Project Management Assignment: Case Study Analysis of Eleven Organizations

Question

Task: Assessment Details:
A case study related to project human resources, communications and stakeholders is given and students need to review the case carefully and answer the questions. The case study questions will be distributed to the students in week 3. Students might need to investigate further references to
comprehensively address the questions in a critical manner. In addition, summary of recently published articles relevant to project human resource, communications and stakeholder management need to be added to the discussion.

Answer

Overview and justification
The case study talks about the eleven organizations that are trying towards the development of the best capability of their employees. The various industries and organizations that have been discussed in the case study are food production industry, shipping industry, manufacturing industry, professional service, construction industry, health industry, finance industry, nonprofit organization. The case study reflects practices which promotes usage of employees’ effective skills. The case study talks about job redesign, job rotation, employee participation and autonomy. Five major critical success factors have been identified from the research study of 11 Australian companies. Effective and efficient leadership and management help in better skill utilization within the organization. It states that organization should encourage its staff in decisions making, it enhances commitment of the staff. The 11 organization has taken strong steps towards the effective utilization of the staff skills. Many organizations have attained competitive advantage because of the effective utilization of staff’s skills. They have also lowered down staff turnover. They are regarded as the role model for those organizations which wants talented employees and skilled employees. They emphasis, that critical success factors within the organization should be in place so that defined strategies of the company can be achieved.

GHD Management Process
GHD is an engineering company which is privately owned, it is also an architecture as well as environmental consulting enterprise. The company operates in five market sectors which are as follows, water, environment, energy & resources, property & buildings as well as transportation. Company is having 6500 employees in five continents. Company has gained 600% growth rate since its inception that is 1990s (DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION , 2012).

HR Management
The organization major strategy is to engage and involve its employee in the success and development of the company. This has improved business processes. Further it has created new gateways for commercial opportunities. Company believes that if organization is having good staff then it can gain tremendous competitive advantage. It is also important that company should retain its good staff in order to sustain in the market. GHD always appreciated experience as well as value of the staff which are near to the end of the career. These types of staff were the part of ‘Peer Assist Program’ of the company. These employees impart coaching to others employees of the company on the difficult projects and also give solution towards the problem. GHD Company motivates this kind of employees by giving choice of long duration annually. Further more flexibility was given to those employees, who are towards the end of their career. This way company is maintaining their valuable skills and transferring their knowledge to others.

Communication Management
GHD followed formal trading process which was completely based upon ‘Business School Model’.This model comprises technical training, personal development, management as well as leadership development. It helped in maintaining consistency across the units of the business. This also helps in attaining the economies of scale. Training was specifically given for acquisition of skills that are required for the mentioned projects and career development. This way company fulfilled the future needs and also meet own aspiration of the employees. Hence GHD was making maximum use of the available staff. Further company used commitment strategy and engagement strategy for the development of non job particular skills.

Stake Holder Management
Company’s main strategy is to attract as well as retained good and talented staff. Further major objective of the company is to make best use of the available experience as well as skills. GHD cleverly aligned organization strategies with three important objectives of the company. Three core objectives of the company are, to provide better services to the clients, secondly creating and developing a culture which is promoting as well as valuing innovative ideas of the people, thirdly enhancing enterprise efficiency and efficacy. It helped in building as well as expanding of the GHD services which were delivered through the commercialization opportunities. Thus GHD linked client, people and performance of the company. Entire process was handled by leadership team which ensures staff participation as well as engagement. Thus GHD make lot of efforts in making a better work place to work in. Thus it can be said that innovation zone has taken the GHD towards the new height.

Evaluation of the case study
The practice of the company has promoted effective and efficient use of the staff’s skills. Company GHD has designed good job framework. Team work as well as flexibility is the core elements of the job description as well as work arrangement of the company. Further company has put best efforts in its staff participation in business strategy. Company has make use of valuable knowledge as well as experienced of those staff which are nearby to their career end. Further employees were given authority along with the freedom to make their own decision regarding their job. GHD also facilitates learning as well as usage of new talent and skills of the staff. GHD identified current level of the employees and required level of the employees, this way company identified actual need of the business. It can be said that employee’s perception has been divided into five categories that is financial compensation, profession fit, training, personal fit and company culture. Company compared current sources with the idle sources and took remedial action immediately. All employees within the organization have right to select their own mentor which helps in self development of the employees. Thus both professional as well as personal development were maintained and focused. GHD has adopted best set of human resource management as well as actions which are universally applicable. In hr management process there are two thought processes, first indicates best fit and second indicates best practices. Best fit means right human resource for the right business strategy, it indicates human resources policy coordinated and aligned according to the business strategy. This way GHD is focusing on enterprise’s needs on the other end it is fulfilling employee’s needs also. Further company has used good hrpractices which provided superior performances. It helped the GHD Company in attaining competitive edge over its competitors. Hr strategy as well as hr activities are aligned by GHD as per the organizations strategy so that optimum efficiency and efficacy can be achieved. In other words company has used strategic human resource management technique. Company wisely makes use of human equation. Company has put people first for building profits of the company. It selected and hired right people for the company along with that it provided security to the staff. This way company developed effective teams which are self managed. GHD pride that valuable information is easily and readily available to those employees who need it. It is essential to share the right information at the right time so that optimum utilization of the available resources can be made. Company facilitated open communication strategy which developed the trust among the employees. GHD involved staff’s within the decision making, this way it discourage negative reflection from the employees. GHD selected those employees for the organization which are nearby to their career ending. These selected employees have appropriate idea about the work structure of the company they have the understanding that what is required and how it needs to be done. In this way they have clear understanding about the needs of the company. It has been observed that when employees have clear vision goals of the company can be achievable easily (Perucci, 2018). GHD combines best practices within the company;this helped in creating the positive synergy. Positive synergy helped in attaining the competitive advantage over the others. Company guaranteed employment security which resulted into high performance.GHD has given option to the employees to their own trainer, this reduced differentiation among the employees and increased information sharing. Hence it can be said culture of the company was improved so that employees can freely give suggestions and can help towards the betterment of the business activities. This way tremendous value has been added to the business. Goals of the company were achieved successfully (DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION , 2012).

Thus it can be said that GHD implemented best human resource practices within the company. GHD hired the best employees trained the unskilled employees, assured job securities and created opened culture. It helped creation of the open culture were ideas and knowledge can be shared. It also indicates implementation of good human resource practices is not sufficient enough good hr practices should be aligned with the business activities. Company did select hiring which was best fitted to the company thus it can be said business strategy, business goals and employees goals were aligned and coordinated.GHD had make use of effective skills by job redesigning, employee participation, autonomy, job rotation, multiskilling and knowledge transferring. GHD has considered employees of the company as the greatest asset; they treated the employees as competitive advantage element. They attracted as well as retained the best employees. Further they provided encouragement and made them feel as the organization’s integral part, thus company has need proactive planning for the near future. This way short term strategic objectives as well as long term strategic objectives of the business were achieved.

Bibliography
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION . (2012). BETTER USE OF SKILLS BETTER OUTCOMES.
Perucci, D. (2018). A Comprehensive Guide to HR Best Practices You Need to Know This Year.