Approaches to People (Using Human Resources)

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Approaches to People(Using Human Resources)

• Lecture 3
• Dr. Craig Kasper

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Introduction

• Main point People are THE key to productivity.
• Productivity reflects on you, the manager!
• And we all want to look good, right??

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Highlights

• Contingency Theory
• Importance of people orientation
• Maslows Hierarchy
• Active Listening
• Writing a Performance Standard
• Efficiency and effectiveness
• Self Assessment
• Five steps to improve productivity

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Contingency Theory

• Well discuss contingencies for physical
  emergencies later, but what if your disaster is
  an employee??
• Human behavior is very complex.
• Ultimately, you manage through understanding and
  feeling for the people.
• A good manager must know the people who work for
  him.

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Good Management

• Select the right people.
• Develop talent
• Treat justly (may be different than what peoples
  sense of fair or unfair is)
• Set high standards (people will either meet or
  exceed them, or wash out.)
• Insist on achieving your set goals (people may
  surprise you with their ingenuity.)
• Reward superior performance!! (Penalize
  suboptimal performance.)

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Leadership Revisited

• We already mentioned that good leaders do so by
  setting good examples.
• However, good leaders also have the ability to
  influence people (not the power to require).
• REM If all your employees leave due to your bad
  daily bad attitude, then you do a lot of work
  yourself!

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Leadership Defined

• Struggle
• Strive to achieve clairity of purpose.
• Competant, assurred, confident (not arrogance),
  courageous
• This attitude can be contageous and often
  attracts followers! (A self-fullfilling prophecy
  of sorts, since this is what make a leader great
  anyway!)
• Mentor, doesnt panic.
• Explains difficult decisions (especially when
  they must be reversed.)

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Malsow (1954)

• Yes, this stuff still applies
• Everone has basic needs and your employees
  certainly qualify.
• They all revolve around self-fulfillment.

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Maslow

• Basic air, water, food, rest, shelter.
• Safety (security) Protection.
• Social sense of belonging, sharing, friends,
  love
• Esteem respect, achievement, competence,
  confidence.
• Independence working toward personal goals,
  authority, freedom
• Self-fulfillment Be all you can be!!,
  learning, growth, self-actualization (ambition).

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• When these core
• needs arent met, it
• often shows up in an
• employees attitude!
• Unsatisfied needs
• become motivators
• for other behaviors.
• Youll see it coming in
• some folks long before
• you actually have a
• confrontation.

James Greenwood
Whoa! Too much coffee, Bob??
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Communication and Active Listening

• We choose to communicate verbally.
• Non-verbal communication (NVC) is automatic.
  (Even when you say nothin, youre sayin
  something.)
• Personal perception is a powerful influencing
  factor in NVC.
• Also, recall that you cant please everyone, all
  the time.

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Active Listening

• You can let your walk, talkor you can let your
  talk, talk but never let your talk, talk, more
  than your walk, talks!
• Learn to speak less and listen more (insight)!
  Reduce your listen/talk ratio.
• This gives you a powerful upper hand in
  determining the best course of action when
  dealing with conflict.
• What you hear from people in the most innocent
  situation may provide valuable insight into what
  their true nature is (tarot).

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Setting the Bar

• Evaluation of performance of workers is critical
  to any operation.
• Each job should have a set of standards to live
  up to. If it doesnt, then employees dont know
  what is expected.
• Employees are often involved in defining their
  job standards. This is good for both employee
  and manager.

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Standard standards

1. Resemble a contract between the employee and the
   firm.
2. Address the most important aspects of the
   empolyees duties and responsbilities.
3. Guide the employee to accomplish important tasks.
   (As defined by the supervisor.)
4. Be directed at specific tasks or requirments.
5. Act as units of meaure (goes back to employee
   comparision/evaluation.)

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Standard standards

• 6. Be brief, clear, concise, believable and
  easily understood!!
• 7. Enhance communication between employee and
  supervisor.
• 8. Encourage productivity and efficiency.
• 9. Enable employeeand evaluator to agree on
  whether the accomplishements failed to meet, met,
  or exceeded the standards.
• 10. Be taken seroiusly.

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Unstandard standards

1. Nebulous, challenge your team, but dont give
   em enough rope to hang themselves!
2. Overemphasis on doing the boss job. If
   yourre doing his job, why is he there? It works
   the other way, too!
3. Include unimportant tasksthose not necessary for
   the possition.
4. Unclear.
5. Difficult to measure.
6. Discourage productivity.
7. Cause mistrust.
8. Mislead employee.
9. Waste/abuse of time.
10. Unused/unenforced.

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Standard Development

• This can be a daunting task, especially if you
  dont have prior experience.
• Communication (language) must be clear.
• Often units of time, quality, and quantity are
  inserted within a document.
• Dont use directives, but require an outcome (and
  communicate it.)

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Productivity

• Usually a good manager also is rewarded by a
  highly productive group (TAL).
• Periodically the manager needs to assess the work
  or workers and make refinements as needed.
• There is no rule of thumb here, but several basic
  steps will be discussed.

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What is productivity?

• Efficiency output/input
• Productivity doing the right things right.
• Increasing productivity can be achieved by
  increasing efficiency, usefulness and efficiency,
  responsiveness to demand (speed), decreaseing
  costs, decreasing production and delivery time.

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The Managers Mandate

• Make goals clear from the start (syllabus).
• Rate yourself as a manager (performance evals.)
• Involve people in looking for opportunities.
• Analyze and measure before and after a change.
• Choose opportunities.

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