Singapore Human Resource Congress sponsored by PsyAsia International

PsyAsia International is pleased to once again be supporting Singapore’s Human Resource professionals as a sponsor of the Singapore Human Resources Institute’s Annual Human Resource Congress.

The Singapore HR Congress and Business-Connect Exposition 2010 will address the newly derived term of HR TransmutationTM and explore the topic in deeper context.  The current economic churning has made it explicitly clear that industry is not just facing another downturn but it is accompanied by impactful structural, demographic and mindset changes across industry and top management cannot afford to respond with anything less than a complete overhaul of the system to survive and sustain. Renowned speakers and leaders from the HR fraternity will share their experiences and provide useful insights on the know-how of managing paradoxes in a turbulent world.

PsyAsia’s clients are entitled to a 35% discount on the price of conference tickets.  Please contact us in the first instance to avail of this special offer.
“A strong and capable HR community can be the catalyst and change agents to initiate and implement people development efforts in organisations, and help build stronger capabilities amongst our business leaders and managers.”
 
PM Lee Hsien Loong
11th World HR Congress 2006 organised by SHRI

PsyAsia International is Asia’s leading independent distributor of Psychometric Tests of Personality and Aptitude. From offices across Asia, including Singapore and Hong Kong, our psychologists assist the world’s top organisations and local governments to recruit, select, assess and retain the best employees. Our services are only offered by fully registered organisational psychologists with years of experience in their field. PsyAsia also offers world-class training in Psychometric Testing in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Online.

Survey: Developing Successful Global Leaders

The American Management Association (AMA), in conjunction with the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), is conducting a study to examine leadership initiatives that organizations have taken to coordinate actions across global locations. We’re looking for your input on the topic. In return, you’ll receive the preliminary results report once available. Please take this survey now.

Estimated survey length: 5 minutes

You’ll receive: Preliminary results report

Survey closes: Wednesday, March 17

Receive a complimentary results report

In exchange for completing the survey, you’ll receive a copy of these valuable results, which otherwise are exclusive to i4cp members. Thank you for your participation.
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 Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts

3 Reasons Virtual Teams Fail- and How To See it Coming

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

10 Reasons for Executive Failure

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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 Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts

The Five Domains of High Performance

Pick a leader – any successful leader. Then search Amazon and see how many books and other publications come up on that person. Abraham Lincoln? 83,642. Gandhi? 61,923. Even Barack Obama, who was widely introduced to the world just five years ago, has 8,670. People love studying successful people.

In the same way that many people have an insatiable appetite to study successful leaders, we in the business world tend to be fascinated with high-performance organizations. What are they like? What do they do differently? Is there a secret recipe that allows them to outperform their competition?

Of course, many books have been dedicated to this subject. From Tom Peters’s and Bob Waterman’s early 80’s best seller In Search of Excellence to Jim Collins’ Built to Last and Good to Great, there has been a succession of books that leaders and managers across the globe have devoured. Programs such as GE’s Six Sigma have trained countless people in how to achieve top performance and consultants have built entire practices around elements of high-performing companies.

While business professionals want to learn more about high-performance organizations in the hopes that they can apply some of the secret sauce to their own organization, many of the companies profiled within the pages of the aforementioned books were unable to sustain high performance. In fact, the number is about half. While much has been written on the subject, the truth is that the ingredients to high performance remain something of a mystery.

Part of the reason is the definition – what exactly do we mean by high performance? Is there a difference between simply surviving (which was the fate of some of the companies profiled in Built to Last, for example) and performing well over a long period? Do we mean companies which outperform others in their own industry or across industries? Over how long a time period does an organization need to perform exceptionally well in order to be considered a “high performer”? And which measures, financial or otherwise, are the best ones to use?

Over the last three decades, i4cp researchers have looked at various ways to define high performance and the traits that separate the consistently top organizations from the rest. Through that time, we have come to recognize high-performing organizations as ones that consistently outperform most of their competitors in four primary areas:

• Revenue growth
• Market share
• Profitability
• Customer satisfaction

And, over the years, our research team has examined well over 100 different core human capital areas and tried to determine the differences between high-performing and low-performing organizations. The research has clearly shown that no single ingredient guarantees organizational success. Rather, high performance is like a delicate entrée – based on a staple of core ingredients any one of which, if left out or of inferior quality, will ruin the entire item.

The Five Domains of High Performance

Our research has shown that there are five basic ingredients which separate higher performers from their lower-performing counterparts:

1. Their strategies are more consistent, clearly communicated and well thought out. They are more likely than other companies to say that their philosophies are consistent with their strategies and their performance measurements mirror their strategies.
2. Leadership is clear, fair and talent-oriented. Those leaders are more likely to promote the best people for the job, to make sure performance expectations are well known and consistent with the strategy, and to be committed to developing their people.
3. There is a commitment to the right talent within the organization, and while employees are treated as unique individuals, the organization takes a holistic approach to managing and making decisions based on data-driven information. This begins with a strategic approach to workforce planning. It entails looking at the organization from an outside-in perspective that identifies the business model components and areas that drive value and then determines what the organization needs.
4. The culture is strong in all the right ways, and employees are more likely to think the organization is a good place to work. Employees not only adapt well to change, they embrace it. High performers also emphasize a readiness to meet new challenges and are committed to innovation.
5. They are more likely to have a strong market focus and go above and beyond for their customers. They are organized internally around what’s best for the customer, they think hard about customers’ future and long-term needs, and their strategy is based on customer data. And they are more likely to see customer information as the most important factor for developing new products and services.

While these five domains – Strategy, Leadership, Talent, Culture and Market – may seem a bit broad or even obvious, the separation our research has shown between high and low performers in these domains is startling. For example, in a just-released study on high performance by i4cp, the following graph depicts this separation:

These findings, along with previous studies, have convinced us to target our research on discovering the best ways for companies to boost their performance in these five domains and the numerous sub-domains within. We’re convinced that companies that focus on excelling in these areas are cooking up a surefire recipe for long-term success.

i4cp’s 4-Part Recommendation:

1. Take stock to determine where your organization stands in these five areas, and be honest – even the best performing companies aren’t always superb in each area. To get an objective view, survey the workforce on these domains as well as use other assessment tools.
2. Once you’ve determined your areas of strength and weakness, make sure senior management is involved in improving on the weak areas while not taking the eye off of the strengths; in tough economies it can be easy to stop focusing on core areas that the company has excelled in. Don’t forget to investigate the practices of other organizations that are excelling in your areas of weakness; it’s amazing how some very simple and inexpensive ideas can make a huge difference in closing the gap.
3. Although companies should focus on the specific tactics for boosting their performance in each of these five areas, it’s important to align the five areas as a whole. Each domain feeds off the others, and ignoring one is like leaving a key ingredient out of a culinary masterpiece.
4. Although these efforts should continue indefinitely to sustain performance over time, organizations should also do regular reevaluations of their progress so they can make course corrections as needed.

View a recording of Thursday’s webinar, The Five Domains of High-Performance Organizations.
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 Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts

The effect of mentoring on the job performance and social status of mentors in China

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

Providing Effective Performance Feedback

Performance management involves an ongoing process of establishing goals, evaluating the activities undertaken to achieve those goals, as well as assessing the final outcomes within an organization. This ongoing process allows management to assess the performance of the employees within the organization and how effective the organization is in meeting their strategic goals.

The performance management process can take many forms, ranging from periodic performance reviews between the manager and subordinate to 360 degree performance appraisals which involve gathering information from varied sources such as from peers, subordinates of the individual being assessed and maybe even from external clients. Typically, these performance reviews are conducted on a formal basis whereby the manager will meet with the subordinate on a periodic basis to assess the performance over that period and to provide feedback to the subordinate. The feedback component of the performance review process is very important as it provides subordinates with information regarding the areas in which they meet expectations or excel as well as areas where they may require further development. These provide advice and guidance for improving their performance. When conducted properly, this feedback process can serve as a source of encouragement and motivation.

With this in mind, it is critical for organizations to provide effective feedback during their performance review processes. This is done by providing specific feedback on behaviours that can be changed so as to improve performance. General feedback regarding possible negative behaviours would likely undermine the confidence of the employee and may cause the employee to become more defensive. Thus it would be more effective to provide examples of ideal behaviour that would help to improve performance. It is also important to maintain the confidence levels of the employee by providing them with support and encouragement in their capacity to improve and meet their potential.

Another point to keep in mind for performance reviews is to ensure that the process is not directed at criticizing the employee. It should focus on problem solving and identifying potential solutions in a collaborative manner. In this way, the employee will not feel that they are being criticized on his or her job performance thus enabling both parties to have a discussion to identify possible ways for that performance to be improved. Even when covering performance issues, it is very important to treat employees with respect so that they do not feel that they are being personally criticized.

Although performance reviews are commonly conducted formally on a periodic basis, the inclusion of informal performance reviews can be of considerable benefit. This allows the managers and subordinates to meet on a more frequent basis to discuss their ongoing processes, identify performance issues and provide advice regarding potential solutions. This can be especially useful for employees dealing with new duties and responsibilities when feedback is provided in a timely manner and immediate remedial solutions can be explored instead of waiting for the formal performance review period when such feedback may not be as urgent or relevant.
These are just some suggestions whereby organizations can help to mitigate some of the stigma and negative public perceptions that are widely held regarding performance reviews. In addition, the motivation benefits that are associated with providing effective feedback during performance reviews can improve both individual and organizational performance.

If you are interested in using an online and validated 360 Performance Framework and Appraisal System, have a look at the Saville Consulting 360 Appraisal System at http://www.psyasia.com/360_performance_appraisal.php

International Society for Intelligence Research provides grants to students

1. ISIR has instituted a new program to help defray travel costs for post-doctoral students and faculty members without travel support or with only partial support. We will be able to support ten or more persons. First priority will go to those presenting papers who are post-doctoral students or junior faculty without travel support. Travel will be funded for up to $1,500 per person. This program is being funded by ISIR.

2. The second program supports student travel and is fully explained in the conference announcement found at http://www.isironline.org/meeting/. This program is supported by the Templeton Foundation grant that we recently received. To apply for either program, send an email by September 25th to detterman@case.edu with an attachment stating 1) Name, 2) Affiliation, 3) Current Status (e.g., 3rd year graduate student, postdoctoral student, faculty member, etc.), 4) Travel support currently available to you, 5) Indicate if you have submitted a paper to be presented at the conference and if you will be the presenter, 6) Any other information that may be relevant to your application. Note that, because of the new program, the deadline for application to both programs has been extended to September 25, 2009.