A Plan to Enhance Performance

Human Resources: A Plan To Enhance PerformanceAshley V Twyman

Organizational Behavior & Human Resource Management8/18/2008 – 9/28/2008

Dr. Susan Sasiadek

Human Resources: A Plan To Enhance Performance 1

A common problem at Kanza Bank remains the frequent rate of turn-over for

front-line jobs. This on-going problem ends up costing the organization large amounts of

money and plenty of time. In this paper I will address the difficulties for the company,

employees, and others, that the turn-over rate affects and how it does so. I will also

discuss this problem in reference to Clay Carr’s Seven Factors of Performance Model and

address my opinions concerning the turn-over rate at Kanza Bank and my suggestions in

reference to what I would do in order to address the issue.

Clay Carr’s definition of a goal is “a different state of affairs that the individual

[or organization] actively seeks to achieve.”(Hersey, Blanchard, and Johnson, pg 285)

One of the main goals Kanza Bank constantly wants to achieve is to hire employees that

are “worth their salt”, if you will. It is also a goal to expand the bank, and in doing so,

obtain employees who are able and willing to be excellent employees and excellent

reflections on the bank as a whole.

One very important aspect of being a front line teller is that you must remember

that you are the face of the bank. Everything you do and say, while in your teller station,

is seen as a reflection, not only of yourself, but of the entire company. Should you

personally upset a customer, that customer is more likely to be become upset with the

entire bank than with just that particular teller. It is possible that a disgruntled customer

may not even know a specific teller’s name, but they may go around saying, “I had the

worst experience at Kanza Bank the other day.”

It is a challenging job dealing with customers, accounts, phone answering,

question answering, account deciphering, changing addresses, mailing out information,


and so on. When you are a teller, you job consists of remembering a wide range of

important information.

It is often difficult to find employees that are both able and willing to encompass

all the requirements of such a demanding job. Every person seems to be willing to start

the job, but not so willing to stay. Human Relations attempts to make people more prone

to staying by offering employee benefits in the form of paid vacations, paid sick leave,

above average hourly pay, overtime pay, health insurance and an optional 401K plan for

full-time employees. Even full time hours are negotiated at thirty-five hours a week in

comparison to most companies’ forty-hour work week. Emphasis is put on the

importance of a life outside of work, being actively involved in our surrounding

communities, and on keeping a good home life as well.

As previously mentioned, Kanza Bank currently has a fourth branch under

construction on the east side of Wichita. This is a very large step for the bank as a whole,

but again, you must have “a few good men” in order to make the goal feasible.

Our Director of HR is constantly running around. Her main office is located at the

branch I work for; however, she is rarely seen! Hiring for jobs is what keeps her out of

the office the most! With all the running around she does in order to find new employees,

it’s amazing that she’s able to accomplish anything else!

What a costly effort it is to hire and re-hire for the same positions. First of all,

Dusty gets paid, her cost in gas is reimbursed; when she’s out of her home office all her

meals are paid and that’s just the cost for one person! After the recruit is hired, then you

must train for two weeks. You have to pay the new employee for those days as well as


the trainer, so it’s as if you are paying two employees to do the work of one! What a

waist! And when that teller decides to leave, you have to think about all that time and

money that was invested in them and double it for someone new! Just recently we had

one employee here for two months and another employee for only three! We are

constantly hiring new employees, and the cost is astronomical!

When looking at Clay Carr’s Seven Factors of Performance Model, located on

page 285 of the text, you can see the most important aspects of the model are motive and

goal. Motive is where someone will start in order to achieve the goal. On the path to

reach said goal, you will need to have five important items: competence, means,

opportunity, feedback, and standards.

When applying Carr’s Performance Model to Kanza Bank’s high employee turn-

over rate, competence is very important. Sometimes it’s hard to find applicants who are

competent. Other times, a person can seem very competent during the interviewing

process, only for the manager to discover, after attempting to train them that they are not.

Means also plays a large roll. Many times managers do not have the right means

to hire a new employee. They do not have the means in terms of applicants or perhaps the

money it would take to hire someone new. It could be if a manager had the company

means to pay a new employee more up front, they would get more competent people

applying for job openings. Means and competence, in this situation, seem to tie together

nicely.

They also must have opportunity. When looking for someone to hire, you must

have the opportunity to do so. At times it seems you must pick out the apple with the


least amount of bruises. You have only so many applications and none of them seem to

be quite what you are looking for because the opportunity for the right person has not

presented itself. You must choose the one that you think may have the potential to be a

great employee, since you do not have the opportunity to choose who, based on an

application, already is.

Feedback is very important. You must be able to keep up with surrounding

businesses and related job field competition to find out what possible things they do to

obtain new employees and what efforts they make in order to keep them there. It would

also be helpful to talk to current employees about their personal experiences with the

company and find out what issues are most important to them. One way that Kanza Bank

currently tries to get good quality feedback is by doing an exit interview with employees

who are leaving the bank for other opportunities. Talk to employees and see what it

would take to keep them around! One thing to consider concerning this is that the

feedback you receive from your employees is not always going to be truthful.

Carr’s Performance Model includes standards, which are a significant addition. I

am sure managers who are able to hire their own staff have all intentions in the world of

holding high standers for the people they hire, given that all other aspects previously

discussed are present. But once you hire people, keep your standards high for them!

Keep pushing them and helping them become better and better employees. In my

opinion, you must always have something above your head that you know you are

capable of reaching eventually. This keeps people motivated and pushes managerial

standards of an employee higher and higher. As one thing is reached, present another


thing that may be reached in the near future. This keeps people interested and hard

working.

My suggestion for Kanza Bank to reach its goal of a lower turn-over rate for

employees would consist of a few things. First, I think the managers, and Director of HR,

already try to choose the best applicants they can out of what they have to choose from.

Most of what needs attention is feedback and standards. I have worked for this

organization for over a year now and I have never once been asked if there was any

particular thing which would make or break my decision to stay with the organization. I

think that if the bank researched the current employee base on a frequent basis, they may

discover there are some aspects of the company that definitely could be worked on

internally by upper management. Many times it seems that the front-line employees are

not in touch with this upper management and that there is a lack of communication

between the two. Should more employees feel as though they are being, one, asked for

their honest evaluations and two, feel as though someone up there actually cared, the

entire company would improve!

The standard aspect is another thing that needs to be improved. If an employee

feels stuck in the job and that there is no possibility of moving up (i.e. something held

above their heads to work towards reaching) they get board and leave; simple as that. If

there were more opportunity for reward by higher job placement availability, I believe

employees would stick around longer than they do.

In conclusion, I think there are many aspects of Carr’s Performance Model that

Kanza Bank could benefit from in order to achieve their goal of lower turn-over rates


with front-line employees. Although competence, means, and opportunity are pretty

much already addressed, a look at Carr’s feedback and standards factors could enhance

what building blocks are currently stacked in our favor.

References

Hersey, P., Blanchard, K.H., Johnson, D.E. 2001. Management of Organizational Behavior Leading Human Resources, 9th edition

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A Plan to Enhance Performance