Proposed HR Program for CompuLearn Essay Example for Free

Proposed HR Program for CompuLearn Essay CompuLearn is a private sector provider of IT-based teaching and learning programmes in business and management based in the UK, with corporate headquarters in Preston, Lancashire and with trading centers in Mumbai, Nairobia and Dubai. Its current global market is focused in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, with 200 education centers in 30 countries. CompuLearn partners with UK universities which validates its programs so that   students are able to qualify in the University programs leading to academic degrees. Its current manpower complement numbers 50 employees mostly based in the corporate office in Preston, Lancashire doing the following functions: Program Development, Customer Service, HR, Marketing, Finance, Sales, IT, Quality Assurance. CompuLearn has embarked on a mission to be market leader in e-learning delivery of University validated programs and foremost learning company in the world. It is on an expanded growth program and it adopted a new strategy to extend to 500 education centers in 60 countries over a span of 3 years. The role of HR is very critical in this new strategy, which is to attract top IT experts. It could be a relatively easy task if not for the following: 1. There is a high turn over in the IT industry in UK and new employees leave after only one month for a new job that offers better pay. 2. CompuLearn has a limited training system in place. Its strategy is to recruit highly trained staff instead of training them in house. The allocated budget for training is almost used up and was used to train the Sales team. 3. Employees have limited management skills as they are mostly technical staff whose training is not in the soft skills development. 4. The company does not have a Performance Appraisal System in place. 5. The staff at the corporate headquarters do not have a comfortable relationship with the staff of the UK universities largely due to complaints of attitude. 6. The HR Director’s strength is in micro-managing and does not have expertise in long-term management plans for the company employees. The Limitations and Constraints Faced by the Company The HR Department will play a very strategic role in supporting the growth of CompuLearn. Among other things, it needs to address the following limitations and constraints faced by the company, whether internally caused or faced by the industry in general: 1. The high turn over rate in the IT industry in UK 2. The lack of a professional or well-developed training and development program for employees 3. The employees’ limited skills in management, customer service and other soft skills 4. The lack of a well-placed Performance Appraisal System 5. The not-so-friendly attitude of the academic staff of the Universities towards the company employees at the corporate headquarters 6. The limited knowledge and skills of the HR Director in long-term planning for the management of the employees Recommendations The HR strategies recommended are based on the following assumptions: 1. Budget The company is working on a limited budget, which is just around 30% of the  annual budget of 25,000 Euros. 2. Lead Department The HR Department will take the lead in implementing the strategies. The HR Director shall formally appoint the section heads to serve as lead persons in implementing the strategies in their respective sections. The HR Director has the free hand in creating working committees to participate in the entire process from planning to implementation. The process will be participatory and with some amount of consultation from the employees. 3. Timetable The strategies are proposed for implementation on a focused basis within the first year (Year 1 Month 1 to Month 12). Beginning Year 2 (Month 13) the focus of the activities will be on monitoring, evaluation, and implementation of improvements. 4. HR Management Perspective/Model Available literature identify different HR Management models that attempt to explain the various strategies adopted by different companies. General classifications fall under the â€Å"soft† and â€Å"hard† models, based on the definitions of employees considered as either â€Å"human† or â€Å"resource†. The hard versions consider employees as resource and adopt a rational approach to managing them, aligning their HR strategies with the strategies of the business. The soft version, on the other hand, considers employees as human and adopts strategies to train and develop them (Bratton and Gold, p. 5). The recommendations adopted in this case will be based more on the soft version of human resource management. Focus will be more on training and development as well as in developing commitment from employees. A limited form of the hard version will however allow the HR to link the strategies with the overall corporate strategy of the company. In analyzing the challenge faced by CompuLearn, a simplistic framework was designed around the following questions, based on the limitations/constraints faced by the company and to become the basis for the strategies: 1. On the high turn-over rate in the IT industry How can CompuLearn keep its employees from leaving the company after short- term engagement only? Or how can the company motivate its employees to stay longer? 2. On the lack of a professional training and development program Should the company train in-house or continue to hire experts from outside? 3. On the employees’ limited skills in management, customer service, and other soft skills. How can the employees learn the soft skills and apply them at work? 4. On the lack of a well-placed Performance Appraisal System Is there a need to formulate or adopt a Performance Appraisal System? 5. On the not-so-friendly attitude of the academic staff of the Universities towards the company employees at the corporate headquarters How can there be a more cordial relationship between the two parties? How can the company make the employees appreciate the importance of having good relations with the University staff? Can this be done through training or should the company replace those who transact with the University staff with other company employees, either through job rotation or job enrichment? 7. On the limited knowledge and skills of the HR Director in long-term planning for the management of the employees. Should the HR Director undertake refresher courses in management? Or should the company hire a new HR person who has the skills in long term planning to assist the HR Director? Below is a presentation of the proposed HR strategies and programs, in matrix form,   that can be implemented under the leadership of the HR Director. They are composed of both short term and long term strategies. The short-term strategies are those that can be immediately implemented, within the first six months from the time the recommendations will be adopted. The long term strategies are those that can be adopted over a longer period and on a continuing basis like the periodic reviews of policies and developing a system whereby improvements can take place every so often whenever warranted. It will be observed that most of the strategies will be newly introduced to the company and it can be expected that certain difficulties will be met. This will include among other things, resistance to the changes to be introduced, the difficulty of the HR Department to implement them for lack of the appropriate knowledge and skills, and with some â€Å"difficult† employees. This is all part of the process of the HR accepting the initial resistance  to the changes. The HR should be firm and consistent but at the same time adopting an attitude of openness and willingness to see through the improvements. Education and training are two important components of an empowered workforce. The saying that a company is only as good as its weakest employee is very much applicable here. Each employee is responsible for knowing about his company and performing according to the expectations set at the time of his engagement. However, it is the job of HR to find the employees who have the potential to learn more and continuously give them the opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills.

McMurphy is Not a Christ Figure in Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoo

McMurphy is Not a Christ Figure in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest      Ã‚  Ã‚   Literary fiction is littered with references to Christianity. It is very obviously a large and influential force in the western world so it is hardly surprising that a novel such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which is so questioning of our society and moral values, should be so full of references to what is arguably the basis of these values. What the question asks, however, is if the character of McMurphy is portrayed as a Christ figure. A Christ figure being a reflection of the New Testament messiah within the characters actions, beliefs and effect on those around him. The figure will then redeem his followers, lead them to salvation, be martyred and resurrected.    The similarities are prolific in their presence in certain parts of the novel, the very context of both stories shows similarities, both are dealing with an oppressed factor that is set free by an outsider who teaches and challenges the system in which the oppressed are caught.    The first allusion to the New Testament comes when the chief introduces the reader to the patient Ellis. Ellis' arms our outspread in the pose of crucifixion, an affectation caused by many treatments on the Electro-Shock Therapy(EST) table, a pose that McMurphy later adopts when he receives the treatment. Ellis also tells Billy Bibbitt before the fishing trip to be ` a fisher of men' one of Christ's instructions to his disciples. The purpose of the character seems to be an introduction for the reader to this theme and to have it introduced so early on both highlights the universal nature of the struggle that McMurphy and the patients face and also allows the reader to be ... ...erely alludes to Christ.    Works Cited Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Toronto, Ontario Canada: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, 1962. Kunz, Don. Symbolization in Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A Casebook on Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ed. George J. Searles. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1989. Pratt, John Clark. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: The Viking Press. 1973. Semino, Elena, and Swindlehurst, Kate. Metaphor and Mind Style in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Northern Light (online posting) Spring 1996. Unknown Author. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. (online posting)   

Parenting Techniques and Their Influences on Their Child’s Behavior and Habits Essay

Parenting techniques and beliefs are essential to the growth of any child. Parents instill habits, behaviors, and moral sense in to their children at an early age. Children benefit when parents engage themselves in to their child’s life. In saying that, parents also have to learn to adapt to what their child needs and teach them to assert themselves and become independent. Habits children pick up are usually either picked up from their parents or tolerated by their parents. It is the parent’s responsibility to assess what is right for their child and correct any bad habits they may learn along the way. Socioeconomic status is a huge factor in how a topic of parenting techniques can be studied. Any subject pertaining to parenting style and their influences can be linked to their social class. I will focus most of my discussion on the effects of overall parenting techniques and how socioeconomic factors and be linked to those techniques. Keywords: parenting styles, socioeconomic status, children Parenting Techniques and Their Influences on Their Child’s Behavior and Habits. Parenting techniques are a very important factor in the development of children. Children learn from an early age their moral senses, the behaviors and habits that are acceptable, and they develop an understanding on what role their actions can play in their life. Parenting along with socioeconomic status and culture are great determining factors in understanding how a child has learned from their parents and what to expect from that particular child. Parents evolve their parenting techniques as they learn how their child naturally behaves and as the child learns from what the parents have instilled. In the study conducted by Rubin, Nelson, Hastings, and Asendorpf (1999), the primary purpose was to investigate the relations between a child’s social inhibitions and the parent’s beliefs on how to best socialize their child. The study determined that both the mother and father tend to follow their child’s dispositional cues on how they should be socialized. The parents would adapt to how the child reacted in a social situation. For example, if the child exhibited shyness, they would alter how they went about socializing. In this study, I agree that parents do evolve with their children and with an agreed upon authoritative style of parenting, both the father and mother would act accordingly to what the study found. The study was a longitudinal study but only followed up once after the initial results; I believe the study would have been more effective had it been followed up until at the least early childhood. In terms of diversity, I feel this study could have been greatly improved upon. Differences may or may not occur between different cultures and races, but the researchers chose not to delve into any demographic exploration on the topic. The socioeconomic status of the parents could also have an effect on how they were able to socialize their child. If the family was from the working-class, they may not have time to socialize their children as effectively. Many factors could have made this study more effective in determining the socialization of the child and the parents’ influences. Children also take after their parents behaviors. Eating habits in children may be partly due to genetic dispositions but are greatly impacted by their environment and the behaviors they are being taught. Birch and Fisher’s (1998) main concern in their study was that childhood obesity was not just simply linked to genetic factors but also environmental factors. The risk of a child becoming obese with two obese parents is very high, opposed to having non-obese parents. This is due to the child following the bad eating habits of the parents. Genes and environment are highly correlated because they are both typically provided by parents. Obese parents would need to acknowledge that there might be an issue and act on it accordingly and instill good eating habits to their children. The researchers of this study also chose not to cover any demographic characteristics such as age or socioeconomic factors. A longitudinal study exhibiting ages when a child learns eating habits and gaining weight would improve the study. Socioeconomic status could also play a large role in what the child had available to eat. In many studies, it is said that many lower or working class families struggle with obesity due to the lack of funds to get healthier foods. Social status would also explain if the parents were not there to monitor what the child was eating. This would affect a lot of qualities in the study had it been chosen to be covered. Differences between race and social classes have been studied for many decades. In an article by Bodovski (2010), she stated that Lareau (2003) examined how socioeconomic status and race backgrounds influenced how parents raised their children and how the children benefited academically. The social class in which a family is raised shapes their values, behavior, and explains what they have available as resources. Middle-class and upper-middle-class families actively reinforce their involvement in their child’s learning and socialization. This social class has a wide array of opportunities to expose their children to including sports, art, dance, and many other extracurricular activities. Middle-class families also encourage their children to stand up for themselves through example and therefore the children learn cultural codes and behaviors that facilitate their achievement (Lareau, 2003). Lower-class and working-class families feel their primary responsibility to their children is taking care of their needs, such as housing, food, and clothing (Bodovski, 2010). These children usually socialize with other family members and their nearby community rather than participate in extracurricular activities. Typically, working-class families experience more hesitancies in asserting themselves and their children also learn these behaviors. Lareau (2003) did not find significant racial differences in parenting styles once social class differences between families were taken into consideration (Bodovski, 2010). This study was very well diversified. It focused predominately on socioeconomic status which is a large factor in how well a parent will have accessibility to resources for their children and it also explains how much time the children are around their parents. The study also features race and explained that there were no significant differences. Late-elementary school children were studied along with their parents, which I believe is a good age range to focus on for an effective study. These articles are just a few facets on how parents influence and teach their children. Overall, when looking at parenting techniques, it is always important to look at socioeconomic status and how the parents can adapt to their children’s needs.

Young Children s Early Arts - 1552 Words

Young children s early arts experiences are important in terms of effective early childhood educational practices and learning. This presentation will promote awareness of the various modes that young children (from birth to five years of age) can and should have experiences of art-based activities within educational settings, at home and within their communities. It was previously believed that in the early childhood years, arts education was not essential. The arts education available were only small opportunities, which allowed children to express themselves in a creative manner. This often took place without a great amount of teacher interference and was carried out separately from the real subjects found in the curriculum and the classroom (Phillips, Gorton, Pinciotti, Sachdev, 2010). Children use their innate senses of smell, touch, taste, sound and sight as they make sense of their world around them. 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