Running head: EMPLOYEES WHO EXCEL Xcel Energy Pays for Employees Who Excel Dorothy "Micki" Gould Kaplan University MT203: Human Resource Management Professor Denise Rodgers December 01, 2011 Xcel Energy Pays for Employees Who Excel Introduction “Employers with well-developed performance management systems often connect compensation to performance appraisal ratings to determine the amount of salary increases and bonuses for employees who meet or exceed the company's performance expectations.” (Mayhew, 2011) When looking for a job, along with knowing what the salary requirements are, job seekers often also want to know what kind if any type of bonus is available. “Recognition can help you reduce turnover and provide options for everyone to actively attract and recruit new employees because they are rewarded for doing so.” (Saunderson, 2006) Review/Analysis of the Case The reasons to agree with management’s conclusion that merit pay can support Xcel’s strategy better that paying for suggestions is that even though the employees loved the idea of the immediate bonus by submitting over 6,000 suggestions they did not know if the rewards were worth the money. (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2009, pp. 361-362) The Merit pay system helps more employees who are hard workers get bonuses. Coming up with a great idea is hard work, but for those people who for one reason or another who cannot come up with ideas but are great workers, they are not being rewarded.
Hiring contract and temporary employees may be very beneficial for business. Companies benefit by not having to be responsible for recruiting and testing employees but at the same time have staffing for their peak needs and flexibility to let temporary workers go when they are no longer needed. Whether contract and temporary employers are good for business depends largely on the type of the business. For example, a productions factory will certainly benefit by hiring temporary workers. The use of temporary workers helps the business to maintain staffing flexibility and reduces hiring costs.
Review/Analysis of the Case /Answer to question #1 Xcel’s decision to change from paying the employees for their suggestions to a merit pay is a better strategy. Focusing on the job and getting the work done in a quick professional manner is a far better way for the company to spend money. This is not to say employees should not contribute their ideas to the success of the company, but there needs to be an overall focus to meet job performance as well as customer service. Answer to question #2 As not to discourage employees from making suggestions on ways to help or improve the company, Xcel may want to offer employees other incentives or rewards when certain number of suggestion are implemented per employee. Incentives could include a number of paid days
Theory X and Theory Y In response to the two sides of the debate around employee motivation and the best ways to boost productivity, Douglas McGregor argued that managers would tend to pursue the approach which was most in line with their view of their employees. He claimed that managers who viewed their employees as lazy would be more likely to follow an approach based on control, whilst managers who believed the workers could be motivated and wanted to develop themselves would be more likely to attempt to create positive working environments and opportunities for advancement. McGregor referred to these theories as theory X and theory Y. It is important to note that, in contrast to popular opinion, McGregor did not state the theory Y was preferable to theory X, rather he held that both views had merit, and managers should not have too narrow a view of motivation. As such, he believed that scientific management approaches could benefit from focusing on the need to motivate workers, whilst motivational approaches could also benefit from greater managerial control.
Re – Assessing the Relationship – it is really important to re- assess what sort of tangible and in – tangible relations we hold with our customers. There could be some factors which are not directly visible but contribute a lot in the non tangible form. 2. Educating Customers – Also. Making the customers aware of the fact that we are not profiting out of making business with them and asking them to contribute towards more profitability or at least a break even in some of the cases would help a great deal.
The aim of all this is that the payment is not an incentive to excel whereas the profit-sharing does reward collective group while they reduce competition between employees. Hiring process is very important for Human Resource Management because it is responsible of deciding who best fits with the company culture. They craft de interview questions in order to identify the best personality. Southwest don’t allow hiring managers to be informal in selecting process whereas they can be creative. Human Resources managers are the ones who build an image that prospective employees are looking.
This deviant increase illustrates the problem. The compensation could attract and incentive employees to have a better performance for individual. As well, if Media General implements compensation for its employees, it would care less risk on financial performance. Employees are more likely to pay efforts on the current job and help the company to achieve its financial objective. Meanwhile, learning and growth is the basic level in balanced scorecards.
Staying educated with additional skills and having diverse expertise will greatly increase your value to an employer. Many consider salary as a key factor when they are looking for a job. Although people are differentially motivated by money, when looking or accepting job offers I’ve learned that salary is only a small part of job satisfaction. Compensation or pay can be a powerful motivator because it determines if I will be able to live comfortable and if I will be able to meet my families’ needs and wants. I also want to know if the company I am working for has annual raise or cost of living raises.
Bobby Jones believes that by making the managers part owners of the company, they will be motivated to provided better service. Incentive problems exist because of conflicts of interest between employers and employees (Brickley, Smith, & Zimmerman, 2009). Incentive problems occur because the costs of exerting effort are borne by employees, whereas the gains go to the employer. To resolve discontent between employees and employers, employers can sell each employee the rights to his or her total output. When employees own their output, both the benefits and costs of exerting effort are internalized by employees and will result in better productive choices by the employees.
Because earning management allows managers to reach their desired outcomes by influencing firm’s financial statements. According to Graham, Harvey and Rajgopal (2005), it is acceptable for senior mangers to use earning management so that they can provide positive and steady earning growth for the firm. In addition, the reputation of a CFO or CEO depends on whether the company they manage has a good prediction of future earnings. The labor market will regard a CFO as a “managerial failure” if the CFO perceive inability to reach the earnings target. In this case, the managers were encouraged to do their best and spend whether it was necessary to bring revenue.