*RESPOND TO BOTH STUDENT'S POSTS*

Question:

1. A base salary for each manager. You have a total budget of $400,000.
2. For each manager, allocate a raise with a dollar amount. You are allowed to divide $50,000 between the managers.
3. Justify your reasons for the base salaries and the raises. What is your policy? What process did you you use to distribute the money? Do you need additional information about the managers? If so, how would you obtain the information?

Education and Years of Employment	Description of Manager
2 year college degree, 10 years with the company	Abraham McGowan. Abe is not, as far as you can tell, a good performer. You have checked your view with others, and they do not feel that he is effective either. However, you happen to know he has one of the toughest workgroups to manage. His subordinates have low skill levels, and the work is dirty and hard. If you lose him, you are not sure whom you could find to replace him.
Bachelors degree, 2 years with the company	Benjy Berger. Benjy is single and seems to live the life of a carefree bachelor. In general, you feel that his job performance is not up to par, and some of his goofs are well known to his fellow employees.
MBA, 5 years with the company	Clyde Clod. You consider Clyde to be one of your best subordinates. However, it is obvious that other people do not consider him to be an effective manager. Clyde has married a rich wife, and as far as you know, he does not need additional money.
High school graduate, 3 years with the company	David Doodle. You happen to know from your personal relationship with Doodles that he badly needs more money because of certain personal problems he is having. As far as you are concerned, he also happens to be one of the best of your subordinates. For some reason, your enthusiasm is not shared by your other subordinates, and you have heard them make joking remarks about his performance.
Bachelors degree, 4 years with the company	Ellie Ellesberg. Ellie has been very successful so far in the tasks she has undertaken. You are particularly impressed by this because she has a hard job. She needs money more than many of the other people, and you are sure that they respect her because of her good performance.
MBA, 1 year with the company	Fred Foster. Fred has turned out to be a very pleasant surprise to you. He has done an excellent job, and it is generally accepted among the others that he is one of the best people at the company. This surprises you because he is constantly frivolous and does not seem to care very much about money and promotion.
High school graduate, 6 years with the company	Greta Goslow. Your opinion is that Greta is just not cutting the mustard. Surprisingly enough, however, when you check to see how others feel about her, you discover that her work is very highly regarded. You also know that she badly needs a raise. She was recently widowed and is finding it extremely difficult to support her household and her young family of four.
2 year college degree, 7 years with the company	Harry Hummer. You know Harry personally, and he just seems to squander his money continually. He has a fairly easy job assignment, and your view is that he does not do it particularly well. You are, therefore, quite surprised to find that several of the other new managers think that he is the best of the new group.

FIRST STUDENT'S POST:

"I have chosen to use a combination of time on and peer reviews for a basis of deciding managerial raise. I feel 50,000 is generous. I dont care about their personal struggles when it comes to work performance. As a manager, I would try to help them with this but not in the form of money. I have decided that my opinion cant be the only basis for my decision for raises. I have chosen a top 4 managers to get beyond a standard of $3,000 per manager. My top will be Ellie. She had education and time on. She is challenging herself and successful. I chose her to get a $6,0000 raise. I then chose ABE, Gretna and Harry to get $4000. Abe has 10 years experience and works the tough job. He seems to be hard to replace. I then chose Gretna because peers respect her and she could be molded toward a goal. I then chose harry because of time on and supervisors view of his abilities. Because I have used only $30,000 I have given each manager $2,000 dollars to use to reward their employees. They can use this money to encourage growth among staff. I will use how well they do this to see who does the best. I dont care how they reward employees as long as there is a positive push for our company goal. I will then base the managers success with this and their annual reviews to look at the next pay raise. I then would have the company cater lunches for employees with the additional $2000. Anything over that I would have come out of my pocket to cover lunches for appreciation. I feel that managers are only successful as the people they manage. I feel that rewarding their people for the rewards they get could be beneficial to the company. I may have an unusual method on this. I feel performance reviews and job difficulty are the criteria that I want to look at with time on for my basis of distribution. "

SECOND STUDENT'S POST:

"Personally, I would reward base pay and raises based on my view of performance in the company. For senior employees, as long as their performance is not dropping, they will gradually earn more salary. My policy would be to award a $10,000 raise at the conclusion of every third year of work for the company. Thus, the base pay I selected for each manager below is based off of this policy and given that they have been good performers up to the present.

I would base my raises on the recents performances and successes of the managers. This is therefore why some received a small to no raise, because, based on the descriptions, they are not working to their potential or company standard. Others, who received $10,000, are doing work that, based on the descriptions, I consider good performance. The hope is that these raises will encourage some managers to strive to be better, and will reward others for their successes and keep them working.

I think this is a decent balance between the extremes of linking performance and rewards. There will always be outside factors, like employee attitudes and situations in real-life, that could affect my decisions. However, I think this is a decently fair way to determine salary and and raises. If I could have more information about where I believe some of the mangers are slacking, that would be ideal. I would have to obtain this through looking over reports. Another bit of information I would click more of is how the managers interact and why some managers think that others arent holding their weight when I think they are. I would have to observe their interactions to get this information.

Abraham McGowan:

Base Pay: $70,000/year

Raise: $5,000

Benjy Berger:

Base Pay: $40,000/year

Raise: None

Clyde Clod:

Base Pay: $50,000/year

Raise: $10,000

David Doodle:

Base Pay: $40,000/year

Raise: $10,000

Ellie Ellesberg:

Base Pay: $50,000/year

Raise: $10,000

Fred Foster:

Base Pay: $40,000/year

Raise: $7,000

Greta Goslow:

Base Pay: $50,000/year

Raise: $5,000

Harry Hummer:

Base Pay: $60,000/year

Raise: $3,000"

Please respond to each student's posting. Challenge their policies and decisions. Do you see possible conflicts among the managers based on their recommendations? Are the distributions equitable? Can you suggest additional ways to compensate employees? Minimum of 150 words for each response.