Instructions: Section A: Short Essay (40%) This essay question is designed to encourage you to think critically about one of the topics we have covere

Instructions:
Section A: Short Essay (40%)
This essay question is designed to encourage you to think critically about one of the topics we have covered during the semester and develop a scholarly discussion. You must use at least three scholarly references sourced from the readings and through the Swinburne library to support your discussion. Note that Encyclopedia entries (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica etc.) do not count as scholarly texts and should not be used in this essay.
Write 500-600 words essay on the following question:
“You are a promoter for UNICEF in Kuching. Your objective is to either obtain sign-ups for regular scheduled donations or at least get one off donation for the organization. Design three (3) strategies to encourage potential donors to donate. Use the persuasion tactics by Cialdini (2006), which we have learnt in the lecture and other scholarly references from your own research.”
Section B: Argument mapping exercise (20%)
How to compete on flexible benefits for non-office workers
In the past three years, life for many office workers has changed almost beyond recognition. The pandemic sparked the introduction of greater flexibility, and many office workers are now able to work from home and adapt their working hours around personal commitments.
However, despite the majority of flexible working benefits being designed for office workers, government statistics show that three-quarters of the UK workforce do not work in office-based roles. And although research from Sonovate shows that 67% of businesses acknowledge flexibility as an important benefit to attract and retain talent, the same type of flexibility cannot always be offered to non-office workers.
Why is this a challenge?
Flexibility continues to be a highly desired benefit for many employees, and employers understand they need to play the ‘flexibility game’ to attract the right people. Reed’s 2023 Salary Guides revealed that over a third (36%) of employees believe flexible working practices are an essential part of their working life.
However, flexibility plays out differently in the realities of a non-office work environment. Many non-office roles are not suitable for home or remote working, and with many businesses needing on-site employees to enable operations within particular hours, often adjustments to flexible working hours is simply not feasible.
For organizations in sectors such as hospitality, healthcare, or retail, for example, where workers typically operate in shift patterns, increasing flexibility would likely mean employers need to hire more staff to fill potential shift gaps to ensure no impact on productivity or periods of downtime.
In other words, in most cases, introducing the same level of flexibility that many office workers enjoy in these roles is likely to result in extra, indirect costs, or the need for additional resources. In the current financial climate, this is not a cost that many businesses can stomach.
However, with the importance of flexibility in the eyes of the employee evident, businesses unable to offer such benefits need to plug the gap with other solutions to retain staff and maintain a positive employee experience. This is crucial to ensure non-office workers are not being left behind as workplace perks continue to evolve.
Realistic expectations
Although flexibility is important for many employees, non-office workers often have realistic expectations when it comes to flexibility. When taking on their role, they typically understand how the nature of their work comes with some restrictions on flexibility, especially surrounding the location or hours they work, which are often fixed.
For example, our research has shown that those in typically non-office-based sectors, such as manufacturing and hospitality, are actually less likely to want flexi-time as a benefit, and would instead prefer a performance bonus to reward their workplace contributions. In addition, those in hospitality and retail are also much more likely to want brand discounts from their employer, when compared with professionals in other sectors.
When considering how to improve employee experience in non-office work environments, without increasing flexibility, employers need to think about what it is that really matters to employees and how alternative benefits can support this. For many workers – in both office and non-office roles – they want to feel valued and appreciated. One way employers can demonstrate this is by investing in their long-term growth, offering the opportunity for career development.
This in turn supports employee retention, as employees can visualise their place in the business in the long-term. Offering apprenticeships or additional training can help staff to develop within your company, and it can also help to improve overall employee experience.
Tailoring benefits
Another consideration is that employees in roles that involve manual labour are more likely to experience musculoskeletal conditions and workplace injuries, according to a study from the Department for Work and Pensions.
For employees that are predominantly office-based, meanwhile, stress is typically the primary workplace health concern. As a result, while flexible working may help office workers to manage stress levels and restore a health work-life balance, for non-office workers who carry out manual labour as part of their role, offering private insurance or enhanced healthcare benefits may be more beneficial.
Ultimately, businesses that employ non-office workers need to communicate more effectively with employees to pinpoint exactly what would make them feel happy and valued in the workplace. With this understanding, employers can then begin to build a tailored benefits package that works for both the business and its employees – enhancing the employee experience without having a significant impact on costs or productivity.
–END–
Questions:
1. Refer to the article above on different incentives for non-office workers besides flexibility and identify the key points for an argument map based on the argument. You must clearly identify four elements (contention, premise, objection and rebuttal). You should identify a minimum of 3 premises to support your contention. (15 marks)
2. Evaluate whether the arguments made in this article are strong or weak and explain your reasoning using any two of Paul and Elder’s standards. (5 marks)
Section C: Case study analysis (40%)
Making sense of why executives are eager to get employees back in the office
After two years, giddy executives appear on the brink of welcoming their workforces back to the office, whether their employees are ready or not. “I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to being together again,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told his employees in a memo last week, outlining his company’s April 11 hybrid back-to-work plan.
“I hope everyone is feeling as energized as I am, and that you are looking forward to seeing your colleagues in person again in the weeks ahead,” Comcast’s NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell wrote in a Feb. 22 memo to staff. “This is an exciting time. Our offices are ready for your return across all NBCUniversal locations.”
Yet studies show employees aren’t nearly as gung-ho about returning to work. The Future Forum, developed by workplace-messaging platform Slack, surveyed more than 10,000 workers globally in the summer of 2021 and found an “executive-employee disconnect” regarding returning to work. Three-quarters of all executives reported they want to work from the office three to five days a week, compared with about one-third of employees. Among executives who have primarily worked completely remotely through the pandemic, 44% said they wanted to come back to the office every day. Just 17% of employees said the same.
There are several causes for the disconnect, said Brian Elliott, the Future Forum’s executive leader and Slack senior vice president. Many executives simply aren’t experiencing the same lives of their employees and are falling back on an antiquated view of work to make inferences about what’s important for a company to flourish, he said.
“Executives have a better setup at work,” said Elliott. “They probably have an office with a door. They probably don’t have the same child care issues as many employees. The risk that we run, as a society, even in a hybrid-work setting, is executives don’t listen to employees looking for flexibility and a real proximity bias sets in among people who are at the office and those that aren’t.”
While JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said last year remote work “doesn’t work for spontaneous idea generation” and erodes culture, Elliott said the data shows hybrid settings allow for better work-life balance while also increasing workers’ sense of belonging among the colleagues. Modern technology connects co-workers — including those who may have worked remotely before the pandemic.
“The data runs counter to the idea that always being in the office is the best way to foster culture,” Elliott said. “Using digital tools is really important to building a culture for people who aren’t the average white male executive. Companies that invest in modern tools and in rethinking how they bring people together will do better than those insisting in full-time office work.”
It’s possible the executive-employee disconnect represents a division between what’s best for the organization and what’s best for the individual, argued Art Markman, a professor of
psychology and marketing at the University of Texas at Austin. In an essay for Harvard Business Review, Markman wrote that observing work by others can lead to a phenomenon called goal contagion. “When you observe the actions of other people, you often adopt their same goals,” Markman wrote. “Being around a group of people who are working toward a common mission reinforces that goal in everyone in the workplace.”
But several of Markman’s assertations — including “the physical workplace enables moments of serendipity that can move projects along” and “it’s harder for institutional knowledge to make its way around in a remote environment” — are more fairy tale than reality, Elliott said.
Still, it’s possible those interactions are much more valuable to an executive than to an employee — further leading to the disconnect, said Amy Zimmerman, chief people officer at Relay Payments, which has worked with founders and executives to develop and nurture culture.
Older executives rely on face-to-face communication to get a better sense for what’s going on throughout their organizations, Zimmerman said. They also may have more need for those chance conversations to keep tabs on many employees, she said.
“I’ve worked with a CEO who told me he just liked the energy of the office,” said Zimmerman. “There was something about seeing the cars in the parking lot that brought him joy. The fact is, corporate America is likely to change forever. You’re making a huge mistake if you’re requiring folks back in office full time, because they see the progress most companies have made in the last two years, and they’ll ask, ‘why?’ It feels like micromanagement.”
While notions that working from an office improve productivity or idea generation aren’t backed up by evidence, executive excitement about returning to work may serve a greater purpose, said Gia Ganesh, vice president of people and culture at Florence Healthcare.
The movement to bring people back to office settings may represent a fundamental human need for socialization, said Ganesh. Executive excitement about returning to offices can optimistically be seen as corporate leaders signaling to employees that it’s once again acceptable to return to pre-pandemic life. That’s an important step for human and group psychology, said Ganesh.
Like Elliott, Ganesh advocated hybrid work settings become the norm in a post-pandemic world. Just as people worry more about flying even though data shows car crashes are far more likely than plane wrecks, executives may need to retrain themselves to feel OK with this new reality, she said.
Adapted from: Sherman, A 2022, “Making sense of why executives are eager to get employees back in the office,” CNBC, 8 Mar, viewed .
Read the case provided above and answer the following questions.
Questions:
1. As a manager, would you make it compulsory for your staff to come to the office? Why or why not? Provide at least two justifications. (6 marks)
2. Identify two key stakeholders in the below article. What impact could the issue have on them? (6 marks)
3. According to this article, there is a difference in opinion between executives and employees about returning to the office. As an executive, how would you use evidence-based management to decide whether to implement a “return to office” strategy for your staff? (16 marks)
4. Can we use ethics to make better managerial decisions? With reference to the article below discuss two potential ethical approaches that we can adopt to make better managerial decisions. (12 marks)