Check profiles for Costco United Parcel Service JC Penney Co

Check profiles for Costco, United Parcel Service, JC Penney Company and Steelcase Inc. and respond to the following questions.

QUESTION:

What learning techniques do these companies share? How are they different?

What are the learning techniques which you believe make them effective.

Compare and contrast these techniques with the ones currently in use at your workplace. What recommendations could you make to your present manager to improve employee learning?

PROFILES:

Costco - Many executives think shareholders are best served if they do all they can to hold down costs, including the costs of labor. Costco’s approach is different, in terms employees are treated. Sinegal says, “Paying high wages – absolutely makes good business sense. Most people agree that we’re the lowest cost provider. Yet we pay the highest wages. So it must mean we get better productivity. It’s axiomatic in our business – you get what you pay for.”

UPS – Service providers are trained to perform their tasks over and over again without wasted effort. There are five habits while driving so make everything efficient especially while delivering packages, being observed or evaluated by their supervisors they effectively get rewarded with t-shirts, free lunches, and the like. UPS give its supervisor’s personal digital assistants (PDAs) to use in road evaluations or sometimes they ride along to observe if the service provider is following procedures and adhering to our health and safety policies.

JC Penney – In an effort to cut down unscheduled absenteeism, JC Penney implemented a program that is staffed by a team of employees to work on this problem. If an employee is sick and cannot come to work for more than three days, the employees must call Penney’s Power Line team. The team determines the type of benefit, if any, the employee can receive. The team notifies the leader of the department where the employee works and sends the employee the necessary forms to complete. The Power Line team follows up with absent employees until they return to work. The Power Line team also discovered that only a third of all absences were related to an illness. The rest of the times absences were related to having to be somewhere else or the individual just didn’t feel like going to work. They also found that authoritarian leaders who make employees feel it’s “their way or the highway” created more absences than leaders who make employees feel important.

Steelcase Inc. – Team members are cross-trained, as time permits, during their regular shifts. Often team members stay after their shifts to watch how other employees perform certain operations. When Steelcase’s leaders decided to create teams and empower its employees, it realized that barriers between workers and leaders would have to be removed. As a result, only customers now have reserved parking spaces. Whenever new equipment is needed, a team of employees who are responsible for running the equipment make the decision about what to buy and how it should be installed on the shop floor. Steel case’s workers are 45 percent more productive than its competitors, turning a customer’s order into a finished product in three days instead of three weeks, thus reducing costs. Team of employees working with suppliers have cut raw material inventory by half.

Solution

1. The learning technique used by Costco includes its strategies that provide more importance to employees than shareholders and this strategy is different from other companies who try to reduce on labor cost. Costco provide the high wages to employees and this helps to create employee commitment towards the organization and thereby increases productivity. Costco is selling the products at low cost which helps to attract more customers towards Costco and is achieved by the hard work put by the employees and the employees learn the customer service with dedication.

The learning technique used by UPS focuses on making every effort efficient which differentiates it from others. This includes observing the employees and rewarding them when they perform efficiently. UPS also provide personal digital assistance to the stakeholders to use in road evaluations or sometimes they ride along the service providers to analyze whether the service provider is following the procedures and adhere to the health and safety policies.

The learning technique in JC Penney is to find the reason for absenteeism and they have implemented a plan to reduce absenteeism which demands the employee to call the Power Line team if the employee cannot come to work for more than three days due to illness. The Power Line Team would follow up with the employees until they return to work. The learning technique focusing on absenteeism makes JC Penney different from others.

In Steel Inc. the learning technique involves giving cross training to team members during regular shift as per the time availability and employees stay after the shifts to watch other employees performing certain operations. In order to remove the barrier between leader and worker they started providing reserved parking spaces only for customers. Steel Inc provides the decision making opportunity on new equipment to the team of employees responsible for running the equipment and this approach makes its learning technique different from others.

2. In my opinion the learning technique used by Costco giving more importance to employees makes them effective because the employees are integral part of organization and when the employees are treated well they will definitely lead the organization to success. The learning technique used in UPS to provide rewards would be much effective as the employees would get motivated much by the rewards and try to put maximum effort to achieve maximum efficiency. Among JC Penney’s strategies I think the focus on finding the reason for absenteeism would help the organization to understand the reason resist the employees from going to work and the organization’s approach towards employees can be shaped to achieve employee commitment. Among techniques used by Steel Inc. its move towards eliminating the barrier between worker and leader and involve the employees in decision making process would be much effective. This approach makes the employees feel that the organization value their efforts and motivate them to work hard cutting the raw material inventory to half and produce finished goods in less time.

3. The learning technique used in my workplace provide reward for employees, equal opportunity for decision making and express the opinions on work related discussions, but the customer and shareholder interests are given most importance. The employees are served next to these and the company tries to compromise by cutting on employee wages first. This makes us very much de-motivated. We daily face much issue in workplace and low productivity due to increased absenteeism. In my opinion the main reason for absenteeism is the employee dissatisfaction. Hence I would recommend my manager to identify the reason behind absenteeism like JC Penney did and try to give more importance to employees like Costco. This would help to reduce absenteeism in our team and increase the productivity.