Graduate students in PSY 57000 (Staffing) are receiving real world experience in a unique partnership with Monarch Beverage. The students are conducting job analyses on three categories of jobs for the company, specifically: delivery drivers, warehouse workers and sales representatives.
The students toured the plant in late September and are currently working on providing a new job analysis for Monarch by the end of the fall semester. Monarch is actively seeking to better their job descriptions to attract the best applicants and diversify the company.
“I hope that they will be able to provide some fresh insight or ideas from a third-party perspective. It can be very useful for someone on the outside to review your practices from time to time,” said Derek Wood a recruiter for Monarch Beverage.
A job analysis is a study of tasks, requirements and related characteristics necessary for successful job performance. You’ll often find the results of the study used in job descriptions, developing and validating methods for employee selection and measuring employee performance.
Graduate students in PSY 57000 (Staffing) tour Monarch Beverage in anticipation of helping the company improve hiring and retention practices.
“During the tour, they spoke a lot about how much they value and take care of their employees. Most companies say this; it’s good PR. However, what stood out to me was the actionable steps they have taken to show, not tell, that they care about the well-being of their workers,” said graduate student Amanda Mosier. “They have an incredibly low turnover rate, which is a sign their employees are very committed to the organization and I can certainly see why. Add all of this to that the fact Monarch is making an active effort to improve their hiring practices in order to increase diversity and it paints the picture of a company who cares about more than just their bottom line.”
After the tour, the graduate students created a customized task inventory for current Monarch employees, listing typical tasks for each job. The employees rated each task for relevance, frequency and importance. The graduate students hosted a workshop with current employees and supervisors to fine tune the results of the task analysis. They are now taking those results to create a personnel selection system that is customized for each job category they evaluated at Monarch.
“Monarch has been very generous in allowing us to conduct these job analyses and are opening the doors to us quite widely. This is a great example of a university-business partnership where students will develop valuable experience and skills conducting job analyses (which is a central competency for all industrial/organizational psychologists), and hopefully Monarch will find our selection and recruiting plans beneficial for their business purposes,” Peggy Stockdale, Ph.D., a professor of psychology.
The graduate students taking part in this project say this partnership is equally beneficial to all involved.
“This partnership with Monarch will help me by giving me the opportunity to take my classroom information and learn how it applies to the real world. Learning how to do something and doing it are two different skills, and here we get to do both; I am so excited to take part in a project that greatly benefits both parties,” said Mya Findley.
Monarch’s recruiter hopes this is an eye-opening experience.
“I’d hope the students take away from this that there is a drastic difference between theoretical human resources and practical application human resources,” said Derek Sutton. “Classroom knowledge provides the base of human resource practices, but every company tweaks and uses them in different ways. Don’t pigeonhole yourself into thinking there’s only one way to manage human capital.”
Monarch says with proper approval, they will use some if not all of the student’s job descriptions and ideas to improve the candidate pool and diversify the company.