Motivation -> Rewards -> Performance

Human Capital Development – Week 4 – Weekly Summary 

The week started with a very appropriate question, “Can you motivate someone”?   

This was particularly appropriate for week 4 of the class, a time when staying motivated can be an issue.  We’re far enough into the class to have issues staying focused, but not close enough to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.  The discussion question was more about motivating employees, but it is entirely possible that many employees are at the same position in there careers that we are in this class.  Far enough into their jobs that they may be getting in a bit of a rut but not far enough that they can be motivated by the idea of retirement as a reward.

The topic of how to motivate lead to a few of the other discussion questions this week that were focused on the concept of Total Rewards.  Total Rewards generated a lot of discussion and the variety of jobs and employers people in the class have experienced provided fuel for conversation.  The discussion questions then turned to how rewards and compensation relate to corporate performance and a nice little side discussion on the role of seniority-based pay versus performance-based pay systems.  Wrapping up the discussion questions were a couple leading into the assignment this week, preparing a problem statement for the scenario.  That problem statement homework really filled out the workload of the week and set the stage for the last two weeks of the class.

Auditing Human Resources and the return of Strategic Staffing

Human Capital Development – Week 3 – Weekly Summary 

This week the discussion questions kicked off with a focus on the application of audits to the human resources department, and if the focus should be on the HR department itself or the HR function as it is applied within an organization.  The concept of strategic staffing also made a return this week in the discussion questions.  The list of five discussion questions for the week was rounded out with consideration of recommendations for the problem solution paper this week and a more personal question regarding applicability of the content presented in class, now or in the future.  The highlight of the week was work on the problem solution paper.  The process of preparing the paper is more familar so I’m able to focus more on the content. 

Organizational Alignment

Human Capital Development – Week 2 – Weekly Summary

Another interesting week with the dialog in the discussion threads really making the class.  Some good discussion questions this week carried on the topics started the week before.  “Organizational Alignment” was particularly interesting to me as my company is developing some new offerings and transitioning people into the business line.  There was also a fairly lively discussion around the topic of labor markets with some interesting observations made by people in the class who have participated in the world economy we live in today.  The team paper was a good exercise and chance to see the wide variety of companies that team members selected for benchmarking.  Just another example of how the participation of the students really makes these classes work.

Strategic Staffing

Human Capital Development – Week 1 - Weekly Summary 

This week was a good introduction to the concepts in Human Capital Development. The approach the professor took to discussion questions, posting seven and asking students to pick four, was a new approach and provided the opportunity to examine more topics before choosing one to discuss in detail. I found the discussion of the relationship between human resource management and achieving corporate strategy to be the most interesting, with strategic staffing a close second. The assignment this week was to complete a human capital concepts worksheet, identifying concepts presented during the week and applying them to the InterClean scenario. This provided a good exercise to survey the important concepts of the week in the context of a business setting and made for a good wrap up to the week.