ICTE, University of Queensland

Transcription

1 1 Institute for Continuing & TESOL Education, University of Queensland School for International Training Cambridge ESOL International Diploma in Language Teaching Management Centre ICTE, University of Queensland Module No. & Name Module 3, Human Resource Management & Communication Name Assignment Title Case Study A case study of how to communicate the career path clearly to the employees under the current situation of distributed HR responsibilities at EF Word length 2485 No of separate documents 0 Date submitted Dec 8,2014

2 2 Contents Page The Description 3 The problems 5 The possible solutions 9 Conclusion 12 References 16

3 3 A case study of how to communicate the career path clearly to the employees under the current situation of distributed HR responsibilities at EF The Description Education First (EF) is a multinational company in English training industry. It has branches in different courtiers and regions worldwide. In EF China, there are quite a few different product lines, such as EFEC for adults, Kids and Teens schools for children and teenagers, CLT for corporate training, overseas study and online schools. EF is a big English training company and it is always changing and progressing. Currently, EF doesn t have an HR department. The HR functions have been shared with: 1. The Teacher Recruitment and Training Department (TRT) 2. The Recruitment and Development Department (RED Team) 3. The Employment and Payroll Department 4. The Legal Department All of the above departments have some functions of the HR management and all of them are based at the headquarters in Shanghai, China. TRT is responsible for teachers, usually hires teachers, and gives orientation, on boarding training, LTA training and other teacher qualification and management training. It also deals with some

4 4 emergency regarding teachers such as teachers sickness and death. Recently, TRT also takes responsibility for teacher engagement to improve teacher retention. RED team focuses on hiring non-academic staff such as sales and service staff and also gives them orientation, in-service, management and business training. The Employment and Payroll team deals with finance such as staff payroll, new hiring, staff termination and staff contracts. The Legal Department handles the legal issues from both employees and customers. They also make sure EF policies align with the local laws, for example, Chinese labor law, contract law, tax law, etc. In each EFEC center, all the center managers : Center General Manager (CGM) Center Sales Manager (CSM), Center Operation Manager (COM) and Center Education Manager(CEM) all take some HR responsibilities such as doing payroll; managing leaves e.g. annual leave, sick leave and unpaid leave, etc. There is an HR intranet called OPAL, which is an HR tool. Staff can use it to apply for leaves, expense reimbursement and managers can submit new hires or terminations, and approve leaves or expenses. The advantage of no centralized HR department is that the company can be very flexible to adjust their policies and strategies. As EF is living in

5 5 chains, i.e. multiple outlet operations (Pickering, G, Living in Chains, ELT Management Number 30 March 2001), which means it has many branches or products in different countries and regions, the distributed HR responsibilities can meet the local needs, help company adjust its business and operation strategies and make changes quickly. However, there are also some disadvantages. Without the centralized HR department, EF has no overview of the HR policies of the company. Human resources policies help to ensure the company is in compliance with legal requirements. In addition, Human resource policies give management the opportunity to thoroughly evaluate the basic needs of the organization as well as the needs of the individual employee. ( How to Write Excellent Human Resources Policies by Jennifer S. Ellerman and Brian H. Kleiner, Volume 23 November 7/8 2000, Management Research News). The problems Note: with the distributed HR responsibilities and management, there can be many problems. Here we just focus on the problems of how to communicate the career path clearly to the employees. 1. Inconsistent policies change the career path suddenly. As a progressive company, EF senior management and policies constantly change. This also affects the employee s career path and advancement

6 6 because the company polices change can lead to the change of organizational structures, which means the needs of certain positions in different departments will increase, decrease, or even disappear. Another factor is that some senior managers are hired from other industries with no education industry background, so they may want to introduce some new modes of running business at EF, which will also lead to restructure the organization. Take the Education Service Team, i.e. teacher team in EFEC as an example, from which we can see how the structure change affects teaching staff. In 2013 the organigram (chart 1) as shown below is the original center structure of EFEC. Center Operation Center Sales Chart 1 The center management was divided into two parts: Operation and Sales.

7 7 In the operation line, Center Director (CD) is in charge of two departments: teachers and service staff. Education Service Supervisor reports to both CD (the solid line) and Area Manager (the dotted line), who is responsible for supporting Education Service Supervisors in an area. Both Area manager and CD report to Area Director of operation. As for the sales line, the sales CD reports to Regional Sales Director. This division of functions did create a clear career path. It was very specialized, though. Teachers could see the career advancement path clearly, which became the motivation of some experienced and ambitious teachers later on. However, this structure lasted for only 9 months. Due to the senior management change, another restructuring happened. The organigram (Chart 2) was the new structure as the result: CGM CEM COM CSM Center Marketing Officer Center Financial Team Teachers Service Consultants Course Consultants Center promoters Chart 2 The purpose of this restructuring is to help develop employees general skills rather than very specialized skills. For example, CEM does not only take the responsibility of training teachers, but also responsible for the

8 8 center growing such as supporting sales, improving customer service taking more HR responsibilities and taking part in P&L management. It is good for employees and managers on the long run to develop more skills outside their specialty. However, when this structure first came out, some ambitious teachers felt the hope to be CEM was very little because the requirement of being a CEM is much higher than being a supervisor. In this structure, CEM was the only managerial position on the team. There was not a stepping stone to the CEM position and the appointment of CEM was not transparent. Eventually, some renewable teachers left the company with frustration. 2. Communication problems stop employees see the opportunity of their career path. Too many different departments sharing HR functions can also create communication problems. As there are too many communication lines, the information to the front line staff will have different versions of understanding, which will cause confusion. Center managers will always need to check with the different departments for the updates when issues come. The similar situation also happens to the employee s career path. When teachers ask if they want to check some information about what other positions available within the company and which department they can contact to apply for the positions they want, it will be hard to answer these questions. All the related information is spread

9 9 in those departments sharing HR functions and they do not usually share the vacancy to all employees. 3. No clear Career advancement path can be seen. As an organization, there is not a clear map and review of the needs of each position. This resulted in promotion and demotion happened very quickly sometimes even less than a year s time. For example, before the EFEC restructuring, there were 13 supervisors and 3 area managers, but after the restructuring there were only 9 CEM positions available. It was certain that only 9 out of 16 people could be CEM and 7 out of 16 had to be demoted as teachers. It is no doubt that the dissatisfaction, frustration, and even resentment could come from those demoted supervisors. Some of them eventually left the company with very negative attitude. It s hard to find the career advancement path, which also leads to the high turnover of staff and even managers. The possible solutions EF as a fast-growing LTO always wants to seek and identify good employees. As an employee working in an organization, it is very natural to seek career advancement. Therefore, creating a clear career advancement path is essential to an LTO because it will help hire employees effectively and retain good staff. 1. Conducting Job Audit to set the necessary positions. Both RED and TRT can conduct the job audit to see if it s necessary to

10 10 hire an employee when there is a vacant position, especially a managerial position, in each department or product line and decide if the position can be hired from within or outside. Evaluation This solution can help avoid cutting off some positions suddenly or minimize the potential negative impact on demotion. However, it requires departmental cooperation, i.e. TRT and RED team need to work closely together to evaluate each position in the company. The challenge will be the time and frequency, i.e. when to audit and how often to audit. How to distribute the workload between these two departments and who will be the leader to do so are the questions need to be answered. Thus, this solution may not be easily conducted in the current situation. 2. Managers map their team members and make succession plans. Managers can evaluate their staff based on their performance and competency to think about their possible development and next movement. For example, some teachers may not be a good manager but can be a good trainer, so the manager can help them develop training skills. Making succession plan can also help the company to find the right person to do the right job within a short time. As for the employee, this is also a way of career advancement. For example, a well-developed senior teacher can be a successor for CEM. The turnover of CEM in EFEC is quite high, so it will be necessary to prepare the succession plan.

11 11 Fortunately, the senior management has realized the importance of succession plan, so the recent EFEC center structure has been changed like this as below (Chart 3): CGM CEM COM CSM Center Marketing Officer Center Financial Team Senior Teacher Teachers Service Consultants Course Consultants Center promoters Chart 3 With the senior teacher position added, teachers can see the clear career path now and at the same time when CEM is away or leaves the company, senior teacher can function immediately to make the center keep operating. For senior teachers, this will be a good chance to move up to the CEM position if they are competent and qualified. Evaluation In reality this solution should be easier than the previous one and it should be quite feasible for managers to do it because they do the performance review for their staff anyway. They just need to go one step further: to record and analyze those strong performers and see where they can develop, then work out the training needs and delegate some relevant tasks to them to build up their competency for the future

12 12 positions. 3. Employees need to know what career opportunities are available to them. For example, we could hold EF career fairs in regional offices with representatives from other departments on hand to show teachers what jobs are available in their respective departments and create transparent application process where open positions are regularly advertised outside of the department that they are being recruited for, e.g. EFEC should advertise CEM positions to kids &teen teachers and vice versa. Evaluation This solution can help teachers who seek higher positions to find opportunities because within the department the career opportunities are always limited, but if they seek outside the department, they will find more. With the Headquarters located in Shanghai, this solution might be working better in Shanghai than the other regions where they will not have enough people or positions in their head offices to hold such a fair. 4. ing open positions to all teachers would help to create the reality that there are more career opportunities within EF. Posting positions on the HR intranet to all staff would also create the sense of transparency and offer varieties of choice. For example, in EFEC, the international teachers are very young, usually in their early twenties, so they re really eager to seek their career advancement path and positions other than the teacher. If they can see the various job opportunities

13 13 within EF, they will stay longer to try seeking those opportunities first rather than seeking opportunities outside the company, which can improve the teacher retention. Evaluation This solution should be easier and more feasible than solution 3 because it does not require a lot of logistic support and it saves labor power. It just needs the technological support and does not have any restrictions in regions. It should be considered on the top list. 5. Avoid politics which surrounds transfers at the moment and praise managers who develop their staff and encourage them to seek out opportunities in other areas of the company. This is very important because if there involves politics, employees will feel the injustice and the company will lose its trust from the employees. However, it s hard to avoid politics completely. 6. Build the Continuing Professional Development Training system to help employees get ready for moving up. It should be managers responsibilities to train and develop their staff so that they can be ready for the higher positions to be opened in the future. If managers encourage their staff to seek the opportunities outside their own department, this actually can create a learning needs for the employees and they will be motivated to be responsible for their self-development. As for the company, hiring from within can reduce the cost and also get

14 14 someone who has already understood the company culture. Evaluation For this solution, the senior management may also consider the cost of building such a training system. It will be crucial to work out a training evaluation system to show the senior management that the CPD system is worthwhile. Anyway, this should be a long-term goal for an LTO.. 7. Put official HR policies on the intranet as a guide. Even though each department or product has different ways of doing things, there is still a general rule to guide managers and employees so that the communication can be transparent. After those employees change their positions in different departments or product line, there will not have a kind of feeling that they enter a totally new world, which is helpful to their adaption to their new jobs. This should be easy to do and should be the first thing to do among all the solutions. Conclusion EF current distributed HR functions and management have its own advantages and benefits that make the company grow fast and make changes quickly to meet the external challenges such as marketing competition, competitor s strategies, and it has been successful so far. However, when the organization is getting bigger and bigger, the staff turnover is also very high, which adds to the pressure of staff recruitment. On the staff and employees side, job security and career

15 15 advancement is also very important. Therefore, it is very necessary to balance the needs and expectations of the LTO and employees. If every employee knows the next movement within or outside their department and product line, it can help with staff retention, reduce the pressure of recruitment and can also help build the training system for continuing professional development within the whole organization across the department. In that sense, EF can really be a learning organization.

16 16 References: Pickering, G, 1999, The learning organization: an idea whose time has come? ELT Management Number 27. Pickering, G, Living in Chains, ELT Management Number 30 March 2001 White, R.V. Hockly, A. Laughner, M.S&van der Horst Jansen, J. (2008) From Teacher to Manager: Managing Language Teaching Organizations, CUP, Cambridge. How to Write Excellent Human Resources Policies by Jennifer S. Ellerman and Brian H. Kleiner, Volume 23 November 7/8 2000, Management Research News Nigel Hemmington Attitude to CPD: Establishing a culture of Life Long Learning at Work Continuing professional Development Issue 4, 1999, How to Hire Employees Effectively by Fang Hsiao and Brian H. Kleinner, Volume 25 Number