On Your Desk

On Your Desk

The world of industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology can be quite varied. There are many ways to apply industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology, and our tasks can vary significantly even from one hour to the next. It is not unusual to be pulled from an ethical problem to a legal problem to a task design issue and more. This is part of what makes applying industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology challenging and exciting.

Scenario

You have been busy as the director of human capital. The company has reached a total of thirty-two employees as of this month, and you are continuing to hire and develop policies. Your desk is a mess with pending tasks, and today is the day you are going to get caught up. Make sure you address each task as described so you can go home and enjoy your weekend!

Directions

You are to complete the following five assignments utilizing the principles of industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology and the assignments should be supported by a minimum of eight scholarly resources:

1. You checked your voice mail and learned that one of your best salespeople has to have a major surgery next week. He has shared that he is having the surgery on his right knee. He has a week of vacation time left but will be out for about ten weeks during recovery. The first two weeks his doctor has told him that he will probably be taking significant doses of pain medication and will not be able to do much. For the following eight weeks, he will have physical therapy at minimum three times per week and has been told he should not drive. He has been working for the company for about eight months now. The company has a short-term disability policy, but that covers only 60% of weekly income and starts to pay seven days after the injury/event. He wants to know whether he will have a job when he comes back and what, if anything, he can do from home. His job is outside sales. You are concerned that the sales department cannot reach the current goals with a vacancy on the team, but you also have to consider that whatever precedent you set in this decision may impact a similar decision in the future, which may concern a less productive employee. Before you call him back, you have decided that you are going to e-mail the owners of the company to run your thoughts by them.
   1. Compose an e-mail to the owners explaining the situation and your recommendation for action.
   2. Communicate the importance of the decision from a policy-setting perspective and long-term implications of any decision.
      • Include a mention of potential legal issues, including the Family Medical Leave Act.
      • Explain any additional concerns about equitable treatment and include your recommendation for how to handle the situation and the response to the employee.
2. You are asked to contribute to the company website by producing a blog each month. This month, your topic is employee recruitment.
   1. Develop a blog discussing the importance of tailoring recruitment strategies to the target candidate pool.
   2. Provide clear, specific examples to support your points.

Search the Argosy University Online library resources for titles on how to write a blog. (Academic Resources > Library > Launch Library > Click on Find Books and more > Select ebrary > In the search bar, type in the word “blog” and click Search)

1. You have been asked to participate in a roundtable presentation at the local university. You will be in front of an audience of undergraduate students considering industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology as a career field. Each member of the roundtable has five to seven minutes to present. For this portion of the assignment, you are to develop an annotated outline of the presentation. You will present the differences between a career in human resources (HR) and one in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology and provide examples of the practical applications of industrial/organizational (I/O). For your information:
   1. An annotated outline is an outline of your main points.
   2. Under each main point, one should have two to three supporting statements related to the content of the discussion and parenthetical citations that support those points.

Search in the Argosy University Online Library to learn how to write a resource in APA format.

1. Your bosses would like to work on employee wellness. The company has some excellent benefits but is concerned that an unhealthy population could dramatically increase premium costs for the next open enrollment. The company owners are interested in adding to their benefits offerings. They currently offer major medical coupled with a health savings account. The premiums for employees are already considerably low when compared to other organizations, and the company contributes to the health savings account. The company offers two hours of paid health time per week for employees who have committed to a regular exercise schedule; but at this point, only about 30% of employees are taking advantage of the opportunity. There is no exercise facility in the office building, but there is a large fitness center about 3 miles down the road. Most of the employees have desk jobs and are typically inactive at work. Many eat at their desks and only get up a few times per day. Work is in general busy—lots of new developments and projects and not a great deal of free time. Suggest an additional offering that would promote employee health and well-being. In approximately a page, answer the following:
   1. Construct an e-mail to your bosses with your suggestions and support them with evidence.
   2. Briefly explain the idea of implementing an exercise facility, potential costs and return on investment, benefits and potential drawbacks, and any implementation requirements. Your e-mail can be written in a Microsoft Word format.
2. As the company grows, more and more situations arise that require written policies to guide employee behavior. As a forward-thinking technology company, you have pushed the boundaries of the traditional workplace. Nonetheless, many of the issues that have plagued workplaces continue to exist. You have heard several employees commenting on how a particular employee spends a lot of time on Facebook. The employee is a technical writer who does submit all of her assignments on time. She does her job reasonably well but does not regularly exceed expectations. Some employees have complained that the content of some of the pages she views is offensive. She follows several political and religious pages. She also receives a daily e-mail that contains jokes usually focused on politics or religion but sometimes containing racial references. A few employees have commented that the information is potentially offensive, but no one has been specific about being personally offended. You believe that it is in the company’s best interest to create written policies addressing these issues. On the basis of the situation, perform the following:
   1. Create a draft of a policy that will be included in the employee handbook.
   2. Reference harassment in the workplace and the federal legislation enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

All your five assignments should be compiled into one Microsoft Word document where each assignment is presented as a section. Each section should start on a new page. Use at least eight scholarly sources to support your points, citing them using APA format. The document as a whole does not need to be in APA format. Instead, take a realistic approach to each task. The different components of the assignment should reflect their unique nature. So length, formatting, tone, and style should change as you write e-mails, blogs, outlines, and policies.

The final assignment is meant to be a reflection of your desk at work and typical activities you might encounter as an industrial/organizational (I/O) professional. While you have a lot to do, none of the tasks should be exceptionally long. As you write, consider the purpose of each task and your audience and the format of these documents that one would see in a typical workplace.Your assignment should be written in a clear, concise, and organized manner appropriate to each task, purpose, and audience; demonstrate ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources, where applicable; and display accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Solution Preview

It has come to my action one of our salesperson will be undergoing a major knee surgery. I acquired this information after going through the voice mail since I have been committed in the last days. Though, the salesperson is on vacation and might…