business plan

Nevertheless, more effort need to be made in training of employees’ with technological skills at all levels. This implies that regardless of the job position each employee needs to have technological know-how of their area of operation. For example, a cook should be in a [position to repair an oven in case it goes wrong. This will save the company a lot that would have otherwise been used in the maintenance field. Rather than hiring specialist more focus need to be put the thorough training of existing employees in the company. This will not only save on the cost of specialist but ensure each task is handled in specialists at all time as they will be available throughout.

Apple is an international company and has outsourced9t services to different countries in the world. Unfortunately, some of the countries have no strict labor laws and highly exploit their employees. In China for instance employees are hired and fired almost instantly and they have no right what over to raise complain. The organization has however made effort to maintain its standards of ensuring the work together with a non-governmental organization to be guided on standard and minimum age. With the minimum age however, there has been noted delays in full implementation and this need to be given more attention. This will save the company from the cases of being accused of discrimination among employees in different countries. This will also save employees from depression that would otherwise lead to suicidal thoughts as it as the case for 18 employees from Foxconn facilities and 14 of them lost their lives. Secondly, the continued employment of students worked has been rampant in many countries and companies and apple is not an exemption. This mainly occurs in cases where deadlines need to be met and more employees are hired. The young employees and not properly trained and are made to do on the job training. This might be hazardous as accidents and many errors are likely to occur due to lack of familiarity with the task at hand. To this extent, the company needs to work closely with non-governmental organizations to ensure that their practices are carried out within the flame of law. This will save the company expenditure on lawyers handling employee’s cases.

On the labor laws adherence, the company is lagging miles behind. As provided by California labor laws employees are entitled to meal break and rest periods (Sanchez, 2013). This was, however, bot the cade for 20,000 employees who worked nonstop without meals and breaks who sued the company in the year 2014. They worked as much as five extra hours with zero meals and rest. This is dehumanizing and shameful for such a leading corporation. The company has also been accused of delayed wages. This gets even more surprising considering the million dollar profit margin the company realizes every day. It, therefore, implies that more strict policies need to be put in place to ensure the employees’ rights are adhered to. The human resource department needs to, therefore, converge look into the issues facing them and come up with the best way forward on the issues.

Various human resource emerging issues have affected employees globally. For example appreciation and recognition, Apple has failed to have a clearly structured career tracking system that would provide a reliable basis upon which decisions one who is recognized and rewarded is made. This has resulted in credit being given to those who initially do not deserve it. The recognition of employee’s ideas and innovation have also been neglected over time. This has resulted in demotivation of employees and the existence of a comfort zone (Barney, 1995). If this issue is not effectively handled over time the company is likely to experience high rates of employees’ turnover in the future. This will rob off the creative and innovative lot leading to the company downfall. A taskforce needs to be put in place to look into the employees’ ideas and innovation.

This will play a great role in making Apple the next big thing decades to come. In career development, the approach has been hierarchical. This limit the opportunity of lowest ranked employees from being recognized and enjoying benefits. A better structure such as matrix would be of great importance in this case. In the rewarding and giving bonuses, the focus has been on the group other than individual performance. This has resulted in people hanging in on efforts of others and being rewarded. Employees in lower ranks have been denied the opportunity to enjoy work bonuses. This is itself is demotivation to them. Working with a clear mind that you will not be rewarded make the employees feel sluggish in their work. Given that the lower ranked are the one in direct contact with the customer the customer relationship is likely to deteriorate posing danger to the success of the company.

In the 21st century, there have been dozens of issues on the human resource. For instance, there is an increasing rate of disloyalty of employees. This is whereby realizing that the company is about to venture into a given area some employees collude with competing companies to steal the initial idea and come up with the project before the originator. This destroys the competitiveness of the company and may be forced to let go of marvelous ideas (Palmer, 2002). To this line, apple should ensure that privacy and accountability are fundamental in the innovation sector.

This is whereby the employees who participate in innovation are closely monitored to ensure that any security breach can be traced. This will allow the company to enjoy the originality pride. Secondly, the employees of this century are fragile. This implies that they work and at the same time look for new opportunities. Overreliance on a given employee may, therefore, pose danger to the company in case the employee secures new employment. It is up to the management to diverse their reliance on employees and consolidates ideas in the company program to allow their continuity even in absence of some of them.

For the longest period of time, Apple has applied traditional methods to employ their staff. This included the development of human resources skills with the sole purpose of achieving organizational goals. The approach does not aim at career development but rather achieving targets. This has helped Apple to achieve its goals as an organization but recorded failure in human resource development. It will be effective therefore for the company to train their employees with an aim of career development. This will raise the standard of the company in terms of what is expected at a global level. The company also expect employees to know the do and don’ts. This is rather not successful in the prevention of mistake occurrence (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2006). This has contributed an increase in number in misconduct and time wastage in solving issues. It is therefore important that the company change the approach to ensure that ideas are communicated to the employees in advance.

In conclusion, Apple has been ranked as one of the best software company globally. This has been on the basis of efforts made such as employee training, compliance with legal provisions at international levels, gender parity, and excellent customer service. There is however a lot of improvement to be made on employees discrimination, modern training adoption and more strict observation of the legal provisions as per the global standards. The end result of this practice will be a realization of not only a successful company but also a motivated human resource.

References

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Barney, J. B. (1995). Looking inside for competitive advantage. Academy of Management Perspectives, 9(4), 49-61.

Bhattacharya, C. B., & Sen, S. (2004). Doing better at doing good: When, why, and how consumers respond to corporate social initiatives. California management review, 47(1), 9-24.

Noe, R., Hollenbeck, J., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. (2006). Human Resources Management: Gaining a Competitive Advantage, Tenth Global Edition. McGraw-Hill Education.

Palmer, J. A. (2002). Environmental education in the 21st century: Theory, practice, progress, and promise. Routledge.

Prater, E., Biehl, M., & Smith, M. A. (2001). International supply chain agility-Tradeoffs between flexibility and uncertainty. International journal of operations & production management, 21(5/6), 823-839.

Ragan, G. (2006). U.S. Patent Application No. 11/139,131.

Sanchez, T. F. (2013). Californian strawberries: Mexican immigrant women sharecroppers, labor, and discipline. Anthropology of Work Review, 34(1), 15-26.

Wasko, T. E., & Ording, B. (2002). U.S. Patent Application No. 29/116,431.