Recognizing Employee Contributions - Coursework Example

Recognizing Employee Contributions Introduction Companies continue to expand globally with benefits schedules for their global workforce increase in value. The company retail stores and internet services are a multinational company operating in US. The company specializes in retail stores and internet services. The company faces compensation and benefits challenges owing to the fact it runs businesses in a country with diverse cultural backgrounds. Other related challenges are difficulties if offering benefits to employees in multi-cultural environments. These are crucial in controlling costs, retaining employees, and rationalizing the company administration. This discourse delves into analyzing these problems in addition, recommends solutions that the management needs take to sort out the problem. It is crucial for the management because the modern economic environment poses additional problems that would make the situation complex. Several questions concerning compensation of employees at the workplace generate complex answers. Among them, who handles employee compensation, what it entails, as well as why it is necessary for employers to carry it out (Mizell, 2010). This discourse delves into explaining the definition of employee compensation, its elements, ways through which institutions comprehend the needs of users, and reasons explaining the need for compensation. Mainly, the paper deals with ethical and legal issues pertaining to compensation a person while discharging his or her duties. The biggest question surrounds appropriate issues to consider while undertaking employee compensation. Is it legal and ethical for organizations to remunerate employees while they discharge their duties? What components should the institutions consider while setting standards of remuneration? What aspects of compensation are acceptable both ethically and legally? In the process, various theories assess whether the employees have any privacy over what they earn at while at work. Many issues exist to support the privacy of employees terms while at work. However, opposing stands on organizations granting rights to employees are equally strong. The development of technology leads to the need to create new rules with the best example being the U.S postal system. The type of employer also carries the potential to determine the protection extended to employees. While legal issues relating to employee compensation come under extreme assessment, the same issue raises many ethical questions that the discourse will address in detail. To keep an efficient and safe work environment, companies need to maintain a watchful eye on activities conducted by the staff). They are activities with the potential of creating harm to other staff members and bring liability to the company as well. Challenges and solutions The first of the challenges the company Retail stores and internet services is facing is developing a strategy reminiscent with global benefit standards. The strategy should meet different needs of employees as applied in other companies with employees from various cultural setups. Trading in the international market provides the company Retail stores and internet services with multiple opportunities for growth. Growth is essential to the prospects of the company. The size of the workforce in the international market can be bigger than the one at in the local market depending on the performance of the company in that market. Senior managers and other employees identified lose as their biggest challenge they face during company expansion. Loses came through acquisition of new offices or establishment of the same. The company strives to ensure that employee-benefit programs continue efficiently and smoothly. They also concentrate on making sure that the company remains compliant with government regulations. However, they carry out these positive changes at the expense of executive compensation. International laws require financial transparency especially those affecting commitments for benefits at the centre of company operations in all companies engaged in international business. The other challenge is that employees complain about the company taking long to become truly global. Employees question the approach taken by the company while drafting and executing compensation and benefits policies. Junior employees posit that by asking the company to become truly global, they do not seek for one-size-fits all compensation schemes. They value the essence of flexibility in addition to cultural factors and government regulations in reshaping local benefits models as well as influencing expectations of employees (Swaak, 1995). One expatriate occupying a senior management level in the company identifies that the way in which the US government stipulates the way companies should remunerate expatriates. Taxes charged on income for expatriates are higher. The incentives offered in branches based in other countries such as India are not available in US. They include home incentives, child incentives, health plans covering even grandparents. The benefits cut across all employees whether expatriates or local. Furthermore, government mandates concerning compensation and benefit schemes are also not standard. It makes employees in US to receive poor remuneration across the board. In fact, few employees are optimistic that changes will be radical once the company becomes truly global. Therefore, the report recommends two ways significant in helping the company address compensation and benefit programs quickly (Rotan, 2001). First, the company should consider a precise benefits strategy that meets international standards because the company is a multinational. The philosophy of strategy should offer employees a model for comprehending management decisions touching on employee compensation and benefits. Such a strategy should have the capacity to take care of different cultures of multiethnic community backgrounds (Rodriguez, 1996). The second strategy is for the company Retail stores and internet services to develop efficient and comprehensive remuneration schemes for all employees whether on contract, permanent, mobile, as well as expatriates. Expatriates feel that the definition of their salaries and benefits should be simplified. Other companies such as Express Financials have taken such measure and are doing well in the same area that appears an Achilles-heel for the company Retail stores and internet services. A proposal to streamline these problems is establishment of hierarchy of needs that enlists the priorities of compensation and benefits for multinational companies such as the company US. The framework enables any company venturing into the international market to adapt to through a learning process while setting its schemes for bonuses, pay, as well as other long-term benefits for employees for all cadres. A case in point is if a company wants to initiate a community service program, then first, it should ensure that it remunerates employees well before launching the community program. The company must also have measures to have the structure working. The second corrective measure comes from other companies in India and Thailand. These branches remunerate their employees well and it is advisable for the headquarters to create a structure similar to a family-company environment in all the global business operations. In this case, the company International should adopt a paternalistic system by giving benefits that across all the branches in all countries including free meals, health insurance schemes, retirement plans, and basic salary standards. The company Retail stores and internet services is on an extensive branding process (ERC Fellows Program, 2010). Therefore, it should create international compensation and benefits strategy in line with the branding process as one of the remedies to their problems. The company can hire the services of a human resource company to integrate its compensation and benefits structures to suit international standards. I the end, it will a strategic shift to thinking and working as a global company leading to new considerations on multinational opportunities (Beall, Toman, Oliver , Peterson, & Traylor, 2011). The management at the company Retail stores and internet services ought to consider that an efficient compensation policy is a significant step in tackling the challenges of attracting and maintaining talented and knowledgeable employees. The company agrees that it is facing this as a great challenge. Solution For the company Retail stores and internet services to maintain growth in its business ventures, it will require the services of an efficient international human resource management services. It entails among other features transferring people around the branches scattered across the US. An efficient international human resource management will help the human resource manager at the company to draft and execute plans of actions and activities in offices for their stores, plants, and other important outlets. IBM and Coca-Cola applied this strategy successfully in most of its branches in the international market. Responsibilities assigned to the human resources manager at the company are training, selecting, formulating policies, and transferring company employees. Selecting and recruiting of staff appears a big challenge to the manager considering the fact that the company runs its businesses internally. The predicament touches on the host-country for the subsidiary, the headquarters of firm, and any other source or region acting as a supply of labor. One of the methods, which the HR manager, can use to determine the incentive pay for the sales team, is through performance contracts (Bryson, Freeman, Lucifora, Pellizzari, & Perotin, 2011). The number of sales they make in a particular time primarily measures sales persons’ performance. The program will apply to both the retail sales and the internet sales people. The method links performance to compensation for work done. It motivates the employee to sell more products so that he or she can be compensated highly at the end of the stipulated period hence increasing the productivity of the employee (Bryson, Freeman, Lucifora, Pellizzari, & Perotin, 2011). To streamline the entire process of implementing, planning, monitoring, and managing compensation schemes remains a constant challenge to the company Retail stores and internet services. The company needs to have a hitherto need for integrated compensation systems befitting all employees (ERC Fellows Program, 2010). The human resource management at the company must to become conscious that expansion into the global market comes with challenges as much as the company’s domestic market became too small to sustain its growth and expansion plans. Research conducted among the nine hundred and ninety-six employees finds that most of them believe that bringing together all compensation and other benefits administration from other branches to a single platform should be the priority for the company. Although the management wishes to develop and implement an ambitious compensation and other benefits scheme, it is necessary for them to know that the whole process has limitations as well. The company Retail stores and internet services will continue to adjust its external and internal resources for the betterment of the lives of employees until global systems become a reality. The advantages cut across all employees whether expatriates or local. In addition, government mandates concerning compensation and benefit schemes are also not standard. The human resource manager together with his office must coordinate procedures and policies to manage from the head office through tom other stores and plants in US. The aspects and policies must balance the desires and needs of employees efficiently while balancing the forms of reward (Kennedy, 2013). If it fails in managing this scenario, then difficulties will emerge similar to the ones faced by the company today. The company should comprehend that management of the employee-compensation scheme will result in the failure or success of the company. The only challenge for the human resource manager is maintaining a cordial working relationship with other executive managers in the company. The team should foster an international mind-set only possible by having managers thinking globally in addition to drafting and implementing human resource policies that enhance the development success of the company. Recommendation and Conclusion The management has a responsibility of comprehending the benefits derived by employees from the current system. The human resources department or the department charged with duty of remunerating employees ought to carry out a research on both international and local programs for the company. At the same time, the human resource manager should define factors that drive the global benefits schemes. The manager has a responsibility of clearly articulating the schemes to all employees. Then, the manager should set up a management framework. The structure should define responsibilities and roles at the head office and other branches. The model must be comprehensive and easy for employees to interpret. The management should make this a priority because it affects their salaries and other benefits. Consequently, the human resources office should communicate, implement, and monitor the whole process by making follow-ups (Heywood, Siebert, & Wei, 2005). Educating employees at all levels is significant to the success of any compensation strategy. The feedback derived from monitoring and follow-ups applied in fine-tuning the company strategy. The management should remember that flexibility is at the core of the compensation scheme. Through this, improvements are possible. The management at the company should be comfortable in making changes to the scheme to make it better. These are central in scheming costs, retaining employees, and rationalizing the company management. This discourse delves into analyzing these problems and recommends solutions that the management needs take to sort out the problem. References Beall, P., Toman, R., Oliver , K., Peterson, D., & Traylor, E. (2011). Communicating Compensation - 2011 Style. WorldatWork Total Rewards 2011 Conference (pp. 14 - 16). New York: Pearl Meyer & Partners, LLC. Bryson, A., Freeman, R., Lucifora, C., Pellizzari, M., & Perotin, V. (2011). Paying For Perfomance: Incentive Pay Scheemes and Employees Financial Participation. Italy: Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti. ERC Fellows Program. (2010). Ethical Leadership and ExcecutiveCompensation: Rewarding Integrity in the C-Suite. Washington, DC: Ethics Resource Centre. Heywood, J. S., Siebert, W. S., & Wei, X. (2005). The Implicit Costs and Benefits of Family Friendly Work Practices . Bonn: IZA. Kennedy, K. (2013). 2013 Employee Benefits: An overview of Employee Benefits Offerings in U.S. Alexandria: Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Mizell, H. (2010). Why Proffesional Development Matters. Oxford: Learning Forward. Rotan, B. L. (2001). Guide to Designing Benefit Packages for Cooperatives. Washington, DC: Agricultural Cooperative Service. Read More