Health and Wellness Value Creation for Human Resource Professionals
-- Dr. Eleanor Marschke and Dr. Bahaudin G Mujtaba
Healthcare costs in the United States have been increasing in recent years. The increase in healthcare costs and the lack of affordable health insurance affects many individuals and organizations. The Human Resource (HR) department has started to take strategic steps to lessen the affect of high healthcare costs on the organization. Creating a culture of wellness at work and implementing workplace wellness programs, allows HR to support individual efforts towards a healthy lifestyle. By proving why organizations should invest in their most valuable asset—their employees—HR strengthens their position as a strategic partner. This article addresses the outcomes from successful workplace wellness programs. Investing in human capital can position the company above others in the marketplace and help ensure long-term stability and success of an organization.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Employee Engagement: Healthy Organization – Happy Employees
-- Dr. Ashish Srivastava and Nitu Saxena
Employee engagement—the state of emotional and intellectual commitment of employees towards the organization—plays a vital role in the attainment of organizational objectives and fostering an environment of belongingness, mutual respect and trust. Ensuring employee engagement is thus considered to be the cornerstone for successful human resource management in any organization. This article gives an insight into various aspects related with employee engagement and also discusses the managerial, behavioral and business factors impacting the attainment of highest degree of employee engagement in business organizations.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Influencing the Boss: Social Neuroscience Meets HRM
-- Dr. Michael Walton
Top and senior executives need fair, honest and straightforward feedback to help them perform well and reduce the potential for destructive and dysfunctional leadership. Whilst the HRM specialist is perfectly positioned to offer such ‘honest’ feedback, doing so is a difficult and taxing responsibility and in some instances could be career limiting. This article suggests how providing such feedback can be facilitated through drawing on insights from social neuroscience and social psychology. Five suggestions are offered for the HR specialist to help them prepare for such important and critical interventions.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Global Compensation: An Important Decision for HR Managers
-- Dr. Mita Mehta
Global compensation has drawn the attention of many HR managers. Compensation management is becoming progressively more difficult for organizations to control as employees’ needs are increasing day by day. Expatriate compensation policy is important and needs to be looked into before embarking on an international assignment. Apart from compensation approach and types, one has to understand the legal system of that particular country. Compensation in the international context is directly related to performance management as well as to employees’ satisfaction. This article throws light on how HR policies differ from country to country, especially in terms of compensation.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Change Management: Is Changing the Unchanged Really Complex?
-- Deepti Pande
Change management is a concern arising out of frequent failures in the change projects which the organizations experience. To sustain in today’s ruthless competition, it is mandatory for the organizations to change in sync with the fastchanging economic environment and it is important for employees to timely acclimatize to change. This article talks about change from employees’ viewpoint, identifying the mistakes that are generally committed, which leads to an ineffective change project. It also discusses the corrective measures which, if adopted, change management can be a success. The article concludes that employees play a critical role in any change assignment considering that ultimately they are the ones who need to change. Therefore, taking employees into confidence and winning their trust is one of the keys to a rewarding change management project.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Stress: One’s Best Friend or Worst Enemy
--M Dhanalakshmii
Stress is a normal physical response to events that makes one feel upset in some way or the other. In today’s modern world, life is so full of hassles, deadlines and demands that stress has become a mode of life. People usually think of stress as a negative experience. According to biological point of view, stress can be a neutral, negative, or positive experience. It is not always bad and it can help individuals to perform well under pressure. But a person constantly running in the emergency mode, is sure to harm one’s mind and body. It is thus essential to balance and manage stress in a positive way to lead a healthy life in body, mind and spirit.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Case Study: Foxconn’s Labor Practices
--R Muthukumar, Ritesh Tiwari and Vivek Gupta
This case primarily deals with the growing concern over the numerous suicides at Foxconn which raised doubts about its labor practices. The case charts the growth of Foxconn into the league of top players of the world in the electronics manufacturing industry and provides multitude of contradictory viewpoints of various stakeholders like employees, suppliers, government, media, non-profit organizations, etc. It provides scope for an analysis of the labor practices at Foxconn and the probable reasons for the suicides. The case unfolds the steps taken by Foxconn to counter the suicide problem and illustrates Foxconn management’s responses to allegations of poor labor practices. How various stakeholders play their part, react and counter-react to these measures is also seen.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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