Tag: Human capital Management B.com Notes

A career development plan is future-focused and details what you as an employee would like to learn and contribute. A word of caution here, career development plans are not created in a vacuum. It is essential for employees to take into account departmental and organizational needs, objectives and goals when creating their career plans.

Personal and professional growth are important factors for keeping your career moving in a direction with which you are satisfied. Prior to setting up a meeting to discuss your plan with your manager or supervisor you will want to engage in self-assessment so that you will be able to clearly define and articulate your goals and developmental needs.

As you begin your self-assessment, keep in mind , The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.? Take some time to reflect on the following factors:

What could you do to increase your satisfaction, and decrease factors that are not sources of satisfaction? Steps to increase your satisfaction could be as simple as rearranging your office to get out of the draft caused by the heating and air conditioning system, or as complex as researching, crafting and presenting a job sharing proposal. What would make you a happier, more productive employee?

What ideas do you have for enhancing your current efficiency and effectiveness? This might include learning how to perform functions that other team members perform in case they are out of the office. Also take into account, ways you could train other team members to enhance their effectiveness and/or knowledge base.

When creating your plan, consider:

1. Results from a 360? assessment instrument which gives you feedback from not only your manager, but also from your peers, subordinates and customers
2. Your previous performance appraisals
3. Future trends which will be impacting the payroll profession and skills/knowledge needed to adapt to and thrive in the forthcoming environment
4. Customer feedback and letters of appreciation
5. What one thing more than anything else is holding you back? Work out a strategy for overcoming that roadblock/obstacle.

Develop both a short-term and a long-term career development plan. The timeframes for such plans vary from individual to individual. For some, short-term means the steps they will take over the next three to six months while for others short-term might mean completing a degree or certification that takes much longer than six months so they could reach their long-term goal of obtaining a promotion.

Your development plan is a road map for plotting your career future. Don?t leave your future to happenstance. The magic begins when you set goals. A switch is turned on, the current begins to flow, and the power to accomplish becomes yours. Career development planning is for individuals as well as the organization

Career development planning procedures are always based on what the organization needs. But they have to recognize that organizational needs will not be satisfied if individual needs are neglected. Career development planning has to be concerned with the management of diversity.

Career development plans must therefore recognize that:

• Members of the organization should receive recognition as individuals with unique needs, wants, and abilities;
• Individuals are more motivated by an organization that responds to their aspirations and needs;
• Individuals can grow, change and seek new directions if they are given the right opportunities, encouragement and guidance.

Career development planning techniques

Career planning uses all the information generated by the succession plans, performance, and potential assessments and self-assessments to develop programs and procedures which are designed to implement career management policies, achieve succession planning objectives and generally improve motivation, commitment and performance. The procedures used are those concerned with:

• Personal development planning .
• Training and management development.
• Mentoring
• Career counseling

In addition, career development planning procedures may cater for the rising stars by ‘fast tracking’ them, that is, deliberately accelerating promotion and giving them opportunities to display and enlarge their talents. But these procedures should pay just as much, if not more, attention to those managers who are following the middle route of steady, albeit unspectacular, progression.

Personal development planning

Personal development planning is carried out by individuals with guidance, encouragement and help from their managers/HRM as required. A personal development plan sets out the actions people propose to take to learn and to develop themselves. They take responsibility for formulating and implementing the plan, but they receive support from the organization and their managers in doing so. The purpose is to provide a ‘self-organized learning framework’.

Career Counseling

Performance management processes, should provide for counseling sessions between individuals and their managers. These sessions should give the former the opportunity to discuss their aspirations and the latter the chance to comment on them helpfully and, at a later stage, to put forward specific career development proposals to be fed into the overall career management programs.

 Management Development

The formal approaches to management development include:

Development on the job through coaching, counseling, monitoring and feedback by managers on a continuous basis associated with the use of performance management processes to identify and satisfy development needs, and with mentoring;

Development through work experience, which includes job rotation, job enlargement, taking part in project teams or task groups, ‘action learning’, and secondment outside the organization;

Formal training by means of internal or external courses;

Structured self-development by following self-managed learning programs agreed as a personal development plan or learning contract with the manager or a management development adviser these may include guidance reading or the deliberate extension of knowledge or acquisition of new skills on the job.

Mentoring

Mentoring is the process of using specially selected and trained individuals to provide guidance and advice which will help to develop the careers of the ‘proteges’ Allocated to them.

Mentoring is aimed at complementing learning on the job, which must always be the best way of acquiring the particular skills and knowledge the job holder needs. Mentoring also complements formal training by providing those who benefit from it with individual guidance from experienced managers who are ‘wise in the ways of the organization’.

Mentors provide for the person or persons allocated to them:

Advice in drawing up self-development programs or learning contracts; general help with learning programs; guidance on how to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to do a new job; advice on dealing with any administrative, technical or people problems individuals meet.

Examples of Career Initiatives:

1) Managers as Career Counselors

• These initiatives bring several unique advantages to the career counseling role. Managers:
• Can make realistic appraisals of organizational opportunities
• Can use information from past performance evaluation to make realistic suggestions concerning career planning
• Have experienced similar career decisions and can be empathetic toward the employee

2) A Job Posting System

• Job posting is an organized process that allows employees to apply for open positions within the organization.
• They can respond to announcements and postings of positions and then be considered along with external candidates.

Job Posting System is the arrangement wherein a company privately posts a list of open positions (which include the job requirements as well as their descriptions) in order for the current employees who aspire to shift to different functional areas or positions may apply.

3) Career Resource Centers

• A career resource center returns the responsibility of career development to the employee.
• The center offers self-directed, self-paced learning, and provides resources without creating dependence on the organization.
• Career development works only if employees accept responsibility for their own careers.
• One of the fundamental goals of career development is to help facilitate career decision making, which helps to develop career exploration and evaluation competencies.
• The primary services provided at career resource centers are: educational information, career planning, and personal growth, and job-finding skills.

4) Mentoring Activities

• The primary purpose of a mentoring system is to introduce people to the inner network of the organization, which may assist them in their career advancement.
• Mentoring systems help clarify the ambiguous expectations of the organization, provide objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of new employees, and provide a sounding board for participants.

Mentoring activities make use of the same skills and models of listening, questioning, reframing and clarifying connected with coaching. Conventionally, however, mentoring in the workplace has managed to describe a relationship wherein a well-experienced co-worker utilizes his/her own greater know-how and deeper understanding of the job or workplace in order to sustain the growth of an inexperienced colleague.

The major focus of career planning should be on assisting the employees in achieving a better match between personal goals and the opportunities that are realistically available in the organisation.

Career planning is an effort to pinpoint and highlight those areas that offer psychological success instead of vertical growth. Career planning is not an event or end in itself, but a continuous process of developing human resources for achieving optimum results.

Pyramidal Model:

First and the most influential model is the Pyramidal Model of organisations and of careers. In this model, authority, status and pay all increase as the individual moves up the pyramid. As professionals first moved into industrial and government organisations, this was the sole career model they encountered.

Many professionals with advanced degrees become prime candidates for management positions. But many professionals were dismayed to find that the ability and willingness to manage seemed almost the sole criteria for advancement, recognition or reward in their organisations.

Similarly, many organisations found that the pyramid model failed to take important realities into account. Too often, they found themselves promoting a key technical specialist to a management position because it was the only way to reward him.

More and more firms began to set up special new pay and promotion schemes such as the dual ladder for their professional employees in order to recognise the critical contributions they could make as individuals.

These criticisms have not subsided. Instead, they have persisted and indeed increased in recent years.

Obsolescence Model

After the initial stage was over, a new problem arose. As the number of professionals with 20-25 years’ experience grew, a new model of professional careers began to emerge. The low performance ratings of many of these senior employees led to the use of the metaphor of obsolescence.

The picture projected by the metaphor was that of a rapidly changing technology in which the skills of the older professionals were rapidly outdated and in which recent professionals who had mastered the latest tools and techniques were at a premium.

This model carries with it an implied solution to the problem. When it is assumed that professionals become obsolete like machines, the obvious solution is to update or reeducate professionals and to restore them to the state they were in when they came out of management schools, on top of the newest and most sophisticated techniques.

All this money and effort spent on training of obsolete employees’ rests on a questionable model. It has not been concluded that these training courses improve performance.

Japanese Career Model

The Japanese model emphasises life time employment and promotions based on seniority. The Japanese have realised the importance of a stable workforce long back (immediately after World War II) and have consciously put legal restrictions on terminations.

The extensive use of automation and robotics in work place also contributed to the practice of life time employment in Japan. One reason for the widespread use of such advanced technology is that employees know that they will not lose their jobs.

Extensive training is also offered to workers so that they do-not leave the company. Despite life time employment, Japanese companies do have a mechanism for discharge, namely, early retirement. Early retirement is given to workers even in their late 40s-if necessary, of course, backed by attractive severance pay and benefits.

Career development has close links with the development of human resources. Where the career development leads to improvement and personal improvement afforded by individuals and organizations to choose a destination and a career path to achieve that goal. Career development is not only referring to regulation but also on the ability of individuals and organizations the ability to develop a career employee. But in reality, many are quite crucial issues arise, particularly in local government organization. As an illustration is hiring policy in structural positions and personnel transfers in an area that is still a lot of colored political overtones and a variety of interests both political elite and elite interests of the executive.

• Willingness to change performed job or employer

Sometimes it is necessary to change job position, department or employers for promotion or job career development. In the event that employer does not allow career progress, employee has only one option- to search new job and change employer.

• Personality of employee

Employee’s personality and motivation is necessary prerequisite for working on certain job positions. Personality of employee and superior ideas about personality profile for concrete job is one of key factor with the direct affect to career development.

• Self-assessment

Explains that the self-assessment is a process of self-study, or the first step to be done someone in career planning is a self-assessment. Realistic self-assessment can help a person to avoid mistakes that could affect the overall progress of his career.

• Education, completed training and courses

Adequate education, completed courses and training programs are one of basic factor with direct influence for career and for promotion in organizational structure.

In some companies it is very difficult for employee without university degree to decide achieve advancement to major work and employee with university degree has obvious advantage career development.

• Mapping Career

Individual career mapping is a process to describe the career prospects of an employee, including an explanation of the level of employee readiness to assume certain positions.

• Behavior and self-presentation

The behavior and the superior view of employee is sometimes more important than job performance. Employ must consider the career goals and for these goals and for proposed job position must modify self-presentation and behavior in company.

• Job performance and evaluation of superior

Job performance and result attained at word should be one of the key factors with influence for career and for advancement in within organizational structure.

But in company games they are not only job performance a work results as factor affecting career development. Equally important and many times more important is the superior view and evaluations of job performance. And superiors decide about career progress of their subordinates.

• Performed job position

Performed job position must be in accordance with career goals. If employee wants to build specialist career in research area, he must find adequate job place in adequate company, which allow him correct job and career development.

• Career Counseling

The importance of career development, it is a labor organization or institution should provide for a career counselor for employees. Career counseling services provide an opportunity for people of all ages and backgrounds to learn the skills, strengths, and potential for various types of the work, and choose a job that suits the purpose and personality of employees. Based on the above description, the relationship and the influence of self-assessment, career mapping, identification of the business achieve career goals, personal development, performance appraisal, career-related education, career information and career counseling for employee career development can be described through the following frameworks

• Company situation

Situation at company has significant influence for employee career. The employee can have all prerequisites and assumptions for promotion, but situation at company does not allow career development. Reasons for these conditions could be different, for examples: well-qualified and well-evaluated persons on required job positions or economic situations of company or market. In these states of affair is almost impossible to reach of promotion.

New Organizational Structures

Holacratic structures are composed of teams which can be brought together and dissolved quickly to meet organizational goals. As a form of self-management, a holacracy’s decision power resides in these fluid teams, or “circles,” which helps to disperse power throughout the organization. Rather than a formal hierarchy, these teams have a set of simple, explicit, and public rules that dictate how work gets done. If anyone has an issue with a current process, they can raise and resolve them at regular group meetings. The aim of a holacracy is to distribute decision making while enabling everyone to work on what they do best. Holacracies still possess some structure and hierarchy, but it’s based more on circles and what people think of as departments rather than on people. Zappos and Medium have been two of the most visible adopters of the holacratic method.

While the hierarchal model enabled industrial-age companies to thrive, the rise of the information economy has rendered this model harder to optimize. In factories, knowledge and intellect is concentrated at the top. Actual production, in contrast, requires little thought and massive coordination and repetition. Knowledge-based organizations, by contrast, require each employee to be

Changing structure is not easy for any organization. There is a lag between technical reality and culture. To catch culture up, we must reframe the challenges of adapting to the 21st century as an opportunity.

Some experts go so far as to advocate for eliminating all titles within an organization, though critics wonder how employees could advance their young careers without an external step ladder of success. But Carter says eliminating titles will also help break down employees’ glass ceilings. Without parameters defining their jurisdictions and authority, they can assume more responsibility and boost their level of involvement in projects.

The key to profitable performance is the extent to which four business elements are aligned:

• The individuals responsible for developing and deploying the strategy and monitoring results.
• The structure, processes and operations by which the strategy is deployed.
• The necessary roles and responsibilities.
• The experience, skills and competencies needed to execute the strategy.

New Organizational Structures and Design

Learning Organizations

In an environment where environments are continually changing, it’s critical that organizations detect and quickly correct its own errors. This requires continuous feedback to, and within, the organization. Continual feedback allows the organization to `unlearn’ old beliefs and remain open to new feedback, uncolored by long-held beliefs.

In a learning organization, managers don’t direct as much as they facilitate the workers’ applying new information and learning from that experience. Managers ensure time to exchange feedback, to inquire and reflect about the feedback, and then to gain consensus on direction. Peter Senge, noted systems theorist, points out in his book, The Fifth Discipline that the learning organization is “continually expanding its capacity to create its future for a learning organization, `adaptive learning’ must be joined by `generative learning,’ learning that enhances our capacity to create.”

Virtual Organization

This emerging form is based on organization members interacting with each other completely, or almost completely, via telecommunications. Members may never actually meet each other.

Network Structure

This modern structure includes the linking of numerous, separate organizations to optimize their interaction in order to accomplish a common, overall goal. An example is a joint venture to build a complex, technical systems such as the space shuttle. Another example is a network of construction companies to build a large structure.

Self-Organizing Systems

Self-organizing systems have the ability to continually change their structure and internal processes to conform to feedback with the environment. Some writers use the analogy of biological systems as self-organizing systems. Their ultimate purpose is to stay alive and duplicate. They exist in increasing complexity and adapt their structures and forms to accommodate this complexity. Ultimately, they change structure dramatically to adjust to the outer environment. (Some assert that self-managed groups are self-organizing systems, although others assert that self-managed groups are not because an ultimate purpose is assigned to team members).

Characteristics:

• Organic in nature: Less rules and regulations, sometimes no clear boundaries and always-changing forms.
• Strong employee involvement: Input to the system starts from those closest to the outcome preferred by the system, from those most in-the-know about whether the organization is achieving its preferred outcomes with its stakeholders or not. This way, the organization stays highly attuned and adaptive to the needs of stakeholders.
• Authority based on capability: Ensures the organization remains a means to an end and not an end in itself
• Teams: Share’s activities to take advantage of economies of scale at the lowest levels of activities and ensures full involvement of employees at the lowest levels.
• Alliances: Takes advantage of economies of scale, e.g., collaborations, networks, strategic alliances/mergers, etc.
• Flatter, decentralized organizations: Less middle management, resulting in top management exchanging more feedback with those providing products and services; also results in fewer overhead costs.
• Mindfulness of environments, changes, patterns and themes: Priority on reflection and inquiry to learn from experience; develop “learning organizations”.

Changing Career Patterns

Significant differences were observed in job mobility and organizational mobility of the various generations, with younger generations being more mobile. However, despite significant environmental shifts, the diversity of career patterns has not undergone a significant shift from generation to generation.

Job mobility no longer carries the stigma once associated with job change, although it can be emotionally stressful. Corporate upheavals of the early 1990s and low unemployment rates during the last part of the decade have caused changes in job search and hiring practices. Companies, especially those in technology fields that are in dire need of qualified, skilled, and experienced employees, are driven to recruit workers away from their current employers. Workers, who see job mobility as a way to find work that is appealing, challenging, and offers growth potential, are viewing career change as a way to progress through the uncertainties of the workplace. Job mobility is most prevalent among individuals who are first entering the labor market.

Although changing careers may seem overwhelming to many, the examples presented in this Digest show that changes are possible and probable. Employment will be increasingly characterized by sequences of decisions and work/role transitions. Similar sequences of behaviors, experiences, and judgments will influence ever-changing career patterns. For workers who seek continued and rewarding employment, career management skills will become increasingly important. Workers will need to be able to identify their strengths, goals, and skills; conduct ongoing assessments of their values and goals; monitor themselves and their job situation; and develop the interpersonal and negotiating skills needed to manage organizational career systems. Life changes and career changes often go hand in hand, offering the skilled and flexible worker opportunities to use these changes to personal advantage.

The employee, the manager, and the employer all play roles in planning, guiding, and developing the employee’s career. However, the employee must always accept full responsibility for his or her own career development and career success. This is one task that no employee should ever leave to a manager or employer. For the individual employee, the career planning process means matching individual strengths and weaknesses with occupational opportunities and threats. The person wants to pursue occupations, jobs, and a career that capitalize on his or her interests, aptitudes, values, and skills. He or she wants to choose occupations, jobs, and a career, and a career that make sense in terms of projected future demand for various types of occupations.

Of course, career planning only gets one so far. Many people who had previously worked hard to train as computer systems analysts were devastated to find that the dot-com collapse had dramatically reduced the need for systems analysts. However, uncertainties like these only underscore the need for keeping one finger on the pulse of the job market, so as to be better positioned to move when a career change is required.

The Employee Role:

Making decisions like these is the employees responsibility. For example, an employee can do several things short of changing occupations. An employee must know what he is looking for in a job and to what extent his current position is fulfilling his needs. Get rid of energy-draining, low impact responsibilities. Employee can enhance his networks, for instance, by joining a cross-functional team at work, discussing career goals with role models, conducting informational interviews with people whose jobs are of interest and becoming a board member for a nonprofit organization so that the employee can interact with new people. If an employee is satisfied with his occupation and where he works, but not with his job as it is currently organized, the employee must reconfigure his job. For example, consider alternative work arrangements such as part time work, flexible hours, or telecommuting; delegate or eliminate the job function least preferred and seek out a ostrich assignment that will let him work on something that the employee finds challenging.

Workplace Politics

Employee development programs cannot always place the same amount of emphasis on all employees at once, and not all employees are interested in growing personally and professionally. When some employees take part in development programs and others do not, it creates an opportunity for negative workplace politics. Employees have a responsibility to refrain from gossiping about or resentfully treating others who take advantage of development programs, and to refrain from looking down on employees who choose not to participate.

Outside Learning

Certain aspects of employee development programs place a great deal of responsibility on employees to work hard in their personal time. An employer can offer a college tuition reimbursement plan, for example, but employees have to put in their own hours studying and working toward their degree. Likewise, employers can send employees to seminars and workshops, but employees must choose to use their time for learning and making professional contacts rather than treat the trip like a vacation.

Attitudes

Employees absolutely must have positive attitudes when approaching employee development programs. An attitude of entitlement or complacency can seriously hinder employees’ professional growth. If an employer gives an employee additional responsibility, for example, it is up to the employee to view it as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than being forced to do extra work. In addition, employees have a responsibility to make the most of training sessions rather than complain that training wastes their time.

Taking Initiative

Employee development initiatives can involve identifying potential management candidates on the front lines and giving them training and extra responsibility to prepare them for a future promotion. Employees have the responsibility to speak up to management about their ambitions and desire to progress in their career, however, and must earn the attention of management through excellent individual and team performance.

Employer Role

The manager plays a crucial role in career’s development. First of all, he should be a mentor to expand the capabilities of the individuals and improve their performance. According to John Kotter (2012), the role of the manager as a mentor can be helpful particularly for young employees, who have just started their career. He emphasizes that the successful executives, who he has known, have had two or more these sort of relationships with their managers in the early stage of their career. The mentors provided them with specific information, important contacts or skills.

The effective manager should incorporate coaching skills into his management style. For instance, at Intel, the management department is responsible to help the workforce understand the shifting demand for their skills and ensure that the staff will be provided with appropriate training. At Reuters, the employees are also receiving the guidance to help them to work more efficiently.

Mentoring is a relationship between two people with the goal of professional and personal development. The “mentor” is usually an experienced individual who shares knowledge, experience, and advice with a less experienced person, or “mentee.”

Mentoring is a process of developing formal relationships between junior and senior members of the organisation, in certain cases mentoring also takes place between peers. In other words it is a process of developing relationships between more experienced members of an organisation and the less experienced ones for transfer of knowledge and skills. These associations are developed with the intent of developing career functions. For example, coaching, sponsorship, protection to peer, challenging assignments, introduction to important contacts and resources are certain ways in which mentoring may happen.

Mentors become trusted advisers and role models people who have “been there” and “done that.” They support and encourage their mentees by offering suggestions and knowledge, both general and specific. The goal is to help mentees improve their skills and, hopefully, advance their careers.

A mentoring partnership may be between two people within the same company, same industry, or same networking organization. However, the partners come together, the relationship should be based on mutual trust and respect, and it typically offers personal and professional advantages for both parties.

Mentoring is also targeted to psychological functions; role modeling, counseling, benchmarking individual practices are various ways in which the latter is achieved. It is no doubt an important tool that apart from employee development also leads to increased job satisfaction, organisational dedication and career achievement.

Mentoring Techniques

Mentoring requires an exercise of great wisdom, caution and expertise on the part of the mentor. There are many techniques that are used these days, some of which have been briefly explained below:

• Mentors are assigned with the responsibility of preparing their mentee for change. The focus is to prepare the individual mentally before he/she is asked for change, so that the change is not taken as negative and instead a developmental process. This mentoring technique s called sowing.
• The other entering technique is called as accompanying, wherein the mentor is involved in the learning process of mentee side by side explicitly, guiding all the time.
• Doing is yet another mentoring technique in which the mentor uses his own example to make something understand. It is also called leading.
• Harvesting is one technique that is essentially aimed at evaluation of the past learning’s and to extract conclusions from the same.
• Catalyzing is one technique wherein the process of learning or knowledge transfer is speeded. This is done only when a significant amount of change is achieved.

Best Practices

Open doors

You have great connections that could benefit your mentee. To help your mentee learn and grow, introduce them to people in your network who could provide insight on how to be successful in their chosen field.

Respect differences

Your mentee’s path may be entirely different than yours, so try not to make assumptions about their experiences, goals or skills. Work with your mentee to recognize how their unique backgrounds and experiences shape their perspective and can be leveraged.

Know your worth and your limitations

Don’t question whether you are qualified to be a mentor what you may take for granted might be invaluable knowledge to someone else. At the same time, it’s also important to recognize your limitations and seek out advice and support when needed, which is a great way to model problem-solving skills.

Empower, don’t solve

Most mentors are amazing problem solvers. But great mentors empower their mentees to find their own solution to a problem or challenge. Sometimes, the journey is more important than the result.

Mutual accountability

Trust and accountability are the foundations of any successful mentoring relationship. Hold your mentee accountable to set goals. By the same token, make sure you’re practicing what you preach.

Set expectations

The most successful mentoring relationships have agreed-upon expectations and goals. Must be transparent about what you can bring to the relationship and what you hope to get out of it.

Celebrate milestones

Recognize small achievements along the way. This is a great way to keep your mentee excited and engaged.

Provide opportunities for growth

Ensure that you provide genuine and honest feedback in a supportive manner. Conversely, be open to receiving it.

Learn from each other

When sharing knowledge and advice with your mentee, ask them questions about their point of view, insights and perspectives. The best relationships happen when a mentor and a mentee can learn from each other.

People tend to restrict the impact of technology on career planning to only those candidates searching for jobs on the internet. While that is a crucial change in career planning, it is by no means the only change that technology has brought in an employee’s life. Thanks to the advances in technology, employees can now undertake a self-assessment of their skill-sets through various online platforms and portals.

Technology can help facilitate career development conversations between managers and employees in a number of ways, including support for regular discussions between staff and supervisors across the career management process. A career development planning section on the regular performance review form can ensure that managers and employees discuss and document employee career goals and that managers assign the appropriate career development opportunities. Employees can also document their broader skills and abilities as well as their career plans in their digital talent profiles. These profiles should be configurable so you can include all the sections you need.

The employees can now get a clearer idea of the areas they need to focus on to get a wellrounded profile. It reduces their dependence on employers and immediate supervisors to get a feedback on their performance in the form of performance reviews. These employees also don’t need to rely upon counsellors or on the human resources department to get their suggestions and to get their questions answered.

Connectivity also helps people from different departments to be connected, which increases overall efficiency and time utilization. The employees can now easily get the response to their queries over mails and instant messengers, as opposed to the earlier method of walking to the desk and getting questions asked. Instead of just one mentor, now there are several ones who can help you out when you are in a fix.

All the credit for providing these facilities goes to the Internet. Internet or technology facilitates the employees to learn new courses and enhance their skills and add weightage to their resume. Even the organizations are making use of the online modules for providing training to their employees.

Mails and instant messaging systems facilitate the employees to communicate easily and the answers to their queries can be fast received. The number of mentors who guide the employees in the due course of their learning also increases.

High-performance teams (HPTs) is a concept within organization development referring to teams, organizations, or virtual groups that are highly focused on their goals and that achieve superior business results. High-performance teams outperform all other similar teams and they outperform expectations given their composition.

A high-performance team can be defined as a group of people with specific roles and complementary talents and skills, aligned with and committed to a common purpose, who consistently show high levels of collaboration and innovation, produce superior results, and extinguish radical or extreme opinions that could be damaging. The high-performance team is regarded as tight-knit, focused on their goal and have supportive processes that will enable any team member to surmount any barriers in achieving the team’s goals.

Within the high-performance team, people are highly skilled and are able to interchange their roles. Also, leadership within the team is not vested in a single individual. Instead the leadership role is taken up by various team members, according to the need at that moment in time. High-performance teams have robust methods of resolving conflict efficiently, so that conflict does not become a roadblock to achieving the team’s goals. There is a sense of clear focus and intense energy within a high-performance team. Collectively, the team has its own consciousness, indicating shared norms and values within the team. The team feels a strong sense of accountability for achieving their goals. Team members display high levels of mutual trust towards each other.

What distinguishes high-performance teams from other groups is that a team is more than a collection of people simply following orders. To function effectively, a high-performance team also needs:

• A deep sense of purpose and commitment to the team’s members and to the mission.
• Relatively more ambitious performance goals than average teams.
• Mutual accountability and a clear understanding of members’ responsibilities to the team and individual obligations.
• A diverse range of expertise that complements other team members’ abilities.
• Interdependence and trust between members.

There are four key reasons why teams work:

• A group of individuals brings complementary skills and experience that exceed the abilities of a single individual.
• Teams support real-time problem-solving and are more flexible and responsive to changing demands.
• Teams provide a unique social dimension that enhances the economic and administrative aspects of work.
• High-performance teams generally have more fun at work than low-achieving teams or individuals.

Characteristics

Different characteristics have been used to describe high-performance teams. Despite varying approaches to describing high-performance teams there is a set of common characteristics that are recognised to lead to success

Participative leadership: Using a democratic leadership style that involves and engages team members.

Talent, skills and work ethic: High-performance teams begin by recruiting and retaining their best talent while quickly helping low-performing members find other places to work. Morale typically increases as performance increases. After selecting for talent, it is critical to ensure that the team members possess complementary skills (e.g., technical, problem-solving, decision-making and interpersonal skills). Team members must exhibit a sustained commitment to performance excellence, exercise candor and mutual respect, and hold themselves and their organizations accountable at both the individual and team levels.

Effective decision-making: Using a blend of rational and intuitive decision making methods, depending on that nature of the decision task

Open and clear communication: Ensuring that the team mutually constructs shared meaning, using effective communication methods and channels

Valued diversity: Valuing a diversity of experience and background in team, contributing to a diversity of viewpoints, leading to better decision making and solutions

Mutual trust: Trusting in other team members and trusting in the team as an entity.

Incentives, motivation and efficacy: Both monetary and nonmonetary systems that encourage high performance have a positive impact on tactical implementation of the team’s goals. Over the long term, intrinsic motivators such as personal satisfaction at work and working on interesting projects provide the greatest impact on performance. In addition, a belief in one’s self and abilities encourages people to take more strategic risks to achieve team goals.

Managing conflict: Dealing with conflict openly and transparently and not allowing grudges to build up and destroy team morale

Clear goals: Goals that are developed using SMART criteria; also each goal must have personal meaning and resonance for each team member, building commitment and engagement

Defined roles and responsibilities: Each team member understands what they must do (and what they must not do) to demonstrate their commitment to the team and to support team success

Coordinative relationship: The bonds between the team members allow them to seamlessly coordinate their work to achieve both efficiency and effectiveness

Positive atmosphere: An overall team culture that is open, transparent, positive, future-focused and able to deliver success

Write results-oriented job descriptions

Many companies find it beneficial to rewrite their job descriptions to include more results-oriented and measurable information. Instead of simply including the specific tasks or duties of the job description, consider adding why the duty is performed, or which results it aims to achieve, and how the performance will be measured.

For example, for the marketing director role in an assisted living facility, the roles and responsibilities might look like this:

• Facilitate the move-in process to build relationships with new residents. Metric: New resident satisfaction.
• Ensure respite apartments are ready to show to ensure marketability. Metric: Apartment turnover.
• Develop and maintain a detailed marketing plan to great market share. Metric: Competitive market data.

The overarching goal of the compensation strategy is to ensure an organization has allocated the money necessary to motivate the performance needed to achieve the business strategy. To that end, compensation should also tie into the overall performance management strategy.

Practices must therefore be understood by employees and based on hard, objective data. It is essential to maintain an approach in which equal pay is given for equal work. These critical objectives can be achieved by:

• Standardizing pays practices and basing the compensation system on benchmarks
• Achieving internal parity
• Providing competitive hiring scales
• Reformatting or rewriting job descriptions
• Creating a meaningful performance management tool

The four types of direct compensation for employees you’ll see most often are:

• Hourly Pay/Wage: The most common and direct form of compensation. Typically used with unskilled, semi-skilled, and part-time positions.
• Salary: Customarily a yearly amount that is split evenly into pay periods so that workers receive the same amount every paycheck throughout the year. Positions that require more education or specific skills generally pay a salary.
• Commission: Commission-based compensation is designed to incentivize employees to produce at a high level and may be used in certain industries where the employer cannot guarantee a consistent workload.
• Bonuses: Bonuses give businesses a flexible option to reward employees additionally for great performance.

Steps

Build a Pay-for-Performance Compensation Strategy

By linking performance and compensation management efforts, employers not only provide clear compensation guidelines for themselves, but they can help employees understand their value and work to increase it.

HR professionals should lead these strategic planning efforts by first working with senior leadership to create these strategies (and subsequent tactics). Second, you’ll want to make sure these strategies are tied to applicable data because your people will want proofs. Data from your performance management efforts can help in this process.

Improve Pay Communication

But don’t run too fast. There is some aligning that needs to take place before you discuss your pay-for-performance strategies with your people.

According to the survey mentioned above, two-thirds of the employees who felt they were underpaid were at least paid at market value, and 35 percent were actually paid above market value.

Compensation is an exchange of value, and as we’ve already discussed, value is about perception. So, even if you come up with a perfect strategy to compensate your people according to their real value, it’ll be for nothing if they don’t understand it.

Performance management is a strategic process and an integrated approach. The process involves an ongoing dialogue between the supervisor and the employee for setting goals which are achievable and contribute in the direction of fulfilment of the organizational goal. The main objective of performance management approach is to proactively manage employee’s performance for accomplishing organizational goals by attaining a desired level of performance. It believes in linking the performance plans of an organization with the strategic vision and identifying the major performance indicators and KRA’s for enabling the employees to achieve the expected outcomes for their organization.

Any performance management process broadly involves three stages and these are:

• Goal Setting and Motivation which is normally done in the beginning of the session.
• Encouraging Stage which is normally undertaken when the employees get involved in the process of pursuit of the assigned task.
• The final stage is the Stage of Rewards and Consequences which is applied after the completion of a task.

Performance management is always a forward planning process which is developmental and facilitative in nature as it involves the team leaders and the employees in a joint process of decision making for fixing smart targets. It aims at breeding performance orientation in the employees for developing high performance organizations. The entire process involves identification, evaluation and development of the work performance of the employees through effective management practices like continuous coaching, feedback and regular communication. The process includes the following stages:

• Work Planning and defining expectations
• Monitoring performance
• Developing the weak performance areas
• Performance rating
• Rewarding good performance

Step 1: Set expectations

Performance management starts with meeting with each employee to discuss which results and behaviors are expected of them. Don’t list off what you want and expect your team members to quietly obey. Instead, ask your employee to participate in deciding what is realistic for them to achieve. Be as specific as possible to ensure everyone is on the same page. This avoids an “I didn’t know I was supposed to do that” situation a few months down the line.

Step 2: Observe

Laid out expectations, and team participated in setting their objectives. Now take a step back and observe how the plan takes shape, helping out as necessary and maintaining regular communication.

• Give ongoing feedback: Rather than waiting until the review period is over, be sure to give feedback and coaching on a regular basis. This ensures the employee develops and helps them reach their objectives. Give advice or constructive criticism as needed.
• Reinforce: Likewise, make sure he maintains good performance by making it clear it is being noticed. If good performance is not praised, employees will lose motivation. This is especially crucial when an employee exceeds their performance standards or expectations. If you don’t acknowledge it, they might wonder why they’re working so hard.
• Give updates and resources: As your project goals change, so might the employee’s objectives. Be sure to update them on any such changes immediately. Provide them with all the resources they need to facilitate goal-setting or to maintain their performance during the shift. Whether it’s training, tools, or readings, make sure they have what they need to do the job.
• Observe and collect performance info: Keep track of examples of good and bad performance on a daily basis. These examples will be used during the performance review process to highlight what improvements are needed, and what they’re already knocking out of the park.

Step 3: Assessment

It may be appropriate to evaluate results, for others behaviors, and for some, both. To help you figure out what to assess for what employee, consider this:

Assess results if: Effort will always lead to results; results show consistent improvement over time; or if there are several different ways to do the job right and get good results. 

Assess behaviors if: Effort and results aren’t connected in an obvious, very direct way; results take months to develop; or if bad results can come from factors outside of the employee’s control.

Self-appraisals:

Let the employee do a self-appraisal as well, or give them a chance to explain how they think they did. Self-ratings pinpoint discrepancies between how a team member views themselves, versus how others view them. These discrepancies provide teaching moments, and highlight areas needing development. Self-evaluations also minimize defensiveness, help team members learn, and ensure they feel the performance management process is fair.

Appraisal forms:

A valuable way to assess performance is to fill out a template or complete an appraisal form. You can also invite an employee’s peers to complete one, as this can be a great way to assess teamwork or how the person acts when you aren’t around. However peer evaluations can be subject to bias and context, so don’t rely on them as your sole source of information.

Step 4: Review

The final step of performance management is to sit down with the employee and discuss their performance during the review period. Share your observations, assessments, and feedback, and ask the employee for their opinion on what they did well and what they need to improve on. Then brainstorm ways to improve performance during the next term. You should also discuss their development and plans for the future.