Confidentiality

It is very important to build confidentiality among the group members for the purpose of building a solid relationship among the group. The discussing subject materials which are being discussed within the group should not be discussed at outside or with outsiders. This is how to build confidentiality among group members.

Respect

The facilitator should respect the views of all the group members and also should teach the group members or the trainees to respect each others views by not condemning others views and showing some sort of interest to hear the others views and also to think in their point of view. This will be a remedy for resolution of lots of conflicts within the group. 

Listening

People have various means of communication. This should be mainly categorized into verbal and non-verbal communication. Verbally and non-verbally what people say is the way that they interprit their own expressions. Hence it is a very integral and important task to listen what people (trainees) say in order to have a good skill enhancement session.

Principles of Facilitation

1.Listening

2.Respect 

3.Confidentiality

4.Agreed Goals

5.Equality

6.Group processes

7.Participation

Participative Facilitation

In participative facilitation the facilitator is used to share his personal experiences with the trainees in order to make the skill enhancement program to be more interesting. For the purpose of perceiving a particular perception in the trainees mind he gives his own personal life examples which he or she thinks might be useful to the trainees.

Delegating Facilitaion

Delegating facilitation provides the trainees to have experience in some organizational activities even in organizing the skill enhancement programs. They are assigned specific tasks and roles and authority is delegated for them to complete the specified tasks. This is how delegated facilitation takes place in action. 

Exploratory Facilitation

In this style the facilitator is used to ask questions about the previous experiences of the trainees or the group members. The facilitation process is conducted  by an interactive questionnaire method..

Directive Facilitation

This is all about doing work by developing a work plan. All the information needed is given by the facilitator. Instructions are given by the facilitator for steps to be followed..

Styles of Facilitation

• Directive 

• Exploratory

• Delegating 

• Participative

Facilitation

Facilitation is a way of working with people, sharing ideas, resources and opinions and also to learn critical thinking as per varying situations arise and in order to meet the desired needs of individuals and the needs of teams.

Training Facilitator

Who is a Facilitator?

 

A facilitator ensures the needs of the trainees are met and he is responsible for helping the individuals in achieving tasks and completing them, reminding the responsibilities which are being held by the particular trainees and deciding what tasks to be accomplished.

Steps for developing a skill enhancement program

Training and Development

What is a skill enhancement programme?

Basically when talking about skill enhancement programs first we should concentrate on what areas to be improved and to be mentored. For that we should clearly identify the strengths and weaknesses of the employees which will be reflected from them when looking at their beliefs, system of values, amount of skills, knowledge and techniques. The most important element of an skill enhancement program is to recognizing correctly the underlying motivation for the need of launching the skill enhancement program and the key values and skills that we are going to include in the group members as a trainer.

Characteristics of a good incentive scheme

The incentive plan should be economical which refers to the profitable ROI that is gained by the scheme. The ROI acquired surely must be greater than the implementation cost of the scheme. This is being thoroughly affected to the profits gained by the organization which is the ultimate goal of any organization. The simplicity of the incentive scheme is the way to get it more solid catalyst for the employees performance increment since when it is simple all the employees could understand the mechanism, the way it operates and could gain the maximum from it by hard work which should be up to the standards. Another most vital characteristic of an incentive scheme is that it should be attractive enough for the employees to be motivated and perform exceptionally well to gain the benefits. The abilities and the skills of the employees must be taken into account very carefully when creating the incentive scheme since it should be equitable for all the employees who are entitled. Flexibility is also an essential characteristic which refers to the ability make any changes as per requests of the employees.

Why we should give incentives?

Incentives are mainly given for the purpose of job satisfaction and for the above average performance which leads to increasing productivity levels which is another advantage for an organization for the organizational development. The incentives are given for job satisfaction since by giving so it gives the employee a feeling achievement and recognition. This will boost up the moral of the employees since they gain confidence in doing their work processes. Highly motivated workforce could be obtained by giving incentives and the retention of employees is high in the particular organization due to reduction of grievances which are arose due to difficult monetary conditions.

Incentives

Definition..

An incentive could be defined as a payment, concession or an arrangement to encourage employee productivity..

Who should be counseled ?

There are some easy ways to find out the people who need to be given counseling. Noticable change in the behaviour is a good sign to identify the need of counseling. The consequences of the behaviour are seemed unaware by the individual. There behaviour could be self destructive. They wont respond to usual motivating factors, they are unable to take their own decisions and they do not mobilize their own energies. Their minds of full of misunderstandings and negative perceptions. They have performance problems. These are the major symptoms of employees who should be counseled. 

Counseling Skills

When it comes to counseling there are specified set of skills related to it. Active listening and empathy is very important in counseling since the individuals who are being counselled are always in trouble minded, they have their issues and they want to be convinced that the counselor is interested and ready to find out and solve their problems. Respect shown to the counselee is another major skill that should be embeded in the counselor. They always expect it from the counselor and it strengthens the mutual bond between the two parties. The counselor always should tolerate the view expressed by the counselee and should avoid heated arguments. Genuineness, self knowledge, strength and balance are some other skills that should be possessed by the counselor

Employee Counseling

Defining Counseling...

Counseling could be defined as a support given to the individuals to recognize and understand the issues, problems accurately and to guide them to find a reasonable solution..

Defining Job Evaluation..

First of all job factors are determined about the particular post which is going to be evaluated. It includes factors such as "Mental effort" which may refer to the ability of a particular person to deal in various difficult situations and the degree of concentration a person need when performing the particular job. "Skills" which is another factor which mainly implies the complexity, dexterity and basic knowledge required to perform a particular job. Finally I like to mention about the job factor which is "job responsibility". This factor implies cash handling, control over cost etc. Then as the second step required human qualities are being decided. This process is called job specification. As the third step job duties and responsibilities are being decided which is the process of Job Description. Then for the 4th step job rating is done which is the study of the JD's and JS's for the comparison between the jobs. Fifth step is to allocate a money rate for the jobs according to a scale. Then the employees are assigned for the job titles according to their qualifications.

Job Evaluation Process

Job Evaluation

Definition..

Job Evaluation is a comparison done between the jobs to determine the value of one job to the value of another and also the purpose of ranking each job based on the skills, knowledge and experience required to perform each job.

ERG Theory of Motivation

Theory is briefly explained simply below..

4.ERG Theory is stated by Clayton Alderfer where he expresses people basic needs by dividing them into 3 major categories as

• Existence Needs
• Related Needs
• Growth Needs

Existence Needs - Illustrates Maslow's physiological and safety needs

Related Needs - Illustrates Maslow's social needs and esteem needs

Growth Needs - Illustrates Maslow's self actualization needs

Motivational Theories

All the thories are brifely exaplained simply below..
1.Needs Theory by Abraham Maslow

Above diagram represents the Maslow's hierarchical needs theory which represents the most basic need in the bottom and the highly specialized needs at the top.

2. Two Factor Theory

Fredrick Herzberg described the employee nature by taking "Motivators" as satisfiers and "Hygiene Factors" as dissatisfiers.

Motivators - Achievement, Recognition, Responsibility, Personal Growth

Hygiene Factors - Working Conditions, Company policies, salary and other benefits, interpersonal relationships, Supervision quality.

3.X & Y Theory

Douglas McGregor viewed his assumptions on motivation based on two theories "X" & "Y".

X Theory
Inherently people dislike work, and always they need formal directions to be given or punishments should be given to achieve goals

Y Theory
Employees view work as a game and not need to give any formal directions and no need to give punishment to achieve their goals. They will self direct themselves.

See the next post..

Describing Motivation..

Importance of Motivation

Motivation ensures better utilization of resources. When employees are motivated they actually focus on the wastage of resources and tries to reduce it as much as they could. Motivated employees cooperate well with each other and improves team spirit. While working with each other they learn many things by looking at each other. It improves knowledge and skills of employees which will lead to bridge the gap between capacity to work and willingness to work. Since the employees are working willingly and have a good interest on the job or being well focused on the job absenteeism, employee turnover grievances may would not occur. Finally it improves productivity of the organization and also good employee relations are also established. Stated above are the major advantages of having motivated workforce in the organization.

Motivation

Defining Motivation..

Motivation is an act of stimulation of an individual due to various conditions such as wishes, desires, goals, ambitions etc. to move in a particular direction to achieve their desired goals.

Safety Management

Main Objectives of safety management are to make the job and the environment safe and also to make the workers abide to the safety conditions. Successful safety management is always proactive where it identifies and plan out safety processes and procedures before an accident occur. As safety processes which are preventive measures the management could educate the people by clearly describing safety rules and regulations which will make employees to think safe. By posting safety slogans and posters also the management could educate the people. Training the employees also could be done in order to prevent accidents in the work place. In  handling dangerous machinery employees have a high risk of getting injured. Hence by providing a vigilant training regarding dangerous machinery handling the management could minimize accidents. Finally as a safety procedure the employees could given safety equipment (PPE's / Personal Protective Equipment) as it may prevent them from many accidents.

Poor Safety management systems increases the insurance cost and make the organization less profitable. It spends lots of money for the payment of benefits and compensation to injured employees and also for their medical costs. When the management will try to reduce these costs it will affect negatively for the industrial relations. Moral and productivity of the employees will affect also. So the company will finally lose its profits. Now we could realize the importance of having a good safety management system.

Health Hazards

• Physical Hazards
• Chemical Hazards
• Biological Hazards
• Psycho-Social Hazards
• Ergonomic Hazards 

When considering about physical hazards it could be listed as excessive heat, extreme cold, intense light, heavy noise, destructive vibrations, high pressure and harmful radiations which are some environmental components some workplaces. As chemical hazards poisonous gases, fumes, solids, liquids etc. could be cited as examples in various chemical sites. In some farms or places where animals are being rared for business biological hazards exists. Psycho social hazards arises due to the nature of the and interpersonal issues. It will negatively affect the mental well being of the employee. The final type of hazard which is ergonomic hazards arises due to wrong postures and anatomical mismatches of the man to the job. When considering about physical hazards it could be listed as excessive heat, extreme cold, intense light, heavy noise, destructive vibrations, high pressure and harmful radiations which are some environmental components some workplaces. As chemical hazards poisonous gases, fumes, solids, liquids etc. could be cited as examples in various chemical sites. In some farms or places where animals are being rared for business biological hazards exists. Psycho social hazards arises due to the nature of the and interpersonal issues. It will negatively affect the mental well being of the employee. The final type of hazard which is ergonomic hazards arises due to wrong postures and anatomical mismatches of the man to the job.

Employee Health and Safety

Occupational Health.. 

Employees being free of physical illnesses, injury and disabilities while being psychologically balanced which implies that understanding own abilities, ability to cope with normal stresses of life, ability to work fruitfully, and to make contribution to his her community in a positive manner in and out of the workplace is known as occupational health.

Reduction of Grievances

Under observation the manager could clearly communicate and implement the proper HR policies and procedures of the organization by observing directly from keeping regular meetings with employees and by identifying the unusual employee behavioral symptoms like insubordination, tardiness, moodiness or decline in quality of work. Attitude surveys could be done to eliminate the causes of grievances mainly such as interpersonal issues by commencing conflict resolution discussions and providing immediate solutions before the issues escalates to bigger problems. Same thing could be done from questionnaire method where each every employee who's having grievances are given a questionnaire to answer. It could be done  by preparing a questionnaire in printed sheet and distributing it among employees who are having grievances. Another method to reveal the exact reasons for grievances is that we could keep exit interviews which is  a big opportunity to the manager to identify the exact underlying reasons for the employee distress where the manager could find a solution and minimize employee turnover..

Lots of grievances could be eliminated by promoting equality and diversity at the workplace which is directly linked with organizational culture. Making employees aware that the management is always available for them to eliminate their grievances at any time is also a mean of reduction of employee grievances. It could be done by close supervision, counselling, coaching, mentoring of employees and also by frequent feedback to the grievances of employees in a positive manner. By praising the employees who are doing their job well and by rewarding the employees for their exemplary performance management can motivate the employees to work better and to feel them that their salaries are matching with their skills and knowledge which will ultimately eliminate the grievances. A complaint box could be installed at several places of the company in order to receive their grievances in written. By doing so we could gain evidence from them for the causes of grievances such as unsatisfactory working conditions, violation of contract terms, ineffective supervision, environment of distrust and non-confidence etc. Incompetency of employees is a major cause for employee grievances. To eliminate this we could give a proper training to the individual.  

Importance of Grievance Handling

Industrial peace is a state in industrial  relations in which both the employee and employer abstrain from industrial actions such as strikes and lockouts. So to achieve industrial peace grievance handling processes are carried out within  organizations. The grievance handling procedure of the organization can affect the harmonious environment of the organization in a positive manner. Many grievances of employees are related to work rules and regulations, policies and procedures, health and safety regulations, wages, individual victimization etc. Resolving these issues have a better probability to maintain high performance working culture and it should be an integral part in the management effort to understand the grievances of employees.

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Effective grievance handling is an essential part of cultivating good employee relations and running a fair, successful and productive workplace. Relationship building is the key to successful labor relations. At first good interpersonal relationships among individuals should be built in order to make a safe and corperative working environment for employees where frustration and dissatisfication would not arise. Dissatisfication of one worker would may create dissatisfication of several workers which will lead to building an anti attitude towards management. This will lead to crisis situation where various conflicts may arise and which will interfere the smooth functioning of the organization. If frustration and perception of unfair treatment would carried on it would it will immediately lead to strikes and slowdowns and affect the activities and the productivity of the organization. Hence to maintain a good productivity level and to maintain a good labor management relationship, grievance handling mechanism should be a advanced mechanism.

If there is no effective grievance mechanism it will lead to increasing of employee unrest which will give rise to employee frustration and dissatisfication, employee turnover and finally affects the productivity of the organization. It is also important to mention that in-effective grievance handling mechanism will affect the employee moral, productivity and willingness to work.  

Grievance Handling

Defining a grievance..

 

Expressed or non expressed, real or imaginative feeling of dissatisfication arising out due to strained or unhealthy relations in the employment connected with any factor such as wages, working hours, conditions of employment. 

Performance Appraisal Meeting

At first a suitable date and time is selected to held the meeting. Then all the necessary data and information is collected from the both parties to discuss in the meeting. At the date of the appraisal meeting the appraisee should be made comfortable to express his or her ideas. Disturbances should not be there after starting the meeting. The appraiser should comment on both strengths and weaknesses of the appraisee while he or she should remember not be over critical. Appraisee should be given chance to give a feedback while the appraiser should listen to it carefully and comment on issues. Appraiser should be rational and not bias and should avoid unpleasant arguments. Finally he should discuss the future actions..    

Performance Appraisal Processs

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Performance Management

Performance is an individual's ability, motivation and the degree of accomplishment of particular task and responsibility through commitment of a particular individual for the purpose of achieving organizational goals..

Performance Appraisal

Definition..

Systematic evaluation of performance of an individual  for specified time period and providing of a value addition as a feedback for the particular individual's work..

Types of Leadership

Autocratic Leadership

This type of leadership benefits for occasions when taking quick decisions without or very less support from the other members or followers. Autocratic leaders seeks very less input from others in decision making and determination of processes and procedures. They give definite instructions, demand compliance and closely supervises the team members. Autocratic leader always need and permit very little or no subordinate input.

Democratic Leadership

Democratic leaders shows opposing characteristics of the autocratic leaders since they welcomes the subordinates to involve in decision making and for the purpose formulation of processes and procedures. this leadership style is also known as participative leadership since participation of group members for  exchanging ideas are highly encouraged.

Paternalistic Leadership

The leaders who shows the paternalistic leadership trait always cares about their subordinates as a father who cares about their children. They are heavily work oriented and cares alot about the group members who are being loyal and obedient to him.

Laissez- faire Leadership

In Laissez-faire leadership very little guidance from the group leaders are being guided and each and every member have the total freedom to have their own decisions. This is also named as delegative leadership style where the leaders provide all the tools and resources for the members to carryout the work procedures.   

Leader vs Manager

Leaders always pulls employees towards goals. They give a helping hand to the followers whenever they need a help to thrive their goals. A typical manager always pushes the employees towards the goals. They do not see from the employee point of view and want to achieve the goals somehow or other. Due to this reason they have no or very few followers. People will speak ill of him after his tenure. 

When considering about a leader its totally different. Leader always encourages the employee to learn from mistakes and have flexible policies and procedures, always willing to take risks and have very low concern about cost. Hence the leaders are always respected by the followers and after his tenure people will speak good of him.

Leadership

Definition..

Managerial leadership is the process of directing and influencing group related activities of group of followers and transforming their behavior towards vision for effective and efficient organizational goal achievement

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Outsourced Employees

Outsourcing is subcontracting a service to another company (third party company)..

Employee outsourcing is done based on many reasons. Cost Saving is a one fine reason. Offshoring or labor arbitrage is done by developing nations to access lower cost economies. When the organizations focus on improving their core businesses, they tend to outsource employees. For an example if there is an organization which is specialized in marine engineering they could hire well qualified and competent marine engineers from the external job market. Another advantage of outsourcing is that improving the quality of the products and services by having a well qualified and competent outsourced employees, and also could gain more knowledge from the so called employees since their educational and professional qualifications lies at a higher level.  

Types of Contracts of Employment

Permanent Employment

Employment in the permanent category always comes under a trial period of employment which is known as Probation period. Normally majority of the organizations offers a six month probation period while there are 3 months, 9 months etc. of probation periods in the corporate sector. In the probation period of employment both the employee and the employer tests each other and both parties have the ability to take their own decision. After the period of probation the employer offers the appointment letter to the employee as an permanent employee in the organization if and only if he particular employee meets the job requirement and the levels of standards that the employer has set.

Casual Employment

As the name implies the contract of employment does not shows any permanency and where the employee doesn't want to report for work daily.  

Fixed Term Contract

In this employment category the employees are given certain fixed time period for the employment while they will be terminated automatically after their period is over. They have chance to extend the time period only if the contract is renewed.

Temporary Employment

This shows some similarity the fixed to the fixed term employment while the time period is finished the contract ends up.

Outsourced Employees

See the next post..

Types of Selection Tests

Personality Tests

In here mainly person's interpersonal skills, emotions, value systems  and personal characteristics such as self confidence, judgement, impulsiveness etc. are being assessed. It is done in order to select the most suitable candidate since an individual's personality illustrates and includes the above listed personal characteristics and interpersonal skills which will prove his or her physical and mental abilities  and capabilities which is important for the effective and efficient job performance.    

Intelligence Tests

Intelligence which implies mainly the quickness of mind in areas such as judgement, reasoning, memory and also the power to abstract is assessed in these tests by verbal reasoning and numerical ability.

Situational Tests

A situation is given to the candidate and the behavioral pattern is verbally reasoned as assuming the applicant to think as it happen to him in his real life. Fish Ball exercise would be cited as an example.

Interest Tests 

This test is done to reveal the particular job applicants genuine interest towards the job.

Polygraph Tests

Polygraph tests are done to determine the truthfulness of the applicant's answers.

Contents in a letter of appointment

• Name
• Effective date of employment
• Designation
• Type of employment
• Grade
• Date of end of contract
• Salary Scale
• Working hours
• Notice period on resignation
• Leave entitlement

CONTARCT OF EMPLOYMENT

Agreement between two parties where terms and conditions are set in which one party will serve (employee) to another party(employer) based on payment.

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Types of Interviews

• Structured Interviews
• Unstructured Interviews
• Stress Interviews
• Group Interviews
• Panel Interviews

Recruitment Methods

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             Internal Recruitment methods

HRIS

Circulars

 Notice Boards

Transfers

Promotions

News Letters

          External Recruitment Methods

TV and Radio Advertisements

News paper Advertisements

Head Hunting

 Magazines

Job Agencies

Job Fairs 

Walk in interviews

Recruitment Process

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Recruitment and Selection

Definition of Recruitment..

The process of attracting a qualified and well confident pool of people who posseses the ability and the capacity to perform his or her particular role profile of the particular job vacancy.

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Definition of Selection.. 

Selection is the process of choosing the most suitable applicant from pool of qualified candidates for a particular job vacancy. 

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HR Planning Process

Major Cycle of steps to be followed..

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Objectives of HR Planning

For the purpose of forecasting future HR requirements

Forecasting is done on the basis of corporate and functional plans. For this purpose HR gaps are being identified which is identifying the gap between demand and supply of the workforce. A comparison between the existing workforce and the projected workforce demand is done. It will show the shortage or surplus of workforce in the future. The gaps which had been occurred in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes could be bridged by training and development

To Cope with changes

Objectives and strategic plans of the company and the demand for goods and services that an organization produces has a direct impact on the man power demand. So when the man power planning is done long term objectives of the organization such as introduction of new products, venturing into new markets and in introducing new production methods should be considered

  Some other major objectives of HR Planning could be listed as follows..

To ensure optimum use of available HR

As a help for recruitment and selection

To maintain productivity levels 

To work out an effective employee development program 

HR PLANNING

Definition for HR Planning..

HR Planning is the process of determining HR requirements which is the process of ensuring whether the organization has the right number of people and the right kind of people at the right place at the right time in order to carry out the integrated plans of the organization smoothly.

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Key Result Areas of HRM (KRA)

Human Resource Planning

Administration of Compensation Systems

Performance Management

Human Resource Development





Employee Welfare Services

Employee Relations



Employee Health and Safety




Managerial and Organizational Development

History of HRM

PRE - INDUSTRIAL ERA

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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 

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SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

 INDUSTRIAL WELFARE MOVEMENT

                                         EARLY INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY

                HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT




LABOR MOVEMENT AND EMERGENCE OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING


   EMERGENCE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT



EMERGENCE OF HRM AND DEVELOPMENT OF HRM