Interclean Benchmarking
InterClean Inc offers institutional and industrial cleaning and sanitation services. As the business evolves and sanitation requirements become more stringent, consumers are requiring more services and solutions from such companies. To remain competitive, InterClean has implemented changes including acquiring a major competitor named EnviroTech. InterClean can learn from benchmarking as a guide to successfully integrating EnviroTech while continuing to grow the business and satisfy their customers. InterClean needs to focus on aligning organizational structure with strategy, evaluating, recruiting, and selection methods, examining the methodology of how human capital is developed, and evaluate training and development of employees. In Search of Excellence, written by Robert Waterman, states that, "factors that discriminate best firms from others are not technology, good ideas, or brilliant strategy but rather they are organized to attract better people and their people are motivated to perform at a higher level. Top firms enhance their excellence by knowing how to manage the top people they have attracted." (Dreher, Dougherty, 2001). These concepts are critical for InterClean as they benchmark companies to provide guidance in aligning the organizational structure.
Compensation is an important part of aligning structure and strategy. Incentive pay is used to reinforce desired behaviors and is over and above standard compensation (Shnurman, 2007). An astute company will use incentive pay as a means to differentiate employee performance rather than risk negative impact driven from different pay levels across jobs (Dreher, Dougherty, 2001). Stock ownership also serves to reinforce behavior that supports company objectives (Lederer, Weinberg, 1995) and is a viable option for InterClean as they integrate EnviroTech. Both initiatives have yielded positive results at other companies such as Southwest Airlines.
Southwest Airlines is a US based air...
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