Geetha Pratap

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Questions for Individual Project (Part 1: Ideal length 1.5 pages for each Qn.)

1. You have learned about four ways of measuring effectiveness and need to choose
the best approach (or combination of approaches) that is/are applicable to your
current job. Choose another employee from your own department whose
effectiveness measurements require a significantly different approach. Explain the
reasons for the difference(s) and its utility (Based on Chapter 1).

a) The company I work for is Harman Connected Services, which is the fourth division of
Harman International, and Samsung Electronics has now acquired this company. Now
we are wholly subsidiary of Samsung Electronics.

Basically our organization is a product of many companies merged and acquired and
with a varied products starting from connected car, lifestyle audio, professional services
and IT connected services.

I work as the Head of HR(erstwhile director now designated as Senior Manager HR) for
the largest division vertical, which is the digital transformation services in Harman
connected services. So the skills and resources we have are very dynamic based on the
projects and the products or services we are working on.

Hence at this point there is one approach that is applicable to my job considering the
present scenario, the Internal systems approach. This will help me and my managers to
strategically change and use a structure that will ensure fast adaptability to the dynamic
atmosphere in the organization.

My team and myself we have to ensure that is there is no conflict in work interest since
the employees are working in co ordination with multiple products/services to new
customers and leaders due to the constant change of culture owing to mergers.

The need to cut on down on the time taken to make decisions is also crucial since we
are at risk of losing out important deadlines on projects since we are trying to
understand the new clients. So HR has to actively encourage and be part of all the
strategic meetings like the staff meetings with the business heads and the finance calls
and the resource management meetings to understand the priority of the projects and
their timelines and ensure quick employee rotation and proper skills and resources are
allotted to the projects.

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The most crucial part of the merger is the change management, which is evident in the
organization owing to the policy and procedural changes. This has to be addressed by
me (HR team) on consistent and periodic basis so the vision and mission values of the
organization is clear and the employees do not lose out time understanding the basics
of their work.

There by employee engagement has to be in forefront ensuring that the employees are
motivated and are in sync with the rapid changes happening in the organization.

So one of the main and very important aspect directly applicable to me and my entire
team is to have an increased employee interaction, forums, engagement activities to
keep the employees pumped and optimistic about the new environment and the
benefits that the changes have brought in.

Also we need to actively ensure there is no work conflict or conflict of interest directly
related to the diversity in my organization.

Working in perfect co ordination with the learning and development team to ensure
that the up skilling and re skilling of the resources so that the innovation curve is
constant and raising and time taken to have the skills required in each project will be
multi skilled resources ensuring project closures on time and moving on to new areas.

Overall with the present environment in my organization and the requirement of HR

business partners a little different, the internal systems approach would be highly
applicable to my job at this stage.

b) I manage the DTS vertical/division and also have a colleague who is handling the
Analytical vertical division of the organization.

Since this is the analytical division, my colleague’s approach as I have observed tends to
lean more towards the technical approach. This would possible be the best approach if
the organization was not as diversified as it is now and not taking into account the
multiple layers of hierarchy and new management introduced.

Typically as HR we need to first analyze the pulse of the employees during such drastic
continuous constant changes like Harman’s present scenario and then changes or apply
the different approaches that is the need of the hour.

The analytics divisions comprises of roughly 1500 employees working in different

sections of the vertical both directly and indirectly with the clients. Hence at this point
the effective measure to be taken is initiate the internal system approach and
simultaneously also use the technical approach to ensure the customer services and
product quality and costs are least affected.

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2. Identify and illustrate the differences in stakeholder conflict between an HR
professional involved in compensation role and another HR professional involved in
staffing role. How will you solve chosen conflicts based on the concepts discussed
during the course? (Based on Chapter).

Compensation is the most integral part of human resources management and

contributes to the success of the organization. The compensation HR professional
should provide a logical method for determining how much employees should be paid
for performing their jobs. Salary and wages are main motivation and retaining the
employees, else they may seek alternative employment or not join the organization if
the pay levels are inadequate.

There fore the HR professional in compensation and staffing have more or less similar
roles of determining and maintaining the pay levels that attract candidates in case of HR
staffing professional and in case of compensation role it would be to retain and maintain
the quality of resources.

Compensation role or function affects the planning, staffing and the growth of the
resource or the existing professionals and their focus would be more on finding cost
effective plans to maintain a strategy that will promote growth within the organization
than the staffing role who rely on external recruiting for positions in the organization
but at the same time position the organizations brand by the pay levels and benefits
that the organization will offer the resources.

The major conflict between the compensation HR professional and the staffing HR
professional are:

a) Compensation affects the business success once the resources is on board and
the payroll costs must be managed and controlled by the compensation team.
They are more concerned in retaining talent and also gaining maximum return of
investment on the resources
While the staffing role will have to present the comp structure to attract new
talent into the organization and the benefits offered plays a crucial role in
getting the right talent in. They would have to present a very positive picture of
the pay compared to similar positions in the relevant markets.
b) The compensation professionals have to quickly turn around and change the
compensation programs based on very short notice owing to the changes caused
by the technological, cultural, mergers and acquisition environments.
The staffing professional would have sold the job based on the existing comp
structure and benefits and cannot convince the resources of the changes once

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 the offers are accepted by the candidates leading to a major conflict between
the compensation policy changes and the period of acceptance of the offer.

c) The HR professional in compensation have to create and refine companies

policies essentially reflecting the company’s values and structure and also
address issues of competitiveness, retain and motivate employees once they are
in the organization.
The staffing professional looks at the compensation as a major criteria to get the
major players in the market to join the organization apart from offering a role
that would match the candidates skill set and growth once in the organization.
d) The Compensation professional develops compensation programs the involves
the consolidation of employees as per their roles, positions, levels and different
types of pay structure is adopted based on the company’s operation and
management actions.
The staffing, training and all other department have to develop and strategize
based on these programs.
Most of the conflicts are real time and can be addressed following few basic
principles and models.
Basically since both the professionals are in human resources it would be easy to
adopt some models that would not cost the company its brand or values and not
being compromised on their goals.
The staffing professional has to clearly adopt some of the ethics model while
recruiting talent like the utilitarian model where they are able to offer the
greatest opportunities without false promises to the candidates
The recruitment team should be very realistic and the senior recruiting staffing
managers should ensure and actions on hiring should be based on the different
sets as per the compensation structures offered.

The compensation professionals should then adopt the justice model once the
employees have on boarded which will ensure to keep the employees motivated
and understanding the steps taken are made taking into account the greater
good for the various job roles existing in the companies.
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3. Compare HR department your organization with that of other organization in the
same sector and identify aspects of specific and generic environment factors unique
(on a relative basis) to of your firm. Whether these factors changed over a period of
last 5-10 years? Explain the impact of these three environment factors on unique
applications of resource dependence theory over the last 5-10 years in your
organization. (Based on Chapter 3).

As mentioned in the beginning our company is a unique combination of

a) Navigation, Multimedia, Connectivity, Telematics, and Safety & Security Solutions

b) Premium Branded Audio products for use at home, in the car and on the go.
Audio, Lighting, Video Switching and Enterprise Automation for Entertainment and
Enterprises.

c) Cloud, Mobility and Analytics Software Solutions along with OTA update
technologies for Automotive, Mobile and Enterprises.

Hence our HR department consists of HR professional who work in all these different
sectors where the outside stakeholders like customers, distributors, unions (present
in some divisions), suppliers are all different for each division. Thereby the specific
and generic environment is very unique unlike other organizations in the same
sectors. Since we have culminated everything under one umbrella whereas the
other organizations have sister concerns for each product and services. All the HR
professionals are working under the same buckets with similar set of policies and
procedures and guidelines.

We have internal stakeholders who also fall under the outside stakeholder’s
category when it comes to offering services to the products that we manufacture.
The connected car division have internal customers servicing the products and
developing applications internally and external clients who are doing the same. We
have presence in US, Europe and Israel. Israel is a security based applications
operations where the specific environment has internal stakeholders who are also
our external stakeholders since these finished services are used within our systems
and also by the Israel government.

There by the HR in all our different sectors are using policies consistent across but
with stakeholders who are influencing our organizations working in different areas.
Hence the global team, domestic team and different sectors all work in sync
according to the changes, types, cultural diversities of our customers who influence
the organizations overall ability to attain, attract and retain resources.

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General environment where the national differences like the wages, domestic and
global products (eg. JBL produces ear phones, sound systems which are
manufactured to cater to domestic and international market), economic standard of
the country, we have different abilities in our products in each country and the four
divisions of Harman which are cultural, product wise and service wise totally unique
to each other but co exist in the same organization

The HR department totally works in sync in order to keep the policies, procedures be
it the offer letters, the SOWs with the customers across the four divisions, the
benefits and compensation structures perfectly stable and aligned.

There are no multiple types of offers or SOWs except clauses, which vary, based on
the countries, product, services offered.

These factors have definitely changed in the past years in many ways owing to the
new acquisition now by Samsung. We are now adopting the Korean way of reaching
out to external stakeholders, customers, suppliers etc. Since Samsung itself is by
and large self sufficient

The dependencies on other organizations for supply of resources have reduced

drastically as explained before since we now have the hardware, the services and
the resources across all the four divisions.

The capability management of resources across the four divisions and the mother
concern is on rotation based on what are the resources needs, kind of resources
whether it is raw material, skills etc. This has reduced the external dependencies on
suppliers and customers.

Able to largely influence the customers and competitors while displaying the varied
and large portfolio existing in the organization. Hence minimizing dependency on
the other organizations for the supply of resources and are able to find creative
ways to influence them with the skillsets to make resources available.

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4. Apply four spans discussed as a part of chapter five (article will be shared later) to
two sub-functions of HR department (staffing and compensation for example) make
recommendations based on your analysis. If the HR department is very small in
allocated organization (with less than five members or no clear distinction across
sub-functions, you may do the comparison between HR department and some other
department)

Business HR partner and Recruitment

Span of control – The Span of Control for a business HR partner should be

narrow since it is not a number game but based more on smart collaboration
than by control. The teams at all level below the senior HR partner have to be
inspired to work towards the vertical or the division’s mission and vision. And
achieve their goals by properly aligning to their KRAs by performing transactional
and transformational activities as mentioned in their end goals and this leads to
efficient span of accountability since at all levels the standard process and
guidelines are followed.
Since the reach at each level is focused and categorized, the span of influence
relatively increases and work assigned will be very interactive, fruitful and leads
to required results. The employees are able to focus on the tasks assigned to
them without having to be tangled with senior management goals that might
lead to confusion and overlap of roles and jobs
The entire structure should work in a fluid and flexible co operative manner
hence the business HR partner should be a smart and efficient leader and team
player both within the business partnering team, interdependent HR teams like
recruitment, L&D and the business strategic team. This leads to Span of support
internally and externally leading to attaining the mission of the business and
department. Since each individual is working with their goals in mind and the
completion or the extent of implementation, recognition results will be evident
and hence recognition and rewards becomes transparent and real time.
Narrow span of control will lead to effective communication to the next level
with minimal confusion, which can be further percolated down to the next level
and so on. The team should be give free hand in using their creativity and
influence levels to create an healthy work environment. Micro management will
lead to frustration among the team especially if coming from an high level.

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Recruitment:
The same applies to recruitment department as well where each senior recruiter is has a
narrow span of control. This will lead to the targets for each level being divided by
Vertical, Business Units and Projects in turn breakdowns the skills required at each level.
So the junior most recruiter will only focus on the projects and the skills required at that
level, the middle management recruiters will look at it business wise and so and on. The
senior manager can then put all this together and get a very clear holistic view of the
target needed to achieve and target achieved so far and then implement new strategic
plans at all levels after assessing the weak areas and problem areas at each level.

The Span of accountability will also increases and the cost reduces to a large extent
since each level recruiters are able to address a large workload with interference. The
span of influence with the individual stakeholders becomes high and transparent as
each unit is assigned to a group and individual based on their technical capability

Once the target is achieved there will be very clear view of the high performers and
employees who were able to close required targets and at the same time assist others
as well hence Span of support becomes evident on who is the clear talented performer
and does out of box thinking to attain the KRAs.

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5. Relate the existing structure of HR department of your organization to any structure
discussed in chapter 6 and present the same in the form of an organization chart in
one page. Identify the critical roles (three to five) and reasons for your choice based
on their contribution in managing the external/internal uncertainties.

Global HR Head

VP - Talent VP-
VP - Global VP - Rewards & VP - Process &
VP - Head HR VP - L&D Acquisition & VP-Operations Communication
Immigration REcognition Quality
RMG & Branding

Director HR
(Business
Partner)

Senior Manager -
HR

Teams upto
Associate level

Our HR team organization structure is as above, though I have not filled for all other HR
functions. It is more of a functional structure and all the people with common skills and
expertise are grouped.
The Business HR is lead by the VP HR Head and he manages for the entire organization.
We have four divisions and each division is lead by Director/Senior Manager- HR and
they in turn have teams managing different BUs, Projects and teams.
The Leads HR Business partners for each division, the recruitment leads and the L&D
and the Resource management group play very crucial roles.
Since each function specialize in their area and have the abilities to inter learn and there
is constant learning and improvement at every level in each function. All the functions
work hand in hand and cater to the needs of the business. Since like-minded experts
with varying levels form the groups, there is scope of learning from top to bottom and
bottom to top. Every individual is an expert at his/her level leading to highly productive
and task-oriented environment. Basically most of the internal uncertainties will be
addressed as part of every day assignments.

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This works very well in addressing the internal uncertainties to a very large extent based
on the facts that all the functions work closely and over a period of time work very
effectively.
The external uncertainties that come along with the expansion and integration of
business becomes difficult. Since along with expansion comes increase in products,
manufacturing, geographic diversities etc. When this happens each function tends to
focus only on their particular role like the recruitment focusing on only hiring experts on
varied skills instead of seeing what is already available in the organization. Business HR
will work only on the retaining the work force and motivation and does not move
forward with strategic ideas. Each function will grow apart has the differentiation and
integration occurs and grows in parallel the functions grow into tall hierarchies
The managers will spend more time is dealing with the immediate impending tasks
rather than strategize or address the long-term issues.
Hence there are both positive and negative aspects to any kind of structure but we need
to salvage and try different methods over a period of time and adopt changes as the per
the changes occurring in the organization.
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6. Explain the relationship between strategy, structure and culture in your
organization. Have the values in your organization changed during last 3-5 years and
give possible reasons for the change or no changes (Based on Chapter 8)?

An organization’s strategy is a plan of action aimed at reaching specific goals and

staying in good relations with clients and vendors and consistently outperforming
competition. On the other hand, an organization’s structure is the way the pieces of
the organization fit together internally. For the organization to deliver its plans, the
strategy and the structure must be woven together seamlessly. Organizational
structure is a term used to highlight the way a company thinks about hierarchy,
assigns tasks to personnel and ensures its workforce works collaboratively to
achieve a common goal. The goal is to avoid task overlap and workforce confusion.
For long time, structure has been viewed as something separate from strategy, but
various researches have proven that structure and strategy are dependent on each
other. A company's organizational structure is based on the result of the analysis of
organizational strategy. Strategy follows structure. What the organization does
defines the strategy. Changing strategy means changing what everyone in the
organization does. When an organization changes its structure and not its strategy,
the strategy will change to fit the new structure.
The strategy of our company is “Setting the foundation for a connected enterprise
by providing expertise in organizational transformation and helping companies stay
connected better and utilize the data generated to provide improved overall
experiences.”
My company had 3 different divisions to start with; Mobility, Auto and Services. The
services division played a connecting role between the auto and mobility divisions
and created a seamless connectivity between both the divisions. This connectivity
created a holistic access to all the data of all the 3 divisions, which led to better
overall business results. This success led to the creation of the above mentioned
strategy and the company started offering connected solutions rather than just
products that connected. The organization structure was then fine-tuned further
based on the industry verticals rather than products. So there was a single team
providing all the needed products that take care of the end-to-end operations,
implementing, supporting and serving the customer. So from Mobility and Auto, the
structure was evolved to truly align with the strategy and it was restructured based
on key industry verticals namely, Retail, BFSI, Healthcare, Automotive.

The core values of an organization are those values which form the foundation on
which the organization performs work and conducts business. In an ever-changing

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 world, core values are constant. Core values are not descriptions of the work or the
strategies employed to accomplish a mission. The core values are the basic
elements of how the organization goes about its work, how employees interact with
each other, how they engage with customers, stakeholders and the community at
large and strategies they employ to achieve the mission. They are the practices that
an organization uses every day in everything we do. The core values of my
organization is as follows; “At ------ we are committed to developing and delivering
solutions that embrace innovation, superior value and an unmatched customer
experience. We achieve this by fostering a culture of employee
empowerment and creativity, blended with integrity and accountability.” These core
values define and create the image of our company. Irrespective of the market or
the dynamics of the business these core values have always remained relevant and
guided the business and hence not changed.
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