Conduct an activity about the range of salaries across the country and across jobs. A variety of salary surveys are reported on the Internet, by both general salary websites and industry-specific sites. Divide students into groups, then assign each group specific criteria to study.
For example, students can consider topics such as the difference in salary between people with a bachelor's degree in business or a master's of business administration; the disparity between men and women's earnings in the same job category; whether business majors in Texas make more than those in Wisconsin; and whether a financial controller makes more than an operations manager.
Turn negative events into positive learning experiences by using big-business failures to set examples and encourage student brainstorming. Make a lesson out of product recalls, which happen when a company acknowledges a deficiency in their product and asks people who have purchased or are owners of that item to return it for repair or exchange.
When big businesses experience a product recall, it often hits the news, such as when Tylenol bottles were laced with cyanide and Nestle Toll House cookies were packaged containing E. coli. Have students research the financial impact of these problems (including the cost of the recall itself, the public relations damage and the income lost from product sales while the items were reconfigured) and try to determine how the situations could have been avoided. (In the Tylenol case, which involved a perpetrator slipping poison into the bottles, this is not possible; in other cases, companies were shown to have skimped on health and safety mechanisms.)
A standard financial and business activity involves having students invest "play" money in a stock and watching it rise or fall over time, with the most successful investor receiving a prize or the highest grade. Tweak this activity to better suit your business students by teaching them a lesson in small business financial investing.
Assign each of your students a small, local business in your town. Have the students determine whether the businesses are a good financial investment by researching a number of factors. According to the State of Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, business managers should have experience both in their field of product or service and in running a small business. Students should review the companies' marketing plans and the price of shares currently on the market (plus track whether shares have risen, fallen or plateaued). Students may want to meet with company executives in person where possible to find out more about the businesses. The resulting reports can be a lesson on the buyer-beware aspect of small business investing.