Entries in the Category "MGMT250"
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.
Are we becoming less ethical?
While doing the reading for last class I should have been shocked by how much ethics have become an issue within businesses today. I would like to think that Enron and WorldCom were just a fluke but unfortunately it seems to be becoming the norm. I was glad to see that a lot of companies are trying to do something about it but at the same time if people have to wait until they are starting their career to learn what you should and should not do. I felt the same way when Mr. Keebler came in to talk to us about interview ethics, while I agree that it is important it is kind of sad to think someone needs to tell us not to lie on our resumes and to show up for our interviews. I was at least proud of our class for showing better ethics with the WSJ quiz than the results shown in Dessler.
Learning Plan
I really enjoyed writing my Learning Plan which surprised me because I expected it to be a horrible experience. It was a different than any other paper I have written and I do not think it highlighted my best writing qualities but enjoyed putting different aspects of personality and goals together. My career interviews were really exciting. I expected to be bored because I already knew a lot about the area I was looking into. It was not learning about the job and about the daily duties of it that excited me but rather the love that my interviewees had for their jobs. It really confirmed for me my desire to work with non-profit organizations. This was the easiest part to write about my learning plan. For the rest of the paper sometimes it was hard to get started with each different section because to me it does not seem very interesting since I am so familiar with it. Once I got into writing however, the words just started to flow and it was really fun and easy to write.
My Values Exercise
I was working on my Learning Plan this weekend and noticed that we were supposed to incorporate what we learned from the My Values Exercise. I then realized we never really discussed this in class. I am a little disappointed by this, according to my personality type, ENFP, my values are something very important in my life and almost everything I do revolves around them. This is one of the aspects of the MBTI that I feel hit right one and really made me feel I was reading about me. When we first assigned the exercise I did not really see how our values would be so important when we are entering the workplace. After reading my MBTI results I began to see how they shape who I am and this effects everything else. But I still don't see the direct effect it has on our management skills. I wish we could have had the opportunity to discuss it so I could more understand how it all fits together.
Motivating Employees
This week's reading was about motivating employees through rewards and not necessarily with cash bonuses or wage increases.
Continue reading "Motivating Employees"
HR Simulation
I am very excited about starting the HR Simulation. I think my group works well together and it is nice because we agreed on a lot of aspects of the project such as what goals we think our company should have and how to implement them. I think this is a great way to get some real life experience with human resources and I hope that it will really help me later in life. The simulation does a very good job of incorporating lots of different aspects that managers will have to deal with in the workplace, even though not necessarily HR directors. I really want to get our results back quickly so we can find out which of our decisions worked and which did not.
Class Procedures
I am starting to have some issues with the way our class is being run. I think the expectations of us are not being clearly explained and I think I would benefit a lot more from the class if they were. For example, we got our mock interview reflections back and I had points taken off for not putting it in memo format, and I know other people did too. I have never written a memo, I don't know what memo format is and I was very upset by this. Another example is with our group projects and the budget and decision sheet. We spent half an hour in class asking questions about the logistics of it the day it was due. I think this is could have been remedied by going through an example in class or at least having completed forms for us to look at. Because we were so busy trying to find out what was going on I don't think we got as much out of the first week as we could have otherwise. On a side note to that I don't think it is fair that we only have two days between when we get our results back and when our next week's input is due. We are all extremely busy and it is very hard to get 5 people together in only 48 hours. I know that the professors want us to try stuff out on our own and this is why they don't give very much specific instruction on assignments but I like more structure from school and I have not been getting it from this class.
Reply to Resume Writing
I don't know how to reply to comments so I am just making a new entry in response to Professor Piderit's comment:
I did read over the book and it was very useful but books don't answer questions. My issue with this method was that the very things that I had questions on were the issues that were focused on by the readers of my resume. If I had my questions answered beforehand my evaluators would have been more able to look past these aspects and focus on the real content of my resume. As an example, the book was a little unclear about the use of references on a resume so I included a list of references on my resume which I found out during the session that should not have. As for my learning style, I think it is fair to see that I do like to work within a set of guidelines but also I get stressed when the guidelines are too strict, an issue I always has when I have assignments to do. They never seem to me to have the right amount of restriction.
Myers-Briggs Test
I really enjoyed the Myers-Briggs discussion last class. This is the fourth time I have taken the personality test so it is fun for me to see how I have changed over time. For example, when I took the test in middle school I was an introvert and now I am an extrovert and the reliability number of that keeps increasing. The last time I took the test was in the spring and I got the same results, ENFP that I did this time. This was also the same as I got in our self-test. I think the description of my personality type is extremely accurate and gives me some new insight into my strengths and weaknesses as a person. But I do see how it can be difficult for some people to see themselves as completely one personality type. People behave different way in different environments and it is important to apply the descriptions to yourself in your most comfortable environment.
Resume Writing
I thought our resume workshop could have been organized a lot better. I know many people have learned how to write a resume previously although I am not one of them. The tips given to us during the session would have been extremely useful BEFORE we actually wrote them. While discussing our resumes afterwards, I felt I lost out on more truly constructive criticism because people were focused on other problems. However, these problems could have been avoided if I knew how to write a resume before I actually wrote one. Overall, I think it was a really good idea and I did get a lot out of it and this is just a suggestion for future clases.