HRMG605 Essay: Evaluating the 'People First' Model by Pfeffer & Veiga

This essay critically analyzes Pfeffer and Veiga's article, 'Putting People First for Organizational Success,' supporting its central argument that prioritizing employees leads to organizational success. The analysis incorporates examples from other journal articles to reinforce the importance of employee engagement, job security, selective hiring, information sharing, delegation, and training. While generally supportive, the review also offers a nuanced perspective, questioning the universality of high compensation and challenging the notion that a 'mean' boss is necessary for success, citing evidence that supportive leadership fosters employee loyalty and well-being. The essay concludes by emphasizing the growing acceptance of the 'employees first' approach in modern business and the need for organizations to invest in their workforce to achieve a competitive advantage. Desklib provides similar solved assignments and resources for students.

Introduction
This assignment is about the review of an article written by Pfeffer J and Veiga JF. The topic of
the article written by them was “Putting people first for organizational success”. This assignment
requires us to write down our ideologies, thinking and review this article in a way that the article
gets our support or a challenge. Well the article is really well written and there is a very little or
no scope of any challenge against this article as one can easily make a guess that what this article
must be carrying in itself from its topic. Earlier the organizations use to make their employees
work hard in order to keep and make their customers happy but as by every passing day the big
organizations have understood the importance of their employees and have start putting them
first to achieve the organizational success. Well it is right too, an organization treating its
employees in not a good manner can’t expect the organization to achieve success. Employees are
like the USP of any organization, if you will keep the employees happy, they will keep not only
the customers but the owners happy. Following are the few points that show that we support this
article in every way possible.
Critical Analysis
Here we are going to decide about the article written by Pfeffer J and Veiga JF in detail. The
article states that an organization can achieve success by keeping its employees at first and all the
other facts or things second. There in the article many cases have been discussed and shown in
order to prove this theory. Earlier many big organizations use to have old school thinking that it
is the customer that will derive your profits so it is better to keep the customers happy at any cost
such organizations ended up incurring huge losses as they didn’t consider any other thing but
only focused on making and keeping the customers happy. Well in our daily lives also if we only
focus on one thing or a person and will put all our efforts in making and keeping them happy will
end us up on losing other things or person ultimately. To support our view here we would like to
share some examples from the journal articles on the similar topics. “"Employees
First, Customers Second" because putting employees first "creates and delivers unique value" for
the company's customers and also helps to differentiate the company from its competitors.
When employees are put first, he points out, they become more engaged (Nayyar 2015).
This concept of putting the employees first has been taken so well by many of the organizations
that these organizations are seeing a huge positive environment and good profits earning. In this
article there is concept explained of the seven practices for becoming successful organizations
and these seven practices are as under (J n.d.):
 Employment Security: It has been generally seen that the private sector of an economy
is the easiest sector of earning a job but it is a sector where you will have to work hard for
20 hours (say) to earn a livelihood of 10 hours. In such an environment after a certain
period the employee may get de-motivated as because of the workload and no job
security. Who will be get affected by all this? It will be the organization of course, hence

to tackle this situation and to achieve success the management can offer job security to its
employee (Miller 2014).
 Selective Hiring: Another thing that we totally agree is to hire selectively. Unnecessarily
hiring peoples will not only increase the salary expenses of the organization but it will
also increase the workload of the managers to train the newly recruits. Hence an
organization must select peoples by thoroughly testing their all skills and capabilities and
their general attitude towards daily life courses.
 Sharing Information: Another right practice to achieve success through the employees
of the organization. When every employee gets any information, he/she may feel
belonged to the organization as a part. This sharing of information will motivate the
employees to work hard (Bond 2015).
 Delegation: Every employee in an organization must be assigned with some sort of
authority and responsibility this will make them more responsible towards their jobs and
organization (Newton 2016).
 High Compensation: This is usually a right thing to do, however it depends in what
circumstances you are applying this practice. In this article this concept has been
presented with an example where the organization was incurring losses and even then the
CEO increased the pay of the store managers and too by 40-50%. According to me this
must bring into practice when the financial condition of an organization is strong. You
can’t risk your remaining wealth in order to earn new profits (Hadzima 2016).
 Reduction in Status: The organization must follow a simple policy of equality between
all the employees, whether an employee’s owns a Mercedes or an average hatch back.
The organizations must work upon reducing the status difference so that every employee
feels equal when they step into the doors of the organization.
 Extensive Training: Training the employees to be effective and efficient will ultimately
help the organization in achieving the success.
In this article, there are few things that should be corrected by the organizations, the first things
is where the managers are pressurized to achieve the short term goals. If an organization
pressurizes its manager to achieve a target of making all of his sub-ordinates a perfectionist in
sales or production or marketing in just a week, then is it possible? No it is certainly not. The
organizations or the running head must keep in mind the feasibility and achievability of a target,
the target above said is not impossible to achieve but in such a short period of time it is
impossible (Zenger 2014).
Another thing what the managers of big organizations does is that they don’t delegate enough
responsibility or authority to their sub-ordinates just because they think that the work will not be
handled by the sub-ordinates properly. This is one of the core reasons why organizations today
are fails to achieve their marked targets because of the managers. In this article it has been given
and we totally support this fact, the managers must start delegating responsibility and authority
to the employees as much as possible, it makes the employees feel responsible and the manager

by doing so can reduce his workload and can concentrate on other essential things of the
organization (Schwartz 2014).
In this article, a paragraph has been given about how a boss should be and it is written that a boss
should be mean and tough; such a boss brings success to the organization (Wilson 2017). Well
we strongly disagree with this belief and would like to present here a statement from an article
“Overly tough bosses can put their employees under stress and the employees may start leaving
the organization” whereas “A nice boss will not only prevent the health and mental conditions
issues of the employees but will also earn their loyalty for the organization” (Getty 2016).
Conclusion
A final conclusion has been provided here, most of the organizations in today’s time have
accepted the concept of putting the employees first and all the other things second. However
some organizations still do believe that employees or all the other things comes on second and
customers comes on first. The success in modern world of business requires small or big all the
business organizations to take care of the employees and train them, motivate them encourage
them to achieve the organizational goals before the competitors.
Bibliography
Bond, FW 2015, The Mindful and Effective Employee, 5th edn, J.K Publishers, Sydney.
Getty 2016, 'Why Nice Bosses Finish First', Managerial Journal Articles, vol 1, no. 20, p. 4.
Hadzima, J 2016, 'How Much Does An Employee Cost?', The Weekly Journals of Employees, vol 2, no.
120, p. 5.
J, P, 'Putting People First for Organizational Success', Research Gate Management Journals, p. 5.
Miller, B 2014, 'Ways to Sincerely Encourage Your Employees', Journals of Enterprenuer , vol 2, no. 50, p.
3.
Nayyar, V 2015, Employees First, Customers Second, 1st edn, Harvard Business Review Press, Melbourne.
Newton, P 2016, Successful Delegation, 3rd edn.
Schwartz, T 2014, 'The Power of Full Engagement', The journals of Effective Management, vol 3, no. 60,
p. 15.
Wilson, BG 2017, 'Beyond Management ', Journals of Performance Management, vol 1, no. 33, p. 20.
Zenger, JH 2014, The Extra Ordinary Leader, 2nd edn.