| Course | HRM 5003 High-Performance Human Resource Management |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 1 |
| Paper type | HR strategy alignment analysis |
| Length | 1,190 words, about 4 pages plus title and reference pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | American College of Education |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for HRM 5003 Module 1
A Cleaning Company That Wants Clinic Contracts With an Office-Cleaning Workforce: Aligning HR Strategy With a Shift to Healthcare Facilities
Student Name
American College of Education
HRM5003: High-Performance Human Resource Management
Module 1 Assignment
Instructor Name
August 28, 2028
The Business Strategy
Brightline Facility Services is a composite family-owned commercial cleaning company in central Ohio with revenue of about $38 million and 640 employees: 560 cleaning staff, 48 supervisors and 32 office and management staff. Most of its revenue comes from nightly cleaning of office buildings under one- to three-year contracts won by competitive bid, where margins have fallen to about 6 percent. Healthcare facilities, mainly outpatient clinics, surgery centers and dialysis units, now provide 18 percent of revenue at a margin of about 14 percent, because clients value reliability and documented infection prevention more than the lowest price.
The owners' strategy for the next three years is to raise healthcare work to 35 percent of revenue. That strategy asks something specific of employees. Healthcare clients require cleaning to written protocols, correct use of disinfectants with the right contact times, handling of regulated waste and a consistent crew that knows the facility. A strategy that depends on consistent crews cannot be carried out by a workforce that turns over more than once a year.
The HR System Brightline Has
Brightline's HR practices were built for office cleaning, where the firm competes on price. Hiring is fast and informal: a supervisor interviews applicants for about ten minutes and most are offered work the same week. New hires receive two hours of orientation, mostly paperwork and a safety video, and learn the job alongside whoever is working that night. Cleaners start at $14.25 an hour, close to the local market floor for the work, with a 25-cent raise after one year. There is no formal performance review and no path from cleaner to supervisor other than being asked.
The results are predictable. Annual turnover among cleaning staff was 118 percent last year, meaning Brightline hired about 660 people to keep 560 positions filled, and 41 percent of those who left did so within their first 60 days. In healthcare accounts, the pattern is costly. Brightline lost two of its nine clinic contracts last year, and in both cases the client's inspection failures were traced to crews in which more than half the members had been with the company for less than three months.
Why the System No Longer Fits
Wright and McMahan (1992) described several theoretical perspectives on strategic HR. The behavioral perspective holds that HR practices matter because they elicit the employee behaviors a strategy requires, and the resource-based perspective holds that a workforce can itself be a source of advantage when its skills are valuable and hard to copy. By either account, Brightline's system is aligned with office cleaning and misaligned with healthcare. It produces workers who can be replaced quickly, which suits a price-driven business, but it cannot produce the consistent, trained crews that clinic contracts pay for.
Delery and Doty (1996) tested three views of how HR practices affect performance: a universalistic view, in which some practices are better everywhere; a contingency view, in which practices must fit the strategy; and a configurational view, in which bundles of practices must fit each other as well. They found support for elements of all three. Huselid (1995), in a study of nearly a thousand firms, found that more extensive use of high-performance work practices, careful selection, training, performance-linked pay and employee participation, was associated with lower turnover and higher productivity and financial performance. Taken together, the research suggests Brightline needs more than one new practice. It needs a set of practices that fit the healthcare strategy and reinforce each other.
A Two-Track Architecture
Lepak and Snell (1999) argued that firms need not manage all employees the same way. They proposed that the right employment mode depends on how valuable and how unique a group's skills are, with commitment-based practices for core employees whose skills are both, and more transactional practices for employees whose skills are valuable but widely available. That view fits Brightline's position. Office cleaning skills are generally available and can be managed efficiently; healthcare cleaning skills, protocol knowledge, disinfectant use and familiarity with a facility, are more valuable to Brightline's strategy and harder for competitors to assemble quickly.
The proposal is a separate Healthcare Services track. Cleaners in the track would be selected with a structured process, complete a 40-hour certification before working unsupervised, earn a premium of $2.00 an hour over the office rate, receive quarterly reviews against inspection results and have a defined path to lead technician and supervisor. The office division would keep its lean model but fix its basics: a structured first week and a clearer first raise, since first-60-day departures are expensive everywhere.
The Risk in Two Tracks
A two-track design has a cost that does not appear in the budget. Office cleaners who see colleagues earning $2.00 more an hour for work that looks similar may conclude that they are treated unfairly. In equity theory as Adams (1965) set it out, an employee weighs what they put in and what they get back against the same balance for a colleague they compare themselves with, and that perceived inequity produces tension that they reduce by lowering effort, changing their view of the comparison or leaving. At Brightline, where office cleaners already leave at a high rate, a visible pay gap could push that rate higher.
The design reduces the risk in three ways. The track will be open to any office cleaner with six months of good attendance who completes the certification, so the premium is earned through a route everyone can see. The differences in duties, protocols and inspection standards will be written into both job descriptions, so the comparison is between different jobs rather than different people doing the same job. And the office division's own first-year raise will be improved at the same time, so the change is not experienced as one group gaining at the other's expense.
Cost, Law and Measures
At the current healthcare staffing of about 100 cleaners, rising to about 190 at the target revenue mix, the pay premium would cost about $418,000 a year at full size, assuming an average of 1,100 paid hours per person, since most night cleaning shifts are part-time, and the certification program about $95,000 a year including trainers and paid training hours. Against that, each lost clinic contract cost Brightline about $260,000 in annual revenue and $36,000 in margin, and each replaced cleaner costs an estimated $1,900 in recruiting, training and lost productivity. Later modules will price each element in detail.
Three legal questions follow from the design. Paying the healthcare track more than office cleaners for similar work must rest on documented differences in skill, effort, responsibility and conditions, since a pay gap that tracks sex or national origin could invite claims under the Equal Pay Act or Title VII. Selection for the track must be validated and checked for adverse impact. And paid training hours count as working time under federal wage and hour law. Success will be measured by first-year turnover in the healthcare track, inspection pass rates, clinic contract renewals and healthcare revenue share, each against this year's baseline.
References
Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 267-299). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60108-2
Delery, J. E., & Doty, D. H. (1996). Modes of theorizing in strategic human resource management: Tests of universalistic, contingency, and configurational performance predictions. Academy of Management Journal, 39(4), 802-835. https://doi.org/10.2307/256713
Huselid, M. A. (1995). The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity, and corporate financial performance. Academy of Management Journal, 38(3), 635-672. https://doi.org/10.2307/256741
Lepak, D. P., & Snell, S. A. (1999). The human resource architecture: Toward a theory of human capital allocation and development. Academy of Management Review, 24(1), 31-48. https://doi.org/10.2307/259035
Wright, P. M., & McMahan, G. C. (1992). Theoretical perspectives for strategic human resource management. Journal of Management, 18(2), 295-320. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639201800205
HRM 5003 Module 1 instructions, in plain terms
HRM 5003 begins with strategy, and Module 1 typically asks you to set an organization's HR system against its business strategy. Most prompts expect the business strategy and what it requires of employees, the current HR practices, an analysis of fit using recognized theory, a proposed direction and an early view of cost, legal constraints and measures. Many sections allow different practices for different employee groups. The alignment paper usually comes to five pages. The HRM 5003 Canvas instructions state whether the employer is assigned and whether this paper starts a course-long project. Describe the strategy in terms of what employees must actually do differently, not only what the company hopes to win.
How the HRM 5003 Module 1 example is put together
The paper opens with Brightline's strategy: move from office cleaning into clinics and outpatient centers, where infection control and documentation matter. It then describes the HR system: hiring on availability, little training, flat pay and no performance reviews. The fit section uses three bodies of theory to explain the mismatch: the system fits low-cost office work but not work where mistakes spread infection, different employee groups warrant different architectures, and paying some workers more for new skills raises fairness questions. The proposal section sets out two tracks with different selection, training and pay. A section addresses the risk of resentment between tracks and how to manage it. The final section gives a first cost estimate, legal issues such as equal pay and measures of fit.
Reading the HRM 5003 Module 1 rubric
Alignment papers in the MBA are graded on fit and theory. Strategy credit requires the business strategy translated into employee requirements. Current system marks reward a concrete description of practices. The fit row usually carries the most weight: theory used to explain specific evidence, not summarized separately. Graders give credit for a proposal that follows from the analysis, such as different architectures for different groups. Risk marks reward naming problems the proposal creates. The last HRM 5003 marks go to a first estimate of cost, legal issues and measures, plus APA 7. Graders also notice when each theory is used to explain a specific piece of evidence rather than summarized. Each HR practice linked to a named business goal also earns marks.
Common HRM 5003 Module 1 mistakes, and how to avoid them
HR strategy papers most often list best practices without asking whether they fit the strategy. Another frequent weakness is theory described in a section of its own and never applied. Students also propose changes with no cost or legal check. Start with what the strategy requires of employees. Describe current practices honestly. Use theory to explain the gaps. Propose a structure that follows. Name the risks. Make a first cost estimate. Keep the employer composite and say so once. For a hospital, a bank or a logistics firm, the desk can draft an HR alignment analysis too.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official American College of Education document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
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HRM 5003 Module 1 questions, answered
What does HRM5003 Module 1 usually ask for?
HRM5003 Module 1 often asks students to analyze how an organization's HR strategy supports or undermines its business strategy and to propose changes. Many sections expect research on strategic HR to support the argument. Your classroom's instructions decide the employer.
Can a company use different HR practices for different employee groups?
Yes. Research on HR architecture supports managing groups differently according to the value and uniqueness of their skills, provided the differences are documented and legally defensible.
Do I need to cost an HR strategy paper?
In this course, yes. Even an early module benefits from a first estimate of what the proposal would cost and what it would save, since later modules build on those figures.
Where can I find a free HRM 5003 Module 1 sample paper?
Right here. The hR strategy alignment analysis for HRM 5003 Module 1 runs from "The Business Strategy" to "Cost, Law and Measures", with notes beside each part.
What is HR architecture?
Lepak and Snell's idea that firms manage different groups of employees differently depending on how valuable and unique their skills are, rather than applying one HR system to everyone.