SHRM SHRM-SCP

A 50-year-old family-owned restaurant has a good business model. Repeat customers are greeted by name, and their preferences are remembered. The owner visits each table to engage in conversation. Food quality is high, merging home cooking with new cuisine. The environment is elegant, welcoming, and unrushed, and the restaurant is known for its celebrity customers. Visitors to town make advance reservations.

Business decisions are typically made in family meetings. In the next six months, the owners plan to open a new location, but they worry about maintaining the same quality of personal service and name brand at the restaurant locations. The owners have relied on immediate family, relatives, and close friends to primarily staff the restaurant, since outsiders without a family connection tend to quickly leave the business. Long-time employees take advantage of time off, yet the owners are reluctant to use discipline for fear it will anger the family. The owners' children have expressed concern about continuing in the business, receiving educational degrees in marketing and management with anticipation of launching their new careers.

Realizing that they must bring on additional staff for the new location, the owners hire an HR representative with large restaurant chain recruiting experience. In addition to identifying a renowned chef to hire who currently lives in another country, the owners want to establish a bonus program. They also want to implement policies and procedures to avoid attendance issues in the future.

What steps should the HR representative take to support implementing an attendance policy that meets the owners' business strategy?

A domestic airline rapidly gains market share through an innovative business model, a charismatic leader, a unique work environment, and sound HR practices. This has led to a global strategic plan of aggressively acquiring small local airlines in neighboring countries.

The VP of HR has been with the airline for 15 years and is an active member of its leadership team. He is a big believer in the benefits of an inclusive and multicultural workforce. This is the VP of HR's first experience with globalizing HR practices. An immediate conflict between headquarters and local policies emerges when a country HR manager raises the issue of discounted tickets for exempt U.S. management in the total rewards package. In the headquarters country, exempt management is paid on a salary basis, but in some of the new countries of operation, management is paid contractually on an hourly basis. The VP of HR is concerned that expanding the benefit globally to all management will create excessive costs and has not taken action after several requests. Frustrated, a country HR manager writes directly to the CEO about the issue, arguing that limiting this benefit may lead to legal challenges or employee relations issues that could damage the company's reputation, the work climate, and the ability to attract talent in the future.

The issue is complicated by the fact that the country HR manager is herself paid hourly as a manager.

Which method should the VP of HR use to best communicate the final policy on this matter to the organization?