MCom I Semester Human Resource Policies Practices Study Material

MCom I Semester Human Resource Policies Practices Study Material: Selection practices Devices Training and Development Programs Types of Training Technical Skills Training Methods Individualize formal training to fit the employee learning style Performance Evaluation and Motivation What do we Evaluate ( This Post Is most Important For MCom Organizational Behaviour Students )

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Selection Practices

The objective of effective selection is to match individual characteristics (ability, experience, and so on) with the requirements of the job. When management fails to get a proper match, both employee performance and satisfaction suffer.

Selection Devices

What do application forms, interviews, employment tests, background checks, and personal letters of recommendation have in common? Each is a device for obtaining information about a job applicant that can help the organization to determine whether the applicant’s skills, knowledge, and abilities are appropriate for the job in question. In this section, we review the more important of these selection devices-interviews, written tests, and performance-simulation tests.

Interviews In Korea, Japan, and many other Asian countries, employee interviews traditionally have not been part of the selection process. Decisions were made almost entirely on the basis of exam scores, scholastic accomplishments, and letters of recommendation. This is not the case, however, throughout most of the world. In fact, of all the selection devices that organizations around the globe use to differentiate candidates, the interview continues to be the one most frequently used.” Even companies in Asian countries have begun to rely on employee interviews as a screening device.

Tests of intellectual ability, spatial and mechanical ability perceptual accuracy, and motor ability have shown to be moderately valid predictors for many semiskilled and unskilled operative jobs in industrial organizations. 15 Intelligence tests have proven to be particularly good predictors for Jobs that require cognitive complexity, 16 Japanese automakers, when staffing plants in the United States, have relied heavily on written tests to predict candidates who will be high performers. Getting a job with Toyota, for instance, can take up to three days of testing and interviewing, Written tests typically focus on skills such as reading, mathematics, mechanical dexterity, and the ability to work with others. In India too, many organizations conduct written tests for selection.

As ethical problems have increased in organizations, integrity tests have gained in popularity. These are paper-and-pencil tests that measure factors such as dependability carefulness, responsibility, and honesty. The evidence is impressive that these tests are powerful in predicting supervisory ratings of job performance and counterproductive employee behavior on the job such as theft, discipline problems, and excessive absenteeism.

Performance-Simulation Tests What better way is there to find out if an applicant can do a job successfully than by having him or her do it? That’s precisely the logic of performance-simulation tests.

Although more complicated to develop and more difficult to administer than written tests. Per romance-simulation tests have increased in popularity during the past several decades. This appears to be because they more easily meet the requirement of job-relatedness than do most written

The two best-known performance simulation tests are work samples and assessment centers. The former is suited to routine jobs, while the latter is relevant for the selection of managerial personnel

Work sample tests are hands-on simulations of part or all of the job that must be performed by applicants. By carefully devising work samples based on specific job tasks, management determines the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for each job. Then each work sample element is matched with a corresponding job-performance element. Work samples are widely used in the hiring of skilled workers, such as welders, machinists, carpenters, and electricians. For instance, job candidates for production jobs at BMW’s factory in South Carolina are given work sample tests. 19 Candidates are given 90 minutes to perform a variety of typical work tasks on a specially built simulated assembly line.

The results from work sample experiments are impressive. Studies almost consistently demonstrate that work samples yield validities superior to written aptitude and personality tests.20

A more elaborate set of performance simulation tests, specifically designed to evaluate a candidate’s managerial potential, is administered in assessment centers. In assessment centers, line executives, supervisors, and/or trained psychologists evaluate candidates as they go through one to several days of exercises that simulate real problems that they would confront on the job. Based on a list of descriptive dimensions that the actual job incumbent has to meet, activities might include interviews, in-basket exercises, problem-solving exercises, leaderless group discus sions, business decision games and behavioral event interviews etc. For instance, a candidate might be required to play the role of a manager who must decide how to respond to 10 memos in his or her in-basket within a two-hour period.

Assessment centres were recommended to be introduced in India in 1975 when the first HRS Department was established in L&T. It was proposed that L&T should introduce assessment centres in about three years from the time it started work on the same. It took another twenty years for L&T to take the concept forward. Why is it that depite the vast experience available across the world, many organizations have not gone ahead and introduced assessment centres. In fact even many fortune 500 organizations do not use assessment centres.

How valid is the assessment center as a selection device? The evidence on the effectiveness on assessment centers is impressive. They have consistently demonstrated results that predict later job performance in managerial positions.

Human Resource Policies Practices

Training and Development Programs

Competent employees don’t remain competent forever. Skills deteriorate and can become obsolete. New skills also need to be learned. That’s why organizations spend billions of dollars each year on formal training. For instance, it was reported that U.S. corporations with 100 or more employees spent more than $51 billion in one recent year on formal training 20 IBM, Accenture, Intel, and Lockheed alone each spend in excess of $300 million a year on employee training. A continuing Education and Training Centre (CETC) was set up at Bell Ceramics Mumbai with the objective of creating responsible citizens. A sustained effort at continuous training continued for upscaling skills and knowledge and grooming prospective successors through specific skill development. This resulted in an increase in quality production by 10 percent.

Types of Training

Training can include everything from teaching employees basic reading skills to advanced courses in executive leadership. The following summarizes three general skill categories–technical, interpersonal, and problem-solving. In addition, we briefly discuss ethics training.

Technical Skills

Most training is directed at upgrading and improving an employee’s technical skills. Technical training has become increasingly important today for two reasons–new technology and new structural designs

Jobs change as a result of new technologies and improved methods. For instance, many auto repair personnel have had to undergo extensive training to fix and maintain recent models with computer-monitored engines, electronic stabilizing systems, GPS, keyless entry, and other innovations. Similarly, computer-controlled equipment has required millions of production employees to learn a whole new set of skills.

In addition, technical training has become increasingly important because of changes in organizational design. As organizations flatten their structures, expand their use of teams, and break down traditional departmental barriers, employees need to learn a wider variety of tasks and need an increased knowledge of how their organization operates. For instance, the restructuring of jobs at Miller Brewing Co. around empowered teams has led management to introduce a comprehensive business literacy program to help employees better understand competition, the state of the beer industry, where the company’s revenues come from, how costs are calculated, and where employees fit into the company’s value chain.29

Interpersonal Skills Almost all employees belong to a work unit. To some degree, their work per romance depends on their ability to effectively interact with their coworkers and their boss. Some employees have excellent interpersonal skills, but others require training to improve theirs. This includes learning how to be a better listener, how to communicate ideas more clearly, and how to be a more effective team player.

Problem Solving Skills Managers, as well as many employees who perform non-routine tasks, have to solve problems on their jobs. When people require these skills but are deficient in them, they can participate in problem-solving training. This would include activities to sharpen their logic, reasoning, and problem-defining skills, as well as their abilities to assess causation, develop alternatives, analyze alternatives, and select solutions. Problem-solving training has become a basic part of almost every organizational effort to introduce self-managed teams or implement quality management programs

What About Ethics Training? A recent survey finds that about 75 percent of employees working in the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations receive ethics training. This training may be included in a newly hired employee’s orientation program: made part of an ongoing developmental training program: or provided to all employees as a periodic reinforcement to ethical principles. But the jury is still out as to whether you can actually teach ethics, 32

Critics argue that ethics are based on values, and value systems are fixed at an early age. By the time employers hire people, their ethical values have already been established. The critics also claim that ethics cannot be formally taught.” but must be learned by example,

Supporters of ethics training argue that values can be learned and changed after early childhood. And even if they couldn’t, ethics training would be effective because it helps employees to recognize ethical dilemmas and to become more aware of the ethical issues underlying their actions, and it reaffirms an organization’s expectations that members will act ethically.

Human Resource Policies Practices

Training Methods

Training methods are most readily classified as formal or informal and on-the-job or off-the-job. Historically, training meant formal training. It’s planned in advance and has a structured format. However, recent evidence indicates that 70 percent of workplace learning is made up of informal train mgunstructured, unplanned, and easily adapted to situations and individuals for teaching skills and keeping employees current in reality, most informal training is nothing other than employees helping each other out. They share information and solve work-related problems with one another Maybe the most important outcome of this trend is that many managers are now supportive of what they considered “idle chatter. At a Siemens plant in North Carolina, for instance, management now recognizes that people needn’t be on the production line to be working Discussions around the water cooler or in the cafeteria weren’t as managers thought about non-work topics such as sports or politics. They largely focused on solving work-related problems. So now Siemens management encourages such casual meetings.

On-the-job training includes job rotation, apprenticeships, understudy assignments, and formal mentoring programs. But the primary drawback of these on-the-job training methods is that they often disrupt the workplace. So organizations invest in off-the-job training. The $51 billion cited earlier for training costs was largely spent on the formal off-the-job variety. What types of might this include? The most popular continues to be live classroom lectures. But it also encamps passes videotapes, public seminars, self-study programs. Internet courses, satellite-beamed television classes, and group activities that use role-plays and case studies.

McDonald’s is known for its globalized training systems which it alters to suit the local requirements of the host countries where it operates. Sharing and exchanging experiences are an important part of these sessions. Operational training is extremely well defined. At Pizza Hut, following recruitment, the team has to undergo intensive training. They use CHAMPS, a training program built around six critical areas of the restaurant that affect its customers, and EXPERI, a section sep specific training that walks the candidate through the workflows of the restaurant.

In recent years, the fastest-growing means for delivering training is probably computer-based or e-training. Kinko’s, for instance, has created an internal network that allows its 20.000 employees to take online courses covering everything from products to policies. Cisco Systems provides a curriculum of training courses on its corporate intranet, with content organized by job titles, specific technologies, and products. While more than 5,000 companies now offer all or some of their employee training online, it’s unclear how effective it actually is. On the positive side, e-training increases flexibility by allowing organizations to deliver materials anywhere and at any time. It also seems to be fast and efficient. On the other hand, it’s expensive to design self-paced, online materials, many employees miss the social interaction provided by a classroom environment, online learners are often more susceptible to distractions, and “clicking

Individualize Formal Training to fit the Employee’s Learning Style

The way that you process, internalize, and remember new and difficult material isn’t necessarily the same way that I do. This fact means that effective formal training should be individualized to reflect the learning style of the employee.

Some examples of different learning styles include reading, watching, listening, and participating. Some people absorb information better when they read about it. They’re the kind of people who can learn to use computers by sitting in their study and reading manuals. Some per best by observation. They watch others and then emulate the behaviors they’ve seen. Such can watch someone use a computer for a while, then copy what they’ve seen. Listeners on their auditory senses to absorb information. They would prefer to learn how to use a computer for instance, by listening to an audiotape. People who prefer a participating style learn by doing They want to sit down, turn on the computer, and gain hands-on experience by practicing

You can translate these styles into different learning methods. To maximize learning, readers should be given books or other reading material to review; watchers should get the opportunity to observe individuals modeling the new skills either in person or on video: listeners will benefit from hearing lectures or audiotapes, and participants will benefit most from experiential opportunities in which they can simulate and practice the new skills.

These different learning styles are obviously not mutually exclusive. In fact, good teachers recognize that their students learn differently, therefore, these teachers provide multiple learning methods. They assign readings before class: give lectures: use visual aids to illustrate concepts: and have students participate in group projects, case analyses, role plays, and experiential learning exercises. If you know the preferred style of an employee, you can design his or her formal training program to optimize this preference. If you don’t have that information, it’s probably best to design the program to use a variety of learning styles. Overreliance on a single style places individuals who don’t learn well from that style at a disadvantage.

Performance Evaluation

Would you study differently or exert a different level of effort for a college course graded on a pass-fail basis than for one for which letter grades from A to Fare are used? When I ask that question of students, I usually get an affirmative answer. Students typically tell me that they study harder when letter grades are at stake. In addition, they tell me that when they take a course on a pass-fail basis, they tend to do just enough to ensure a passing grade.

This finding illustrates how performance evaluation systems influence behavior. Major determinants of your in-class behavior and out-of-class studying effort in college are the criteria and techniques your instructor uses to evaluate your performance. Of course, what applies in the college context also applies to employees at work. In this section, we show how the choice of performance. evaluation system and the way it’s administered can be an important force influencing employee behavior.

Purposes of Performance Evaluation

Performance evaluation serves a number of purposes in organizations.41 Management uses evaluations for general human resource decisions. Evaluations provide input into important decisions such as promotions, transfers, and terminations. Evaluations identify training and development needs. They pinpoint employee skills and competencies that are currently inadequate but for which programs can be developed to remedy Performance evaluations can be used as a criterion against which selection and development programs are validated. Newly hired employees who perform poorly can be identified through performance evaluation. Similarly, the effectiveness of training and development programs can be determined by assessing how well employees who have participated do on their performance evaluation. Evaluations also fulfill the purpose of providing feedback to employees on how the organization views their performance. Furthermore, performance evaluations are used as the basis for reward allocations. Decisions as to who gets merit pay increases and other rewards are frequently determined by performance evaluations.

Each of these functions of performance evaluation is important. Yet their importance to us depends on the perspective we’re taking Several are clearly relevant to human resource management decisions. But our interest is in organizational behavior. As a result, we shall be emphasizing performance evaluation in its role as a mechanism for providing feedback and as determine reward allocations

Human Resource Policies Practices

Performance Evaluation and Motivation

In Chapter 6, considerable attention was given to the expectancy model of motivation. We argued that this model currently offers one of the best explanations of what conditions the amount of effort an individual will exert on his or her job. A vital component of this model is performance, specifically the effort-performance and performance-reward links.

But what defines performance? In the expectancy model, it’s the individual’s performance evaluation. To maximize motivation, people need to perceive that the effort they exert leads to a favorable performance evaluation and that the favorable evaluation will lead to the rewards that they value.

Following the expectancy model of motivation, if the objectives that employees are expected to achieve are unclear, if the criteria for measuring those objectives are vague, and if the employees lack confidence that their efforts will lead to a satisfactory appraisal of their performance, or believe that there will be an unsatisfactory payoff by the organization when their performance objectives are achieved, we can expect individuals to work considerably below their potential.

In the real world of organizations, one explanation for why many employees may not be motivated is that the performance evaluation process is often more political than objective. Many managers will subordinate objective accuracy for self-serving ends-deliberately manipulating evaluations to get the outcomes they want. 42

What Do We Evaluate?

The criteria or criterion that management chooses to evaluate when appraising employee performance, will have a major influence on what employees do. Two examples illustrate this.

In a public employment agency, which served workers seeking employment and employers seeking workers, employment interviewers were appraised by the number of interviews they conducted Consistent with the thesis that the evaluating criteria influence behavior, interviewers emphasized the number of interviews conducted rather than the placements of clients in jobs.

A management consultant specializing in police research noticed that, in one community, officers would come on duty for their shift, proceed to get into their police cars, drive to the highway that cut through the town, and speed back and forth along this highway for their entire shift. Clearly. this fast cruising had little to do with good police work, but this behavior made considerably more sense once the consultant learned that the community’s city council used mileage on police vehicles as an evaluative measure of police effectiveness

These examples demonstrate the importance of criteria in performance evaluation. This, of course, leads to the question: What should management evaluate? The three most popular sets of criteria are individual task outcomes, behaviors, and trails

Individual Task Outcomes Trends count, rather than means, then management should evaluate an employee’s task outcomes. Using task outcomes, a plant manager could be judged on criteria such as quantity produced, scrap generated, and cost per unit of production. Similarly, a salesperson could be assessed on overall sales volume in his or her territory, dollar increase in sales, and number of new accounts established

Behaviors in many cases, it’s difficult to identify specific outcomes that can be directly attributable to an employee’s actions. This is particularly true of personnel in advisory or support positions and individuals whose work assignments are intrinsically part of a group effort. In the latter case, the group’s performance may be readily evaluated, but the contribution of each group member may be difficult or impossible to identify clearly. In such instances, it’s not unusual for management to evaluate the employee’s behavior. Using the previous examples, behaviors of a plant manager that could be used for performance evaluation purposes might include promptness in submitting his or her monthly reports or the leadership style that the manager exhibits. Pertinent salesperson behaviors could be the average number of contact calls made per day or sick days used per year.

Note that these behaviors needn’t be limited to those directly related to individual productivity: 15 As we pointed out in our previous discussion on organizational citizenship behavior (sce specifically Chapters 1 and 4), helping others, making suggestions for improvements, and volunteering for extra duties make workgroups and organizations more effective. So including subjective or contextual factors in a performance evaluation as long as they contribute to organizational ness-may not only make sense, they may also improve coordination, teamwork, cooperation overall organizational performance. Tralts The weakest set of criteria, yet one that is still widely used by organizations, is individual tants. We say they’re weaker than either task outcomes or behaviors because they’re farthest removed from the actual performance of the job itself. Traits such as having “a good attitude,” showme confidence, being dependable,” “looking busy,” or possessing “a wealth of experience may or may not be highly correlated with positive task outcomes, but only the naive would ignore the reality that such traits are frequently used in organizations as criteria for assessing an employee’s level of performance.

Who Should Do the Evaluating?

Who should evaluate an employee’s performance? The obvious answer would seem to be his or her immediate boss. By tradition, a manager’s authority typically has included appraising subordinate’s performance. The logie behind this tradition seems to be that since managers are held responsible for their employees’ performance, it only makes sense that these managers do the evaluating of that performance. But that logic may be flawed. Others may actually be able to do the job better.

Immediate Superior While an employee’s immediate boss was once the most popular source of evaluations, this is no longer true, largely because it has several major limitations. For instance, many bosses feel unqualified to evaluate the unique contributions of each of their employees. Others resent being asked to play God” with their employees’ careers. In addition, with many of today’s organizations using self-managed teams, telecommuting, and other organizing devices that distance bosses from their employees, an employee’s immediate superior may not be the most reliable judge of that employee’s performance.

Peers Peer evaluations are one of the most reliable sources of appraisal data. Why? First, peers are close to the action. Daily interactions provide them with a comprehensive view of an employee’s job performance. Second, using peers as raters results in a number of independent judgments. A boss! can offer only a single evaluation, but peers can provide multiple appraisals. And the average of several ratings is often more reliable than a single evaluation. On the downside, peer evaluations can suffer from coworkers’ unwillingness to evaluate one another and from biases based on friendship or animosity.

Self-Evaluation Having employees evaluate their own performance is consistent with values such as self-management and empowerment. Self-evaluations get high marks from employees themselves; they tend to lessen employees’ defensiveness about the appraisal process; and they make excellent vehicles for stimulating job performance discussions between employees and their superiors. This helps explain their increased popularity. For instance, a recent survey found that about half of exec. utives and 53 percent of employees now have input into their performance evaluations.”

As you might surmise, self-evaluations suffer from overinflated assessment and self-serving bias. Moreover, self-evaluations are often low in agreement with superiors’ ratings. Because of these serious drawbacks, self-evaluations are probably better suited to developmental uses than for evaluative purposes or combined with other sources to reduce rating errors.

Immediate Subordinates A fourth judgment source is an employee’s immediate subordinates. Its! proponents argue that eliciting these opinions is consistent with recent trends toward enhancing honesty, openness, and empowerment in the workplace.

Human Resource Policies Practices

Immediate subordinates’ evaluations can provide accurate and detailed information about a manager’s behavior because the evaluators typically have frequent contact with the person being evaluated. The obvious problem with this form of rating is fear of reprisal from bosses who are given unfavorable evaluations. Therefore, respondent anonymity is crucial if these evaluations are to be accurate, 360 Degree Evaluations The latest approach to performance evaluation is the use of 360-degree evaluations. It provides for performance feedback from the full circle of daily contacts that an employee might have, ranging from mailroom personnel to customers to bosses to peers (see Exhibit 17-1). The number of appraisals can be as few as 3 or 4 evaluations or as many as 25. with most organizations collecting 5 to 10 per employee.

A recent survey shows that about 21 percent of American organizations are using full 360-degree programs.50 Companies currently using this recent survey shows that about 21 percent of approach include Alcoa, Du Pont, Levi Strauss, Honeywell, UPS, Sprint, American organizations are using full 360 AT&T and W.L. Gore & Associates.

What’s the appeal of 360-degree evaluations? They fit well into organizations that have introduced teams, employee involvement, and quality management programs. By relying on feedback from coworkers, customers, and subordinates, these organizations are hoping to give everyone more of a sense of participation in the review process and gain more accurate readings on employee performance. On this latter point, 360-degree evaluations are consistent with evidence that employee performance varies across contexts and that people behave differently with different constituencies. The use of multiple sources, therefore, is more likely to capture this variety of behavior accurately.

The evidence on the effectiveness of 360-degree evaluations is mixed. It provides employees with a wider perspective of their performance. But it also has the potential for being misused. For instance, to minimize costs, many organizations don’t spend the time to train evaluators in how to give constructive criticism. Other problems include allowing employees to choose the peers and subordinates they want to evaluate them, which can artificially inflate feedback; and the difficulty of reconciling disagreements and contradictions between rater groups.

Human Resource Policies Practices