Management Style, Applied

You recently completely overhauled several aspects of employee benefits, including health insurance and compensation packages. You have also developed clear succession plans and career development plans to assist in the retention of your current employees. You are pretty excited about the changes and feel they are better for the employees, while costing your organization less money. These plans came from your development of a strategic plan and goals set last year. You think these plans will result in lower turnover.

However, in four recent exit interviews, the former employees mentioned the lack of communication from your department on the changes you made. They said they did not feel well informed and are disappointed they were not notified. In addition, they complained of micromanagement on the part of two particular managers. They said they spend half of their day responding to their managers with project updates, instead of working on the projects themselves. As you begin to think about these exit interviews, you realize that development of the strategic plan and implementing it simply isn’t enough; you must communicate the changes to employees as well. You also have a bit of concern about the management styles mentioned and think it might be a good time to offer training on effective management to your entire company.

QUESTIONS;

1. Using concepts from this chapter and other HRM chapters, develop an outline for a training program on effective management.

2. Discuss some of the ways you can communicate the following topics to the employees: changes to benefits, training opportunities, compensation plans, and succession plans.

Management Style, Applied

You recently completely overhauled several aspects of employee benefits, including health insurance and compensation packages. You have also developed clear succession plans and career development plans to assist in the retention of your current employees. You are pretty excited about the changes and feel they are better for the employees, while costing your organization less money. These plans came from your development of a strategic plan and goals set last year. You think these plans will result in lower turnover.

However, in four recent exit interviews, the former employees mentioned the lack of communication from your department on the changes you made. They said they did not feel well informed and are disappointed they were not notified. In addition, they complained of micromanagement on the part of two particular managers. They said they spend half of their day responding to their managers with project updates, instead of working on the projects themselves. As you begin to think about these exit interviews, you realize that development of the strategic plan and implementing it simply isn’t enough; you must communicate the changes to employees as well. You also have a bit of concern about the management styles mentioned and think it might be a good time to offer training on effective management to your entire company.

QUESTIONS;

1. Using concepts from this chapter and other HRM chapters, develop an outline for a training program on effective management.

2. Discuss some of the ways you can communicate the following topics to the employees: changes to benefits, training opportunities, compensation plans, and succession plans.

On June 1, our company purchases $10 million book value of corporate bonds that we classify as available-for-sale (AFS). We intend to sell these securities on September 30 to meet planned funding needs. Since an increase in interest rates will cause the fair value of the securities to decrease, we decide to hedge against the risk of loss in the fair value of the debt securities that would result if the interest rates were to rise. As a result, we sell September Treasury note futures contracts on June 1 in the amount of the debt securities. We have determined that the hedging relationship between the futures contracts and the debt securities is highly effective (both at the inception of the relationship and on an ongoing basis) in achieving offsetting changes in the fair value that are due to changes in the benchmark interest rate. Accordingly, this transaction is designated as a fair value hedge. Interest rates rise as we had predicted, and the prices of the corporate bonds (the hedged item) and the futures contracts (the hedging instrument), and the resulting gains and losses, are as follows:

Date............................................Securities Loss............Futures..............Gain Net

August ...................................... $(100,000)....................$75,000.............$(25,000)

September ................................... (50,000)......................50,000....................0

We sell the debt securities on September 30 at their fair value of $9,850,000.

Prepare the journal entries to record the following:

a. Purchase of the debt securities and futures contracts on June 1

b. Accrue changes in fair value of AFS debt securities and futures contract in August

c. Accrue changes in fair value of AFS debt securities and futures contract in September

d. Record sale of securities in September

Exercise 16-44 Comprehensive Cost Variance Analysis (LO 16-5, 6)

NSF Lube is a fast-growing chain of oil-change stores. The following data are available for last year’s services:

NSF Lube performed 467,700 oil changes last year. It had budgeted 435,000 oil changes, averaging 8 minutes each.

Standard variable labor and support costs per oil change were as follows:

Direct oil specialist services: 8 minutes at $30 per hour $ 4.00

Variable support staff and overhead: 10.5 minutes at $20 per hour 3.5

Fixed overhead costs: Annual budget $1,039,000

Fixed overhead is applied at the rate of $3.90 per oil change.

Actual oil change costs:

Direct oil specialist services: 467,700 changes averaging 11 minutes at $34 per hour $ 2,915,330

Variable support staff and overhead: 0.22 labor-hours at $15 per hour × 467,700 changes 1,543,410

Fixed overhead 1,425,000

a. Prepare a cost variance analysis for each variable cost for last year.

b. Prepare a fixed overhead cost variance analysis

I know the answer for b is:

Price Variance: $386,000 U

Production Volume Variance: $785,030 F

Fixed Overhead Cost Variance: $399,030 F

......But I can't figure out A: how to get the Price Variance, Efficiency Variance or the total variance for both the oil specialist and the variable overhead.

Any help would be appreciated.

Assume the firm has a tax rate of 21 percent.

c-1. Calculate return on equity (ROE) under each of the three economic scenarios before any debt is issued.

c-2. Calculate the percentage changes in ROE when the economy expands or enters a recession.

c-3. Calculate the return on equity (ROE) under each of the three economic scenarios assuming the firm goes through with the recapitalization.

c-4. Given the recapitalization, calculate the percentage changes in ROE when the economy expands or enters a recession.

The 8-year-old girl who was naughty.

8-year-old girl brought to her pediatrician by her 26-year-old mother • Chief complaint: fever and sore throat Psychiatric History • While evaluating the patient for an upper respiratory infection, the pediatrician asks if school is going well • The patient responds “yes” but in the background the mother shakes her head “no” • The mother states that her daughter is negative and defi ant at home and she has similar reports, mostly of disobedience, from her teacher at school • The patient has had temper tantrums since age 5 but these have decreased over the past 3 years, especially the past year • Still angry and resentful since her little sister was born 6 years ago • Academic problems • Fights with other children, mostly arguments and harsh words with other girls at school Social and Personal History • Goes to public school • Has a younger sister age 6 • Does not see her father much, lives in a nearby city • Not many friends • Spends most of her time with her sister and either her mother or her maternal grandmother who helps with after school supervision and baby sitting

• List three questions you might ask the patient if he or she were in your office. Provide a rationale for why you might ask these questions.
• Identify people in the patient’s life you would need to speak to or get feedback from to further assess the patient’s situation. Include specific questions you might ask these people and why.
• Explain what physical exams and diagnostic tests would be appropriate for the patient and how the results would be used.
• List three differential diagnoses for the patient. Identify the one that you think is most likely and explain why.
• List two pharmacologic agents and their dosing that would be appropriate for the patient’s ADHD therapy based on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. From a mechanism of action perspective, provide a rationale for why you might choose one agent over the other.
• If your assigned case includes “check points” (i.e., follow-up data at week 4, 8, 12, etc.), indicate any therapeutic changes that you might make based on the data provided.
• Explain “lessons learned” from this case study, including how you might apply this case to your own practice when providing care to patients with similar clinical presentations.

Case study

Last month you were hired with the title Health Informatics Specialist at an independent community care hospital with 350 beds. The hospital includes a comprehensive outpatient clinic, a rehabilitation center with both inpatient and outpatient services, a cardiac care center, and an emergency room. In addition, four family health centers are located throughout the community. More than 930 primary care and specialty physicians are associated with the hospital, which has a staff of just over 2000 employees. The hospital has an EHR in place. The hospital has a working relationship with a major academic medical center located 23 miles away. Acute care patients who need more extensive treatment are usually transferred to the medical center. These are often emergency situations, and data are freely shared among the institutions with the best interests of the patient in mind. Located directly beside the hospital is a 194-bed skilled nursing home. While the nursing home has its own medical staff consisting of a physician and two nurse practitioners, patients needing consults or additional care are usually seen at the hospital with follow-up at physicians’ offices. While the nursing home, most of the physicians’ offices, and the hospital are independent institutions, there is a long history of sharing health-related data when treating patients who live at the nursing home and are seen at the hospital or in the physicians’ offices. This coordination is seen as a general benefit for a number of patients. It appears that most patients have signed a form giving the hospital permission to send information to the nursing home. However, these forms have been stored in individual offices, so it is difficult to determine who has signed what forms and what permission has or has not been given to share information among the nursing home, hospital, and independent medical practices.

Discussion Questions

1. What additional information is needed to clarify what problems may exist and what changes may be needed in terms of data that are shared among the institutions?

2. Can the EHR system and/or e-mail be used to share data among these different institutions more effectively and securely? If yes, how would this be done? For example, what agreements, policies, and procedures might need to be developed?

3. In your position as Health Informatics Specialist, how would you go about determining whether there are other potential security issues that now need to be managed by the hospital?

4. From your reading in chapter 25, name two federal agencies and describe their role in the regulatory oversight of Health IT.

5. What are three major issues with mHealth applications and wearable devices?

Victoria Company reports the following operating results for the month of April.

Management is considering the following course of action to increase net income: Reduce the selling price by 5%, with no changes to unit variable costs or fixed costs. Management is confident that this change will increase unit sales by 10%.

Using the contribution margin technique, compute the break-even point in units and dollars and margin of safety in dollars: (Round intermediate calculations to 4 decimal places e.g. 0.2522 and final answer to 0 decimal places, e.g. 2,510.)

(a) Assuming no changes to selling price or costs.

(b1) Assuming changes to sales price and volume as described above.

In this activity we have graphed the function y = sin(x). For this assignment, you will explore the changes that occur in the curve when we make simple changes to the function.

For each of the different parts below, create sketches and a description of the crucial properties of the periodic graphs including:

• Period
• Amplitude
• Maximum
• Minimum
• Axis of the Curve
• Zeros

Finally, in a few sentences, based on your findings describe how these changes in the function affect the properties of the curve.

For your sketches, you can scan hand-made sketches and email or fax these to your instructor. Alternately, you may use a simple drawing program like Windows Paint.