Business Management

Business Management Essay Task: Choose a company and identify all motivational (employee-centered) programs that the company has in place. Then ascertain the significance and objectives of these programs. Next provide a critique of these programs. Finally, recommend changes that will improve on the programs and/or new programs that will better meet the objectives articulated above. Overview: The company that I have chosen as the subject of my research is the AAA Travel Agency. More specifically, I have interviewed several travel agents from the Reno, Pennsylvania location, which serves patrons from Western Pennsylvania as well as West Virginia. The bulk of the information for my analysis has come directly from the in-office interviews with Ms. Tiffany Pacior, the senior travel agent for the Reno office. She has provided me with information directly out of the AAA employee handbook as well as personal information covering the positive and negative effects she has experienced from the programs I will be discussing. There can be little doubt that the backbone of every successful business or company is its staff of employees. Employees are the vital parts of the business machine that can aid in its success or contribute to its failure. It is for this reason that it is imperative to possess the ability to acquire and maintain effective employees. The chief method by which a business or company can accomplish this task is through employee-centered motivational programs. The goal of these programs is to encourage employees to maximize their performance by targeting three specific motivational stimuli. These include morale, satisfaction, and rewards. After researching their policies and interviewing employees, I have came to the conclusion that AAA of Reno, Pennsylvania has adopted Fredrick Taylors approach to motivating their employees. In this paper I will demonstrate how AAA applies Taylors scientific management approach to target the three motivational stimuli stated above. I will also provide some insight from the employees perspective as to how effective the programs are at what they are designed to achieve. The scientific management approach to motivation evolved from the work of Frederick Taylor. He believed that when highly productive people discover they are being compensated basically the same as less productive people, then the output of highly productive people will decrease. Consequently, the scientific management approach to motivation is based on the assumption that money is the primary motivator. This seems to be the ideology that AAA has adopted to produce high morale, achieve satisfaction, and reward their employees. Morale, as it applies here, may be defined as the overall feeling of the members of an organization. Generally speaking, a company with a high morale among its employees enjoys above average performance and a lower than average employee termination rate. AAA has several programs in practice, which support the scientific management approach to motivation to produce high morale. First, it is not uncommon for a travel agent to work beyond the scheduled forty-hour workday to complete the tasks of a heavy business day. It was for this reason that the company offers overtime compensation for the dedication of their employees. The company pays one and a half times their regular hourly rate of pay when an agent works more than their scheduled hours per week. Also, for those individual days when an agent works more than ten hours per day, they are entitled to overtime dinner pay. The employees stressed that this is a worthwhile program because it allows overtime workers to order dinner from local delivery shops. The objective here is simple, no one likes to work on an empty stomach and so why not use a little give and take to make the employees feel like they are not being taken advantage of. It has proven to be effective from the opinions of the employees I interviewed. The final program I was made aware of designed to bolster company morale is the paid time off program. This allows employees to take time off from their work for various reasons and to be regularly paid as if they were working for that period of time. Acceptable reasons for this privilege cover a wide spectrum including personal vacation, minor illness, funeral leave, jury duty, holidays, military leave, and marriage. READ: Business Law and Ethics : Physicians and Professio Essay Ms. Pacior explained that although these programs .

Job opportunities in the deaf community Research Paper

Job opportunities in the deaf community - Research Paper Example This paper delves into job opportunities in the deaf community. The deaf community has its own employment or job resources and opportunities to help the deaf as well as hearing people who are seeking employment opportunities that are related to deafness. It is worth noting that employment opportunities in the deaf community are near similar to other communities. This is because this community requires almost similar types of goods and services (Padden and Tom 33). The first type of job in the deaf community is teaching jobs that are essential in facilitating education in the community. The second one is that of interpreters who help in aiding communication between hearing people and deaf people. The other type of job opportunity in deaf community is captioning – captioning jobs have gained prominence in the deaf community especially because laws of many countries have called for captioning in the broadcasting (Andrews, Leigh and Tammy 106). Captioning entails displaying text or non-speech elements on visual display such as video or television to provide interpretive or additional information to deaf people. There is also the job of speech language pathologists and audiologists who are essential in providing healthcare services to the deaf. They diagnose, monitor, and treat disorders of the vestibular and auditory system (Padden and Tom 71). Psychologists also have opportunity to work in this community. For instance, counseling and clinical psychologists can provide psychological services for deaf people of all ages in mental health clinics and hospitals such as, assessment, therapy and counseling. Social workers are also required in the deaf community and this is because they provide a broad range of services to the deaf individuals. The knowledge and skills developed by the social workers prepare the deaf for career opportunities in addition to empowering them to know their rights (Berke

Emergency, Exception and New Technologies in International Relations Essay

Emergency, Exception and New Technologies in International Relations - Essay Example In it, malicious actions such as usurping, destroying, altering, disabling, or damaging them occur. These are collectively known as â€Å"cyber attacks.† Lin asserts that cyber conflict has attained a level where it is a humanitarian issue but it is still not fully addressed by existing interventions such as the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter. This is because these interventions (instruments) are outdated in that cyberspace is a new technology as compared to their establishment time. As such, cyber conflicts are bound to affect organizations, people, groups, and territories in the near future. Again, he asserts that the world is yet to experience a serious form of cyber conflict because no stringent countermeasures exist in preventing such (Lin, 2012). The increasing importance of IT, though very beneficial when applied, has dragged along a detrimental side to it. The fact that IT is universal (global) means that what is taught in one continent is the same thing that will be taught in another. As such, creating or attacking IT systems is possible from any point of the earth; adding up to cyber conflict. Cyber conflict can be caused by two levels of hostilities: technology-based and people-based approaches. Technology-based hostility refers to cyber attack conducted using purely technological tools such as software, programs, or computer hardware. This includes gaining access to restricted systems, interfering with them using a payload, and gaining in one way from doing so. People-based cyber hostility occurs when people are tricked (through scam), bribed, or blackmailed to conduct the attack from inside the target IT systems. Collectively, these forms of cyber attack/ hostility have led to the emergence of new countermeasures or frameworks. These are intended to protect IT systems from both vulnerabilities emerging from both offensive approaches. Lin presents two policies that can be implemented in preventing or minimizing vulnerability; defense