Uni versity of the people homework

In this assignment we are going to study The Factors that have the most influence over work behavior from the Book “Management Principles” by Carpenter M., and Bauer T., Erdogan B. We will compare all these factors to the approaches SAS a major software company takes towards its employees. The Five Factors that have the strongest influence over work behavior are Job performance, Organizational Citizenship, Absenteeism and Turnover. Job performance basically refers to the level in which employees complete all the task or factors included in the job description. The way one can measure job performance is through quality and quantity of work done by an employee, the time it took to complete the job, and how well and accurately the job was completed etc. (Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, n.d.). A real life example to measure job performance would be to keep track of the number of sales made by a Sales employees, number of clients an employee brings to the company. Job performance helps to decide whether an employee should be given more or given less work in the future, whether they should be promoted or fired, or whether they should be given a raise etc. (Carpenter et al., n.d.) There are five main predicators of Job performance. General mental abilities, Organizational justice and interpersonal relations, stress, positive work attitudes and personality. SAS ensures that their employees turn in the best job performance by making sure they provide Organizational justice and interpersonal relation. They do this by building a strong trust between employee and employer. In 2010 SAS CEO Jim Goodnight did not layoff any employees during the recession in return for loyalty (Carpenter et al., n.d.). They also make sure that their employees are stress free, SAS discourage working above 8 hours per day, Provide leave for family matters and provides many athletic fields to keep their employees physically and mentally healthy. So from the case study it seems pretty clear that SAS is doing a lot to make sure job performance is at its best. Organizational Citizenship Behaviors are the voluntary work employees do to help others in the organization and overall benefit the company. Some of the voluntary work an employee can do is show new employees how the company works, provide helpful suggestions to the company, and do other voluntary work. Positive voluntary work helps a company operate smoothly (Carpenter et al., n.d.). There are four predicators of Organizational Citizenship. Organizational justice and interpersonal relations, older employees, positive work attitudes and personality. We already talked about how SAS takes care of Organizational justice and interpersonal relations, positive work attitudes and personality. We also know from the case study that SAS have a turnover rate of 4%, which means that most of the older employees are still present in the company. All the four predicator are very well managed by SAS resulting in good work behavior. Absenteeism refers to the unscheduled absence of employees from work. Absenteeism are very costly and if not managed correctly can cause the company even more loss. The reason absenteeism are costly is because when an employee is absent he need to be replaced and the time used to recruited another employee will be wasted and progress will go down. Absenteeism is cause by health issues. Example a person may take a day off if he is having fever or a month of if had an accident. Most companies provide a sick leave but there are many other reason for which an employee might need to take some days off example taking care of a family member, studying for an exam. So to avoid unexpected absences a company should provide a single paid time off policy that would allow workers to balance work and life. There are four predicators of Absenteeism. Health problems, work and life balance issues, Negative work attitudes and younger employees. SAS takes care of health problems by offering free on-site health care for employees, covers dependents at their fully staffed primary medical care center. As for the work and life balance issues SAS offers unlimited sick leave in which employees can take care of other matters in their lives. SAS conducts regular employee satisfaction surveys and takes actions in response to the results therefore eliminating negative work attitudes. According to Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan (n.d.) younger employees are more absent than older employees. To solve this problem SAS reduced their turnover rate by 16% which means older employees are still employed by the company thus reducing the loss caused by absentees. The last of the four factor that influence work behavior is Turnover. As we already know SAS has been ranked on Fortune magazine’s best places to work list every year since the list was first published. It was also has a turnover rate of less than 4% which is 16% lower than the average of 20% The 5 main reasons company have to deal with turnover are Low performance, Negative work attitudes, Stress, Personality, and younger employees. We have already talked about the length SAS takes to eliminate Negative work attitudes and Stress and ill personality. To make sure there is always high performance SAS motivates its employees giving its employees opportunities to work on interesting and challenging projects. Furthermore, the company removes obstacles for employees. Tasks, policies, rules, and meetings that could slow down productivity are eliminated. Younger employees are more likely to leave a company so SAS takes action to reduce turnover rate up to less than 4% which results in both younger and older employees staying with the company. TO sum it all up I agree SAS is doing a great job keeping their employees motivated and productive. There methods prove to be beneficial for both employees and the company. As for SAS the above comparison proves they agree with the policies of the Four Factors That Have the Strongest Influence over Work Behaviors. Reference Carpenter M., and Bauer T., Erdogan B. (n.d.) Management Principles. Retrieved from https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/386421/mod_resource/content/1/management-principles-v1.1.pdf