Chapter 16

Concept and Brief Discussion:

Elements of a High Performance Work System: In order to establish a high-performance work system, the elements that must work together include organizational structure, task design, people, reward systems, and information systems (pg. 469).

Organizational structure is the way the organization is put into order and operations. This includes putting people into groups, departments, and reporting relationships. The company must group its employees appropriately in order to know how to best structure a efficient and effective company.

Task design gets more detailed in grouping tasks to defined groups of employees. Good job design promotes efficiency while promoting high quality.

Making sure that you hire the right people is crucial to the success of your company. Providing an organization with well suited and well prepared professionals will garner high performance. In order to maintain good people, proper training, development, and career management must be done to ensure these people are able to continue to perform well in their present and future tasks.

Reward Systems also contribute to high-performance work systems. It encourages workers to strive for objectives that support the organization's overall goals (pg. 470). This can include measuring performance and linking incentive pay and other rewards linked to success.

Finally, information systems are a key element in high-performance systems. Being able to gather and distribute information in this modern age is vital to a company's success. HR departments take advantage of technology to give employees access to information about benefits, training opportunities, job openings, and more.

The Hook:

You are restructuring a company's department. As you do so, how will each of these above listed elements help to organize a good department that will bring success to the company?

Key Points to Elicit in Conversation:

High-performance work systems can be accomplished with the right elements, which include organizational structure, task design, the right people, reward systems, and good information systems. As you incorporate these elements into an organization, you will find more success.

Facilitative Questions:

What has your current employer done to incorporate these elements into the work system you are in?

Chapter 13

Concept and Brief Discussion:

Employee Wellness Program (EWP): This is a set of communications, activities, and facilities designed to change health-related behaviors in ways that reduce health risks (p. 376). Typically, employee wellness programs aim at reducing risk factors like blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, smoking, and obesity. All these things can lead to chronic and acute heart problems, as well as many other system failures. Employers can provide services to their employees in a couple of ways. Passive programs provide information and services, but no formal support or motivation to use the program. Examples include health education and fitness facilities. Active wellness programs assume take on a much more proactive role and may include counselors who tailor programs to individual employees' needs.

The Hook:

As an employee of a busy firm where your time is stretched thin, you don't feel like you can make a commitment to go to the gym every day. You would like to be more active and can tell that your energy levels are affecting your performance. If your company were to provide on site facilities with showers and a locker room, how much more likely would you start exercising?

Key Points to Elicit in Discussion:

Employee wellness programs can cost a company a lot of money, however the benefits can far outweigh the costs. Workers will have more energy, morale will increase, and the overall health of the company will improve. Many insurance companies these days will give employees and employers discounts on insurance for participating in such programs too. I think every company should have some sort of wellness program or guidelines for their employees, even if it just involves an educational component.

Facilitative Questions:

What does having a good wellness program at a company say about their commitment to employees? Have any of your employers offered gym memberships at a discount or had on site facilities? How do you think a wellness program can help an organization?

Reflection on Thursday's Class

On Thursday, we got into our groups to talk about various ways to give incentives and bonus pay to employees. The two topics our group was given was profit sharing and stock options. I enjoyed reading over the material with my group and learning more about their experiences with these methods of pay.

Profit sharing is an incentive pay in which payments are a percentage of the organization's profits and do not become part of the employees' base salary. This is a low cost way of giving performance and bonus pay to employees, but can cause problems when the company isn't doing well. If employees begin to feel entitled to profit sharing bonuses, the company morale with go down hard when the company doesn't have anything to give out during hard times. I saw how profit sharing can be good and bad at my previous employment. One of the issues where I worked, was that older more tenured workers didn't like that I got the same share of profit sharing as they did, since they had been there longer.

Stock options include the rights to buy a certain number of shares of stock at a specified price. Companies will offer stock options to their employees as a way to get them to think more like owners, like they have something truly vested in the company. This method can be good to create long term incentive for employees to stay with a company. However, I don't think lower workers with stock options would have a huge connection with the company in that way.

Chapter 12

Concept and Brief Discussion:

Incentive Pay for Executives: The book talks about two specific incentives for executives that attract leadership and influence performance. Short-term incentives include bonuses based on the year's profits, return on investment, or other measures related to the organization's goals. Long-term incentives include stock options and stock purchase plans. The rationale for these long-term incentives is that executives will want to do what is best for the organization because that will cause the value of their stock to grow. Controversy over high paid executives has recently been addressed as a public frustration. It appears that many top-level management employees are getting high incentives and compensation, even if their performance is low or the company they work for doesn't make profits.

The Hook:

You are on the board of directors for a large company, and you are currently reviewing the company's past year's performance. If the company is struggling, how much of the issues are due to poor strategic planning and execution by the top-level management at the company? What will you do to lessen the rewards for executives while keeping them fully vested in the company?

Key Points to Elicit in Discussion:

Company executives have a much stronger influence over the organization's performance than other employees do, so incentive pay is often offered as a way to show their importance and to persuade good performance. Much of executive's pay now comes from these short-term and long-term incentives. Long term incentives tend to be associated with greater profitability.

Facilitative Questions:

What kind of incentives do your employers have? How public is it discussed, and does it make any of you angry? How much is a really good executive worth?

Chapter 9

Concept and Brief Discussion:

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: This is a popular psychological inventory assessment that tests individuals' preferences for source of energy, means of information gathering, way of decision making, and lifestyle. The assessment is more than 100 questions long and asks a variety of questions. Most of the questions deal with preferences and feelings about situations in the workplace and in your career.

The Hook:

You have been asked to do this test by your academic adviser. Once you take it, you see that your preferences on the test don't match what kind of work you plan on doing. How would you react to this and what questions might arise from this experience?

Key Points to Elicit in Discussion:

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator helps with employee development and helps employers understand the work style of their employees. Although this is a long and comprehensive test, it is still a self-assessment and can have problems. I don't think these tests really mean much and don't always point to accurate data.

Facilitative Questions:

Have you ever taken one of these tests? If so, how did your responses match up to your performance in the workplace?

Chapter 8

Concept and Brief Discussion:

Criteria for Effective Performance Management: There are many ways to predict performance of a potential employee, and likewise, there are also effective tools and ideas that will help to properly measure the performance of a current employee. In chapter 8, there are five criteria discussed that help us determine the effectiveness of performance measures:

• Fit with strategy--A performance management system should be aimed to see how well the employee is aiming with the overall goals and strategy of the company.
• Validity--This deals with the extent to which a measurement tool actually measures what it is intended to measure (p. 218).
• Reliability--The results of the measurement must be consistent and even tested over time to see if the employee has changed.
• Acceptability--The measurement tool must be acceptable to the people who use it. Employees must not believe that it is unfair or too time consuming.
• Specific Feedback--A performance measure should specifically tell employees what is expected of them and how they can meet those expectations (p218).

The Hook:

You go into a room with your supervisor to do a performance appraisal. He or she pushes through the official papers and reviews your numbers without allowing you to talk and set appropriate goals. This happens all the time in business. How do you feel when you are treated as a number in these situations?

Key Points to Elicit in Discussion:

In order to effectively evaluate performance of employees, there must be a concrete, effective measurement tool that will allow employees to set goals and understand expectations. I believe this is a good opportunity for employers to show how much they care individually about their employees. This should be a relationship building exercise that aligns boss and worker in a shared vision.

Facilitative Questions:

How have your past employers effectively measured your performance? How did it make you feel?

Reflection on Thursday's Class

On Thursday, we had a guest speaker come in from Tahitian Noni International. He talked to the class about training programs in business and the components needed to make it effective. Surprisingly, I think the biggest thing that I got out of the presentation was recognizing how well my current employer trains its employees.
One area of discussion that I particularly liked was when we talked about the process and not just the principle of training programs. I like what he said about being able to measure success from the trainings. This is a key principle, in my opinion, because like the speaker said, training is not cheap and unless you can show that your training is working or contributing to the overall bottom line, you will get cut off.
I love the trainings that happen at my current job. They remind me of the purpose of the company and keep me sharp at what I do. I believe all companies should invest in a training program.