Hello everyone, I am Rylan Wymer and this blog is for my MGMT 453 class. For this blog post I am looking at 2020 Fortune Best Companies to Work For and discussing how some of these companies practice HR. The companies I have chosen to take a look at are Hilton, Ultimate Software, and Wegman’s Food Markets, Inc which were respectively voted the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd best places to work at in 2020. Hiltons main way of practicing HRM is through education and mentorship programs and their “Hilton University” which allows their employees to access debt-free education, aiming at not only improving their career at Hilton but as a whole, per HR Dive. This shows Hilton’s main section of the HR Functional Areas they focus on is Training and Development as they care about training and developing their employees not only in the current role they are in but for their future goals as well whether that’s with Hilton or not. I’d say this also means Hilton practices Strategic HRM pretty well too as this allows their employees to not only better their own career and knowledge but it makes them better at the job they are performing for Hilton, aligning their HR practices with their overall objective of better performing employees thus a better experience for their customers. While Ultimate Software practices HRM by focusing more on the HR Functional Area of Employee Health & Safety. Ultimate Software is an HR software firm so they are pretty intune with how stressful the workforce can be and that the employees need to be treated like customers in the sense they need to be given a level of respect and dignity that allows them to feel safe while working for a company that clearly cares for their well-being. They standby their motto of “Our purpose is people” which coincides with the basic principle of HRM which is people matter. Lastly, Wegman’s Food Markets practices HRM by following the HR Functional Area of Recruitment and Selection, as they purposely choice candidates based on whether they seemed to have a interest/passion for food which they believe would translate to engaging a customer more and according to their research a engaged customer typically spent 46% more at checkout, per Wegman’s: HR Practices and Culture . It’s really interesting to me to see the different sections of the HR Functional Areas that companies tend to focus on and that they can vary a decent amount, but they still all tend to work in their favor and help them successfully perform their HR practices in a way that makes their employees happy.
Now it’s clear management can really impact a companies culture and how their employees both feel at work and how well they perform. So if I was a manager I would like to be the kind that is easy to approach with questions, and also able to turn mistakes into learning moments rather than just unnecessary berating. I think it’s important for employees to be able to feel empowered about their choices and if their manager is one that they can talk to about ideas and they aren’t scared to put themselves out there in front of, that’s the kind of manager I would like to be. Though being able to put your foot down and make hard decisions is still necessary no matter how supportive you can try to be. I feel that the most challenging part of a manager’s job is when they have to make a decision that impacts a team member or may even slightly undermine if the manager doesn’t believe they are doing the correct thing. It can create an awkward working environment and they have to leverage that outcome with what would be the best business decision. It just becomes a situation which seems lose-lose and I think that’s where a good manager is able to find the best course of action even if it still ruffles some feathers.
Thank you for reading!
