Pre Employment Tests Purpose Effectiveness Legality

TOPIC 2 4

Topic 2

Do you think there is a difference between diversity management and affirmative action?

Both diversity management and affirmative action recognize the growing diversity in the workplace. However, the two differ by the manner of administration and the goal they seek to realize. Diversity-management refers to actions or policies that an organization takes to ensure inclusivity of all employees into the organization’s structure and culture (Sharma, 2016). Thus, diversity-management is behavioral and seeks to change the organizational culture to enhance inclusion of employees from different backgrounds and allow everyone to perform their best (Sharma, 2016). Conversely, affirmative action programs are implemented to increase the representation of certain marginalized groups in an organization (Sharma, 2016). Therefore, affirmative action is based on numbers and focuses on increasing representation, while diversity management is behavioral and aims at enhancing inclusivity in the workplace (Sharma, 2016).

Organizational-Level goal that could be incorporated into business strategy

The organizational-level goal that the organization seeks to pursue is increasing overall profitability as measured by the net profit margin. The net profit margin assesses overall profitability by looking at how much profit the company ploughs back after paying off all its expenses.

Organizational level goal: to increase overall profitability as indicated by ploughed –back net profits

Strategy One: reducing employees’ working hours to cut down on costs

· S – Reduce working hours for employees whose full time presence is not necessary such as finance and Information Technology personnel

· M – The organization reduces the monthly salaries and wages expenditure by 50 percent

· A - The remaining employees are able to work effectively and there are no personnel shortages that threaten the effective fulfillment of customers’ orders

· R - The 50 percent reduction in the monthly wage bill pushes monthly operational costs down by 50 percent, leading to an increase in net profits. Net profit is the calculated difference between sales revenues and total costs.

· T- At the end of every quarter, the organization will measure overall efficiency using efficiency ratios such as assets turnover and inventory turnover ratios. These will provide a view of how efficiently the available human resources help to generate revenues (Fleetwood & Hesketh, 2010). The company can then decide whether or not the decision to reduce working hours was feasible

Strategy 2: introduce a referral reward and incentive program to increase sales

· S- customers earn points for referring new customers and can use the points to purchase products in the company

· M – The measurable output is the number of new customers who purchase under the referral program every week. For instance, the target could be that 100 new customers purchase the company’s products under the referral program every week

· A – 5 new customers are referred every day

· R – The referral program increases sales by say 10 percent, which in turn increases overall sales revenues by 10 percent and profits by between 5 and 7 percent.

· T – The organization measures the effectiveness of the referral program at the end of every month by assessing the costs of running the program against realized revenues.

Strategy 3: Training all employees on personal selling to increase sales

· S – Organize a one-week training where all of the company’s employees are trained on effective personal selling to enhance their capacity to sell effectively to their friends, relatives, and other customers in their social networks

· M – The measurable output is the number of trained employees who are able to convert their skills into sales. The target is that every employee will use their personal selling skills to make at least 5 sales every week.