Last Day of Class

Today was our last day of class. We reviewed for the final and got our presentation results. I was nervous for my presentation and could have done a little better job. Now that class is over I realize I want to take more classes in the HR track. I hope I can get involved a little more next year. It's been a great semester and we had some good discussions. Having a good teacher and a likable group made this class a success for me.

Peer Reviews

We exchanged peer reviews in class and have been editing them and reviewing for the research paper. We had one student present his presentation early. It was nice to see how someone else demonstrated their topic.

Cultural Differences

Today we finished talking about chapter 15. I liked talking about cultural differences because we have already talked about it in another one of my classes and I realized that I knew a lot about it from my other class. I don't think I could be one of those people who traveled to another country for work, but I think I would like working with others from those places. It was interesting to realize that for global economics, we actually need all of these cultural diversities to be successful. I think our differences can be hard to understand, but that they compliment each other.

Chapter 16, Meeting other HR Goals

I think one of the most challenging tasks, not to mention the one which is severely suffering in implementation, is transfer of knowledge. According to the chapter, only 4 percent of companies are recording the knowledge of retiring employees. I think this is a shame, but how do you record what's in someone's brain? Perhaps having a daily journal throughout their career would help, or saving their emails. One way we did it a little at my previous company was to have a database or spreadsheet of notes about each customer we worked with. That way, when someone else went to call them, they were always aware of their situation.
Aren't there a few things about knowledge sharing that can make people feel nervous? For example, if you are a little insecure about your job, or another person at your job seems to shine more than you do, then sharing your information and knowledge is not going to be very tempting to you. Furthermore, are you even going to get credit for it? I think in the workplace, we need to first make people feel secure, which is hard to do these days, and then encourage them to share things with each other. If we show them that they sharing things with each other actually benefits everyone, then maybe they'll be more likely to participate thoroughly.

Chapter 15 Review

We discussed Global HR Relations and talked about our upcoming project. I am going to do mine on the benefits of being part of a Union, vs. not being part of a Union. This will be done from an employees perspective, rather than a manager's. From a manager's perspective having a Union is usually going to be bad in the beginning.

Chapter 15, Managing HR Globally

It seems like opening an office internationally must be quite the undertaking. Every country has culture aspects that need to be learned. It seems like the United States started out as a "melting pot", and now the rest of the world is starting to mix as well, if not genetically in many cases, then culturally. Many other countries are staring to take on "American" qualities. I wonder if this was initially because they wanted to be able to understand our culture at first, or if they simply wanted to be more like us. Brazilians, for example love American music and American products. The world is growing smaller and smaller as technology expands to every country. Do you think someday all of our cultures will mesh together and you won't have to worry about offending someone by wearing white, or showing your lower leg or neck? Hundreds of years will tell...

Chapter 14 Review

We discussed Unions in class today. I was surprised at how negative people's opinions were on Unions. If we had Unions in Utah our wages would be much higher. One student stated that Unions make it so that Employees get raises and don't deserve them. Who is to say that employees in general don't deserve raises? It's on a case by case basis, but when an entire industry isn't getting paid what they deserve, then Labor Unions are necessary. We played a game in class today that represented the way Unions work. I was surprised at how chaotic the negotiation can be. I'm not sure how their negotiations work in real life, but I hope they don't stab each other in the back as much as we did in class.