Topic > HR Issues in Laying and Downsizing Employees

This article talks about issues with Amazon under the new minimum wage law recently passed to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by Amazon. Since Amazon has to pay employees more, it is now looking to eliminate monthly bonuses and stock grants, as well as cut some employee hours as well. This move by the company is also known as layoffs or downsizing. Instead of giving employees more working hours, they are using different machines and technologies to implement more automated machines, by doing so they can reduce the additional wages they are costing them. The article also mentions how Amazon has garnered plaudits for raising the minimum to $15 an hour for its workers, however this has come at an expense and the fact that warehouse workers are no longer eligible to receive monthly bonuses and stock awards. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay This article contains some of the major HR issues. The first in this article is about employee layoffs and downsizing by increasing the use of technology to replace workers. The other HR issue is the elimination of monthly bonuses and stock grants, both of these issues affect employee morale. Layoffs and downsizing are a very serious and important issue in human resources. In this article Amazon is trying to use machinery technology to replace workers. Amazon's response to the wage increase is to cut other benefits and jobs to keep expenses low. They think that using mechanization and machines will be less expensive than paying workers the new minimum wage. By using this approach by Amazon, currently employed workers will receive fewer hours of work per week or, even worse, lose their jobs to a machine. This is a common problem nowadays, cutbacks are a typical problem in the workforce due to several reasons such as cutting of work expenses or the worker not performing admirably. Layoff is not so easy for a company to decide to cut some workers' jobs, but there are effects and consequences for the employee and for the company. One of the main problems that a company faces with the dismissal of employees is that the organization will work harder they will probably not be able to perform competently and adequately to achieve their goals. How workers respond to the organization's retrenchment strategy is another way the company or employer could be affected. This shows that downsizing can reduce labor expenses, however if companies irrationally cut workers' hours, at that point workers' commitment will be affected by employers' action. On the other hand, workers may also not be as efficient because they are losing their monthly bonuses and stock awards. (Ramlall et al., 2104). Worker morale is also affected, as they may be stressed about expanding the remaining task at hand, stressed about being the next person in line to be fired, and even supervisors giving them much greater and greater work burden. This shows that worker morale and work efficiency would both be affected. job enlargement is an expansion of job duties and obligations to make a position further difficult.This could ultimately cause debates or contention with their managers if workers continue to be given more tasks. This article contains a couple of tips for organizations and businesses. The main suggestion concerns the competence and appropriateness of the IT approach when it comes to hiring more workers. The use of machines would broaden the adequacy as it would have a lower chance of making mistakes where a human worker can make mistakes more frequently than machines. Likewise, machines and mechanization help increase consumer loyalty as they would make procedures such as packing shipments quicker and more effective. This will satisfy the customer as they have saved time. The other implication for the company is that, over the long period of time, the company will be able to save more on operating costs because it can spend a one-time cost on new machinery and use it for a long period of time. time. Furthermore, in this case they will save more by eliminating monthly bonuses which would cost more if they kept those plus the minimum wage increase. Sooner or later, they may be able to shoulder the expense of the car and start profiting from it. Machinery and automation will not only affect the company, but will also affect the workers themselves. The first tip for workers is that they may benefit from the minimum wage increase, but overall they may actually lose more money than before as organizations attempt to reduce or eliminate benefit bonuses and weekly hours to reduce costs. Even though employees might lose in this situation, supervisors would expect more from workers since they technically get a raise in their salary. Therefore, workers are not really paid more over the long period of time since they are working for their money. Employer stability is another meaning in this article. Since the machines and new technology used could perform the task for the organization, the workers may be fired right away or they may fear being fired. This would affect their morale and efficiency as workers who were not fired might think that if they are the next employee to leave the company. Villano, M. (2007). argues that workers connect with each other (Villano, M. 2007). Therefore, in case a worker is fired and never works with the organization again, the rest of the workers may panic, affecting the work they are doing. The use of different machinery and technologies not only affects both companies and workers, but also has a huge impact on society. This can have both a positive and negative impact on the public. In case organizations like Amazon come up with machinery and other technologies to do most of the work instead of sourcing workers and paying them more; at that point this would have a positive effect on the general public. On the other hand, if the use of different machinery and technology did not work, the organization would need to come back and hire more workers now with an increased minimum wage, and this would result in an increase in labor expenses. This would increase the cost of goods and this would affect the general public in a negative way. If this happened, stakeholders and partners would also be financially harmed. Organizations may not pass on all of the increased costs due to the highly competitive nature of their organizations. For example, organizations such as supermarkets would not have the ability to fully increase their prices because there are numerous other supermarkets.