Athena Bancorp Case Study: HR Strategy and Performance Management

This case study examines Athena Bancorp's HR strategy, focusing on the challenges faced by the company and potential solutions. The case highlights issues such as employee stress, high attrition rates, and the time-consuming hiring process. It delves into the company's focus on customer service, which, while a key success factor, leads to employee overwork and potential burnout. The balanced scorecard is presented, covering financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth perspectives. The assignment analyzes the effectiveness of the company's performance management system and provides recommendations for improvement, considering factors like employee engagement, training, and the use of technology to enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction. The case underscores the importance of aligning HR strategies with overall business goals to achieve sustainable growth and success in a competitive environment.

Athena Bancorp
1. Athena has managed to survive amidst doubts about its success. The case highlights
the HR strategy deployed by Athena to drive its goals to succeed in a service industry
where high performance is a norm. In the short term, especially with respect to its HR
strategy, the following challenges can be foreseen:
 Employees may be experiencing stress and burnout because of the unusual
high demands on high performance and high customer service which are also
the hallmarks of Athena’s success. The engagement levels also have gone
down that may be one of the reasons behind the attrition
 The hiring process seems time consuming because Beth Daniels insists on
knowing everyone personally as well as hiring only experienced
professionals. The costs of hiring these professionals is high and it takes a
long time for the selection process to go through. Owing to this, the present
employees take the heat and must work harder in order to keep up the
deadlines.
 The culture of Athena was such that all team members had to pitch in
whenever required. Employees may have felt their rewards were not
commensurate with these expectations. To keep up with Daniels’ demand for
stellar customer service, employees had to work long hours, go beyond their
job function, and accept pay that was not very high.
2. The success strategies of Athena that may be causing the challenges are its focus on
customer service to the extent of overworking its employees and hearing out all
customer issues at the cost of time and money. The training provided to all
employees to ensure their values aligned with that of Athena also could be one of the
bottle necks in the process of scaling up and having a faster turnaround time.
3. Balanced score card

Financial
To succeed
financially,
how should
we appear to
our
shareholders?
Objectives Measures Targets Initiatives
 Use of
technology to
capitalize on
slow growth
banking
industry
 Process
improvement
with the use
of technology
 Monthly
targets to
improve
efficiency by
15 % in the
first quarter
 Streamlined
processes;
use of online
application
based
systems
 Enhance
employee
engagement
 Work through
employee
issues
 Distribute
rewards and
efforts
amongst
teams
 25% reported
decrease n
stress levels
 TRUST
initiative
 Feedback on
engagement
and stress
levels
Customer
To achieve
our vision,
how should
we appear to
our
customers?
Objectives Measures Targets Initiatives
 Enhance
customer
loyalty
 Scale up
using
technology
 Customer
feedback of
35 and higher
for each
employee
 Customer
feedback
forms
 Customer
suggestion
boxes
 Improve
turnaround
time for
customer
interactions
 Higher issues
can be
escalated to
relationship
managers
exclusively
 Time taken
from
customer
coming to the
person to
exiting the
window
 Less than 5
minutes per
customer

 Higher
turnaround
time for
customers
through using
technology
for concerns
for which
human
contact is not
mandatory
Internal Business Process
To satisfy our
shareholders
and
customers,
what business
processes
must we excel
at?
Objectives Measures Targets Initiatives
 Faster
turnaround
time for
hiring process
 Time taken
for hiring and
selection
 Less than a
month for
final offer
letter
 Train senior
managers to
take
interviews
 Daniels
handles only
key officials’
hiring
 Standardize  Mapping  3-4  Competency

certain
interview
questions so
anyone can
check for
functional
competence
Competency
requirements
for technical
areas
competencies
for functional
areas
 3-4
competencies
for
culture/value
fit
matrices
Learning and Growth
To achieve
our vision,
how will we
sustain our
ability to
change and
improve?
Objectives Measures Targets Initiatives
 Improve
training
process and
efficiency
through use
of technology
 Time taken
for training to
be completed
 Feedback on
training
delivery
 Less than 3
days for
training
module
 Training to
be a part of
the induction
process
 E-learning so
that training
can be done
by the
individual
learners on
their own
 Use
employee
discussion
boards and
sharing best
practices
 Fortnightly
meetings to
air employee
grievances
 Monthly
meetings
where
employees
can share
their best
practices for
benefit of all
 Meetings
done on time
and
facilitated by
Daniels or
any senior
management
official
 Townhall
meetings
 Employee
suggestions/g
rievance
boxes
References

Aguinis, H. (2019). Performance management (4th ed.). Pearson Education.