Suppose you are an HR professional who convinced your company's management to conduct a survey of employee satisfaction. Your budget was limited and you could not afford a test that went into great detail. Rather, you investigated overall job satisfaction and learned that it is low, especially among employees in three departments. You know that management is concerned about spending a lot for HR programs because sales are in a slump, but you want to address the issue of low job satisfaction. Suggest some ways you might begin to make a difference, even with a small budget. How will you convince management to try your ideas?

Some solutions might cost no money at all -- for example, reorganizing more effective work teams to create a better sense of corporate unity can increase job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is not necessarily directly linked to pay, but often to a better work environment and a greater sense of control and ability to provide creative input into the business' standard operating procedures and future activities.

4. Imagine that you manage human resources for a small business. You have recently prepared a report on the market rate of pay for salespeople and the company's owner says the market rate is too high. The company cannot afford this level of pay and furthermore, paying that much would cause salespeople to earn...

Suggest three possible measures the company might take to help resolve this conflict.
Sales people are the face of the company -- paying for quality salespersons is like 'paying' for good advertising.

Giving salespeople greater input into how they can structure their pitches, their choice of territory, flexible hours, and creative control, might make some of them willing to accept slightly less money.

Offering higher commissions and lower salaries might attract highly competitive talent.

Consider the job of a customer service representative who fields telephone calls from customers of a retailer that sells online and through catalogs.

A a.

What measures can an employer take to design this job to make it efficient?

Conducting quality control electronic monitoring of calls, counting the number of customers served to meet a specific benchmark, and including follow-up surveys to customers to ask them about the quality of service are all possible ways to increase efficiency.

What might be some drawbacks or challenges of designing this job for efficiency?

Efficiency measures based in numbers of customers served alone can translate into brusqueness, a poor corporate image, and ultimately consumer dissatisfaction.