Question

Scenario: Six months into an academic development project, the client reviews the progress and issues a stop-work order. The main issues identified during their review were: 1. There were different expectations about the complexity of graphics in course development and course materials. 2. There were different opinions about the level of marketing required (marketing a course versus marketing the whole academy, no post-course promotions, etc.) 3. There were issues with instructors. These were instances where instructors had rescheduled on multiple occasions or cancelled. 4. There were concerns about the subject matter experts. Subject matter experts had been hired outside of the budgeted amount. 5. There were concerns about the subject matter experts not providing the level of technical writing expertise required, which resulted in having to hire additional technical writers. MRG HPI addressed some of these concerns by removing the videotaping requirement during the analysis phase and removing the repeat courses that were going to be offered during the final contract year. By eliminating videotaping and repeat courses, the remaining courses to be developed and presented were stretched over the rest of the contract of 2.5 years. This mean that instead of developing and offering the 15 courses using two teams in a staggered fashion over two years, MRG HPI must reduce staff. Currently, there are three senior instructional designers, six graphic artists, three document specialists, six technical writers, three subject matter experts, and two editors assigned to the teams. MRG HPI has subject matter experts as consultants under contract. They don’t want to lose their staff, but they may have no choice but to let some go.

Questions: 1. What re the challenges faced by the Human Resource department in this scenario?

2. What can be done to retain the employees?

3. What communication strategy should be adopted to implement employee retention strategies?

Answer 1

1) The various challenges faced by HR in this scenario are :

The inability to keep the project tasks and activities under the budget resulting from hiring the specialised experts,

The inability of subject matter experts to impart technical knowledge and understanding resulting in hiring of additional technical staff which add to the cost.

The bad and ineffective communication taking place in the organization which breeds confusions and misunderstandings.

Lack of proper control over the staff, lack of targeted measures, lack of performance appraisal and lack of supervision resulting in inability to achieve desired performance targets and inability to instructor properly.

The dissatisfaction from expectations deviating from reality due to lack of understanding and comprehension about how to transfer course material into course development.

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2) The most essential thing that can be done to retain employees will be establishing and putting an efficient communication strategy at place so as to ensure that employees work to their maximum potential and utilise their capacity without cancelling work schedules and achieving targets in short span of time which can save laying off them. For employee retention the budget needs to be controlled so that investment in employees does suck large costs essentially required for other resources. The compensation strategy should be revised to pay employees on the bais of their work performed and performance outputs which can reduce cost and save employee layoff.

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3) The communication strategies such as Reporting of tasks performed, Continuous performance appraisal, establishing of proper feedback mechanism, encouraging follow up messages, checking and monitoring performance outputs and most importantly providing required or essential supervision and instructions on how to perform tasks in desired manner to guide them towards accomplishments of objectives will help in employee retention. These communication techniques can to a very great extend guide the retention strategies .

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