Reference no: EM133203680

Assignment 1 - HR Ethics in High Tech Discussion

When Stew Leonard's started in 1979, it had seven items and nine employees. Today, it has four food stores, nine wine stores, and 2,500 employees. The company has tried to keep its employees feeling like they are part of making Stew Leonard's successful. Karen Mazako, vice president of human resources, gives a long list of benefits. The company also offers fun benefits like appreciation dinners, picnics, and trips. Stew Leonard's provides training and tuition reimbursement to help employees advance in their careers. During annual reviews, managers and employees discuss career goals. The company invests in its employees. Happy team members make the customers happy, and the business and profits flow naturally from that interaction.

Discussion Questions -

1. If healthcare costs increase, should Stew Leonard's reconsider the health benefits it provides to its employees? What should it consider in making this decision?

2. Stew Leonard's uses participation as a metric when evaluating its benefits. What is a disadvantage of using participation as a key metric?

3. Companies in the grocery business often employ many part-time workers. What are the pros and cons of Stew Leonard's offering benefits to its part-time employees?

4. The fact that personality conflicts inside the team can have a negative influence on productivity and team cohesion is a significant drawback of a team-based organization. Although they have the choice to remove one person from the team in order to maintain unity, it can be difficult for the disruptive individual to integrate smoothly with another team (Quain, 2019).  Another is that not all workers are good at working in a team. Since some workers operate more effectively alone, working in a group may not fully utilize their skill set. In a team environment, some employees could look at their coworkers to make up for their own laziness. Therefore, some may need to implement individual performance targets because some individuals may coast on the efforts of others.

5. Offering benefits to Stew Leonard's part-time staff has both perks and drawbacks. As a result of the shorter working hours, part-time employees are more encouraged to offer their best effort during work hours, which also leads to a sense of job satisfaction. Part-time employees will also feel more supported if they have a variety of perks available to them. The costs associated with providing benefits to employees go up, offering similar benefits to part-time workers is impractical given the rising cost of healthcare, and full-time workers get resentful when part-time workers receive the same perks.

Assignments 2 - HR Ethics: High-Tech Firms Collude to Limit Employee Pay

Several high-tech firms in Silicon Valley violated antitrust laws by agreeing that they would not try to hire each other's employees. This limited employees' job options and income.

1. How should companies address the possibility of bidding wars when trying to retain top talent? How should HR professionals or general managers help address this issue?

2. What compensation strategies would enable companies to attract and retain good employees without having to worry about bidding wars? How should the needs of employees be addressed in these strategies?

3. Companies should offer salaries and incentives to employees in order to entice and keep good workers. The businesses with the best production and employee morale pay a combination of salaries and incentives. Employees receive a wage as payment for completing all duties and as a reliable source of income. They are encouraged to accomplish and surpass their goals by the incentive, which can be a bonus for some people and commission for salespeople, and it also provides them the chance to make more money. Pay the pay component of the employee's compensation monthly or bimonthly. Employees should get the incentive part of their pay as soon as is practical after achieving their objectives. As a result, monthly incentive payments are frequently the best and quarterly related to financial performance are typically more motivating than annual payouts.

4. Retaining top talent should always be a priority for companies. To help aviod the issues with bidding wars, the best way to limit this would be making sure everyone is knowledgable on the topic. Everyone in the company and the surrounding tech firms should have set policies in place so that employees are able to move freely in their career path and able to negotiate compensation accordingly. One thing that HR professionals can do to help would be to make sure that employees are not overworked and can relax. Nobody should be overworked, since that could lead to an upset employee that would be looking to leave the company. To help limit the overworking of employees, employers can also implement a rewards to employees as well in an effort to help limit bidding wars.