Understanding employee behavior - Back to the basics of Neuroscience

"The Brain at Work" article (SHRM, March 2008 edition) explains that science is deeply rooted in explaining why people behave the way they do and also on how to better manage them. The article points out that workplace behavior is not always motivated the way many people think (giving incentives). Though it may work for short-term, not in the long run because of the way our brain is wired, when targeted change is in an employee's intrinsic behavior.

Some important lessons from Neuroscience highlighted in the article that can have implications for HR professionals, trainers include

1. People need enough sleep to integrate learning into long-term memory.
2. Learning should be broken down into "bite-size nuggets" to make it effective.
3. Social fairness and respect gives brain a chemical boost.
4. Stress can cause people to think unclearly.
5. Uncertainty arouses fear circuits and can decrease ability to make decisions. However, employees’ ability to think clearly can be hindered when employers fail to meet expectations or create uncertainty (in a healthy way with some direction) in the workplace.
6. Employees need some ownership over situations to better accept changes. Even a little choice helps.
7. Engaging people in more active learning techniques improves retention.

Having knowledge of how our brain functions and things that people are sensitive to will enable better training decisions, and facilitate managers to better manage their teams.

The complete article can be accessed at the following link.
http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/0308/0308fox.asp

Developing leaders from within

The IBM Global Human Capital Study 2008 suggests that company leaders emphasize on building leaders from within the company. The survey reflects that it is the leading challenge faced by the organization.

So what are they doing to assess and develop leaders from within the organization? The top executives reported using of initiatives such as Action Learning; Mentoring; and Job Rotation.

Action Learning and Job Rotation are methods where the future leaders gain hands on experience in different projects. Whereas mentoring is one of the most widely used training method to develop future leaders by providing guidance and feedback on one's performance through a one-to one mentor-mentee relationship.