Ethical Performance

(Dimitriadis, 2019)

Organization’s ethics are the way employees do their work.  This could be perceived as ethical or unethical. Letendre (2015) defines organizational ethics as: organizational practices and structures which includes the values such as fairness, honor, compassion etc. in their day to day operations. There is no single set of ethics guidance or standard that is perfect to every company.

Eg: smoking could be prohibited by only by few organizations.

Most of the organizations have a set of code of ethics which is a good indicator of organization’s understanding of ethical behaviours (Wood, 2000). Organization’s ethical values are the basic guidelines to differentiate what is right and what is wrong, and organization’s rules and regulations pave the way to achieve these ethical values (Yankelovich, 1981).

The most important factor for the success of the organization is employee’s performance which is related to employees’ perception of organization’s ethics (Pettijohn et al., 2008). During the initial recruitment, interviewee is evaluated to identify the personal characteristics. According Hoy and Miskel (1996), employee performance is affected by individual characteristics and ethics. Employee’s performance can be measured by the amount of sales and production rate, managers rating of an employee and self-appraisal (Porter and Lawler, 1968)

It is important for employees to achieve targets or exceed the KPI or performance level. Therefore, employees may sometimes seek illegal ways to achieve those. These illegal ways are accepted neither by organization nor society (Imam et al., 2013). Organizations formulate code of conduct or employee handbook to instruct their employees how they should behave, work, communicate, dress, act, respond etc. which are in line with organization’s culture and acceptable to most of the employees.

As stated by Salahudin et al. (2016), there is a significant relationship between organizational ethics and Job performance. Individual employee will perform high when organizational ethics are implemented. Overall, it will be resulted in greater performance of the organization. It is a must to include code of ethics for employees as guidance, and management should encourage everyone in the organization to practice it to improve the performance. Finally, it should be noted that, in addition to compensation and reward system, organizational ethics play an important role in employee performance.

References;

Dimitriadis, C. (2019) Digital ethics rising in importance. Available at: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3396037/digital-ethics-rising-in-importance.html (Accessed: 10 January 2020).

Hoy, K., Miskel, C. (1996) Educational administration: Theory, research, and practice. 5^th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Imam, A., Sattar, A. and Muneer, S. (2013) ‘The impact of Islamic work ethics on employee performance: testing two models of personality x and personality y’, Science International (Lahore), 25(3), pp. 611-617.

Letendre, M. (2015) ‘Organizational Ethics’, Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics, pp. 1-10.

Pettijohn, C., Pettijohn, L., & Taylor, J. (2008) ‘Salesperson perceptions of ethical behaviors: Their influence on job satisfaction and turnover intentions’, Journal of Business Ethics, 78(4), pp. 547–557.

Porter, W. and Lawler, E. (1968) Managerial attitudes and performance. Homewood, Ill: Irwin.

Salahudin, S., Alwi, M., Baharuddin, S. and Halimata, S. (2016) ‘The Relationship between Work Ethics and Job Performance’, International Conference on Business and Economics, pp. 465-471.

Wood, G. (2000) ‘A cross cultural comparison of the content of codes of ethics: USA, Canada and Australia’, Journal of Business Ethics, 25, pp. 287-298.

Yankelovich, D. and Immerwahr, J. (1984) 'Putting the work ethic to work Society’, 21(2), pp. 58-76.

Organizational Culture and Motivation

(McGregor and Doshi, 2015) 

Organizations believe a strong organizational culture is critical to success. Culture is a part of internal environment, and it is the set of values, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that helps the employees to understand how it does things, what it considers important etc. (Ricky, 2007). Culture seems like some magical force. Most leaders manage the culture based on their perception, but it seems only few know how to control. Organizational culture should motivate employees to achieve organizational goals (Sempane et al., 2002).

It is important to understand why we work for some organization and how well we work. Deci and Ryan (1985) identifies six main reasons why people work for an organization, and they are play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia. First three motives, while the latter three hurts. Organization with high performing culture maximizes play, purpose and potential while minimizing the emotional pressure, economic pressure and inertia. McGregor and Doshi (2015) explain these six reasons in the following way;

Play is when employee is motivated by the work itself. Eg: A nurse at play takes care of the patients with smiling face.

Purpose is when result of the work fits the employee’s value. Eg: A doctor is satisfied when he saves a patient who was in a critical condition.

Potential is when the work outcome benefits the employee’s need or enhances work potential. Eg: A doctor is doing his job to become a consultant.

Emotional pressure is when an employee works due to some external force/pressure.

Economic pressure is when an external force makes an employee work and may due to gain a reward or avoid a punishment.

Inertia is when an employee can’t identify why he is working.

Further, motivated staffs feel responsible for the organizational success (Sokro, 2012). According to Hofstede (2001), recognition of the work done by the employees will make them work harder in future. A great organizational culture should motivate people to perform at work rather than just work. This kind of performing culture is a great advantage for organizations. Culture could play a greater role in survival of an organization. Therefore, leaders must carve the organizational culture, and should not consider culture as a magical force.

References

Deci, E. and Ryan, R. (1985) Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum Press.

Hofstede, G. (2001) Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. 2^nd ed. London: Sage Publication Limited.

McGregor, L. and Doshi, N. (2015) How Company Culture Shapes Employee Motivation. Available at: https://hbr.org/2015/11/how-company-culture-shapes-employee-motivation (Accessed: 08 January 2020).

Ricky, A. (2007). Fundamentals of Management. 5^th ed. USA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Sempane, M., Rieger, H. and Roodt, G. (2002) ‘Job Satisfaction in relation to organisational culture’, SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 28(2), pp. 23-30.

Sokro, E. (2012) ‘Analysis of the relationship that exists between organisational culture, motivation and performance’, problems of MANAGEMENT in the 21^st century, 3(1), pp. 106-119.

Effect on Human Resource by Globalization

(UTSA, 2020)

With the boom of world economy in early 1980s, many new companies started to emerge. Competition led to think about cheap labour and economies of scale. Movement of labour, production, knowledge etc were inevitable to achieve the economies of scale. Thus, companies tried to attract labour (eg: cheap, skilled, semi-skilled etc) from other countries or outsourced/subcontracted the production to a cheap labour market.

Outsourcing or subcontracting is not always easy. Sometimes, even the brand name could be affected by the actions of subcontracted/outsourced party. Below is an example of how an American company, Nike, got affected by the labour issue in its subcontracted manufacturing plant in Indonesia.

In the early 1990s, Nike products were being manufactured in several Indonesian factories. Some of the factories were manged by Nike’s Korean suppliers. These factories came under greater scrutiny for labour exploitation, poor working conditions, low salary etc. Plight of these poor workers exposed to American media. Initially, managers at Nike ignored these criticisms by arguing that the Indonesian factories were not owned and operated by them, but by the independent subcontractors. Due to the pressure from many stakeholders, ultimately, Nike instructed subcontractors to raise the wages and improve the working conditions (Locke, 2002).

Another issue faced mainly by companies situated in developing countries is “Globalization of human capital”, which is different to “brain drain”. Globalization of human capital mainly related to Skill migration (Khadria, 2000) which can be further divided into professionals and students (who will become professionals in future) (Khadria, 2001). This migration may due to the lack of job opportunities, career development, salary, job satisfaction etc in the home country.

Global companies require movement of international personnel, especially in manufacturing and service-oriented companies. This includes recruiting non-citizen and moving current employees internationally for both short and long-term assignments. These companies make decisions for global operations of their business believing that their employees could be able to travel to most of the world to perform the assigned duties (Keely, 2003).

Eg: Training facilitator should be able to travel to any country to deliver the required training.

Finally, globalization introduces many new challenges to the company. Some of them are unpredictable and uncontrollable. It is also vital keep common corporate culture, HRM practices etc throughout its offices and it is HR’s responsibility to manage them efficiently and effectively.

References

Keely, C. (2003) ‘Globalization Transforms Trade-Migration Equation’, International Migration, 4(1), pp. 87-92.

Khadria, B. (2001) ‘Shifting paradigms of globalization: the twenty‐first century transition towards generics in skilled migration from India’, International Migration, 39(5), pp. 45-71.

Locke, R. (2002) The Promise and Perils of Globalization: The Case of Nike. Industrial Performance center, MIT.

UTSA (2020) Overseas Jobs. Available at: https://careercenter.utsa.edu/resources/overseasjobs-com/ (Accessed: 01/07/2020).

How Employee Engagement Affects Business and Employee Performances?

(Empxtrack, 2016)

Employee Engagement is a new concept attracting more importance in recent years. It considers employees as the key to the organization’s success. Employees engagement with organization can depends on many drivers. Today, employee engagement is seen as a powerful tool of competitive advantage. It is management’s responsibility to ensure that employees perform at work rather than just they come to work. In other words, employees must come to work not only by physically but also by mentally and emotionally (Bedarkar, 2014).

Many researches have tried to identify drivers leading to employee engagement. According to Mani (2011), employee welfare, empowerment, employee growth and interpersonal relationships are the main drivers. Penna (2007) researchers defined a new model “Hierarchy of engagement” which is like Maslow’s need hierarchy model. Pay and working conditions are the basic needs of an employee. Once satisfied, then the employee looks for learning and development opportunities. Then possibility for promotion and then for leadership and respect. Finally, employee looks to an alignment of value-meaning, which is related to a true sense of connection, a common purpose and a shared sense of meaning at work.

(Vaughn, 2018)

Most drivers that lead to employee engagement are non-financial. Therefore, organizations can easily reach the desired level of engagement with less cost. Financial factor can be a motivator. Therefore, it is important to not to forget financial aspect which can be easily linked with performance of the employee (Markos, 2010). It is also identified that employee engagement results in employee performance which can further lead to organizational performance. Therefore, true employee engagement leads to better financial performance of the organization.

If an employee engages to work, he or she will feel an ownership, and come work to perform. Job will not be a burden and produce a greater result in more efficient manner (Robertson-Smith and Markwick, 2009). Engagement also provides mindfulness, motivation, creativity, authenticity, non-defensive communication, ethical behavior (Kahn 1990). Employees would become advocacy of organization and retain with organization. In other words, organization will enjoy a better employee retention, employee productivity, and ultimately business success (Robertson-Smith and Markwick, 2009). Similar research by Harter et al. (2002) reveals that employee engagement will result in better customer satisfaction, productivity, profit and employee turnover, which would pave the path to business success.

References

Bedarkar, M. and Pandita, D. (2014) ‘A study on the drivers of employee engagement impacting employee performance’, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 133(2014), pp. 106-115.

Empxtrack (2016) Did you notice changes in employee engagement in 2015?. Available at: https://empxtrack.com/blog/did-you-notice-changes-in-employee-engagement-in-2015/ (Accessed: 31 December 2019).

Harter, J.K., Schmidt, F.L. and Hayes, T.L. (2002) 'Business unit level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: a meta analysis', Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(2), pp. 268-279.

Kahn, W.A. (1990) ‘Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work’, Academy of Management Journal. 33(4), pp. 692-724.

Mani, V. (2011) ‘Analysis of Employee Engagement and its predictors’, International Journal of Human Resource Studies’, 1(2). Pp. 15-26.

Markos, S. and Sridevi, M. (2010) ‘Employee Engagement: The Key to Improving Performance’, International Journal of Business and Management, 5(12), pp. 89-96.

Penna (2007) Meaning at Work Research Report. Available: https://www.ciodevelopment.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2006-10-08-08-36-31_Penna-Meaning-at-Work-Report.pdf (Accessed: 31 December 2019).

Robertson-Smith, G. and Markwick, C. (2009) ‘Employee Engagement: A Review of Current Thinking’, Institute for Employment Studies.

Vaughn, G. (2018) How to Measure Employee Engagement for a Better Workplace. Available at: https://medium.com/@zef.fi/how-to-measure-employee-engagement-for-a-better-workplace-9daca615f64d (Accessed: 31 December 2019).

Performance Management at my organization

(Marr, 2019)

It is important to identify the difference between performance management and performance appraisal. Aguinis (2013) defines the Performance management as a continuous process of identifying, measuring, and developing the performance of individuals and teams and aligning performance with the strategic goals of the organization. Performance appraisal means evaluating the employee once a year. Neither it provides a feedback about employee’s performance nor any training or coaching to increase the performance of the employee (Daoanis, 2012). Simply, performance appraisal is an important step in performance management system.

Performance Management at my Organization….

Each year April, we identify number of goals which need to be accomplished during that fiscal year. At least one development goal and five operational goals needs to be identified, and weightage must be assigned for each goal, and total should be 100% for both development and operational goals. Then these goals are reviewed by the manager and approved.

In November, we perform the mid-year review my analysing the completion percentage of each goal. Then this completion percentage is reviewed. By end of the fiscal year, we perform the final performance appraisal and, final completion percentage or rating is given by us.  Manager then gives his/her rating.

Drawbacks in existing Performance Management system:

1. I also look after Engineering and design issues that arise time to time. Sometimes we get several issues during the day and, most of time, we don’t get anything. Some issues need several days to solve, but most can be solved in few hours. Issues are always not homogeneous; therefore, existing performance management system does not capture these variations.
2. Individual goals are not directly related to organization’s goals. There are no internal mechanisms to capture some of the tasks we do. Therefore, goals which can only be measured are identified as goals in the performance management system.
3. We believe that current performance management system is an utter waste of money and time and does not capture the true performance.
4. HR dept has developed some scales (eg: excellent, very good etc) and advised managers to limit the number of employees in each scale to predefined percentages. Therefore, every employee can’t reach the top level and manager can favour individual employees by giving higher rating.
5. No feedback system available regarding employee’s performance.
6. No coaching is available to improve the performance.
7. Final appraisal rating is linked to following year’s salary increment. Since this increment is very small, employees do not bother about rating they get. 

Conclusion:

Holland (2006) argues that only 3 in 10 employees believe that their performance was improved by organization’s performance review systems. I believe that performance management system at my company is poorly implemented. It does not make any positive contribution to employee performance and leads to several negative outcomes such as increased turnover, wasted time and money, decreased motivation to perform, varying and unfair standards and ratings etc (Aguinis, 2013).

References:

Aguinis, H. (2013) Performance Management. 3^rd Edition. New Jersey: Pearson.

Daoanis, L. (2012) ‘PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL SYSTEM: It’s Implication To Employee Performance’, International Journal of Economics and Management Sciences, 2(3), pp. 55-62.

Holland, K. (2006) Performance reviews: Many need improvement. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/business/yourmoney/10mgmt.html (Accessed: 23 December 2019).

Marr, B. (2019) What Is Performance Management? A Super Simple Explanation For Everyone. Available at: https://www.bernardmarr.com/default.asp?contentID=770 (Accessed: 23 December 2019)

What is Lean Manufacturing?

(Tiwari and Wanjari, 2010)

As per Kilpatrick (1997), lean manufacturing increases capacity, quality, and productivity while reducing inventory and lead time(s). Several features of Lean techniques were first introduced at the Ford production plants in the 1920s. This was mentioned in the books ‘My life and work’ and ‘Today and tomorrow’, written by Henry Ford himself. According to Ford, focus on functions which add value to customer while reducing material, time and motion wastages.

The book “The Machine that Changed the World” describes about the Toyota Production System and the term “Lean production” was firstly appeared. Lean approach allowed Japanese companies to reduce the cost and increase the quality (Korchagin, Deniskina, and Fateeva , 2019).

Korchagin et al. (2018) stated that the efficiency of lean process is based on the eliminating unnecessary activities or in other words wastes in the manufacturing process. This would save cost and optimize the production cost and resources.

Korchagin, Deniskina, and Fateeva (2019) identifies following types of Wastes

1. Wastes due to overproduction (Eg: Manufacturing more than the demand or what is required for the next stage of the process)
2. Time waste due to waiting (Eg: short breaks in between working hours; waiting for people, materials, equipment etc)
3. Wastes due to excessive processing (Eg: due to tool’s poor quality, design mistakes etc.)
4. Wastes due to unnecessary movements (Eg: movement of people, tools or equipment that does not add value to the final product)
5. Wastes due to inventory (Eg: high stock level of raw materials or finished product)
6. Wastes during transportation (Eg: Unnecessary long distance transportation of materials etc.)
7. Wastes due to the release of defective products (Eg: Additional inspection, replacement etc.)

Following Lean manufacturing techniques, which could be used to reduce or eliminate wastages.

1. Cellular manufacturing

Organizes the entire process into a group (or “cell”), including all the necessary machines, equipment and operators to facilitate small lot, continuous flow production.

(AMIA systems, 2017) 

2. Just-in-time (JIT)

JIT is an inventory system that minimizes inventory by aligning raw-material orders directly with production schedules.

3. Kanbans: A signalling system or scheduling system for JIT production.

4. Total preventive maintenance (TPM): Preventing breakdowns rather than fixing.

5. Setup time reduction: Continuously reducing the machine setup time.

6. Total quality management (TQM): TQM is a continual process of detecting and reducing or eliminating errors in manufacturing. Key components are employee involvement and training, problem-solving etc.

References;
Ford H. (1922) My life and work. New York: Garden City.

Ford, H. (1926) Today and tomorrow. New York: Doubleday.

Kilpatrick, A. (1997) Lean manufacturing principles: a comprehensive framework for improving production efficiency. MSc Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Korchagin, A., Deniskina, A. and Fateeva, I. (2019) ‘Lean and energy efficient production based on internet of things (IOT) in aviation industry’, E3S Web of Conferences, 110, pp. 1-13.

AMIA systems (2017), What is Cellular Manufacturing?. Available at: https://www.amia-systems.com/what-is-cellular-manufacturing/ (Accessed 15 Dec. 2019).

Tiwari, A. and Wanjari, S. (2010), Lean Manufacturing In Apparel Industry. Available at: https://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/5159/lean-manufacturing-in-apparel-industr (Accessed 15 Dec. 2019).

Employee Voice and Silence

(Hontz and Braude, 2019)

In this blog, I’m going to briefly explain about the difference between Employee voice and silence and, importance of Employee voice.

Definitions

Morrison (2014) defines employee voice as informal communication by an employee of ideas, suggestions etc about work-related issues to persons who might be able to take appropriate action (eg: supervisor, team mates). But Strauss (2006) points out, voice is a weaker term than some of the others, such as participation.

Silence is not merely a lack of speech, it means not sharing of important information what is on employee’s mind (Morrison & Milliken 2000). Eg: not speaking up when one has a concern or information about a problem.

Types of employee silence and voices

According to Dyne (2003),

There are 3 types of silences;

1. Acquiescent Silence (Keeping opinions to self due to low self-efficacy to make a difference)
2. Defensive Silence (Omitting facts to protect the self)
3. ProSocial Silence (Protecting proprietary knowledge to benefit the organization)

There are 3 types of voices;

1. Acquiescent Voice (Agreeing with the group due to low self-efficacy to make a difference)
2. Defensive Voice (Proposing ideas that focus on others to protect the self)
3. ProSocial Voice (Suggesting constructive ideas for change to benefit the organization)

The Importance of Employee Voice

It is important to understand why employees do not speak up when they have important information.  If they don’t speak up, both employee’s performance and motivation will be affected. On the other hand, absorbing employees’ idea and information into business decisions can help to produce better decisions and motivate employees. 

In many organisations, employees’ voices are muted, and they are reluctant to raise their concerns, especially when they feel their supervisor would take their information in negative manner (Detert et al. 2010, Milliken et al. 2003). 

Further, Wilkinson (2011) suggests that appreciating employee voice can;

1. Improve employee attitudes, loyalty, commitment, and more cooperative relations.
2. Improve performance, lower absenteeism and greater teamwork.
3. Improve managerial systems by identifying employees’ ideas, knowledge, and experience

It is also believed that many leaders in the organizations do not aware about the tendency toward silence. As Detert &Trevino (2010, p. 264) wrote, many leaders unintentionally impose authority ranking and they believe that employees feel free to communicate upward, failing to recognize the reluctance and fear that many employees experience when it comes to upward voice.

Employee voice can be seen as the expression of employee’s rights. In other words, industrial democracy, which sees participation as a fundamental democratic right for workers to extend a degree of control over managerial decision making. Foley & Polyani (2006) argue that workplace democracy allows skills and values to develop.

Employee voice can be representative (and largely union voice) for industrial Relations. Employee voice can change quality and productivity in good manner, while identifying the problems (Gollan & Wilkinson, 2007).

References

Detert, J. R., Trevino, L. K. (2010) ‘Speaking up to higher ups: how supervisor and skip-level leaders influence employee voice’, Organ Sci, 21, pp. 249–70.

Dyne, L. V., Ang, S., & Botero, I. C. (2003, September) 'Conceptualizing Employee Silence and Employee Voice as Multidimensional Constructs', Journal of Management Studies, 40(6), pp. 1359-1392.

Foley, J., & Polanyi, M. (2006) ‘Workplace democracy: Why bother? Economic and Industrial Democracy’, 27(1), pp. 173–191.

Hontz, J., and Braude, K. (2019) ‘It’s Time for Parents to Speak UP’. Available at: https://educationpost.org/its-time-for-parents-to-speak-up/ (Accessed 14 Nov. 2019).

Gollan, P., & Wilkinson, A. (2007) ‘Contemporary developments in information and consultation’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, (18)7, pp. 1133–1145.

Milliken, F. J., Morrison, E. W., Hewlin, P. (2003) ‘An exploratory study of employee silence: issues that employees don’t communicate upward and why’, Journal of Management Studies, 40, pp. 1453–76.

Morrison E. W., Milliken, F. J. (2000) ‘Organizational silence: a barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world’, The Academy of Management Review, 25(4), pp. 706–25.

Morrison, E. W. (2014) 'Employee Voice and Silence', The Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, pp. 173-197.

Strauss, G. (2006) ‘Worker participation—some under- considered issues’, Industrial Relations, 45(4), pp. 778–803.

Business Simulation Games

(Advantexe, 2017)

History of modern business simulation games

First known use of modern business simulation game can be trace back to 1955. The Rand Corporation developed a simulation program, called Monopologs, for U.S. Air Force. This game simulated the Air Force’s supply system (Jackson, 1959). In 1956, well known business game, Top Management Decision Simulation, was developed and it is known to be the first business game ever used in a university class, in 1957 at the University of Washington (Watson, 1981).

General Electric, IBM, Procter & Gamble were among early business users of simulation games. Faria and Schumacher (1984) stated that, by mid 1960s, aerospace giant Boeing had three business simulation games for different levels of managers.

Why Simulations Games?

Effective and efficient strategic decision making is the most important factor for the success of an organization. These decision-making processes determine whether the business will continue to survive or not.

In real life, each business organization is considered as a player and rivalry among the organizations is like a game.  Each organization makes strategic decisions based on some uncertain information. Organization sometimes can’t predict the output when it changes some of its variables. Eg: If price and marketing were increased, organization should know how these variables would affect the consumer demand.

Sometimes, organization should be able identify the moves that other players in the market could make as a reply to its tactics. This helps the organization to choose the best strategy and prepare itself for rivals’ moves. Himmelweit et al. (2001) stated that Coca-Cola’s president Doug Ivester once mentioned as;

"I look at the business like a chessboard. You always need to be seeing three, four, five moves ahead; otherwise, your first move can prove fatal’’.

Therefore, it is vital to train employees to handle different decision-making situations they face in their day-to-day work activities (Lainema, 2003). This could even be trained from when they were in the business school. Unfortunately, most of the business schools are not sufficiently preparing students to understand and cope with the levels of ambiguity and uncertainty they will inevitably face when they take up positions in organizations (Aram and Noble, 1999).

This trend has been changing in positive manner. With the advancement of technology and mathematical modelling, simulations can represent the real-world business environment perfectly. According Faria (1998), more than 1700 business schools in USA have been using simulations. Wolfe and Roberts (1993) argue that simulations represent the real-world issues faced by the managers and, the simulation environment is the most realistic one offered in an off the job training. Simulations can be general purpose or specialized one particularly designed for an industry or organisation (Fripp,2004).

Finally, Doyle (2000) identified following advantages in Business Simulation Games

1. Motivating and entertaining
2. Provides risk free environment
3. Analyse different scenarios and strategies
4. Experimental learning.

References

Advantexe (2017) How Business Simulation Models for 2025 Can Build Skills Today. Available at: https://www.advantexe.com/blog/how-business-simulation-models-for-2025-can-build-skills-today (Accessed 7 Nov. 2019).

Aram, E. & Noble, D. (1999) ‘Educating prospective managers in the complexity of organizational life’, Management Learning, 30(3), pp. 321-342.

Doyle, D. and Brown, F. W. (2000) ‘Using a business simulation to teach applied skills - the benefits and the challenges of using student teams from multiple countries’,  Journal of European industrial training, 330-336.

Faria, A.J. (1998) ‘Business simulation games: current usage levels – an update’, Simulation and Gaming, 29, pp. 295-308.

Faria, A. J. and Schumacher, M. (1984) ‘The Use of Decision Simulations in Management Training Programs’, Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, 11, pp. 220-225.

Fripp, J. (1994) ‘Why use business simulations?’, Executive Development, 7(1).

Himmelweit, S., Simonetti, R. and Trigg, A. (2001) ‘ Neoclassical and institutionalist perspectives on economic behaviour’. UK: Thomson Learning.

Jackson, J. R. (1959) ‘Learning from Experience in Business Decision Games’, California Management Review, 1, pp. 23-29.

 Lainema, T. and Makkonen, P. (2003) ‘Applying constructivist approach to educational business games: Case REALGAME’, SIMULATION & GAMING, 34(1), pp. 131-149.

Watson, H. J. (1981) ‘Computer Simulation in Business’, New York: John Wiley & Sons Publishing Company.

Importance of Employee Retention

(yiftee, 2014)

Employee retention is vital factor for the survival of an organization. This became a challenging one for most of the organization in the current dynamic environment (Ramlall, 2004). Organizations recruit competent employees and, invest time and money for the development of employee. When an employee leaves an organization, there is an associated cost for the organization. But it is difficult measure and value it. Ramlall (2004) stated that the average company loses approximately $1 million with every 10 managerial and professional employees who leave the organization. In other words, when direct and indirect costs are combined, the total turnover cost of a relieved employee is between one and two years’ pay and benefits.

There is substantial economic impact to the organization when losing any of its critical employees. When an employee leaves from an organization, all the knowledge about the company, stake holders, projects etc go with employee to competitor. This is the knowledge that is used to attract and satisfy the desires and expectations of organization’s customers. Toracco (2000) stated that most of the organizations now accepts that the knowledge as one of their most valuable asset, but it lacks a system to retain and control the value of knowledge. Moreover, company must incur additional costs on advertising, screening, verifying credentials, interviewing and training etc. to fill the vacant position.

It is crucial for an organization to develop an environment within the organization to motivate employees to stay in the organization. Motivation as defined by Robbins (1993) is the “willingness to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need”. According Yamamoto (2011), unsatisfied needs drive the individuals. These unsatisfied needs make individuals to find alternative ways to satisfy them (eg: finding new jobs etc).

There are various human resource practices employed by the organization to retain the employees (Khan et al., 2014). The HR must know how to attract and keep good employees because these are the employees who can make or break the organization’s goodwill (Wisnefski, 2008). According to Haider et al. (2015), the decision of an employee to stay in the organization is mainly influenced by;

• Personal factors (individual’s age, the family situation etc )
• Opportunities for training and career development
• Networking, external job market or job title
• Remuneration and employee benefits

Conclusion

Talented and good employees are asset of an organization. Retaining talented employees is highly important for the long-term growth as well as success of the business. Thus, it is necessary to retain the talented employees not because of the costs incurred on them by employers, but also because of the required output they give to the organization.

References

Haider, M., Rasli, A., Akhtar, C., Yusoff, R., Malik, O. and Aamir, A. (2015) 'The Impact of Human Resource Practices on Employee Retention in the Telecom Sector', International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, 5(Special Issue), pp.63-69.

Khan, F., Yusoff, R.M. and Khan, A. (2014) 'Effect of human resource practices on job satisfaction in Pakistan', Sains Humanika, 1(1), 5.

Ramlall, S. (2004) 'A Review of Employee Motivation Theories and their Implications for Employee Retention within Organizations', The Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, (September), pp.52-63.

Robbins, S. (1993) Organizational Behavior. Sixth Edition. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Torraco, R. (2000) 'A Theory of Knowledge Management', Advances in Developing Human Resources, 2(1), pp.38-62.
Wisnefski, M. (2008) 'Employee retention in the new millennium', Business Services, 16(3), 465-507.

Yamamoto, H. (2011) 'The relationship between employee benefit management and employee retention', The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22(17), 3550-3564.

yiftee (2014) Keys to Retaining your MVPs. Available at: https://yiftee.com/keys-to-retaining-your-mvps/ (Accessed: 31 Oct. 2019).

What is Behavioural based interview?

(AMS International, 2019)

Recruiting the right talent into an organisation is a challenging process. With the advancement of technologies humans have become more complex such that most of the talent screening methods do not reveal the real traits of a candidate. Interview is considered as the most important step in the talent recruiting process and it is a discussion between recruiters and a candidate with an intention (Bingham & Moore, 1931).

According to Swider et al. (2015), before starting the recruitment process, the human resource department should evaluate the requirements such as qualification, experience, skills, attitude etc needed for the position to be filled. Interviews can capture and obtain adequate information about the candidate’s knowledge, skills and experience (Callaghan and Thompson, 2002). But, critical elements of an interview for selecting a right candidate are attitudes, which are tough to recognize in normal short interview (McCarthy et al., 2013).

As Buang et al. (2018) stated, there are two interview methodologies

1. Traditional interview
2. Behavioural based interview

TRADITIONAL INTERVIEW

According to Kiviat (2009), a face to face or non-face to face interviews can be conducted in this method. Interview questions can be organized, semi-organized or open ended (Bragger et al., 2002). Candidates can be familiarized with the interview process by practicing or performing mock interview (Hartvigsson & Ahlgren, 2018). Therefore, Huffcutt et al. (2017) concluded that the traditional job interview is a poor forecaster of on job performance.

BEHAVIOURAL BASED INTERVIEW

After identifying the disadvantages of traditional interview method, behavioural based interview method became famous. This method helps employers to predict how would candidates perform on the job, by assessing candidate’s experiences and behaviour in the interview (Buang et al., 2018).

Altmaier et al. (1992) said that traditional interview only backs a small percentage of on the job behaviour. On the other hand, behavioural interviews predict 55% of job behaviour. Traditional interviews have common questions like “Tell me about yourself”. Candidates can mislead the interviewer and tell only what interviewer likes to hear. But, in behavioural interview, certain scenarios could be further analysed to get broader knowledge about the candidate. For eg: “What made you to make that decision?”.

In summary, behavioural based questions are more challenging and difficult to mislead. Therefore, a correct set of questions would reveal the true nature of the candidate. 

References;

Altmaier, E. M., Smith, W. L., O'halloran, C. M., & Franken, J. E. (1992) 'The predictive utility of behaviour-based interviewing compared with traditional interviewing in the selection of radiology residents', Investigative radiology, 27(5), 385-389.

AMS International (2019) Are you prepared for a Panel Interview?. Available at: https://www.ams-int.com/prepared-panel-interview/ (Accessed:29 Oct. 2019).

Bingham, W. V. & Moore, B. V. (1931) How to interview. Oxford, England: Harpers.

Buang, A., Seng, L. C. & Sum, L. W. V. (2018) 'The needs of Change in Job Interview: Compassionate Assessment and Interview', Open Journal of Human Resource Management, 1(1), pp. 30-37.

Callaghan, G. & Thompson, P. (2002) '“We recruit attitude”: the selection and shaping of routine call centre labour', Journal of Management Studies, 39(2), 233-254.

Hartvigsson, E. & Ahlgren, E. O. (2018) 'Comparison of load profiles in a mini-grid: Assessment of performance metrics using measured and interview-based data', Energy for Sustainable Development, 43, 186-195.

Huffcutt, A. I., Culbertson, S. S., Goebl, A. P. & Toidze, I. (2017), 'The influence of cognitive ability on interviewee performance in traditional versus relaxed behavior description interview formats', European Management Journal, 35(3), 383-387.

Kiviat, B. (2009). How Skype is changing the job interview. Time, Oct, 20.

McCarthy, J. M., Van Iddekinge, C. H., Lievens, F., Kung, M. C., Sinar, E. F., & Campion, M. A. (2013), 'Do candidate reactions relate to job performance or affect criterion-related validity? A multistudy investigation of relations among reactions, selection test scores, and job performance', Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(5), 701.

Swider, B. W., Zimmerman, R. D. & Barrick, M. R. (2015) 'Searching for the right fit: Development of applicant person-organization fit perceptions during the recruitment process', Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(3), 880.