Performance management

First of all what is an appraisal- an appraisal is a regular assessment of an employee’s performance. An appraisal takes an overall look at the employee and a view at the work loads, and volume, and gives tips on what could be improved on. (ACAS 2006)

An appraisal I have taken part in, was when I was working at phones4u, after 3months of working there, the team manager booked me in for an appraisal, for the following week. During the appraisal, I realised it was the other team manager, that I had never worked with was giving me the appraisal, the simplest way to put it, I was shocked to have someone, who i have hardly seen tell me things, I need to improve on, it made me the appraisal wasn’t taken seriously. However on the other hand I was praised for my efforts at work, although I felt like, the praise part was just said to lighten up my mood.

The skills needed to make a mentor good and effective is, being a good listener, everyone needs someone to listen to them at some point,  mentors guide the people how seek their help and  advice, and direct them.

Mentors also provide insights on the objectives of the person they are mentoring, mentors criticize usefully; mentors also help every way possible, all these skills listed, are required to make a mentor effective.

A person in my social life who has been a mentor to me is my older brother, he gave me advice in my time of need, and on a daily basis, even when i didn’t really need it, however it kept me on track, this has however, made me realise, that I can do what want to, if i put my mind to it.

To conclude, we all need someone to put us on track some point in our lives, however some people may not need a mentor.


Mullins (2004) management and organisational behaviour.  (8^th edition).

selection

Examples of selection methods

Interviews

Telephone screening

Short listing from applications and cv’s

 Interviews – on average interviews is a hiring decision, of the candidate. An interview is a tool used, to decode the candidate, to get a better insight of which the candidate really is, a job interview is seen as the most efficient tool of knowing potential candidates.

Pros of interviews

Interviews give the company a better insight of the candidate

Cons

The interviewer may influence the candidates answer

Interviews are time consuming

Interviews may portray the candidate in the wrong way due to pressure.  

Interviews may only last for a short period of time, which prevents getting to know all about the candidate.

Telephone screening

 Telephone screening helps break down candidates to prevent unnecessary candidates coming for an interview.  These interviews also take place if the candidate is really far away.

Pros

It saves time by reducing candidates that don’t qualify

Cons

It can prevent worthy candidates from qualifying, due to the wrong impression gathered by the interview

The candidate may not be able express themselves that good.

Short listing from applications and cv’s

This is when, the interviewer , goes through cv’s and applicants to decode, candidates who they think, are fit for the job, and then called in for an interview.

Pros

This helps to cut down candidates

This method can also, get a little insight from the cv to know a bit more about the candidate

Cons

Candidates are judged even before they are spoken to

This method is time consuming

This method can be expensive, because ads have to be posted before, candidates can hear about the job.

An interview I took part in was for a job at phones4u, before I had the face to face I went through different stages, such as feeling out an application online, of which I was completely honest about everything I wrote, however when i had the phone interview, i just told the interviewer what, i thought he wanted to hear. After that i was offered a face to face interview, of which was effective, only in the way of me portraying myself in the character they were in search for.

I recommend , that companies make more use of face to face interviews, to find out about their candidate more, instead of prejudging them on a telephone interview, this could help to select the best candidates possible

To conclude, even though I disagree with most other interviews, minus face to face interviews, it does help to save time, and cut off candidates who do not meet the companies’ standard by judging them on limited information.

Mullins (2004) management and organisational behaviour.  (8^th edition).

Recruitment

The layout of the site is very easy to understand, it is laid out in sectors. The site is really

Spaced out, which gives a chance to the user of the site to take their time to go through the site, in order to find what their looking for. This will also prevent people from leaving the site, from being discouraged from looking for what they want, from seeing too much information at once.

The accessibility of the site is good however the choice of colour could be better, the site also has links to other useful sites to find what you’re looking for. The site also makes it possible to upload your CV, and informs you about the trends of the working sector, such as average pay etc.

A recruitment campaign that has caught my attention recently is the Olympics, this campaign hasn’t been seen on television by me, but has been seen in simple and catchy places. Such as the tube in London, the ads have some motivational lines such as “be part of the once i several years Olympics held in the UK”.

This is very encouraging, and the campaign online tells us that there are jobs available right from the skilled workers to unskilled workers, something for everyone. These interests I because the campaign, has mixed work with pleasure, this would make sport lovers apply for the job to be part of the experience, with is being held in the UK.

Advantages of online recruitment

1)      Widens out the search to employ skilled employees.

2)      This is an easy and quick recruitment, and saves time.

3)      It is cost effective; the job vacancy can be posted on the internet.

4)      Improved efficiency of recruitment process.

5)      With online recruitment, most of the time, there are no intermediaries.

Disadvantages of online recruitment

1)      Carrying out checks and balance on people that apply is considered to be time consuming.

2)      Not everyone has internet, so some places in the world will lack awareness about the job opportunity.

3)      Businesses and firms cannot completely depend on the online recruitment methods.

4)      In some parts of the world such as India prefer face to face interaction rather than communicating through other mediums such as email.

5)      Candidate dissatisfaction can be a problem, because some people just simply prefer the traditional methods of applying for a job.

Equality Opportunities

Equality comes from “equal opportunity” this is in place to make everyone meet the terms with the anti discrimination legislation. This protects people from being discriminated against, on the basis of group membership i.e. sex. While diversity is the recognition of individual differences and that people are not all the same.

2006 age legislation/ effects

1)      Widens  people to pick from

2)      Keeps people in employment if able to work

The stereotypes that we tend to hold about young people is that, they may be a little bit reckless and unreliable, however with the old age people, the stereotypes we tend to hold about them, is that they may not be as efficient as the middle age people, also they can fall sick at any point in time, due to their health, this paints a picture of them being unreliable.

B&Q success is down to the amount of customers and staff they have. The company greatly believes to make their workforce as diverse as possible, and mix up the talent, right from the highest power of the hierarchy right to the bottom, more that 1200 of B&Q staff speak various different languages. The company continues to promote, equality of opportunity to prevent barriers from people working for them.

To conclude equality is a major thing in the work place of today, and is seen as very important, however this doesn’t mean that, there is equality everywhere. For example, a British Airways worker was punished for not taking off her crucifix, while other employees from different religions are allowed to be the religious symbols’, so even though the act is in place, we still need to question, how effective the equality act is.

Personality

First of all what is nature and nurture debate all about?

Nature can be seen personalities that are inherited from the family, in other terms the genes have been passed down from other members in the family that contributes to our personality, and the way we behave. Meanwhile nurture says our personality and behaviour is produced by the environment we live in.

Nomothetic approaches, this approach focuses on people in general, rather than a certain group of people. This is done through analysising group data. Believers in this approach suggest that personality is largely inherited instead of influenced by the environment. This perspective looks traits and characteristics, and then looked at as a whole. Then identified and measured, and finally put forward for test and observation.  This method is particularly helpful to managers. The nomothtic researchers take a positivism approach, which is looking at things from a scientific view, and mainly based on observation.

 Cattell used quantitative methods to analyse the data, he continued the study using basic traditional scientific methods to understand different people’s personality.   Cattell identified two main types of personality traits which are: surface traits and source traits.

  

Idiographic approach studies the personality and attempts to understand the individual and unique personality of people. Idiographic approach, this approach regards personality development as a process that is open to change; they all see the environment as a major factor in shaping peoples.  They also we people adapting with their environment, as a normal skill everyone has, this is said to make everyone unique in their own way.

Carl Jung theory identifies life energy as something that is concerned with hopes and goals of the future, and not just of post.

 Jung describes three levels of personality:

1)      A conscious

2)      An unconscious level

3)      A collective conscious level.

To conclude, the nature and nurture debate is important, however, according to what we are taught from a child in primary school, are genes and traits are gotten from people in our family, however i believe a load of factors, are taken into consideration to the development of an individual’s personality. In referral to the personality test, I agree with the rest.

Teamwork

Coming to the middle of first year in college, the sociology teacher sprung group work on the class, which was all about raising money for charity, and reviewing people’s perceptions in the modern day to day world about giving money to charity. The teacher put the class in random groups, which left the class working with people who they didn’t really know.

The group I was in consisted of three females and two males, which was kind of funny that the only two boys in the class where in the same group. That same day the group set to the library to construct a plan, funny enough I noticed had the hard working people in my group, which had me motivated even before we even started the work, the team came together, with limited disagreements, and we achieved are objective, this was looked as a successful and hard working group by the team members and the teacher

The theory that best relates to my college teamwork experience is tuckman , Tuckman's model explains that as the team develops maturity and ability, relations established, and the head changes leadership style. The module has five different stages which are forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

Forming is when the team just get together and start knowing each other. Storming is when the team goes through a rainy season and there is allot of infighting and demotivation .Norming this is the group starts to control issues, can getting found of a process to carry out the task. Performing this is where the group become more supportive to carry out and complete the task.

Adjourning this is make or break, if a team is willing to work with each other again, or cannot wait to leave, in my case the team i worked with would love to work with each other again. This would be seen as successful, because all the stages encountered by my group, was taken head on in a positive way.

Tuckman suggest that a group goes through 5 different stages which is known as forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning, my group from the first assignment  fits  into Tuckman’s  module, because the group went through all the stages outlined, some stages more intense than others. We did not perform greatly in the performance stage and this had a great effect on the end result, even though we went through the five stages it ended up with not adjourning again. Compared to the group i worked with at college, we performed poorly or maybe because the work in university is more advanced than college.

The two companies that are going to be looked at are:
1) Office Angles (recruitment consultancy)
2) Microsoft IT/internet


Office Angles use team work as a major driving force to motivate staff and encourage them to work hard, the company goes further by explaining how, they use rewards to encourage staff compete amongst themselves. The company renders rewards such as trips to Dubai, New York and Barbados.

Microsoft employees are said to get a buzz from working in teams, a workforce consisting of 2625 have people who enjoy helping their team mates, outings outside work is seen as a team bonding session as well as leisure

To conclude, working in teams has seen to work for organisations in the sense of getting them to work hard, and achieve goals, however we should not fail to remember, that not all teams work well with each other.

Perception and Communication

A pervious situation where I have gotten the wrong insight of an individual, happened while working at Phones4u, while working at phones4u, I had up to four colleagues I worked with and I was initially assigned to pair up with a particular colleague called Lance who was the manager of that particular store.

My first thought of Lance when I first saw him was, how am I going to work with Lance, because my first day at the phones4u, he had a meeting with all staff, and it lasted for 2hours, consisted of lance talking about how he is going to change, the way we do things in the store, and how he doesn’t like the way things are done. After him saying all this I noticed the reaction of staff that had been working there for over 2yrs, they didn’t seem very happy.

The first thought that came to mind was, how am I possibly going to work with this manager, with my  previous perception of him is him being ultra arrogant. And with other staff saying, they had never had a manger like that, got me thinking can I cope with such an arrogant and strict manager, what made it worse he was my partner.

After the 2hr speech about changes, the new manger had to go to the head office for a meeting, so I didn’t get to work with him, which was a relief, I came to the conclusion it would be hard working with such a person.

The next day was back to work, funny enough I resumed work late, and panic had kicked in, due to too much thinking about, what my manager would say. Strolling in late,with all eyes on me, but to my surprise he said “how you doing mate, hope your not too tired from the long shift yesterday”. 

During lunch Lance suggested me and him should go on brake at the same time, I was really dreading going on break with him, while eating lunch we had various interesting conversations, about views on life ,the world and social events, after lunch I told him, your much different from when your at work, he told me, its better not mix business with pleasure, to get the job done every one has to do what they have to do, that he is only putting on an act, jus to get things done (job). 

This showed me that people can give different perceptions across to people, consciously and sub consciously, but lance was diffidently  not the person I thought he was, I even started to see him more as a friend by the time I left the company.

However to conclude its better to read the book, and not blurb before Judging the book, in other words are perception of people should be made after, we get to know them, rather than judging them.