Clearly, companies that invest care into their employees' well being (which includes the work-life connection "balance") are going to have higher retention of said employees. The article describes the Nestlé Purina Petcare Company as one example of such a company. They allow employees to bring in their pets to work, thus helping to bridge the gap between home and work life. The SAS institute offers their employees several at-work benefits including a gym, a healthcare center, and a daycare center. These are aspects of human relations discussed in Chapter 3 in that they aim to satisfy human needs in order to keep employees happy and motivated to work. It would be fairly incredible to work for such a company that values their employees so highly.
The chapter offered several different approaches to human resources but the one that stood out most to me was the Pfeffer's Seven Practices of Successful Organizations. When I read the table describing the different approaches, it made me reflect on the previous jobs I've held and made me realize that they weren't quite up to these standards.
For example, I worked for Safeway Inc. a couple of summers ago and I certainly did not feel like the management styles incorporated "selective hiring", "employment security", "Self-managed teams", nor "comparatively high & contingent compensation". My job title as "courtesy clerk" was really just a glorified janitor. I was extremely underpaid for the amount of physical labor and work that I had to do (which mostly involved running bottle return machines in a very busy downtown store), and there was no equality of treatment between employees that got their work done and those that only got half of what they were supposed to get done and left the rest for everybody else.
The readings from this week gave me a lot of food for thought to think about my past work experiences and what elements make up a strong human resources program.
Nicely written. I also like that you brought your personal experience of working at Safeway into it. When you say "the chapter", cite the source so that outside readers know what you are referring to. I love the Big Bang clip... great addition there!
ReplyDelete