Week 10!!!

I think working for the labor union is honestly a personally preference. I think there are pro and cons to any job and that included labor unions. I know my guy friend loves working in the labor union because he gets paid great and has he says “he gets a free gym membership.” Or in other words he’s always doing hard work. I think for me personally I wouldn’t want to because I like the desk job boss environment. However, I would like to be outside or active more but that’s what spare time is for. Some of the pros I research about unions is that they are :economic trend setters and promote higher wages and better benefits.” I think a big con for me that I noticed is that unions don’t promote individuality. I love being able to express myself and share my thoughts and ideas. But this is very difficult to do in union jobs. One thing that I thought was surprising is that union jobs “make it hard to promote and terminate employees.” This would make me very upset, because I think skill level is above all else and union jobs usually always promote seniority. Again I think it’s a personally preference and I think there are pros and cons and I personally couldn’t do it in general. Thank for great term! Happy Holidays!

Stevenson, M. (2022, November 28). Pros and cons of Labor Unions. HR Exchange Network. Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://www.hrexchangenetwork.com/hr-compensation-benefits/articles/pros-and-cons-of-labor-unions

Week 9

After taking all the surveys I was very surprised. The first survey about stress levels I thought I would have scored much higher in because I often feel stressed out. But according to the survey I scored a 157, which isn’t to bad. The survey said if you score a 150-300 you 50% more likely to have a mental breakdown in the next two years. Since mine was just over 150, I felt pretty good about my score. The second test about coping with stress I knew I would score poorly since I am very bad a coping with stress most of the time. I scored a 45 and the test said I had problem focused coping which makes sense, since I have a troubles not thinking about problems or what’s stressing me out. This score does surprise me since my stress level score wasn’t that high. The final survey which was the personality survey I was a little annoyed about because I scored a 48 and was told I was impatient and irritability, which no one likes to hear. I personally think however I am just very self aware and will get annoyed when others aren’t since I am normally always focused on what my actions may be doing to overs. I feel like it is normal to get annoyed with people who are not self aware, or simply don’t care. Overall, these surveys surprised me since I thought I would score higher in some areas and get an overall more positive score on the rest. I think this is a good learning experience though, is not I will be able to be more aware of how I handle things and how that may effect my stress levels.

Week 8

Compensation incentivizes behavior by encouraging employees to push themselves to obtain a certain outcome or achieve a specific goal. Employee compensation is important in an organization because it can help the organization’s equity. For equity to be distributed fairly, employee perceive it as three types of equity internal, personally, and external. In this week’s learning materials we learned about how we often compare our inputs and outputs  to our co workers and how this is one way negative inequities can occur. In week 8 lecture 1 it discusses the results of negative inequities such as “ask for a raise, start stealing, reduce inputs, leave the organization, and convince myself the ratios are equal.” (Slide 7) But there are also positive inequities to comparing our equity to our co workers, which are “Increase inputs, Convince myself the ratios are equal.” (Slide 7) These examples are based on the if we think our co workers inputs and outputs are lower than our own.

One example of compensation is pay and incentive pay can greatly effect behavior. According to the article the definition of  “Incentive pay is performance-based compensation that rewards an employee for meeting set goals or objectives. This compensation can come in the form of money, stocks, additional paid leave, gifts, etc. Although incentives are often created for individual employees, you can also create incentive pay plans for teams or the entire company.” (Eddy. 2022, August 25) Some benefits of incentive pay on behavior are happier employees, better performance and retention, better organizational performance, and helped execute business strategy. These are some positives to this example of compensation but compensation can also have negative effects on employee behavior such as, uncertainty for employees, distrust, and conflict. Overall compensation can have both positive and negative effects, but it still effects behavior either way.

Incentive pay: Pros, cons & how to implement. Eddy. (2022, August 25). Retrieved November 18, 2022, from https://eddy.com/hr-encyclopedia/incentive-pay/

Week 6 Post

The most beneficial training I have received as an employee is where I currently work now. I work at a non profit organization in Corvallis. Some of the first training I did was an online training program that was interactive and very information. It went over the companies mission and how to be an advocate. Other training occurred as I continued working, little things I would learn as time went on and as projects came up. I appreciated this form of training a lot because it made me feel like I was learning new things frequently.  However, I have had jobs where the training was very poor and this was in the retail industry. The training occurred all at once and I didn’t learn anything after it was over. The job became very repetitive and boring, after a while the negatives of the job started to out way the benefits.  In one of our readings this week, we looked into Walmart and their trainings and in the article it stated “Other researchers say what many Walmart workers need most is not training, but higher wages. The training programs, they say, may be helpful in enhancing employee loyalty and performance, but increasing pay would benefit the workers most.” (Corkery, M.) After reading this statement I came to the conclusion that one of the reasons the training wasn’t beneficial for my old retail job was because I stopped learning, but their was also no area to improve, which meant no increase in pay. The training in my current job is great because I have opportunities to learn more and possibly get paid more. Which is how most organizations should be. With trainings I think for them to be beneficial the training or learning should continue. For training to be beneficial to me, I have to come out of it with some kind of reward, whether that be learning something new, new opportunities, or increase pay.

Corkery, M. (2017, August 8). At Walmart Academy, Training Better Managers. but with a better future? The New York Times. Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/business/walmart-academy-employee-training.html

Blog Post 3

I have luckily only had good experiences with interviews, in regards to being the one interviewed. One thing that made all those interviews effective is I went into them with the same professionalism and always made sure to have copy of me resume. I have been grateful enough to have walked away from every interview I have been in with a job offer. But now my current job, I am the HR individual who is hiring and scheduling interviews and it’s much different than I thought. Many individuals I have come across are not very professional, whether this be because their resume is five pages long and formatted poorly or because they came in for an interview and were dressed in everyday clothes with nonprofessional attitudes. If I had to give advice to most of them, it would be to go into every interview like it’s your dream job you’re being interviewed for or applying for. For the interviewers, I would suggest to “…also require the interviewer to score each answer immediately after it is provided. This neutralizes a variety of biases: We are more likely to remember answers with vivid examples, for example, and answers that are most recent.” (Harvard Business Review) One thing I have learned is to always right down your thoughts about the individual after each answer they give. Interviews can be scary on both sides but remember to go into it like it’s your dream job has always helped me on both sides.

How to take the bias out of interviews. Harvard Business Review. (2016, July 18). Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-take-the-bias-out-of-interviews

Blog Post 2

Job descriptions can be difficult but are very necessary for the employee and the organization. In my experience I actually worked at an organization where not having a clear and updated job description caused the organization to go through a huge lawsuit. An individual working for the organization had be fired for not following through with assigned tasks and because of performance. This lead to the individual calming they were unlawfully fired because they were given responsibilities not in their job description and blamed their poor performance on not being trained correctly in those responsibilities. I don’t know how it ended, since I left shortly after this situation occurred. But this goes further to show how important job descriptions are. In one of the articles from this week’s reading this legal situations are warned. “For example, “If you don’t keep it up-to-date and you have [an employment] claim against you, that nonupdated job description can do as much damage as a good one could benefit you. It can work to help in your defense or it can work to help the employee” filing the grievance, Flewelling says.” The reading also discusses the importance of updating job descriptions and says that it should occur with the employee, HR, and managers and “How often should job descriptions be reviewed and updated? Once a year at a minimum, experts say. But circumstances might call for more-frequent updates.” I completely agree with this statement one, because a lot can happen in a year, people leaving the organization or people moving up. Also has new managers come in, position duties can change. Overall, by organizations updating job descriptions, this can keep allow the organization to maintain efficiency and prevent lawsuit(s).

Tyler, Kathryn. Job Worth Doing: Update Descriptions. 11 Apr. 2018, www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/Pages/0113-job-descriptions.aspx.

 

MGMT 453- Blog 1

Many people would say the success of a company is based off of how well the company is at selling or producing to its customers, but this is wrong. After investing the article “Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For 2020.” I made the discovery that some of the best and most successful companies are successful because of their employees. I researched three different companies all in very different fields including The Hilton, The Cheese Cake Factory, and Bank of America. All companies received extremely positive feedback from there employees. But what do these three very different companies have in common? Every single one scored in the 90% for “When you join the company, you are made to feel welcome.”

This couldn’t all be a coincidence, even more so because the question is specifically about when you join the company. So maybe the saying “you never get a second change to make a first impression” – Will Rogers was true. If that is the case than that is every future Managers key to starting off their career, making a good impression. Some people may disagree with that statement about first impressions but if it’s not true, then why have so many people in our life told us to dress professional to an interview. To prepare. Why only one interview, are you going to get to know some in just one interview?  Likely not. But you may get a good impression of them. First impressions are key.

Overall, I think one of the greatest skills to have is being able to wow someone with a first impression. This is how networking occurs, this is how interviews are, this is also why we are taught elevator speeches, and told to dress professional. My goal as a manager would be to have someone recognize that one, the first impression of me was great, and two that my first impression is actually how I am all the time.