Seeing the Forest Products Company

Seeing the Forest Products Company and the Trees HR management Where does Horace start? What programs does he put in place to deal with the needs of corporate culture, knowledge, skills, leadership, and team orientation? Horace should start with executive programs. These programs will train the organization's executives on strategic leadership skills, change management, managing corporate culture, and building successful teams. This training will allow the executives to be better informed and acquire new skills to enable them manage the change.

Without these skills, they will not be prepared to handle the resistance already taking place and the executives may fail at their strategy. For the middle managers, who are already against the changes, Horace should prepare them for change management. This involves transitioning people, organizations or teams from their current state to the desired future state Levasseur, 2010. This process will assist the middle managers in accepting and embracing the changes occurring in the business environment. Without change management, the chances of succeeding will be reduced.

Properly handling the transition will allow the middle managers to see the benefits of this change, the corporate culture will be changed, and the employees will have the opportunity to learn new skills. With a huge number of employees, Horace would have conduct leadership training for the middle managers. The training will give the managers new skills they can use to lead and demonstrate leadership amongst the employees under them.

People will follow their managers, and if the manager is against the change all the employees under him/her will also be against the change. The middle managers and executives will then be team leaders for the various groups of employees. Each group will work collectively together to ensure they succeed. This way Horace will be able to change the organization culture, demonstrate to the employees the need for change and its benefits both to them and the organization.

The employee program will demonstrate to them where the organization is currently, where it has been going wrong, and how to get where they would want. How does he go about developing the programs that he needs to put in place? Does he do it by himself? Can he buy off-the-shelf programs? Horace will need first to analyze the problem he needs to solve. He will have to establish if the problem can be solved, or eliminated by provision of instructions Jackson, Schuler, & Werner, 2011.

To establish what the managers expect from the training, a needs assessment will be conducted. Horace will then need to identify who the training is targeted for, and establish their distinctive characteristics. The training program will be designed by identification of the learning objectives. A summarized list showing what participants should remember after every session is made. Skills the participants will have gained after the training will also be listed. After this Horace will need to develop the training materials.

There should also be exercises included after each session to allow the participants opportunity to practise what they have learnt. He can do it by himself or involve a trained professional, who will guide him on how to develop the programs. The trained professional can also be charged with conducting the training programs. This will allow the employees to have a new person whom they might be more comfortable around. If the programs are available, Horace can also purchase off-shelf programs.

The only problem with these programs will be they are more generalized, and they might not suit the organization's specific purposes. The programs would have to be customized or used the way they are, but the organization risks not gaining anything. Having programs that are geared towards the specific organizational problems that need to be addressed would allow the organization to implement the programs much faster and with less or no customization.

What time frame does Horace need to implement the programs to make the change successful? If he deals only with executive development programs, does he need to be concerned with programs for middle managers and below? If so how does he do this? For the change to be successful and acceptable by all, Horace will need a minimum of 6 months. During this period, he will conduct training programs for the executives, middle managers, and all the employees.

The time frame is only an estimate but if well arranged the programs can be completed successfully. Each level of management and employee level is different. No level should be ignored in the programs to make sure that the specific concerns.