The advantages of this alternative are:

The company is aware of the competition's training and development programs and their levels of efficiency.

The company can improve its results by following industry best practices in those areas where it score below industry averages.

Also, it can monitor its improvements during its entire activity by comparing the actual results with the ones from the previous years.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

If the industry has lower efficiency levels in average, a.C. Kaplan can't use industry best practices to improve its activity, because the company is the one creating these best practices.

Also, if the company considerably improved its activity, the comparison with previous years will not be very helpful, especially if all competitors have registered major improvements as well.

The efficiency of training and development activities can be perceived differently by each employee. The company should run employee satisfaction surveys with respect to these activities.

The advantages of this alternative are:

Feedback from employees is very helpful when trying to improve training and development programs.

The same feedback may improve the employee's image of the firm because its opinion matters.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

Employees can be subjective when evaluating activities, sometimes. This may bias the results to the employee side, rather then determining the most efficient solution for both the company and the employee.

Employees may not be 100% truthful when participating in surveys because they fear the consequences of a negative evaluation.

The lower the participation rate, the larger the bias of the results. The participating employees are likely to display similar characteristics and these characteristic lead to bias.

The company needs a better strategy to retain its personnel

The average working schedule of a C.P.A. is made of 60-70 hours per week. After a few years or even months, the C.P.A.s choose to leave the company because of the busy schedule so one way to increase employee retention would be to reduce the hourly work load and bring it to the common 40-hour per week.

The advantages of this alternative are:

The employee retention rates increase.

The employees are more satisfied with their working schedule.

The employees have more time to relax, which should make them more efficient in the same time unit.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

A.C. Kaplan has to hire more entry-level employees to take over the work that will be given up by reducing the working time of the existing employees.

Some of the employees may want to do overtime, but the new policy won't be open to it.

The entry-level salary is quite low for a company of this size. The company could raise the salary level above the industry average. That way it would make sure that its employee won't go to its competitors, because those have lower salary levels.

The advantages of this alternative are:

Employee retention rates increase.

The employee satisfaction increases.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

The company incurs higher salary-related expenses.

The salary costs grow larger compared to other cost items, which will make this cost item less productive than others.

Offer employee benefits above average

The advantages of this alternative are:

Employee retention rates increase.

The employee satisfaction increases.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

The company incurs higher employee benefit related costs.

The cost employee benefit cost-related items become less productive when compared to other cost items.

Taking under consideration high attrition rate and maintaining the 10-year average time span condition to reach partner position, the company will not be able to reach management personnel objectives

Promote people from outside the company

The advantages of this alternative are:

The company gets to hire people with experience to fill in the management positions.

The company manages to fill in the management positions needed to grow.

Experienced people from outside the company bring with them new ideas.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

Employees from within the company have fewer chances to be promoted.

Outside employees may lack specific knowledge about a.C. Kaplan's accounting/auditing methods.

Reduce the time span required to promote entry-level employees to management positions.

The advantages of this alternative are:

Employees will remain more time with a.C. Kaplan if they know they have good chances to be promoted.

The company fills in the new management positions that will show up.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

The new employees may not have time to acquire all the skills needed to fill in the management positions.

The employees that waited a long time to be promoted will feel frustrated as they had to wait a long time to be promoted, whereas the new employees beneficiate...

Kaplan incurs premium costs to bring those employees back.
The current employees will have an incentive to leave the company after a while and hope to return in better conditions.

The CEDC is not focused on the new employees' interpersonal skills

While recruiting the new employees, the company should focus on interpersonal skills.

The advantages of this alternative are:

Saves the company the time and money spent training a person with low interpersonal skills.

It is an extra filter in the recruitment process that narrows down the search.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

The interpersonal skills may be harder to find in people with analytical thinking, which is more important for a.C. Kaplan's employees.

The interpersonal skills condition can eliminate good potential candidates.

While training the new employees, the company should simulate real situations.

The advantages of this alternative are:

New employees learn how to interact better with customers.

The new employees get to know each other better.

The company is able to assess better the new employee's interpersonal skills.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

new training technique implies that the company has to allocate more resources to training and development activities.

The best technique to develop interpersonal skills is on-the-job training, which will make some of the managers suspicious when implementing it.

While motivating the employees, the company should set objectives for interpersonal skills outcomes and when remunerating the results, taking under consideration the extent to which employees meet these objectives.

The advantages of this alternative are:

The employees feel motivated to improve their interpersonal skills.

The company's clients are more satisfied.

The disadvantages of this alternative are:

The company has to put an extra effort in designing new motivational packages.

The company has to allocate extra resources for the new motivational packages.

On one hand, the company may continue with its existing personnel policy, but it won't be able to keep up with the industry's development page. The promotion, remuneration and motivation policies have to be restructured to adapt to the new market and industry requirements.

On the other hand if the company tries to restructure some or part of its activity to extreme, such as bringing a lot of employees from outside, it may incur heavy losses from managers leaving the company. This usually happens when a company goes through a dramatic change and old employees don't want to be part of the new structure.

Solutions/Decisions

The CEDC is seen by many managers as a high financial burden set virtual environment classes taught by remote managers

This solution was chosen over the others as the technological advancement allows for training and development programs to be almost similar to classroom trainings. On one hand, the latest virtual classrooms allow for eye contact and the quality of the transmission is very good. Attendees have the impression they are all in the same room. On the other hand, the costs of holding training sessions in a virtual environment are considerably smaller. There is no need for a special place for the activity to take place, so there is a rent saving. Also, there is no need for the trainer or the trainees to move from one place to another, which is synonym with traveling expenses.

b. To some extent, CEDC's efficiency and efficacy is unknown to the management

The company has to set measurable indicators for training and development activity.

A process that is not measured can't be improved. Given that improving efficiency should be a must for any company that needs to survive in its industry, a.C. Kaplan should measure all its activities and always try to develop sets of indicators that give management a good insight about what is going on in the company. Benchmarking wouldn't be possible before developing key performance indicators, so this solution is better than the benchmarking one and since employee surveys are biased, this solution is more reliable for the management, although the three solutions don't exclude each other.

c. The company needs a better strategy to retain its personnel

The company should raise the entry-level salary level above the industry average.

If the industry is expanding, it means that a.C. Kaplan's competitors will increase their activity as well and they will have to compete with this one for the same workforce supply. Salary is an important motivating factor for entry-level employees, which is why if a.C. Kaplan doesn't change its salary policy it may have to face even…