Team Bonding – Hocus Pocus

“Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.”-Stephen Covey

Team bonding glues many individuals strung by tasks to be delivered, in a project. It is a step beyond the team building exercise, where the roles have been defined, rules have been set and tasks have been designated. This phase is beyond forming and norming the team. We consider this phase as it imprints success resulting from collective efforts of the performers. We have repeatedly read, seen and experienced its success. Here we share two real-time business cases which teach us the invaluable lesson through their myriad ways. The names have been changed, to maintain the business confidentiality.
Case A- Shooting stars
Here we present a business unit ABC, composed of many stars, each responsible for a quantified end result. All the members had a considerable track record, to have earned a role, in the dream team. The individual performances ranks high and the initial report runs strong. The situation takes a turn when the performances spikes, without the collaborative effort. The team differs majorly with each other. The dissonance fuels better performance and a cut-throat competition. The project ends with great results and a bunch of highly disjointed individuals, who trajectiles into different directions. The learning gained from the absence of this team-bonding is, this process is not limited, to bond for the business result, but inculcating relationships, to gel the magic for a longer duration of time.
To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11546-team-bonding-hocus-pocus/

Managing Employee Expectation

People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn’t make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.- Mary Kay Ash

An overview: We embark on our quest to comprehend what is employee expectation management. Every employee seeks to do their best at work. To give their best there are few factors required to be bunched together. These factors are offered to the employee, as designed by the organization. Ideally they are a combination of the job description, role, compensation, fringes and branding. These factors are vital for an employee to be associated to identify the end result. This inherently impacts the employee lifecycle in the organization.
Source and flow to employee expectation: Let us identify, where it arises from. At the hiring phase, this may get initiated from either end. The employee starts looking for a job and the organization may headhunt the employee. This marks the beginning of communication and matching up of the employee expectation. The organization arranges a series of assessment to check the employability and the fitment to the role. Both the parties look at the same point from different sides. Hence give the same designation, two completely different meaning. The company considers the role with right KPI to make best use of the resource, whereas for the employee, it’s a pedestal to achieve their dreams, a platform where they can offer their expertise and reach next level with their offerings. Once the employee comes on board, it begins the journey of parallels to ‘what was perceived’ and ‘what is offered’. The new hire orientation aims at this through several educative programs addressing all the perception gaps. The performance management initiation cycle delves deeper into it. Here, the employee is supported to align the organization and team’s goal to their personal goals.
Process to Manage expectations:The organization policy of designing ‘What’s in it for me’ and ‘what it means to work here’ deals with managing employee expectation. These cultural building programs aim at understanding the common feeling and club them under the organization goals and vision to manage them. Achieving greatness in the job is what every employee aims at.
To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11544-managing-employee-expectation/

The Art of Relocating

Relocations are a must part of a professional life. Growth comes through changing places and organizations as it brings in unparalleled learning of adapting to newer environment and undiscovered wisdom which may not happen in the state of inertia. Here we have a situation where an individual have shifted from one location to another in search of Holy Grail. The change takes the individual by surprise. As it goes with the initial rites of passage, a series of shocks and tremors are meant to awaken us to a situation where we ‘survive’ to become tougher and wiser. The situation is as shared below:

"I am from ABC, recently moved to xyz for a new job. It’s been about two months since I joined and the initial excitement has vanished altogether. This is the first time ever I am living on my own and I must admit it is boring. I am left alone, no friends and no office buddies. I am not used to this kind of environment with absence of fun loving nature in employees. But I have seen other companies adjoining ours with better crowd, guess the grass is always greener on the other side. Office is bland and boring. On the weekends you may develop suicidal tendencies, the kinds that arise knowing how the life has changed for the worse compared to what it was. Every day, I miss my family, city and friends. All of them are in ABC. To add to my woes, my manager is rude, arrogant and inconsiderate. At times he just shouts and then apologise stating work pressure as an excuse. Most of the time, even that apology, doesn’t come. My training is ruined because he sits in some other location and blames me for being slow. When the fact is he cannot find time to train me. Sometimes he abuses and then says don’t mind as he thought I was my more experienced than other team mates. Colleagues discuss the price of the vegetable in different local markets. To top it all, there is no transportation offered, as it was promised. I have to walk close to a kilometre every morning under the scorching sun to get to a point from where I can get an auto! My manager asked me to get a house nearby. Its difficult to find a decent place at a decent price close to office. In addition I am also having food, laundry and maid issues! How I miss my home!"
We seggragate each problem in the above situation to consider them exclusively and find a collectively exhaustive solution.
Expectation Management: Life would get better with a relocation: Most of the time, when we relocate, we expect things to change for better. Hence we stand jolted when the reality doesn’t match the expectations.
Problem: “I am from abc, recently moved to xyz for a new job. It’s been about two months since I joined and the initial excitement has vanished altogether. This is the first time ever I am living on my own and I must admit, it is rank boring. I am left alone, no friends and no office buddies.”
Solution: Accepting the change, to bring in a combination of experience prepare us better for it. As explained by Daniel Goleman, in Performance Review: It’s Not Only What You Say, But How You Say It, “The neuroscientist Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin has found that when we’re in an upbeat, optimistic, I-can-handle-anything frame of mind, energized and enthusiastic about our goals, our brains turn up the activity in an area on the left side, just behind the forehead. That’s the brain state where we are at our best”. Hence getting into that state of mind and staying objective to each situation is the first step.
To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11499-the-art-of-relocating/

Making Employee Townhall work

Organizations communicate with the employee through different modes of communication, including intranet, newsletter, message dashboards, soft boards, common mailer and Town halls. All these modes have its own unique impact on the employee. Hence, they are chosen based on the result to be created. Executive communication has the maximum impact on the employees. This is done through CEO’s letter, Hotline, Podcast, etc. Greatest effect is created by the Town hall as it allows direct interaction between the CEO and the employees. This event is organized to address many employees at a single point of time. Ideally they are arranged based on durations and event based to communicate any particular message .
Types of Town hall
Durations based: Quarterly town halls are arranged to communicate with the employees. Leaders share the business results, current scenario within the company and make announcements. This is a mass meeting to ensure that the voices are heard both ways.
Event based: During an organizational change these efforts are made to address the common concern. Employee fears and concerns are noted by the line HR and managers. This is provided as a feedback to the head of the organization, who in turns address all these concern with the facts and its implication during the townhall.
Challenges: The challenges in arranging these sessions lie in planning and implementing them.
Planning: Often detailed plans for the program are launched yet last minute faux pas kills it all. Covering the gaps and identifying the probable last minute slump, needs to be mitigated right in the beginning of planning, for the session. Though an equipment-rehearsal at the venue is essential, yet keeping a buffer for every requirement is the key.
Speaker: The speaker selection is primary. Generally the speaker is organizational head, such a CEO or a Managing Director, who leads the business. But the twist comes in when the top leader is not completely comfortable addressing the session attended by such a large number of employees. Sometimes convincing them is a hard task. In such a situation connecting the leader with one of the best communicator to preside the session would be the solution.
To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11486-making-employee-townhall-work/

Get better – Invest in yourself

Getting ahead is easy when you can afford a college degree, or you have been sponsored for a learning program. In a state, where you may not have the choice to invest any extra amount, how do you manage to get better? Consider, the following customs to invest on yourself without putting any extra money within the time frame you have.

Look within: In the words of Dolf de Roos, “The most expensive piece of real estate is the six inches between your right and left ear. It’s what you create in that area that determines your wealth. We are only really limited by our mind.”

1. Focus on what you want, whether it is the Corner office or the expert in your field. Find your alignment. Everyone wishes to be a CEO, but not everyone succeeds at it when they get there.
2. Decide what is important for you, what you are best at and you find a inner calling at it. At every appraisal form you write your career plan, including the areas that will let you grow. A promotion is always a priority, but thats what everyone would be planning for. Focus on the area of expertise, where you can become the unchallenged leader, plan your growth in that area. When you are best at what you are doing, the promotion will come to you.
3. For eg: If you have a sales position, focus on learning, how to sell slow moving goods with higher percentage returns. If you excel at that, your sales target achievement would be higher than the average team members. Hence you would automatically allowed to guide the team. If you are an HR, learn how to quantify your tasks. As you are supporting business you would be measured through the value you create.

Plan and work towards it: The secret to productive goal setting is in establishing clearly defined goals, writing them down and then focusing on them several times a day with words, pictures and emotions as if we’ve already achieved them.”-Denis Waitley

1. If your career doesn’t allow you to make drastic changes, take baby steps. You may have a full time job with no choice to go for the next level education, be it MBA or Ph.D. You may not even have that luxury even to plan for it in the next few years. So look for opportunities in the current role.
2. Get the mindset of an MBA or a Researcher. Create the map identifying the areas for knowledge. Start your on the job learning and maintain a note for it. Look for communities where the discussions related to your future studies are been done. Learn from the contribution made by others. Find a mentor for yourself. As noted by Tom Peter’s, Make your personal learning university with everyone a faculty to it. No sooner or later you will find yourself on the road to a greater learning. This would make your knowledge concrete when you start the course.
3. Excelling is what you aim for when you get there. In the words of Napoleon Hill “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”At times you may lose a track of all that you are learning. Do not fuss over it. Gather yourself at any point of time and include the new understandings you have gained in between.
4. For e.g.: If you are into recruitment and wish to be shifted to Generalist HR role, then take up a voluntary role in the department. You may not get paid for the initiative, but your take away is ‘on-the-job learning’ and paving your way to the role. Incase you don’t have that option, offer your service for free to a non-profit organization where similar initiatives are required. Intern in that role and share it in your next appraisal form.

To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11382-get-better-invest-in-yourself/

 

Managing a ‘Hostile’ Boss

Every team constitutes a structural design including a reporting manager and the team member. The reporting manager, often referred as a ‘Boss’, personifies leadership and inspirational guidance. A team member delivers a task as mentioned in the KRA. The leader guides the team member to ensure that the KPIs are met. The team members are groomed for different roles in their career path. The situation quash when the behaviour of the boss is at variance with insecurity, personal fears and individual agenda setting in. The boss may micro manage and fail to empower the team member with responsibilities and learning. It becomes hostile when the boss turns a virulent liar and blames the team members in case of any error and deprives them off their credits.
Let us take a closer look to understand how it works in such a situation. The tasks are delegated to the team members. The vantage point is lost, if the deliverables are not totally quantified in the score card. It creates a high scope for blame-game. In absence of yardstick and metrics, any initiative taken by the employee or any work allocated by the boss remains chancy. The more the employee works, the more they are blamed. In such a situation the two entity ends up looking at two different directions at the same point of time. The team member looks at the amount of tasks delivered. The boss looks at the mistakes and the blames. This culminates with the annual appraisal where the team member is marked low, whilst that employee had expected a hike, as a result from the extra initiatives taken. This brings in a cul-de-sac as the boss and the reportee lock-horn with each other.
Just as every problem have a solution so does this situation. There are few areas to be rewired. Here we discuss how the team member can troubleshoot such a situation.
To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11209-managing-a-hostile-boss/

Managing the Creative Class – HR Challenges

This is a discussion in CiteHR identifying two areas in managing ‘The Creative Class’. We take a closer look at this class to understand how to manage them and deal with other HR challenges http://www.citehr.com/287495-need-your-help-these-two-questions.html
Richard Florida in his book ‘Rise of the Creative Class’ defines creative class as, “the class including not only the world of traditional artists (writers, painters, actors, musicians, entertainers etc. which Florida calls the “bohemians”) but everybody for whom creativity or intellectual work is an essential element of his or her personal and professional life. It includes all types of knowledge workers, who produce or deal with ideas and intellectual capital, such as software developers, advertisers, designers, architects, engineers, scientists, inventors, consultants, educators, and many more.”
HR Challenges for creative firm lies in identifying the talent, training and grooming the talent to a level where they are productive. The pull and the push factors need to be identified to hold the talent back in the organization. In this vertical, the type of talent intake is defined right during hiring. The talent is further groomed to deliver in the role, through numerous training programs and on-the–job mentoring. The emphasis on the best fit during the training program is required as it sets the learning curve. The talent will require the natural capabilities to remain creative even during stress situation. Apart from talent retention and best fit identification, compensation structure and mobility will remain a concern. As the hiring increase it creates an increased pressure on the creative firms to scale up their compensation structure with monetary and non-monetary benefits. Incase, the salary offered is not increased certain non-benefits including up-skilling is offered. This is important as it increases the value offered by each talent .Consequently maintaining the talent mobility to ensure lowest risk and highest production becomes a paramount importance. For e.g.: A consultancy may build on the expat program to ensure maximum gain through global mobility. They may deploy the talent at the client’s site to ensure fastest delivery and least downtime to what have been mentioned in the service level agreement.
To continue reading :http://www.citeman.com/11057-managing-the-creative-class-hr-challenges/

Dealing with demons at work

Here ‘s a discussion in CiteHR http://www.citehr.com/83935-tackling-physco-manager.html

Cases on harassments get recorded and actions are taken on them. But there are situations where voicing the truth might not lead to justice. An attempt to report a case would end up in power plays and further emotional harassment for the employee. We are aware of the legal guidance and support offered by the Government in such a situation. Here we intend to understand is, how such a situation can be dealt emotionally and intellectually prior to reporting such a case with the legal authorities . We share few coping skills to such tricky situations irrespective of the gender :

Speak objectively: When expressing and setting boundaries, please make specific comments free of emotional remark. If you are not comfortable being called ‘dear ‘ specifies it and mention the name you wish to be addressed with.

Set an alarm from the grapevine: Most of the issues can be dealt early if noticed. The rumour need not be believed, but certainly kept in mind to substantiate with data. We do agree that rumours can get fuelled from a personal rift or enmity. Yet if there are many employees talking consistently about a leader, it needs to consider without keeping any biases.

Early warning signs: It’s important that the changes in the behaviour is noticed , such as if the colleague or the senior shows indifference in public yet is exceptionally nice in private. Certain initiative such as dropping one home can be completely unintended. But repeated incident of arranging meeting towards the end of the office hours and dragging it to ensure the employee stays late, becomes a matter of concern.

To continue reading http://www.citeman.com/10872-dealing-with-demons-at-work/

Five days work-week

Here’s a discussion in CiteHR about the pros and cons of five day work week http://www.citehr.com/249462-five-day-week-six-week-better.html

The term ‘Workweek’ stands for the time spent at work and ‘Weekend’ for the time spent away from work. During the first few years of industrial revolution, the number of work hours would go up to 10 hrs a day. There were no standards defining maximum number of day for weekend till Henry Ford declared the five days work-week with a pay of six days. The concept was to pay the employees and worker more and create time away from work. The ‘Leisure time’, as described by him was quintessential for productivity. The extra cash would be spent on consumerism hence add on to the GDP. His concept was ,a well managed business pay higher wages and sell at low prices.

This was successfully managed at the service and administrative sector. However, the logistics, health care, manufacturing and defence had to manage it differently. The continuity in the business in addition to scaling up of productivity and talent shortage in different pockets made it difficult to implement. The work timings were then divided into shifts and weekends were allotted other than usual Saturday or Sunday. This worked till a point where the cost of production was manageable. During economic recession, the production had to be managed and increased to meet the cost. Certain verticals such as IT which had five days work-week since the very beginning, switched to six days work week to justify the billability of the talent. Paradoxically, few companies offered more time off from work as a non-monetary benefit to the employees. During downturn even manufacturing companies offered time off from work to apportion the cost of talent rather than retrenching them. For e.g.; if a company had to retrench talent because of a limited production and cost of productivity running high, they offered lower pay and lesser work time but did not retrench anyone.

To continue reading http://www.citeman.com/10834-five-days-work-week/

Managing Dual-Career Couples

A discussion on Dual Career Couples http://www.citehr.com/282666-dual-career-couples.html

When a couple takes up two different career yet lives together, they are described as Dual-career Couples. Barbara Schneider wrote in Being Together, Working apart, how this works is affecting the well-being. It models the thought process of the family through the redistribution of responsibilities. C. Susan Weiler and Paul H. Yancey, in their study, Dual Career Couples and Science: Opportunities, Challenges and Strategies mention how this phenomenon brought a demographical change. The society from a single income household metamorphosed into a dual-income. They emphasised, if organization can support dual career-couples will find greater applicant pool and more stable workforce.

To continue reading http://www.citeman.com/10611-dual-career-couples/

Managing cold war - The soccer way

A discussion was raised in CiteHR about a cold war between two teams in a department. http://www.citehr.com/262597-cold-war-department.html

Here we consider the situation taking a leaf out of the Soccer principles. The situation is defined where two teams have freezed their goals and drawn a line between each other . The HR Manager may require to play the role of a mediator or even a coach to the game. Hence we take a deeper look into the situation . We realise that the two groups have polarized under tow conflicting believes. At this point we assume that both the team wants to excel by working towards the organizational goals.

Identify the mental terrain : The first task of the HR Manager is to map the motivational terrain for the two teams . Identify what are the goals and approaches , so as to predict report the ideas suggested

Talent Hunter : Every talent in the teams and their behaviour would differ. The performance of a talent is directly proportional to the right fitment . Hence realise who are he performer who becomes most productive
Signature Behaviour : the HR Manage needs to identify manging styles for the talent . Every talent is sure to have a motivation . Its quintessential to understand that For eg : if monetary benefits are valued more than potential opportunities , the award system needs to be designed accordingly.

To continue reading Citeman Network Management Article
http://www.citeman.com/9596-managing-cold-war-the-soccer-way/