Creating a strategy-supportive reward structure for an organization is an important task as it is a powerful management tools for gaining employee buy-in and commitment. Meanwhile, the key to creating a reward system is to promote relevant measures of performance that the dominating basis for designing incentives, evaluating individual and group efforts, and handling out rewards. In a competitive business climate, more business owners are looking at improvements in quality while reducing costs. While businesses need to get more from their employees, their employees are looking for more out of them. Employee reward and recognition programs are one method of motivating employees to change work habits and key behavior’s to benefit a business. As the strategy-supportive reward structure motivates and attracts the employee, designing the reward structure for an organization is quite complex. This is because the importance of the reward structure should define on the job and assignment in Continue reading
Human Resource Concepts
Learning Styles
Learning style refers to the ability of an individual to learn. A manager’s long-term success depends more on the ability to learn than on the mastery of the specific skills or technical knowledge. Kolb’s Learning Styles Model Kolb’s model of learning styles is one of the best-known and widely used learning style theories. Kolb’s learning theory sets out four distinct learning styles (or preferences), which are based on a four-stage learning cycle. Much of Kolb’s theory is concerned with the learner’s internal cognitive processes. “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping experience and transforming it.” (David A. Kolb, 1984). These four learning styles are: accommodation, divergence, assimilation and convergence. The four learning styles are based on dimensions: feeling versus thinking and doing versus observing. Accommodator: An accommodator learns by doing and feeling. He tends to learn primarily Continue reading
Common Team Problems
In today’s organizations, people work in teams that have either a leader or a self-driven team member to lead. While these teams provide support mechanism in the office environment and are used to improve productivity and results, they are also a source of competition. It is this team building scenario that is envisioned to promote the productivity of the employees, and at the same time the organization. In any team there is a difference of opinions, this is beneficial as it provides the building blocks to ideas for their team and organization as a whole. At the same time these opinions do raise the emotions and feelings of the team players. There arises conflict within the group that either improves the team’s performance or the breaks down of the team and consequently hampering the achievement of the organizations goal. The most common team problems are; Floundering: This problem occurs in Continue reading
Theories of Motivation: McClelland’s Three Need Model
Each person tends to develop certain motivational drives as a result of his cognitive pattern and the environment in which he lives. David McClelland gave a model of motivation, which is based on three types of needs, namely, achievement, power and affiliation. They are stated below: Need for achievement (n-Ach): a drive to excel, advance and grow; Need for power (n-Pow): a drive to influence others and situations; and Need for affiliation (n-Aff): a drive for friendly and close interpersonal relationships. Achievement motivation: some people have a compelling drive to succeed and they strive for personal achievement rather than the rewards of success that accompany it. They have a desire to do something better or more efficiently than it has been done before. This drive is the achievement need. From researches into the area of achievement need, McClelland found that high achievers differentiate themselves from others by their desire to Continue reading
Morale and Productivity
The satisfaction and comfort an employee experiences at the workplace is termed morale. Morale is a widely used term in organizations. But in general, it refers to esprit de corps, a feeling of enthusiasm, zeal, confidence in individuals or groups that they will be able to cope with the tasks assigned to them. The result of high morale generally results in the high efficiency of the organization. Morale directly impacts the working of an individual in a team towards the realization of common objectives. Morale therefore is individual specific as well as general. Unfortunately building of morale is not a mechanical problem that could be solved by either rewards or punishments. The best way to manage it is to proactively do a lot of employee related interventions that will together impact morale positively. Morale can also be understood as the spirit and confidence with which the employee performs his job. Continue reading
Efficient Use of Human Resources
The Human Resources of an organization represent one of its largest investments. The term human resources at the macro level indicate the sum of all the components (like skill, creative ability) possessed by all the people. Human resources at the organizational level include all the component resources of all employees from rank and file to top level management. So, it includes the resource, of all people who contribute their services to the attainment of organizational goals. Human resources play a crucial role in the development process of the present economy. It is often felt that though the exploitation of natural resources, availability of physical and financial resources and international aid play prominent roles in the growth of modern economies, none of these factors is more significant than efficient and committed manpower. A country with abundance of physical resources will not benefit itself unless human resources make use of them. Only Continue reading