Compensation is a controversial workplace topic. Throughout the years, specifically the past decade, average employee wages have not greatly risen. However, managerial and executive pay has steadily increased.

Despite current economic stability and low unemployment rates, U.S. businesses are constrained from raising employee salary and benefits due to low-wage foreign competition.  This week’s readings showcase a case study on pay compression at Envelop City and on how McDonalds uses praise (intrinsic factor) and individual incentive pay (extrinsic factor) to ensure satisfied and happy employees.

Discuss how an organization can motivate its employees to maintain/increase their productivity and performance without significantly increasing employees’ compensation.  Additionally, as a compensation consultant, how would you develop market value for positions within your organization? Propose a compensation plan to ensure that rewards (i.e., wages, benefits, and other compensation) match job duties, tasks, and responsibilities.

Answer the above using the question and answer (Q&A) format.  The Q&A format should include the original question along with your response. Within your post, support your responses with information from at least one peer-reviewed/scholarly source (not older than 3-5 years) from CSU Global online library (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. or the Internet, and provide the full citation at the end of your post. Use APA guidelines (at CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA)Links to an external site. to format your references. Your total word count must be at least 300 words excluding the original questions.

Your initial posting is due by midnight Mountain Standard Time, (MST) on Thursday and two peer responses to your classmates are required before midnight on Sunday.  Late discussion responses will not receive credit.

The two reply posts to your fellow students must be similarly substantive in a manner and address two of the following bullets:

• Answer a question (in detail) posted by another student or the instructor.
• Provide extensive additional information on the topic.
• Explain, define, or analyze the topic in detail.
• Share an applicable personal experience.
• Provide an outside source (for example, a website) that applies to the topic, along with additional information about the topic or the source (please cite properly in APA format).
• Make an argument concerning the topic.

reply to the students’ response and not the question  in 150 words minimum and provide 1 reference. Respond to the students response as though you are talking to them, use name 

question

     What is learning? How do you best learn? Websites that contain scientific instruments are preferred. 

Student response

According to (Noe, 2017, pp. 159) “learning refers to a relatively permanent change in human capabilities that can include knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors and competencies that are not result of growth process”. Learning requires that those being trained remember and apply what they learned. This continuous application of learning to a specific job or task is called transfer of training.  In my opinion learning is when you teach someone a skill, attitude or a behavior and they can use it, mimic what they are taught. I am a hands-on learner. When ever I start a new job or even move to a different department and I am being trained I believe in taking notes of what the trainer is saying but also on what he or she is doing. Because I am a hands-on learner, I must practice the job that is given to me for me to get the hang of it. If someone lectures and talks all day, I will never understand what they are talking about until I start to do it on my own. The way a person learns also plays a role on how well the trainer teaches. Noe (2017, pp. 161), stated that there are several different theories about how people that is related to the different aspects of the learning process.

After reading Bob Pike 5 laws of adult learning, I couldn’t agree with what his laws stated. If I had to choose which one speaks to me the most, I would say all of them. Bob Pikes 5 laws of adult learning are: Adults are Babies with Big Bodies, People Don’t Argue with Their Own Data,  Learning is Directly Proportional to the Amount of Fun You Have, Learning has not Taken Place Until Behavior has Changed and Fu Yu, WuYu, Wzu Tu Yu (Mama’s having it, or Papa’s having it, ain’t like Baby having it.) (Pike, 2018)

Reference:

Noe, R.E. (2017) Employee Training and Development 7e. NY: McGraw Hill

Admin. (n.d.). The Bob Pike Group’s Five Laws of Adult Learning . Retrieved from https://www.bobpikegroup.com/trainer-blog/creative-training-techniques-101-the-basics.

Your boss announced a major budget cut for each department. One of the areas he wants to cut is the home leave allowance for the expatriate employees. You know this is a good benefit that helps the morale of expatriate family members as well as the employee, and losing it will also hurt in recruiting talent to serve abroad in your subsidiary companies. How would you convince the boss to keep this program? What would you suggest replacing instead of the home leave program? 

REPLY TO MY CLASSMATE RESPONSE TO THE ABOVE QUESTIONS AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU AGREE? (A MINIMUM OF 125 WORDS or MORE)

                                                                 CLASSMATE’S POST

A full expatriate package with premiums, base pay, different arrays of allowances and other perquisites is generally very expensive as compared to an individual base salary. As such, reducing costs is a very important action for management. Despite this, I believe that a compensation system in any organization must finely balance adequately motivating and rewarding expatriates while at the same time keep costs under control for the entire management. Home leave allowance is very important as it help employees on international assignment to maintain their family ties as well as help them stay current with their home country’s business associates and contacts. Maintaining ties with their home, families, friends and even business associates does not only motivates them to work harder but also assist them in a less stressful and smoother transition. Cutting the home leave allowance for expatriate employees is therefore not the right way to go about the budget cut due to reduced morale, hurting the recruiting talent and different other disadvantages. Instead, I think other measures should be put in place. For instance, the company should look for an alternative to the already existing traditional expatriate policy. For instance, have local hires where policies state employees will be transferred to the new country’s payroll with an exemption of repatriation guarantees or ongoing benefits. Additionally, a tiered policy may be put in place where employees can take the standard long-term assignment policies that are offered by the company and tier it based it on salary, job grade, level or any other factors rather than using one-size fits all approach. Additionally, the duration of a long-term assignment can be reduced in order to cut costs.

COMPANY MAERSK / Human Resources – I need three pages 

Prompt

In this assessment, you will review the human resource management (HRM) in an organization through a case study. This case study will give you the

opportunity to explore various roles and processes within the human resources profession. A key skill for any professional working in human resources is the

ability to develop and implement processes that align with a company’s strategic plan and mission.

I. HRM Functions and Practices

A. Explain why the human resource (HR) function should be aligned with an organization’s strategic plan.

B. Explain how current global conditions in this industry impact human resource management (HRM) practices within organizations.

II. Staffing

A. Describe a process to recruit and select new employees who are aligned with the organization’s vision and goals from the case study.

B. Compare and contrast recruitment and selection of internal versus external candidates using best practices from the Society for Human

Resource Management (SHRM) website. Refer to the Research and Metrics page for helpful resources. You may want to consider which method

of recruitment would be most beneficial to this organization.

III. Training

A. Describe the components of a needs assessment used to determine the training requirements of the organization.

B. Explain the importance of developing learning activities. Be sure to incorporate adult learning principles and methods of experiential learning

from this course.

C. Illustrate the value of a training needs assessment in an organization. Support your response.

D. Describe the importance of creating SMART objectives for a training plan.

IV. Compensation

A. Describe the compensation philosophy. How does the market influence this philosophy?

B. Determine the value of salary surveys and describe the advantages of discretionary benefits.

V. Evaluation

A. Determine the HRM’s role in the performance management process. How can you ensure the process aligns with the organization’s strategic

plan?

B. Differentiate between various performance appraisal systems. Provide an example where one would be more applicable.

C. How do you identify best-suited appraisals for employee job duties? Support your response with an example.

D. Identify a variety of performance rating scales that can be used in organizations that includes graphical scales, letter scales, and numeric scales.

Describe each scale.

reply to the students’ response and not the question  in 150 words minimum and provide 1 reference. Respond to the students response as though you are talking to them, use name 

question

 You are a compensation analyst for a pharmaceuticals company, which is located in Los Angeles, California. Define the scope of the relevant labor markets for chemists and for data entry clerks. Describe the rationale for your definitions 

student answer

After looking at Salary.com and LinkedIn for what a Chemist does in the Los Angeles area and what the pay and compensation is for that area.  I have concluded that starting pay is $58948 and can be as high as $85K with the total compensation package.  The numbers and jobs that were evaluated were entry level or Chemist I positions.  In the specific add from LinkedIn, it a actually goes into detail the job responsibilities and Salary.com was in general terms for what the labor market is expecting from an entry level chemist.  The job of a chemist appears to be more of a person-focused compensation plan due to what would seem to be the need for training and insurance of compliance with various equipment (Martocchio, 2017).  Depending on the pharmaceutical that a chemist would be, working on their expertise could be used on a different one.  This training and flexibility would ensure quality and data integrity.

In looking for data entry technician on LinkedIn, the marketing for this entry-level type position that requires GED or High School diploma seems to be marketing their compensation package more than they pay salaries.  Their add in the beginning “Insperity offers a competitive compensation package and a world-class benefits package, including 19 days paid time off, 8 paid holidays, medical, dental and vision benefits, 401k and tuition reimbursement.” According to Salary.com the median salary for an entry level data entry technician is $36658.  With this the positions are more of a job based pay where the employee would be paid based off the number of records entered (Martocchio, 2017).  The is a small possibility once an employee becomes higher level supervision or moves up levels for data entry that they could have more person focused compensation but this would not be at the entry level.

The two positions have different levels of knowledge, skills, and ability (KSAs) associated with them and the pay and benefits plans reflect that.  The way the positions operated when looking at how they produce the product (chemist is research and the data entry technician is records) is very different and the ramifications if they are not done properly has different risk levels.  If a chemist does not adequately account for a chemical reaction, someone could potential die.  If a data entry technician at the entry level miss types something the record has an opportunity to be corrected without the outcome of death.

I’ve also attached some of the data points that I’ve used such as responsibilities of the position if anyone is interested.

Martocchio, J. (2017). Strategic Compensation: A human resource management approach (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Chemist References

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1308572713/?trk=li_appcast_Global_careers_jobsgtm_job-dist&utm_medium=jobdist&utm_source=appcast&ccuid=23554270056

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1681079776

Data Entry References

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1601628554

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/data-entry-clerk-i-salary