- Response to the Case of Stacy Snyder
Issues such as the ones presented in the case of Stacy Snyder were a lot less common during the time when the internet and the social networking sites that millions of people around the planet have and maintain an account on were not so ubiquitous. This may be due to the fact that people, most certainly employers and human resource managers have less access to an employee’s personal life and so it did not matter how unethical, undisciplined or nasty the things that the employees of a certain corporation do outside the workplace and the company’s designated working hours are. Today, it appears that this is not going to be the case any longer. Employers, especially if a certain employee is directly connected to them in a social networking site like Facebook, now have access to the employees’ personal life and some of these job bearers do believe that they still have the rights to enforce the company rules about Good Manners and Right Conduct even after working hours and even if the employee is well outside the physical boundaries of the office building where he or she works. These employers’ basis for believing so is the fact that regardless whether activities are done during working hours and outside the boundaries of the office building or not, the employees still symbolize the type of culture that exists within the organization that they are a part of and instilling negative photos and all sorts of things via social networking websites may tint the clear image of an entire organization. Regardless, the employees also have the freedom to do what they want, whenever, and wherever they want to do it. This freedom should be honored and acknowledged and unfortunately, employers will have to draw a line and establish a code of conduct with their employees and make it clear at the beginning or at any point in their employment, but definitely after sanctions have already been delivered to the employees who are accused of violating a technically informal company policy.
- Ethics of Incentives
In my opinion there should always be some form of balance between the things that an employee should do in every job. In this case, he should know when he should follow the rules of the company even if it means being unethical to the customers and other company. A true employee should not only value the interests of the company but also the interests of the company’s customers because they are technically the main reason why they are being paid handsomely even without the bonus. At some point, the customers will be able to discover the poorness of the quality of script-based customer service which may lead to the inevitable loss of clients, hurting the company’s finances which would then lead to mass firing of employees. Doing unethical things towards the customers will almost always lead to bad things not only for the company but for all the people who depend on it for work and other livelihood. A guiltless customer services will always be better than any amount of bonus or incentive. In my opinion, I would rather receive zero additional pay for my work as long as I am doing my job right without having to resort to cheating the customers because I know that in the end, it will be the employees and not the ones who used to order the employees to cheat the customers who would suffer, in an event that the customers discover that the company is intentionally cheating its way out to make more money and decides to seek the services of other companies. So as a conclusive response to the question, I would prioritize the quality of the customer service first before the incentives and I would also encourage my co-workers and the bosses to do the same.
- Age Becomes an Issue in Job Layoffs
Age should never become an issue in Job Layoffs. The process of choosing who among the current pool of employees to fire should always be done in an objective way, focusing on the interests and survival of the organization rather than on the personal interests of those who sit on the top doing less to minimal volumes of work than the others. Managers became immediately wrong when they started to assume that implementing the last in first out principle in laying off employees was going to be the key to avoid age discrimination lawsuits which would most likely be filed by their older employees after they get fired even after receiving poor performance evaluation results. What managers failed to think ahead of is the fact that younger employees can also file age discrimination lawsuits against the company—which nobody would rally want because processing lawsuits can drain a significant amount of time, effort and resources, just like the way how older people can. Taking the employees’ personal and family factors as a major consideration in deciding who to layoff in case it really becomes a necessary thing to do will only make the process of doing so more subjective than objective. Unfairness often stems from subjectivity and so managers should keep their emotions out of the equation a bit and focus more on the benefits of laying off employees based on their performance and overall contribution to the company rather than on their age, social status, and on how they need to have a job.
- Flattened Into Exhaustion
It is a given that there is not a single existing job that we cannot associate with stress. What is common among every job is the fact that each and every one of them can, at some point, become stressful. It has been proven by countless studies that overworked individuals would tend to be less productive compared to those who are well rested and are only required to consistently handle not so heavy workloads. A more flattened management approach may indeed be helpful in cutting a company’s expenses at some point but a too flattened approach—that is reducing the number of workers even though the volume of work remains the same which means that ones who were left would have to handle more tasks and responsibilities, would turn out to be counterproductive. Employees need rest to recompose themselves and recuperate after a tiring streak of all-work and no-play days. The only way to make them work for the company in their best possible condition is to provide adequate rest so that they cans spend sufficient time with their families, relax and do whatever they please. Managers are supposed to make their employees understand their jobs and responsibilities more, in a fun and exciting way as much as possible. They were never meant to make the lives of the employees miserable—one effective way of doing which is to layoff other employees and assign the responsibilities of those who left to those who were left. A good manager should know that flattening the management approach has its drawbacks and one of which is the increase in the levels of unrest among employees, which would only lead to negative implications for the company. What the manager in this case could do is to make the process of being assigned into additional workloads a voluntary process so that even with a flattened management approach, the employees would still be able to have their much needed rest and work in their best conditions. The management can then assume that those who are taking additional working hours are the ones who need additional pay—because work is basically paid by the hour, and the ones who are not are the ones who need to rest. Overall, it would be a win-win situation because sooner or later, the distribution of responsibilities would be even among the employees and so it would appear that no responsibilities were actually added even if in fact there were. However, the management should carefully monitor how much more workload a particular team could still handle so that they do not feel overworked, tired, and overwhelmed. In case this happens, then the flattening should be put to a halt and new employees should be brought in to compensate for the increase in the demand for human resources.
References
Jones, C., & Parker, M. (2005). For Business Ethics: A Critical Text. London: Routledge.
