Archives for the Month of December 2005 on Jenn Zollman's Online Journal
Tom Mendola
In our discussion of the Tom Mendola case, i was on the side of not firing Tom. Even after discussing all the reasons not to fire Tom, if I was his boss I would still fire him. Living in poverty is no excuse for not working to the standard all of the other workers do. I think if he cared that much about his family, we would have worked harder the whole time. Work ethic is not something you can teach through more training and no matter what you did Tom would never have a strong work ethic. It would benefit the compamy more to let him go.
Learning Plan
I think in general the learning plans are a good idea. I hated writing it but I do think I learned a little about myself through the process. Also, as I mentioned in class I really enjoyed being forced to do career interviews and would encourage everyone to do some before they really decide on a career path. One thing I really do not like though is having to write personal goals. I really did not feel comfortable writing a personal goal down for others to read, critique and grade and ended up making up a personal goal that I did not mind if people read. While even doing this helped me to realize my actual personal goals, I think that in the future this aspect should be optional.
HR Simulation Final Report
While writing our Final Report, I was really surprised by how complicated the different measures were. One of our main goals was to increase morale and keep it high. We never quite figured out how to do this. We assumed that morale would depend on a lot more than wages and while we did discover morale had a positive relationship with fringe benefits and Level 1 we never figured out the right combination of increases to control morale. We also expected to see more of a correlation between morale and turnover than the weak one we saw in our graphs. Also, without trying to we managed to maintain high quality levels simply through keeping the quality budget above average. I never really realized how many different things Human Resource managers affect and how much they can change the entire workplace environment.
Performance Management Special Session
I did not enjoy the special session we had with the guest speaker. While he was a good speaker and very knowledgeable, I think we had already beat the subject of performance appraisals to death in class and through our reading. His exercise in the beginning, having people teach us the alphabet, was way too time-consuming and I did not learn anything from it. Provost hour is supposed to be a time where no one has classes and I usually plan meetings and other things I have to around campus during this time and I did not appreciate having to miss other things I needed to do that day for what I felt was a waste of time. I enjoyed the first special session, the resume workshop becuase I learned a lot from it but if I am going to give up my provost hour I would rather it be for something more worthwhile.
Catch Your Dreams
I thought the Catch Your Dreams Exercise we did in class was really pointless and I felt like I was in elementary school again. I think we are all old enough to know the difference between a dream and a goal and whether are goals are attainable or not. I feel our time could be used much more productively in discussion or lecture. If the teaching team still believes it is a good idea and a useful experience instead of just busy work, I think it would be a better experience if it was done as homework, outside of class in our own time. I personally got nothing out of the exercise and felt like I was wasting my time that could have been put to better use doing something else.