New on the job

Joe and Michael's just started her job as human resource manager at in the doghouse, a retail chain specializing in dog apparel and accessories. She is a good friend of yours if you met in college.

The organization has 35 stores with 250 employees in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. As the chain has grown, the training programs have been conducted somewhat piece meal. Upon visiting some of the stores in a three week tour, Joanne has realized that all the stores seem to have different ways of training their in-store employees.

when she digs further, she realizes even the corporate offices which employee 75 people have no formal training program. In the past they have done in formal and optional brown bag lunch training to keep employees up-to-date. As a result, Joe and develops a survey using survey monkey and send it to all 75 corporate employees. She created a rating system, with one meaning strongly disagree and five meaning strongly agree. Employees were not required to answer allQuestions, hence the variation in the number of responses column. After this task, Joanne creates a slightly different survey and send it to all the store managers, asking them to encourage their retail employees to take the survey. The result are shown here

question:

1. I am paid fairly. Number of responses 73 average rating 3.9

2. I feel my group works well as a team number of responses 69 average rating 2.3

3. I appreciate the amount of soft skills training offered at in the doghouse. Number of responses 74 average rating 2.1

4.I can see myself growing professionally here number of responses 69 average rating 1.95

5.I feel I am paid fairly number of responses 74 average rating 3.8

6.I have all the tools and equipment I need to do my job number of responses 67 average rating 4.2

7.I feel confident if there were an emergency at the office I would know what to do and could help others number of responses 73 average rating 2.67

8.I think my direct supervisor is an excellent manager number of responses 55 average rating 2.41

9.the orientation training I received was helpful in understanding the expectations of the job number of responses 75 average rating 3.1

10.I would take training related to my job knowing there would be a reward offered for doing sonumber of responses 71 average raining 4.24

in the doghouse retail employee survey results

1. I am content with the benefits I am receiving number of responses 143 average rating 1.2

2. I feel my store works well as a team number of responses 190 average rating of 4.1

3. I appreciate the amount of product training and information offered at in the doghouse. Number of responses 182 average rating 2.34

4.I can see myself growing professionally here number of responses 158 average rating 1.99

5. I feel I am paid fairly number of responses 182 average rating 3.2

6. My supervisor works with my schedule, so I work at times that are convenient for me. Number of responses 172 average rating 3.67

7. I feel confident if I had to evacuate the store, I would know what to do and could help others. Number of responses 179 average rating 2.88

8. I think my store manager is a great manager. Number of responses 139 average rating 3.34

9. The orientation training I received was helpful in understanding the expectations of the job number of responses 183 average rating 4.3

10. I am interested in developing my career at in the doghouse. Number of responses 174 average rating 1.69

Based on the information Joanne received from her survey, she decided some changes need to be made. Joanne asks you to meet for coffee and take a look at the results. After you review them, Joanne ask you the following questions. How would you respond to each?

1. “Obviously, I need to start working on some training programs. Which topics do you think I should start with?”
2. “How do I go about developing a training program that will be really useful and make people excited? What are the steps I need to take? Which strategies do you recommend?”

Create 4-page (not including the cover or reference page) paper on a hot topic in Human Resource Management.

Paper Topics:

1. Remote Work/Telecommuting Increasing in Popularity
2. Health Care Reform and its Impact on Businesses
3. Trends in Minimum Wage and the Impact on Businesses
4. Employee/Workforce Literacy: Issues and Solutions
5. Background Checks and Neglect Hiring
6. The Impact of Baby Boomers on the Workforce
7. Is the Interview a Valid Predictor of Employee Success?  How to Improve the Interview Process.  
8. The Importance of Work-Life Balance:  Benefits to the Employee and Company.
9. The Use of Social Media in the Hiring Process
10. The Benefits of Teamwork in Business.  How to Develop and Manage High-Performance Work Teams.
11. Employees Use of Social Media at Work: Pros and Cons
12. Sexual Harassment Issues in Corporate America
13. How HRM deals with absenteeism of the employees in a specific sector?

Content: paper should consist of information that cannot be found in your text.  

As a human resources manager, you realize that performance management must be considered even before a person becomes an employee of the organization. One of your goals is to reduce employee turnover through the revision of the personnel assessments used during the recruitment and hiring process.

The first opportunity to implement the new personnel assessments will be next month when you begin interviewing for three open positions in the training department.

In your Discussion, address the following:

1. What types of personnel assessments are you familiar with? Do you prefer one type of assessment over the other?
2. Which assessments would you use for the training position candidates and why do you believe these are the most appropriate?
3. How would you monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the use of each assessment?
4. How will you evaluate this data in relation to the overall performance of the organization? If you found flaws in the data, how would you correct or report them?

Another key objective for a firm is to "Retain Human Capital".  Given this, please read the passage below and answer the 2 questions that follow.

The Blurring Boundaries Between Work and Home

One of the most interesting transformations taking place in the work place today is the rapid blurring of the boundaries between home and office. The following numbers, based on a survey of large companies that employ more than 500 employees, tell an interesting story.

¨             40 percent of large companies allow part-time telecommuting.

                ¨             16 percent of large companies offer child care centers, some even subsidized by the company.

                ¨             3 percent of large companies allow employees to bring their pets to work.

1. Do these numbers surprise you?

2. Why do you think companies permit such flexibility, even in an environment where unemployment is high?

Question from - Human Resources Management - Chapter 9 " Collective Bargaining and Labour Relations"

A. Explain the three levels of decisions that are involved with labour relations.

B. Assume that management and a union are negotiating a collective agreement. During the negotiation process, the two parties are unfortunately unable to reach a contract. Identify and explain three neutral third-party actions that could be used to resolve the conflict.  

C. From the actions identified above, which is the most formal and produces a binding decision?

Please answer briefly .

Many struggle with topic of human sexuality often from a spiritual or religious viewpoint. What are your thoughts about the debate referencing sexual orientation and gender identity either being a choice or a natural biological preference? This is to include all orientations and gender identities including heterosexual and cisgender persons.  Please don't forget to cite your source in APA format. Please also remember the following are not considered academic sources is not acceptable. Magazines, popular websites, religious texts, blogs, social media, Wikipedia, etc.

While death maybe an unfortunate and inevitable occurrence in human life, the death of government policies was originally thought of as so or near impossible. Many researchers considered that termination can cause difficulties when trying to identify causal and predictable relationships. Possibly even more troublesome is the misunderstanding of what constitutes termination (Kinney, N, 2013).

However, the government of Malaysia have terminated several policies such as Teaching Science and Mathematics in English (PPSMI), Goods and Services Taxes (GST) and bend bridge project.

1. Based on the examples given above, do you agree with the author? Justify your answer

2. If you were hired as a public official and you were given instructions to terminate a program or a policy,

   1. i) how would you proceed?

   2. ii) would you apply the ‘big bang’ or the long whimper approach? Justify your answer?

When Jim began working in the human resources department at KR Electronics, he was impressed with the number of advancement opportunities the job offered. His first task was to monitor reports that came in from employees through the company’s ethics hotline. It was a simple job, but one Jim felt would lead him to a higher position in the HR department. He spent two days learning about the company’s ethical policies and values, such as the importance of integrity and confidentiality. Jim felt reassured he chose a great company in which to start a career. KR Electronics was a competitive company, and every six months employees were evaluated for performance. While the highest performers received substantial bonuses, the lowest 15 percent were consistently fired within the year. This didn’t bother Jim too much. He knew many other well-known companies had a similar system in place. What bothered Jim was the way the supervisors treated employees who did not perform highly. Several employees approached Jim and told him of an abusive manager who often yelled at employees in front of other coworkers. Jim heard reports that the supervisor would make comments such as “I can’t wait till the year is up and I can tell you to get lost. It’ll be nice to actually get someone in this job with half a brain.” When Jim approached David, the human resources manager of his department, about what he heard, David shrugged off Jim’s concerns. “You’ve got to understand, Jim,” David explained. “We operate in a highly competitive field. Employees have to work quickly and efficiently in order to maintain our business. This often requires supervisors to get tough. Besides, this supervisor’s unit is one of our highest performers. Apparently, whatever he’s doing is working.” This remark made Jim feel uncomfortable, but he did not want to argue with his boss about it. One day Jim got a call from a woman in the company’s sales department. She informed him that many of the firm’s salespeople made exaggerated claims about the quality of their electronics. He also learned salespeople were making guarantees about products that were not true, such as how long the product would last. “The salespeople are given substantial bonuses for exceeding their quotas, so many promise whatever it takes to increase their sales,” the woman explained. Although it was not required to provide a name when reporting, the person talking to Jim gave her name as Sarah Jones. She asked Jim to make sure her sales manager Rick Martin did not find out she called the hotline. Jim gave the report to his supervisor for further investigation. Two weeks later Jim heard that Sarah Jones had been fired for poor performance. He approached David to ask him about the situation and was horrified to find out the sales manager of Sarah’s division had been told about her report. “But David, this is a violation of our confidentiality code! I promised Sarah we would keep her name anonymous when investigating this matter. What if Rick fired her out of retaliation?” Jim asked. David looked at Jim in exasperation. “Jim, you are making too big of a deal out of this. Nobody forced Sarah to give her name to us over the hotline. And trust me, Rick’s a good man. He wouldn’t fire someone simply to get back at them for reporting. It seems to me that these reports don’t have credibility, anyway. It’s likely that Sarah made up these allegations to hide her poor performance.” Jim left David’s office upset. Even if Sarah was a poor performer, he did not feel that it was right that her sales manager was told about her report when she expressly requested otherwise. As he went back to his desk, he remembered hearing that the sales manager and David were good friends and often went out together for lunch. Case 1 questions: 1

. Using concern-for-people and concern-for-performance matrix, discuss the four types of corporate culture? What type of corporate culture does KR Electronics have? Explain your answer?  

List and explain THREE ethical issues in the case? And explain how the corporate culture of KR Electronics contributed to these ethical issues?

Human Resources performs many functions in an organization.A primary responsibility is assisting leaders and managers in recruiting and selecting future employees.While seemingly a straight forward task,'s, assessing a candidate's relevant skills,abilities,personality and intelligences, is fraught with challenges.Among these is the ability to accurately identify the candidate's job fit while minimizing the candidate's and interviewer's biases.What can HR professionals and managers do in order to limit the number of incorrect hires(false positives) and failing to hire the right candidates(false negatives).