DQ1 Case Lenovo Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

DQ1 Lenovo - Case Study Example Lenovo differentiated its products in the marketplace by providing a greater value proposition than the competition. Other important values of the company include customer focus, innovation, and trustworthiness. Customers often rely on subjective factors to determine whether to trust a company (Philosophe). Investing money in marketing can increase the customer awareness and level of trust towards a company. The company should advertise the ThinkPad product in a manner in which the customer knows that Lenovo is now responsible for the manufacturing of the product. This will give the customers confidence that other products developed by Lenovo are of high quality. The design, functionality, and features of the ThinkPad should stay the same to maintain consistency in the customer’s minds. Lenovo should position itself as a global corporation. The firm can no longer think domestically only since the Chinese market is limited in comparison with the global market. It is better to have a small market share of a big pie, than a big market share of a small pie. In 2011 there were 352.2 million computers sold worldwide (Plunkett Research,

Extreme Weather Events In The Uk Environmental Sciences Essay

Extreme Weather Events In The Uk Environmental Sciences Essay Intro: Global Warming is an undisputable cause of climate change in which the major cause of climate change is mostly induced by humans (anthropogenic), and not simply by the natural course of nature. The severity of its effects to weather conditions is always increasing day by day. Extreme weather conditions may range from floodings, heatwaves, droughts and other severe weather conditions. We are now experiencing each year drier plus burning summer seasons due to the increase in heat waves and global warming, whilst we have warmer plus rainier winters as a result of increased rain, snow and hail precipitation. Even stormy weather is on the increase. [1- 4] Who does it affect?: This issue of random extreme weather conditions affects everyone in every national and local communities across the world (even in the UK), particularly the most vulnerable people.. Disruption to the normal farming conditions due to random climate change will cause an imbalance to the soil quality which will mean that crops will not be able to grow[5], and fewer animals will be fit for consumption due to the increase of food poisoning and water borne diseases, therefore farmers will lose out on potential job earnings. This will make farmers less likely to keep up with their bills and live less comfortably due to the reduced income. At the same time, it will affect us as there will a shortage of good, nutritional food. They may resort to increasing food prices. Since farmers supply food for many different food companies, it could indirectly pose problems to companies regarding the supply of food and marketing of their food products. Drought which is the result of increasing global temperatures can severely affect water supply companies. Water supply companies may increase their water usage prices by at least 5 percent each year[6] due to the drought and the ever increasing demand of water. Climate change and extreme weather can affect our health and make us more susceptible to much more illnesses than now and even cause death. Examples of illness conditions are hay fever, cataracts and skin cancer. It could even cause occurrences of Dengue fever and West Nile virus which are tropical diseases not normally found in the UK.[7] Temperature rises and heatwaves are becoming more frequent than usual. The Met Office conducted an interesting research which showed Englands highest temperature recorded in a day. One of the figures was particularly striking which was found in Kent from the southern part of England. It revealed that Kent had the highest temperature recorded in January 2003 which was 17.6 degrees, and 38.6 degrees in August 2003 showing a shocking 21 degrees increase in just above 6 months.[7] Such extreme temperatures can present health problems to these vulnerable people. When exposed to heat long enough, Heat exhaustion may result to these people and possibly may lead to dehydration and even heatstroke which is a life threatening medical condition. Also, it will increase the amount of harmful UV radiation contacting our skins so increasing our skin cancer risk. Since Britain may experience further increase in temperatures in the near future, this problem needs much attention. Moreover, the heatwaves may induce power cuts and increase water demand which will affect everyone including business people. Technology and water are in ever increasing demand therefore disabling the available technology around us due to power cuts, more droughts and increasing water bills may cause severe problems in our ability to cope without them at work and leisure. Also if business buildings are severely damaged, they may build a new building at another site which may cost more money than minor repair. Not only does it affect us humans, it affects plant and animal life too. More heatwaves and other severe weather conditions will increase the incidence of forest wildfires, contamination of river water and damage to habitats. This will harm the plant and animal wildlife and they may struggle to survive. It will ultimately lead to affecting our lifestyles in the long term.[8] Examples of damaging cases: In the UK (England and Wales), floods that occurred at Autumn in the year 2000 between October to November have resulted in massive damages which have costed at least  £1.3 billion.[1] That autumn was the wettest autumn season ever recorded since 1766, demonstrating more than 500mm of rainfall between September to November, and insurance claims up to  £3.5 billion were called for as a result of at least 10,000 flooded homes.[1, 3] . Another case in the UK that is increasing even today is in the farming industry. Due to climate change, there is now a rapid growth of certain parasitic worms particularly the Helminth family that are affecting cattle and sheep livestock (affects both young and adult livestock). The most common Helminths are the roundworms (gastrointestinal nematodes) and the flatworms (flukes). The roundworms are thought to drastically reproduce far more quickly in higher temperatures and adapt very well to its surroundings due to its biotic potential and genetic diversity.[9-10] This means that they can potentially thrive in all four seasons. Global Warming may increase mean daily temperatures and therefore cause a upsurge in the reproducing rate of roundworms.[9] A specific roundworm species called Teladorsagia grows really fast in the Spring and have been causing heavy damage to young lambs and even death in South East Scotland.[10] There had been an outbreak in 2004 of another specific roundworm called Nematodirus battus, which have adapted to the Scottish weather so that they grow not only in Summer but also Autumn and Winter. They have been seen in young and old lambs.[10] Furthermore, the European heatwave that the UK experienced in August 2003 was the hottest heatwave ever recorded. Altogether in Europe, 20,000 people died because of the heatwave. Out of this, a minimum of 2,000 people from the UK died as a result of excessive heat. One third of the 2,000 deaths in the UK were associated with air pollution. It even affected roads, train services, water and energy suppliers plus farmers. [11] Not only that, home building foundations (subsidence) were being damaged due to the drying of water from the soil and building foundations causing cracks to form and non-level home foundations. The subsidence insurance claims soared up to  £400 million. [12] Vulnerability of certain people types: In the UK, the magnitude of Heatwaves and rising sea levels (which may lead to larger wave heights, more floods and faster coastal erosion) are rising. Heatwave effects may be particularly significant in the South and East parts of the UK. These extreme weather conditions pose certain vulnerable individuals who:[2, 4] have low income support They cannot afford to buy accessories and other essential items that may help against short term and long term extreme weather problems. live in low quality constructed houses (particularly more found in coastal regions)- buildings will trap the heat, making their homes hotter and more susceptible to weaker house foundations. are elderly or quite young -more susceptibility to disease due to weaker immune systems. have poor health due to illness may increase their chances of catching other major or minor diseases, especially in cities. are isolated from social links finding environmental, social and emergency help may be harder live near the coastal regions -particularly in the East part of England as these coast have low lying, soft sediment coasts that erode much more quicker. Who live in cities referred as urban heat islands, which means that urban areas produce more heat than countryside towns. Makes them more susceptible to illnesses and possibly cause city infrastructure problems.[13] Cause of severe climate change and science: Many scientists agree that the major cause of the drastic climate change, global warming and extreme weather conditions are due to pollution mainly by certain human activities (anthropogenic) that emit greenhouse gases (nitrous oxide, water vapour, methane and carbon dioxide (CO2)). Of course there are natural equilibriums such as the carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle and the water cycle that tries to balance the levels of these gases. Also, the ozone layer (O3) helps protect us from the harmful UV radiation from the sun. But these natural equilibriums have been disturbed by human activities. So now temperatures and sea levels are rising (glaciers in the Antarctica are melting as proof). [14-20] A few examples of the human activity that has damaged the natural cycles are:[14-20] the cutting of trees (deforestation) increases the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to burning of trees. Trees are important in the absorption of carbon dioxide and water from the environment using the process called photosynthesis to release oxygen (O2) to the environment. driving cars, buses and other transport (especially airplanes) build-up of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere. Accounts for 21% of the emission of greenhouse gases in the UK. industrial cooling towers- increases the amount of heated water into the atmosphere. use of fertilisers and pesticides for farming the ones that contain nitrogen increase the levels of nitrogen in the biosphere via contamination of water due to heavy rainfall. Therefore it affects humans, fish and animals. Accounts for 8% of the emission of greenhouse gases in the UK. Burning of fossil fuels done to produce energy. The biggest contributor in the UK of releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere (65%). aerosols that contain CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) the CFCs are sent to the atmosphere in which the UV radiation frees the chlorine from the CFC. This chlorine damages the ozone (O3) layer in the atmosphere. Some may argue that natural causes are significant to the climate change effects. It is known that eruption of volcanoes, the output energy of the sun, ocean currents and Earths orbit changes do contribute to this but only play a minor role.[17,20] Who can influence change?: The UK Government can help with the mitigation and adaptation strategies for sustainability development which includes social, environmental and economic improvements. Mitigation is trying to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases in order to reduce the temperature rises. Adaptation involves doing things differently in our lives to reduce the level of greenhouse gases. They must consult with other business leaders and organisations to ensure mitigation and adaptation strategies are implemented for sustainability. It could help the UK unemployment issue whilst helping biodiversity. However, greener solutions may require lots of financial and political help to implement them, which is the challenge. They need to use short and long term strategies for success. What currently is happening and what extras can be done? A study found that London was producing 44.71 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2008 from which major culprit the business workplaces contributed by a shocking 19.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide(43% of total). Also, homes and transport were emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide. The Mayor of Londons mitigation strategy to climate change is to lower London CO2 levels by 60% for 2025. It is currently under public consultation but sounds promising. The mitigation programmes include RE:FIT, RE:CONNECT, RE:NEW, the Green500, Electric Vehicle Rollout and Operation Decentralised Energy. It will involve installing new energy saving technology at businesses and homes, encouraging community to reduce CO2 levels, recycling waste into energy and get 1,000 electric vehicles and more. [21] Advantages are that it explores different ways that can bring a change in CO2 levels so results can be seen relatively quick, it may provide many jobs in a variety of sectors for the unemployed as it is a concerning issue in the UK, the scheme is easy to follow, helps people save more money in the long term. It may have problems with the project being expensive and refuelling electric or hydrogen fuelled vehicles as it may take longer. Overcoming resistance needs more public awareness about the benefits, business and public role models to show public being greener is possible, and easy. The Queen made a speech recently in which she said that policies and legislations of the energy security and green economy Bill are to be introduced and implemented by the Government into homes and business across the UK. This will enable more use of energy efficient technology whilst ensuring management of energy supply to keep up with energy demand, reduce greenhouse gases especially carbon dioxide, encourage people to coincide with the demands set by the Government, and fund more projects that help the economy whilst reducing greenhouse gases via the Green Investment Bank.[22] This sounds like a good idea for mitigation and adaptation towards climate change. In the UK, Business and Government Leaders like David Cameron need to encourage greener jobs for benefit of the environment, economy and society. Unemployment still is a big issue across the world. Many people including graduates are claiming unemployment benefits and are unable to find work due to the credit crunch. Women are especially finding it difficult. In March 2011, the number of men on the benefits are 988,200 whilst number of women are 462,300.[23] Recently, The Green Economy Council have fetched big business leaders (eg. Joe Greenwell, chairman of Ford UK) in its council to provide professional advice to the Government on policies that affect green business infrastructure, investment and regulation. They are setting up policies like Green Deal which may open a thousand new jobs. But policies need to be clearer on low carbon economy. [24-26] They have not considered solar energy which has the potential to thrive. Mazhar Bari of SolarPrint said in 10 years, it could create 10,000 jobs, à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬1 billion of exports and à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬140 million of annual tax revenue.[27] Public Biodiversity awareness needs to be more focused in the UK particularly to the medium/low class people due to low income. Certain celebrities can probably help with this. Solutions need to be easy, practical, involve little effort and cheap. Health adaptation policies look good like the Heatwave Plan, Climate Change Act 2008 and the Annual Public Health Report of the Director of Public Health 2010 have been introduced to help healthcare professionals and public adapt to climate change and help health sector Government bodies and media to raise awareness of solutions. Also, diet and health advice to public is given by healthcare professionals. [28,29] As far as farming is concerned in the UK, the Common Agricultural Policy needs to be reviewed again by DEFRA to convince the Government the benefits of the scheme.[30] Funding cuts to UK flood defence may have serious consequences as those seen in November 2010 at Cornwall where 5 million poor people were at risk from flood damage. I think some property insurance cover and belongings can help in advance of flooding event so that less money is spent in aid. [31] Conclusion: Much effort still needs to be done by everyone, although the Government and others have actively tried to reach sustainable development through mitigation and adaptive approaches. They seem to be in the correct frame of mind but farming and flood aid strategies still needs to be tackled.

The Galvanic Skin Response :: essays research papers

The Galvanic Skin Response The simple psycho-galvanometer was one of the earliest tools of psychological research. A psycho-galvanometer measures the resistance of the skin to the passage of a very small electric current. It has been known for decades that the magnitude of this electrical resistance is affected, not only by the subject's general mood, but also by immediate emotional reactions. Although these facts have been known for over a hundred years and the first paper to be presented on the subject of the psycho-galvanometer was written by Tarchanoff in 1890, it has only been within the last 25 years that the underlying causes of this change in skin resistance have been discovered. The Tarchanoff Response is a change in DC potential across neurones of the autonomic nervous system connected to the sensori-motor strip of the cortex. This change was found to be related to the level of cortical arousal. The emotional charge on a word, heard by a subject, would have an immediate effect on the subject's level of arousal, and cause this physiological response. Because the hands have a particularly large representation of nerve endings on the sensori-motor strip of the cortex, hand-held electrodes are ideal. As arousal increases, the "fight or flight" stress response of the autonomic nervous system comes into action, and adrenaline causes increased sweating amongst many other phenomena, but the speed of sweating response is nowhere near as instantaneous or accurate as the Tarchanoff response. The most advanced layers of the cortex, unique to Man, link to the thumb and forefinger especially, and there is a further complex physiological response which occurs when the forebrain is aroused. Changes in Alpha rhythms cause blood capillaries to enlarge, and this too affects resistance. By virtue of the Galvanic Skin Response, autonomic nervous system activity causes a change in the skin's conductivity. The overall degree of arousal of the hemispheres, and indeed the whole brain, is shown by the readings of the GSR psychometer, which does not differentiate between the hemispheres, or between cortical and primitive brain responses. Higher arousal (such as occurs with increased involvement) will almost instantaneously (0.2 - 0.5 sec) cause a fall in skin resistance; reduced arousal (such as occurs with withdrawal) will cause a rise in skin resistance. Thus a rise or fall relates directly to reactive arousal, due to re-stimulation of repressed mental conflict. Initially this may cause a rise in resistance as this emerging, previously repressed, material is fought against.

Computer Security Incident Response Team Essay

In the last decade, more and more companies have started to look into e-commerce to connect them to the infinite world of global suppliers, partners, consumers and much more. This boom in technology has placed multiple assets are risk from a security stand point allowing hackers/crakers and anyone on the internet to gain access to these network and gain information or try to jeopardize business to a point where it stand stills. Increase in Denial of service attacks, child pornography, virus/worms and other tools used by individuals to destroy data has lead to law enforcement and media to look into why and how these security breaches are conducted and what new statutory laws are needed to stop this from happening. According to CSI computer crime and security Survey 2007, the average annual loss reported by security breach has shot up to $350,424 from 168,000 the previous year. To add to this, more and more organizations are reporting computer intrusions to law enforcement which inclined to 29 percent compared to 25 percent the year before. 1] To be successful in respond to an incident, there are a few things that need to be followed: 1. Minimize the number of severity of security incidents. 2. Assemble the core computer security Incident Response Team (CSIRT). 3. Define an incident response plan. 4. Contain the damage and minimize risk. [3] How to minimize the number of severity and security incidents: It is impossible to prevent all security related incidents, but there are things that can be done to minimize the impact of such incidents: †¢Establishing and enforcing security policies and procedures. Gaining support from Management in both enforcing security policies and handling incidents. Accessing vulnerabilities on the environment on regular basis including regular audits. †¢Checking all devices on certain time frames to make sure that all the updates were performed. †¢Establishing security policies for both end users and security personal and asking for security clearance each and every time an access is granted. †¢Posting banners and reminders for responsibilities and restriction of use of applications, and other systems on the network. †¢Implementing secure password polices thought the network. Checking log files on regular basics and monitoring traffic. †¢Verifying backups are done on regular basics and maintained in an appropriate manner. This would also include the new email backup policy laws. †¢Create Computer Security Response Team (CSIRT) [3] Security threat is the same for both large, small, and government organizations and therefore it is important that regardless of what the company has for its security measures, it also ha s a written document that establishes guidelines for incident response. Incident respond planning is a set of guidelines that document on security incident handling and communication efforts. This plan is activated when an incident that could impact the company’s ability to function is established. Computer Security Incident Response Plan (CSIRP) should contain the following: 1. Mission: Things the response team will be responsible for, including how to handle incidents as they happen and what steps are necessary to minimize the impact of such incidents. 2. Scope: this would define, who is responsible for which area of security, it can include things like application, network(s), employees, communication both internally and to the public and much more. . Information flow: How information will be handled in case of an emergency and how it will be reported to the appropriate authority, pubic, media and internal employees. 4. Services provided: This document should contain all the services that are either provided to the users or services that are used or bought from other vendors including testing, education, service provider issues to name a few. [2] The CSIRT team must contain several members including a Team leader which will monitor changes in individual’s actives and responsibility of reviewing actions. An Incident Lead, that will be dedicated as the owner of set of incidents and will be responsible for speaking to anyone outside the team while and corresponding changes and updates. A group of individual’s part of the CISRT team called members will be responsible to handle responsibility of the incident and will monitor different areas of the company. Other members of this team should include Legal help, public relations officers, contractors and other member of management both from business and IT that can help during security breaches. If an Incident has occurred, it is important to classify this as an incident severity. Most companies use between Severity 1-5. 1 being the highest and 5 being the research phase where no system or user’s are affected. For most system anything under Severity 3 is not a major impact of the system but if there is a system wide issue that requires immediate attention, a severity 1 or 2 would fall under the category of Incident response procedure and set up a high alert. The cost of an incident can be very high, depending on the loss of data, therefore identifying the risk and all the real threat fall under this category. Once the incident has been identified it should go into the assessment phase, where it should be determined if the system can be bought back up again and how much damage is done. If the business is impacted assessment should be done. The assessment includes forensic investigation usually involving a team of expert that look into the how many computer were affected, what kind of information was stolen or changed, entry level of attacks, potential damage done by incident, recovery process and the best way to assess this from happening again. The next phase of this is containment, which is the assessment of damage and isolation of other systems that can also be compromised including network. Backup of the system in the current state should be done at this time for further forensic investigation. Analyzing of log files and uncovering systems that were used like firewalls, routers should be identified. Any modification of files including dos, exe should also be carried out in this phase. Once all this is done, the next step is Recovery. Recovery is restoring clean data back the system so it can perform is function as required. After installing last good backup, it is important to test the system before putting this in production again. Further surveillance of network and application should be set in place as intruders might try this again. Every company today, weather small or big needs an incident response unity to defend itself against predators on the web. The government agencies has set some rules and regulations on such standards and are required that company follow these standards to avoid further disruption of the service. This becomes even more critical for companies that play important place in the economy like credit card, health, insurance and much more. Several regional companies today can help plan CSIRP plan that provide help creating a team of individuals that can act fast in such situations. The implementation of such plan cost less in the long run, when compared to companies that don’t have such response plan and loose data that is critical to their survival.

HR Plan for Principle Financial Group Essay

Human resources are the most important aspect of any organization in today’s world. The developing idea of the necessity of HR department and the need of making the efficient and timely use of the organization’s resource for the betterment of the organization has taken recent importance. Companies that are the giants of business arena have made it sure that their sole target is not to keep their customers satisfied but also to ensure that their employees are satisfied with their work and they are giving their best output. The paper will look into the organization named â€Å"Principle Financial Group† that how the HR of organization works and how they are making it work better. Principle Financial Group The organization Principal Financial Group (The Principal) is a worldwide financial services contributor which provides an extensive variety of financial commodities, and is a U. S. leader in 401(k) plans. The Headquarters of The Principal are based in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. The corporation is serving more than 18 million customers globally. By September 30, 2009, the organization had assets amounting more than $280 billion. In May 2009, Fortune Magazine had listed The Principal as 273rd in the list of 500 largest companies in USA. It is also considered as the most Ethical Company of the world and has received many awards due to this quality (Principal. com, 2010). The organization was founded by Mr. Edward Temple in the year 1879 by the name ‘Bankers Life Association’ and it used to provide life insurance to the men aged between 22 to 55 years. Since then, Mr. Edward served as the President of the organization for thirty years and the organization saw its prosperity under his leadership. In the year 1985, after nearly a century, Bankers Life Company became Principal Financial Group (PFG). The company started to expand and decided to provide its services in other countries too that included Brazil, China, Argentina, Chile, Hong Kong, Mexico and India. In October 2001, the company offered its initial public offering and became listed in New York stock Exchange (Principal. com, 2010). The competitors of PFG are AXAHY. PK, John Hancock Financial Services Inc. , a privately held organization and Lincoln National Corporation. PFG ranks to be the highest amongst the three mentioned (Daily Finance. com, 2010). The Culture of Principal Financial Group Culture is the way people work in an organization. It the way employees are thought to behave and perform their tasks. Culture is an important aspect of any organization as with out culture and organization would not function properly. It may not seem to be an integral of any organization’s success, but when giant corporations are looked over, it would come to our realization that culture makes each and every organization distinguish itself from others. Cultures can originate from many factors and they can also become the permanent way of work performances. Stories, jargons, ceremonies are part of an organization’s culture. Culture can be formalized i. e. , followed strictly by the words of book, or it can also be simple. In which ever way culture is followed, it makes an important component of an organization and it also helps employees get familiarized with the place they work in. Culture of PFG Culture of PFG is very vibrant and helps employees enjoy the work they do. The culture of PFG is embedded with their commitment to honesty and togetherness. They believe in team work and they want to excel at what they do. There are certain components of their culture. They are: Commitment to diversity, Commitment to development, Commitment to community and Commitment to ethical practices (Principal. com, 2010). They have faith in diversity if employees in organization. They respect the employees which hail from different back grounds and consider that their experiences and their knowledge would help the organization perform better. They appreciate learning from them and value the differences present amongst each other. Development is important for the organization. Training to the employees is important and they accept the fact as true. They have their training programs and they enhance the capabilities of the employees’ not for the organization only, but they trust that employees should be given importance as they give importance to their work. Additional development openings are provided to the employees through Employee Resource Centers. These centres foster a way of learning amongst the employees. These groups give a proper work setting for the employees who have common interests, and they provide career development opportunities and reach out the community for the purpose of recruitment and selection. Some of the employees resource groups are; ‘Asian Employee Resource Group’, ‘Disability Employee Resource Group’, ‘Muslim Employee Resource Group’, ‘Women in Technology Group’ etc (Principal. com, 2010). Core Values of PFG Their core values are the factors that are critical to their success. They are factors which help the organization make its decision and they do not change. These factors give the organization its personality. They are customer focused and they believe that customers will help their organization grow and they are very concerned about what their customers want and desire. Be it any business or an individual that needs financial assistance, they make it sure that their customers are provided with complete choice and control in their financial provisions. Training and Development at PFG Training and development of employees is another important aspect of the organization. The organizations that ignore the aspect of training and development come across many troubles at the later stage of their organizational life cycle. They fail to stay in touch with the recent development in the environment and their response to those changes is laid back which results in failure. In order to stay in touch with the regular changes in internal as well external environment, companies must train and develop their employees. Importance of training and development can not be ignored. Timely training and development not only helps the employees, but it also provides organizations with competitive advantage over their competitors (Noe, 2009). Employee development is another critical to success factor of the organization. Excellent culture with growth opportunities is what PFG gives to its employees and it believes that continuous training and development will help them retain employees and would give satisfactory results to the organization. Change and innovation is another key to success for PFG and it works on it to help employees change with ease and flexibility (Principal. com, 2010). Profitability and sound financial performance is also the success factor of the organization. Along with operational brilliance they provide their customers with timely solutions and satisfactory results with their products and services. With fierce competition they are faced with, PFG has been able to remain an outstanding financial solution to many institutes and individuals (Principal. com, 2010). Recruitment and Selection When recruiting and selecting the employees, PFG follows the guidelines of EEOC. i. e. , Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They are fully dedicated to the concept of the equal employment opportunities and it is evident through the diversity of the employees in the organization. The policy is to hire, train and develop employees regardless of gender, color, race, religion, pregnancy, national origin, sexual orientation, etc. Harassment of employees on these differences is strictly forbidden in the company. However, the things to decide their eligibility to the employment are their competence, qualification and their merit (Roberts, 2008). In the work place the employees are treated with great respect. Diversity in the organization makes employees accept each other’s differences as the basis of their learning and experience. The principles they follow at their work place are: work schedules are flexible to cater to the needs of their employees. They believe that employees should be given the required flexibility so they do not find hindrances in their personal as well as professional lives. Multicultural celebrations are norms at PFG. Employees learn the cultural celebrations of their colleagues and they respect each others traditions. This creates the bond between employees and they value the contentment of their partners. For the expectant mothers, PFG is very considerate to help them during their pregnancy. PFG provides prenatal care to the mothers and ensures that working mothers who are expecting their babies are to be taken care of. They do not discriminate them on their health issues. For Muslims, they also provide a separate prayer rooms to ensure that that religious obligations do not go unattended and it helps the employees respect the religious needs of their counterparts (Principal. com, 2010). Compensation Management in PFG Compensation management is other important aspects of an organization’s contend employees. Efficient compensation management gives the employees with advantage of performance management too. These two aspects are closely linked. Employees must know that their compensation would tend to increase if they outperform their colleagues and give performance that is beneficial towards meeting the goals of the organization (Berger & Berger, 2008). Compensation Management in PFG is based on the competitive salary system and salaries are evaluated yearly on the basis of the performance of the employees. They also get to participate in the annual incentive program which is subjective to the performance of the organization as well as the individual performance. They call it PrinPay (Principal. om, 2010). The organization’s compensation package is not just salary but it comprises of different benefits provided to the employees. These benefits are the medical benefits which can be customized by the employees according to their choice. Dental benefits include different dental services. Other benefits are vision coverage, wellness programs, and flexible spending accounts. Financial benefits provided to the employees include the retirement programs with 401 (k) plans, stock purchase program and treatment to short term and long term disability of the employees. The financial and health benefits are not the only incentives that are given to the employees of the organization. The employees enjoy the time off facility called ‘Personal Time off (PTO)’. The PTO is saved in a â€Å"PTO Bank† and employees earn extra hours at the year end. Nine paid holidays are given to the employees through out the year, and they are also given some time off for voluntary activities they want to perform. PFG does not believe in standardized compensation package and year end salary raises are all subjected to the performance of the employees (Principal. com, 2010).