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Fall/
August 2012
Master
of Business Administration- MBA Semester 4
MU0015
–Compensation Benefits - 4 Credits
(Book
ID:1336)
Assignment
Set- 1 (60 Marks)
Note: Each
Question carries 10 marks. Answer all the questions.
Q1.Describe
flexible workforce in detail.
Answer : Thanks to the changing employment situation, today, the average
workforce of an organization is far different to that of a few years ago. More
and more companies are going for different kinds of employee engagements like
temporary staff, consultants, freelancers, contractors, sub-contractors and so
on. This brings with it its own particular sets of advantages and disadvantages
for organizations. Managing the flexible workforce of a company needs a
different set of policies and strategies.
Some of the key reasons or trends for the emergence of
flexible workforce below:
1. Retention
of women employees:
Over 60 % of women opt out of full-time work within 6-8
years of employment, but 93% of these women want to return to work part-time.
Companies that tap into this talent pool by accommodating their request for
flexibility in working hours will create a competitive advantage in the labor
market.
2. Retirement
of baby boomers:
Companies in certain sectors will face a significant
skilled labor shortage with a huge number of experienced people eligible for
retirement in the next ten years. Many of these baby boomer (people born
between 1945 and 1965) employees, however, would prefer working in a flexible
capacity rather than going for retirement. Many companies would prefer to
retain them on flexi-hours engagement, as they prove to be highly beneficial,
especially in the absence of a proper knowledge management system.
3. The
Retention of the voluntary workforce: In
certain high-tech sectors, many highly skilled employees no longer have to work
as they would have earned and saved enough for a life time and are leaving
because they are unhappy with a lack of work- life balance. Companies are ready
to accommodate their need for flexibility in working hours rather than losing
out on highly skilled workforce.
4. Challenges
of global teams: Today, due
to globalization, more and more people are required to work continuously in
order to communicate and collaborate with colleagues around the world. Due to
this, people are experiencing a feeling of burnout and employers have no option
but think beyond 9 to 5 and implement flexible schedules to accommodate these
challenging logistics.
Some of the different types of work arrangements that
accommodate a flexible work force below:
Job sharing: Here, the full time job is split between two co-workers
and benefits are given in proportion based on the number of hours put in by
each employee.
Daily
flexible choice: In this the
log-in and log-out time may vary daily.
Open flexible
choice: In this the employees can choose
the total number of hours required to complete the specific task.
Compressed
week choice: Here, employees have a choice to
work for less than five days in a week.
Comp-off: In this, the employees can extend their timings on busy
days and use that later for compensatory time off.
Types of
locations:
Satellite
options: These are remote work centers
like satellite work centers which are provided by the employers.
Telecommuting: Employees work from home for a few days in a week via
telecommunications and then work out of office on the remaining days.
Tele working:
Employees work from home on all the days of the week via telecommunications.
This flexi-time arrangement has a lot of benefits for
both the employers and the employees.
The benefits
for the employees are:
Ø Provides an opportunity for workers who are disabled.
Ø Working parents can meet their family obligations.
Ø Saves commuting time.
Ø Provides time and location flexibility.
Ø Reduces job related stress and also interruptions at the
workplace.
Ø The benefits for the employers are: Influences employees
in a positive way. Improves productivity.
Ø Reduces absenteeism.
Ø Improves employee job satisfaction, job performance and
work quality.
Ø Reduces costs related to environmental requirements,
time, space, employee safety, relocation of the employees, and productivity.
Ø Helps in retention of voluntary workforce, women and baby
boomers. Companies can terminate contingent workers services more easily.
With respect to compensation and benefits paid to the
flexible workforce, most companies pay an hourly wage, which is fixed on the
basis of the complexity of work as well as the skill sets of the employee. No
amount of paid leave, insurance and legally required benefits like gratuity and
retirement benefits are paid.
Q2.Define
internal equity and explain its importance.
Q3.What is
CTC? What are the components of CTC?
Q4.What
are the elements of compensation?
Q6.Ms.Deepa
Mehra is the VP-HR of Induslink Network. She is assigned the task of finding a
new CEO for the company and fixing the compensation. What are the trends that
she will have to look into before finalizing the compensation package for the
CEO?
Fall/
August 2012
Master
of Business Administration- MBA Semester 4
MU0015
–Compensation Benefits - 4 Credits
(Book
ID:1336)
Assignment
Set- 2 (60 Marks)
Note: Each
Question carries 10 marks. Answer all the questions.
Q1.What
are the major issues related to repatriation?
Answer : The term repatriation refers to bringing the employees who are on an
international assignment back to the home country. It is very important to
manage repatriation of employees in a very careful way. A poorly managed
repatriation can lead to a feeling of frustration and cynicism in the
employees. These feelings can be worse than the culture shock experienced in
the first weeks of the assignment. It requires transparency in repatriation
policy, sharing information on the career progression path, degree and support
from the organisation during the international tenure and so on. Many
organisations develop and share documented guidelines with respect to overseas
assignment, so that the employees understand the rules and regulations and also
know what to expect. Expatriate managers often return to the home office with a
wealth of experience and perspectives. Yet, poor repatriation processes are
blamed for underutilizing talent, losing human capital, and discouraging
skilled managers from accepting overseas assignments (Gregersen and Black,
1995). Often the impact of repatriation for the employee is far greater than
that of the original move to the host location. The move abroad is usually
exciting, involving a promotion or at the very least, an increase in peer
status.
Also, the day to day impact of life in the new culture is
more keenly felt by the spouse and children, who interact with it on a far more
personal basis. Moreover, the employee will be chosen for a particular skill
set, which are generally appreciated by the new team as an asset. As the
project comes to an end, the expatriate starts the closure process of the post,
probably handing over to a locally based team or manager. At this point, home
country HR should be back in touch with the employee, to start the career
planning for the home move. However, most companies provide no post assignment
guarantees, and this has a dual impact on the employee. Firstly, they will feel
deeply insecure since they may have taken their family away from extended
family and friends, interrupted education programmers and careers, and for
what? To return home with no job? Another issue is the change in living
standards. While settling down in a foreign country, they would have been
offered financial incentives for the family to relocate from generous housing
allowances to the payment of school fees. On returning home, these are taken
away and the lifestyle that the family has become used to is radically reduced.
This is particularly a factor for Europeans coming home
from the USA, where living standards are very high in comparison with the cost
of living in most European cities. It is the children of expatriates that the
impact can be the most pronounced, and the most dramatic, especially for
teenagers caught between school systems, deep friendships and hormonal angst!
Where the assignment has been a long one, there is the risk of the child
becoming a Third Culture Kid far more familiar with the host culture than the
home one. For them the return is a far greater challenge, as they are already
at home and will be going somewhere completely foreign. Not only will they face
a profound culture shock, they will also struggle with a sense of loss of
identity as they leave their friends and peers behind.
Q2.How
does compensation effect employee satisfaction?
Q3.What
are the factors to be taken into account to ensure an optimum compensation
package for executives?
Q4.How is
employee benefit and labour market linked?
Q5.What
are the factors that have to be determined before preparing the salary
structure?
Q6.Mr.Senthil
is the HR Manager of First Source Pvt. Ltd. He found that many of the employees
have been doing the same work for a long period of time. He decided to enrich
some of their jobs. List some of the strategies which can be used by Mr.Senthil
to enrich jobs in organisations.
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