All Colors of the Rainbow: HR Plan

In order to guarantee the effective attraction and recruitment of talents to any company, it is necessary to develop a sufficient plan for managing Human Resources (HR). This plan is important for setting the goals for supervising human resources of an organization with a focus on their selection, training, and retention with the help of an attractive compensation system (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014).

The company under discussion is a small organization known as All Colors of the Rainbow that is located in Mount Clemens, Michigan. To be viewed as effective, the HR plan for All Colors of the Rainbow should include the goals and associated steps for such areas as recruitment, training and development, compensation, legal issues, and performance appraisal.

Summary of the Business

All Colors of the Rainbow is an educational organization that operates in Mount Clemens, Michigan, as well as the Metropolitan Area. The company’s goal is to address the needs of colored at-risk and low-income children in the community in order to help them cope with problems in learning and improve academic performance.

The organization was founded only in 2020, and it is at the stage of its development and recruitment of the first employees. The primary HR goal is to hire and train 1099 tutors, who will assist diverse children as representatives of low-income communities to achieve success in such disciplines as Reading, Mathematics, Science, Language Arts, Social Studies, and History.

This company offers both online and offline services or face-to-face lessons, and it is critical for the organization to hire tutors who are able to teach using communication technologies. To realize its goals, the company requires the development of an efficient HR plan oriented toward addressing the needs of this business in the industry of education (Nikolaou, 2018; Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). The development of an appropriate plan will become one of the main steps in establishing the organization.

HR Plan

Recruitment and Selection Plan

The effectively developed recruitment and selection strategy is important for any business because the success of an organization depends on the talents, who work for it. The following steps should be proposed for the recruitment and selection plan for All Colors of the Rainbow:

1. The determination of job requirements and advertising the position.
2. The determination of selection criteria to assess candidates.
3. The development of an interview process and direct interviewing (Ling, Ning, Chang, & Zhang, 2018).
4. Decision making and providing a job offer.

During the first step, the HR manager will develop specific job requirements for the position of a tutor, for example, at All Colors of the Rainbow. Then, it is necessary to post the job advertisement using different channels: job search websites and platforms and social media. The next step is associated with determining selection criteria, according to which the candidates from the pool will be evaluated to be invited for an interview (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014).

In this context, it is essential to develop effective criteria regarding education, degrees, experience, and other skills to be able to attract the most appropriate candidates (Klepić, 2019; Nikolaou, 2018). Much attention should also be paid to checking references for candidates.

The selected applicants will be invited to participate in a job interview, and the task of the HR manager is to prepare effective interview questions that will help the professional to determine the qualification and personal qualities and skills of a candidate. At this stage, the manager and the candidate determine whether they can cooperate to achieve the organization’s goals.

To guarantee that the selected candidate will accept the offer, it is necessary to accentuate the benefits of working for this business with a focus on the compensation, training, and a schedule (Ling et al., 2018; Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). The final step for the manager is to decide what candidate will be offered the job position of a tutor at All Colors of the Rainbow, provide a job offer letter and negotiate the salary and conditions.

Training and Development Plan

Training and development are required to be used in any company, especially with a focus on orientation training for novices. The main goal is to guarantee that all employees have the required knowledge, skills, and competencies in order to perform their professional responsibilities (Hammond & Churchill, 2018; Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). For All Colors of the Rainbow, it is important to develop two training and development programs:

1. Orientation training for all new employees.
2. The program to improve the work with innovations and technologies in education.

In order to address the expectations of managers in the company, as well as the needs of students, it is necessary to provide all employees with effective orientation training that will last two days. During this training, novices will learn the principles of working at All Colors of the Rainbow with a focus on conducting face-to-face and online lessons and working with all the required documentation (Hammond & Churchill, 2018; Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). At this stage, new employees will receive needed coaching and assistance from experienced tutors working for this company.

For educators, it is also necessary to follow the trends in the sphere of education with reference to using technologies and innovations. Therefore, the training program based on the resources of external agencies will be given to employees in order to improve their skills and competencies. The main reason for conducting such training is the fact that tutors of All Colors of the Rainbow work with many students using online resources, and they also apply technologies and different devices to address students’ learning needs (Rikkerink, Verbeeten, Simons, & Ritzen, 2016).

From this perspective, the discussed training and development plan can be viewed as both relevant and problem-based to respond to the needs of the employees at All Colors of the Rainbow. Thus, the key focus should be on improving employees’ performance and addressing gaps in their skills and competencies.

Compensation Package for the People Hired

An attractive compensation package, along with available training and development plans and appropriate schedules, works as an important motivating and retention factor for employees. If workers are satisfied with their compensation, they can be effectively retained, and the level of their commitment can also increase (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). The compensation package for employees at All Colors of the Rainbow will include the following components:

1. Base hourly rate for the payment.
2. Bonuses.
3. Vacation benefits.

The first step for determining the compensation strategy and package is to analyze positions in the company and define pay rates for each position. Depending on the specifics of the company’s operations, the hourly rate was selected for all positions in contrast to the salary rate (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014).

The hourly rate is set at the market rate in spite of the fact that prices for services are below the market average, and the difference is covered by sponsors. There are no grades for employees due to the fact that only high-quality professionals are selected for their positions. Bonuses are set depending on the evaluation of employees’ performance, and these bonuses are paid at the end of the year.

Other criteria for setting a bonus are the period of working in the organization and the number of hours worked per year. There are also vacation benefits for employees which are paid as for 20 hours per week. This proposed compensation system and package can be discussed as fair because it addresses the market and industry trends (Brown, Farrington, & Sprinkle, 2016; Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). As a result, the elements of the performance-related pay system are combined with the principle of the hourly wage to address the needs of the market, in which the discussed company operates.

Legal Issues the Company Should Consider

Two main legal issues that the HR management of the company should consider is the provision of the equal employment opportunity for all candidates with a focus on the principle of non-discrimination and the provision of equal pay. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is an agency responsible for promoting the laws preventing employment discrimination in the United States. According to these laws granting the equal employment opportunity for Americans, it is prohibited to prevent the employment of persons because of their race, ethnicity, age, gender, and religion (Victor, Thacker, Gary, Pawluk, & Copolillo, 2017).

HR managers need to focus only on the link between a candidate’s skills and experience and specific job requirements (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). Furthermore, HR managers should also focus on the Americans with Disabilities Act that also prohibits discrimination against individuals who have disabilities, and they are also granted equal employment opportunities (Victor et al., 2017). These listed legal issues are associated with the problem of possible discrimination at the stage of recruiting and selecting employees.

Furthermore, when employees are hired, their rights are also protected according to the US legislation, and much attention should be paid to avoiding discrimination in payments. Thus, the Equal Pay Act prohibits the discriminatory distribution of payments in any organization, and the pay scheme and rates should depend on the fair evaluation of employees’ skills, performance, and productivity. Differences in the wages and salaries for men and women in US organizations are prohibited according to this Act (Shippey, 2019).

In order to avoid violating the Equal Pay Act, it is necessary to ensure that payment scheme applied at All Colors of the Rainbow is as transparent as possible, and all employees, regardless of their gender, age, or race, are paid according to the corporate policy set for their specific job position (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). HR managers are expected to focus on examining and understanding laws and policies related to employment in order to avoid violating legal norms and discriminating employees.

Performance Appraisal System

In many cases, employees are demotivated and confused if they are not informed regarding the criteria and standards according to which their performance and work outcomes are evaluated. It is important to develop an effective and detailed performance appraisal system in order to guarantee that all employees in the selected company know their responsibilities and are aware of the performance standards followed in the organization (Su & Baird, 2017). The critical components of a working performance appraisal system are the following ones:

1. Performance requirements, goals, and objectives determined for employees.
2. Performance measures, with a focus on which the HR manager evaluates employees’ performance and results.
3. Evaluation and performance appraisal forms.
4. The schedule for conducting performance appraisal for different groups of employees.
5. The process of providing feedback for employees (Su & Baird, 2017).
6. The determination of disciplinary procedures that depend on the results of the evaluation.

It is important to start with identifying desired performance requirements and goals with reference to the company’s strategy and focus. Employees need to know what performance criteria they should address, and they also should be informed regarding performance measures that should be taken into account because these parameters can influence their evaluation as professionals (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). The HR manager’s task is to develop effective evaluation forms and protocols to be able to regularly conduct the assessments of employees’ performance.

The regularity of evaluations should be based on a schedule that is known for employees. The main goal of the evaluation is to determine possible gaps and problems in the performance of employees in order to be able to address those (Su & Baird, 2017). Therefore, evaluation and performance appraisal procedures should result in providing detailed feedback to employees. The HR manager should discuss performance with each employee and determine the steps for its improvement if it is necessary.

Disciplinary procedures can be applied in those cases when an employee intentionally violates the rules of working in the organization and does not perform effectively. In other cases, the HR manager needs to determine the causes of an employee’s possible low level of performance and propose the ways for resolving the situation (Su & Baird, 2017; Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). In this case, the performance appraisal system applied in the organization should work in line with the training and development strategy in order to guarantee that all employees have an opportunity to improve their performance to contribute to achieving corporate goals.

Conclusion

An effective HR plan for All Colors of the Rainbow includes the goals and steps for realizing a recruitment and selection plan, a training and development plan, a compensation package, and a performance appraisal plan. Additionally, legal issues that can be faced by the HR manager are also listed in this HR plan to be taken into account. For All Colors of the Rainbow, the priority goal is the attraction and recruitment of professional tutors, who will address the needs of diverse low-income students in the community.

Since the goal is to recruit up to 1100 employees, it is important to guarantee that the proposed HR plan is efficient enough in order to meet the needs of the organization and many employees working for the company. Thus, the proposed plans as the components of the large HR plan contribute to realizing the main goal of All Colors of the Rainbow, which is to respond to the learning needs of diverse at-risk children in Mount Clemens and the Metropolitan Area in Michigan.

References

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Klepić, I. (2019). Correlation of recruitment and selection of human resources and the performance of small and medium enterprises. Naše Gospodarstvo/Our Economy, 65(4), 14-26.

Ling, F. Y. Y., Ning, Y., Chang, Y. H., & Zhang, Z. (2018). Human resource management practices to improve project managers’ job satisfaction. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 25(5), 654-669.

Nikolaou, P. (2018). Effective strategies for human resource management in educational organizations. Conflict management case studies. Journal of Contemporary Education, Theory & Research, 2(2), 30-34.

Rikkerink, M., Verbeeten, H., Simons, R. J., & Ritzen, H. (2016). A new model of educational innovation: Exploring the nexus of organizational learning, distributed leadership, and digital technologies. Journal of Educational Change, 17(2), 223-249.

Shippey, I. P. (2019). Pay history and wage discrimination: Can state pay history laws survive present judicial construction of the Equal Pay Act. American Journal of Trial Advocacy, 42(2), 411-447.

Su, S., & Baird, K. (2017). The association between performance appraisal systems, work‐related attitudes and academic performance. Financial Accountability & Management, 33(4), 356-372.

Victor, C. M., Thacker, L. R., Gary, K. W., Pawluk, D. T., & Copolillo, A. (2017). Workplace discrimination and visual impairment: A comparison of equal employment opportunity commission charges and resolutions under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 111(5), 475-482.

Youssef-Morgan, C. M., & Stark, E. (2014). Strategic human resource management: Concepts, controversies, and evidence-based applications. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education.