Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Importance of Career Development in Organisational Success

 

The process of organisational career development is very important for both employees and employers. Managing career development is a matter of growing challenge for organizations as it needs to be mindful and align individual employee aspirations with business objectives of the organization. Developing a career development strategy will help employees to take one’s job serious and see it more as a career as it's linked to his or her long-term aspirations.


Job-hopping mindset has become more common around the globe, smart organisations have identified this trend and have implemented strategies to have an atmosphere of growth where employees are able to identify the opportunities for career advancements that exist within the organisation. These organizations help employees to plan a path that may carry them through the whole of their working life, as finding a good employee is much more challenging than retaining an existing one. 


The Importance of seeing a Career as Steps of Development 

This idea of observing an employee’s career as a whole and designing diverse sets of recognized training, developmental activities, and relationships at each phase is recognized as career development (Noe, 2010). Traditional training programs emphasize educating specific competencies related to the employee’s present job, employee development programs target skills, knowledge, and behaviors that better prepare the employee for future positions; career development includes both training and development.

The combination of precise job training, employee development, and linking career development set up to the process needs a high level of strategic thinking and planning; such a plan cannot be based purely on an expected future return from the employee. It takes robust direction and broad views to be able to acknowledge what training and developmental experiences are necessary for employees to grow in their positions so that they are positioned correctly in the organisational hierarchy and support the organizational vision. Whereas this may need some level of investment on the part of the organisation, understanding and supporting career development, impacts the organization’s ability to draw in and retain high-performance employees, a combination that may lead to a long-term organisation-wide competitive advantage.


Why is Career Development So Important for Organizations?

  • Attracting top talent: Although recently the globe has been faced with a tight job market, in competitive fields employers must focus their efforts on attracting the top talent. Competitive employment packages that go beyond traditional compensation and benefits can be key to their accomplishment.

  • Job satisfaction: It is often said that “A happy employee is a productive employee.” Job satisfaction is very vital since most of the people devote a major share of their life to their working place. Furthermore, job satisfaction has its effect on the general life of the employees also, since a satisfied employee is satisfied and happy human being. An extremely satisfied worker has healthier physical and mental well-being (Janardhanan & George 2011).

  • Retaining employees/reducing turnover: Through organizational commitment, career development opportunities help to retain employees and thus prevents turnover. 

  • Productivity and Financial Returns: Employers can also increase efficiency and financial revenues by capitalizing on their employees via career development. 

Because organizations have to stay current in technology, business practices, and advances in their industry, an organization that embraces career development processes can keep employees up-to-date on advancements in the industry while, keep staff motivated and retain the knowledge pool within the organization ensuring its competitive edge in the market.


Reference


Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Will Chatbots Replace the H in HR?


Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are swiftly moving the globe we live in, and many of the current job roles would get affected in the coming years.                                                                                                                                                                                     

Automation will bring considerable efficiencies to many of the roles, but it also may replace some of the roles. On the bright side, automation will create new jobs that involve the kind of thinking machines cannot do. When you have so many tasks to handle in a day, you might feel like automating a few of them to move things faster.


What is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is an application that can take your place when you are unreachable. A Chatbot is a computer program based on AI designed to simulate conversations with humans, especially over the Internet. They are simple software applications that imitate human or written or spoken human speech for simulating interaction with an individual. There are numerous chatbot platforms used by many businesses all around the globe. 


How do Chatbots Work?

Chatbot helps like a human serving as a help desk. So, when the end-user opens a dialogue box for discussion, the Chatbot becomes the medium that responds.

As mentioned already,  Chatbots are the best application of Artificial Intelligencethey can be easily divided into two categories. The simpler Q/A bot needs a minor skillset and knowledge base and is limited to answer only a specific set of questions while the smarter machine learning Chatbots connect the full potential of AI.

For being an effective bot and ability to offer related answers, the Chatbot mostly employs four major parameters as Text Classifiers, Suitable Algorithms, Artificial Neural Networks, and Natural Language Processing (NLP)All these aspects subsidize to the overall bot functionality and intelligence of the Chatbot.


Will HR Jobs be Automated?

The answer to that question depends on the specific HR role and the tasks performed. Automation will affect all HR jobs, and already has, but to a different degree.

As McKinsey showscertain kinds of responsibilities are expected to be automated than others. Technical ventures, such as data collection and data processing, are likely to be automated. (Most of the organizations might have already begun automating some of these functions.) Other types of work, such as managing people, planning, or creative work are much less likely to be automated.

This explains why HR administrative jobs have a 90% chance of being automated by 2035, according to a study from Oxford Universitybut HR managers, directors, and officers are much less likely to be replaced by robots. A robot can spit out data, but it can’t create a strategic plan or mediate a conflict between two employees.

In short, robots are likely to take over routine HR tasks, while the HR tasks that require creativity, problem-solving, decision-making, or people skills will remain the domain of humans.


Reference




Why Strong Values are Important for Modern Organizations

 


Having clear company values help the management to ensure that all employees are working towards a common Goal. Values support the company's vision and its culture. That is why every single business decision must be aligned with these values. A business lacking values would not survive in today’s competitive and complex world.


Values – Why are they Important to any Company?

Values are what support the vision, shape the culture, and imitate what a company considers as important behaviors. They’re the core of the company’s identity. Some organizations emphasis generally on the technical competencies but often overlook the primary competencies that make their organisations run smoothly — values. Creating a strong set of values delivers both internal and external advantages to the company:

  • Values help companies in the decision-making processes. For instance, if one of your values is to stand behind the quality of your products, any products not reaching the suitable standard are inevitably rejected.


  • Values educate clients and potential customers about what the organization is about and simplify the identity of the organization. Especially in this competitive world, taking a set of specific values that voice to the public is definitely a competitive advantage.


  • Values are becoming prime recruiting and retention tools. Through the ease of investigating organisations, job explorers are doing their study on the identities of the organizations they are applying for and considering whether or not these organisations hold the values that the job seekers think about as vital.

A recent Harvard Business Review article by Dr. Natalie Baumgartner, Chief Workforce Scientist at Achievers, discovers why culture needs to line up with organization values. She refers to LinkedIn survey that recommends 26 percent of employees would decline a fancy title and 65 percent would accept lower pay before dealing with a poor workplace environment.


Values Drive Culture

Just like home, values are the foundation for ‘HOW’ everything occurs in a workplace. The values of employees along with their knowledges, upbringing, and so on, combine together to form the base of company. A decent value structure has employee wellbeing at its core, and that, in turn, drives growth for a business. Successful organization like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. All of them have a thriving set of ethics to make everyone's lives easier. 


Values initiates from the topmost. The Chief Executive Officer sets and leads from the front. Why does the senior leaders have a vast role in transferring them to every corner of the organization? Since leaders have the authority to decide the direction and define the daily actions of employees. That’s why implementing values is tougher than just writing them on a piece of paper.


How to Identify and Implement Values in an Organization

Start by creating value statements. At present, define how you would want people to work with others in your organization. Also, focus on how the organization will value customers, suppliers, community, and everyone else who’s involved. Once you have this list, create value and proceed, implement.

Identifying values is nothing like analyzing your kitchen and listing a grocery list. Likewise, one cannot copy them from the value page of another organization. Lastly, a long list of values are not required. ‘More the merrier’ won’t work here, so six to seven is a good number at the start.


Conclusion

Organizations’ culture can be used to separate it from competitors. It allows organisation to create a differentiated brand, attract and retain loyal employees, and build robust relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners. Since culture represents unique values, competitors cannot replicate it. The only requirement is that organization is true and committed to it’s values that represent company culture. Having values on a plaque on the lobby wall is not sufficient. One must always act and behave in alignment with values. This means only hiring employees that share your values and making business decisions with values in mind.

If the values are strongly running in the organization, employees experience motivation and high engagement levels throughout their work lives. So, don’t underestimate the power of values in creating an engaged workplace. They have the authority to change the landscape of your organization. Which choice are you going to make?


Reference



Monday, April 26, 2021

360-Degree Performance Appraisal in Organization

 


360-Degree performance appraisal is a system or method during which employees receive confidential, anonymous feedback from those that work with them. This usually covers the employee's manager, peers, and direct reports. The feedback received is usually anonymous and confidential. The basic procedure is generally the distribution of a digital form through a system that needs to be submitted by the people concerned.


Why Organisations need a Performance Appraisal Framework?


Organisations are met with the challenge of promoting innovative productivity improvement among workers. Hence, productivity plays a vital role in the organisation’s competitiveness. Thus, innovation supports efficiency through the new uses of technology in the business, enhanced industry systems, meeting changing customer demands, and better systems and processes (Business Victoria 2016). For an organisation to evolve, people working within it must be involved in processes that improve the organisation’s productivity. Fourie (2008) is of the opinion that organisational success depends on a suitable recognition and reward system. The recognition and rewards may be used to increase performance in organisations that have adopted the 360-degree performance appraisal. Therefore, a complete performance policy must be developed that aligns pay (or other incentives) to performance.

Let’s look at why adoption of performance management frameworks are widespread amongst top organizations around the globe.

  • Performance Management - This type of performance appraisal method aligns employee rewards/recognition with a company’s performance. The data collected from the feedback is used for the review of an employee. With the size and frequency of the data available you can effectively track and develop the performance of your workforce.

  • Employee Development - This is one of the main reasons why companies opt for an all-round feedback system. Human resource management applies these data from the survey to fill the gaps in the skillsets of the employees. This ensures that the organization is up to date with skills in-line with the current trends in the industry.

  • Onboarding and Training - Companies want to have a structured way of training and getting new employees on board. It helps the companies recognize the kind of skills required and make arrangements for fresh new talent. Also, it helps companies to elect on a promotion. It helps to inform the administration with the strength and weaknesses of a new leader. This makes certain that the company doesn’t lose an excessive amount of time adapting to changes. These are generally the motives why companies opt for such an appraisal system.

“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we

improve. – Bill Gates”


 Advantages and Disadvantages of 360-Degree Performance Appraisal System

 Appraisal management system could be a very powerful asset for the business. Yet, every system has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of 360-Degree Appraisal System

  • Self-development of employees
  • Fair and accurate reviews
  • No biasing with 360-degree feedback
  • Motivate workforce
  • Provides a comprehensive view of employee performance
  • Convincing opinions from participants
  • Better morale of employees
  • Positive work environment
          Disadvantages of 360-Degree Appraisal System
  • Process could be time-consuming
  • Sometime peers and subordinates might not give objective feedback
  • Needs proper training to give proper feedback
  • Data mix concerns
  • Concerns on confidentiality might hamper objective feedback – especially from subordinates
  • Sometimes too much data with conflicting views
  • Data is not available to everyone. Can create a suspicious environment 
     Conclusion

      The 360-degree performance appraisal makes a working atmosphere that inspires worker participation. It is a suitable system for succession planning, training, and professional development (Riboldi & Maylette 2007). Henceforth, there was no relation between the 360-degree performance appraisal and labour efficiency. The system is not a result of inherent labour productivity problems. It is a method that takes advantage of a focused organisational approach to combine employee appraisal and participation. The system can be used for developing employee capital in organisations. Thus, the staff will have the ability to solve organisational problems (Brewster et al. 2003). Therefore, the 360-degree approach was able to reduce the spoilage rate in the organization.

    
    Reference    

  •       Business Victoria, 2016, Increase profitability and staff retention with an innovative culture, State Government of Victoria, Melbourne

  • Fourie, D., 2008, ‘An examination of an incentive system to maximize performance in an automobile manufacturing environment’, thesis, unpublished, Rhodes University, Grahamstown.

  • Ahmed., 2021, An Overview of Employee Development? [Blog Entry] 01st February 2021, Available from https://blog.vantagecircle.com/employee-development/ [Accessed on 24th April 2021].

  • Dutta., 2021, 7 Easy Steps to Build a New Employee Onboarding Process? [Blog Entry]29th January 2021. Available on https://blog.vantagecircle.com/employee-onboarding/ [Accessed on 24th April 2021]
  • Riboldi, J. & Maylette, T., 2007, ‘Using 360 feedback to predict performance’, T&D 61(1), 48–52.

  • Brewster, C., Carey, L., Dowling, P., Globler, P. & Wärnich, S., 2003, Contemporary issues in human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage, Oxford University Press, Cape Town.



        
     

Jan 16, 2018



    
     

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

The Psychological Impact of Working from Home


 

In year 2020 organization have seen a rapid shift towards working from home and this has created a new set of challenges leading to a significant psychological impact on employees. But experience in year 2020 have shown that with the right leadership and management approach, these can be overcome.


The worldwide lockdown of businesses, industries, and school closures took place to contain the outbreak and prevent a health system overload and fundamental challenges for both employees and employers across the world. The working environment has significantly changed with thousands of jobs lost, disappearance of some occupations, and dramatic growth in new occupations and employees were turned overnight into work from home.


The sudden shift to a remote work setup has been stressful for many employees, partly due to the challenges of information technology systems that were implemented to facilitate working from home. The restriction caused by the privacy setting, connectivity capabilities, and server limitations caused employees much anxiety and restlessness to the point that they are unable to be productive.


Employees also faced challenges in managing time due to the work from home initiative. In most cases, employees were no longer confined to a 8.30am to 5.00pm schedule as employees found it difficult to demarcate the office and personal time. They had to work beyond 5pm even sometimes without knowing that they are consuming personal time for office work and also sacrificing relationships, family and health. 


Working from Home made everyone to accept certain behaviors  where the line between someone’s professional and personal life has disappeared.  Therefore, it’s vital for people and organizations to familiarize themselves with the best practices to incorporate in order to sustain a stable and productive pace of work that takes everyone’s wellbeing into account.


How will we change productivity to this new set of circumstances? It will be our personal challenge to find the balance between work, leisure, childcare, and chores. A main organizational challenge will be understanding the different realities and create flexible processes to accommodate these circumstances.


How do Organizations Create better Working Environment for Employees Working from Home?

To overcome these issues, the companies have made few changes to their day to day work by introducing policies like requiring a ten-minute break between meetings, implementing meeting-free days each month, avoid scheduling meetings after 5.30 pm and during holidays, etc.. These helped to reduce the psychological pressure of being constantly online.


Besides looking for a solution form employers to resolve some of the current problems faced by those working-from-home, individuals who are working-from-home, may also need to do something for themselves to stimulate productivity. For instance, stretching or doing yoga in between work hours. Exercising has been found to stimulate endorphins and serotonins so that employees are not feeling depressed or overwhelmed by their work demands. A regular exercise of 20 to 30 minutes a day would drastically reduce their rate of anxiety, as has been proven in many scientific studies (Erica and Jackson 2013), thereby eliminating any psychological and mental influences.


Further, some organizations have implemented

  • Hosting / promoting virtual social events such as online quiz, games, sharing your personal talent etc.
  • Establishing casual platforms where employees can share work-from-home selfies, stories or experiences.


In my opinion, these simple changes could boost the psychological impact on employees, and I believe that in the long term wider systemic change is needed.


Reference

1)  https://blog.workana.com/en/entrepreneurship/teamwork-identifying-each-members-potential/

 2) Erica M. Jackson (2013), Stress Relief: The Role of Exercise in Stress management, ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Benefits of Diversity in the Workplace

 



Workplace diversity is captivating the Human Resource world by storm. Bringing in people with different experiences and views can lead to better decision-making, greater innovation, and higher engagement in the workplace. It may not only improve a company's reputation, it also makes it easier to attract top talent.

Let's review the tangible and intangible benefits of workplace diversity, the challenges that come with it, and what we can do to get started on related initiatives today.

What is Diversity in the Workplace?

Diversity in the workplace refers to an organization that purposely hires a workforce contained people of variable gender, religion, race, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education, and other attributes.

Diversity in the workplace leads to benefits both from an internal and external perspective.

Benefits of Diversity in the Workplace

Talents, Skills, and experiences - Individuals from diverse backgrounds could offer a range of different talents, skills, and experiences, that may benefit the organization and their work performance. However, some crossover of skills could be useful when it comes to supporting each other, it’s important to hire people with the proper skills to fit each of the roles within the organization. A diversity of skills and knowledge among the team also means that employees can learn from each other.

It creates innovation – By working along with people of different backgrounds, knowledge, and working styles, inventive ideas can bounce ideas off each other offering different suggestions and feedbacks.

Improved cultural awareness - A diverse range of cultures within the workplace permits organizations to deal with different nuances within the marketplace. If an organization does business with China, for example, having an employee who can speak Mandarin is an asset and can lead to improved workplace relations. Also, when an organization having products and services targeting different religious segments, employees from these religious groups would add value. Eg. Islamic employee could bring relevant aspects of sharia law to product design.

Challenges of Diversity in the Workplace

Executing diversity initiatives at work isn’t without its inimitable set of challenges. Some of those challenges are:

  • There are challenges in handling a diverse work population. Managing diversity is more than simply accepting differences in people. It comprises recognizing the value of differences, opposing discrimination, and promoting inclusiveness. Managers may also be challenged with losses in personnel and work productivity due to prejudice and discrimination, and complaints, and legal actions against the organization (Devoe 1999).
  • Negative attitudes and behaviors can be barriers to organizational diversity because they can harm working relationships and damage morale and work productivity (Esty et al., 1995). Negative attitudes and behaviors in the workplace include favoritism and discrimination, shouldn’t be used by management for hiring, retention, and termination practices (could lead to costly litigation).

Required Tools for Managing Diversity  

“To successfully manage a diverse workforce, managers and employees must be trained in a new set of skills, including:

  1. Communicating effectively with employees from a wide variety of backgrounds.
  2. Coaching, training, and developing employees of different ages, educational backgrounds, ethnicities, physical abilities, and races.
  3. Providing performance feedback that is free of values and stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity, or physical handicap.
  4. Training managers to recognize and respond to generational differences.
  5. Creating a work environment that allows employees of all backgrounds to be creative and innovative.” (Noe, 2010 P.20).
Effective managers should be aware that certain skills are required to create a successful, diverse workforce. First, managers should understand that discrimination and its consequences. Second, managers must recognize their own cultural biases and prejudices (Koonce 2001). Diversity is not about differences amongst groups, but somewhat about differences among individuals. Every person is unique in their own way and doesn’t represent or speak for a particular group. Finally, managers must be willing to change the organization if necessary (Koonce 2001). Organizations need to learn how to manage diversity in the workplace to be successful in the future (Flagg 2002).

Unfortunately, there is no single method for success. It purely depends on the respective manager’s ability to understand what is best for the organization based on teamwork and the dynamics of the workplace. According to Roosevelt (2001), managing diversity is a comprehensive process for creating a work environment that includes everyone. When forming a successful diverse workforce, an active manager should emphasize personal awareness. Both managers and associates should be aware of their personal biases. Therefore, organizations need to develop, implement, and maintain ongoing training, because a one-day session of training will not change people’s behaviors (Koonce 2001). Managers should also understand that equality is not necessary. There are always exemptions to the rule.

Managing diversity is about more than equal employment opportunity and affirmative action (Losyk 1996). Managers should expect change to be slow, while at the same time encouraging change (Koonce 2001).

Another vital requirement when dealing with diversity is promoting a safe place for associates to communicate (Koonce 2001). Good ways to form dialogues is to have social gatherings and business meetings, where every member must listen and have the chance to speak. Managers should also implement policies such as mentoring programs to offer associates access to information and opportunities. Also, associates should never be denied necessary, constructive, critical feedback for learning about mistakes and successes (Flagg 2002).

Conclusion

A diverse workforce replicates a changing world and marketplace. Diverse work teams could lead to greater things for your organization. Respecting individual differences will benefit the workplace by forming a viable edge and increasing work productivity. Diversity management profits connections by creating a fair and safe environment where everyone has access to opportunities and challenges. Management tools in a diverse workforce must be used to educate everyone about diversity and its issues, together with laws and regulations. Most workplaces are made up of diverse cultures, therefore organizations need to learn how to adjust to being successful.

Reference:

  1. Noe, R (2010). Employee Training and Development Fifth Edition. New York, New York: McGraw Hill Irwin
  2. Devoe, D. 1999. Managing a diverse workforce. San Mateo, CA: InfoWorld Media Group.
  3. Esty, K., R. Griffin, and M. Schorr-Hirsh. 1995. Workplace diversity. A manager's guide to solving problems and turning diversity into a competitive advantage. Avon, MA: Adams Media Corporation.
  4. Konce, R. 2001. Redefining diversity: It's not just the right thing to do; it also makes good business sense. Training and Development (December).
  5. Flagg, A. 2002. Managing diverse workgroups successfully. United Behavioral Health.
  6. Roosevelt, T.R. Jr. 2001. Elements of a successful diversity process. The American Institute for Managing Diversity.
  7. Loysk, B. 1996. Managing a changing workforce: Achieving outstanding service with today's employees. Davie, FL: Workplace Trends Publishing.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Performance Appraisals

 

Performance Appraisal's (PA’s) are periodic assessments of an employee’s job performance against his/her performance targets.

Why are PAs Important?

In history Performance appraisal had been used for administrative process such as promotion, salary administration decision and retention (De Vries, Morrison, Shullman and Gerlach1981)

In today’s world, organizations around the globe often use PAs to provide employees feedback on their contribution to achieve organizational goals and to make decisions like identifying training requirements in addition to traditions functionalities like salary increases, bonuses…etc. In most organizations, PAs are conducted on a quarterly, semi-annual or annual basis. Some of the top reasons to implement PA's includes the following:

      • Measuring & Rewarding employees' performance
      • Identify employee development needs
      • Managing changing roles in an organization
      • Allowing Employees to voice concerns or suggest new ideas

PA frameworks link organizational objectives to employee KPIs and ensures employee work is in line with the organization's business plans. Further employee reward frameworks require staff to be differentiated on some basis. PA tools like bell curves facilitate this requirement and ensures organization rewards the staff who has contributed most. This differentiation motivates that staff who have contributed most.

Need of Modern Methods of Appraisal

PA's have existed in one way or another for many years. They have become more precise over time and, for years, identical strategies that were originally developed worked. In today's workplace, the types of jobs being performed are different than before. Moreover, many people don't work onsite but work from home, coming in only occasionally or not at all. With time and technology, new strategies had to be developed that would accurately assess work performance.

It’s been observed that modern methods of PA lay more emphasis on the evaluation of job achievements, which is more objective-driven. The most modern methods of PA include

      • Assessment center method 
      • Human Resource accounting method 
      • Behaviorally anchored rating scale method
      • Management by objectives
      • Psychological appraisal method
      • 360-degree appraisal method

The main reason of developing these modern performance management techniques was to overcome the flaws in traditional methods.  Most of the earlier performance management methods depend on the judgments of one or two raters, due to which sometimes the evaluation gets biased. Further the softer aspects like ethical behavior, team working…are not captured.  But it’s important to note that even these modern methods of PAs have weaknesses and would not suitable in all situations. Therefore, it’s important to select the most appropriate technique based on the situation and context of the organization.


Reference

  • K. Mankiewicz (2019) The Ultimate Performance Appraisal Guide. [Blog entry] 21 Nov. Available from https://www.jotform.com/what-is-performance-appraisal/ [Accessed 03 April 2021]

  • De Vries,D.L., Morrison,A.M., Shullman,S.L and Gerlach,M.L. (1981). Performance Appraisal on the line. John Wiley & Sons, New york

Sustainability in Business and Human Resource Management

  Sustainability is the topic of the century. It’s an important issue for people across the globe, and as climate change continues to affect...