The blog that I recently read on why shouldn’t managers use stack ranking to assess employees’ performance sparks my interest in motivation at workplace.

Max Nisen believes that the ranking system is terrible because it doesn’t measure the performance of employees accurately and it in fact, discourages the workers.

I totally agree with what Nisen suggests that is to new system that ranks people not in a intimidating way. Moreover, the ranking system should put more focus on “consistent feedback and how people should improve”. I believe this is crucial because simply sorting out the poor and high performers is not the ultimate goal of any company. Every manager should at least try to help those workers who are regarded as low in efficiency out so that it can not only help to improve the overall effectiveness, but also substantially reduce the staff turnover rate. Only the people who grow with the company have strong connection and loyalty to the company.

Microsoft terminates the use of stack ranking and innovate a new performance review program that promote “teamwork”, “employee growth” and etc. Their HR leader Lisa Brummel summarizes the reason for doing so: “There is nothing we cannot accomplish when we work together as One Microsoft.” This can’t be more encouraging and motivating to their employees.

Promoting such a pleasant organizational structure will help Microsoft to grow in a sustainable manner.

Here is a video on ex-Microsoft manager describes effect of stack ranking.

Source:

http://www.businessinsider.com/stack-ranking-employees-is-a-bad-idea-2013-11

http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-just-killed-its-controversial-stack-ranking-employee-review-system-2013-11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRuUm2yGYVg

Julia Zhang previously blogged about the expansion strategy of Air Canada to the China’s market. I always believe that this could be a brilliant idea before she pointed out that Air Canada is actually struggling to cut its deficit.

“The huge cost of expanding international flights and increasing production of planes in a short amount of time” can bring risks to the operation of Air Canada. However, with the rapid growth in number of people from China who want to either study in or travel to Canada, I believe that the starting costs will be eventually covered by the large revenue that will be generated later on.

As a Chinese student to go back every year with extremely expensive flight ticket, I feel the importance, the urgency as well as expected returns of increasing the number of the international flights. Launching more international flights should be an opportunity for Air Canada that may help to attract a significant amount of potential customers (Increase in flights means increase in flexibility in time schedule and possibly decrease in price for each ticket).

Air Canada was the“only airline that offers intelrnational flight across the Pacific Ocean”, why couldn’t it be the largest airline company that offer these flights?

Source:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/juliazhang/2013/10/07/canadian-airlines-expand-in-asia-pacific-market/

After reading Kristina’s blog, I am convinced that Telus thrives on its “corporate culture”. They create pleasant working conditions for their employees, allowing them to work at home. Also, Telus is creating shared value by donating their revenue to charities and volunteering their local community.

However, I believe that these are not the only success-determining factors that Telus possesses. As a customer of Telus, I sincerely understand the quality of the services they offer. The staff who helped me to set up internet connection was friendly and efficient. Also, the Telus person who was on the phone to answer my random questions was patient and professional. Therefore, Telus gave enormous consumer satisfaction to me and I believe many other people feel the same way.

Another way that Telus use to distinguish themselves from its competitors is that they offer extreme data plan with 7GB that no other carrier has. The flexibility of their plans is another point of difference they have against Bell, Rogers and etc.

By doing so, Telus is conducting its business in a sustainable way that it takes into account its customers, its employees, the society as well as its shareholders.

Click on the link to view a short video about Telus plan

Sources:

Telus Corp’s future is friendly – and full of success

http://www.imore.com/rogers-vs-bell-vs-telus-which-canadian-iphone-5s-iphone-5c-carrier-should-you-get

People usually find it hard to relate the tedious numbers in Accounting and the advanced program in Information Technology. However, it is undoubtedly that IT is essential to accounting in many ways.

For a large firm (i.e. Apple), it will be impossible to store all of their cash flow statements, income statements in a warehouse. The implementation of information technology can help company to store the accounting information into databases and make it easier to find the information whenever they are needed. Also, it enables the company to back-up the important data in case they lose it.

The recent development of “cloud” signify another advancement of the combination of accounting and technology management. This advancement significantly reduce the cost of buying hard-drives and some software by providing online storage spaces where you can have an access to it no matter where you are.

Click on the picture to view a short video that explains the advantage of using a Cloud Accounting Software.

Source: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/effectiveness-information-technology-accounting-applications-2102.html

Unicore is a multinational, technology-based company that is dealing with recycling precious metals and manufacturing product from the recycled metals. In 2013, Unicore is recognized as the world’s most sustainable company in recognition of its environmentally friendly, socially friendly and economically friendly practices.

The criteria being used when judging the degree of sustainability includes “waste productivity, CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio, leadership diversity, and employee turnover”

From my perspective, conducting the business in a sustainable way not only means that business should keep up their revenue stream for a long time, but also indicates that business should contribute back to the society (reduce turnover and etc.) and generate little or no externalities. By doing so, business is creating shared value that benefit the company and the society as a whole.

The company’s business model is crucial since it determines the strategy that the company is enforcing. If the business model is created with the aim to make the world better off while maintaining high profit, then the company is achieving sustainability.

Find out more about Unicore by clicking this link: Unicore 2011

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/01/23/the-worlds-most-sustainable-companies/

As Michael Porter suggested, company should focus on one strategy to develop a comparative advantage against its competitors and never try to combine two or more strategies or the company would fall into a dilemma that is “stuck in the middle”.

However, in my opinion, in such a volatile and fast-changing modern market condition, concentrating on a single direction can be disastrous because you never know when will an “accident” pop up and crash your business.

For example, Nokia corporation was the largest mobile phone producing company and occupied a market share of 32% by the end of 2010 and now they are only left with 3%. Their mobile phone business was just sold to Microsoft of a price of US$7.17 billion this September.

It is not hard to tell that the strategy that Nokia was using before the technology innovation was providing relatively cheap, good quality functional phones which can be concluded as a low-cost strategy. In 2008, Nokia had a market share of approximately 60% which seems that Porter’s theory is working so well and Nokia will never be tumbled out of the throne. At that time, the operating system of Nokia’s smart phone was the dominant one and Nokia had no pressure to improve its system but continued to offer cheaper keyboard phones and smart phones and beat its competitors by price. Nevertheless, this solely strategy doesn’t prove itself to be sustainable and result in the breakdown of Nokia empire.

It is not bad to keep the company’s cost down but implementing differentiation to the products will help a company to survive longer.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#2000_to_present

During the economic recession in United State in 2008, Honeywell International Inc. experienced are dramatic drop in demand for their products. Usually, for an labour-intensive company like Honeywell, they will make a decision to reduce the staff trimmer in order to reduce the operating costs of the company. However, the CEO of Honeywell, Dave Cote chose to survive this economic downturn in a different way.

He believed that to make a some employees to be on leave without pay for short period so that no one get fired and everyone can therefore “feel better”. However, I think this is not a wise decision. The employee with a better efficiency will feel uncomfortable for the loss they suffer during the leave. They could enjoy a higher wages if company simply decide to have a job cut. Some of them eventually decided to leave Honeywell due to their insatisfaction. For those employees with a lower efficiency, they get to be “on a vacation” for a longer period of time and they couldn’t even survive with the little wage they earn. Keeping them to work in company cannot bring any extra value and it could be damaging especially during the recession period.

Source: http://honeywell.com/About/Pages/ceooftheyear.aspx

http://hbr.org/2013/06/honeywells-ceo-on-how-he-avoided-layoffs/ar/1

The second day of US government seems to have a relatively insignificant impact on US’s as well as other countries’ economy, but what if last for a month or maybe even longer?

According to statistics, almost eight hundred thousands of government workers have stopped receiving salary and this is a big issue for majority of them. As a result, the sales of some business are anticipated to decrease which could result in a reduction in the workers’ working time as well as wages. These consequences may eventually go into a vicious circle and cause a severe damage to US’s economic system.

For some Canadian companies that export products to the U.S., they may expect their goods to stay at the border for a longer time and therefore cause inefficiency.

Canadians should be aware that Canada’s economy are stable yet susceptible to variability in U.S. and Europe since many Canadian businesses somewhat restricted by other countries’ regulations.

Sources:http://globalnews.ca/news/876912/us-businesses-worry-about-a-prolonged-shutdown/

http://globalnews.ca/news/873079/us-govt-shutdown-bad-news-for-canadian-economy-at-tipping-point/