Human resources management development - Essay Example

Q Ans. The employer has not broken any promise in such cases because whether the job was secure or not was employees’ own judgment since it was seemingly secure. When companies are doing well, they can afford to provide their workforce with different kinds of benefits, and many companies actually do it. However, the prime concern of any company is to make the business profitable. In hard times, it is understandable that the employer would take all kinds of measures to sustain the profitability of the business.

As long as the employer has legal protection to terminate the employees, as the terms and conditions of employment might suggest, the employer has not broken any promise to the employees. Q. 2: Ans. The first and the foremost ethical obligation upon a company toward the employees in the hard times is to provide them with a healthy and safe environment to work irrespective of the external influences or the present conditions of the company. Employers need to keep the employees motivated to work hard and reassure them that hard times would be over with their effort and cooperation.

The best way to achieve this is by taking the employees into confidence and explaining the whole situation to them; this promotes trust, reliability, and honesty in the relationship between the employer and the employees. Besides, this also explains everything to the employees so that they can start looking for alternative opportunities in time. However, the prime concern of the employer in hard times should not just be sustenance of the profitability of the business as this sends the impression to the employees that the employer is selfish and that the management was fake in its assertions that they all make part of the same family.

“In the face of layoffs, employees often experience lower morale and productivity, higher levels of absenteeism and job-related stress, and a loss of faith in the business” (canadabusiness.ca, 2012). The employer should try, as much as possible, to retain all employees and draw a balance between the profitability of the business and benefits of the employees. If the hard times result from the unethical conduct of an employee or a manager, the responsible employee should be dealt with as per the company’s code of ethics while the rest of the employees should be dealt with in the same way as discussed before. Q. 3: Ans.

AIG should not differentiate between its executives and other employees down the line in the organizational structure. For a company to be fair toward its employees, it is imperative that it fosters such a culture where all employees feel like members of the same family with equal rights and respect irrespective of position or status, needless to say that maintenance of the organizational structure and power dynamics is essential for the fundamental survival of the company. “People like to be treated fairly” (Siers, n.d.).

It is unfair that the executives are being given bonuses while employees working at lower positions are being terminated. If AIG treats all employees equally, it would optimize the tendency of the employees to remain associated with the company and remain hopeful. Unfair treatment increases the rate of employee turnover (Moorman, Niehoff, and Organ, 1993, p. 210). References:canadabusiness.ca. (2012). Managing employees during tough times. Retrieved from http://www.canadabusiness.ca/eng/page/2721/.

Moorman, R. H., Niehoff, B. P., and Organ, D. W. (1993). Treating employees fairly and organizational citizenship behavior: sorting the effects of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and procedural justice. Retrieved from http://cobacourses.creighton.edu/rmoorman/pdf/treating%20employees%20fairly.pdf. Siers, B. (n.d.). An introduction to organizational fairness. Retrieved from http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/leader_model/development/media/Targeted%20Lessons/organizational_fairness.htm.