Week 6
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Human Resources: Leveraging TalentA Skills Gap
As you continue your work as an organizational consultant for RPZ Marketing, Regina Poincy Zimmerman, the CEO, calls you in to attend a meeting. Human resources director Carmen Alongway and operations manager Charlie Handler are also in the room.
RPZ Marketing is working on a plan to restructure its Genaflek and RPZ Social Media analytics teams, and Charlie is raising concerns that the company’s claims about what it offers are not backed up by its employee skill sets.
The company markets itself as a one-stop-shop for all of its clients’ marketing needs. But in reality, few of its personnel have the requisite combination of traditional and social media marketing skills to make that promise a reality. This makes it difficult for any single consultant to adequately serve any one client.
How should RPZ Marketing deal with this skill gap? Should they cross-train every consultant for expertise in both areas? Change their one-consultant-per-client model to teams of consultants? How would teams impact the one-to-one relationship that Carmen feels is essential to customer satisfaction?
Regina, Charlie, and Carmen are looking to you for advice. What advice will you offer?As businesses become increasingly automated, their competitiveness depends more and more on the ability of their employees to add value to their core products and services. For human resources managers, that trend translates into heightened pressure to move beyond the personnel, legal, and compliance aspects of their roles to gain greater expertise in the relatively new function of talent development and performance management.
Rather than simply keeping the company out of trouble, human resources is increasingly responsible for a key aspect of the company’s competitiveness: human capability.
This week, you’ll take a look at the rapidly changing and strategically important role of human resources in helping companies sustain business quality and competitiveness.
TO DO LIST
What You Need To Know: Read about how one company’s human resources department and leadership created a structure aligned with its business strategies. Expand your knowledge of today’s human resource management landscape, and view an RPZ scenario focused on human resources.
Assignment: Develop a 3–5 page white paper outlining recommendations for three functional areas that you believe to be essential to the success of a company.
Discussion: Participate in the weekly discussion activity in Yellowdig.
Interactive Learning Module: Complete a brief interactive to assess how well you understand functional areas of business.
Discussion OverviewFor the discussion this week, choose among three options: respond to the scenario video presented in the What You Need to Know activity, discuss how human resources can be used strategically, or share which readings this week are most relevant to you.
Assignment OverviewIn this week’s assignment, you will develop a 3–5 page white paper that outlines recommendations for three functional areas that you believe to be essential to the success of the company. For each functional area, you will describe the primary purpose of the area and explain how that purpose works to promote and support the organizational goals.
What You Need to KnowWhen Human Resources Gets Strategic
Read the following article to see how LG Chem, a battery maker, created a more collaborative and innovative structure to align with its business strategies. Their business units were working in silos, with one area not knowing what the others were doing. Together, human resources and leadership reinvented open innovation within their business—no easy task to accomplish.
Lee, S.-M., & Shin, J. (2017). A path to collaborative innovation through internal boundary breaking. Research Technology Management, 60(4), 26–32.
Today’s HR Management Landscape
Heathfield, S. M. (2019). What does a human resources manager, generalist, or director do? https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-does-a-human-resources-manager-do-1918551
This is a straight-forward article defining the role human resources managers play today, the many hats they wear, and different types of human resources positions available.
Stone, D. L., & Deadrick, D. L. (2015). Challenges and opportunities affecting the future of human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 25(2), 139–145.
The framework of human resources management is changing with the pressures of globalization, diversification, and technological innovations. The authors tackle what may be in store for its future.
RPZ Scenario
This week, you’ve been pulled into a meeting of the CEO, operations manager, and human resources manager of RPZ to discuss the fit between the company’s current talent and its brand image. Watch what happens in the scenario video. How would you apply what you have learned this week about the strategic role and changing nature of human resources to help RPZ settle on a good direction to pursue?
Human Resources Scenario.
Interactive Learning Module: Functional Areas of Business
This experience will help prepare you to successfully complete the assignment this week focused on functional areas of business.
LAUNCH INTERACTIVE MODULE
Write Your Discussion Post
Instructions
For this week’s discussion, choose one of the following for your post:
Apply what you learned from this week’s readings to the Human Resources Scenario RPZ scenario video. What advice can you offer RPZ?
Describe how the human resources function has evolved. How can HR strategically impact an organization?
Share which of the readings this week offered information you can immediately use at school, home, or work.
Response Guidelines
As you respond to your classmates, share your ideas, experiences, and anecdotal feedback regarding their posts. How have your personal experiences resonated with their ideas? What can you add to their ideas, building upon the connections you have made to the material so far? Don’t forget you can love or like their posts as well.
Do the following when writing your post:
Do not create your post as a reply to this pinned post. Instead, use Yellowdig’s Create option to create a new post.
Label your post with the hashtag for the week (#Week 6) so that others can sort posts by the week’s topic.
If you wish, include links to credible or scholarly articles, videos, images, or other Web resources. These resources could be used to support your post or provide examples.
You may also choose to create a slideshow or use audio or video as your discussion post.
For help using Yellowdig, please see Using Yellowdig [PDF] and Grading in Yellowdig [PDF]. Or visit Yellowdig Forums, Capella’s Campus support page for Yellowdig, with links for technical support.
GO TO YELLOWDIG DISCUSSION BOARD
Assignment Instructions
FUNCTIONAL AREAS OF A BUSINESS
Scenario
Different areas within organizations work together to achieve organizational goals. These areas are often referred to as functional areas and typically include:
Human resources.
Sales and marketing.
Information technology.
Production and operations.
Finance and accounting.
Suppose leadership in the organization where you currently work (or have worked) is considering changes to organizational structure—in particular, to the functional areas it currently has. Before making any changes, the leaders have asked several managers, including you, to develop a white paper that outlines the manager’s recommendations for three functional areas that he or she believes to be essential to the success of the company. Based on the recommendations of each manager, as well as the strength of each manager’s arguments and supporting references, leadership will make final decisions.
Instructions
Based on the scenario above, select the three functional areas that you believe to be essential to the success of the organization. For each functional area, describe the primary purpose of the area and explain how that purpose works to promote and support the organizational goals.
Based on the scenario above, use the Week 6 Assignment Template [DOCX] to develop a white paper with the following sections.
Title page.
Introduction.
Explain the type of organization the assessment is based on and its primary goals.
Identify the three functional areas you believe are essential to the organizational structure.
Functional Area 1.
Explain the primary purpose of the functional area of an organization and why it is essential in supporting the overall organizational structure.
Explain how the purpose of the functional area supports the organizational goals in terms of continued organizational success.
Functional Area 2.
Explain the primary purpose of the functional area of an organization and why it is essential in supporting the overall organizational structure.
Explain how the purpose of the functional area supports the organizational goals in terms of continued organizational success.
Functional Area 3.
Explain the primary purpose of the functional area of an organization and why it is essential in supporting the overall organizational structure.
Explain how the purpose of the functional area supports the organizational goals in terms of continued organizational success.
Recommended Organizational Structure.
Describe the type of organizational structure best suited for the functional areas you selected, and justify your recommendation.
Conclusion.
Explain how your recommendation will promote continued success of organizational goals.
References page.
Your white paper should be 3–5 pages in length, well organized, and written in clear, succinct language. Follow current APA rules for attributing sources that support your analysis and conclusions.
Academic Integrity and APA Formatting
As a reminder related to using current APA rules to ensure academic honesty:
When using a direct quote (using exact or nearly exact wording), you must enclose the quoted wording in quotation marks, immediately followed by an in-text citation. The source must then be listed on your references page.
When paraphrasing (using your own words to describe a non-original idea), the paraphrased idea must be immediately followed by an in-text citation, and the source must be listed in your references page.
Refer to the scoring guide to ensure that your work meets the grading criteria for this assignment.
Example assignment: You may use the Week 6 Assignment Example [PDF] to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like.
Additional Requirements
Your assignment should also meet the following requirements:
Written communication: Communication should be clear and well organized, and support a central idea, with no technical writing errors, as expected of a business professional.
References: References and citations are formatted in consistent style, with a preference for using current APA style and formatting.
Number of resources: Use a minimum of three scholarly resources related to the content of the assignment.
Length of paper: 3–5 typed, double-spaced pages in addition to the title and references pages.
Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
Once you have completed your assignment, submit your paper to SafeAssign as a draft. Review the report and correct any citations you missed or cited incorrectly before submitting your assignment for grading.
Your paper is due by midnight CST Sunday.
SCORING GUIDE
Your work will be evaluated using this criteria.VIEW SCORING GUIDECompetencies Measured
By successfully completing this assignment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
Competency 1: Explain the underlying principles of successful businesses.
Explain the primary purpose of functional areas of an organization.
Explain how the purpose of functional areas supports the organizational goals.
Describe the type of organizational structure best suited for functional areas.
Competency 5: Communicate in a manner that is scholarly, professional, and consistent with expectations for the field of business.
Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions.
Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references.
