Gap Analysis: Riordan Manufacturing

Gap Analysis: Riordan Manufacturing

Riordan Manufacturing is a successful Fortune 1000 company in the field of global plastics production. The production is split between three plants, two in the United States, and one in China. Headquartered in San Jose, California, the company boasts “revenues in excess of $1 billion” (University of Phoenix, 2008a, para. 3). Riordan Manufacturing has made some strategic changes over the past couple of years to a customer-relationship management (CRM) system. The adoption of this new system has restructured the plants into self-directed work teams. Unfortunately, since the restructuring, job satisfaction and morale are down, and employee turnover up. Further, dissention among the executive team as to the cause and solutions to the problems is present. CEO and founder, Michael Riordan has his own idea of what the problem is, an ungrateful workforce, but realizes that in order to remain competitive in this global market, he will need to make many changes to the current human resource management (HRM) system to keep his valuable employees. Riordan understands that “…organizations with better talent will be more successful than those with lesser talent” (Brockbank and Ulrich, 2005, July, para. 4).

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

Riordan Manufacturing is facing several human resource issues. After implementing a new customer-relationship management system, turnover is up from the prior year by an average of 50%, with the highest being an increase of 75% at headquarters (University of Phoenix, 2008b). Additionally, morale is down and employee complaints are up 33% quarter to quarter (University of Phoenix, 2008c). Various situations are the causes for these increases, but recognizing them allows opportunities for the company to improve the situations and turn the human resources issues around.

The Riordan employees complain of unfair promotion practices