Discuss the following:
In recent years, internships have become more popular among college students. Students realize that simply having a degree is not enough to get a job after graduating - work experience also matters. Internships are forms of temporary employment that respond to work demands in the short term. They are also a way for college students to earn credit towards their degree and work experience before they graduate. Internships are often unpaid, but many companies use them as a recruiting tool for new hires.
With internships growing in popularity, lot of companies offer pay to their interns in either the form of a low hourly wage or a small stipend. More often than not, the pay that companies offer their interns is not enough to live off and does not correspond to the amount of work the interns are expected to complete.
In 2013 a federal district court judge in New York ruled that Fox Searchlight Pictures compensate two unpaid interns who worked on the 2010 movie Black Swan. The plaintiffs claimed that they were doing work that benefited the studio and "did not foster an educational environment" (Greenhouse). Since this ruling there have been two more cases brought to New York's federal court in which interns are demanding compensation. The first was brought against publishing company Conde Nast for work an intern did for the magazine W. She worked three days a week for ten hours per day. She never received proper training from an employee (she was trained by a fellow intern) and did not gain any educational benefit. At the time, interns at Conde Nast received $550 per semester (less than $1 per hour), but two months after the company was served with a lawsuit they decided to stop paying interns altogether.
In some way, interns can benefit from unpaid internships by receiving college credit, but now many colleges and universities have stopped that practice. For example, no Ivy League institutions allow internships to be applied towards a student's academic credits.
The future of internships is difficult to predict, but it is possible companies will have no choice but to begin paying interns for their work or to eliminate internships entirely.
Q1: With the case study in mind, determine the primary manner in which you, as a human resource manager, would formulate an appropriate and non-exploitative experience for interns at your company. Address issues like compensation, working hours, job duties, and training.
Q2: Compare and contrast the approaches that the researched companies take towards training and compensating their interns. Perform a critical analysis to determine which company's approach you believe is most fair and which company's approach you believe is most effective. Justify