Stress and Personality

Stress is very personal as it depends on how you perceive events.   One of the factors that influences your perceptions is your personality.   Depending on your personality you may be more vulnerable to stress than some of your friends or colleagues.   It is important to understand this as many people wrongly think they are weak or at fault in some way because they feel stressed by something others appear to take in their stride. There are in fact individuals who psychologists have termed ‘hardy’, because of their higher level of tolerance to stress.   A ‘hardy’ person has a particularly strong belief in their ability to control events, even when in reality they have limited control.   They also tend to believe that stability is unusual in life and that constant change is normal.   Having these kind of beliefs makes the ‘hardy’ individual more able to Continue reading

Global Compensation Practices

For many companies, maintaining a domestic compensation program  that supports the strategic goals of the organization and meets the needs of  employees is a difficult challenge. This challenge is intensified when a similar  program must be designed to operate in multiple countries with different  cultures. For organizations competing in a global marketplace, managing compensation requires a through understanding of the taxation of compensation  and benefits, differing state social systems, differences in living standards and  employee values and expectations. Some of the most challenging questions in  compensation practices are following: How does a company pay expatriates from difference home countries  brought together to work on a project? What about compensation packages for same country nationals sent to different  regions of the world? Traditional compensation systems for expatriates, such as the balance  sheet approach and going  rate approach, may not be adequate for the company  or expatriate in facilitating an case of Continue reading

Managing Cultural Diversity in the Workplace

Cultural differences are usually created by race-ethnicity, gender, function, and tenure among the organization factors. Difference in culture may result to the rise of conflicts among team members. This usually results to disrupted communication within the organization and eventually negative outcomes. Therefore, it is the role of every organization and entire management to come up with various ways of managing and reducing negative effects of cultural differences. Management in various organizations should ensure that they are able to detect and avoid such cases from arising. Political backgrounds and experience are other major factors that contribute to cultural differences. Multicultural teams and differences in most occasions generate dilemmas in the organization management. Cultural differences usually create considerable obstacles to efficient teamwork. Recognizing various underlying cultural causes of conflicts is the main challenge in managing multicultural teams by organizations’ management. It is also a great challenge for management to get teams back Continue reading

Wage Differentials – Definition, Causes and Types

Wage differentials have a great economic and social significance; they are directly related to the allocation of the economic resources of a country, including manpower growth of the national income, and the pace of economic development. Social welfare activity depends, in a large measure, on such wage differentials as will: Cause labor to be allocated among different occupations, industries and, geographical areas in the economy in such a manner as to maximize the national product. Enable full employment of the resources of the economy to be attained; and Facilitate the most desirable rate of economic progress. Wage differentials reflect difference in the physical and mental abilities of workers, differences in productivity, in the efficiency of management and in consumer preferences, and act as sign posts for labor mobility. By providing an important incentive for labour mobility, they bring about a re-allocation of the labor force under changing circumstances. Under competitive Continue reading

Process of Performance Appraisal

One of the most important things to remember about performance  appraisals is that its effectiveness will be highly influenced by its purpose. For  example, a programme, which is developed, to focus on employee development  and training needs may not be suitable for making major decisions about  salaries. Likewise, it is possible that the organization, management and  employee may all have different goals for the performance appraisal process. Performance  appraisal involves ‘identifying, evaluating and developing employees’ work  performance with the dual purpose of achieving the organization’s goals and  objectives whilst also ensuring the employee receives recognition, feedback and  development’. The process of  performance appraisal  starts with employee planning and  ends with an evaluation of employee progress. The process of performance appraisal  consists broadly two steps. First, complete the performance appraisal  form; secondly, participate in a performance appraisal interview and discussion.  These two sages comprise the following levels in the appraising performance Continue reading

Impacts of Rewards on Employee Turnover Intentions

Employee Turnover Intentions can be defined as a measurement of whether a business or organisation’s employees plan to leave their positions or whether that organisation plans to remove employees from positions. The pay level has an enormous impact on turnover intentions considering that people start seeking new job opportunities with higher salaries to satisfy their life needs. The pay level is more influential for employees than pay raises. Therefore, those workers content with their salary amount are less likely to search for a new workplace. When the payment decreases, the turnover intention increases vice-versa. As for the financial incentives, they are crucial for employees of the young age groups more than for older staff. Therefore, it is vital to cater to workers needs in the incentives scheme according to their age groups as this factor is not the most influential for the turnover intentions. As stated previously, the turnover rates rise Continue reading