Reflection on 4/15

It was interesting to see my classmates’ presentations. There were many topics and everyone had different approaches for his or her research. I enjoyed and learned from their presentation.

Reflection on 3/31/10

In class, we talked about emotional cycle associated with a foreign assignment: Honeymoon, culture shock, learning, and adjustment. As our professor mentioned, he had all these stages even though he thought he was ready. I have a same experience. Because I went to a college in the US, had many American friends and learned their culture from them, I thought it would be easy to work for an American company. However, I sometimes got culture shock and learned differences when I worked for an American company. I think learning the difference of other cultures and the emotional cycle is very important to be ready for global market.

Ch 16. Creating and Maintaining High-Performance Organizations

According to this chapter, the definition of high-performance work systems is the right combination of people, technology, and organizational structure that makes full use of the organization’s resources and opportunities in achieving its goals. The elements of a high-performance work system such as organizational structure, task design, people, reward systems, and information systems have to work together.

Have you worked for a company which has a high-performance work system? If so, what was the benefits you received from the system?

This chapter also mentioned about human resource management technology which can improve the efficiency of the HRM functions and support knowledge sharing. HRM applications including transaction process, decision support systems, and expert systems can improve the competence of routine tasks and the quality of decisions.

How does HRM technology help to improve the quality of decisions?

Ch 15. Managing Human Resources Globally

Due to the globalized environment, more companies are entering international markets. Companies export their products, build facilities in other countries and enter into alliances with foreign companies. When the organizations operate in international markets, they have to know the factors that influence HRM in the markets such as culture, education, economic systems and
political-legal systems.

Have you worked for a foreign company? If so, what was the biggest challenge?

When organizations operate overseas, they have to decide whether to hire parent-country nationals, host-country nationals, or third-country nationals for the overseas operations. Usually, they hire a combination of these. If organizations decide to send employees on foreign assignments, organizations prepare the employees through cross-cultural training.

What are some advantages from firing host-country nationals? How about challenges?

Reflection on 3/9 class

One of things we learned in the class was the benefits required by law – there are four benefits: Social Security, Unemployment insurance, Workers’ compensation, and Family and Medical Leave. I think medical insurance should be required by law like it does in Korea. Here in America, the medical expenses are too expensive so people who do not have medical insurance are afraid to go to a hospital.

Ch 14. Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations

According this chapter, workers may negotiate differences with their employers individually or they may form unions to negotiate on their behalf. To avoid conflicts, it is important to understand each other’s goals: management goals are to increase the organization’s profits. However, labor union goals are to satisfy their members with obtaining pay and working conditions and give members a voice in decisions that affect them. For that reason, the role of government laws and regulations which affect union and labor relations are important.

Have you joined a labor union? Why?

Unions engage in organizing, collective bargaining and contract administration with business and government organizations. This chapter talks about the union membership in the United States has been declining among business but has held steady with government employees.

Why do you think the union membership is decrease in business?

Ch.13 Providing Employee Benefits

Chapter 13 talks about employee benefits which are compensation in forms other than cash. There are some benefits, such as Social Security or unemployment insurance, required by law. However, many of them are optional benefits; paid leave, medical insurance, retirement plan etc. To select employee benefits, employers need to consider the organization’s objectives, employees’ expectations and values, and benefits’ costs. Indeed, organizations should aware of the regulations to design and administer benefits programs.

Do you know the detail of the benefits your company provides? I remember that one of employees who quit the job said that didn’t know the company provided education support and felt regret for not using the benefit.

This chapter talks about the importance of communicating information about employee benefits. According to this chapter, employees and job applicants often have a poor idea of what benefits they have and the market value of their benefits. Employer spend large amount of money on benefits, but if employees do not understand how to use them or why they are valuable, the cost of the benefits will be wasted. Therefore, organizations must communicate benefits information effectively so that the benefits motivate employees.

What is the best way to communicate benefit information to employees?

Reflection on 3/4 class

We had a class assignment; each group had to discuss about pro and con for a type of incentive pays. Our group talked about ‘group bonus and team reward’. As we discussed, working together as a group brings a synergy effect, but there are some people who do not work hard and take advantage from other team members. Also, another con is that competition may prevent necessary cooperation among group.

Ch12. Recognizing Employee Contributions with Pay

According to the Chapter 12, incentive pay is the forms of pay linked to an employee’s performance as an individual, group member, or organization member. It is influential because the amount paid is linked to predefined behaviors or outcomes. Through communication and participation in decisions, employees can feel that the incentive pay plans are fair.

Imagine that many people at work received incentive pay but you are in the group of people who didn’t get the incentive pay. You thought you worked hard. How would you feel?

Chapter 12 talks about three types of payment. First, organizations provide a variety of pay incentives to individuals such as piecework rates, standard hour plans, merit pay, individual bonuses, and sales commissions. Next is the pay related to group including gainsharing, bonuses, and team awards. The last one is that organizations link pay to their overall performance: profit sharing and stock ownership.

Among the incentive pays, which one (pay link to individual performance, group performance or the organization’s overall performance) do you prefer? Why?

Ch.11 Establishing a Pay Structure

Pay decision is important for organization. Pay is major cost for company’s point of view, but it has large impact on employee’s attitude and behaviors which is related to company’s goal. Therefore, organizations have to make pay decisions carefully. They establish relative pay for different functions and different levels of responsibility for each function. Indeed, they must establish pay levels, or the average paid for the different jobs.

Have you felt that your pay is unfair?

According to equity theory, employees think of their pay relative to their inputs, such as training, experience, and effort. Hence, employees evaluate their pay relative to the pay of other employees. If employees think they are underrewarded, they will do one of three ways: They might put less effort, find out a way to increase their outcomes, or withdraw by leaving the company.

How can organizations find out whether their employees think the pay is fair or unfair?

Reflection on 2/16 class

I enjoyed the guest speaker’s presentation. He has many experiences in HRM, and it helps me understand about HRM more. HR job seems interesting to me, but there are some challenges as he mentioned. For example, sometimes it is hard to do pay/benefit negotiation and not easy to layoff or fire employees.

Ch.10 Separting & Retaining Employees

All organizations want to have low labor turnover and employees who are fully engaged to their work. However, some poor performers have to be terminated, which is involuntary turnover, and some good workers want to leave the organizations, which is voluntary turnover. Both involuntary and voluntary turnovers are costly so organizations try to minimize them. To make employees satisfied, organizations make jobs more complex and meaningful, provide clear and appropriate roles, and recognize the importance of pay and benefits. In addition, organizations monitor job satisfaction to check employees’ satisfaction levels.

Have you changed your job due to the dissatisfaction? What was the reason?

According to Ch.10, job withdrawal is a set of behaviors with which employees try to avoid the work situation physically, mentally, or emotionally. The book mentions several causes that employees do not satisfy their jobs: individual personality differences, role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload, pay and benefits etc.

Among the monitoring job satisfaction systems, what is the best tool to check employees’ satisfaction?

Reflection on 2/11 class

We watched a short video clip in the class. I strongly agree with the interviewee (I forgot his name) in some his opinions. As he mentioned, I am the only person who has to have responsibility for my life, and I don’t like people who blame others all the time. I also agree on the ethic part; there is no gray color. As he said, only white or black exists. Some people say that the gray or black are needed to be succeed in business. However, we should know for sure what the right or wrong is. One thing I don’t agree with the interviewee is that people are not working hard today compared the old generations. I just want to ask to him whether he has ever been working in the real business world. In my experiences, there are so many workaholics and people who have to work hard.

Ch.9 Developing Employees for Future Success

Many organizations help developing their employees’ knowledge, skills and behavior to compete in today’s changing business environment. This chapter talks about several development approaches: formal education, assessment, job experiences, and interpersonal relationships. It also mentions the steps of the career management process, and employee and employer have to have responsibilities at each step of the process.

Imagine a company sends an employee to Europe for a training to learn a new soft ware which is very useful in the field. However, the employee quits the job six month later and moves to another company. At the new company, the employee uses the new technology which he or she learns from the training in Europe.

Many organizations have focused on linking training programs to business goals. Also, employees must develop new skills to remain marketable.

What are the advantages and risk from helping employees’ development?

Refliction on 2/9 class

We talked about Ch.6, selecting employees, and it was good information. I wished we had learned this chapter earlier because the topic of my compare and contrast interview paper is recruiting human resources and many good interview questions came to my mind during the class.

Ch.8 Managing Employees' Performance

It is important to know whether employees are doing a good job and how their performances contribute to the organization’s goals. This chapter talks about the performance management. There are three purposes of performance: strategic, administrative, and developmental. Organizations use variety of methods for measuring performance, and fairness in rating performance is important to evaluate correctly.

How would you feel if you had low points on your performance appraisal? I remember at my work a couple of employees who were given lower evaluation seemed very frustrated and hurt, and they were swearing behind the supervisor’s back.

There are many measuring performance methods that organizations can use: simple rating, forced-distribution method, rating attributes, mixed-standard scales, critical-incident method etc.
All of them have both advantages and drawbacks so organizations should search the better performance appraisal method.

What’s the best method among them? What’s the reason?

Reflection on 2/4 class

We had a guest speaker, Ryan Browne, who is working for Tahitian Noni. He talked about the purpose of training and training process. As he mentioned, having effective training program is important for both, the company and employees. Through the training, employee can have confidence, get bigger picture, increase their performance and meet company goal. I learned from him that the cost of training program is not expenses. It is opportunity cost for future.

Ch.7 - Training Employees

Organizations have training programs which teach employees job-related knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve organizations’ goal. To plan a training program, the organization must consider the budget, time, and expertise for training. There are many training methods such as classroom instruction, audiovisual training, computer-based training, on-the-job training, simulations, team training etc. After the organization plans a training program, it has to implement the program and evaluate the results.

When I worked in Korea, we had the computer-based & conference call training which started at 5:00 A.M. The reason we had the training so early was the instructor was in Head Quarter office in Virginia. Also, some of other employees who were in Hawaii office had to join the training. The training went almost three hours, and I remembered most of us fell asleep. What a training time!

Organizations should plan an effective training program. Computer-based training is that employees receive course materials and instruction distributed over the Internet or on CD-ROM. It is less expensive than the classroom instruction and getting popular.

To have an effective training, what else should an organization consider?

Reflection on 2/2 class

Today, we talked about ‘lead-the-market pay strategies’ which is one of personnel policies. ‘Lead-the-market pay strategies’ is that organizations pay more than the current market wages for a job, and it includes bonuses, stock option, and other benefits. It sounds very good. However, when I worked, I realized that people have to work as much as they get paid. At my work I saw people who had ‘lead-the-market pay’ did not have weekends, and no time for family. I remember a couple of them even didn’t want to have children because they were workaholic and knew they didn’t have time to take care children. Since then I didn’t want too much money because I love to spend some time with my family and for myself.

Ch.6 - Selecting Employees and Placing them in Jobs

Finding new employees who will be a good fit with the job is very important for organizations. The selection process includes a review of candidates’ application and resume, reference and background checks, employment tests, and interview.

Imagine you are in a conference room as an interviewee. There are eight interviewers who wear a suit and look very serious ask you questions without any chat about casual matters. How would you feel?

Interviews bring together job applicants and representatives of the employer to obtain information and evaluate the applicant’s qualifications. Interview should be narrow, structured, and standardized.

How can the interview be more effectively for both the interviewer and interviewee?

Reflection on 1/28 class

We talked about works for motivation such as skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. These characteristics make the employees have motivation and satisfaction. The more of these characteristics a job has, the more motivating the job will be. In my opinion knowing the purpose of a job and the impaction to others are the most important items among them. We can apply them to our life, too. If we know our life identity and significance, we will be more excited and happy.

Ch 5 - Paning for and Recruiting Human Resources

First, organizations should make human resource planning which includes forecasting, goal setting and strategic planning, and program implementation and evaluation. And then organization should do recruiting human resources following their planning. For recruitment sources, there are several ways the organizations can use: internal source, external sources, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, or electronic recruiting.

Imagine you are an office manager and recently hire your assistant who is your boss’s niece or your major customer’s wife. How do you feel working with the assistant?

‘Referrals’ is one of the external sources that organization can use to recruit. It brings many advantages to both job seeker and employers, and it is considered as the best sources of new hires as well as direct application.

What should the organizations do to avoid the disadvantage of referrals?

Reflection on 1/26 class

Sexual Harassment is one of topics we discussed in the class today. As we saw in the short video today, the harassers usually do not realize that their behavior can create an offensive environment. Therefore, organization should prevent sexual harassment by developing a policy and training employees so that they can be aware of it.

Ch.4 - Analyzing Work and Designing Jobs

This chapter discusses the job analysis and design of work. Job analysis is the process of getting detailed information about jobs, and job design is the process of making jobs more efficient or more motivating. Both of them are related to achieve high-quality performance.

Recently, one of my friends was complaining about her work. The friend has a team project, but a couple of her team workers have very different view and negative attitudes. She was very stressed out, and didn’t want to do the project with them. Teamwork is supposed to bring synergy, but in my friend’s case, it doesn’t. If you are in her situation, what will you do?

A part of Chapter 4, it talks about self-managing work teams as one of job designs for motivation. Self-managing work is the assignment of work to groups of employees, and the teams have authority for an entire work process. Therefore, teamwork can motivate employees by making work more interesting and significant.

How can we make the teamwork more efficiently?

Reflection on 1/21 class

We talked about EEO laws and regulations in the class. Especially, our group discussed about Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. These laws are to prohibit discrimination against individuals with pregnancy and disabilities. During the discussion, one of our group members said if he were an employer and met an interviewee who was a super pregnant woman, he wouldn’t hire her. I understand what he means even though I am a woman. Unless the candidate is really skilled person, it won’t be easy to choose her in businesswise. However, as the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 defines, an employer should not refuse to hire a woman because she is pregnant. I believe it is very important that employers have to be aware of the EEO laws and regulations.

HR Legal Issue - Laying Off an Employee

I read an article about the laying off an employee. The article talks about how to prepare for a layoff and there are many steps to lay off employees. The employer has to review the company’s personnel policy and handbook, and determine which benefits employees are entitled to. Also, the employer has to ensure that he or she is in compliance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification. After the layoff, the employer should tell the remaining employees the reasons for the layoff and encourage the employees.

I have an experience of being laid off. My company was a subcontractor of the government, but the government was short of the budget at that period so many employees had to be laid off temporally. Being laid off was one of the unhappiest things I ever had. I was supposed to come back to the company two month later, but I applied for another job and worked for another company because I couldn’t trust the company anymore.

A layoff is challenges for both, employee and employer. However, all businesses have their upturns and downturns, and sometimes, it is necessary to lay off workers.

We learned a new psychological contract that the relationship has been changed to be trust or loyal between employee and employer. How does a layoff affect the trust between employee and employer?

Reflection on 1/19 class

We learned about the changes in the labor force in the class today. The labor market is aging so that organizations will spend much of their time on concerns related to retirement planning and retraining older workers. Also, the labor force is growing more diverse and successfully managing diversity is important in the global market. The last thing we discussed about the changes in the labor force was skill deficiencies of the workforce. For example, not many students go to ‘natural science’ field.

We also talked about the employee empowerment and the changes in the employment relationship. The relationship between employees and employers has been changed; there are more trust, loyal, and unspoken expectation. It will give employees to have more responsibility and authority to make decision. Also, today’s organizations seek flexibility such as work schedules, staffing levels.

Learning about the changes in labor force will guide us to manage successfully.

Ch.3-Providing EEO and a Safe Workplace

Equal Employment Opportunity(EEO) is all individuals -those protected classes include race, color, age, religion, sex, disability, or national origin- have an equal opportunity for employment. There are federal laws for EEO, and The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforces the EEO laws.

One of my former bosses often made jokes on black people after an African-American employee left the office. Even though you are not the African-American employee, how would you feel if you hear these jokes?

Chapter 3 mentions about disparate treatment which is the discrimination of differing treatment of individuals, where the differences are based on the individuals’ race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability status, and employers or managers can avoid this illegal discrimination in several ways.

Have you had the experience that you were discriminated against on one of the above reasons? If you feel you are discriminated, what will you do?

Reflection on 1/14 class

We watched a video clip about the Pike Place Market in Seattle. It was amazing to see the employees who were so energetic and excited to work there. Also, customers and visitors seemed happy. I believe the satisfaction of employees affects the customers. What makes the employees in the market are so energetic? As the video shows, there are many reasons; they have a goal to be world famous, trust each other, know own responsibilities, and the owner doesn’t treat people as number. Theses are important elements for HRM, and if companies apply these, probably they will make success no matter what fields they are in.

Ch.2-Trends in Human Resource Management

When I read Chapter 2, one of the interesting topics was outsourcing. In globalized business environments, organizations all over the world compete to provide value to their customers and make their profits more. As the author of the book mentions, one of the popular trends in the business world is outsourcing. Many companies outsource manufacturing, customer support, accounting, engineering etc. According to the chapter, 8 out of 10 companies outsource at least one human resource activity, and 91 percent of U.S. companies have taken steps to standardize their HR processes to prepare for outsourcing.

If someone who is not working in a corporation knows your confidential information such as compensation rate, benefits or personal information, how do you feel? What does employee get benefits from the HR outsourcing?

In the early part of this chapter, managers today are beginning to see a more central role for HRM. It also says they are beginning to look at HRM as a means to support a company’s strategy. If the strategic role of HRM is bigger and important, why do they want to outsource HR?