The country I would choose to move to for international work would be Italy. In terms of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, this is a country that is much more relaxed in all aspects and less focused on professional achievement and more focused on family. This is in sharp contrast with what is generally considered to be important in American culture, where there is a lot of emphasis and importance placed on what one manages to accomplish in their career. In terms of the power distance index, Italy scores right in the middle meaning that they do believe that the power distance index is real and justified and that there should be a few key differences between managers and subordinates. This power distance has been said to not just be present but also visible (Business and Management, 2022). In terms of individualism versus collectivism, Italy has ranked on the higher end of individualism on Hofstede’s scale, but they do believe strongly in the importance of family and that family is to be prioritized above all else which would seem to hint at a more collectivist mindset. In the dimension of masculinity versus femininity, Italy is strongly more masculine than feminine in that there is strong motivation to succeed and to be competitive. Contrary to my assumptions, Italy also rates fairly high on the uncertainty avoidance scale, meaning that they like to have a sense of direction and certainty in most aspects of their lives. They have more of a short-term orientation and don’t put much thought or effort into investing for the future, and I see this as a way to enjoy the life that one is living in the moment without worrying too much about the future. In the aspect of indulgence versus restraint Italy is a more restrained society in that they prefer to put off immediate gratification and instead focus on what their sacrifices in the present moment will lead to in terms of success that can be achieved later on.
Ultimately it appears that Italy and the United States are more similar than I expected, which makes me believe in part that the transition to living there would be easier than I originally anticipated. I expected them to be more relaxed in general as a culture, and from what I have heard from family and friends that have traveled there for leisure, the information I have found in my research for this assignment is quite contradictory to what they felt and observed while in Italy. I do suspect that this is because the people I know were in Italy on vacation and that actually living there and trying to maintain a career are completely different things. I would only be convinced to take the opportunity to work there knowing that I could come home whenever I wanted and to be repatriated. I don’t think I would do well if I knew I didn’t have the option to come home because my entire immediate family is here in the United States. I would also need to know that my husband would be able to find work there and be happy. If he is not happy, I generally am also not happy and I would not be willing to work there if he couldn’t come with me.
I have to admit that I didn’t appreciate the information that was given to me from the majority of the surveys that were required to be taken in order to answer this blog prompt. Telling a Type-A person that they are more at-risk for health issues because they are Type-A is like telling someone to “calm down” when they feel extremely upset. They usually don’t just suddenly “calm down.” I feel that the logical part of me is supposed to respond and be grateful for the information and to use it productively, but I find assessments like these are only useful if you are either unfamiliar with them and if you have never taken an assessment like this before. My journey with graduate school has been good overall but stressful at times mostly because this is just how I handle things: I tend to get stressed about things and people when I actually care about them. I also feel that the survey that told me that I’m likely to have a significant health breakdown in the next two years is just unkind even if it is true. I have known that I’m at least partially Type-A for years and I don’t really see this as a personality flaw that I need to fix. At this point in my life it is part of what makes me who I am and I don’t fight it. I have found ways to use it to my advantage and while it may mean that I tend to get stressed out, I don’t really see the need to change as a person.
I’m not the most expressive person, and this is something that I could see as an area where I can improve. I used to journal and found this helpful, but the idea of this just kind of sounds silly to me now and I rarely make any time for it. I used to de- stress by exercising a lot; I had a lot more physicality then than I do now. Just writing this part of the blog post makes me feel like the first paragraph was a reflection of my negatively-perceived Type-A tendencies, and this paragraph feels like the part where I’ve cooled down and thought about the assessment results for a second. Answering this blog post in itself has been a reflection of my Type-A personality traits.
Organizations seem to be spending more time and money on helping their employees manage their health and to cope with stress. Companies are supplying more information and awareness training about the benefits of healthy stress management; they are encouraging employees to talk about things that are bothering them so that they don’t end up “taking their work home with them”; and they are trying to let employees work remotely in order to be more accommodating of the employees’ work-life balance needs.
I have left jobs several times for other jobs elsewhere that paid better. Each time I did this, it was because I knew I wouldn’t be able to make any more than I currently made at the job I had, and most of the time I was looking elsewhere for a job because I had also decided that I didn’t care for the job itself. Because my main reasons for being interested in jobs has been for the pay, I have never experienced any real heartbreak over having to leave a job with the exception of one time. It was hard for me to leave the very first real job I had despite not getting paid much at all. It was difficult because I felt I excelled at the position, I loved that I was the only one who was in my position so I was the main authority or expert on it, and I also had great admiration, respect, and appreciation for my boss. The human element of the job was ultimately what made it difficult for me to leave. If I could make excellent money doing that job, I may actually still be there because it was easy and even fun at times, but there was a limit on the amount of money the position could pay and there was no growth potential in it.
I have also experienced what it is like to find out that I was making less than my peers and that is never a great feeling. I don’t know that I retaliated in anyway; more than anything else it made me feel like they just didn’t understand what I was really worth as someone working toward my master’s degree when my other coworkers had no formal education beyond high school. I do understand that not all employers care about how much education a person has and therefore will not compensate an employee for it, but social comparison is something I have always engaged in both with and without conscious awareness.
Both of the trainings I’m about to describe were for work. One training I received when I was just starting out at Providence Medford Medical Center, which is part of a large hospital system, and the other I received when I started working at The New Well, which is part of a larger health and wellness company based in Grants Pass, Oregon. The training for Providence was comprehensive in that they took the time to delve into what personality traits made for good employees (which they referred to as “caregivers”) and how the kind of person you are plays into how you are able to make a difference in the world in a healthcare setting. This kind of training made me feel immersed in the culture of the company and as though what I had chosen to do for employment truly made a difference. Having supervisors from all different departments come talk to us about what their work meant to them was meaningful to me because it made me feel like everyone that worked there was able to get personal satisfaction from what they did for a living. This training was both meaningful and impactful.
The other training that was less effective was with The New Well. The training that we were required to do was meant to get employees to be more vulnerable with each other and to become more self-aware through the use of a workshop called Empowered and I absolutely despised the whole process from start to finish. It felt cult-ish, and the entire time I questioned if the people that seemed engaged were sincerely engaged or if they were just having less of an awful time than I was because they weren’t new to the company and they had friends who were participating in the workshop at the same time. This training was focused on building interpersonal relationships with coworkers and to develop leadership skills, but the way the training was delivered seemed overly-emotional and for this reason, I was completely repelled by the method of the training. My obvious lack of interest made me a bit of a target for the instructors and as you may be able to guess, this didn’t make the class any more appealing to me. Part of the training consisted of staring into someone’s eyes as you sat across from them for a solid five minutes. This in no way made me a better person or employee and I will always remember how powerfully uncomfortable this workshop made me. Another part of the training was sharing an experience that was painful and how we dealt with the painful experience. There are many reasons I don’t for work for this company anymore.
There are three companies that come to mind when I think of the worst interviews I have ever been in as a candidate for the position, but the biggest offender was The New Well. When I interviewed for a wellness consultant position at The New Well (they referred to themselves as a “wellness spa;” I eventually developed other opinions) which was a branch of the Grants Pass, Oregon-based company Club Northwest, they had multiple candidates interview for the position at one time. This felt odd and strangely competitive, as though all of us candidates were being pitted against each other even more than if we were to just have been interviewed separately. I’ve been in interviews where there were multiple interviewers interviewing me, but this approach of having us all around the table getting interviewed by one or two interviewers and answering in turn just felt odd and it made me feel like none of us were worth the time investment that interviewing us separately would have required. This had to have been ineffective. Additionally, I distinctly remember that none of these interviewers were taking any notes during the interviews, and considering there were multiple interview candidates being interviewed simultaneously, I really didn’t know how they would be able to remember each of our answers or how valid their recollections of our answers were going to be without written observations. I think that this method of interviewing would be subject to whatever the interviewer was thinking or feeling that day, rather than the things that they could have written down in the moment during the interview. As mentioned in How to Take the Bias out of Interviews (Bohnet, I. 2018), unstructured interviews have been proven to be ineffective, and at certain points in this interview, the candidates were encouraged to converse with each other in an unstructured format and to worry less about the actual questions that were being asked by the interviewers. I think this was an effort on the interviewers’ part to observe our rapport-building skills, but it was definitely misguided, and I would encourage them to take the time to interview people individually in the future for improved interview effectiveness, validity, utility and reliability.
Citations:
Bohnet, I. (2016, July 18). How to take the bias out of interviews. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved April 25, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-take-the-bias-out-of-interviews
One challenge that I have personally experienced regarding job descriptions is that I was hired for a job in the medical field several years ago that I assumed was based off of the job description that was listed on the job search engine Indeed. This job description was briefly touched on in the interview process. When I actually started working there, I was then informed that certain things about the job description were no longer accurate. In reality, approximately half of the job description was accurate. This created some confusion for me and made me wonder why this was not kept up to date. Looking back I wonder if the human resources department at that company really kept their descriptions up to date across the whole company in general and if they realized how this may impact the company and the individuals who work there. I understand that for a lot of individuals, updating job descriptions may not seem like something deserves high priority status on a to-do list, but I think that regular updating of job descriptions seems like a great way to make sure that not only the right people are attracted to the job, but that those employees will feel like what they are asked to do at work is reflective of their actual job description. This idea is mentioned in Job Worth Doing: Update Descriptions (Tyler, 2013) by director of HR operations for Insperity, Janet Flewelling. Also mentioned is the hypothetical situation in which an employee’s job description and actual work day don’t match. I have experienced this and I know that it can reflect poorly in the employee’s mind on the organization of the company. One way to make sure that job descriptions are updated on a regular or annual (at minimum) basis is to schedule this. It’s one thing to say that it “should” be done, but it shows more initiative to actually schedule these job description reviews and for this schedule to be visible to all of human resources and management so that everyone makes an effort to prioritize it.
The first company I picked was Hilton, where employees feel that they aren’t just a number in the system; they feel that the Hilton is caring and that employees are treated like family. This is reminiscent of the way the Lankford-Sysco employees seem to feel they are treated when they are mentioned in First, Break All the Rules. The employees at Lankford-Sysco genuinely seem to enjoy what they do as well as feel that they are cared for both personally and professionally by their bosses who have their pictures up on the wall in order to feel closer to them.
The second company I chose to focus on was Cheesecake Factory Incorporated. Employees here feel that the company cares about employees’ personal and professional well-being and are accepting of people of all kinds. This speaks to me about diversity. I think that some employers are more likely to hire a diverse employee population based on the geographical location of the business; some places are just more likely to have a diverse population than others making it easier to hire diverse employees.
The third company I chose to focus on was Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI). REI employees admire the company’s passion for the outdoors, excellence, and commitment to doing the right thing and how they prioritize purpose over profit. I do think that businesses have become increasingly aware of their impacts on the environment and on the planet, and companies like REI have seemed to almost make it cool to care about the environment. Every year on Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year, REI closes its doors to the public and encourages its customers to get outside and to enjoy the great outdoors rather than spend the day doing something that people do all the time anyway, which is shopping. They are innovative in the way that they see themselves as a business because they are aware of the image that they project out into the world and they try to use that platform as responsibly as they can while still striving to maintain a healthy business. In a world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to prioritize things above profit, REI strives to make sure that it continues to do so.
The last company I chose to focus on was Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. These employees appreciate that the company genuinely cares about employees; employee was offered a place to sleep at the hotel when they lost their home in a disaster. To me this says that Four Seasons is genuinely concerned about the well-being of its employees and that they really are like family. I honestly don’t think that if something happened to my house, my employer would be able to offer me a place to sleep. I’ve heard stories about hotels that hosted traveling nurses who traveled to heavily pandemic-stricken areas to work and some of these hotels took great pride in being able to provide for these healthcare heroes.
As for the kind of manager I would like to be and the role I think the HR functions and activities discussed in the lectures and readings will play in me being that manager, in terms of functional HR areas, I like to think that I would encourage and support diversity if I was involved in the hiring processes of individuals because I am someone that would fall into the category of being racially diverse. Growing up in a town where there wasn’t a lot of diversity, I appreciate that where I live now celebrates and practices diversity in the workplace a lot more purposefully than where I used to live. I know what it’s like to work in places that are diverse as well as places that aren’t and I can honestly say that it was more interesting to work in places where there was more variation in the backgrounds of the people that worked there.
To address another functional HR area, I would have to say that retention and engagement would be something that I would prioritize as well. This is because I know what it’s like to hold a job where there is a high turnover rate and where you feel like people are constantly leaving the workplace while newcomers are constantly being trained to take the place of someone that just left; the strain that this creates and the toll this takes on supervisors and management becomes apparent and I feel that a high rate of turnover does in part have a lot to do with how a workplace is manager. In the reading from the class text First, Break All the Rules this week, it is mentioned that people don’t quit jobs, rather they actually quit managers. I have to admit I can heartily relate to this. I once left a job because I didn’t like the way a manager treated me (among many other reasons), but I do agree that a manager can play a pivotal role in an employee’s decision to stay with or to leave a company.
As for the aspects of a manager’s job I think are likely to be most challenging, I think one of the most difficult aspects of being a manager for me would be living up to employee expectations and making sure that I am satisfying their needs as employees. I like to think that I’m capable of meeting expectations most of the time, but I also realize that it is possible for people to expect more from me than I am actually capable of. This happens rarely, but when it does happen, I struggle with the idea that I don’t measure up to those expectations. This is something I may struggle with for the rest of my life but which I welcome to challenge me because I know it won’t only make me a stronger person, it will make me a better leader in any capacity. I know I can’t stop caring about what people think of me, because if I do, I will no longer try to please them, and while that’s not necessarily the first priority, what people think and how they feel should be taken into consideration.
I think it may also prove difficult to reconcile what I think managing people should be like with what managing people is actually like. I think that getting people to understand the vision I have in any situation and to support or at least not totally hate it would prove difficult given everyone comes from such different backgrounds and has such different beliefs and communication styles. I see managers as conductors of a symphony: groups of people may be playing different instruments with different parts, but it’s ultimately the conductor’s job to make sure that everyone does their part to make sure their part of the song is represented and that everyone comes to the end of the same song at the same time and is on the same page, literally and metaphorically.
