HR Application: Employee Retention and Engagement

 

his discussion replicates a situation you may be faced with while sitting for the SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP examination.

HR Application

You are an HR vice president of a major corporation that has just acquired a smaller company, which has a groundbreaking IT product. You have a large HR team of almost 60 people, which includes business partners and generalists who support both the corporate headquarters and organizations in the field under the units of human resources information system (HRIS), development and learning, and compensation and benefits. The organization also has a human capital cell performing HR analytics work.
The acquired company is a medium-sized firm with about 2,000 employees. It is quite new and has some large inconsistencies in pay. Some units are highly productive, while others have marginal production. Employee engagement also varies within the units. Some units have a very high engagement, but some other units have experienced a 20 percent turnover rate in the last year, including separations and issues of instability. As the HR vice president, you are now tasked with addressing, mitigating, and repairing the challenges in this organization.

As the HR vice president, respond to the following:

  • What would you do in this situation?
  • What would you consider most important?
  • What actions would you take?
  • What assumptions are you making regarding actions you would take to correct HR-related challenges?
  • What resources in your organization might you use to address the many issues present in the acquired organization?