"Human beings are the most important, potent and critical, resource of any organization, and yet the least understood and the worst managed of its resources" (1500words)
Wow..I think this is a great reflection to make and a very critical to think with this topic.
So to begin with,First I'll discuss it one by one to make it clear and at the bottom is my outline on how i discuss the subtopics.
*Why Humans are the most important in an organization?
*Why Humans are the most critical in an organization?
*why Humans are the most resource in an organization?
*Why Humans are least understood in an organization?
*Why Humans are the worst to manage of its resources in an organization?
Why Humans are the most important in an organization?
As a Human Resources professional, I like to explain this importance in car terms so that it's simple for anyone to understand.
The board of directors or senior managers make descisions about where they want the car (or organisation) to head, and how they would like this to happen (timeframes, route etc.).
The staff are the tyres and pistons - the working parts, and just like a car, the organisation goes nowhere if these parts are not oiled correctly.
In any organisation HRM works between staff and management to reach common goals and achieve a good workplace environment and an instant increase in producativity.
Of course this will only occur in organisations who's HR branch are given powers beyond payroll, like planning and consultitive arrangements.
Why Humans are the most critical in an organization?
Employee engagement is a critical issue for organizations today. It was identified as the number one strategy that organizations are pursuing in 2009, according to Aberdeen’s report The 2009 HR Executive’s Agenda. In addition, Aberdeen’s January 2009 study, Fully On-Board, found that Best-in-Class organizations are overwhelmingly focusing onboarding processes on engaging new employees and assimilating them into the organization's cultural and social fabric.
Aberdeen’s latest research, Beyond Satisfaction: Engaging Employees to Retain Customers, looks at how organizations are addressing engagement issues, and describes how Best-in-Class companies are achieving impressive results.
* 82% of Best-in-Class organizations attribute changes in profitability and/or revenue DIRECTLY to employee engagement initiatives and more than twice as likely as all others to validate that impact through data
* Best-in-Class organizations are 33% more likely to provide engagement training and tools to their managers than all other organizations
* Best-in-Class companies are also seeing a 22% year-over-year improvement in customer satisfaction / loyalty and a 21% year-over-year improvement in turnover / retention
To create an engaging environment, organizations must understand how to engage individuals with the overarching goals of the organization - not just create an environment where employees feel satisfied that their personal needs are being met. In fact, this linkage to activities that delver business results is what differentiates employee engagement from employee satisfaction. Satisfaction could indicate that an individual is happy their paycheck comes on time, or that their schedule doesn't interfere with their weekend plans. It doesn't necessarily reflect any connection with the priorities of the organization. To achieve this alignment, employee engagement efforts must be managed and measured in terms of business impact, and organizations must create an engagement mindset among all leaders and managers.
http://research.aberdeen.com/index.php/analyst-insight/86-human-capital-management-insights/754-employee-engagement-is-critical-for-organizations-today-
why Humans are the most resource in an organization?
How Human Resources can Resource Humans.
Despite our best intentions so much of what we practice in Human Resources, including training and development, does little more than reinforce that the organisation views its people as resources first and humans a distant second. Humans are analyzed, measured and evaluated as a resource, rather than as human beings with lives personalities, wants, desires and feelings.
We regularly talk of our people as categories ' the sales people' or 'Our middle managers' or we talk of them in terms of numbers and statistics, ' 45% of our people are engaged with their work.' "We now have a staff moral average of 83%'. We measure and review our people as averages, on everything from the levels of engagement and moral, through analysis of learning needs, to tracking our staff turnover figures, as percentages of the whole.
These numbers and averages are, of course, useful in terms of identifying trends that are emerging or transpiring within our business. However, the danger is that by placing too much emphasis (and faith) in the averages and percentages we inadvertently begin to think of and treat our people as EVERBODY rather than SOMEBODY! The down side of focusing too extensively on averages is that we can easily misinterpret the reality of the situation. People do not experience averages, they experience specifics and extremes and variances!
People experience specifics rather than averages because of course, we are all unique with unique perspectives and experiences, even in a common environment. However even though we all know and readily accept that we are all different it seems repeatedly in HR and training we do not necessarily act accordingly. We seem to regularly forget ( or are forced by circumstances and time restrictions) that what we are really talking about are individuals with specific needs desires and wants.
Even such current and popular frames of references as the emphasis on understanding the Generation Y phenomenon, tends to ensure companies begin to fall into the trap of generalizing the individuality and uniqueness out of the way they view and relate to people.
When Human Resources get too caught up with the numbers and averages we live up to our name as viewing people as resources by balancing our approach we can invert this phenomenon and begin to dedicate ourselves to Resourcing Humans. After fifteen years of working with people and organisations as corporate anthropologists we have found that organisations that engage and retain their people with the least amount of cost are more focused on resourcing their humans than treating them as human resources. So what's an alternative?
Well one approach that definitely works and has numerous merits is working with values. Using a comprehensive values approach organisations can support themselves and their people to identify and work with the specific values of individuals in an effort to align them with peoples work roles the company values and even the company strategy and culture.
Research of over ten thousand personal values inventories (drawing from the globally validated pool of 128 human values) for people in organisations, in Australia and New Zealand demonstrates that no two people have ever had an identical set of values. We define person's values as their preferences multiplied by the priority they place on each preference. When a person has clarified their preferences and the priority associated with each preference they create for themselves a personal values hierarchy.
When companies understand that each and every one of us are driven by and motivated from own unique personal values hierarchy then they are able to immediately create a language and process for supporting humans to become acknowledged as a SOMEBODY distinct and separate from others.
Organisations that support their people to clarify their own personal values and then work to align those values with their work role benefit enormously. The people feel that the organisation is acknowledging and celebrating their individuality and uniqueness.
Values alignment to a work role is also the key to supporting your people to establish in very specific and personal terms what is making work meaningful for them. It identifies what specifically is driving their motivation to work, perform and even excel, all of which is unlikely to emerge from averages…It will also make sure that learning and development can be focused on skills rather than trying to cover up issues of personal alignment and mismatched priorities.
Insights and understanding of people personal values in alignment to their chosen work results in increased engagement and the unleashing of discretionary effort. Discretionary effort, in turn has a direct impact on people work performance and their decision to stay in a role (retention).
For a simple quick and effective way of enhancing your HR approach to resource humans then supporting your people to clarify their personal values and align them to their role will take you and them a long way down this path.
http://www.evancarmichael.com/Human-Resources/818/How-Human-Resources-can-Resource-Humans.html
Why Humans are least understood in an organization?
because of:
Competence is shown in action in a situation in a context that might be different the next time you have to act. In emergency contexts, competent people will react to the situation following behaviors they have previously found to succeed, hopefully to good effect. To be competent you need to be able to interpret the situation in the context and to have a repertoire of possible actions to take and have trained in the possible actions in the repertoire, if this is relevant. Regardless of training, competence grows through experience and the extent of an individual to learn and adapt. However, there has been much discussion among academics about the issue of definitions. The concept of competence has different meanings, and continues to remain one of the most diffuse terms in the management development sector, and the organizational and occupational literature (Collin, 1989).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competence_(human_resources)
Why Humans are the worst to manage of its resources in an organization?
EMPLOYEE TRUST – WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU FEAR THE WORST
Have you ever asked yourself; “Is this employee being upfront and honest with me?” We may have a gut feeling or something maybe does not size up, yet we have no concrete evidence of deceit. This is a difficult situation as the repercussions of falsely accusing an employee may hinder a future of trust.
It seems sometimes as managers of employees that we have to cultivate a sixth sense in order to know what is happening behind the scenes with certain individuals or groups of individuals within our organizations. And for those of us who have that sixth sense….it can be a benefit and a curse. The benefit being that we can sense an issue and hopefully prevent it from growing into a problem. The curse is that we can sense a problem and then we have to deal with it. And if we don’t act on that sense and deal with it, we kick ourselves later!
Experience typically shows that it is not advisable to ignore our sixth sense. When we ignore our senses or question our feelings, the doubt sets in and then we question our own abilities to know when something is not correct. This almost always backfires.
So what to do. First I will share what not to do. And that, my friend, is to not ignore the problem. Begin documentation. Not later, NOW. A sense of something not being quite right can come and go and be easily forgotten. Example: You discover an employee has not been completing assignments as expected. You think about this discovery and you recall a sense of this a while back ….and maybe more than one time. Darn it, why didn’t you act on it at that moment? Perhaps you could have resolved this situation before it became a problem.
More of what to do. Step back. What if you would have documented this situation the moment you felt that gut reaction. A suggestion would be to have a private file on our PC or better yet a handy notebook (yes people still use these). Keep a notebook that is easy to get to. Jot down occurrences on scrap paper and move that information to the PC file or notebook. We must bring ourselves to be in the habit of noting things as they happen.
Now you can take action. When confronting an employee, one of the most important rules to follow is to focus on facts. A good measure to determine between what is truly factual and what is not is to ask yourself if the “fact” can be argued. If it can be argued, it is not a fact. Facts make for easier and honest communications. Facts will support you well in court. Example of a non-factual confrontation: “Joe, you are constantly coming into work late and signing in that you are arriving on time.” Example of a factual approach: “Joe, over the last 4 weeks I personally witnessed you arriving 15-20 minutes late on 4 occasions. These occurrences were on each of the last 4 Mondays. When I reviewed your timecard it shows that you are arriving on time.”
There are some efforts that we can take to decrease these types of occurrences. This includes taking some time to observe our employees’ behaviors more often. Spend time around them and listen; listen well. Sometimes by just taking the time to truly hear our employees we will prevent the bitterness that is often the result of dishonest behavior or even retaliation. As a next step we may choose to learn more about our employees’ needs. This can come in the form of simply asking, performing an employee survey or forming task groups to identify issues within our organization. Perhaps we will discover that training is needed. In some cases when employees are more confident in their work performance they will be less likely to act out or be dishonest. Assure that there is a real sense of the ability to openly communicate within our organizations. These are ideas that can work well in any size organization and across all industries.
It comes more naturally to some, but learn to listen to that sixth sense. Our senses grow as a result of years of various types of life and work experiences. Our instincts are a highly valuable resource right up there with our degree, diploma, and work experience and work history. Arguably they may be worth much more. By learning to trust our senses and value what we have learned, we will support ourselves and our organizations by utilizing all of the skills we have to offer.
http://www.evancarmichael.com/Human-Resources/3504/EMPLOYEE-TRUST--WHAT-TO-DO-WHEN-YOU-FEAR-THE-WORST.html
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