GHRM5113 Strategic Human Resource Management

Case Study: FairWork Solutions Sdn. Bhd.

FairWork Solutions Sdn. Bhd. is a Malaysian business services company with approximately 450 employees working at its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur and regional offices in Johor and Penang. The company employs individuals from different age groups, educational backgrounds, ethnicities, and levels of work experience. Due to rapid business expansion, management recently introduced an integrated digital human resource system to manage attendance, performance, compensation, promotion, recruitment, and workforce information. The system is intended to improve efficiency and support faster decision-making. However, employees have raised concerns about whether the system is fair, transparent, and inclusive, particularly because it was introduced with limited consultation and minimal explanation.

The new HR system evaluates employees mainly through attendance, punctuality, monthly output, overtime hours, customer feedback, and achievement of performance targets. Employees from the customer service department argue that the system does not consider the complexity of certain cases, teamwork, mentoring, creativity, or problem-solving. Remote employees also believe that they receive lower ratings because their contributions are less visible to supervisors. In addition, some employees claim that managers give higher ratings to staff with whom they have closer working relationships. These concerns have created doubts about whether the performance management system treats all employees fairly and whether the HR metrics provide a balanced assessment of employee contribution.

Concerns have also been raised about compensation, recruitment, and selection practices. Employees performing similar duties sometimes receive different salaries, allowances, and bonuses because management considers qualifications, experience, previous salary, and negotiation skills. Longserving employees believe that newly recruited staff sometimes receive better compensation despite having similar responsibilities. The recruitment system also automatically screens applications based on qualifications, years of experience, and selected keywords. Although this process saves time, some qualified applicants may be excluded because they do not use the exact keywords required. Employees are concerned that older applicants, individuals with career gaps, persons with disabilities, and candidates from non-traditional educational backgrounds may be unfairly disadvantaged.

Many employees are resisting the new HR system because they do not understand how their information is collected, evaluated, or used in decisions involving promotion, salary, and job security. Some employees are also worried about privacy, excessive monitoring, and inaccurate data. Senior management has therefore instructed the Human Resource Department to review the system and recommend improvements. The department must respond to employee concerns, improve participation and communication, and ensure that HR practices promote fairness, equality, transparency, and inclusion. At the same time, the company expects the system to remain efficient and support its future growth.

Answer ALL questions below

Question 1

Discuss the fairness and inclusion concerns arising from the HR metrics and performance-rating practices. Suggest how HR should respond.

Question 2

Discuss the equality and transparency concerns in the compensation system. Explain an appropriate organisational response.

Question 3

Discuss how automated screening and recruiter preferences may disadvantage certain applicant groups. Suggest inclusive responses.

Question 4

Discuss why employees are resisting the system and how management should respond through communication, participation, and engagement.

Experts Answer on Above Questions on Human Resource Management

Fairness and inclusion in HR Metrics and performance rating

Fairness and inclusion concerns – the major concerns are in relation to algorithm bias in performance rating as there is probability of employees working in complex projects may get lower ratings. Lack of transparency is another concern as employees do not have an idea of how attendance, KPIs and behavioural indicators are considered in calculating performance. Indirect discrimination in the form of lower ratings to employees because of maternity leave, medical leave or flexible working. Manager’s involvement is very less and there is significant reliance on automated scoring which is also a major concern.
HR response – it is important for the HR to publish clear performance evaluation criteria, integrate AI generated scores with the review given by manager, support employees by providing them a formal performance appeal process, and train manager to support fair and inclusive performance management.

Equality and transparency in compensation

The equality and transparency concerns in compensation are in the form of lack of clear specification about salary increment and bonus calculations, different rewards to employees with similar roles across Kuala Lumpur, Johor and Penang, and lack of visible assessment criteria for promotion-linked salary.
Organisational response – the issues can be resolved by introducing transparent salary bands for each job grade, equal pay audits on annual basis to identify any differences in pay, clear communication of bonus and promotion criteria, against Malaysian industry standards and giving employees complete freedom to discuss compensation related issues.

Automatic screening and recruiter preferences

How certain applicants may be disadvantaged – the older participants may get less attention from AI as compared to recent graduates with new digital skills. The applicants from smaller universities may not get equal opportunities as compared to those where recruiters favours graduates from well known institutions. The applicants from different backgrounds may suffer from favouritism by recruiter to certain cultural group people.
Inclusive responses – it is important to remove any kind of personal identifiers during initial screening, and make use of competency based selection criteria instead of universities reputation. The final hiring decisions will take into consideration the structured panel interviews for fair and effective hiring.

Employee resistance and management response

Reasons for employee resistance – employees are not aware of the complete transformation process, and concerns because automated decisions would replace managerial judgement. Employees are also not consulted before proceeding with the change.
Management response – it is important for the managers to communicate properly about the change, and include employees in all the major discussions and provide employees with regular implementation updates. Employee participation along with their engagement is crucial in successful implementation.

Want Detailed HRM Answers with References?

The analysis above revealed how FairWork Solutions Sdn. Bhd can strengthen employee trust in its digital HR system by improving fairness, transparency and inclusion across performance management, compensation, recruitment and employee engagement. If you are also looking for assistance with your HRM assignment, visit our assignment help page in Malaysia to get a professional HRM assignment helper for all your assignment needs. If you want to be sure, you can view the experts’ solved assignments from Universiti Tun Abdul Razak and proceed with ordering your assignment after you are 100% confident.