Monday 3 May 2010

Employee Involvement and Comunication

Employee participation is when an organisation involves employees in decision making processes. employee participation can by represented by a committee or be direct. Direct forms of employee participation can take place through surveys, team briefings, quality circles, idea suggestion schemes and so on. This is more of a pluralist view. (dictionary.bnet [2010]).

Employee involvement however is when you physically involve your employees in making the decision making process, and let every one have their say about any changes in organisation. By allowing employees to take part in decision making plans and process; it will increase loyalty, motivation and employees will take more responsibility towards the improvement of an organisation. Involving employees in decision making is more of a unitarist view. (humanresources.baout [2010]).
An organisation can imvolve their employees, by allowing them to participate finacially, for example allow them to buy shares in the company, calling employees to decision making meetings and plannings, consult their oppinnion and try and put them into prctice and so on.

Nowdays a new inovative ways to involve employees are social networking sites where employees could talk about their views on companies and even get involved decision making schemes. Companies would hire IT experts to run those social network site, whre one person will take into consideration everybodys ideas and reply to them on their views. These sites ar also used to recruit future employees, there would be a page where people who want to apply for that job are able to access someone who will clear all their queries. One last thing that social sites ae used for, eventhough companies don't admit it, it's to monitor employees and see what they do outside their workplace, and some even get caught on doing things that they shouldn't be doing. Employers can personally view the character of an employee through social networking sites. The main social networking sites that are used are facebook, Twitter, and after that the ones that are not commonly used are bebo and my space. On facebook i found a recruiting page for M&S where all the questions of potential future recruits were cleared, however i also found one for employees, however that one was blocked and only members of the organisation can access it. Having pages on social sites is a really great advantage for organisations as they can monitor employees as well as recruit people and monitor the numbers.

Conclusion:

In conclusion i believe that involving employees is more effective than making them participate, as it will increase loyalty motivation and also contribute towards retaing good employees.
References:
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Reward

Reward is something given in return ro someone, for a favour, service or any other help received. (brainyquote [2010]). When it comes to organisations, the main rewards for an employees work would be their wages or salaries; most organisations offer bonusses or comissions on excellent work. Each organisations has their own way to reward, it doesn't have to be money, it could be a verbal reward. Different rewards are given to different working group.

BP and their reward strategies:
When i was working for BP for a year, normal employees did not have any reward what so ever apart from their wages, even duty managers wouldn't get any bonuses or nothing apart from their salaries. The only people who would gt the rewards would be the store manager and the assistant managers. They would get bonuses, days off if the store performed well. I have no idea of what the senior employees above them would get. In my point of view i see it as an unfair rewarding strategy as the store is ran by the employees and controlled by the manager, and therefore without the employees, the store wouldn't be able to do anything. The store is doing well through everybody's contribution, and i believe that it is really unfair that the store manager is the only one that gets all the credit. I don't think that fairness and equity is considered properly here, but then again not many employees retaliate due to the fear of losing their jobs.

Should chief executives receive large bonuses even if their organisations underperforms?
A chief executive officer is the higher chain of command in an organisation, they are tipically the president of a company, sometimes it is the owner of the company that are CEOs. they make decisions, and have all the power over a company. (answer [2010]).

Chief executives should get higher bonuses as they are the ones responsible for making correct decisions for the company to be profiteable, and any wrong decisions could be very devastating to the company and lead them to make big losses. However on the other hand if a chief executive keeps on underperforming then it is costly and wasteful for a company to give him or her large amount of bonuses for sinking the company down.

In an organisation everybody, from the chief executive to the low level employees have to contribute in order for a company to run effectively and make profit. without any low level employees, the company won't be able to run and therefore it is only fair that the large bonuses the CEOs get, gets shared equaly to every employees at all level. On the other hands Qualified and skilled CEOs are very hard to find and there are only a very low numbers of them on the market compared to the unqualified labour which makes most of the available labour market; and as a result if these CEOs are not paid like other CEOs are, they would leav the organisation and go to another one that offers them a bette deal of rewards.

3 financial and non financial way to reward a teacher at a primary school:

Financial rewards:
  • They could get a bonuss if they are efficient teachers that are bringing good grades to the school.
  • They could get a sum of money per students that gets good grade
  • Their performance could be assessed and if they do really good, they could get an increase in salary.

Non Financial ways:

  • A teacher that is doing well could for example get promoted to become the head of her subject department.
  • They could be given a longer period of paid or unpaid holidays.
  • They could be recognised as teacher of the month for the department for example.

Conclusion:

In onclusion, rewards is a very good way of motivating employees, however it could demotivate employees when they find out that one is maybe getting more then they are.



References:
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Saturday 1 May 2010

Training and development

The purpose of training is to improve ones skills and knowledge.

Designing a 1 week induction training program:
1st day:
Introduction to store layouts, where everything is situated and how the store works. Introduction on the company they will be working for and a brief on the daily tasks they will need to complete.

2nd Day:
Introductions to legislation and to be careful not breach them, brief on what a manager is allowed to say and not to say.

3rd Day:
Health and Safety legislation and procedures that needs to be carried out in the stores in order to maintain a safe and hygienic environment.

4th Day:
Getting to know shopfloor work and till trainning, managers need to be familliar store work, price verification system, wastes and so on.

5th Day:
Trainning on how to handdle employees, diciplinary procedures, customer services and so on.

6th Day:
Expectation from company, what these managers need to deliver and so on.

7th Day:
surprise monitored evaluation day, each candidate will be given a store to manage for shift of between 8 hours to 12 hours, as managers sometimes have to take extra hours to complete unfinished tasks.

The above is the one week induction trainning program. It will take place in a actual store as it will give more feedback to the new future managers whereas if training was taking place somewhere else it wouldn't be as informative as it would be in a actual store. Each training session will a senior member to monitor and give as much advice and feedback as possible to the learners as possible. Making mistakes and correcting them will increase the chance of them remembering the process. To see if the trainning program was successful we will send each candidate to manage a store for a 8 hour period. This will obviously be monitored by an external audit, and the actual store manager will be present in case of any problems. By doing so we will be able to see all the improvements as well as th committement of these apprentices.

This in my point of view is a good trainning program, however it will require a lot of time from a lot of people from the company; In addition to that employing external audit can be really expensive. There is however on bad side of this program, is that by letting the apprentices to manage a store for a day, could make losses on that day but that is why the actual manager will be present, to make sure nothing goes wrong.

Conclusion:
Trainning and developement is a really important process, if an organisation wants the most out of its employees, its however very expensive and time consuming, but very reliable and efficient on the long run, given that the trainned employees stay with the company.
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Performance Management

Performance management is a repeating process which involves monitoring performance of staff and giving them feed back so that performance can be improved. (team technology [2010]).

performance of employees can be measured in different ways, for example: you can measure by looking at the number of unit produced, the quality of a product, timelines, cost effectiveness, personal appearence, absentism and there are many more ways. (hrworld [2010]).

Performance is measured because employers need to monitor employees and make sure that each goal is completed in the given time, if not monitored employees could become free roamers.

The benefit of measuring employee performance are that, employers will be able to know if they are meeting with customer requirements, which areas to improve on, if there are problems with existing procedures, it will increase comunication between staff and management, and most of all employees will be recognised for the work they do and therefore motivate them more. (orau [2010]).

Appraisal at Work:
When i used to work for BP my manager would call me out and give me feedback on my performances and would tell me to improve on areas that i wasn't doing so well. when i managed to complete tasks he would aprise me by saying that i did a good job and would tell me that i would get promoted sooner if i continued like that. Just those words have motivated me to do better and more and as time went he would keep on saying the same thing but then i got to the point when i realised that i would never get promoted when my manager employed somone from another store and therefore i dropped my performance level. the feedbacks however, were very good but the apraisals was just to motivate me to increase performance. very nice trick from the manager, i was too naive.

Mentors:
Mentors are experienced and skilled people who are here to help people, by listening, giving advices on how to solve things, or life problems, anything really.
a skilled mentor would be one with very good listening skills, analytical skills, a very experienced person who do not tell the person what to do but helps them and teaches them how to do it. Mentor should have a number of useful conections, and most of all should be a person who is approchable with any sorts of queries. (businesstimesonline [2010]). In my view a very good mentor should be able review your erformance and give you feedback. a mentor who doesn't give feedback is not really a mentor. and this is where the performance management skills comes in for a mentor. Mentors need to be able to look analyse and give very good feedback.

My mentor:
When i first came to this country i was in year 7. At that school i had a mentor as i didn't know the language aswell as the people and the place. He spoke french which was a great advantage, he helped me through my school days, he knew a number of people that could help me to improve my english skills. He also introduced me to kids in the school so that i could make freinds and not be on my own, he has thaught me to be independent. He would always listen to my problems and would give me very good advices on how to resolve them. By having had a mentor i now feel more independent and know how to solve most problems, i have learned to look at life and plan ahead before life looks at me and draggs me down.

Conclusion:
Overall i believe that performance management is required in all organisation as it is a crutial process that would help organisations to achieve goals and detect problems if there are any. Mentors without performance management skills, in my point of view will not be good mentors.

References:
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