| Course | HRM 595 Human Resource Capstone Course (HRM/595) |
|---|---|
| Week | 1 |
| Paper type | Organizational profile and HR alignment analysis |
| Length | about 1,223 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for HRM 595 Week 1
Keeping 1,900 Wind Turbines Turning: Aligning HR With the Growth Strategy of Prairie Crest Wind Services
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
HRM/595: Human Resource Capstone Course
Week 1 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Prairie Crest Wind Services and all company data are composites written for a model paper.
Prairie Crest Wind Services, a composite company headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, maintains and repairs wind turbines for utilities and wind farm owners in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas. It employs 1,050 people: 780 field technicians, 95 site supervisors, 60 engineers and planners, 50 in the operations center that monitors turbines remotely and 65 in sales and administration. It services about 1,900 turbines under multiyear contracts. Its strategy calls for 30 percent growth in four years, mainly by winning repowering work on aging turbines and by expanding into blade repair. A service company's strategy is only as real as the skilled people available to carry it out, and in wind maintenance those people climb 300 feet in Midwestern winters. This paper opens the capstone by assessing whether Prairie Crest's HR practices fit that strategy.
Mission and Strategy
Prairie Crest's mission is to keep its customers' turbines producing safely and reliably. Its competitive position rests on uptime: contracts reward the company for keeping turbines available, typically above 97 percent. The strategy has three goals: grow revenue 30 percent by 2030, enter blade repair and maintain a safety record better than the industry average.
Customers and Contracts
Customers are utilities and independent wind farm owners. Contracts last three to ten years and include availability guarantees with penalties. Customers increasingly ask service companies to prove technician qualifications and safety performance before awarding work, so workforce quality is part of what Prairie Crest sells.
The External Environment
Several forces shape the workforce. Federal tax changes enacted in 2025 reduced incentives for new wind projects, which may slow new construction but increases the value of keeping existing turbines running and repowering them. The Midwest fleet is aging, with many turbines installed between 2008 and 2015 now needing major component work. Wind turbine technicians are among the fastest-growing occupations in federal labor projections, and competitors, including turbine manufacturers' own service arms, recruit aggressively.
The Labor Market
Technicians typically complete a one- or two-year community college program, then require safety certifications and company training. Iowa and Kansas have several such programs, but graduates are courted by multiple employers. Experienced technicians who can troubleshoot electrical and hydraulic systems are scarce. Blade repair requires composite skills few technicians have.
The HR Function
HR has 14 staff: a director, three generalists covering regions, two recruiters, a training coordinator, a safety manager who reports to operations, a payroll and benefits team and an HR information systems analyst. HR is largely administrative, and the director is not part of the executive team's strategy discussions.
The Resource-Based View
Barney (1991) held that a firm keeps an edge over rivals only through assets that create value, that few competitors possess, that others cannot easily copy and for which no ready substitute exists. Wright and McMahan (1992) applied this view to human resources, arguing that a firm's people and the systems that develop and coordinate them can be such a resource. For Prairie Crest, experienced, safe and productive technicians organized into effective crews are the resource that determines uptime and wins contracts.
Strategic HRM Evidence
Research supports the link between HR systems and performance. Combs et al. (2006) combined results from many studies and reported that high-performance work practices, such as selective hiring, training, incentive pay and participation, were related to organizational performance, with stronger effects when practices were combined into systems. The implication is that Prairie Crest's practices must be evaluated together, not one at a time.
Assessing Staffing
Hiring is reactive. Recruiters post openings when technicians quit, and the time to fill technician roles averages 74 days. During that time, crews work short, overtime rises and uptime suffers. There is no pipeline with community colleges. Staffing fits poorly with a growth strategy.
Assessing Training and Development
New technicians receive required safety certifications and two weeks of shadowing, then learn on the job. There is no structured path from entry-level technician to lead technician or site supervisor, and no blade repair training. Development fits poorly with plans to enter blade repair and grow supervisors.
Assessing Rewards
Technician pay is near the regional median, but competitors offer higher travel per diems and signing bonuses. Pay does not increase with certifications or skills. Turnover among technicians with one to three years of experience is 31 percent. Rewards fit poorly with the need to retain experienced staff.
Assessing Performance Management
Performance reviews are annual and focus on attendance and safety incidents. They do not measure troubleshooting skill, uptime contribution or development. Performance management fits partly, through its safety focus, but misses productivity and growth.
Assessing Safety and Culture
Safety is strong: the company's recordable incident rate is below the industry average. Crews report strong loyalty to their supervisors. Safety and culture are the strongest areas of alignment and should be protected as the company grows.
The Cost of Misalignment
The gaps already cost money. When a site runs short of technicians, repairs wait, and each day a 2.5-megawatt turbine is down can cost its owner $1,000 or more in lost power sales and production credits, which flows back to Prairie Crest through availability penalties. Last year, penalties totaled $1.9 million, and operations leaders traced about two-thirds of them to crews working short-handed. Overtime cost another $2.4 million, and recruiting and training replacements for 31 percent of early-career technicians cost about $3 million. These figures make the business case for the capstone plan.
What Employees Say
A short survey of 210 technicians and supervisors, conducted for this analysis, asked what would keep them at Prairie Crest. Pay for certifications, a clear path to lead technician, predictable rotations between travel and home and better tools ranked highest. Supervisors added that they spend more time covering vacancies than developing their crews. The responses match the misalignments identified from company data and suggest employees would welcome the changes the plan will propose.
The Five Misalignments
The analysis identifies five gaps: no workforce forecast tied to growth, reactive hiring without pipelines, no career path or skill-based pay, no blade repair capability and a lack of HR data and influence at the executive level. These form the agenda for the capstone plan.
Strengths to Protect
Growth can damage what works. Rapid hiring can dilute a safety culture if new technicians are placed on crews before they absorb its habits, and promoting technicians into supervision without preparation can weaken the crew loyalty employees value. The plan will treat safety performance and crew cohesion as constraints: no growth target will be pursued in a way that raises the incident rate or breaks up stable crews without cause.
HR's Role in Strategy
Becker and Huselid (2006) argued that HR creates value when its systems are designed around the strategic capabilities a firm needs, rather than around generic best practices. For Prairie Crest, that means building HR around technician capability, safety and retention. The HR director should join strategy discussions and report on workforce readiness.
Conclusion
Prairie Crest's growth strategy depends on technicians who are skilled, safe and willing to stay. Its safety culture is a strength, but its staffing, development, rewards, performance management and HR influence are not aligned with growth. The capstone plan will forecast needs, analyze gaps, manage change, build HR data and design development to close these misalignments.
References
Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1), 99-120. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639101700108
Becker, B. E., & Huselid, M. A. (2006). Strategic human resources management: Where do we go from here? Journal of Management, 32(6), 898-925. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206306293668
Combs, J., Liu, Y., Hall, A., & Ketchen, D. (2006). How much do high-performance work practices matter? A meta-analysis of their effects on organizational performance. Personnel Psychology, 59(3), 501-528. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2006.00045.x
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
What the HRM 595 Week 1 instructions ask
The opening HRM 595 assignment generally asks students to introduce an organization and analyze how its HR function aligns with its strategy. Required elements commonly include the organization's mission, vision, strategy and competitive position; the external environment, including labor markets, regulation and industry trends; the structure and role of the HR function; an assessment of whether practices in staffing, development, rewards and performance management support strategic goals; and the main gaps that a human resource plan should address. Use frameworks from strategic HRM, support claims with data about the organization, write as an HR leader advising executives and cite sources in APA format.
How this HRM 595 Week 1 example is built
A wind service company that plans to grow by a third while its technicians leave for better-paid rival employers has a strategy its HR practices cannot yet support, and the paper documents the mismatch. It profiles the company's mission, services and customers. An environmental scan covers federal tax changes affecting new wind projects, the growing fleet of aging turbines that need repowering and a tight market for technicians. The resource-based view explains why skilled, safe technicians are the company's main source of advantage. Each HR practice, from hiring to pay to safety training, is rated for fit with the strategy. The paper ends with five misalignments that the capstone plan will address.
HRM 595 Week 1 grading rubric: where the points go
Capstone papers in this first week are judged on how clearly they connect the organization's strategy to its people and HR practices. Faculty credit a concise but complete profile, an environmental scan that identifies forces affecting the workforce, accurate use of strategic HRM theory such as the resource-based view and an honest assessment of where practices fit and where they do not. Using data from the organization makes the assessment credible. Framing the misalignments as the work plan for the remaining weeks shows planning. Writing for an executive audience, with clear headings and tables, and APA citations complete a strong opening paper. A one-page alignment table, listing each HR practice, the strategic need it should serve and a rating of fit, gives faculty and executives a quick view of the argument.
HRM 595 Week 1 help: mistakes to avoid
Weak opening capstone papers spend most of their length describing the company and little on alignment. Keep the profile brief and the analysis central. Another frequent gap is an environmental scan that lists general trends without explaining their effect on the workforce. Tie each trend to people. Students also describe HR practices without judging them against the strategy. Rate each one. Avoid citing theory without applying it. Use numbers such as turnover, safety incidents and hiring time. Choose an organization with enough information to sustain six weeks. Finally, end with a short list of priorities, because the rest of the capstone will build on them. Five or fewer priorities keep the plan manageable.
Related HRM 595 sample papers
Other HRM 595 week samples
- HRM 595 Week 2: Forecasting HR Needs
- HRM 595 Week 3: Gap Analysis
- HRM 595 Week 4: Change Management
- HRM 595 Week 5: HR Tools, Technology and Data
- HRM 595 Week 6: Training, Development and the HR Plan
More MBA sample papers
- HRM 548 Week 1: Workforce Planning and Assessment
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HRM 595 Week 1 questions, answered
What does HRM 595 Week 1 usually cover?
It usually covers introducing the organization for the capstone, including mission, strategy and environment, and assessing how well HR practices align with strategic goals to identify the gaps the HR plan will address.
Where can I find a free HRM 595 Week 1 sample paper?
This page holds a full organizational profile and alignment analysis for a wind service company, with notes beside each section. Tell us which organization you picked and a free draft of this opening paper can follow.
What is strategic alignment in HR?
The degree to which HR practices such as hiring, development, rewards and performance management support the organization's strategy and reinforce one another, rather than working at cross purposes.
What is the resource-based view?
A strategy theory explaining lasting advantage through assets that rivals lack and cannot readily copy or replace, provided the firm is organized to use them, which often include an organization's people and the way they work together.
How should I choose an organization for the HRM 595 capstone?
Choose one with enough available information about strategy, workforce and HR practices to support six weeks of analysis, such as a current employer or a well-documented public company, with permission where required.
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