case study 1

Answer the Question 1 Page Apa

“Case 1.1. The Changing Role of Human Resources in Organizations: The Curious Case of Zappos

In the 1980s, when you were interviewed or hired for a job you often met a person from the company who worked in the Personnel Office.

The Personnel Office was viewed as a place where each employee filed the necessary forms to work at the company. The Personnel Office was considered a staff management area where you learned about the policies and rules of being an employee at the company. Personnel was considered a staff management area, since they only advised line managers in some field of expertise. For example, Personnel would have consultants with specialized experience in accounting or providing input on legal issues to support the line managers that were creating the product.

Fortunately, over the years the Personnel Office became known as the Human Resources (HR) Department. HR has become a larger part of the strategic planning process in many companies. The HR manager often helps to set policies and strategies in relation to the workforce at an organization. At the same time, HR managers continue to support line managers by constantly improving areas such as finding prospective new employees, training employees, improving employee motivation, searching and evaluating lower cost and higher quality health-care benefits, providing information on retirement services, and many other activities designed to make sure employees are able to complete their jobs.

Zappos, a very successful online retailer that sells shoes mainly to women, is an example of a younger company that provides a modern approach to human resource management. The human resources department at Zappos organizes unique events to help celebrate the excitement at Zappos. To begin the process of working at Zappos, the initial job interview is often conducted in an informal atmosphere to allow the prospective employee to feel comfortable. New employees are offered $ 2,000 if they don’t want to stay with the company. Very few employees decide to leave the company since they are excited to work for Zappos and their exciting CEO Tony Heish. 1

Zappos has been so successful that it was purchased by Amazon in 2009 for over $ 807 million. Zappos runs independently of Amazon to protect its unique human resources department. 2

Rebecca Henry is the former director of human resources for Zappos. She believes the company consciously decides what the corporate culture needs to look like based on ten core values. Each new employee is trained by an HR person on each of the following ten values:

· Deliver WOW through Service

· Embrace and Drive Change

· Create Fun and a Little Weirdness

· Be Adventurous

· Be Creative and Open-Minded

· Pursue Growth and Learning

· Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication

· Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

· Do More With Less

· Be Passionate and Determined, Be Humble 3

The HR Department works with upper-level management to develop employee job descriptions, the hiring process, on-the-job training, and the day-to-day work environment based on these unique core values.

Zappos is always exploring new ideas to improve its human resources process. For example, to improve the recruiting process, it has developed a social network known as Zappos Insiders. Zappos Insiders allows prospective employees to interact with current employees to see if they would be a good fit with the creative culture at Zappos. 4

Tony Heish’s latest idea is to make sure the people working at Zappos are truly motivated to work at his company. All employees were offered the option to leave the company with a severance package if they didn’t want to participate in a self-management program. Self-management is a newer management idea that is based on having agile workers. Employees learn to manage themselves and move from job to job instead of staying with a single static job. The goal is for employees to give up traditional job titles and work on multiple tasks, rather than at a specific job. An employee’s job is constantly changing instead of being static.

Overall, 220 employees (14%) took the severance package offered by Heish to weed out employees who wanted to change companies, who were ready for retirement, or decided to leave for their own reasons. However, that also means 84 percent of the remaining employees are employees who are motivated to make Zappos an even more successful online retailer. 5

Case Questions

1. Should Tony Heish be concerned that a large number of managers and employees might reject self-management, leave the company, and accept a severance package?

2. What benefits or incentives do employees experience at Zappos that make them want to stay with the company?

3. Does it appear the Human Resources Department at Zappos is a staff or a line area?

4. Does human resources at Zappos create revenue for the organization?

5. If you were the HR manager at Zappos, would you support the Zappos Insider program as a reliable source of acquiring new prospective employees? Case 1.2. HRM”