Human Resource Practices Discussion

• Tell the reader about the situation accurately and with enough information that they can understand it clearly
• Demonstrate your subject matter expertise

Link to HR

• Highlight aspects of this is related to the required readings
• Demonstrate the link to HR ideas, literature, theory, practice, etc.

Deeper Dive

• Explore the topic in a more complex way, focused on some of the contradictions, implication, implicit biases, impact, inconsistencies, timeliness etc. of the issue you have presented
• Demonstrate your ability to think about the topic in an advanced way.

Conversation starter

• Provide some questions to your reader to start the conversation about the topic
• Demonstrate your ability to lead the conversation.

Choose one of the following questions to start a discussion

Chapter 8

1. Career Management as a student: Reflecting on your role as a student, evaluate two strengths and two weaknesses in how the University of Guelph prepares you for your career as a student. Use the terminology that is provided in the associated chapter appropriately. What are limitations that may have resulted in the challenges that you’ve faced during your onboarding and training for your role as a student at the University of Guelph. Include a discussion regarding what your responsibility as the student was in the on boarding and training process.
2. Onboarding: Reflect on your role in a paid job or a volunteer role. What type of onboarding tools did you experience? In your opinion, were these effective or ineffective? Why? How would you improve the onboarding process given your recently acquired expertise in onboarding?
3. Inclusivity and Diversity: Review the expert opinion academic viewpoint of Dr. Ann Beaton. The focus of this discussion is largely around inclusion and diversity. What does social inclusion mean? What does diversity mean? What contributions can you make to this viewpoint (e.g., challenging the assumptions made or providing supporting perspectives).

Chapter 9

1. Job Rotation: Do you think developmental job rotation is a good method to use for developing management trainees? Why or why not? Identify a company that uses job rotations and explain what their system looks like.
2. HR metrics: As a newly hired HR manager for a medical clinic with 20 physicians and 40 staff (nurses and admin), you want to identify and develop some HR metrics to determine how well the human resources in the organization are being used. Using metrics discussed at www.saratogainstitute.com and other web sources that you find, identify five specific metrics (include the equation in your post) and identify why those measures could be useful.
3. Flirting for the job: UK based Pizza Express hired actor Karl James to teach flirting and the art of chit-chat to staff to help them “butter up” restaurant customers. The intent was to redefine the restaurant experience for customers as face to face interactions have reduced over time. This training was intended to help customers relax and feel comfortable, given that company reps felt that the fast pace of modern life prevents people from having quality conversations. You can look up details of the company initiative online. Do you agree or disagree with this approach? What HR issues does this present? How might managers control or appraise employee emotions?

Chapter 10

1. Inconsistent ratings: How can the problem of inconsistency between managers who are rating workers be solved or at least diminished? Make two or more suggestions.
2. Appraisal tools: Reflect on a job or volunteer role you had in the past. If you did not have any job role or volunteer role in the past, reflect on your role as a student. In this role, identify what type of appraisal tools you have an exposure to. Reflect on the strength or weakness of the appraisal tool to the role that you had. Use the appropriate terminology including a discussion of any potential biases.
3. Virtual Workplaces: Over the last decade, there has been an increased move towards telecommuting, virtual teams, and working from home. However, in 2017, that trend changed a bit when large companies like IBM retracted their work from home programs, forcing staff back into the office. Then, as the Covid-19 pandemic hit, knowledge workers were being forced to work remotely. What challenges does working from home present to organizational efforts for performance management? How can these be overcome?