home depot

see attached instructions

“Home Depot® Adds Benefits”  Please respond to the following:

1. As the e-Activity indicates, employees who are distracted by non-work related issues may perform less effectively or efficiently in the workplace. Therefore, employers may have profit-motivated reasons to implement programs that help employees strike a better work life balance. However, they may also face a moral obligation to provide such assistance. Determine the degree of moral obligation that you believe employers face in assisting employees in their meeting non-work-related obligations. Assess the appropriateness of Home Depot’s® actions in relation to your determinations. 

2. The access to resources that large companies such as Home Depot® have enables them to provide employee benefit programs like those described in the e-Activity. However, not all employers are so fortunate. Formulate two strategies that a manager, without the benefit of a large amount of resources, could implement in order to increase job satisfaction among employees. Propose the approach you would take to implement these strategies, and examine the potential benefits and pitfalls that you should consider during implementation.

E-ACTIVITY to complete questions above

Discussion #1) Home Depot Adds Benefits

After reading the case study, answer the questions below.

According to a 2007 survey of working adults conducted by Workplace Options, 59 percent of employees or their spouses are forced to miss work each year due to breakdowns in either child-care or elder-care plans. Additionally a study by the National Alliance for Caregiving in 2009 reported that 70 percent of caregivers felt their work was affected by those responsibilities, with nearly two-thirds reporting that they went in late, left early, or took time off to care for dependants at home.

Home Depot was no exception, and many of its employees faced these issues on a daily basis. The company recently implemented two new benefit programs that address both ends of the spectrum of dependent care; child and elder care. At its corporate headquarters in Atlanta, the company opened a corporate day care facility, the Little Apron Academy, that is available to all Home Depot employees in the Atlanta area —not just those that work at the head office. The company also added a dependent care benefit that allows employees to get day care or in-home care for dependents. Employees pay a deductible of $25 to $35 dollars and the company covers the remaining cost.

Tim Crow, Home Depot’s top human resources executive, said that it is crucial to offer competitive benefits because those types of programs will attract and retain the best people. He states, “There is always a war for top talent. It’s a great recruiting tool for us.” Currently, the Society for Human Resource Management estimates that about four percent of employers offer backup childcare for their workforce and only two percent offer backup elder care. These statistics support the company’s claim that the child care center is a powerful differentiator that has helped them to stay competitive.

Feedback from employees has been widely positive, even from those who have not been faced with situations of having to care for a dependent child or family member. Brant Suddath, Home Depot’s director of benefits said that employees report they are happy with the solutions the company has come up with to address these issues. “This was another stake in the ground that says: ‘We don’t just talk the talk. We walk the talk.’ . . . We care about families, and we want them to feel comfortable when they come to work.” Meghan Mitchell, a mother of two and a senior manager of medical and health management for the company, is grateful for the child care facility. “It helps me to be more productive and just to have peace of mind while I am at work, knowing my girls are onsite. It takes the worry out of my day because I know they are at a good place.”

Optional Further Reading

· Davis, Andrea. “Home Depot goes big with child care center.” Employee Benefit News. Sept. 15, 2012. (

ebn.benefitnews.com/news/home-depot-goes-big-with-child-care-center-2727488-1.html

)

· Kass, Arielle. “Home Depot chips in for child, elder care.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution. June 2, 2011. (

www.ajc.com/news/business/home-depot-chips-in-for-child-elder-care/nQt26/

)