Chapter 12 Discussion Topic

Incentives are nice to have and to use as motivators for your staff; but if used incorrectly or poorly they can make things worse. Employees like to be a part of changes that are going to affect them, and working with them when dealing with pay-related decisions especially you can help set the ground-work for employee empowerment. You also need to talk with the employees and let them know what is going on and why decisions are being made. When people feel like they are a part of the process they can hopefully understand what is going on and will appreciate the incentives rather than feel like they have no control. This can build up the team as well. Another good idea is to hold interviews with employees so they can discuss any issues they may have regarding the new policy.

What are some incentive programs you have come across? Were any of them good? Were they handled well? How could you as an HR representative make use of such a program and how could you make it the most effective?

February 25 Reflection

Jeff Weber came into class today from Ancestry.com, he talked about the Fair Labor Act, and how compensation changes with the economy. With the Fair Labor Act he showed that there are a lot of issues with companies determining Exempt or non-Exempt accurately. He said that he's noticed the most problems with restaurants, although WalMart had to pay out around 3 mill in 2007. He showed us a slide from a presentation he showed in march of 2008, it was amazing to see the big changes since then in compensation including the use of big sign on bonuses and that now they are not used because the problem is not filling positions, its having positions open to fill.

I think that if you know the laws you will save yourself and your company a lot of headache and money so you don't have pay out later if you determined employees as Exempt when they shouldn't have been. It is also helpful to either know how to forecast fairly accurately or have someone who does so that you can see how compensation can help you recruit better or the best options in employees.

Discussion Topic Chapter 11

I think that it is really important to keep pay structures fairly balanced in each department or division at a company and should be based on skill level, training, and the job or tasks involved in the job. It always seems silly to me to have the pay scale be even across the board when obviously not everyone is doing the same work, has the same level of skill and ability or experience so it doesn't seem fair or smart. Company's have a harder time filling in positions when they try to figure out some low-ball number to pay people and see how low they can pay and get away with it. Unless you're cool with only hiring high schoolers.
I worked at a place that paid the same amount for all (call-center) employees, regardless of the department. This seemed hardly fair because the data entry employees were making just as much as the people that dealt with ticked off customers all day, or talked customers through technical issues. They also were not big on pay raises even if you were full - time not just seasonal employees. I don't know if they ever figured out they would keep more people around and build up good rapport with the employees and the employees in turn would improve their skill sets and make the customer service procedures more smooth.

What sorts of problems have you come across with companies that didn't seem to have a good working pay structure? What are some things that you could do as an HR professional to help make the structure happen or to make it work better if there are any issues with the one currently in use?

Reflection 2/18/10

On Tuesday we had a guest speaker who discussed Employee Relations with us. He used an example of a new hire RN who would require a higher pay to come on than the RNs that already work at the establishment because he gets paid more at his current job. Staying competitive, but still keeping the equity theory in balance.

Today we discussed Managing Turnover, such as why people usually leave a job. It's suprisingly not because of pay, but most often due to poor fit with the culture, poor relationship with boss/coworkers, more interesting work, etc. We also discussed the Exam which should be awesome, I am looking forward to seeing how the exams go in this class.

Retraction...ish

Okay so not really a retraction, but I have come to the conclusion that perhaps our dear professor is not completely at fault for the ridiculous amount of homework and content provided in this class. In a brief moment of clarity I realized that maybe it is the fault of the directors, deans, etc, for requiring an entire textbook be covered in only one semester. With all of the work that is required this should be considered not a 3 credit course, but a 5 or 6 credit course. The material covered in this class should be given more time to discuss and analyze, not just be quickly briefed on before moving on to the next topic. We are doing way more work than the average 3 credit course, as I am sure our professor is also doing more work too. We should be given the credits for the amount of work we are doing and he should be paid as such as well. Okay, I feel better and I deeply apologize for the highly passionate anger I feel towards this class.

Discussion Chapter 10

Job dissatisfaction seems like a fairly normal thing. Apparently a lot of research has been done on the subject, there are even tests you can take such as the Meyers-Briggs Exam. This can help figure out what jobs work best for different personalities and which jobs have been found to have the highest job dissatisfaction for the different personality types. This is usually shown by behavior change, physical job withdrawal, psychological job withdrawal. What are some things that HR management can do to help prevent employees from job withdrawal?

Reflection February 11

We discussed Performance Management in class on Thursday. There are several different ways to measure performance, but it seems like the least effective methods are the most commonly used because they are easiest to do. Companies can be so lazy sometimes. Looking just as the bottom line, doing things because they know they are supposed to do them and not trying to do the best they can... which is odd because they are doing a poor job managing their people but they expect their people to do an excellent job on their end...just a thought. Oh the irony.

Chapter 9 Discussion Post

I think employee development is a really good idea. At Children's Healthcare of Atlanta they focus on development efforts on high-performing employees who have the potential to become managers. These employees complete a full day of assessment that includes personality test and participating in a business simulation in in which they take the role of managers. Each year they also attend five workshops, where they learn about leading change, developing a business strategy, and creating a personal vision. They work in teams to solve a practical problem affecting Children's and they receive coaching to help them set and achieve their own goals. I think this is such a good idea because it helps keep employees around if they feel like they have a chance to move up in the company and their hard work is being identified and rewarded.

I think taking the psychological inventory and skill/interest assessments are such a good idea to help you as an employer understand your employees more and as an employee to understand yourself and where you probably want to be.

What sorts of things should be covered in development training other than managerial aspects? What are some assessment tests you have come across that can help you develop your skills before you even enter your career or graduate?

Chapter 8 Discussion Topic

Errors in performance measurement. So your company is actually evaluating people's performance, yay kudos to them. Whoops; they screwed up and, apparently, there are several opportunities and ways they could have done it.

One of the ways is the person who is evaluating compares the person being evaluated to themselves. "I'm effective and this person is kind of like me so they must be too." Have you ever had people say that you remind them of someone else? Have they ever compared you to someone they thought would be a compliment to be compared to, but you actually find it as an insult? Or you are actually nothing like that, and you wonder how much people actually pay attention to either your or that other person. My dad always used to compare me to him, when you're 16 and your dad is the least cool person you can imagine next to your 4th period math teacher this is a travesty and a big blow to the ego. This also meant my dad expected me to make the same mistakes he did when he was my age. But I wasn't my dad, and you aren't your boss/supervisor/whatever. This can be highly ineffective and research has demonstrated that this effect is strong, but can be considered discriminatory so be careful of doing this yourself.

Another way is that the person being evaluated is compared to other employees rather than to an objective standard, contrast errors can occur. This can be nice if you are what would be considered average or even above average in most situations and you work with a bunch of idiots, but it doesn't seem as nice when your are good or even just competent and you work with a bunch of over-achievers. It'd be like comparing a 9th grader from Panama (foreign exchange student -real scenario) 7th graders from the U.S., obviously the 9th grader is going to have a better understanding of the material so if the teacher were to curve the class then everyone else would look like complete incompetents when in fact they would probably test as normal for the age group.

Distributional errors occur when the rater only really uses part of the rating scale, you know the really strict teacher that never gives an "A" because "that is equivalent to perfection, and you aren't perfect", the teacher that easily gives an "A" - nice for the under-achievers, much anger induced from the achievers/over-achievers section, or the one that may not fail anyone but you still have to work extra extra hard for the "A"....ahem... This can make it difficult to see how the employees are actually doing.

Basically, when rating performance there should be a standard to be followed and even though you may be closer to some employees the best option is to just follow the standard and look at the overall performance of employees and do your best to show what's really going on.

What would be a good way to do performance evaluation? Should your relationship (how the employees associate with you) with the employees have any bearing on the evaluation, whether its good or bad? What are some other things that could cause issues with performance evaluation?

Note from the Editor

Does anyone else think that these things are a huge time suck? Because I feel like I'm constantly playing catch up with this class, not just with the reading, the blog posts and then still having to write a paper on top of it, but in class if we actually get into a discussion there doesn't seem to be time budgeted for such a thing. I know "if this was my job I wouldn't be able to have a sob story, I'd just lose my job"...blah blah blah, whatever. I also wouldn't have to spend about a minimum of 10 hours on this "job" alone plus 30 hours at another job, and 3 other "jobs" that also required my time, on top of real life. Get over yourself, this is not real life it's college, and you aren't my only class. I figure I should just say this now since it'll be more helpful than at the end of the semester on the course evaluation; although, it'll be on there too.

Chapter 7 Discussion Topic

Measuring the results of training seems so obvious and simplistic but how many places actually do it? The book talks about how the planner for the training program should prepare how to evaluate a training program when the program itself is being developed.
It would seem impossible to know whether a program was effective or not if you had no way to measure the results or didn't check for a change in behavior. Usually there is a written test, but there are also regular performance evaluations that would be more accurate for evaluating whether or not a training was effective. This is also known as a transfer of training or on the job use of training.
A lot of companies will purchase software to do e-learning which allows for quick testing and evaluation, I've also worked for did weekly testing on information we needed to know to do our jobs and help our customers more fully and quickly. This seemed like a pain as employees but this was also pretty helpful because we usually remembered things better when we had been tested on 1)because the better the score the better the prizes we got; 2) if you screw it up and because you can't remember before the test you are more likely to remember it after being tested.
I think ultimately it's really important to evaluate the results of a training to see if the time and money is being used to it's best possible use and also because why do the training at all if you the information doesn't matter enough to track its use?

Reflection February 4

We had a speaker in class today from TNI, or Tahitian Noni International. Brian Brown is a senior manager of sales and customer service. He helps create the training process at TNI, apparently their process is pretty intensive. They have a lot of steps and it takes a lot of money to do a good job. I have definitely been in the trainings where the trainer doesn't want to be there and doesn't know the information and/or the content is pretty much not helpful. Their trainings seemed to focus on getting feedback from people throughout the organization including the (gasp) customers. I like the idea of making the employees feel of more worth because the company is investing in them and taking time to actually help them do their jobs better. Giving well thought out trainings, testing and watching the progress after the training to see if that particular training set met the objectives. TNI spends a long time planning the training, the content and the objectives they want to meet with the training, but they evaluate it before they present it. They also use a few different methods; E-learning, in class, and group meeting. Where I work we mostly do E-learning, although I've heard that later down the road they do some in-class training, but we also have team meetings every once in awhile if an issue arises. These issues can be something that we as the employees brought up, management brought up, or corporate visitors so we can be briefed. All of this helps us feel more like a team and less like just co-workers. All in all, training is good and a nice break from the actual work.

February 2 Reflection

I think with the clip from Oceans 11 you see that their screening process is based on results. They know how each person will handle different situations and have a reputation for quality work. I think in reality the hiring process should be, and often is similar. You're not usually getting ready to rob a casino, but you still want to know how someone is going to handle a difficult customer/client/vendor. Reading the resume is seeing what they say they can do, the interview helps to see more of the person behind the skills, and testing or the training process help show if that person can live up to or improve upon the information that was on the resume.

We also talked a little about hiring staff (HR, managers, supervisors, etc.) checking social networking sites to see what the potential employees say about their job, how they speak to people, whether they put forth a responsible persona. I know that some people feel that this is a breach of privacy, but I think that if it's on the internet it's not private whether or not you have your account set to private. I have heard of interviewers asking to add interviewees as friends so the person who was interviewed will know that they are being looked at and also so then the info is really not private.

If you don't want your mom, your potential employer or your church leaders to know about it don't but it up on the internet.

Discussion Topic Chapter 6

Resumes

There are so many ways to create a resume and pretty much each employer and/or school I've spoken to/been to has a different way that they prefer the resume to appear. We as employees don't like to make them, and employers don't like to read them. It's really a lose/lose situation for all of us but for some reason they are still necessary to get a job.

They can provide a first impression (or second) of the applicant, but as the book states the content of that resume and first impression is controlled by the applicant. They can be helpful to the employer too because this can show which applicants meet the required educational training, skills, any related work experience and any equipment or software knowledge, and can also set the applicant apart from others from the get-go.

I heard that people used to be required to submit a picture of themselves with their resumes, I thought that sounded ludicrous, but those were the times. This of course caused some HR issues and is probably why it's not done anymore, but can you imagine? I've heard too that some people lie about their skills and experience in different areas in order to get a job and figure they will be able to learn in if they need to once they get the job.

What are some ways that we as HR Managers could avoid wasting our time on these applicants that pretend to be a good fit for the job so we don't pass up on people who really do know what they are doing? Could we do testing as part of the interview process like many customer service jobs require?