HRM 7600 Module 8 Final Project: HR Practice Analysis Example

An HR Practice Analysis of a Pennsylvania Food Manufacturer

Student Name

Master of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

HRM-7600: Human Resource Management - Talent Management

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

An HR Practice Analysis of a Pennsylvania Food Manufacturer

The HRM-7600 final project asks for a human resources practice analysis of a real company, based on an interview with an HR professional, comparing the company's practices with the best practices identified in the course and recommending improvements. This sample uses Lehigh Valley Provisions, a composite maker of packaged soups and sauces with 2,300 employees at two plants and a distribution center in eastern Pennsylvania. Its director of human resources described the company's practices in a one-hour video interview organized around the course's modules. Each section below summarizes what the director reported, compares it with course readings and research, and rates the practice as strong, adequate or weak.

The HR Function

The department has 19 people, about one for every 120 employees. The director reports to the chief operating officer, not the chief executive, and joins executive meetings only when a people issue is on the agenda. Most HR time goes to recruiting and employee relations at the plants. DeNisi and Griffin (2020) argue that HR adds most value when it helps shape strategy, and research on systems of high-performance work practices supports that view. Rating: adequate. The function is well staffed but positioned operationally.

Managing Turnover

Annual turnover among hourly production workers is 41 percent, and 38 percent of new hires leave within their first year, most within ninety days. The company tracks the overall rate but not reasons by group, and exit interviews are optional. The course treats turnover as something to measure by type and manage where it is avoidable and harmful. Without data on why people leave, the company cannot target its efforts. Rating: weak.

Recruiting and Selection

Plant supervisors hire production workers after a short, unstructured conversation and a background check; maintenance technicians also take a practical skills test, which the director described as the company's best hiring tool. Research consistently ranks structured interviews and work samples well above unstructured interviews in predicting performance, and the course emphasizes job analysis and consistent, defensible selection. Rating: weak for production roles, strong for technicians.

Compensation and Benefits

The company pays hourly workers near the regional market median, with a shift differential of $1.25 an hour for nights and an attendance bonus. It surveys the market annually and has pay ranges for all jobs. Benefits include a 401(k) match and a health plan whose deductible rose last year, which the director said generated complaints. The practices match the course's emphasis on external competitiveness and internal consistency, though the company has not communicated the value of its total rewards well. Rating: strong.

Performance Management

Salaried employees receive annual reviews tied to merit raises; hourly employees receive no formal feedback beyond attendance tracking. Supervisors receive no training in giving feedback. The course readings describe performance management as an ongoing system of goals and feedback, and research on feedback shows it helps only when it is focused on the task and delivered well. Rating: weak for hourly staff.

Safety, Health and Well-Being

Safety is the company's strongest area. It has a safety committee at each plant with hourly members, reviews every near miss, and has cut its recordable injury rate from 6.1 to 3.4 in four years. It offers an employee assistance program, but the director estimated that fewer than 3 percent of employees use it. Rating: strong for safety, adequate for well-being.

Diversity and Inclusion

The workforce is diverse at the plants, where about 45 percent of production employees are Hispanic or Latino and many speak Spanish as a first language, but supervisors and managers are much less diverse: only 2 of 31 production supervisors speak Spanish. The company's program consists of a one-time online training module for new managers and a statement of values. The director noted that the legal environment has shifted; in January 2025 an executive order revoked the long-standing requirement that federal contractors maintain affirmative action programs for women and minorities, and the company, a supplier to federal food programs, has stopped preparing those plans.

Research suggests that the company's chosen tool is the weakest one. Kalev et al. (2006), studying 708 private employers over three decades, found that diversity training had little effect on the share of women and minorities in management, while practices that established responsibility, such as task forces and accountable leaders, produced the largest gains, with mentoring and networking programs in between. Shore et al. (2011) describe inclusion as a sense of belonging combined with being valued for what makes a person distinct, and they emphasize that inclusion depends on daily practices in work groups, not on policies alone. Communication across a language barrier between supervisors and much of the workforce is a basic inclusion problem as well as a safety and turnover risk. Rating: weak.

Summary of Ratings

The ratings show a company that is strong where it has invested deliberately, in safety and pay, and weak where it relies on supervisors' habits.

Recommendations

Five recommendations follow, ranked by expected impact. First, replace unstructured production interviews with a structured interview and a short work sample built from a job analysis, and train supervisors to use them. Second, require exit and stay interviews and report turnover monthly by plant, shift, tenure and reason, so the company can target the first ninety days. Third, set an accountable inclusion goal, such as raising the number of Spanish-speaking supervisors from 2 to 10 within three years through a frontline leadership program open to hourly employees, sponsored by the operations leadership team and reported to the executive team; offer bilingual pay for supervisors. Fourth, introduce brief monthly check-ins between supervisors and hourly employees, with training in task-focused feedback. Fifth, invite the HR director to regular executive meetings and publish an annual total rewards statement for every employee.

These recommendations carry costs and trade-offs. Structured hiring and check-ins take supervisors' time from production, the leadership program will cost about $150,000 a year, and focusing on Spanish-speaking candidates for development requires care to keep selection open to all employees and based on job-related criteria, consistent with antidiscrimination law. The expected return is lower turnover, which at a replacement cost of about $4,000 per production worker could save roughly $370,000 a year if first-year departures fell by a quarter.

Conclusion

Lehigh Valley Provisions shows that a company can excel in some HR areas while neglecting others. Its safety program demonstrates what deliberate, accountable practice achieves; applying the same approach to hiring, turnover, feedback and inclusion, with goals, data and responsibility rather than one-time training, would close most of the gaps this analysis found.

References

DeNisi, A. S., & Griffin, R. W. (2020). HR (5th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Kalev, A., Dobbin, F., & Kelly, E. (2006). Best practices or best guesses? Assessing the efficacy of corporate affirmative action and diversity policies. American Sociological Review, 71(4), 589-617. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240607100404

Shore, L. M., Randel, A. E., Chung, B. G., Dean, M. A., Holcombe Ehrhart, K., & Singh, G. (2011). Inclusion and diversity in work groups: A review and model for future research. Journal of Management, 37(4), 1262-1289. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206310385943