Coen H. Online

Upon researching the Pros and Cons of Unions, I found information that seemed to agree with much of what we learned in this week’s materials. Many of the pros and cons that were identified by the article I found (linked below) address much of the procedural information regarding unionizing and collective bargaining in this week’s learning materials (Lecture 1 and 2). One of my key takeaways has been that we are living in a much different environment now for forming unions, especially compared to the landscape for unionizing before the passing of the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932. While it is a fictional book, the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck was one of the most impactful books that I’ve read, and paints a visceral picture of what migrant worker camps were like and the violence and horrendous practices used by employers (“Management”) against Laborers trying to organize. I think this is important to keep in mind today, and not to take for granted all of the work put in to making it easier (and safer) to unionize today.

While not a member of a union myself, I spent the last two summers working around many union workers (on a construction site), and my sister is a member of her Fire Union. The main con against unions that I have heard and learned about it the additional bureaucracy and red tape that is involved, which can lead to more talented workers not receiving warranted promotions, and placing too heavy of an emphasis on seniority, and time spent in a union. While this is a considerable con, it is important to recognize that without many of the safeguards that unions provide, such as the power of collective bargaining to enforce safe working conditions, fair (and increased) pay and benefits, and systems for workers to file grievances. I would join a union if it made sense for the work that I was doing, but for the future it does not look like I will be joining one. However, this may change as white-collar unions are becoming more prevalent.

https://smartasset.com/career/the-pros-and-cons-of-unions

https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2020/ten-things-you-might-not-know-about-grapes-wrath

MGMT 453, Week 10, Lecture 1

MGMT 453, Week 10, Lecture 2

This week’s focus is on stress, and specifically the ways that I deal with stress now, and how I can work to mitigate the harmful effects of stress in the future. I took several tests to get my current benchmark level of stress. From the Holmes-Rahe “Life Stress Inventory” Rating system, I scored a 235. According to this test, that puts me at a 50% chance of having a major health breakdown in the next 2 years. This was very unsettling to discover. Additionally, I took the “Coping and Stress Management Skills Test”, and scored a 75, and was told that I do “problem-focused coping”. This made sense, and is generally helpful, as long as the problem that I am focusing on is something that I have the agency to change myself. I also took the “Type A Personality Test”, and scored a 41, characterized with “impatience and irritability”. This tracked for me as well, as I generally try to be as patient, tolerant, and warm, but when stressed I definitely can lash out. These results were somewhat troubling as well, as I was unaware of the connection between these traits and the increased risk of heart disease.

While these results are somewhat troubling, I would be foolish to say that they are surprising. Over the last term, I have slowly been taking inventory of my major habits that I need to change in order to have the best chance of success once I am “on my own” truly and working full-time. I am going to be starting work in the Construction industry soon, which is a notoriously stressful work environment, so it is paramount that I work hard how to start developing my habits so that once I start work I will already have a system in place that can help to mitigate the chronic stress of that environment.

As I understand it, the Latent, or Chronic Stress is the real killer, that leads to all of the long term health problems, whereas acute stress (fight or flight response) is actually somewhat beneficial as long as it doesn’t happen too often. I definitely have some chronic stress, and need to start developing my routine to mitigate the impact that it has on me. During my last summer working, I would bike for at least an hour every day after work, and that had a very positive impact on my stress levels during the day (especially when compared to the previous summer where I didn’t put effort into maintaining routine physical activity).

Currently I am reading the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, which is helping me come up with actionable steps that I can take to change my nonproductive habits, and develop positive new ones to create a system for myself which will allow me conquer my stress and get better everyday.

Sources:

https://www.apa.org/topics/healthy-workplaces/work-stress

Earlier this year, I spent a lot of time thinking about compensation. I am in Construction Engineering Management, and our program works very hard to connect to job opportunities after school, so as long as one can pass their classes, do an internship or two (they are quite easy to get at the many CEM career fairs), a person is more likely than not to graduate college with a signed offer. I was lucky and received a job offer from my internship that I had completed, but I wanted to take my elder’s advice and seek out at least one more job offer. So I went through the interview process and received a job offer from another company that met my criteria of General Contractors, which I would like to work for (High Construction Volume, employee-owned).

Once I had two offers in hand I had to take a second and just sort of catch my breath, I was extremely grateful to be so fortunate to have these opportunities. Then came the hard part: negotiation and making a decision. Not to go too deep into the weeds of the offers but essentially: the offer from my internship company was a fair salary as well as non-exempt, with good benefits and essentially a guarantee I would get my shares vested within 2 years, and the second offer was a slightly higher amount of base salary, however it was exempt, and the timeline to vesting my employee ownership was less clear.

Given all of this, and knowing that I liked the people, workstyle, and culture of the company I interned with, I returned with a counteroffer asking for a signing bonus, and they accepted. This decision was highly driven by compensation, as I want to start working after college to start paying off my loans. Both jobs offered a lot of potential compensation, however I felt that the offer I accepted would both have a higher potential for upfront earnings as the position was non-exempt, so I will have the opportunity to earn overtime, as well as I will most likely get my shares vested much faster at this company, so I will be able to start acruing company equity which will provide further compensation.

I have had many different types of training for the various jobs that I have had before and during College. The two most distinct trainings that come to mind were the trainings I did for my internship at PCL construction, as well as the trainings that I did while I was working part-time at Harbor Freight.

First off, I want to say that of the various onboarding trainings I have done, Harbor Freight’s was by far the most intense for the Job itself. The first day was 8 hours of module based training on the standard operating procedure for the company as a whole as well as my role. This was not an engaging process, and I found myself overwhelmed with information that I was not able to take in entirely.

This is countered with the training that I received for my Summer Internship at PCL construction. The only real training besides my half-day orientation (which was mainly getting my computer and filling out paperwork) was the safety training I had to complete before arriving on site, which took about 2.5 hours. This training was more manageable, as I was able to pretty much only focus on the safety side of things, and it was a more gradual process than the Harbor Freight onboarding process, which felt like trying to drink from a fire hose.

In terms of the actual Job-specific training, I felt like Harbor Freight had a good system once I was over the actual hump of the onboarding process. Using technology-assisted on-the-job training, I was able to start learning the layout of the warehouse, while actually starting to stock the shelves and learning about how the Inventory system works. When there were new tasks to accomplish such as unloading a truck day, or updating the shelves with a new planogram, my manager stayed on top of me completing the online training module before, and then working with an experienced associate to take on the new task.

At my internship at PCL, the learning curve was a lot steeper, and to give them credit, it is very difficult to create a training program for construction management at any given point on a project, especially with no experience. The trainings that I did have were mostly about safety, or the company’s policies, and didn’t really pertain to what was going on on the job at a given moment. This made it a challenge but very engaging for me to learn and work to make myself an asset for my boss, which ended up being a very fulfilling summer.

Overall, I think that Harbor Freight had a more effective job-specific training program and that PCL had a more engaging onboarding process. I enjoyed the technology-assisted on-the-job training at Harbor Freight and felt that was quite effective in teaching me each activity.

The Challenges of Maintaining Job Descriptions

With today’s job market being so tumultuous, it is becoming more and more important for both people seeking jobs, as well as those looking to hire, that job descriptions are kept as accurate and up-to-date as possible. Especially when jobs now can rely on the understanding of a coding language, specific project management software, or other specific technical knowledge, employers need to keep their posted job descriptions transparent and clear.

Many view job descriptions as static when in reality they should be looked at as amendable, flexible, living documents, that can and should be reviewed at least once a year (Tyler, 2013). The employees who do the job, along with their managers, should review the job description regularly with HR to ensure that the job being marketed is as accurate as possible. Additionally, depending on the level of inaccuracy, a misleading job description could get a company in legal trouble.

The largest challenge with job descriptions can be the nature of the jobs that are being described, as in some jobs can be easy to quantify into a job description, and some can be much more nebulous to describe with a simple list of tasks. HR departments can use different types of analyzing jobs to better describe them in job descriptions. Instead of sticking to a list of routine tasks that that job will perform, employers could offer a list of skills required, and problems that they will be required to solve on the job, for example.

Creating and maintaining accurate job descriptions is an oft-overlooked and underappreciated task for HR managers. By leveraging employee collaboration to review and revise job descriptions, and treating them as living documents, as well as changing how jobs are described, companies will be more successful in recruiting and retaining employees who will be happier because their actual job matches closely with the job that they applied for. 

Sources:

Tyler, Kathryn. “Job Worth Doing: Update Descriptions” SHRM. Last modified January 1, 2013. https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/hr-magazine/job-worth-update-descriptions.

How the Best Practice HR

According to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® 2020 List, the top three companies are: Hilton, Ultimate Software, and Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. These three companies are all in different markets and industries, however, they achieved their status as the best through great human resources management.

Hilton is a large hotel brand, and they have a lot of personnel spread across the world. Their HR brand focuses on a lot of internal training and development for their employees, as well as a focus on internal mobility for career advancement. Hilton has the best rating because the organization is the most effective at showing their employees they care about them.

Ulimate software is a cloud based personnel and HR management software (Now UKG), and they provided many other companies with services for HR management, so Ultimate Software has all of the right tools to manage themselves well, and all of their employees know how to use them because they are the ones working on them everyday. I would be curious to see how the company is doing after the merger between Ultimate Software and Kronos.

Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. is an East-Coast chain of supermarkets, and it is a company that is driven by it’s values and mission. Consistently is is awarded with Fortune Best Places to Work awards, and many of them are for Women, parents, or other specialized demographic. Wegmans places a lot of emphasis on training and giving back to their employees, as well as a lot of sustainability and corporate sustainability initiatives.

How I’d Like to Practice HR

If/When I become a manager, I want to be as direct and open with those that I am managing as possible. I want to be strategic, and hopefully when I am a manager I will have some say over the goals that my organization has, so that I can fully align my management strategy towards seeking to achieve those goals. I also want to be very transparent with my expectations for my employees, and help them as much as I can to exceed all of my and their own goals for themselves. I think that the hardest part of managing people will be having hard conversations, such as disciplinary action or firing someone. Additionally, I think another hard part of being a manager will be balancing having a friendly relationship and a great rapport with my employees with also keeping the role as manager intact. This especially seems like it will be a challenge in construction, where a lot of the time you are having to manage and work with people who are not in the same organization, so there is not a concrete organizational structure to abide by if people start butting heads.

Sources:

https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/corporate-social-responsibility/how-hilton-upholds-its-legacy-through-employee-centric-practices#:~:text=Hilton%20remains%20true%20to%20Conrad,and%20built%20a%20strong%20connection.

https://www.greatplacetowork.com/best-workplaces/100-best/2020

Contribute an original blog post (250-350 words) to your blog discussing how the companies you selected practice HR, what kind of manager you’d like to be, and what aspects of a manager’s job you think are likely to be most challenging. Use the material from the lectures, outlines, and/or readings to support your reasoning and provide citations.