Question

HR management

1)    To compete more effectively, your organization is considering a profit-sharing plan to increase employee effort and to encourage employees to think like owners. What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of such a plan? Would the profit-sharing plan have the same impact on all types of employees? Is the size of your organization an important consideration? Why? What alternative pay programs should be considered?

2)    Why is communication so important in the employee benefits area? What sorts of programs can a company use to communicate more effectively? What are the potential positive consequences of more effective benefits communication?

3)    What are the features of traditional and non-traditional labor relations? What are the potential advantages of the “new” nontraditional approaches to labor relations?

4)    Why have the roles and activities of the HRM function changed over the past 20 to 30 years? What has been driving this change? How effectively do you think HRM has responded?

Answer 1

1)    To compete more effectively, your organization is considering a profit-sharing plan to increase employee effort and to encourage employees to think like owners. What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of such a plan? Would the profit-sharing plan have the same impact on all types of employees? Is the size of your organization an important consideration? Why? What alternative pay programs should be considered?

Answer- Potential advantages of profit sharing plans;

-It enhances employees’ commitment to organizational goals/objectives.

-The costs of implementing profit sharing plan are determined by organization’s revenue, in other words, the cost rise and fall with the organization’s returns.

-It brings employees to work together towards achieving a common goal as well as helping them focus on profitability.

Potential disadvantages of profit sharing plans;

-The plan focuses only on organization’s profits.

-For organizations whose earnings are unstable, this plan may result in drastic rise and fall in employees earnings; hence, employees may find it difficult to manage their personal finances.

-The rise and fall of organization’s profits affect each employee.

The profit sharing plan won’t have the same impact on all types of employees. The amount distributed to each employee is based on his or her salary level. Employees with higher base salaries receive a slightly higher amount of the shared returns.

The size of an organization is considered important. It means the organization’s earnings are relatively stable therefore initiating such plan will have a good reward to employees.

Alternative pay programs; implement an incentive-based compensation program to award employees a percentage of the company's profits.

2)    Why is communication so important in the employee benefits area? What sorts of programs can a company use to communicate more effectively? What are the potential positive consequences of more effective benefits communication?

Communication is important in the employee benefits area because often employees have only a very vague and often incorrect information regarding benefits provided by employers. Correct information would not only help the employees understand their total compensation package from their employer, but also help them make correct career decisions. Surveys indicate that employees often underestimate the quantum of benefits they receive from their employers.

Companies can use social media like Facebook, company’s own website and employee portals to disseminate information regarding employee benefits. The human relations department can also have separate question and answer meetings with employees and their representatives explaining employee benefits. Detailed brochures illustrated with case studies would be another way of disseminating benefits to employees.

Surveys confirm that increased awareness regarding benefits contributed to considerable increases in employee satisfaction. Poor communication strategies regarding benefits results in employees being unsure of their compensation package, despite companies spending relatively large amounts of money on employee benefits.

3) What are the features of traditional and non-traditional labor relations? What are the potential advantages of the “new” nontraditional approaches to labor relations?

Traditionally, the interactions between the management and the union are adversarial. However, this relationship needs transformation to achieve two basic objectives. The first one is to improve employee commitment, motivation and problem solving attitude. The second one is to have more flexibility in organizing work.

To illustrate, at C’s engine plant at D, given that the hourly workers are highly educated and skilled, the labor and management came to an agreement on flexibility of work allocation. The employees can be rotated through various work processes depending on the need. This rotation enhances the employee skills and reduces the monotony of repetitive work. This also reduces repetitive motion injuries. Most automobile companies would have many job classifications/titles, depending on the specific work allotted. In C’s engine plant at D, there were only two classifications - team leader and team member The team had a guiding principle that “anyone can do anything, anywhere, at anytime” and the team leader instead of supervising the team also worked along with the team. Despite the union’s apprehensions initially that the management would have all the power to move labor around, they realized that in the competitive situation in the auto industry, there is a need for flexibility for survival.

This kind of change to “new” non-traditional approaches are important and sustainable because most people have realized that adversarial relationships have resulted in not only loss of earnings but also plant closures, resulting in large scale unemployment

4)    Why have the roles and activities of the HRM function changed over the past 20 to 30 years? What has been driving this change? How effectively do you think HRM has responded?

Earlier, several large firms concentrated on the “personnel department,” mostly to manage the paperwork. Nowadays, companies consider that Human Resource department is playing important role in company’s performance.

The important roles of Human Resource department are staffing, training, and managing people and the firm to perform with maximum capability in the highly satisfying manner.

The below mentioned are the reasons that are driving Human resource management functions to change:

• Companies strategic redirection and renewal

• Cultural change

• Management development

• Improvement in knowledge management The Human Resource Management has responded significantly, below mentioned are few effective changes of the Human Resource department:

• Increases productivity of a firm by optimizing the effectiveness of its workers while alongside improving the work life of workers, and treating the staffs as important resources.

• Human Resource Management(HRM) has taken efforts to improve personal development, compliance with workers related laws, and employee satisfaction

• Human Resource Management has implemented primary actions such as acquisition, development, maintenance, and compensation.