Just thought I would voice my opinion

I hate saturday morning classes. No offense to the teacher or the topic but it is almost lame enough that it is wasting my time and I hate when people waste my time.

Welcome Back to School

Hope y'all are excited to be back in school 'cuz I sure ain't.

May 26, 2010

I guess this is my personal blog now that HRM is over. I guess we will see if I continue to post.

My Personal Blog Now People

4/24/2010

All right see yall later. Its been fun. Research paper is all I have to turn in.

4/20/2010

Today we had couple presentations left to finish. The one presentation I really like was the one about sending people at work that test positive for drugs to rehab. He said that it saves nearly 78 work days of cost to send the individual to rehab instead of firing the person and paying to hire someone new. I thought this was a great idea. He also said that by sending the person to rehab you are taking care of the person and the problem. If you just fire the individual then it doesn't solve anything except getting rid of the "problem". That kind of says to the rest of the employees that the company will only care about you if you are good and do what we ask.

4/15/2010

We had presentations about our research papers. I had the opportunity to present some of the information that I had found about Child Labor. I found that China is being pushed to produce cheap products and as a result factories are violating some labor laws that put in place. There is evidence that Brazil is exposing children to harmful shoe glues. And finally there is evidence that Africa foster many children to homes of higher economic status.

4/13/2010 Reflection

We had presentations from everybody's research papers. About half of the class went and they were really good I was impressed. Pierre even had a handout for his presentation for every student, that was great.

4/6/2010 Reflection

1. Utilitarianism-Moral reason based on consequences or the "end result"
2. Deonotology-Moral reason is based on duty and principle(intrinsic). Action is good if it is right.
3. Virtue Ethics-Moral reason is based on complying with identified virtues(or principles). Maintains integrity and builds character.

Capitalism- Creates a place for creativity to happen, can be a problem when peple take advantage of it. There are downfalls to capitalism.

In 2005, the average pay of a U.S. Wal-Mart employee was just 60.5% of their average Costco counterpart. Wal-Mart turnover rate that year was 50% and only 24% at Costco.

That is some interesting facts that I learned today in class. I would prefer to work at Costco.

4/1/2010 Reflection

We talked about high performance work systems. A learning organization is an organization that support life long learning by enabling all employees to acquire and share knowledge. Knowledge sharing needs to be going on.
1. continuous learning
2. knowledge is shared
3. critical, systematic thinking
4. learning culture
5. employees are valued

Chapter 16

Discussion

This chapter is about high performance teams and what goes into them. I just want to focus on Empowerment, Knowledge Sharing, and Job Satisfaction. I want to focus on these three, because I think that they are the most important pieces to a high performance organization. Empowerment is the idea of giving more power to the individual instead of the manager micromanaging everybody and not allowing for individual growth or input. This will help create a high performance organization by the employee working harder because they are not micromanaged. It will also help the individual to be able to give more input. This knowledge sharing needs to be happening at all levels. With the empowerment and knowledge sharing going on the job satisfaction will go up and these are three main peices to a high performing organization.

Key points

Do you think that these ideas should be put into the mission statement of the company?

Questions

Have you ever been part of a high performing company? How did it feel being part of something that great? What do you think was the most important aspect to make it a high performance team?

Chapter 15 Discussion

Discussion

Many U.S. companies are out sourcing their labor. It is cheaper to outsource to other countries that have lower wage rates and don't have to give as many benefits to the employee. The average U.S. employee has it really good.

Key Points

Out sourcing all this labor is putting the money elsewhere. Businesses have to do it to keep a competitive edge on their products.

Questions

Are you worried about too many businesses putting money into other countries instead of our own?

3/11/2010

On Thursday we learned about optional benefits. These look pretty good to me I have never had any of these benefits. There is paid leave, retirement plans, group insurance, family friendly benefits and other benefits. I learned that benefits weren't popular until post WWII era. Benefits sound pretty cool I learned that there even some companies that allow their employees to bring their pets to work to help contribute to the relaxed atmosphere. I would just hate the smell in that office building and i imagine they have a high turnover rate for their janitors.

Chapter 13 Discussion

Discussion

Unemployment insurance can be collected when you become unemployed. To get unemployment insurance benefits they have to meet four requirements. They are:
1. Prove that they have been unemployed.
2. Show that they are available for work(I am assuming not leave the country on vacation and still be collecting unemployment insurance).
3. Register at local employment offices and be actively seeking work.
4. Person has to not have quit job voluntarily.

Key Points

Unemployment insurance can be a great benefit for a head of a household that has been recently laid off and just needs a little bit of money to stay a float until they find another job. Some use unemployment unlawfully by stating that they are looking for labor when they are actually just sitting at home collecting on their insurance.

Questions

Do you know someone that has been receiving the benefits of unemployment insurance? Were they legally receiving the benefits or by breaking some of theses 4 requirements?

Chapter 14 discussion

Discussion

Unions can a be a huge benefit to an individual. You do a job and then you get put at the bottom of the list of people. This way you get cycled through the list of workers and get an equal opportunity. Companies can sometimes request certain workers because they know that they do quality and efficient work. Sometimes you have to pay dues to the union that you work for. If you get caught doing side jobs other than the union jobs you get kicked of the union.

Key points

Unions cost a lot of money to use for a labor contractor because of all their coverage they have for their employees.

Question

Do you think it is wrong to not allow the person to do side jobs because it might be a while before he is cycled through the list of employees?

3/4/2010

We discussed Chapter 12 last Thursday. The characteristics of a job the the organization values is how you will be judged for pay. Some obvious things on the top of the list is education and experience. I then learned about how ridiculous the pay scale is for executive pay in the United States. The average ratio from executive pay to lowest paid employee is on average from 300:1 to 500:1. I think that this is ridiculous. This is obviously not a smart distribution of wealth in America. This is one of the reasons why the middle class is shrinking in the United States. Twenty percent of the top paid employees in the U.S. receive more than 50 percent of the total money paid to all employed people in the U.S. As the middle class shrinks the upper class will grow minimally and the lower class will explode and most people will be on the poor pay scale. We also talked about how cool incentive pay can be. I learned that I like the idea of a company having to post its employees pay amounts online for all to see. This helps keep public companies honest in their pay scales.

3/3/2010

Yesterday we had class in the library to get information about getting information. Ha ha there you go that that is how I would sum it up. The lecture was given by Christy Donaldson. I have had her lecture me before in some of my other business classes. It was beneficial to listen again. She suggested that we don't touch google to do searches because the sources we find will probably charge money. The school pays for many of the sources that we need to do research. She said that searching on the schools database is pretty much the opposite of using Google. You use the word AND to search multiple topics together and add a * at the end of search topics to search singular and plural. The database searches for the exact words so it is more picky. This information was beneficial because I found some articles while we as a class were looking for articles.

Chapter 12 Discussion

Concept

Performance bonuses are rewarded on an employees performance. The time period of performance is decided by the company. The idea is to improve performance of employees by presenting the possibility of earning a bonus by how hard the individual works. The performance bonus is added to the amount of your base pay. Extra cash basically.

Emotional Hook

Some of you have had the experience of receiving a performance bonus in your places of employment. How did it make you feel when you received a bonus? Did it make you more committed to helping your employer succeed in the business world? If you have never received a performance bonus would like to receive one?

Key Points

Did your performance bonus help you perform better? If you haven't received a performance bonus do you think that it would help you to work harder if you got one?

Facilitate Questions

Do think that if the company announces that there will be a performance bonus given to the hardest worker it can create problems; like unhealthy competition?

2/25/2010

We had the opportunity to have a guest lecturer in class on Thursday. Jeff Weber is in Human Resources at ancestry.com. He talked about legal requirements and current trends of compensation. I learned about the Fair Labor Standards Act and how many companies are not in compliance with this act. Jeff talked about how investment is an investment. Every company needs to sit down and make-up their philosophy and decide base pay. Companies have gone to flexible salaries and market. Each area at ancestry.com gets a little different pay. Why? Because it cost more to live in San Fransisco for example than Salt Lake City. Jeff said that variable compensation programs vary from base pay by 3 to 20 percent. If company performs well then board members like to pay out. He talked about some long-term incentives that companies do help employees stay at their company. An example of a long-term incentive is stock options, but sometimes options go under water and they have lost their value. Jeff said they best way to decrease turnover is most affected by career development. And he brought donuts for the class heck yeah! He told us about how their company feeds their employees and they tried taking away donuts and their employees got pretty mad at him.

2/23/2010

Sorry gang no post for today because we had no class so I slept in.

2/18/2010 Reflection

Managing turnover was the topic of the class discussion. Every organization recognizes that it needs satisfied loyal customers. If they don't it is probably only a matter of time before they are out of business. Success requires satisfied loyal employees. Research provides evidence that retaining employees help retain customers and increase sales. Organizations with ow turnover and satisfied employees tend to perform better. Then we talked about progressive discipline. Companies should have a policy in place and let their employees know about it. Documentation is critical in with company policies. Companies need to be assertive in telling employees about their expectations. That gives the employee the chance to meet those expectations before they are fired for something they didn't know about. We also touched on the definition of job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is a pleasant feeling resulting from the perception that one's job fulfills or allows for the fulfillment of one's important job values. We talked about how people will be more satisfied with their jobs as long as they perceive that their jobs meet their important values.

2-9-2010

We did some class reflection on Ryan's presentation from last class time. We talked about interviewing effectively.
1. Be prepared
2. Assign responsibility
3. Put the applicant at ease
4. Ask about past behaviors
5. Figure out what your employees do and ask question that look for similar behaviors.
6. At the end of the interview make sure the candidate know what to expect next.
We also talked about PAR=Problem Action Result. Use PAR in job interviews to help show them what you can do. Interviewing is a skill. Instructional Design is a process of systematically developing training to meet specified needs. Some different training methods that we talked about were:
Classroom instruction
Audio visual
Computer based training
On-the-job training
Simulations
Business Games and Case Studies
Behavior Modeling
Experimental Programs
Team training
Action learning

My Apologies Gang

Hey everybody I have an apology to make. I am two chapters behind in the reading. I haven't done any discussion topics for those chapters. I have an explanation. I am in a construction management competition. I have been preparing since the beginning of this semester. It is like being on a sports team. I will be going to Reno this week to compete. So after this week I might have a chance to catch up and keep my blog up to date. I have also been busy preparing my compare and contrast paper. Hope yall are doing well.

2/4/2010 Reflection

Yesterday we had the privilege of hearing from a representative from Tahitian Noni. I learned a lot from him about employee training. The benefits of employee training have to be tracked well by showing improvement in sales or customer service. The average training ratio for other companies is 50:1. The training ratio for Tahitian Noni is 20:1. Tahitian Noni has 30 minute briefing sessions each day. The lecturer also told us it cost double to get a new employee than to hang on to an employee. He also talked about how they keep training internal in their company than bring in outside trainers. I learned from him that training helps keep the companies mission in focus. He told us that in companies that need to cut spending usually cut the training programs first. The most important thing I got out of this lecture is was to have training programs and to have a training program objective.

Chapter 6 Discussion

Discussion

It is part of human nature to not get along with every human being. Some people you just wont be able to get along with because of a personality clash or an ego clash. These differences can sometimes be difficult to hurdle. One or both parties have to be willing to make a compromise and hold back or lower their ego to be able to get along with the other person.

Emotional Hook

Lets say you were in charge of human relations for a big company. How would you deal with these differences? If you were the human relations for a company and you had a personality clash with the best interview candidate; what would you do?

Key Points

You are hired to do what is best for the company and hiring the best individual for the job position.

Question

Should you be the one to always be making the compromise if you are the one doing the hiring?

1/28/10 Reflection

This class session reminded how much I hate micro-management. I have had boring jobs that lacked interest for me. I learned about job enlargement and how it helps to broaden tasks done to help make a job more interesting. One of the best jobs I ever had used a lot of job enlargement. It helps you feel more important when you have many different tasks to perform. Job rotation sounds like a good idea too. I have never experienced this in my employment. In class there were experiences shared where others said that this helped factory work not be so boring. This class discussion just helped me realize that mixing it up with job tasks makes work better for employees. If you make work better for employees production of the good or service is going to improve. I am going to remember these ideas just in case I ever end up in a management position.

Discussion

Nepotism is basically the act of hiring relatives. This may be a very common practice in everyday life for family owned companies. It may also happen in non family owned companies. In the non family owned companies it may be more of recommending instead of hiring. If you apply to work for the family company and a relative is also applying then who do you think is going to get the job? I haven't heard of a law saying that you can't discriminate against non family members.

Emotional Hook

Some of us have worked for a family owned company. When you are not part of the family and work for them this can create some bad feelings. You might ask why, but it is because family members in the company usually end up getting special treatment. The special treatment may mean good pay right off the bat or getting the easy jobs. The family members in the company know each other better and act as a group. You may find yourself feeling like the outcast. Has this every happened to you? Do you feel the same way or was your company different?

Key Points in The Discussion

Depending on where you sit can affect how you feel about this topic. If you work for a family company it may offend you if others don't like the company. You might take offense because they aren't just attacking the company but also the family. If you are family and work for the family company you might not understand how good you have it.

Question

How can we remedy this situation of favoritism in family companies?

1/26/2010 Review

We learned about Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact. Disparate Treatment is differing treatment of an individual with different race, age, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability status. Disparate Impact is a condition which employment practices are seemingly neutral yet they exclude a group from employment. I learned about the lawsuit that Greyhound bus company lost against Asian bus drivers. They lost because Greyhound specified a certain height to drive their buses and a group of Asian workers filed a lawsuit and won.

Chapter 4 Discussion

Discussion

Part of human resources personnel have figure out what skills are needed to fill a position. The job description then has these list of skills required for the job. Companies then put these lists of characteristics and skills on the job information page.

Emotional Hook

As a college student do you give yourself more or less credit than you deserve in the area of skills and characteristics?

Question

Have you ever used UVU's employment services to help yourself obtain a job?

1/21/10

I learned about all the laws that our government relating to Human Relations. The different groups got up in class and gave a summary of each law. There is also a great summary in the book on page 59. The table on page 59 also tell which government agency enforces each law. I think that is great to live in a country that protects minorities and the disabled.

News Article Discussion

Discussion

The article is about a biker gang that came into a town to make a reservation at a hotel. There was a contract signed stating that the gang would pay $16,000 for 113 rooms. Part of the agreement is that they would spend at least $2,500 at the hotel's restaurant and bar. The restaurant and bar have been currently closing at 2 pm from lack of business. The hotel planned to keep the restaurant open until 2 am for the weekend. The city came in and said they would close the hotel down if they let the gang come and stay at the hotel. The hotel gave in and canceled the reservation contract. The biker gang is now suing.

Emotional Hook

If you were a member of this biker gang then you probably wouldn't be too happy that your weekend was canceled because a town was scared of your gangs reputation. Every member of the gang could be good law abiding citizens and lead normal lives. The biker gang just could be their network of friends they have a good time with on the weekends. Do you think that this could be accurate? If so, how should they be treated? If not, how should they be treated?

Key Points

The hotel probably should not have breached their contract with the biker gang. If there had been any damages done to the hotel from the gang then the hotel could just have billed the gang for damages incurred on the hotel. Do you think this is the best thing to do?

Question

What would you have done if you were the hotel owner?

Class Notes for 1/19/10

I learned in class about issues with an aging workforce. The older employees have a huge knowledge base about their field of work. When that employee quits their job the knowledge they have goes with them. Their is a struggle to transfer that knowledge to new employees before the older employee retires.
We also talked about the problems with psychological contracts in work environments. The main issues with that is either party putting more faith in the other. The party that has more invested usually ends up getting hurt by the others actions.
I also learned about out sourcing and off-shoring.

Chapter 3 Discussion

Concept and brief description

In the 1960's Title VII was put into place. Title VII is from the Civil Right Act. It ensures that minorities receive equal opportunities. Title VII prohibits companies from not hiring people because of national background, religion, gender, or race. There was also the Equal Pay Act of 1963. This act states that if men and women are doing equal work they get paid the same amount.

Emotional Hook

Imagine if you were in the work force before these two great laws came along. What would you think about these new laws? Now imagine if you were unemployed before these two great laws came along. How would you feel about these laws?

Key Points

It is great to live in a country that supports diversity and allows for immigration of any country.

Question

How would you feel living in a country that doesn't support diversity and discriminates against others?

Thursday January 14th Class Notes

I learned a lot in the movie that was shown in class about the fish company. The idea of coaching co-workers. To be a good leader you have to delegate out your power and empower people. This style of managing saved the company from going under. We also talked about in my group the value of treating your employees well. We talked about what Google does for their employees and how well the company is doing. I have concluded that the investment on your employees pays back.

Chapter 2 Discussion

There is an aging workforce. The baby boomers are getting older and getting close to retirement. A lot of people in the baby boomer age would retire if they could but many can't because of the down turn in the economy. This can create a problem if companies are all ready cutting back on hiring. That doesn't leave much room for graduating college students to find a place in the work world. Does this make you worried about finding a job when you graduate? Does this make feel some animosity towards the "older generation."

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