HR Plan for Principle Financial Group Essay

Human resources are the most important aspect of any organization in today’s world. The developing idea of the necessity of HR department and the need of making the efficient and timely use of the organization’s resource for the betterment of the organization has taken recent importance. Companies that are the giants of business arena have made it sure that their sole target is not to keep their customers satisfied but also to ensure that their employees are satisfied with their work and they are giving their best output. The paper will look into the organization named â€Å"Principle Financial Group† that how the HR of organization works and how they are making it work better. Principle Financial Group The organization Principal Financial Group (The Principal) is a worldwide financial services contributor which provides an extensive variety of financial commodities, and is a U. S. leader in 401(k) plans. The Headquarters of The Principal are based in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. The corporation is serving more than 18 million customers globally. By September 30, 2009, the organization had assets amounting more than $280 billion. In May 2009, Fortune Magazine had listed The Principal as 273rd in the list of 500 largest companies in USA. It is also considered as the most Ethical Company of the world and has received many awards due to this quality (Principal. com, 2010). The organization was founded by Mr. Edward Temple in the year 1879 by the name ‘Bankers Life Association’ and it used to provide life insurance to the men aged between 22 to 55 years. Since then, Mr. Edward served as the President of the organization for thirty years and the organization saw its prosperity under his leadership. In the year 1985, after nearly a century, Bankers Life Company became Principal Financial Group (PFG). The company started to expand and decided to provide its services in other countries too that included Brazil, China, Argentina, Chile, Hong Kong, Mexico and India. In October 2001, the company offered its initial public offering and became listed in New York stock Exchange (Principal. com, 2010). The competitors of PFG are AXAHY. PK, John Hancock Financial Services Inc. , a privately held organization and Lincoln National Corporation. PFG ranks to be the highest amongst the three mentioned (Daily Finance. com, 2010). The Culture of Principal Financial Group Culture is the way people work in an organization. It the way employees are thought to behave and perform their tasks. Culture is an important aspect of any organization as with out culture and organization would not function properly. It may not seem to be an integral of any organization’s success, but when giant corporations are looked over, it would come to our realization that culture makes each and every organization distinguish itself from others. Cultures can originate from many factors and they can also become the permanent way of work performances. Stories, jargons, ceremonies are part of an organization’s culture. Culture can be formalized i. e. , followed strictly by the words of book, or it can also be simple. In which ever way culture is followed, it makes an important component of an organization and it also helps employees get familiarized with the place they work in. Culture of PFG Culture of PFG is very vibrant and helps employees enjoy the work they do. The culture of PFG is embedded with their commitment to honesty and togetherness. They believe in team work and they want to excel at what they do. There are certain components of their culture. They are: Commitment to diversity, Commitment to development, Commitment to community and Commitment to ethical practices (Principal. com, 2010). They have faith in diversity if employees in organization. They respect the employees which hail from different back grounds and consider that their experiences and their knowledge would help the organization perform better. They appreciate learning from them and value the differences present amongst each other. Development is important for the organization. Training to the employees is important and they accept the fact as true. They have their training programs and they enhance the capabilities of the employees’ not for the organization only, but they trust that employees should be given importance as they give importance to their work. Additional development openings are provided to the employees through Employee Resource Centers. These centres foster a way of learning amongst the employees. These groups give a proper work setting for the employees who have common interests, and they provide career development opportunities and reach out the community for the purpose of recruitment and selection. Some of the employees resource groups are; ‘Asian Employee Resource Group’, ‘Disability Employee Resource Group’, ‘Muslim Employee Resource Group’, ‘Women in Technology Group’ etc (Principal. com, 2010). Core Values of PFG Their core values are the factors that are critical to their success. They are factors which help the organization make its decision and they do not change. These factors give the organization its personality. They are customer focused and they believe that customers will help their organization grow and they are very concerned about what their customers want and desire. Be it any business or an individual that needs financial assistance, they make it sure that their customers are provided with complete choice and control in their financial provisions. Training and Development at PFG Training and development of employees is another important aspect of the organization. The organizations that ignore the aspect of training and development come across many troubles at the later stage of their organizational life cycle. They fail to stay in touch with the recent development in the environment and their response to those changes is laid back which results in failure. In order to stay in touch with the regular changes in internal as well external environment, companies must train and develop their employees. Importance of training and development can not be ignored. Timely training and development not only helps the employees, but it also provides organizations with competitive advantage over their competitors (Noe, 2009). Employee development is another critical to success factor of the organization. Excellent culture with growth opportunities is what PFG gives to its employees and it believes that continuous training and development will help them retain employees and would give satisfactory results to the organization. Change and innovation is another key to success for PFG and it works on it to help employees change with ease and flexibility (Principal. com, 2010). Profitability and sound financial performance is also the success factor of the organization. Along with operational brilliance they provide their customers with timely solutions and satisfactory results with their products and services. With fierce competition they are faced with, PFG has been able to remain an outstanding financial solution to many institutes and individuals (Principal. com, 2010). Recruitment and Selection When recruiting and selecting the employees, PFG follows the guidelines of EEOC. i. e. , Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They are fully dedicated to the concept of the equal employment opportunities and it is evident through the diversity of the employees in the organization. The policy is to hire, train and develop employees regardless of gender, color, race, religion, pregnancy, national origin, sexual orientation, etc. Harassment of employees on these differences is strictly forbidden in the company. However, the things to decide their eligibility to the employment are their competence, qualification and their merit (Roberts, 2008). In the work place the employees are treated with great respect. Diversity in the organization makes employees accept each other’s differences as the basis of their learning and experience. The principles they follow at their work place are: work schedules are flexible to cater to the needs of their employees. They believe that employees should be given the required flexibility so they do not find hindrances in their personal as well as professional lives. Multicultural celebrations are norms at PFG. Employees learn the cultural celebrations of their colleagues and they respect each others traditions. This creates the bond between employees and they value the contentment of their partners. For the expectant mothers, PFG is very considerate to help them during their pregnancy. PFG provides prenatal care to the mothers and ensures that working mothers who are expecting their babies are to be taken care of. They do not discriminate them on their health issues. For Muslims, they also provide a separate prayer rooms to ensure that that religious obligations do not go unattended and it helps the employees respect the religious needs of their counterparts (Principal. com, 2010). Compensation Management in PFG Compensation management is other important aspects of an organization’s contend employees. Efficient compensation management gives the employees with advantage of performance management too. These two aspects are closely linked. Employees must know that their compensation would tend to increase if they outperform their colleagues and give performance that is beneficial towards meeting the goals of the organization (Berger & Berger, 2008). Compensation Management in PFG is based on the competitive salary system and salaries are evaluated yearly on the basis of the performance of the employees. They also get to participate in the annual incentive program which is subjective to the performance of the organization as well as the individual performance. They call it PrinPay (Principal. om, 2010). The organization’s compensation package is not just salary but it comprises of different benefits provided to the employees. These benefits are the medical benefits which can be customized by the employees according to their choice. Dental benefits include different dental services. Other benefits are vision coverage, wellness programs, and flexible spending accounts. Financial benefits provided to the employees include the retirement programs with 401 (k) plans, stock purchase program and treatment to short term and long term disability of the employees. The financial and health benefits are not the only incentives that are given to the employees of the organization. The employees enjoy the time off facility called ‘Personal Time off (PTO)’. The PTO is saved in a â€Å"PTO Bank† and employees earn extra hours at the year end. Nine paid holidays are given to the employees through out the year, and they are also given some time off for voluntary activities they want to perform. PFG does not believe in standardized compensation package and year end salary raises are all subjected to the performance of the employees (Principal. com, 2010).