***There are 2 questions related to certain topics from my Human Resourse Management course which have already been answered in depth by my peers. What is required of you is to go over each question and its answer, then based of what you understood from each topic, you have to answer the the open ended questions that are asked after each Q&A. Open ended questions are in bold font and underlined so you may distinguish them.***

QUESTION 1 (Private vs. Public Space):

 If or when our off-hour actions result in job-related action (e.g. politicians/coworkers taking vacations during Covid-19), what are the differing penalties and expectation levels? What precedent do HR policies set?  

ANSWER to Q1:

A current/quite popular example of a job-related action that resulted in a public consequence is when Rod Phillips took a trip to the Caribbean in December of 2020 (The Canadian Press and News Staff., 2021). He later resigned as Ontario’s Finance Minister as a result of the instant backlash from the community (The Canadian Press and News Staff., 2021). His personal actions resulted in large personal and public consequences at his job as he worked directly with Doug Ford who is a significant figure in Ontario’s political scene (The Canadian Press and News Staff., 2021). Although their jobs clearly define the safety guidelines to help fight against and limit the spread of Covid-19 he disregarded them. Now, the question becomes should Mr. Phillips personal decisions on his own time be consequential because it contradicts with his work life. The differing penalties and expectation levels are dependent on job status as presented above since many people took vacations throughout the COVID pandemic which did not result in resignation from their jobs. In the public eye as presented above and in private personal circles, professional expectations are held to different standards and controversial actions are dealt with differently based on job title, level of offence and severity of consequences afterwards. In the required readings professionalism in HR is one of the main topics. It is important that individuals and companies hold themselves to a respectable standard of etiquette. In the business world presentation is incredibly important and necessary for success as how you are perceived greatly affects who your business markets to and what it markets. As technology progresses the standard of professionalism in the workplace and subsequent penalties have shifted. Social media has greatly influenced how reputations are perceived, which has made it even more important for people to present themselves in a mature manner both in the workplace and at home. HR policies are typically in place to hold people accountable, but people are now finding that the lines become blurred when someone’s actions in private outside of working hours become public knowledge.  

OPEN ENDED QUESTION 1 (answer based on Q&A 1 above):

Do you think that people that have careers in the public eye should be held to professional standards during their personal time after work hours? If so, how do employers and/or employees clearly define expectation levels clearly?

QUESTION 2 (Competencies): 

A potential future job I would like to do is being a data analyst, which requires quite a bit of competencies. There are many competencies moving from having higher level knowledge and experience in excel and in programming languages such as SQL and Python to having good statistical knowledge, writing and communicational skills, problem-solving and more. I believe I could attain these competencies by focusing on the ones I don’t have more such as machine learning and my statistical knowledge and at the same time slowly improve on the ones, I have such as the programming languages, excel and problem-solving to further my overall knowledge.

How I can prove I have these would be to show them through projects. To prove that I have the necessary competencies the best method in this case would be to create and show projects as these projects will present multiple competencies each project. For example, I could create a payroll management system project which would highlight my SQL programming, problem-solving, data visualization, and statistical knowledge and more. This way of proving my competencies is beneficial as it shows them that I have the necessary knowledge as well as shows the company a real example of what to except if I were working for them.

OPEN ENDED QUESTION 2 (answer based on Q&A 2 above):

How would you decide to tackle meeting the competencies for your dream job? Do you believe competencies are the best way for an employer to evaluate you?