Final Exam
1. 1. The Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer and the Executive Management Team has embarked upon a fundamental organizational shift. In order to reestablish their sustained competitive advantage in the market, the shift will take the organization from one which has always recruited, selected, trained and developed employees based on the traditional knowledges, skills and abilities to one that is primarily based on talents and strengths. As the Human Resources Director:

A. What types of organization activities and behaviors would you curtail and why? (Buckingham)
The types of organizational activities and behaviors I would restrict in order to shift a company from knowledge, skill and ability-focused to talents and strengths-focused would be:
• Spend a considerable amount of time finding the right candidates in the beginning. If the appropriate time is dedicated to finding the right candidate, it will save time and money for the company trying to invest in an employee with the wrong talents or strengths.
• Recruit based on talents and strengths. Focus on performance by establishing outcomes. Rather than trying to fit each employee into a certain pattern, emphasize on the amount of positive outcomes and less on policies, procedures, and capabilities.
• Training should be focused on educating employees about their strengths and discovering new ways to build on these strengths. The company’s time and money should be invested in educating their employees for the benefit of the organization.
• Development should be focused on growing employee’s strengths and not necessarily promoting outside their areas of strength. Avoid promoting employees that take them out of their strengths based role, there are other ways of incentivizing a job well done.
B. What steps/activities would you undertake to assess the current employee base and why?