What would happen if Jim Goodnight's philosophy was applied to multiple industries? HR departments would be flooded with applications as flocks of people attempt to capitalize on the opportunity. This provides several positive effects. Employers will theoretically have a more diverse potential employment pool than before. The promise of extraordinary benefits is likely to attract highly skilled professionals and people of every race, gender, age, and sexual preference. By adding diversity to the workforce, companies would see concrete benefits such as higher creativity, improved customer service, lower litigation expenses, and a more satisfied workforce overall. Ideally, each company would experience varying levels of the “SAS effect.” This can be categorized as attaining low absenteeism and turnover, high workforce morale and satisfaction, unprecedented creativity and freedom of expression, and financial success as a result of putting employees first. Employees at SAS tend to have more positive work attitudes. Coworkers display high levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. People are happy to go to work and have a strong emotional connection to the company. Due to this bond, employees across the company volunteer more time to organizing social events (as if there were not enough “distractions” at SAS to begin with!). As made clearly evident, the business world has much to gain by learning from Jim Goodnight.
However, there are always two sides to each coin. While the business community could benefit from SAS’s policies, we have to consider the generalizability of this situation. It is also possible that offering such benefits could bring potentially negative effects. Leaders cannot simply offer un-worldly perks and expect productivity to jump immediately. The promise of these perks will obviously attract the attention of sub-par applicants. This goes beyond simply under qualified candidates, which can be expected at every company. No, these perks will serve as bait to a different class of applicants. Underachievers, freeloaders, procrastinators, con artists, and irresponsible workers will come to the negotiating table in the hopes of securing a golden ticket. Employers would need to take extra care when screening applicants. If one happened to make it through, employers would need to deal with the litigation of removing an employee who only has personal intentions in mind. When applied to every industry, this could create very costly mistakes and waste precious time. After considering these facts, it is clear to see that Jim has done a fantastic job managing his company. Jim Goodnight wants to reward legitimate employees who care about the company and want to make an impact by contributing quality work. He has eliminated the problems associated with employees who are only “in it” for the money and the perks. He has also moved past mitigation of losses due to this issue. He has managed SAS efficiently and effectively all while remaining profitable. This is another reason why Jim Goodnight truly is a great example of an impact player in the world of organizational behavior.
Regards,
Jarek Palmer (BBB)
Rewarding employees is usually beneficial in increasing job performance and motivation. The problems organizations often run into deal with costs and quality of employees. As an organization, when you are the trend setter who offers employees unprecedented perks and rewards, you usually attract a wider array of applicants. These applicants may not necessarily be "con artists" but the range of their KSAs will be all over the board. Organizations are likely to lower the quality of employees if they fail to pay proper attention during the screening process. If the HR department can in fact do a good job of screening their quality is less likely to decline. Instead, your employees not only will have higher KSAs but they are likely to be more motivated and enthusiastic about their work.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this blog because it really provides insight on how the different areas of an organization are affected by a decision such as rewards/benefits. It may sound like a good idea, but if it isn't thought through fully it can easily backfire and do more harm than good. An organization should consider the increased cost in the employee selection process and also the long-term costs associated with providing extraordinary benefits to employees. But in respect to organizations, it good to see that some are attempting to reach out to their employees and make them feel wanted.
Three's Company
Sunny Shah
Dr. Sheep's feedback for your team:
ReplyDeleteIn general, you are off to a very good start on your blog. Your posts are specific, good at both reporting and applying some analytical concepts and theories from the OB textbook, and interesting in terms of issues and questions. I would say that your blog posts are beneficial and add good value to the whole MQM 221 class, if everyone were to read your blog. However, there are some improvements that would make your blog even more useful.
First, it is somewhat unclear how the themes of your blog posts tie together under the heading of the Big Bang (change). Even after reading your introduction, I am not certain why you include articles and posts about ethical dilemmas (as that is a theme covered by another blog). I recognize that ethics applies to almost every decision in an organization, but you would probably help your readers if you drew these themes together more intentionally and defined for us what the thread running through it all might be.
Your several posts by one member about Jim Goodnight are excellent, but it is not clear what the source of the information might be. Reference all of your sources in each blog post so that it will not be unclear to readers (you don’t want to risk suspicions of unethically borrowing from other sources, so make sure to give credit explicitly when the info is not your own). Also, from the first post about Goodnight, it sounds like you are taking the approach suggested for the “dream team” blog, which is not really your topic. So again, it would help either to focus more on your chosen theme, or to make sure that you explain to the readers how all of these kinds of posts “fit” the theme that you chose.
Otherwise, your blog posts are very good, generate some interactivity in comments, and I would encourage you to keep up your very good work.