For Katie Griffiths, Lauren Howard and Giana Parsons, the Annual MHRM Eaton Invitational Case Competition presented an opportunity to work together to deepen their understanding of the challenges facing management and human resource professionals today.

The three Master of Human Resource Management (MHRM) students, having been a part of a team that won Fisher’s internal MHRM competition during autumn semester, had just 24 hours to create a strategy aimed at solving a real issue in management: boosting employee engagement within a remote workforce.

“Organizations everywhere are dealing with this day-to-day, and they are struggling to keep engagement up during these difficult times and in remote environments,” Griffiths said. “As HR students and emerging professionals, we have been frequently discussing ways to address this ongoing issue of diminishing employee engagement.”

Despite missing three team members from the team that won the Fisher competition, Griffiths, Howard and Parsons put together and presented a plan that resonated with the event’s judges — HR employees at Eaton and PepsiCo.

“Our team presented three interconnected solutions to increase employee engagement,” Howard said. “The highlight of our ideas included a quarterly newsletter featuring personal stories and achievements, coaching suggestions for managers, data collection and reporting on newly implemented ideas, among others.”

“We received feedback that we approached our solutions from a holistic business perspective rather than just an HR perspective. The curriculum in the MRHM program has prepared us to focus on business problems as part of a larger picture, which has contributed to our success in competitions and as students.

The team beat others from Minnesota and Rutgers for first place.

“The three of us were extremely proud we were able to compete with and win with only half our initial team,” Parsons said. “We were grateful to have had the opportunity to compete and even more grateful to have been named the winners.”

“Experiences such as this one allow us the opportunity to proactively think about emerging trends and issues facing HR in the workforce. We gained experience tailoring solutions to an industry, which is a transferable skill we will use after our time in the MHRM program.”