People & Organisation : Employee Engagement (Part 02)

EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION VS. EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Employee engagement has emerged as a critical driver of business success in today's competitive marketplace where employee engagement relates to the level of an employee's commitment and connection to an organisation. High levels of engagement promote retention of talent, promote customer loyalty and improve organisational performance.

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is the passion and energy that employees have to give to their best to the organization to serve the customers (Cook, 2008). In other words, it is about the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs and are committed to the organization’s success.

Federman (2009) defined Employee engagement as that the degree to which a person committed to an organization and the impact that commitment has on how deeply they perform and their length of tenure.

Employee Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction is the indicator used to understand whether the employees are happy, contented and their desires and needs at work are fulfilled (Saxena, 2019).

Today, many managers mistakenly think that employee satisfaction can increase employee motivation (Rogel, 2018). According to Frederik Herzberg's Mivation - Hygine Theory proposes that people are influenced by two factors: 

Hygiene factors determine a person’s level of satisfaction with their job. This strongly influences on employee retention. Employees who are not satisfied with their jobs look for better opportunities elsewhere. However, the addition of more or better hygiene factors over a certain baseline will not increase job satisfaction or performance. Hygiene factors consist of pay and benefits, supervision, working conditions, and job security (among others).

Motivation factors influence how a person performs on the job. Motivated employees invest more of themselves in their work and strive to do better. Merely being satisfied does not cause an employee to work harder. Motivation factors include challenging work, recognition, and responsibility.

There may be some employees who are highly motivated but not satisfied with the job. They might find the work interesting and challenging, but if they worry too much about job security or think they can be paid more at a different company, they will not be satisfied.

However above described Both factors can be considered as key components of employee engagement. Basic hygiene factors required to ensure employee satisfaction and retention and they are easy to identify and improve. On the other hand, an employee must also feel motivated to perform at a high level. But the motivation factors differ for each employee and are most influenced by the employee’s supervisor. Therefore the managers need to understand what drives each of his or her employees and create the circumstances for them to perform at their best.

Most organisations conduct employee satisfaction surveys each year and employees do give positive responding indicating employee satisfaction”. But is has been observed that satisfied employees may be happy enough to attend the office but not put any extra effort to work hard which means such employees are satisfied but not engaged?Organisations with genuinely engaged employees have higher retention, productivity, customer satisfaction, innovation, and quality. 

References

Cook, S., 2008. The Essential Guide to Employee Engagement: Better Business Performance through Staff satisfaction. 1st ed. London: Kogan Page Limited.

Federman, , 2009. Employee Engagement : A Roadmap for Creating Profits, Optimizing Performance and increasing loyalty. San-Francisco: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Rogel, C., 2018. decisionwise.com. [Online] Available at: https://decision-wise.com/job-satisfaction-vs-employee-engagement/ [Accessed 30 September 2019].

Saxena, V., 2019. Employee Engagement: A recipe to boost Organisational Performance. Chennai: Notion Press.

People & Organisation : HRM and the Design of Work (Lecture 05)

"CROWD WORKING " : NEW FORM OF EMPLOYMENT

It is worth to think about what will happen to the growing surplus of labour if the technology displaces the human in the workplace with the emerge of advance technology. According to Berg et al. (2018) one of the major transformations in the world of work over the past decade has been the emergence of an online digital labour platform. This includes:

• Web-based platform (Crowd work): work is outsourced through an open call to a geographically dispersed crowd
• Location-based application: Individuals are allocated to work in a specific geographical area.

Crowd working

Crowd work emerged in the early 2000s with the growth of the Internet and the need for human input in tasks needed for the smooth functioning of the web-based industries.

“Employment that uses an online platform to that enable organisation or individual to access an indefinite and unknown group of other organisation and individual to solve a specific problem or to provide specific services or products in exchange for payment” (EurWORK, 2018).This is also known as crowdsourcing and crowd employment.

Crowd workers or micro task workers are a group of people who work on micro tasks. These usually pay per task kind of work which will vary according to the company. They do not need any expertise for this kind of work as it based on the guidelines provided by the employer and which are not hard to follow.

The companies which offer this kind of work are Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), Lionbridge Crowd Worker, Appen Butler Hill, Clickworker.

View more on : Crowd working 

Crowd working has both advantages & disadvantages to the workforce and Risk and rewards to the market.

According to Berg et al. (2018) advantages & disadvantages of crowd working to the workforce are as follows.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Provide the opportunity for workers to perform the best suited job from any place at any time.	Able to perform work under Reliable internet connection only
flexible working hours	Lack of social protection
Work is flexible, interesting, and enables to work from home	Lack of clear employment relationship
offers new opportunities for workers to earn income	Insufficient availability of work

Chandler et al. (2013) describe Reward of Crowdsourcing market place and it can be summarised as follows.

Rewards

• Transaction Cost Effectiveness - Marketplaces make crowdsourcing accessible to requesters with limited financial and technical resources.

• Efficient Matching and Task Completion- Each worker proceeds at their own pace and receiving new work only when old work is completed.

• Low Market price - Apart from a minimal payment to the web service, the only cost faced by requesters to crowdsource their tasks is worker.

• Flexible recruitment - Crowdsourcing marketplaces allow requesters to specify that workers possess certain attributes in order to complete a task.

Conclusion

Online marketplaces have developed rapidly in the past few years and it is too difficult to predict what will happen in the future. Another thing that needs to think is what tasks online labour markets will be used in the future. As machine perception and language processing improve, it is likely that the demand for human and human-machine hybrid computational solutions will no longer be needed for these tasks. However, will software replace crowds, for some tasks?

Finally, a larger sociological question that remains to be answered is how these changes within crowdsourcing marketplaces may impact other labour markets and society at large.

References

Berg, J. et al., 2018. Digital labour platforms and the future of work Towards decent work in the online world. Geneva : International Labour Office International Labour Organization.

Chandler, , Paolacci, G. & Mueller, , 2013. Risks and Rewards of Crowdsourcing Marketplaces. Handbook of Human Computation, pp.377-92.

EurWORK, 2018. Euofound. [Online] Available at: https://www.eurofound.europa.eu [Accessed 28 September 2019].

People and Organisation : Managing Performance (Lecture 06)

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT & EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION

The organisation's success and growth largely depend on their team members’ contribution. To facilitate effective contribution, team members must know what is expected of them and how they are measured up to those expectations. On the other hand, companies must create a work environment that empowers employees to perform to the best of their abilities by providing continuous development opportunities.

Performance management in an HRM process concerned with getting the best performance from individuals in an organisation, from the team, and the organisation as whole (Dransfield, 2000).

According to Leonard & Cardy (2011) Performance management is a crucial and important component for both individuals and organisational effectiveness. Therefore real gain in performance required a thoughtful and committed process of evaluation and feedback.

What Performance appraisal do ?

According to Lloyd (2009) well-designed and well-executed performance appraisal have a strong motivational impact on team members of an organisation. The following are the benefits that are interconnected with motivated employees.

Demonstrate the need for improvement - It gives a clear understanding of how should be performed and clearly express the issues with performance.It motivates the employee to do

Self-improvements. 

Higher-level psychological need - It is an opportunity for an employee to get formal, significant and enduring recognition from their Manager.

Build a sense of personal value - Managers takes time and effort to carefully review and discuss the performance and it gives a sense of value to the employee.

Enhance personal development - Performance appraisal is an effective tool for employees who are looking to enhance their learning and development.

Increase satisfaction - Effective performance appraisal creates satisfied employee through self-improvement and personal recognition.

Performance appraisal at Sampath Bank PLC

In Sampath Bank, a high level of performance, commitment, and results from team members are expected at all levels. They strive to create an environment where all team members understand the impact of their contribution towards the achievement of the bank’s vision and are provided the opportunity for personal growth.

The bank endeavour to provide necessary tools, training, guidance and a conducive work environment to create a performance-based work culture where team members are rewarded based on their achievement of expected results and deliverable. 

The bank considers the performance management process as a continuous communication process between team members and their immediate supervisors as they plan, manage, review and reward performance. Therefore Managing performance is a mutual responsibility of team members and the respective supervisors.

During the performance appraisal process, Formal assessment should take place regularly; preferably twice a year. Both the positive and negative aspects of an individual performance should be frankly addressed. Its purpose is to provide feedback on past performance and future potential as well as on other relevant aspects concerning a team member’s work including the development of his/her skills and competencies. 

Assessment of performance is based essentially on agreed objectives and their level of achievement. Adequate time should be dedicated to the monitoring and follow-up of the progressive achievement of objectives during the year. 

Further supervisors are requested to provide written evidence of such feedback sessions. The focus should be essentially on continuous improvement, identifying appropriate training measures and also to create a stimulating working environment. 

References

Dransfield, R., 2000. Studies in Economic and Busiess - Human Resoure Management. Bristol: Heinemann Eucational Publishers.

Leonard, B. & Cardy, R.L., 2011. Performance Management : Concepts, Skills and Exercise. 2nd ed. New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Lloyd, K., 2009. Performance appraisals & phrases for Dummies. Hoboken ,NJ: Wiley Publishing Inc.

People and Organisation : Employee Relation (Lecture 04)

EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION IN TRADE UNION AND ITS IMPACT OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF SRI LANKA

Employee participation at workplace level helps to create better labour-management communication, prevents and absorbs disputes and helps to find solutions for both work and production-related issues. On the other hand various employee participation practices can play a vital role to promote collective bargaining and sound industrial relations.

The process of employee participation in the workplace has traditionally taken place in Sri Lanka through the formation of trade unions. In Sri Lanka, trade unions have been linked with the struggle for independence. In order to bargain with the employer on behalf of its members or to be recognised for bargaining purposes, Sri Lankan legislation requires that a trade union must be registered as such with the relevant authority (Ranaraja, 2013).

According to International Labour Organisation (2019), there are 2,074 registered trade unions in Sri Lanka, of which 54.5% are in the public sector, 27.5%in public corporations and 18 % in the private sector.  9.5% of the total workforce is covered by the trade unions of Sri Lanka.

Is there a right to strike?

The Sri Lankan law does not explicitly recognise a right to strike, as in the case of the fundamental right to freedom of association, which also includes the right to join a trade union of choice. These fundamental rights do not at any point state that it includes the right to strike.

However, the Trade Unions Ordinance defines as to what strike action involves and therefore, in the context of the Sri Lankan labour law, strike action can be regarded as a legitimate trade union activity, except in situations where it is restricted by law (Mudalige, 2016).

Impact of strikes to economic development

For the past few months, Sri Lanka has been repeatedly hit by trade union strikes and street protests. There are more labour-intensive industries than capital-intensive industries in Sri Lanka. Therefore the labour is one of the key factors that drive economic growth and the workforce of the country is highly affected by these strikes.

These kinds of trade union actions and street protests bring on the tremendous economic cost that directly and indirectly delays the economic growth of the country. When people are frequently on the streets, they waste their as well as others’ time which could have been used for the development and betterment of the country.

Eg: During the recent railway strike, the number of people badly affected and found it difficult to continue their day-to-day activities due to trade union action.

Today, the country needs foreign direct investment to boost the economy. When the labour force quality is at stake, they will not invest in labour-intensive industries and the economic image will be destroyed.

However, it is not fair to note that the employees should refrain from taking trade union actions. If these trade unions can reduce the frequency of strikes, provide early warning signals before the strike, be genuine with the objectives instead of getting politically motivated, the negative impact will be mitigated to achieve economic development.

References

International Labour Organization, 2019. https://www.ilo.org. [Online] Available at: https://www.ilo.org/global/lang--en/index.htm [Accessed 24 September 2019].

Mudalige, N.K.K., 2016. Daily news E - paper. [Online] The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. Available at: http://www.dailynews.lk/2016/08/22/features/91046 [Accessed 24 September 2019].

Ranaraja, S., 2013. Emerging trends in employee participation in Sri Lanka. International Labour Office, Geneva, pp.12-15.

People and Organisation :Organisational Culture (Lecture 09)

GOOGLE'S ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

Organisational Culture

“Culture guides discretionary behaviour and it picks up where the employee handbook leaves off. Culture tells us how to respond to an unprecedented service request. It tells us whether to risk telling our bosses about our new ideas, and whether to surface or hide problems. Employees make hundreds of decisions on their own every day, and culture is our guide. Culture tells us what to do when the CEO isn’t in the room, which is of course most of the time” (Frei & Morriss, 2012).

Culture inside Google

Google is renowned as an amazing employer and many other organisations trying to imitate its best practices, such as financial bonuses, free meals, parties, gyms, a dog-friendly workplace, and employee recognition.Because of this, Google employees also have a reputation for not only being talented but driven, staying on with the company and receiving a number of promotions throughout the year (Zambas, 2017).

Google’s Company Culture and its characteristics

One of the reasons why so many people long to work for Google is because of its unique company culture. Following are some intangible qualities that keep Googlers happy, productive and dedicated to the company (Forbes.com, 2019).

• Google’s culture is flexible - employees are encouraged to work when they like and how they like.

• Freedom to be creative - It gives people a chance to solve huge problems with the information what they have .Eg ; conversations in the breakout zones are usually about work, products and new ideas.

• Place with full of fun - offices have nap pods, video games and ping pong. Therefore it’s a fun place and doesn't feel like work.

• The people and their expertise - It is a place where can access to experts in every technological field.

• Collaboration - Employees are encouraged to coach each other in the ‘Googler to Googler’ programme which includes key business skills such as public speaking, management and orientation as well as extra-curricular activities like kickboxing.

• Openness - culture motivates individual employees to interact with each other at various times of their typical workday, as a way of improving the knowledge they use in their jobs (Smithson, 2018).

• Building a sense of community - Numerous micro-kitchens dotted around the Google campus are one way the company helps to bring people together.

• Trust- Google's willingness to trust their employees build up a strong relationship between employer and employee.

Conclusion

Google takes full advantage of its talented, smart employees by letting them teach each other and encourage employees to learn from not only their own but also each other’s mistakes. Company culture attracts top talent and leads to happy employees. Happy employees translate to higher productivity and less turnover. This ultimately leads to higher profit and greater overall success of the organisation.

Even though most of the companies offer similar kinds of perquisite, they do not determine the culture completely. The approach taken with how employees are treated and what level of ownership and trust they are given is also a key part of company culture and the same will be driven to organisation success.

References

Forbes.com, 2019. 13 Reasons Google Deserves Its 'Best Company Culture' Award. [Online] Forbes Media LLC Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/02/08/13-reasons-google-deserves-its-best-company-culture-award/#4bf1e8123482 [Accessed 23 September 2019].

Frei, F. & Morriss, A., 2012. Culture Takes Over When the CEO Leaves the Room. Harvard Business School Publishing.

Smithson, N., 2018. Google’s Organizational Culture & Its Characteristics (An Analysis). [Online] Panmore Institute Available at: http://panmore.com/google-organizational-culture-characteristics-analysis [Accessed 23 September 2019].

Zambas, J., 2017. CareerAddict. [Online] Delta Quest Media Limited Available at: https://www.careeraddict.com/best-company-culture [Accessed 23 September 2019].

People & Organisation : Learning & Development (Lecture 03)

LEARNING ORGANISATION

Today the world becomes more interconnected and business becomes more complex and dynamic. Therefore work become more important and learning is an essential part for it. Organisations that will truly surpass in the future will explore how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organisation.

What is Learning Organisation?

Learning organisation is an organisation which learns powerfully and collectively and is continually transforming itself to better collect, manage, and use knowledge for corporate success. It empowers people within and outside the company to learn as they work (Marquardt, 1996).

According to Garvin (1993), A learning Organisation is skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights.

Is yours a Learning Organisation ?

Garvin et al. (2008) identified three factors those are essential for organisational 

learning.

A supportive learning environment - 

An environment that supports learning consists with four distinguishing characteristics.

• Psychological safety - There should be an open environment for employee to express their thought about the work at hand.
• Appreciation of differences - Employees can learn from opposite ideas with others have.
• Openness to new ideas - encouraged employees to take risks and explore the untested and unknown ideas
• Time for reflection - Supportive learning environments allow time for a pause in the action and encourage thoughtful review of the organisation's processes.

Concrete learning processes and practice - 

Learning organisation is having concrete learning processes including;

• Generation - experimentation to develop and test new products and services
• Collection - intelligence gathering to keep track of competitive, customer, and technological trends
• Interpretation - disciplined analysis and interpretation to identify and solve problems
• Dissemination - education and training to develop both new and established employees

Leadership that reinforces learning - 

Organisational learning is strongly influenced by the behaviour of leaders. Employees feel encouraged to learn when leaders actively question and listen to employees.

Does your organisation have a Learning Disability?

Senge (1994) discussed following learning disabilities which evident for organisational failure.

• “I am my position"- Employees are trained be loyal to their jobs so much .They "do their job," put in their time, and try to cope with the forces outside of their control .As they focus only on their position, they have little sense of responsibility for the results produced.
• "The Enemy is out there" - This can be explained as the propensity to find someone or something outside ourselves to blame when things go wrong.
• The illusion of taking charge - Instead of face up to difficult issues, stop waiting for someone else to do something, and solve problems before they grow into crises, Managers are taking aggressive action against their employees.
• The fixation on events - If people's thinking in an organisation is dominated by short-term events, Learning cannot be sustained there. If an organisation focuses on events, they can predict before it happens and can react optimally. But they cannot learn to create.
• The delusion of Learning from Experience - The most powerful learning comes from direct experience. We learn best from experience but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important decisions.
• The myth of Management Team - The Management team of an organisation are supposed to sort out the complex cross-functional issues that are critical to the organisation. But there is a less confidence on their ability to overcome above learning disabilities.

Steps in Becoming a Learning Organisation

It is important that one never fulfil as a learning organisation. Change always continues, as well as learning. (Marquardt, 1996).Company can commit to become learning organisation through learning with the business operations with in the organisation.With in that learning environment employees can capture learning and release knowledge for better performance.The decision should be taken by the organisation it self to transform the organisational culture to one of continuous learning and improvement and acquire and apply best of technology to the best of learning.

References

Garvin, D.A., 1993. Building a Learning Organization. Harvard Business Review, (July - August ).

Garvin, D.A., Edmondson, A.C. & Gino, F., 2008. Is Yours a Learning Organization? Harvard Business Review, (March 2008).

Marquardt, M.J., 1996. Building the Learning Organization:A Systems Approach to Quantum Improvement. McGraw-Hill.

Senge, P.M., 1994. The Fifth Discipline- The Art Practice of The Learning Organization. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.