week5.html

<title> CS349 Spring 2019: Robert McInvale</title>
<h1 style = "font-size:300%;"><b> Robert McInvale CS 349 Blog</h1></b>
<h2 style = "font-size:200%;">Week 5 - The Future of Business </h1></b>

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When we speak about the ethicality of a company, we enter a deep and sticky quagmire of moral issues. The ramifications of a company’s actions, or even existence, can be widespread and extremely complex. Health insurance can fund 
amazing advances in medical technology while bleeding consumers dry; companies like Amazon can provide incredible convenience and unheard of consumer satisfaction, while simultaneously destroying local economies; and companies like 
Google and Facebook can take significant credit for changing the way humans live, socialize, and do business, while also taking credit for massive violations of user privacy. This leads to a delicate balancing act as we judge the 
ethicality of a company, juggling all of the many effects of a company’s actions and trying to see which carry the most weight.
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Because of this complication, and as a selfish person who prefers simple ideas, I tend to place a strong value on one particular area of a company when deciding whether it is ethical: treatment of its employees. While the outcomes 
of a company’s end products may be difficult to evaluate in their sum impact, providing employees with a good work experience and plenty of benefits is clearly a good thing. To my mind, the most ethical companies are those that 
provide ample compensation, amazing facilities, supportive management, and a relaxing work environment. Perhaps even more important than these, however, are benefits related to time and work/life balance, such as flex schedules 
and ample paid time off, which both allow employees to enjoy an existence outside of the office.
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Flex scheduling is a system that allows employees to choose their own hours, allowing a work day that fits around their needs and schedules. With this flexibility, morning people can come in as early as they’d like, and night 
owls are able to burn the midnight oil if they so choose. Additionally, employees are often afforded the convenience of working from home, taking advantage of recent leaps in technology to avoid the daily commute (or even changing 
out of their pajamas). These conveniences greatly improve quality of life for employees, and come at essentially no cost - studies have actually shown that productivity <i>increases</i> at companies that have implemented flex 
scheduling<sup>1</sup>. To me, there seems to be only one ethical choice when it comes to choosing how a company should manage its employees’ time at work.
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But time outside of work is important, too, and here an ethical company has a strong responsibility to ensure that its employees are getting enough. While unlimited paid time off has been a controversial policy (and studies show that 
it can often lead to employees taking <i>less</i> time off), providing ample vacation, and the flexibility to use it, can greatly increase workers’ quality of life<sup>2</sup>.
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Humans spend a huge chunk of their lives at work. Before we aim to make people happier with the products we produce at our jobs, we should ensure that our jobs make us happy; otherwise, we’re losing the battle before we even fight it.


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<sup>1</sup><a href="https://risepeople.com/blog/flextime-telecommuting-make-staff-more-productive/">https://risepeople.com/blog/flextime-telecommuting-make-staff-more-productive/</a><br>
<sup>2</sup><a href="https://www.inc.com/gene-marks/why-unlimited-paid-time-off-is-bad-for-your-employees.html">https://www.inc.com/gene-marks/why-unlimited-paid-time-off-is-bad-for-your-employees.html</a><br>
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