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.

A very good article on kinds of leadership and what makes a person an effective leader. Leadership: is it an innate ability to lead or is it gained by experience? Qualities of different leaders like charismatic leader and transformational leader are also highlighted.

For more details, please check the link below.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/nov/22har.htm

Successon Planning - Preparedness for future

Companies that have succession planning in place are better prepared for any sudden changes in the company. It avoids knowledge loss once the leader exits. It gives the ability to takeover new responsibilities in a much faster way and with least disruption in the business activities. Surprisingly, lot of companies do not dedicate sufficient resources to this and may suffer tremendously when CEO's depart unexpectedly.

An article highlights four best practices to ensure effective succession planning that can be implemented in any company - Analysis; Development; Selection and Transition.

Having a structure in place that carefully engages in those best practices will set the new leaders firmly towards future success.

Please follow the link to access the complete article.
http://www.forbes.com/leadership/2007/11/07/succession-ceos-governance-lead-cx_sm_1107planning.html

Compensation as a strategic move to reduce turnover for HR professionals!

"Organizations have lost nearly 30 percent of their human capital in the past two years" (2007 SHRM Human Capital Benchmarking study).

High turnover and the need to fill positions quickly is making HR operations even more challenging. One way organizations are trying to control is by having a strategic compensation through incentive system beyond base pay for HR professionals. The variable pay is tied to performance through short-term incentives (STI) in the form of cash bonuses for increased/improved productivity and long-term incentives (LTI) in the form of varied stock options.

The use of LTI's is spreading from the top specifically for HR executives whereas STI's are used more frequently than LTI's for variable pay for HR executives as well as HR managers.

Source: HR Magazine (Nov. 2007)

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement can be crucial to a company's competitive advantage because that leads to higher productivity and lower turnover. The greater the employee's engagement with their company, more likely are they to "go an extra mile" to strive excellence and achieve their goals.

But what exactly is "employee engagement"?
It is a sense of attachment, willingness to stay w/ the company, organizational citizenship, employee's willing to go above and beyond their call of duty, and willingness to put effort in achieving employer goals. It provides satisfaction and greater pride for the employee.

Ground-breaking research on "Work Trends" conducted by Dr. Jack Wiley, Director of the Kenexa Research Institute suggests that employee engagement is most in employees less than 1 year & employees who stayed more than 10 yrs w/ the same company.

Engagement index is calculated as Satisfaction + Retention + Advocacy + Pride

Some of the top drivers of employee engagement that surfaced in the research were

-Opportunities for career path
-Having confidence in future of the company and in its senior leaders
-CSR efforts the company is engaged in,
- Kind of work
- Satisfaction w/ amount of pay
- Company supports employee efforts to balance work and family/personal responsibilities
- Company’s mission, vision, & value

Thus it definitely seem to be essential for companies to design program strategically to reinforce employee engagement.

More information about employee engagement at
http://www.shrm.org/foundation/1006EmployeeEngagementOnlineReport.pdf

Workplace flexibility

Who does not want an added benefit of flexible work hours?

With the constantly changing work dynamics, many people factor in the flexible work hours in their decision making for a job. For many it provides a healthy work/life balance, allows working parents to accommodate visits to their kids games, functions, and school meetings etc.

Well said by someone in a supervisor role that "you may have many different jobs during your life, but you only have one family".
I worked in a company that valued workplace flexibility. Employees can take off early if required because they know they can put in that time some other day. We could work from home 1 day per week and set our own work hours. I think companies are slowly realizing the impact of such benefits are huge. Employees are more productive, enthusiastic and responsible with such work norms. The incentives could be huge both for employees (personal growth and satisfaction) and for the company (reduce turnover, labor costs, and more profits).


More in SHRM Sep 2007, Employees' Reactions to Workplace Flexibility.