Human Resource Management/DB and Reply/Strategic Plan Waffle House Inc.

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1. Human Resource Management

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Climate and Culture Measures

The purpose of this discussion is to help you achieve Course Outcome 4 and Module Outcomes 1 & 2.

As discussed during this week, climate measures may be easier to gauge than culture measures and are more focused on current perceptions in the workplace.

As with anything related to change management, you need to know the current state to effectively determine how to reach a new future state.

For this week’s discussion, select ONE of the following prompts to answer:

• Your organization has a chronic turnover problem. What lagging indicator(s) can help you identify the situation to create an effective strategy? Explain and give an example.
• Your organization has a chronic high absenteeism problem. What indicator will you use to determine what the climate is like at the organization (poor leadership, cynicism about change, high burnout, etc.) and how it is impacting performance? Explain and give an example.
• Mention one direct and one indirect cost associated with turnover. What strategy can help you minimize them? Explain and give an example.
• Thinking about the problem of turnover, what are some not-so-common measures you would collect to see what prevents the problem from developing and how would you collect them? Explain and give an example.

2. Human Resource Management

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Shannon Garcia

Dec 31 11:28am

Manage Discussion by Shannon Garcia

Reply from Shannon Garcia

Understanding Turnover Costs: Direct and Indirect Impacts, and How to Minimize Them

Employee turnover is a universal challenge for organizations, particularly in high-volume environments like call centers. While some level of turnover is inevitable, excessive rates—such as the 100% turnover I experienced in a call center workforce—can wreak havoc on both financial performance and workplace culture. To effectively manage turnover, it’s crucial to understand its direct and indirect costs and strategies to minimize them.

Direct Cost: Recruitment and Training Expenses
Recruitment and training are among the most significant direct costs associated with turnover. Organizations must invest in advertising, interviewing, onboarding, and training replacements when employees leave. These costs increase quickly, especially in high-volume industries. For example, in the call center I managed, the cost of recruiting new agents included advertising job openings on multiple platforms, conducting interviews, and dedicating time and resources to train new hires on the systems, processes, and customer service standards. According to Forbes (2019), the average cost to replace an employee is about six to nine months of their salary. The expense may seem minimal in a call center where entry-level roles are typically lower paid. Still, considering the high turnover rate, these costs compound rapidly, resulting in a significant financial drain.

Indirect Cost: Loss of Productivity and Team Morale
Beyond the tangible expenses, turnover leads to less visible but equally impactful indirect costs. Productivity often declines as teams are forced to pick up the slack for vacant roles. In a call center setting, this means longer customer waiting times, reduced service quality, and increased stress for the remaining staff. Additionally, constant turnover can erode morale, creating a sense of instability and disengagement among the team.

During the period when my call center faced 100% turnover, these indirect costs were painfully evident. Customers became frustrated with inconsistencies in service, and employees who remained felt demoralized by the revolving door of new hires. This ripple effect amplified the turnover problem, making it harder to stabilize the team and achieve performance goals.

Strategy to Minimize Turnover Costs: Building a Culture of Engagement
Fostering a culture of engagement and accountability is one effective way to reduce direct and indirect turnover costs. Employees are more likely to stay when they feel valued, supported, and connected to the organization’s mission.

In the call center example, we implemented a comprehensive strategy to improve retention:

• Structured Onboarding: Instead of overwhelming new hires with information, we broke the training into manageable phases and paired each new employee with a mentor to guide them through their first few months.
• Regular Feedback and Recognition: We introduced monthly check-ins to provide consistent feedback and celebrate achievements. Small acknowledgments, like recognizing top performers in team meetings, helped employees feel appreciated.
• Career Development Opportunities: Offering clear paths for advancement and cross-training opportunities gave employees a reason to invest in their roles long-term.
  As a result, turnover began to decline steadily. One standout success was an employee who started as a customer service agent and later advanced to a supervisory role. By investing in their development, we retained a valuable team member and created a positive example for others.

Turnover is costly, both in visible expenses like recruitment and hidden impacts like reduced productivity and morale. However, with intentional strategies to engage and support employees, organizations can minimize turnover’s effects.

In high-turnover environments like call centers, structured onboarding, consistent feedback, and clear opportunities for growth are essential. By investing in your people, you can reduce costs, improve retention, and build a more stable, productive team.

Reference:
Hall, J. (2019, May 9). The cost of turnover can kill your business and make things less fun. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com

3. Human Resource Management

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Jerick Flores

Dec 30 4:36pm| Last reply Dec 31 11:51am

Manage Discussion by Jerick Flores

Reply from Jerick Flores

Module Discussion 7: Turnover

When an employee leaves an organization, it costs the organization 1.5-2 times the cost of the employee’s salary to replace the position (McFeely & Wigert, 2019). Many times, employees leave an organization because of a reason that is preventable. Beyond this statistic, there are many direct and indirect costs to turnover.

A specific direct cost of turnover is onboarding costs, such as recruitment, advertising, background checks, and training for a new employee, while a specific indirect cost is a higher level of work for employees who are still with the organization. A strategy to minimize both costs is to invoke succession planning and clear position descriptions. Succession planning is the identification, training, and preparation to fill roles in an organization when there is change, which helps share organizational knowledge, prepare staff members to minimize the impact of change and loss of productivity during change, provide development opportunities for internal growth, and identify early the roles and needs of a position (Rana, 2023). Because of succession planning and knowing what is required of the position, this can help fill some positions internally or at least prepare internal candidates to be ready for the role. This minimizes turnover by providing growth opportunities and lowers onboarding costs because there is a clear position description, less work to be done during the recruitment process if it needs to be hired externally, and if an internal candidate is selected or promoted, minimizes training and loss of productivity cost (Rana, 2023).

Succession planning also helps minimize the increase of work level for employees still with the organization. Whether the position is filled internally or not, there is a clear and direct understanding before an employee departs about what their duties are, which gives the team time to provide cross training and development in these areas, making the impact of taking an additional duties less. Along with this, succession planning lessens the time to fill the new position, meaning they are without the additional productivity for less time (Rana, 2023).

For example, say there is a manager of a team of 4. Positions are well-defined and set up beforehand, and if duties change, they are updated. Through performance evaluations and coaching, the manager identifies potential strengths and helps employees train in various functions; meanwhile, they document the way they perform their daily work. Setting up the team in a way that identifies potential future leaders provides an ability to have trained and readied a future leader when the time comes for change. When the manager leaves, there is a candidate on the team who is able to pick up and minimize change and loss of productivity; if it is determined they are not ready for the position, the position is well-defined, recruited for quickly, and because of succession planning, provides the new employee a lot of resources to also minimize down time.

References:

McFeely, S., & Wigert, B. (2019, March 13). This fixable problem costs U.S. businesses $1 trillion. Gallup.com. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/247391/fixable-pr…

4. Human Resource Management

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Organizational Topic: Waffle House, Inc. (United States Restaurant Chain)

Strategic Plan

The purpose of this assignment is to help you achieve course outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and module outcomes 1 and 2.

Select an organization (Waffle House, Inc.) you like or are familiar with. Now, imagine you are the Human Resources Director for that organization and the CEO has asked you to develop the next 3-year strategic plan for your department.

Some important aspects to think about while creating the strategic plan are the organizational needs in relation to the following aspects:

• Staffing (industry data)
  
  • Internal/ External Recruitment
  • Needs of specific KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities)
  • Hard to fill positions.
• Training and Development (cost-benefit analysis)
  
  • Organizational Needs
• Health and Safety (direct-indirect costs from past, present, future)
  
  • How is the organization doing?
  • How to improve?

For this assignment do the following:

• Present a brief description of your organization, including the industry, mission, vision, and goals.
• Environmental Scan
  
  • Identify opportunities and threats that could influence future decisions.
    
    • Example: Events, Trends, Issues, Expectations
• Internal Analysis
  
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses.
    
    • Example: Areas of opportunities.
• Strategic Direction – Implementation Plan:
  
  • Determine the vision for your strategic plan.
  • Identify the mission of your strategic plan.
  • Create the goals for your strategic plan.
  • Develop the strategy for your strategic plan.
  • Select metrics to measure performance related to the goals of your strategic plan.
  • Set timelines for achieving the goals of your strategic plan.