Oz Newspaper Case Study: HR Strategies for Organizational Success

This case study solution analyzes the human resource management challenges faced by Oz Newspaper, focusing on stakeholder reactions, key HR issues, and potential solutions. The primary stakeholders identified are newspaper leaders, shareholders, and employees, each affected differently by declining productivity due to technological advancements. Key HR issues include lack of employee motivation, poor employment conditions, and resistance to change, which can be addressed through incentives, improved working conditions, and clear communication about the benefits of change. Environmental factors such as absenteeism, union restrictions, outsourcing, and technical advancements further complicate the situation, requiring HR to adapt and influence management to embrace digital platforms. The HR department can support the newspaper's new plan by recruiting skilled employees, providing necessary training, fostering employee motivation, and enhancing leadership development practices. Desklib offers this and similar solved assignments for students.

Running Head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 1
Human Resource Management
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Institution Affiliation
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Human Resource Management
Discussion (Answers)
Q1.
Stakeholders refers to individuals who influence, affect or are affected by organizational
activities. This may be in terms of policy making, performance, setting goals and objectives of
the firm or organization. In the Oz Newspaper case study given, the key stakeholders are the
newspaper leaders, shareholders and the company employees. As a result of low productivity of
the firm due to technical development, the stakeholders will react in different ways as each one
of them has a responsibility and expectation from the firm.
Newspaper leaders as much as they benefit from reading the newspapers, the issues arising about
losses does not directly affect them unless they are part of the firms shareholders. This is
because, they can read the same information online and with a lot of ease. Company shareholders
as the main stakeholders affected by the present situation will be frustrated and have to come up
with a way to improve on levels of productivity mainly by accepting that they are in a digital
world. The shareholders are the main source of capital to the firm and benefit from profits made
and are affected by losses made, this situation might also bring about disagreements as they
blame each other on the causes of the present situation. Employees are likely to be disappointed
as part of service delivery team lowering their morale to work even harder (York, 2010).
Q2.
Human resource (HR) mainly deals with management of people and ensuring wellbeing of
employees in an organization. There are various HR issues raised in the case study that affect the
wellbeing of the employees in the firm. These are lack of employee motivation, poor
employment rates and condition as well as resistance of change at workplace (Hendry, 2012).

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Oz Newspaper employees are not motivated, this affects their morale to work extra harder.
Research findings has clearly indicated that, in every organization, employee’s motivation is key
to ensuring they work harder than just in the assigned circles important in enhancing productivity
levels. To improve on this issue, I would ensure incentives and other motivation factors are given
to all employees (Latham, 2012). Poor employment rates and conditions is a clear sign that
employees are not working in favorable environment and the payment is low beyond their
expectations. Poor working conditions ensure that any effort to improve productivity by the
employee is proved futile as no advancement can be recorded while low payments rate lower
their morale. To solve this, I would ensure the management improves on the conditions in which
all employees work in and ensure their labor value is recognized with a better pay. Resistance of
change at workplace is also a HR issue in Oz that affects productivity levels, this is an issue of
disagreement and failure to convince organizational people to accept change. This can be
improved by ensuring that circumstances under which change has to be enhanced are clear as
well as the benefits (Nohria, Groysberg & Lee, 2008, p. 78-84).
Q3.
Environmental factors at play in Oz case are both internal and external. These are absenteeism,
union restrictions, outsourcing, use of contractors and technical advancement. Absenteeism
refers to low labor turnover on a daily basis, this is a problem at workplace as labor given every
day is not enough to carry out the required responsibilities. Human resource manager has a role
of ensuring a positive performance management, with low labor turnover on a daily basis, it’s
hard for the HR to enhance this in such cases. Union restrictions brings about conflicts as the
conditions set are not conducive for employees, the HR in this case has to come up with means
of improvising the restrictions to favor employees at workplace. Outsourcing of labor and use of

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other contractors is also an issue affecting the HR department as they have to deal with different
individuals every day. This affects the consistency of the HR to enhancing a positive
performance management. Technical advancement is one of the main factors affecting Oz
productivity level, it influences use of digital platforms to give or sell the newspaper information.
This is a digital mile that Oz Newspaper has not adopted, the HR has a role of influencing the
management to accepting the mile as they also train the employees on the skills required and
recruit others where need be (Chen, et al, 2014, p. 326-342).
Q4.
In supporting Oz Newspapers new plan, the HR can take various roles. Some include;
Selection and recruitment of other employees. In cases the plan advocates for employees with
different skills, HR has a role of inviting applicants, select those that have required skills, test the
selected applicants and recruit those that qualify.
Training of employees. HR has a role of ensuring that all employees are well skilled as required
by the responsibilities they are to carry out. Training can be done to both the existing and new
employees in to the company, this ensures all employees are well skilled important for improved
productivity (MacIndoe & Barman, 2013, p. 716-738).
Employee motivation and good working environment. Factors of employee motivation includes
provision of incentives, valuable salaries and good working conditions or environment. Human
resource has a role of ensuring that all employees are well paid, motivated and work in the right
conditions to enhance their morale towards productivity. In organizations where employee’s
needs are not taken care off they are likely to record low productivity (Cerasoli, Nicklin & Ford,
2014, p. 980).

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Enhance leadership development practices. As a leader, a human resource manager has a role of
ensuring that leadership practices put in place enhance development activities to ensuring that
the new plan works out and in line with the company’s set goals and objectives. Example,
enhance performance management plan among others.

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References
Cerasoli, C. P., Nicklin, J. M., & Ford, M. T. (2014). Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic
incentives jointly predict performance: A 40-year meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin,
140(4), 980.
Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Nevo, S., Jin, J., Wang, L., & Chow, W. S. (2014). IT capability and
organizational performance: the roles of business process agility and environmental
factors. European Journal of Information Systems, 23(3), 326-342.
Hendry, C. (2012). Human resource management. Routledge.
Latham, G. P. (2012). Work motivation: History, theory, research, and practice. Sage.
MacIndoe, H., & Barman, E. (2013). How organizational stakeholders shape performance
measurement in nonprofits: Exploring a multidimensional measure. Nonprofit and
Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 42(4), 716-738.
Nohria, N., Groysberg, B., & Lee, L. E. (2008). Employee motivation. harvard business review,
86(7/8), 78-84.
York, K. M. (2010). Applied human resource management: Strategic issues and experiential
exercises. Sage.