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Reply to the discussion of the following three people

1st

When it comes to animal welfare organizations, there is a big disconnect when it comes to general operating funding and restricted funding.  Reading these first chapters has confirmed what I already know.  Having professional, paid positions within an organization is imperative to its success.  You cannot rely on volunteers to be able to take on the importance of Human Resources and Managing the team.  There are so many things that go into Human Resources such as planning, organizing, scheduling and, most importantly, the overall care of the team.

From experience, Human Resources has been this rigid, almost scary place for employees.  It is understandable to an extent due to the amount of responsibility it holds for an organization.  They must be up to date on the plethora of employment laws and be concerned with the liability of the organization.  Liabilities include items such as sexual harassment, discrimination, equal pay, and civil rights.  Human Resources needs to be knowledgeable in all these areas plus running the day-to-day tasks of employee benefits.  Human Resource Managers need to remain approachable to all employees for this to be hugely successful. 

As discussed in Part 3, Human Resource Mangers also hold a responsibility to know and understand the core values of the business they are working for.  Creating a strategic plan for motivation is an absolute must for HR Managers to keep track of successes and areas of improvement. They need to be able to encourage employees to reach harder goals while validating the work they are already doing.  Managers may be tasked with encouraging more employee participation, so it is important to be able to show their employees appreciation and praise through different avenues.  Understanding the organizations mission and goals is imperative to the success of the motivational strategic plan.  Managers need to have a clear understanding of where the organization needs to be and put a strategy in place to get it there.  With employees as the heart and soul of an organizations, keeping them motivated and educated will result in better business and less turnover.

2nd

I am finishing a MIS degree and am especially interested in Public Administration.  Knowing the laws and court decisions is helpful as a foundation for managing people, and creating strategy. I work in higher education. Human resources is essential knowledge for strategic planning in higher education as there are many moving parts within a university's system and all of them will deal with elements of human rights.  

It is really interesting to see the progression of the human rights acts for employment in the United States. I'm interested in the Civil rights act of '91 (CRA 1991). In Dessler's text he noted that the CRA 1991 was put in place by President Bush as a way to "roll back" the laws on equal rights to how they were before the 1980's (Dessler, 2017).  The purpose was to, in theory disavow the court rulings that were a disservice to minorities who were placed in a difficult position of trying to prove the employer's discriminatory acts . 

I had a mind blowing experience this afternoon while I was at Home Depot.  I don't have all the details about this situation but enough for me to seriously question what was going on.  As I entered the garden center the employee sitting by the register had a printed sign by the register saying, I just had my tonsils removed and can't talk, please be patient with me. Thank you. I thought it was strange that she would be working.  Upon trying to communicate with her as I was checking out, I could tell she was in pain.  I asked why she didn't have a doctor's note to be able to stay home. She pulled out the doctor's note from her apron and said they wouldn't take it because she didn't have any more sick days left.  Again, I don't have every detail. She was 18 yrs old and no family in town. I ended up trying to help her, even called the doc (who said she should not be working).  She hadn't eaten in over 24 hours and was barely able to sip water.  maybe I was putting my nose where it didn't belong but I informed her that they had to respect the doctors note and that she really needed to be in bed.   I kept in contact with her and grabbed her a smoothie (which she couldn't drink because of the pain). Finally she said they were going to "let her" go home.  Something is very wrong with that.  I can only assume that she may not have known what to do and maybe didn't have the assertion to communicate properly with her supervisor.  I would think that a doctors note would be enough. 

I still don't have all the details but my best conclusion is that there may have been miscommunication on both sides.  A young worker may not know her rights, and as such could be a liability for the store if her and her manager are not on the same page. 

3rd

We are seeing unprecedented change in the workplace accelerated by the pandemic. Trends in human resource management now includes employees that worked from home and some resisting coming back to the office. It is clear that many organizations and companies will need to evolve to address employees working at home. Tricky since workplace protections cover traditional workplaces. Human resource management has had to keep pace with technological changes, accessing productivity of employees as they are online, utilizing applications and communication through online platforms. Some companies hesitant to trust employee productivity when they work at home. More research will shed light on the benefits of focused work, pros and cons. Citing lower costs associated with commuting and child care expenses, employees favor hybrid options which complicates human management. 

Trends also reflect more jobs being sent off shore in countries where workplace protections are less than here or nonexistent. At the heart of laws enacted to protect workers and to create equity in the workplace is the idea of a level playing field and to account for traditional forms of discrimination that created obstacles for women, BIPOC and those with disabilities. By sending jobs overseas, companies are able to bypass regulations and standards.  Smaller companies with less than 15 employees are not encumbered with employment regulations, discriminatory practices may go unnoticed. The "Me Too" movement most likely sparked many re-training programs across the country, allegations of sexual misconduct can cost a company a lot of money. Title VII covering sexual harassment in the workplace has to recognize the nuanced nature of people's perceptions regarding sexual harassment and the meaning of terms because as I saw with the "Me Too" movement, terms such as assault, rape, abuse, harassment and others were being used interchangeably.