Archive for the ‘Performance at Work’ Category:
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Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts
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Filed under Human Resources Articles (General), Leadership, Performance at Work, Talent Management
Tags:Development, hrm, human resource management, human resources, Leadership, Performance at Work, Performance Management, Talent Management
A couple of weeks ago, my buddy Chris Ferdinandi over at Renegade HR and I talked about multi-generational workforces and what they mean to employers for his podcast (one of the few I actually listen to). Want to have a listen? Of course you do:
So what are always my main points about generations?
- There are differences between various generations.
- Sometimes these differences are blown out of proportion to their importance.
- Often these differences relate to career level rather than generations.
- Truly skilled managers rarely have issues dealing with a multi-generational workforce.
- Problems with managing certain generations often point to greater leadership issues.
- Generation Y can talk about whatever they want but businesses speak the language of action.
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Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts
Ten years ago – heck, five years ago – few people worked on teams with geographically dispersed members. Today, this is very common. Every manager needs or will need to learn how to manage and inspire team members they regularly see “live.”
Pal and witty guy Wayne Turmel (a.k.a. The Crank Middle Manager) has written this helpful white paper: 3 Reasons Virtual Teams Fail- and How To See it Coming. You can down load it for free by clicking on the link. A couple interesting quotes from the paper:
- “70% of managers above 1st-level supervisor now have at least one team member who is not co-located with them.”
- “Technology and online tools are great but they are effective only if they are used to create context and human connections. Mere data transfer will result in short-term time savings and long term communication problems of the project.”
- “A good project requires a mix of synchronous (people can talk at the same time) and asynchronous (people use them at different times) tools to be truly effective.”
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Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts
A derailed executive is an previously-named high-potential employee who has reached the middle management level, only to find that there is little chance of future advancement (as previously thought) due to a misfit between job requirements and personal skills. Thus, the executive either plateaus or leaves the organization altogether. That is the original CCL studies definition. Sometimes the term also refers to leaders who experience big failures after reaching the executive spot and, more recently, those involved in ethical scandals.
Whatever your definition of a bad leader is, most have several of the following 10 leadership shortcomings:
Lack of energy/enthusiasm: OK so some people are less visibly enthusiastic than others, thanks to a personality trait called introversion. But there’s an effort to be made, no matter what your personality style, to covey and inspire energy and enthusiasm in your team. And there is NEVER an excuse for complaining. Either do it, change it, or leave it.
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Filed under Human Resources Articles (General), Leadership, Performance at Work, Talent Management
Tags:Competencies, Competency, Development, executive derailment, hrm, Leadership, Performance at Work, Performance Management, Performance Reviews
Technology has made it so that I can email you much more easily than I can call you. We can communicate virtually just as well as we can connect face-to-face. With the recession cut-backs, many companies have taken advantage of that. Workers have been treated as disposable. Cost-containment is important. It’s the most important part, in fact, if your business is struggling financially. But what is creating disposable workers doing to your company?
Temps, freelancers, contractors, and interim executives are easy to get rid of. What kind of culture is having temporary workers creating? First, the bright side…
You get better talent.
The more ’stable’ jobs are the ones that are sought after by high potentials seeking the executive track. Since there are fewer of these positions available, competition is increased, and you can be more selective. Yet, the temps, the contractors and consultants feel the competition as well, because you are their ‘client.’ You can hire experts when experts are needed and generalists where generalists are needed. Consequentially, the bar is increased and you have your pick.
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Filed under Human Resources Articles (General), Leadership, Performance at Work, Recruitment & Selection, Talent Management
Tags:hrm, human resource management, Leadership, management practices, Performance Management, talent, Talent Management
In this study, we examine how mentoring benefits mentors as well as how team cohesiveness affects mentoring relationships and resulting benefits. We followed 512 formal mentors in a Chinese manufacturing firm for six months and collected data in three phases and from three sources. The findings reveal that the amount of mentoring provided is positively related to mentors’ in-role job performance and social status. These relationships were fully mediated by mentors’ personal learning and social interaction quality, respectively. Team cohesiveness, however, did not moderate these relationships. Our empirical findings have implications for understanding how mentors’ careers can benefit from being a mentor.
Sourced from: Latest Issue of Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology
Written on November 25th, 2009 by Derekno shouts
Working in teams to achieve organizational goals is increasingly common in today’s workplace. Working in teams provides synergistic benefits such as the combined skills and knowledge of all the team members, varied perspectives to improve innovation and creativity as well as increased motivation and satisfaction associated with being a part of a work team. Nevertheless, there is an associated downside for working in teams, the potential for Social Loafing. Social loafing occurs in situations where individuals put less effort into working to achieve goals when they are working within a team. For example, when there are one or two team members who are not pulling their weight or contributing significantly to the project when working in a team.
When working in teams, emphasis is placed on the achievement of group goals and not on the individual contributions. One possible reason for social loafing may be due to the lack of recognition for individual contributions within the team and therefore individuals may not be overly motivated to do their best. Such occurrences can be damaging to the overall group effectiveness and may lead to the failure of the team in achieving their goals.
To alleviate the negative issues associated with social loafing, the establishment of teams should incorporate measures to identify and record the efforts of each individual team member. By making individual efforts identifiable, each member of the team can be held accountable for their contributions to the team effort. In addition, high performers in the team can be identified and their contributions can be recognized through additional rewards or other benefits. Such measures would motivate team members to provide their best efforts to enable the team to achieve its goals.
Written on November 20th, 2009 by Derekno shouts
Organizational conflict is popularly known as a disruptive influence within organizations, as it can affect the organizational effectiveness and lead to counterproductive behaviours. This may not always be the case as research has suggested that conflict at moderate levels within an organization is optimal for organizational effectiveness (Jones, 2004). It appears that some conflict is required for organizational effectiveness but overly high levels of conflict can harm organizational effectiveness.
Amason’s (1996) study regarding this phenomenon has identified and differentiated between two forms of conflict, functional and dysfunctional conflict. According to the author, functional conflict refers to differences in judgment regarding the achievement of common goals and is mainly task oriented while dysfunctional conflict tends to relate to personal differences and is likely to carry an emotional slant. The results of the study indicated that improvements to decision making were due to the cognitive aspects of conflict while decision making suffered due to the emotional aspects of conflict. The author also proposed that although simulation of cognitive aspects can help to promote functional conflict, often it may unintentionally raise emotional aspects leading to dysfunctional conflict (Amason, 1996). Therefore, it is important to note that conflict does play a part in determining organizational effectiveness and also that it is not totally undesirable as some conflict appears to be necessary to maximize performance.
Having considered different forms of conflict that might be present within organizations, it would be important for organizations to be able to differentiate between sources of conflict that may provide beneficial effects and sources of conflict that are associated with negative effects. This would allow organizations to maintain an optimal level of conflict to promote organizational effectiveness and undertake strategies to minimize the negative aspects that are associated with counter-productive conflict within the organization.
Amason, A. C. (1996). Distinguishing the Effects of Functional and Dysfunctional Conflict on Strategic Decision Making: Resolving a Paradox for Top Management Teams. The Academy of Management Journal, 39(1), 123-148.
Jones, G. R. (2004). Organizational Theory, Design, and Change (4th ed). New Jersey Pearson Education Inc.
This research examined the role of national differences in positivity as an explanation of cross-national variation in job satisfaction (JS) ratings. National positivity values were derived from a sample of current employees by calculating the mean residual in a regression of global JS on mean facet satisfaction ratings. As predicted, the positivity values derived in the research showed convergent validity with other indices of nation-level positivity, and national differences in extraversion. National differences in positivity showed significant incremental associations with national differences in JS ratings after controlling for the effects of acquiescence, perceived differences in working conditions, and national development. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.
Sourced from: Latest Issue of Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology
This is a summary of an original article published by Strategic HR Review.
In an economic downturn and subsequent recovery, change is inevitable for every organization. Effective Change Management is often a mix of the strategic and the practical. It can encompass everything from ensuring strategies are aligned, to making sure your weekly bulletin goes out on time, on message and to the right people. From a HR perspective, it is important to provide leadership and guidance by example and the following actions can help HR executives to lead the way during the change process.
1. Define and deliver your HR strategy
Make sure that HR strategy is consistent with the overall business strategy, and where necessary provide input and ideas into the overall business strategy. Make sure you achieve buy-in from key stakeholders. This can be achieved by clearly outlining your proposed improvements and delivering on project ideas early on. Part of aligning HR strategy with the overall business strategy will be achieved by sharpening your HR operating model and asking how each HR role will support your organization in the next 12 months. You will be better able to respond quickly to organizational changes with better HR systems, more effective processes and better aligned capabilities in place. This allows HR to deal with the next new change more effectively.
2. Understand HR cost drivers
It is vital to know what drives HR costs. If you know your key performance metrics and what has an effect on them, you can quickly demonstrate that you understand the cost, service and risk implications of any proposed organizational changes on your own department. A good grasp of the cost implications of strategic decisions and the analysis to back it up – really helps when it comes to making changes. By conducting an assessment of the HR department, you get a better understanding of your internal benchmarks. A key metric for HR to understand is the HR “Cost to Serve”of each employee, including staff, systems and third parties. This can vary widely between businesses and geographies and it is important to know why.
3. Take a lead on sourcing options
Take the outsourcing decision to your board – do not let the board take it to you. Be proactive and do the research into how outsourcing could benefit your department (see article Top 5 Benefits of HR Outsourcing)and bring about positive change, as well as cost-savings. Show that you have been actively looking at alternative ways to provide better and more cost-effective HR services in payroll, IT, recruitment, training, HR administration and benefits. Develop your own “build or buy” criteria to help gradually improve HR services. Demonstrate that your business case takes into account the benefits of moving from fixed cost to a more variable cost (that will help in the downturn and the subsequent upturn).
4. Lead by example
There is a balancing act that good HR directors need to master. Often, HR directors are so outwardly focused on supporting the organization that they can neglect the day-to-day workings of their own department. When aligning HR strategy to the wider business strategy, HR directors need to focus on the internal working of the HR department, and most importantly, the people within the HR department. Show leadership through developing your talented team members, and use this as your core team to lead change. Retention strategies start at home, so show the board what you are doing to keep and develop your most talented team members. Be innovative. The organization will look to the HR department to lead on this – secondments, project roles and recognizing excellent service are all initiatives that can inspire people within the organization.
5. Implement change decisively and calmly
All executives in the organization must demonstrate leadership by managing change in a calm and decisive way. HR can stop the organization making “knee-jerk” reactions – more than ever, this is the time to make the right decisions for your organization. Implement changes calmly, effectively and consistently.
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Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts
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