One key point of this article is employee motivation. This point is addressed through the decision of the American Greetings Corp to create about 400 new jobs for its employees to apply. This decision was mainly taken as a result of the lack of promotion positions for employees in the organizational hierarchy (Joan 81).
Another key point is organizational change. This issue comes out when the American Greetings Corp engages in restructuring the organization by creating new jobs for employees to apply for. These new jobs are different from the rest, which the employees have held previously, and require them to have some form of training (Joan 81).
Lastly, the third key point of the article is balancing organizational resources, expenses, and profits so as to survive, especially during hard economic times like the global economic recession. This issue comes out when the American Greetings Corp reduces the number of working hours for less productive products like greeting cards and increases the production time for more productive things (Joan 81).
A human resource management student may benefit from this article by learning the concepts of employee motivation, organizational change, and change management as well as management proper. The concept of employee motivation can enable the human resource management student to understand that employees are motivated either intrinsically or extrinsically. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the employees themselves as a result of passion, while extrinsic motivation comes from external rewards, one of them being good pay as well as promotion, as addressed in the article.
The student may also learn about the concept of organizational change and how to manage it. Through the article, He or she could be able to learn and understand that organizational change is inevitable, especially due to stiff competition in the contemporary business environment and harsh economic times, which force organizations to restructure and revise their policies to be in line with the available resources.
The student may also understand that organizational change needs to be properly planned before it is implemented. Managers are supposed to seek the views of the employees about the change and offer them the necessary training so as to allay their fears about the change, which causes resistance to the change and sometimes, high turnover rates as it happened with Kodak.
Lastly, the student of human resource management may learn from the article the concept of managing proper, which is about achieving organizational goals using human (employees), financial and physical resources.
A student of human resource management may get the opportunity to understand that management entails planning, coordinating, and controlling the resources which are there to achieve the organizational aims and objectives in a timely manner. The student may understand the fact that human resource managers should be able to align the organizational goals with the available resources and also be ready and able to make the necessary changes in the organizational functions, processes, and procedures to deal with the organization to achieve its goals.
The student must note that planning should not be on a reactive basis but on a proactive basis, which enables the human resource managers to anticipate challenges and put proper mechanisms to address those problems. Controlling entails the regulation of the human resource capital of an organization with the aim of directing it to the most productive areas to maximize the profits and minimize the costs and expenses.
Work Cited
Rigdon, J. I. “Workplace: Using Lateral Moves to Spur Employees.” Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition). 1992: 81. Print.