HR professionals need to be constantly aware of workforce behaviour, standards of behaviour and how to make people perform better.

Choose a workforce behaviour that you believe needs correcting in the HR department (of a company you have worked for or know about).   Perhaps it is a problem of absenteeism, lack of customer service or accident rates.  Answer the following questions:

1. Provide a brief description about the organization (not the name, but the number of employees, size of HR department, service vs. manufacturing, what it does).

2. Identify the workforce behaviour and provide a brief description of why you think it is a problem.

3. State an acceptable standard (benchmark) you would like to achieve.  For example, if your identified behaviour is an absenteeism rate of 12%, then you might see 7% being a standard.

4. List some root causes of this behaviour.  Why do you think employees are absent from work etc?

5. Describe at least three policies or programs you might introduce to achieve the desired results.  Put these in priority order (which ones are thought to be most effective in achieving results, keeping in mind cost considerations).

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