they are hopeful will enable them to monitor and evaluate the recruitment process so that updates to senior management can be more accurate for better decision-making.
Unfortunately, due to budgetary constraints, the HRIS platform did include a visualization module for dashboard building. The dashboard has to be manually created for the time being and the HR director is keen to do this well to justify more budget to improve their HRIS. Thankfully, the relevant data from the HRIS platform was able to retrieve the following information. These data are listed in the tables below.
Table 4 consists of pooled data directly from the HRIS platform regarding number of open positions and the time-to-start. The number of open positions indicates the number of available positions that Lean Hin has yet to fill. The time-to-start indicates the average time between when a candidate accepts an offer to their first day as an employee.

Table 5 consists of details regarding the recruitment process. There are six stages in this process with both number of applicants and the average number of days that each applicant takes to complete each stage recorded. These data are retrieved from the HRIS platform. These six stages are:
1. Application stage. Lean Hin posts its positions on various recruitment sources such as online job portals, linkedin, recruitment agencies, and company. HRIS compiles the total number of applicants applied through these sources.
2. Screening stage. HR will screen the received applications based on the requirements for each job role/function. Applicants that meet the minimum requirements for each job role/function will then be passed onto the respective hiring managers for a second screening.
3. Assessment stage. Applicants who successfully passed the screening process may be put through a selection test that is specific for the respective job roles/functions. The scores have to be keyed in by the HR staff.
4. The fourth stage is the interview stage. An interview will be arranged for applicants who passed the assessment. The interview is conducted jointly by a member from the HR team and the respective hiring manager.
5. The fifth stage is the offering stage. An offer will be made to successful candidates after the interviewing stage. This offer is usually subjected to negotiation by the candidates.
6. The last stage is the hiring stage. The recruitment process concludes once the candidate accepts the offer and has started work on the first day at Lean Hin.
Table 6 consists of the number of open positions per department and the total number of applicants applied to each department. Table 7 consists of the number of applicants that Lean Hin receives from various recruitment sources. Table 8 consists of the number of applicants received by Lean Hin per month. These data are all obtained from the HRIS.

Table 9 consists of reasons by applicants declined the offer. There are five categories. Job reasons involve a mismatch of job tasks and responsibilities. Location reasons involve a long commute between work and home. Pay reasons involve a higher salary expected by the candidate that cannot matched. People’s reasons involve a mismatch of work culture and values. Other reasons involve reasons that are not captured by the other four categories. Some of these data are collected from the HRIS where applicants who rejected the offer stated their reasons. However, HR also has to manually key in the reasons during discussions of the job offer with the candidate.

 

 

(a) Describe the P.R.A.C.T.I.C.E. heuristics and appraise the design of dashboard using the P.R.A.C.T.I.C.E. heuristics. Please be specific in terms of which charts meet or do not meet

(Note: You are NOT required to appraise the suitability of the metrics nor recommend metrics.) (20 marks)
(b) Design a new dashboard by recommending the appropriate charts and graphs to use for Tables 5 to Table 9 with justifications. (10 marks)
(c) Discuss the different levels of Fitz-Enz’s (2000) Human Capital-to-Enterprise Pathway and appraise the type of human capital activity captured by the dashboard with explanations. (10 marks)
(d) Recommend and describe TWO (2) additional metrics that can help improve the Applicant Sources Table in the dashboard to show the efficiency and effectiveness of each recruitment source. Explain briefly how these two additional metrics can aid managers’ evaluation of their recruitment sources.

Question 2

Lean Hin’s HR Director is concerned that the research and development (R&D) department may be facing some serious issues as the turnover rates of the department are above the average rates. So far, 10 senior R&D engineers have resigned. Exit interviews also point towards a lack of direction and a toxic culture. The HR director has briefed the Managing Director about this matter and the worry that this may negatively impact the organization.
However, the managing director did not show much concerned and suggested that there could be potential savings on headcount costs. Also, the manager director views that the new hires would bring in new ideas and innovation. However, as the HR director, you are concerned and would like to evaluate the costs of turnovers.
The following separation procedures are carried out for each employee who resigns:
⦁ A 1-hour exit interview is conducted by an HR Manager.
⦁ 4 hours are spent processing the resignation by a HR Specialist.
The following recruitment procedures are carried out to replace each employee who resigns:

⦁ An average of $825 is spent on advertising and sourcing costs.
⦁ An average of 60 hours is spent processing for each hire by an HR Specialist.
⦁ An average of 5 hours is spent on job interviews conducted by both the HR Manager and the Hiring Manager.

The following onboarding procedures are carried out for each new hire:

⦁ A 5-day orientation program is scheduled for each new hire conducted by an HR Specialist.

Based on past data, it takes on average 60 days to recruit senior R&D engineers. During this period, it is estimated that the respective hiring manager will need to spend a total of 8 additional hours per day to cover the tasks of the resignee so that development projects are not delayed. Table 4 presents the average hourly wages of the various job positions.

(a) Calculate the cost of turnovers using the above information. (20 marks)

(b) Assume that your calculation for the total difference in performance for the replacements is $121,400, discuss the implication of this value. Then calculate the financial impact of this turnover and provide a conclusion from your calculation. (10 marks)