Developing Individuals, Teams and Organizations
LO 1 Knowledge, skills, and behaviours that are required by HR professionals
According to Abuazoom, Hanafi, and Ahmad (2019), considering the recent business environment, it is found that the new constant changes. To keep up with this change, companies around the world try to constantly upgrade their systems, helping and improving the human capital factor, implementing new and advanced technologies, and many more.
However, because the business environment needs professionals who are trained and have experience, companies tend to implement various training schemes for their employees. The managers play an important role in implementing and motivating training modules for the employees. Training and professional development is a very crucial tool for the company to grow and implement strategic management into its functions and operations (Adam 2018).
Continuous learning helps the employees to face off anything that comes across. Companies are nowadays are very strict about their policies on learning and development schemes. Moreover, learning and professional development help the human resource factor in the company to grow strong in the recent corporate culture.
Continuous learning and development is a concept which helps in the constant up-gradation of the skills of the employees taking the changing nature of the business environment into consideration (Ahammad 2017).
Besides, if an employee wants to increase productivity, knowledge, and skills, he needs to constantly gain new knowledge, learn and expand new skill sets and correctly use the resources of the company to support the set target and the objective that the company aims (Brewster and Cerdin 2018).
The main criteria of Whirlpool are to create an environment that helps its employees to learn and grow their skills. Whirlpool is one of the top names in the technology and appliances business should always consider the benefits that learning and development bring with themselves.
The professionals of the company being able to achieve their targets in a short period and also increase their productivity are a benefit for the company. By implementing learning and professional development, the company has been able to build a highly skilled and hardworking workforce (Brewster, Boselie and Purpura 2018). Moreover, learning and professional development have helped Whirlpool to achieve, which are as follows:
High Performance and Enhanced Productivity
Proper training provides the employees with a piece of better knowledge about their responsibilities and the key role they play in the functions of the business. This provides the company and the employees a scope towards a better future. This also enables the company to achieve the desired outcomes (Harney, Dundon and Wilkinson 2018).
Knowledge about Competition
Constant learning and professional development help the employees to gain knowledge and also helps to develop their skills. This also enables the company as well as the employees to gain insight into the market. Employees who have the correct knowledge help the company with correct data about the ever-changing nature of the market and also insights about customer demands (Järlström, Saru and Vanhala 2018). This helps in the future growth of the company.
Increase in Investment Return
It is a fact that implementing learning schemes needs some investment from the company. However, if the learning scheme is aimed at the greater good of the company, there can be a chance to increase the investment return (Jayashree and Faisal 2017).
Customer Loyalty
A well trained and engaged workforce who interacts with its customer can be the biggest brand advocate like no other. The well-trained workforce helps in creating the correct environment for the product to grow in the minds of its customers. An engaged workforce helps the company to increase its loyal customer base and also helps in improving the experience of the customer. A well-trained workforce would always consider the demands and needs of the customer. They should be well aware of the changes in the business market and should also have details about the competitors (Kianto, Sáenz and Aramburu 2017).
Professional Development Plan
The professional development plan can be referred to as a formal method of learning that helps employers or employees sustain a competitive business environment.
Moreover, it adequately sets out the learning goals as well as objectives to achieve the performance objectives held out by the organizational managers in the words of O’riordan (2017). The professional development is achieved through various sources, which can be undertaken by the Whirlpool Company, as described in the form of a table,
| Objectives of the Session | Performance Monitoring on a regular basis | |||
| Identifying any gaps within the performances of the employees | ||||
| Providing feedback to achieve a sustainable business performance | ||||
| Managing employee talent | ||||
| Timeframe | Activity | Teaching and assessment approach or strategy to achieve the objectives of the business | Tools/resources | |
| One hour | Monitoring or tracking the performances of the staff members, employees, and others to ensure a sustainable business environment. | The management team of the Whirlpool Company must keep an eye on the performance of the employees. One efficient way to do that is to keep a close eye on their performances. In addition, engaging with the workers and staff members will also help to understand their abilities as well as competencies. It might be a time-taking process though; however, it can help improve the business to a large extent. Besides, research progress is periodically tested and approved by the employees. | Self-monitoring software, CCTV cameras spot test and mount to track the employees’ activities. This would help the employers train them based on their performance level. | |
| Thirty minutes | Identifying the staff and other efficiency gaps. This would help in understanding the in-competencies of the employees. | Planning the performance and reviewing the performance of the employees will give a sense of the holes in their operations. Additionally; performance assessment, reporting, dissemination, and others can aid in performance growth. Moreover, understanding the performance gaps would enable employers to take adequate strategies to fill those gaps in the performance. | Monitoring tools, CCTV cameras, registering the employees’ issues, | |
| Thirty minutes | Providing appropriate feedback and reviews to the workers based on their performances. | The workers tend to collect feedbacks very frequently. Being equal and precise is crucial. It can be achieved by utilizing interactive sessions or seminars with staff members or employees. They are needed to be inspired and empowered to express their views as well as thoughts, without any doubt. If they voice their opinions without any hesitation, there will be an opportunity for employers to understand their inefficiencies. | The conference rooms can hold interactive sessions as well as team huddles. It could also be achieved by sending individual emails to workers or employees. To serve that purpose, projectors, and laptops are required. | |
| Twenty minutes | Managing employees’ talent. | The management team should be able to identify the organizational goals as well as priorities, organizational drivers or challenges and more to handle the talent of the employees along with other staff members. Online surveys may be performed to recognize the strengths and competencies of the workers. This would help the business environment sustain as employee performance will witness a sea change on professional grounds. | Installation of response machines, the establishment of questionnaire surveys, and so on. | |
Personal Skills Audit
A personal skills audit can be regarded as a very good method of recognizing an individual’s strengths as well as needs to improve in a stable environment. It has been shown to be very helpful for people to primarily keep successful managers and businessmen on the career path.
The audit of personal skills depends on the field of business in which the employers work too, which varies with the various areas or environments as per Obeidat, Tawalbeh and Akour (2019). The whole field of personal skills can be divided into a few parts under which come several questions that describe the existence of that specific talent in the personality of an individual through the answers they give to those questions according to Panagiotakopoulos (2016).
| Skills for improvement | Reasons to improve | Process of improvement | The time required to improve |
| Skills of organizational management | Skills management can be referred to as the process of recognizing individuals and their skills, improving and applying them. Well-implemented management of skills would define the skills needed for job positions, the skills of workers, and any difference between them. | Different initiatives of research can be adopted in such a scenario or even getting more contact with others would help. | Ten to eleven weeks |
| Skills of Decision-making | These delicate skills are immensely important for personal development as it helps in professional development. Using a proper decision-making method that offers a straightforward collection of steps leads to a decision result while eliminating common decision pitfalls and thought errors; strategies to the identification of needs and practices, such as stakeholder management and candid self-reflection. | Requires methods like appraisal assistance along with the assistance of organizational managers, supervisors, peers, or other senior officials. | Twelve to thirteen weeks |
| Skills of performing in an organized manner | Performing in an organisation helps an individual achieve desirable results. Additionally, it helps employees reduce performance gaps and also, enables them to give their best performance. Worldwide, CEOs are moving towards enhancing organizational efficiency regardless of the size of the industry. Organizational management of performance is the particular strategy of assembling the proper operation of company equipment in pursuit of organizational goals. The performance improvement standard is extensively appropriate to employee development. | Initially, it is important to schedule the work in an organized manner. | Ten to twelve weeks |
| Maintaining a proper balance between personal and professional life | Maintaining an appropriate balance between personal and professional life is immensely important as it encourages as well as motivates the staff members to perform more effectively and efficiently. Maintenance of a healthy balance between work and life is not just important for health as well as relations, but also improve the productivity of the employees. It can also help improve the emotional as well as physical health of an employee. | Managing work and providing adequate time to work as well as family in an efficient manner, to maintain a healthy balance. | Fourteen to fifteen weeks |
LO 2 Differences between organizational and individual learning, training, and development
There is a huge difference between organizational and the learning of an individual, along with training and development. This demonstrates that the learning processes are much nuanced in organizations. Learning appears to transcend industrial, national, organizational, group and individual levels but it is extremely dubious whether the individual strongly affects any of these learning levels.
The individuals learning in organizations is comparatively limited than that of learning individually. This is because most of the organizations have a limited method of educating or training the employees (Sarvaiya, Eweje and Arrowsmith 2018).
Examining, for example, how the learning practices of the employees are influenced by their chosen professional identity, and moreover, how they tackle internal challenges they face when they need to align learning-related personal as well as organizational goals, which would help in understanding the differences between both the learning methods (Wang and Lin 2018).
Taking Whirlpool Company into consideration, it can be said that the professional development plan is a bit different from that of the professional development plan. This is because organizations expect the employees to have a few necessary skills beforehand to perform better and give their best.
Moreover, another reason for the differences is that the organizations prefer hiring competent employees for their positions and shape them as per their goals and objectives. Most of the training, induction processes or educations provided within the Whirlpool Company are to enhance their level of performance (Wehrmeyer 2017).
They prefer providing them training on performance management to identify the gaps in their performances. However, if the personal development plan is considered, that is more related to develop one’s own shortfalls. A personal development plan mostly includes managing work, developing communication skills, decision-making skills, balancing personal and professional life, and also working in an organized manner (Zhu and Warner 2019).
Individual skills are the basis of what the employers hire them. The skills that are already developed by the employees are the ones they are expected to work upon. Moreover, employers also motivate or encourage them to perform better for the organization.
However, the human resource manager of Whirlpool Company is expected to chalk out certain strategies to help these individuals develop professionally. Professional development is seen as teamwork, where all the employees are equally trained by employers to develop their professional skills in the words of Ahmad (2015).
Quality management systems help workers perform effectively but the human resource managers are expected to automatically promote learning and training strategies to facilitate learning. However, they should not expect that these skills would lead to improved results immediately.
The professional development strategy is a method of helping the employees evolve professionally, however, it is a time-taking process. The employees should not be forced to perform under critical conditions (Albrecht et al. 2015).
This is where the human resource manager of Whirlpool Company should consider. The employees should be given time to get accustomed to the environment of work. It is not expected that an employee would start giving his/her best since the first day of his/her joining. Moreover, they should be motivated as well as encouraged by programs like rewarding or recognizing.
Additionally, their work should always be monitored and a performance management plan should be chalked out. There is room for improvement, which the manager of the company should always consider (Boxall 2014).
The performance of the employees can be measured in different ways like labour productivity, product or service quality, the financial performance of the company, turnover rates, absence rate of the employees, and the labour costs’ reduction. Individual learning, however, deals with personal growth, and managerial learning mainly copes with the changes within the organization, mainly due to the competing needs of the business environment (Bratton and Gold 2017).
Continuous learning and professional development
A well trained HR professional’s responsibility is very crucial to the company’s growth. The management of human resources requires various skill sets and knowledge. It helps the company to be one step ahead in recruiting the best in the market.
Professional recruitment is a competitive market in the words of Cullen et al. (2014). Moreover, Whirlpool needs to consider the factors mentioned below as the key competencies while managing its human resources. The key competencies are as follow:
Knowledge
In recent times, a job seeker has more knowledge about the market than the company. A well-trained HR professional should always look for the best available in the market. The professional should be prepared to meet the deserving candidates of the company with correct knowledge about the industry they are from. Understanding the individuals and their strengths and weaknesses is one of the main criteria for effective HR (De Clercq, Dimov and Belausteguigoitia, 2016).
Commitment to Learning
HR should be always committed to learning. It is one of the major factors of an HR professional. An HR professional should always engage its workforce with new schemes of learning. Constant learning helps in developing skills and provides a learning base for the employees as well as HR himself. The commitment towards constant learning helps the company to grow shortly (De Lange, Kooij and Van der Heijden 2015).
Communication
One of the primary functions of the HR professional is to learn effective and efficient communications. Communication is considered among the most important roles of HR. Human Resource managers should always be informed about the new trends in the market and also be able to communicate with the employees to create a better and positive workforce. Creating a positive and engaging workforce with the help of effective communication is the major role of the HR professional (Deery and Jago 2015).
Critical Thinking
Thinking critically is an important role of the HR professional. While performing his duties of recruitment and managing the workforce, critically thinking and critical strategy help the HR to smooth management. Managing the requirement of a large workforce of a technology giant such as Whirlpool, HR should do more than critical thinking.
He should be thinking critically while formulating the idea for implementation. While implementing, HR should always think about the growth of the company. An effective HR professional should always think about the growth scopes of the company rather than thinking about individual growth as per Dumont, Shen and Deng (2017).
LO 3 HPW’s contribution to employee engagement and competitive advantage
High-performance work can be referred to as an organization’s culture where there is transparency, trust as well as free communication flow for everyone. It emphasizes turning the organization’s conventional hierarchical organizational structure into a flattering environment that enables workers to express their opinions and issues, as the workers are considered the company’s assets. Whirlpool relies more on productivity and innovation for achieving a competitive market environment (Gunkel et al. 2015).
Thus, the organization manages its team members in accordance with the standards of the North American Region, since they assess employee success based on the five core parameters such as productive disputes, common business vision and exceptional objectives, clear communication, transparency for results, clear communication, solidarity, and mutual respect (Haddock-Millar, Sanyal and Müller-Camen 2016). Whirlpool must also follow the HPW activities outlined below;
Selective recruitment of employees
Whirlpool puts some effort into hiring its staff, and they pursue a lengthy process to pick the appropriate candidates from those in the list of applicants. It believes in hiring the applicant in terms of its educational career skills and behavioural competencies. Whirlpool needs to hire individuals with more efficient tasks and skills and therefore can contribute to organizational growth (Jamali, El Dirani and Harwood 2015).
A shared commitment to the company’s vision
Whirlpool also involves employees in the processes of decision-making as well as in the decision of company missions and visions to recognize every facet contributing to the company’s improvement. It also helps motivate and encourage employees, who develop confidence among themselves and generate a teamwork environment (Jiang et al. 2017).
Conflict resolution group or team
Whirlpool creates a group for conflict resolution that manages a company as well as its employees’ issues. This group hears the workforce’s problems or concerns during its operational activities and attempts to get rid of those issues as well as problems (Kopnina and Blewitt 2018). They also share results with employees that help to minimize disagreements or incomprehension within the workforce.
Flexible statements of job
Whirlpool needs to place more focus on building a community that has communication consistency so that workers have an understanding of whatever they need to achieve the desired outcome. If the employees have awareness of their assigned duties, they will be encouraged to accomplish the result more efficiently (Kramar 2014). Whirlpool can preserve the flexible working atmosphere so that activities can be carried out more efficiently for better results within defined time periods.
Fair payment structure
While wage is a responsive issue to be discussed, it is indeed something no one can prevent. Demonstrating to the workers how the salary system of the business functions is immensely important and what the employers are exactly looking for is to be mentioned when an employee needs a promotion (Longoni 2014). By becoming transparent and teaching the employees on these sensitive issues, staff members will better understand the policies of the company and work even harder to prove that they should get this promotion.
Cultural diversity
Cultural diversity would be when businesses are responsive to recruiting workers from all kinds of backgrounds; irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity and community. When firms recruit and maintain a diverse pool of talent, it brings various benefits for both the corporation and its employees. Therefore, it is important for Whirlpool to consider this policy while undertaking recruitment activities (Kopnina and Blewitt 2018).
Communication
Effective communication is considered to be a further contributing factor to employee engagement. If there is miscommunication between the employers and their staff, issues will often occur either within the project or the organization. It is important to seek to emphasize a daily team meeting as a vital part of the communication of the organization, and workers must be able to give their opinions on how to enhance contact between their divisions as well as within the business (Jiang et al. 2017).
LO 4 Different approaches to performance management
Performance management can be regarded as a continuous communication process between subordinates and supervisors to monitor performance as well as develop the ability to more efficiently and effectively perform operations. It also helps to measure development, set goals and provide input for the company’s performance. Performance management helps firms perform better and keep ahead of the group.
It essentially involves recording, tracking and reporting progress to improve performance, both at the corporate and individual levels (Haddock-Millar, Sanyal and Müller-Camen 2016). There are many performance enhancement methods and tools that Whirlpool Company’s human resource management team can employ to outsource and contribute to making the process more efficient.
Performance Appraisals
Performance evaluations are perhaps the most commonly used performance evaluation tool. When adequately used, performance assessments are incredibly efficient in aligning people’s expectations along with the strategic objectives of the organization. To get the most out of this system, however, staff needs to trust that the evaluation procedure is a natural, frank, fair, and constructive two-way conversation (Gunkel et al. 2015).
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Key Performance Indicators, as well as metrics, provide a means to assess how well organizations, programs, groups of business, or individuals perform with regard to strategic aims and objectives. The main benefit of KPIs as well as metrics, however, is not measurement per se, however, enabling rich data-driven successful conversations or effective decision-making (Bratton and Gold 2017). Whirlpool’s training provider HR may follow this strategy to consider the performance of employees.
Reward and Recognition
When employees feel that excellent work goes unacknowledged or uncompensated, morale breaks down and individuals withdraw from the firm’s entire intent. Hence, recognition and reward programs are deemed an integral part of any extensive performance management process and provide a method for identifying those who may be successful performers or workers.
This means offering financial rewards for many businesses, such as bonuses, compensations, or incentives, but simple recognition and acknowledgement of some well-done job are equally important in order to maintain the reputation or sustained high results according to Abuazoom, Hanafi and Ahmad (2019).
360 Degree Feedback
This tool addresses the issue of how efficiently the organization’s employees work or perform. It provides a comprehensive assessment of individuals’ success depends on the views of those across them, including their boss or supervisor, colleagues, customers, suppliers, direct subordinates, and others. The human resource officer must collect the findings as well as show them privately to the employee (Cullen et al. 2014).
Real-world Examples of managing organizational performance
Google is a trendsetter and its technique of performance management is emphasized upon data as well as analysis and making sure that its management is well educated.
When reviewing their program of performance management, the organization introduced a project devoted to reviewing or assessing their managers that have culminated in rigorous training as well as a potential advancement process that guides managers, and therefore workers, to success. They do utilize a target-setting technique that has been fixed on through many industries. They redefine the goal-setting scheme utilizing their goals as well as the Main Outcomes (OKRs) method, with brilliant results.
Another technology trendsetter, Facebook does have a method of performance improvement that puts great importance on peer-to-peer reviews. They are encouraged to use the input in semi-annual evaluations to see whether teams work and appreciate where teamwork is occurring and where it is missing. They have also established an internal application to provide permanent and real-time reviews. That lets workers fix concerns before they get into trouble.
Adobe estimated that the organizational managers spend around 80,000 hours a year for performance evaluations, only to have workers complain demoralizing those evaluations and as a result, turnover increased. Seeing a program that only yielded negative outcomes,
Adobe’s organizational leadership team took a bold move into a performance appraisal system that started by educating managers about how to execute more regular check-ins as well as give actionable feedback, then the organization gave management the flexibility they required to lead effectively.
Management was provided with much more liberty in how their check-ins, as well as employee reviews sessions, was structured, and more discretion in the payment structure, wages, and promotions. Workers are also approached for ‘pulse surveys’, which is a method for the team of leaders to ensure their teams, are well managed by individual managers.
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