How does replacement planning differ from succession planning?

An HR vice president briefly reviews the company's employee performance scores and relevant compensation increases over the past four years. The data reveals a .7 correlation between performance scores and salary increases and a significance level of less than .05. Additionally, the HR VP finds that the use of personal days increases by 30% around the annual performance review time and production falls by 5%.

Over the past three years, there has been a steady decline in profits and employee morale. Employees seem less engaged, and both the voluntary and involuntary turnover rates are currently 15 percentage points over the industry average. The senior team asks HR if there is any correlation between the performance scores, decreased production, and employee engagement. As the HR VP is conducting a cursory review of the current performance management system and analyzing the data to make recommendations, the CEO asks the HR VP to increase all salaries by 4%, citing the correlation between salaries and performance as a rationale.

The next week, at the weekly management team meeting, one of the senior leaders states that at her previous company the employees were 80% engaged, and she suggests using the same number as an engagement benchmark. The CEO likes this number and asks the HR VP to put a plan in place to meet this engagement number. Another senior leader suggests to the HR VP that the company should prohibit the use of personal leave before, during, and after the review period.

How should the HR VP respond to the CEO's request to use a benchmark figure of 80%?

Which should be the first step in solving an organization's problems with a sharp increase in back orders of shipments?

Which is a reason why an organization might be pushed into global expansion?

The largest customer of a small consulting firm demands that the project manager terminate an employee for poor performance or the customer will terminate its contract immediately. The account project manager has documented the employee's performance as meeting expectations, there is no documentation to support a termination, and there is no place to transfer the employee to.

The HR manager conducts a comprehensive investigation and learns that the employee and the customer had a verbal disagreement about how the employee had classified specific expenses and how it affects the customer's budget. The confrontation was significant but did not involve any unacceptable language. In addition, the employee's classification was technically correct; however, a reclassification was also acceptable under generally accepted accounting principles. The project manager was unaware of this conflict. The HR manager concludes that the employee did not follow the policy that requires an employee to advise the supervisor of a client issue. Because such a conflict could significantly harm the company's business, the policy states that an employee can be disciplined up to and including termination for this violation.

What steps should the company take with the customer to improve communication and ensure that all employees are aligned with how information should be communicated going forward?