Essay --

In todays’ hard economic times, academic issues such as increased in college students’ mean age, student drop outs due to financial difficulties, and increased in average students’ lending has started to plague universities even in developed countries. In Taiwan, most of the college students are either enrolled in the morning or in the evening sessions, wherein, the evening sessions are opened specially for the on the job students. However, upon asking, many of the morning session students are actually working part-time. It is hypothesized that properly managed part-time jobs would have a positive effect for the students, in terms of job preparation and value adding experiences. In light of these issues, the current study shall seek to determine the key factors that students consider while looking for a part-time job. Furthermore, the study also seeks to determine the practical effects of having part-time job while still studying. A survey was developed and admin istered to 450 college students in a Technical and Vocational University in Taiwan. Statistical analysis shows that students’ part-time job selection is much dependent on two key factors, namely: Job matches my future and Job is able to help my future career. Further implications are also given to provide a much bigger outlook on how students plan their career. 1. Introduction Part-time (PT) job has long been a part of the university student experience. Observation shows that most students tend to work in industries such as retailing, service industry, and restaurants where the demand for labor has always been available. Employers in these industries need cheap and flexible labor in order to remain viable [1], while the students wishing to find a PT job fulfill this requir... ...riences as priority for taking a job. In the survey, it is also could be found that our students do not feel threatened or strained as facing competence. Supposing we have opportunities to take a job in all studying periods, and actually students will have four years to learn relevant skills or enhance practical experiences. Nevertheless, â€Å"closer to home† is their first choice always. It seemed that we remain unconscious about what is called the reality. Spending all the time on something unnecessary is our defect or the common problem of college students in Taiwan. By these outcomes, we recommend more speeches could be held, which get us more familiar with the intense of competitions and to realize â€Å"survival of the fittest.† In addition, instead of living a life with nothing, we are supposed to be vigilant that how the other countries make progress on their skills.

Managing Overtime Worked in the Workplace

In the following report, I will be give illustrations and possible solutions for an overburdening problem that exists in the U.S. Postal service Operations throughout the country. Overtime is an age-old problem that has gone long overdue without someone or a group paying serious attention to correcting this problem. The United States Postal Service is a large organization with many facets of operations; I will be concentrating on what we call the Field Operation or Area Office. This is where the public comes into personal contact with the Postal Service either by way of the individual letter carrier (mailman) or the window clerk who assists with business transacted at the post office. Every community across America has a Post Office. We are one of the most visible employers in the world. The U.S. Postal Service employs approximately 750 thousand diverse people. Many different cultures and nationalities come together to combine as an efficient workforce that gets the job done. The pay is moderate, so it would be pretty difficult to become independently wealthy working for the Postal Service. But, there are some employees that believe if they work, as much overtime as possible, maybe they can become rich. Unfortunately, this poses a daily obstacle to overcome for most managers in the U.S. Postal Service. The U.S. Postal Service is a production driven outfit therefore; everything is based on production verses cost ratio. The average workday for a postal employee is eight hours. It does not take a genius to figure out that the longer it takes to do the job, the more money is made. So, the employee that desires more money would be motivated to take longer to complete his or her assigned task(s). Historically, the Postal Service has been plagued with managers that were not diligent in doing their jobs with regard to overtime management. Because of this clusters of employees became accustomed to a Carte Blanche style of working. Employees were in effect managing the overtime and work production. During my career as a letter carrier, I completed my assigned tasks within my eight-hour shift working overtime only when deemed necessary by my manger. When I became a manager, I expected everyone who worked for me to have the same work ethics that I had. If this was not case, I attempted to force them to work as hard as I did. I later found out that this was not a good management approach. In fact, this was the easiest way to harvest disgruntle employees. Here was my dilemma; I was the new young manager who expected an honest day†s work, for an honest day's pay, paired with a staff that had been allowed to do whatever they wanted for the past ten years. The office of my first management assignment had 90 percent of the employees working an average of 10-16 hours of overtime per week. My performance as a manager as well as well as the production performance for our office was based on the amount of manpower hours used to deliver the total volume of mail. I will present information about the systems put in place that worked as a check and balance format. These systems enabled me to demonstrate to my employees that my requests were not unfair or unreasonable. I will discuss the areas that the employees were able to assist in helping to aleve the excessive use of overtime. I will also discuss in detail areas that contributed to the excessive use of overtime that did not involve my employees. With implementation of the new systems, my office has reduced its overtime to 14 percent.    While controlling overtime may seem as easy as just making an announcement â€Å"that no one is allowed to work overtime†; this is very far from true in the U.S. Postal Service area offices. There are many variables that come into play, the first of which is staffing. In order to do a good job; the office must be properly staffed. We have percentage breakdowns that factor in amounts of carrier routes; amounts of deliveries per zip code that derives to an employee complement. Each office has a number that satisfies their complement. If for any reason a particular office is operating under their complement that makes the task a more difficult. Any office can be fine one week and short the next, due to retirement, injuries, or details to name a few. If any of the aforementioned were to occur a manager could request replacement for these employees, whether they will be granted or not is another story. Then we have the day-in day-out mystery of who will call in on sick leave. Having any of these instances to take place in a given day can simply cripple an operation. If we take a carrier operation anywhere in the world that has 35 city carrier routes and 4 carriers call in sick on a Monday, that manager now has to scramble to get coverage for those four vacant routes. It is not like other organizations where your work can carry over by one day; the mail must be delivered daily without exception. This makes it difficult to get the work done in an eight–hour day for the remaining employees. The first thing the manager must do is to telephone four employees who would normally have the day off and ask them to come in and work their day off. Bare in mind that the U.S. Postal Service has something called an Overtime Desired List, a voluntary list of employees who wish to work overtime on assignments. When the manager telephones employees to come in on their day off, he must first call those on the Overtime Desired List. If the manager does not get four employees from the list, he may then exercise the option to call employees not on the Overtime Desired List. The only alternative to this situation is to have employees already present complete their assignments and pitch in to help deliver the vacant assignments. The advantage of this situation is that it allows you to minimize your overtime usage for the day. If the manager was able to get four employees from the Overtime Desired List to come he has automatically used 32 hours of overtime for that day. By having employees already present work additional hours, you are able to use far less overtime for that day. This is an area I feel managers need to stress to their bosses so that all efforts are exhausted in hiring more employees for offices to operate under their complement. The earlier mentioned example could have been avoided had that office been properly staffed. A fully complemented office would have unassigned employees who would have been given those assignments for the day avoiding the need for overtime. In order to be a successful office you must be fully complemented. When I was finally able to get my office fully complemented my overtime was reduced by 10% – 30% as shown in the graph below. The U.S. Postal Service has another formula that we use to gauge an employee†s production. There is a standard based on demonstrated ability. We can not hold Carrier A to Carrier B†s standards. This formula is for sorting letters and flats (magazines, newspapers, etc.). The formula allows 1 hour to sort 2 feet of letter mail. This is 2 linear feet, 2 linear feet equals 454 pieces of letter mail or 230 pieces of flat mail. So in order to standardize an employee the manager must count out 2 feet of mail, letters or flats, and calculate the amount of time it takes the employee to sort this mail. The average carrier has no problem at all meeting this quota, but there are those who attempt to outsmart their managers. If the manager is not focused on them during the sorting period there are those carriers who have the tendency to leave their areas to socialize among their coworkers, or â€Å"slow sort† their mail. The longer it takes a carrier to sort his mail, the longer it takes that carrier to get out of the office on the street to deliver this mail, making this same carrier late in returning from his assignment guaranteeing this carrier overtime for the day. You multiply this by several carriers in one office daily and you come up with an unaccountable amount of overtime usage as a manager. This affects your production numbers for the office as a whole. This where a manager has to jump in and approach the individual carriers immediately. As a manager I that this has happen to, I have approached the individual and asked some very basic questions to make certain that there are no health or personal issues going on with the carrier affecting their productivity. If nothing out of the ordinary exists, I point out that they are not meeting their productivity quota and make certain suggestions to assist them in meeting their quota. There are those times when you are challenged as a manager to verify your findings. When those situations arise, I go out and measure, with the carrier present, the actual number of feet of mail for them to sort and time them sorting this mail. Once you demonstrate to your employees that you are only expecting from them what is minimally required, and that you will hold them accountable for just that you run into this type of problem less and less. Another major contributor to overtime usage is the actual mail flow itself. Most days this is not a problem, but when it is a problem it is usually a big problem. In Northern Virginia we have two mail distribution centers, one in Merrifield and one in Dulles. For the Falls Church Post Offices, we receive our mail from Merrifield. Each morning we receive 3 dispatches of mail from 6:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. When these dispatches are on time everything runs smoothly, but when these dispatches are late an office goes from running smoothly to being hectic. One of the main reasons for a delayed dispatch is the mechanical failure of a mail-processing machine in Merrifield. In preparing itself for the new millenium, the U.S. Postal Service Distribution Centers are equipped with high-tech automated mail processing machines that do the job of ten employees sorting mail. In the event of a mechanical failure, one of our dispatches can be delayed by 1 – 2 hours. This 1 – 2 hour delay is passed along to my operation in 1 – 2 hours of down time for my carriers while they are waiting for their mail to deliver. That equals approximately 1 –2 hours of unforeseen overtime per employee that day. As demonstrated in the graph below this is a large usage of overtime for an entire office when calculated. The combination of mail volume and properly scheduled mail dispatches is critical in minimizing overtime. In closing, I would suggest that as we approach a new millenium the U.S. Postal Service would be better served by doing away with some of the older ways of thinking. The Overtime Desired List should be dismantled. This forces managers to go outside of the employees already present for work as a first solution to a vacant assignment list. To me this encourages overtime usage. I would also suggest for offices receiving mail dispatches late at least 3 times a week to move their scheduled time for mail receipt back and bring their carriers in a little later to accommodate for the dispatch schedules. For example if an office has consistently been receiving their dispatches an hour late, instead of having the carriers report to work at 6:30 a.m. they would move the carriers reporting times up to 7:30 a.m. instead eliminating that hour of downtime per person that they are losing.

Wal-Mart Evaluation Report - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 6 Words: 1735 Downloads: 3 Date added: 2017/09/21 Category Advertising Essay Type Narrative essay Did you like this example? Wal-Mart Evaluation Report Axia College of University of Phoenix Analyzing Wal-Marts annual report provides a positive outlook on Wal-Marts financial health. Given the specific ratios and its comparison to other companies in the same industry, Wal-Mart is leading and more than likely will continue its dominance. Though Wal-Mart did not lead in all numbers, its leadership and strong presence of the market cements the ongoing success of the company. The review of the current ratio, quick ratio, inventory turnover ratio, debt ratio, net profit margin ratio, ROI, ROE, and P/E ratio all indicate an upbeat future for the company. The current ratio, which is defined as current assets divided by current liabilities, is a measure of how much liabilities a company has compared to its assets. Wal-Mart in the year of 2007 had a current ratio of . 90, and as of January 2008 it had a current ratio of . 81. The quick ratio, which is defined as current assets minus inventory divided by cu rrent liabilities, is a measure of a companys ability pay short term obligations. Wal-Mart in the year of 2007 had a quick ratio of . 25, and as of January 2008 it had a ratio of . 21. Both the current ratio and quick ratio are a measure of liquidity. Wal-Mart is not as liquid as its competitors such as Costco or Family Dollar Stores, Inc. The reason why Wal-Mart is not too liquid is because they are heavily investing their profits for expansion and growth. Management claims in their financial report that holding their liquid reserves in other currencies has helped Wal-Mart hedge against inflationary pressures of the United States dollar. The next ratio to look at is the inventory ratio which is defined as the cost of sales divided by average inventory. In the year of 2007, Wal-Mart’s inventory ratio was 7. 8, and as of January 2008 it was 7. 96. Because Wal-Mart has a lot of sales, it does not have too much of a problem with holding too much inventory. The competitors of Wal-Mart have similar ratios, but they do not have as many sales as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s ability to sell at lower prices for the same quality gives them the edge against the competition. As of the year 2007, Wal-Mart had a debt ratio of . 58, and as of January 2008, it had a debt ratio of . 59. The debt ratio is calculated by dividing the total debt by its total assets. Wal-Mart has a ot more assets than it does debt, so Wal-Mart is not overleveraged. Wal-Mart far exceeds their competition in comparison of assets. Wal-Mart is the 800-pound gorilla in this industry and looks to remain that way. The next ratio to look at is the net profit margin ratio, which basically measures the return of sales. Wal-Mart had a 4% net profit margin ratio in the year 2007, and had a net profit margin ratio of 3% as of January 2008. The industry average is similar, so the comparisons between the competitors remained flat. The ROI or also known as return on assets compute the efficiency of an   investment. Wal-Mart had an 8% in the year of 2007 and as well as of January 2008. Wal-Mart had one of the highest ROI’s in the industry; however the most important of the number is its consistency. Wal-Mart is more consistent than its competitors when comparing ROI, or return on assets. The return on net worth is also known as the return on stockholder’s equity which gives a clear picture of the performance of Wal-Mart, and in the year 2007, it had a ROE of . 19 and as of January 2008, it had a ROE of . 19. Wal-Mart’s dependable profits make it a great company. It was able to get close to a 20% return for its shareholders. The final ratio that solidifies Wal-Mart’s impressive performance is the P/E ratio. It is calculated by dividing the market price per share and the current earnings per share. Wal-Mart had a P/E ratio of 17. 89 in 2007, and as of January 2008 it had a 16. 28 P/E ratio. In general, a high P/E  suggests that investors are expecti ng  higher earnings  growth  in the future compared to companies with a  lower P/E. Wal-Mart’s ability to turn their inventory into cash is remarkable. They have the shortest operating cycle of its industry. By adding the inventory conversion period and receivable conversion period, one would get the operating cycle. Wal-Mart had 49. 36 days for its operating cycle as of January 2008. A very similar computation of Wal-Mart’s bottom line is its cash conversion cycle. It is calculated by subtracting the days of payable deferral period from the operating cycle. The number of days for Wal-Mart to turn its resource inputs into cash is about 12. 36 days. There cash cycles are much more optimized and the best among its competitors. It spells success given that they are able to sell their inventory in a very quick time frame. The shorter the cycle, the less time capital is tied up in the business process, and thus the better for the companys bottom line. Wal-Mart ’s system is very efficient because of their superb capability to need less working capital given their short cash cycle. Below is the list of long term debt with maturity dates and yield to maturity. Wal-Mart sells only common stocks with a current selling price of 58. 62 per share. It had a 52-week average price between high 40’s and low 50’s. The average cost of capital for the year 2007 was 5. 3% and as of January 2008 was 4. %. These numbers are very impressive given how Wal-Mart borrows very cheaply. The primary reason why Wal-Mart is able to do so is because Standard Poor’s rates Wal-Mart’s long term debt as â€Å"AA. † Wal-Mart is a good credit risk, meaning bondholders are safe in terms of Wal-Mart’s ability to repay. Their strong recognized brand helps its sales, and I believe along with their great management, Wal-Mart is in no trouble to pay its creditors because it has a strong history of paying its obligations and the c heap borrowing rates reflect that. Wal-Marts stellar performance has created optimism for those invested in Wal-Mart whether it be a shareholder, bondholder, employee, management, and as a consumer. Wal-Mart is a great buy; however, one should wait for the stock to dip a little lower. The current economic conditions in America especially, Wal-Mart might suffer because consumers in America will be less inclined to spend as much money. Though they are still going to grow because Wal-Mart has expanded its operations in emerging markets such as Asia, it will be able to bounce back. Its long term growth and outlook is still positive however stock prices will probably take a dip in the near future as Americas economy begins to decline and contract. Wal-Mart still, however, gathers hundreds of millions of customers and continues in its growth. Their mission of providing low prices will help attract customers who want the most out of their money. Many analysts agree that Wal-Mart will perform well into the future and when looking at Wal-Marts revenue and market cap compared to its competitors, Wal-Mart surpasses and moves ahead. With the right system and leadership in place, Wal-Mart may even monopolize their market as a retailer. It sells a diversified range of products such as foods, consumable goods, clothing, pharmacy, gasoline through distributors, photo processing, video rental stores, and just about everything else one might need. Wal-Mart has become the one-stop-shop place for a person, and it has provided quality as well as quantity. They will continue to be the leader in providing a unique service of diversified goods with a combination of low prices and customer satisfaction. Wal-Mart has given a lot of value to its customers. However, the same cannot be said to its workers. The labor force of Wal-Mart has complained about lack of benefits and low pay. Things are slowly changing, as the CEO of Wal-Mart shared in Wal-Marts annual report that empl oyees will be given more incentives such as health care benefits. There also has been much controversy that Wal-Mart has discriminated against female workers. The CEO of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, has said in the annual report that Wal-Mart has been constantly promoting women especially in the companys growing market of China. Wal-Mart has better positioned itself for opportunities in all aspects and has become more aware of peoples needs inside and outside of the business. In analyzing investments and businesses, numbers tell the story. The eight ratios analyzed were all good or above average in its industry. The current ratio was good, however not the best in the industry. The primary reason why it has more current liabilities than it does current assets is because the capital used to buy wholesale products and sell retail are used heavily to keep the business booming. Many customers are constantly shopping in Wal-Mart, and this need has to be met with enough inventories. The quic k ratio which measures short term obligations, suggests that Wal-Mart is capable to pay its creditors and has above average number than the industry. The inventory ratio proves Wal-Mart is the best as it sells a lot more products than its competitors. The inventory is always moving because Wal-Mart sets its prices to sell. The debt ratio of Wal-Mart is good but not the best however has done better than most of its competition. Wal-Mart as a larger net worth and market cap than any of its competitors. There net profit margin ratio is good however is not performing than it should. The problem is that they price it too low. Wal-Mart can raise prices to prove this ratio; however, their volume of business makes up for this. Their ROI on its assets as well as their ROE is consistent unlike its competition. As Wal-Mart gains more market shares, they will dominate their competitors beyond what it is now. The P/E ratio is not too low or high as it suggests that Wal-Mart is poised for more gr owth especially as business is expanded to other markets. Wal-Mart is a great company with very little blemishes, as its management and leadership make small but important changes to improve its bottom line. References Moyer, C. (2007). Fundamentals of Contemporary Financial Management (2nd ed. ). Thomas-Southwestern, OH (n. d. ) Annual Reports. Retrieved August 3, 2008, from https://www. annualreports. com/ (n. d. ) Thomson One. Retrieved August 3, 2008, from https://tabsefin. swlearning. com (n. d. ) Wal-Mart. Retrieved August 3, 2008, from https://finance. yahoo. com/q? s=wmt Don’t waste time! 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