Assessment Two: Case Study Analysis and Presentation

Submission Slides: due Friday 23:55 (Sydney time) end of module 6

Presentation: to be scheduled by the learning facilitator

Context:
The assessment of this subject supports students in developing their skills and knowledge in topics that include strategic human resources management, organisational design, culture and ethics, organisational behaviour, motivation and performance management. Retention and succession planning are important themes.

Instructions:
Assume your group comprises a boutique HR consultancy that has been engaged by a fictional company in an industry of your choice. Prepare a fifteen-minute presentation aimed at the executive team of that company that addresses:
• you are brought in to address a company in crisis. Widespread absenteeism, all-time record low productivity, insubordination, protracted industrial action, and negative media attention—including the business being heralded as an “employer of ‘unchoice’”—fifty per cent turnover and a lousy safety record have contributed to considerable loss of market share. You are engaged to arrest further decline and to recommend actions to take in order to rebuild back into an employer of choice within two years. The executive team is particularly interested in the potential
impacts that your ideas will have on motivation, performance, retention, succession planning and talent management.
• you have been asked to elaborate on culture improvement initiatives. You should outline your proposals you would seek to undertake, highlighting successful case studies you found in the literature.
• as the CEO is considering the future of the firm, in her initial brief she intimated that she believed the present HR director was not qualified enough to lead the firm into the future. You have been asked to make a recommendation for a permanent appointment. Find a suitably qualified candidate through LinkedIn and make justified arguments why an approach to that person should be made, what the terms of their appointment should be and how they would be remunerated.

Make whatever assumptions you deem necessary. Your learning facilitator will schedule a date for class presentations. This may be held face-to-face on a Torrens University campus or virtually via Blackboard Collaborate. It is your responsibility to ensure you are available for the presentations.

There is no prescribed format for the presentation; use your own research to inform its structure. Where you can, be sure to use your creativity to ensure the presentation is informative and entertaining for the executive team; you want to be retained for further engagements or recommendations after all.

Do not presume to waste the client’s time. Assume the time limit is literally a limit and that the executive team will walk out if your presentation breaches it. Students should use the brief to guide what to include in the assessment and the following rubric to inform the standard required.

Note: all team members are required to present and to contribute in the formation of the presentation. When the group is not presenting all team members are required to be in the audience while other groups present, to participate by asking questions and to challenge other groups to meet their potential. Marks for the ‘team work’ criterion below, marked individually, will not be awarded unless all of these conditions are met by all team members.