Delaney's Human Resources Blog

In class, we learned that avoiding unions enables businesses to decrease costs, keep operations flexible, and increase outputs. Union workers tend to receive higher wages and benefits than non-union workers. Unions create tighter regulations around promotions based on seniority and rules regarding scheduling, discipline, and termination. To mitigate the staffing costs incurred by unionization, companies can train managers and supervisors to recognize the early signs of unionization. Trained staff will know to report those activities and limit them to non-work time in non-work areas. When rumors of unionization are floating around, companies can mitigate the risk of legal action by ensuring managers and supervisors know to avoid TIPS: threatening, interrogating, promising favors, or spying on employees engaging in unionization efforts.

Survey data from 2017 shows that 48% of nonunion members would vote to unionize their workplace if they could. Why? Higher wages, better benefits, access to adequate programs, more convenient access to unemployment insurance, paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave. On average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 10.2% more in wages than their counterpart with similar education, occupation, and experience in the same sector. Hourly wages for women represented by a union are 4.7% higher than for nonunionized women. Black workers in a union earn 13.1% more than their nonunionized Black peers, and Hispanic workers in a union are paid 18.8% more than their nonunionized peers.

Despite the benefits of unionizing, early studies showed that unionized workers were less satisfied with their jobs. However, recent studies suggest more to the story; it’s not the unions making them unhappy. Workers who choose to unionize are often already dissatisfied with their jobs. They join the union to gain power over their position and voice their complaints. Workers experiencing poor working conditions suffer from job dissatisfaction and are more likely to complain and join a union. Workers experiencing fair benefits, equal pay, and safe working conditions are happy and satisfied with their jobs and are not likely to join a union. An EPI analysis concluded that private-sector employers spend nearly $340 million per year hiring union avoidance advisers to help them prevent employees from organizing. Companies need to hold themselves accountable if they wish to dodge the financial burden triggered by unionization. Instead of paying to avoid organizing, firms could fund the implementation of programs encouraging employee participation and input, where they can express themselves and feel represented.

To determine where I stand on joining a union, I briefly interviewed someone with more experience. My interviewee was the union chairman for his police department for twelve years before becoming the sheriff. Now he sits on the other side of union negotiations. He was adamant that unions are essential for protecting people and holding management accountable. They ensure consistency in the workplace, safe conditions, and equitable compensation. His only grievance with unionization was that negotiations between unions and firms could create a tense, accusatory undertone in the work culture. After the interview, I decided that I would prefer to unionize whether I was a worker or a manager.

Laroche, P. (2017, August 30). Research shows unionized workers are less happy, but why?. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/08/research-shows-unionized-workers-are-less-happy-but-why

Shierholz, H., Poydock, M., & McNicholas, C. (2023, January 19). Unionization increased by 200,000 in 2022. Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/publication/unionization-2022/

To better understand how stress impacts workplace health and safety, I took a series of tests that scored my psychological well-being and coping mechanisms. First, I took an inventory of my stress using the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory. I scored 272. According to the inventory, scores between 150 and 300 indicate a 50% chance of a major health breakdown in the next two years. I have had a moderately stressful year, and there are risks associated with stress if it is handled poorly. Next, I examined my coping and stress management skills, where I scored 76 out of 100. This signifies that most of the time, I am willing and able to take action and modify a stressor to handle it better. Finally, I took the Type A personality test to examine my impatience and irritability. I scored 35 out of 100, indicating that I am not typically Type A and that my mannerisms primarily benefit my relationships and health.

My scores were acceptable, but if I advance into a stressful career, I must find better ways to mitigate the damage stress does to my relationships and health. According to Harvard Business Review’s “What’s the Hard Return on Employee Wellness Programs,” depression and stress are proven to be significant sources of decreased productivity and success within organizations. Life events like illness and starting a family hugely impact performance, and because I am experiencing so many life events at once right now, I need to stay on top of my mental health.

My Type A Personality Test results recommended that I become more comfortable opening up to others and confiding in them. Having a strong support network and being able to share your feelings can help alleviate stress and provide emotional resilience.

Numerous workplace strategies minimize the effects of stress. To stabilize productivity and minimize the outcomes of stress, some companies, like Biltmore, offer 24-hour nondenominational chaplain services. Other organizations, like Lowe’s, implement wellness “clues” throughout the workplace. For example, some Lowes’ spiral staircases make the climb appear more appealing than the elevator and allow employees to exert stress through physical activity.

Berry, L., Mirabito, A., & Baun, W. (2010, December). What’s the hard return on employee wellness programs? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2010/12/whats-the-hard-return-on-employee-wellness-programs

Scott, E. (2022, November 30). 9 tips to deal with stress at work. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-deal-with-stress-at-work-3145273

My coworkers and I work hard and are proud of our organization because we are compensated well. We are loyal to our organization and have remained with the business for as long as we’ve lived in Corvallis. However, we are all paid Oregon’s minimum wage. At our coffee shop, a significant chunk of our paychecks can be attributed to gratuities. Tips have incentivized us to develop closer relationships with regular customers, complete orders quickly, improve the shop’s curb appeal, and enhance our physical appearance. These behaviors also create more returning business for our organization without soliciting an increase in employee base pay, so we are encouraged to engage in actions that promote tipping in customers.

Conversely, I have experience working a serving job where the owner took a hefty cut of employee tips. In this position, my coworkers and I were less motivated and rarely did work outside of our required tasks. None of us took pride in our jobs, and that sentiment was reflected in the quality of our customer service. This organization suffered from high employee turnover and struggled to hire high-performing staff because everyone knew the tips were unfairly distributed. As a result, the cafe was trapped in an endless shuffle through unmotivated, short-term employees.

According the New York Times article featured in class this week, Moo Cluck Moo, a small fast food joint in Michigan, pays its employees a starting wage of $15 an hour- $5 over the state’s minimum wage. As a result, the business owners have experienced no turnover, resulting in low training costs and a high performing lineup of workers. Their workers outperform Moo Cluck Moo’s competitors and have customers coming back for more. Similarly to Moo Cluck Moo, the coffee shop where I work has high retention and lower training costs than competitors that do not encourage customer tipping, like Dutch Bros or Starbucks. Both the employees and the employers benefit from this.

Greenhouse, S., & Strom, S. (2014, July 4). Paying employees to stay, not to go. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/05/business/economy/boloco-and-shake-shack-offer-above-average-pay.html

I received excellent training for my current job as a barista at a cafe. The company’s approach to ADDIE prepared me for the position. Executives analyzed the tasks employees in my position performed so that they could design a training program that would adequately prepare me. They developed plans for who would conduct the training (my general manager), and what topics would be covered (drink recipes, caring for machinery, and customer service). The training was efficiently implemented when multiple new employees could be trained simultaneously. After training was completed, new baristas were evaluated using a written test and by making one of each item on the menu. This training program was a week-long, and because multiple new hires were trained together, I felt socially accepted in the company. New research shows that companies with long orientations are shown to retain new hires and report measurable profit growth. Additionally, feeling socially accepted is integral to newcomer success in organizations. Perhaps this is because new employees are comfortable seeking out information about the job when they feel connected.

Conversely, I received poor training in a similar position with a different company. There was no orientation period or training program. Instead, new employees received on-the-job training from collegial peers. Because I was working in food service, I sometimes felt uncomfortable with how my coworkers prepared items intended for customer consumption, but I did not feel socially comfortable speaking up. Tools were not always correctly sanitized, food was not stored for freshness in a consistent way, and there was not a company-wide customer service “script.” As a result, each employee made food and beverages differently and sometimes delivered poor customer service. There was also a high turnover. I believe that the quality of the cafe would improve if executives implemented a more extended orientation period and a group-based training program. Extending the orientation period would improve retention by promoting communication between managers and employees. Meanwhile, group-trainings would improve socialization among employees and improve the consistency of how tasks are completed.

Ellis, A., Nifadkar, S., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2017, July 20). Your new hires won’t succeed unless you onboard them properly. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/06/your-new-hires-wont-succeed-unless-you-onboard-them-properly

I have heard of implicit bias tests before and have always wanted to test my unconscious prejudices. For this assignment, I chose to take the racial biases test because racial discrimination is a current, hot-button issue in the media. Also, as a management major, I want to monitor my prejudices before I am in a position where I manage others. I never want to make someone uncomfortable at work or hold back careers because of my implicit bias towards a group.

According to the results, my responses suggested no automatic preference between Black people and White people. I do not consider myself prejudiced, but I was surprised by my results because most test takers show an automatic preference for European American compared to African American. Also, according to The Kirwin Institute, our implicit associations do not necessarily align with our declared beliefs or even reflect the stances we would explicitly endorse. As a European American, I expected to be mildly biased. I wonder if my Implicit Association Test results would change if there were more images of women in the test; as a woman, I suspect that I have an automatic preference to associate men with negative words and women with positive ones. If there were more European American women than African American women, it might have skewed my results, and vice versa.

According to Keith Payne’s piece in the Scientific American Journal, the Implicit Association Test results are not entirely reliable, resulting in individuals having experienced low stability in their test results. Because of this, I need to take action to prevent implicit biases from developing. Michele Ruiz lists ten steps I can take as a business manager to minimize implicit bias within my organization. The action that stood out to me was number three: being transparent about the hiring and promotion process. If I hold myself accountable, I will have nothing to hide about how people are managed.

Payne, K. (2018, March 27). How to think about ‘implicit bias’. Scientific American. Retrieved May 7, 2023, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/ 

Ruiz, M. (2021, November 9). 10 ways to reduce the damaging impact of unconscious bias on your business. Forbes. Retrieved May 7, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2021/05/17/10-ways-to-reduce-the-damaging-impact-of-unconscious-bias-on-your-business/?sh=4cbe7f00367d 

The Kirwan Institute. (2012, May 29). Understanding implicit bias. Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Retrieved May 7, 2023, from https://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/article/understanding-implicit-bias

One of the weirdest experiences of my life was interviewing at Little Caesars during my freshman year of college. I just needed a minimum wage job so I could make some spending money, and I saw the “Now Hiring” sign on the street. I went in to ask about the position they were filling, and the shift manager basically hired me on the spot without knowing anything about me. I went into the back, and he directed me toward a computer screen that would ask some screening questions. Somehow, I failed the screening. He was shocked and said he’d never seen that before but was sure I was a great fit. He still hadn’t seen my resume. This experience left a bad taste in my mouth, but why?

Firstly, the recruiting method was an issue. They did some things right; for example, they were filling an unskilled labor position and advertised using a billboard. Signage and billboards are effective ways to recruit a pool of unskilled workers instead of using social media and job boards. However, Little Caesars failed to know and communicate the organization’s recruiting value proposition; I did not know what my duties would be, what the job environment was like, or what compensation to expect. Little Caesars also failed to present a recruiter who was warm, personable, and knowledgeable about the organization. Instead, he was creepy and uninformed.

Secondly, the selection process was muddled. First of all, there was not an interview. Instead, the manager made assumptions about my character based on my appearance- maybe that classifies as an unstructured interview? I was presented with a Situation Judgement test, which I previously referred to as a screening test. I failed it. The shift manager ignored my results and still offered me the job. 

How could Little Caesars improve the effectiveness of their hiring process? For starters, they could pool applicant resumes and select the ones that stand out to come in for interviews. They could ask each interviewee an identical set of standardized, scored questions when conducting interviews. This would eliminate the shift manager’s pattern of making snap judgments about applicants. Finally, managers should trust the viability of the Situation Judgment test.

I did not accept this job because the interview process was extremely uncomfortable, but if it had been more structured, it might have been a good fit.

Knight, R. (2019, August 16). 7 practical ways to reduce bias in your hiring process. SHRM. Retrieved May 5, 2023, from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/7-practical-ways-to-reduce-bias-in-your-hiring-process.aspx

Updating job descriptions is essential to workplace planning. In my experience with job descriptions, I have used them to understand a job’s scope, size, and compatibility with my skills and characteristics before applying. However, they serve as more than the design of a job advertised for recruiting. They can also serve as a training development plan and help gauge employee performance and compensation. In addition, updated descriptions are helpful as a legal defense, protecting organizations from employee claims. To improve efficiency and employee job satisfaction, organizations need to produce better job descriptions.

Firstly, to create an effective depiction, experts recommend that job descriptions be updated annually. The longer you wait to update your job descriptions, the more difficult it will become; you may need to pay for in-depth job analysis, allocate more of HR’s time to reworking descriptions, and limit HR’s availability to resolve other organizational issues. Secondly, HR should never assume they know more about the job than the person working. It is helpful to have managers’ and workers’ input on descriptions and their approval before standardizing them.

To rewrite a job description, you need to perform a job analysis. This assesses the work and employee characteristics required to perform the job successfully. An analysis will result in a list of tasks that workers regularly fulfill. From here, it is simple to identify the KSAO, or knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics HR is looking for in strong applicants and current employees. Information for analyses can be sourced from professional organizations, the internet, and experts in the field, like supervisors and incumbents. This information can be collected through interviews, observations, questionnaires, or employee diary-keeping.

Tyler, K. (2013, January 1). Job Worth Doing: Update Descriptions. SHRM. Retrieved April 28, 2023, from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/Pages/0113-job-descriptions.aspx