HRM101: Case Study Analysis of Oz Industries: HR and Leadership Issues

This case study analysis of Oz Industries, prepared for HRM101, examines the company's restructuring and its implications. The analysis identifies the reasons behind the new direction, focusing on changes in personnel, management, and job processes, particularly the shift in HR responsibilities. It explores the factors contributing to Carmelita's redundancy, including resistance to change and motivational issues, and discusses the potential negative repercussions for the organization, such as loss of experienced staff and reduced productivity. The study also addresses ethical and HR issues arising from workplace diversity and other ethical considerations. Furthermore, it assesses the impact of these changes on current employees, including potential loss of confidence and decreased productivity. Finally, the analysis proposes alternative restructuring strategies, such as retaining senior management and implementing performance-based initiatives, to avoid redundancies and improve organizational outcomes by fostering shared goals and values.

Hrm101 introduction to HR and Leadership
Assessment 2 case analysis
Name
Date
Questions
1. Identify the changes at Oz Industries and determine the reasons for the new direction.
The are several changes at OZ industry that took place in order to enhance performance management. The
changes can be classified in terms of human resource and job process. In human resource context, changes of
personnel, board and senior management took place with long-serving employees of OZ industries being
replaced by new hires. In the change process, Meg O’Brien was appointed the Vice president of People and
culture as Carmelita was appointed as the new manager for human resource in the manufacturing division. In
terms of the job process, Carmelita role of being responsible for “payroll” has changed as the newly
implemented policies allowed the separation of HR and payroll (Stone, 2017).
The main reason for reshuffling the administration to take a new direction is to break the current
organizational culture and create a new culture that aligns with organizational structure and that will improve
the performances of the company. The hiring of new employees is one way of promoting workplace diversity
which in turn creates innovation and creativity in job process as research conducted by Okoro & Washington
(2012) on workplace diversity and organization communication shows that if an organization adopts diversity in
its HR practices, it is likely to breakdown the current norms and create an organization address the
contemporary performances.
2. Describe the issues which contributed to Carmelita’s position being made redundant. What are the
possible repercussions for the organization?
Contemporary developments and strategies adopted by the company to maximize profits resulted to
Carmelita’s position being made redundant. With Carmelita not ready to accept the change of new performance
appraisal program that emphasizes on goal setting and individual accountability and further question Peter and
Meg over the small issues, the management saw the long-serving employees including Carmelita were a barrier
to change and could influence the new employees to resist change. Furthermore, motivation issues also played

part in the position being redundancies. According to Maslow theory of motivation “employees must be
motivated and their morale boosted in order for them to perform better” (Taormina & Gao, 2013). Therefore,
Carmelita and other long-serving employees were not motivated to fully contribute to the organization with the
consideration that new employees were being promoted into managerial positions. In addition, low motivation
was associated with poor performances experienced that empowered Megg and Peter to terminate contracts of
Carmelita and other long-serving employees.
The possible repercussions of losing Carmelita and other long-serving employees are that the productivity
and general performance of the organization will be negatively affected. Losing the long-serving employees’
means the organization has lost experience and trained staffs that are more knowledgeable about the goals and
policies of the organization and their individual roles on achieving goals. Furthermore, new employees require
time to learn about roles and adapt to the work environment as a research conducted by Neves (2009) indicates
that “employees take more than a year to reach the productivity level of departing employee”.
3. What ethical and HR issues may arise to challenge the proposed changes?
Workplace diversity is an ethical issues that might arise to challenge the proposed changes. Workplace diversity
consists of various experiences and characteristics that distinguish employees in their workplace. The
characteristics can be signified by differences in skills, experiences, social status and race. Therefore, by treating
Carmelita and other old employees differently because of the number of years they have served in an
organization possess a human resource ethical issue. Other ethical issues include integrity, values, performance
appraisals and salaries and wages.
4. How will the changes impact on current employees?
Firstly, the change will disrupt the status quo which might result in loss of confidence in management among
the current employees. With current employees being aware of what happened to the Carmelita and old
employees, the majority of them may feel secures about their jobs although it depends on employee personality.
For example, employees who cope with change and fear management might redundant their position will be
forced to work extra hard to perform well and further fit in new appraisal program. However, the employees
who are uncertain about their future in an organization may become less productive.
5. Based on the topics you have studied; explain how the to restructure could have been better managed:

a. What additional initiatives could be proposed in order to avoid resignations and redundancies?
Retaining senior management and its board in their previous position- The organization could retain its key
managerial position and further conduct appraisals to determine the main reason why the staffs are
underperforming. In addition, the organization could also opt to use KPI’s in various departments to identify
the gaps and how to seal them. For example, if the poor performance resulted from underperformance resulted
from lack of engagement and commitment or motivation, the organization could opt to review reward and
compensation system of an organization and reward employees accordingly for them to perform well.
Furthermore, restructuring of the organization is not a solution as long as the unethical practices and existing
problems that cause employees to underperform are not addressed. Other additional initiative includes training
on employees, benchmarking with other companies, reward and compensation reviews and team building.
b. How would these benefit the organization?
The issue about the “goal conflicts” could have been significantly reduced as the initiatives will unit
diverse managerial position to work toward the same goal. Furthermore, the conflict between Carmelita, Meg
and Peter resulted from “conflicting goals of new appraisal system”. Therefore, the initiatives will offer shared
values and objectives which is acceptable to all workforces and further boosts the performance and profitability
of the organization.
References
Neves, P. (2009). Readiness for change: Contributions for employee's level of individual change and turnover
intentions. Journal of Change Management, 9(2), 215-231.
Okoro, E. A., & Washington, M. C. (2012). Workforce diversity and organizational communication: Analysis of
human capital performance and productivity. Journal of Diversity Management (Online), 7(1), 57.
Stone, RJ 2017, Human Resource Management, 9th ed, John Wiley & Sons: Milton, Queensland.
Taormina, R. J., & Gao, J. H. (2013). Maslow and the motivation hierarchy: Measuring satisfaction of the needs.
The American journal of psychology, 126(2), 155-177.