Essay on Appropriate Technique for Addressing Attrition Problems

Conducting an Employee Satisfaction Survey (ESS) can be an effective tool for addressing the human resource (HR) issues that Magic Graffix faces. This method is appropriate because a majority of the problems facing Magic Graffix are organizational-specific. For instance, issues such as chaotic working environment, vague job descriptions, lack of training, and deadline pressures can be handled efficiently by internal HR interventions. This is critical in the sense that it becomes easier to locate the specific areas that require intervention since the HR personnel is well-acquainted with the organizations work environment.

The cost of carrying out the exercise is relatively cheaper compared to other strategies such as contracting a consulting firm. Hiring of a consultant means that the crisis at Magic Graffix is likely to drag on for a longer time. This is due to the limitation that the company has to take some time to select a firm that is best-suited to carry out the process. As a result, Magic Graffix stands a chance of losing more employees as evidenced in the resignations that have been experienced in the recent past.

Employees require immense emotional strength to effectively carry out duties at the Business Delivery Department (BDD) due to the nature of the tasks that need to be accomplished. For instance, design and software programming tasks require a lot of commitment and emotional investment. This may result in high levels of stress, especially when such tasks are pegged to tight deadlines which employees have little say regarding their realization (Trivellas, Reklitis, & Platis, 2013). As such, ESS gives staff an opportunity to directly address their employers on issues that expose them to extreme stress and also reveal the challenges undermining their motivation to carry out duties as expected. This is likely to reduce cases where employees quit as a result of frustrations.

Hiring of Employees at Magic Graffix

Hiring of the right employees means designing techniques that would attract employees with relevant skills. For instance, research has found that job descriptions with a long list of duties and responsibilities tend to alienate potentially the best-qualified employees (Weber, 2015). Indeed, one of the survey responses of employees of Magic Graffix cited vague job description as a major issue affecting their motivation. From this finding, it is worth conjecturing that some of these employees may have joined the organization without a clear understanding of the expectations of their different job designations. To address this problem, Weber (2015) suggests that business organizations should write job descriptions in a manner that emphasizes career growth or job significance for them to attract the best-qualified applicants. In context, this technique can improve employees output at Magic Graffix by providing clarity on job expectations, as well as discourage applicants who are merely seeking for employment.

Selection Technique

Going by the employees feedback contained in the ESS report, it is apparent that there are several issues relating to career interests. Notably, employees cite compensation, vague job descriptions, and lack of competitive salaries as some of the issues affecting their performance. These grievances suggest of a failure on the part of HR department to articulate the vision of the organization, particularly during the recruitment process. It is recommendable, therefore, that the organization infuses organizational vision and mission in its hiring processes to give the potential workers a preview of what to expect from a nascent organization such as Magic Graffix. This can be done through preliminary interviews.

Preliminary interviews play a vital role in addressing the fundamental issues attracting candidates who aspire to work for a particular organization. For instance, HR selection teams can learn about the objectives of prospective workers, individual interests, career goals, and their general attitudes towards the jobs they are applying(Ullah, 2010). This selection criterion is appropriate because Magic Graffix is a young and growing organization .By so doing, the selection teams could single out those candidates that may lack the patience and attitude to grow with the organization considering that it has been in operation for the last three years and, as such, may lack the attractiveness of established firms. This way, problems arising out of variables such as lack of competitive salaries and lack of training can be avoided at the point of recruitment.

Performance Appraisals and their Relevance to Magic Graffix

Ranking

This method puts the performance of an employee at a given position. Employees are ranked according to their relative contribution to the organization compared with other employees. Using this approach, the appraiser is able to rank the best and the worst- performing employee. The limitation of this method is that all attention is given to the position the employee occupies in a list of performers. As such, it does not consider factors that influence effectiveness of workers (Venclova, Salkova, & Kolackova, 2013).

Critical Incident

The critical incident method entails identifying significant requirements of a job and rating employees on various categories identified. The appraiser is required to maintain records of positive and negative acts and behaviors that fall within the job description of the employee under focus. Also, the supervisor notes unsuccessful and successful act of each employee under review and identifies any critical incidents which are then used to make a judgment about the overall performance of the employee over a particular period (Venclova, Salkova, & Kolackova, 2013).According to Venclova et al.(2013), one of the major benefits of employing the critical incident approach is that it reduces bias of the appraiser and also provides prompt feedback which allows subordinates to adopt prompt corrective measures. This is done through discussions between the supervisor and the employee who is being evaluated.

Psychological appraisal Method

This method rates employees based on the workers ability to achieve goals and objectives of the organization (Khanna & Sharma, 2014). In other words, it measures the potential of employees based their current psychological condition. The psychological appraisal is conducted in the form psychological tests, in-depth interviews, and discussions with supervisors (Venclova et al., 2013).

Psychological appraisal investigates factors that are employee-specific and how such factors influence the performance of workers. It emphasizes on the potential for future performance rather historical records. Specifically, it focuses more on the employees emotions, motivation, intellect, and other personal attributes that impact on performance. The character traits that the assessors may look for include alertness, resistance to stress, energy level, and creativity among others (Khanna & Sharma, 2014). This technique is more relevant to young people due to the vital position they occupy in driving the future of any business organization. However, the appraisal is costly and time-consuming (Venclova et al., 2013).

Appropriate Method for Appraisal at Magic Graffix

Psychological appraisal technique can be an effective tool for evaluating performance at Magic Graffix. The simulation report indicates that Magic Graffix employees work in a chaotic environment and under a lot of pressure. In such environments, the psychological appraisal can be instrumental addressing these problems as its primary focus is on how to control negative emotions in the workplace. Besides, it is ordinarily expected that jobs of graphics artists, illustrators, software programmers, writers, and sound Engineers generate high levels of stress. For this an appraisal, a method that seeks to alleviate stress while enhancing creativity is an ideal mechanism to appraise employees performance at Magic Graffix to avoid scenarios where such as reviews create further stress and also undermine creativity.

References

Khanna, M., & Sharma, R. K. (2014). Employees performance appraisal and its techniques: A Review. The Asian Journal of Advanced Basic Sciences, 2(2), 51-58. doi:2347 -4114

Trivellas, P., Reklitis, P., & Platis, C. (2013). The effect of job related stress on employees Satisfaction: A Survey in Health Care. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 73, 718-726.

Ullah, M. M. (2010). A systematic approach of conducting employee selection interview. International Journal of Business and Management, 5(6). doi:10.5539/ijbm.v5n6p106

Venclova, K., Salkova, A., & Kolackova, G. (2013). Identification of Employee Performance Appraisal Methods in Agricultural Organizations. Journal of Competitiveness, 5(2), 20-36. doi:10.7441/joc.2013.02.02

Weber, L. (2015). The simple change that attracts great job applicants. The Wall Street Journal.