ACTIVITY 1 - RASPBERRY

“Professional Networks and Human Resources” 

1. Some well-known executives say that the most valuable asset they have in their companies is their employees. Do you agree with this statement?

I am absolutely agree with this statement because the employees define the quality of the service offered by the company and it is up to them to do their best taking important decisions which make profits for a company. In the other hand, you could imagine how bad for a company could it be a demotivated or disappointed employee? I would say the work atmosphere is also very important. From my experiences when I was looking for a job before FUE gave me the opportunity to work for Holcim, the main target in an interview was to investigate about what the interviewer thought about the employees and the atmosphere working in the place.

Do you think companies apply it as a policy to all the employees of the company or does it just apply to some of them? Do you think that your company follows this principle in their management practices?”

This time and again from my experience I would say big companies forget completely workers when they can find easily a replacement. I mean workers with no experience or no studies. In fact, I guess they are wrong because they are the most important value and they will work for a company with the same loyalty or effort as the best director in the company. During this time of crisis in Spain, HR departments are deploying a wrong recruitment campaign, because they all are taking advance of students really skilled but with no experience. One quote to summarize the answer:

‘’If you pay peanuts you get monkeys’’

  2. Should job creation be an explicit policy for companies?

 No, I do not think so. It is really important to keep and do not stop seeking for talent, but I would say, job creation is not an important policy if you already have a great work team. A great policy which includes this one could be keeping talent, offering the best service in the sector improving the incomes of a company and expanding the business in other countries or developing a new product hiring more people. As I said, the first position of the chain is a great and talented team work

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3. Statistically speaking, a far greater number of incidents take place in nuclear reactor during a shutdown than during a regular operational cycle. Does this tell us something about human resources practices?

There are some approaches of best HR practices:

Careful recruitment and selection; for example if you hire skilled people to solve difficult problems, they will not have trouble to solve daily problems but if you do the opposite, bigger problems will come up.

Extensive remuneration systems; for example, If you pay bonuses you will retain talented workers and they will be motivated just in case they are involved in a boring task.

Team working and flexible job design; Almost the same explanation than the last HR practice described before. If HR department is worried about the situation of each worker in a company, would be easy to take action and propose an improvement or a change just in order to retain talent.

Training and Learning; this is one of the meanings of ‘take action’ said before. The employee would be more interested in his/her work position and ready to be involved by biggest project. One quote for this:

CFO asks CEO: ‘’What happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave us?’’

CEO: ‘’What happens if we do not, and they stay?’’

Employee involvement; It helps to keep the employee informed about the key changes in the organization and keep him/her motivated, making the worker feel important.

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