Question

Three articles regarding current affairs in Human Resource Management

Answer 1

Layoffs that are not harmful for the company-

Summary of the article-

The world has been taken away by the force of automation and fierce global competition. In order to maintain profitability and reduce operational costs, companies lay off people, which damages the company's reputation in the long term and hence damages the profitability too. The article also illustrates how Nokia's bad layoff policies in 2008 caused a huge downfall in company's reputation. Some governments have also created laws that prevent big layoffs from happening at one click, while some countries still alow the companies to lay off at will.

Although, researches have shown that bad and unplanned layoffs for the companies have hardly ever brought good results for the companies doing so. Researches also showed that companies saw around 20% decrease in job performance of employees after the layoff happened. Stock market experts also said that after layoff, the stock prices showed neutral to negative variation.

Although short term productivity increased, as lesser employees did more work, but eventually there was a dip in the overall performance. The paper also tells that out of the people who were laid off, only 41% of them found a job equal to the payment they received, rest were left jobless or found a low paying job.

The paper then discusses on some alternatives of a layoff.

These methods can be-

1. Change philosophy - Bringing a change in the workforce attitude, and hence increasing the overall productivity

2. Giving your employees some other options instead of firing them

3. Make them learn something new or give them a new career path

How netflix has reinvented HR

This article talks about how certain employees are only an extra baggade, and how the companies should not be awarding them. The article has been formed around these strategies used by Netflix and how successful they have been on the scene by usiing them. The article talks about

1. Companies should award only fully formed adults, who are actually generating value for the company. More importantly, they should behave like adults, have open conversations with the bosses, keep a good working environment, and are not to be spoon fed.

2. The second thing that Netflix did was- told the exact truth about the performance of employee to him/her. This made things more clear, defined objectives well, and took the ambiguity out of the system. Hence increasing the productivity of the employees much more effectively

3. Managers were asked to create their own effective teams

4 The leaders were told to maintain a good company culture

Types of incompetent leaders

The article identifies the key characteristics of bad managers

1. They create distance between themselves and their junior employees

2. They are highly manipulative in their behavior

3. They are reluctant to take a stand for their team

The article talks about how these qualities in the managers should be identified as soon as possible and restricted in the bud itself. Too many leaders developing this quality are bound to take the organization on a decreasing slope