BUS 1010 Module 4 Human Resources Written Assignment Example

Passaic Fire Sauce Company: Motivating a Production Team, Hiring Eleven People and Paying Them Fairly

Student Name

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

BUS-1010: Introduction to Business

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Passaic Fire Sauce Company: Motivating a Production Team, Hiring Eleven People and Paying Them Fairly

Passaic Fire Sauce Company, the composite hot sauce maker in Paterson, New Jersey, followed in these answers, must hire eleven people in the next six months to staff a second shift for its new grocery contract. The owners have never hired more than two people at once, and they want the new team to care about quality as much as the original nine employees do. These answers address how to motivate production workers, how to recruit and select new hires, and how to design pay and benefits for a growing small business.

Question 1: What Motivates Workers on a Production Line?

Bottling hot sauce is repetitive, and the owners cannot match the pay of the large food plants nearby. Motivation theory suggests money is only part of the answer. Self-determination theory, which Gagné and Deci (2005) applied to work, distinguishes motivation that comes from interest and personal value from motivation driven by pressure or rewards, and argues that the first kind lasts when work lets people steer their own effort, feel capable at what they do and feel connected to the people around them, which the theory calls autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Each need can be met on a production line. For autonomy, the company will let each shift team arrange its own rotation among cooking, filling and labeling and choose how to meet the shift's target. For competence, every worker will be trained to test pH and taste for heat level, skills that make them responsible for quality rather than just speed, and each shift will see its reject rate posted daily. For relatedness, the owners will introduce new hires to the farms and stores the sauce reaches and hold a monthly tasting where workers vote on new recipes. Pay still matters; it has to be fair enough that it does not become the only thing people think about. Nickels et al. (2016) make a similar point about job enrichment: work that offers variety, responsibility and feedback motivates more than simplified jobs paid slightly more.

Question 2: How Should the Company Recruit and Select Eleven People?

Recruiting for entry-level food production in Paterson works best through local channels: referrals from current employees, a hiring event at the community college, the county's workforce development office and the reentry program the company already works with. Online job boards will add applicants but also many who never show up for interviews.

Selection is where small firms often rely on gut feeling. Research suggests a more structured approach works better. Sackett et al. (2022) re-examined decades of studies on how well selection methods predict job performance and found that earlier estimates had been overstated, but that structured interviews still came out on top: a fixed set of questions about the actual job, put to each applicant and scored with one shared guide. Passaic will therefore use a short structured interview with six questions about reliability, following procedures and working on a team, scored by two interviewers, followed by a paid one-hour work sample in which candidates fill and label bottles under supervision. The work sample also lets candidates see the job before accepting it, which reduces early quitting. Every candidate will be asked the same questions, which is fairer and helps the company avoid discriminatory hiring.

Training completes the process. New hires will spend their first three shifts paired with an experienced worker, learn the food safety plan before touching product and receive a checklist of skills to master in their first month, with a short review at 30 and 90 days.

Question 3: How Can a Small Firm Pay and Reward Fairly?

Compensation must be competitive enough to attract reliable workers and fair enough that people see it as just. The company will set starting pay at $18 an hour, above New Jersey's minimum wage and in line with similar food production jobs in the county, with a $1 raise after 90 days for workers who complete quality training. A quarterly bonus pool equal to 5% of the shift's on-time, on-spec production value will be shared equally among the team, rewarding cooperation rather than individual speed.

Benefits are harder for a twenty-person firm. The company will offer paid sick leave, which New Jersey requires, a modest health insurance contribution through a small-group plan and a retirement plan with a small employer match once the grocery contract is secure. Nickels et al. (2016) note that benefits make up a large share of total compensation and that flexible options can help employees choose what they value most. For a small company, being clear about what it can and cannot offer builds more trust than promises it cannot keep.

Together, these choices aim to make Passaic a place where reliable people want to stay, which matters because every quit means another round of hiring and training during the busiest year in the company's history.

References

Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 331-362. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.322

Nickels, W. G., McHugh, J. M., & McHugh, S. M. (2016). Understanding business (11th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. (2022). Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(11), 2040-2068. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000994