Inductions and Orientations

People Management - Helping your people work for you!

Inductions and Orientations

In our last article, we discussed the first of the four part People Management Planning and Delivery strategy. This article moves us on to the socializing the new employees we have attracted and recruited into our firm.

Induction or as the Americans, and increasingly the Ghanaian, call it Orientation has the purpose of socialising the new employee into the firm, moving them into peak performance quickly and contribute to the provision of safe working environment.

How does it support the socialising of employees into the firm? An appropriate induction programme should provide new employees with detail information on the organisations culture and style. How can this be done? Traditionally, organisations put new employees in a class and tell them about the organisations history, triumphs, failures, organogram, strategic plans and general sense of directions. In some firms, managers will ‘teach’ new employees the carefully written culture that management is trying hard to instill. This is approach is used by culture expert as a way of embedding new organisational cultures. I think they are less successful because people need their learning to be re-enforced and as the actual culture is usually different, people ignore what they have been thought.

I think a much more useful approach is a mix of lectures by senior leadership team on strategic direction and the firm’s history talking about some of its triumphs and failures. The organogram should be by provision of the structure and small information on a document for reading by each new employee. The values, mission and culture should be a discussed so that these could be impressed on the minds of new employees of their practical application and impact. Of course, other important but detail information such as HR policies may be discussed and left for employees to read on an ongoing basis.

In socialising new employees, what I have found useful is buddy system. Firms can train some employees to act buddies for new employees who come to their areas of work. These employees are trained to support the new colleagues in areas of organisational structures, how things work, share their network with them and provide information on where to find general information, items such as stationery and support.

Another objective of an effective induction will be to move the new employee to peak performance quickly. How do you do this? As part of the induction, the employee should be given information on their role that clarifies the purpose, the expectations, success measures, detail and mechanism for ongoing support. 

The probation period, if there is one, is an essential part of the induction. In this period, there should be an explanation of the role requirement, management/monitoring style, and all that will make the role clear. If any learning needs were identified during the recruitment, these should be addressed. I cannot over emphasise the benefit for managers if they are clear on their expectations, provide detail understanding of the strategic directions and share their network of people who are able to help their new team members with new employees.

Managers must ensure that all the tools and equipment needed by the new employees to effectively achieve the agreed expectation of the role are provided and are available even before the employee starts. This is an essential consideration as managers cannot expect performance from employees who are working with inappropriate tools. Effective induction will provide a checklist for managers that guide their activities from end of recruitment to the end of probation of a new employee.

Another purpose of an induction is to support the firm’s legal obligation of providing a safe working place. Depending on your sector and country, certain training programmes are mandatory before a new team member can work for you. This is particularly evident in the mining and other industries. However, in all work places you can use your induction to ensure that your employees have the basics such as where to assemble in case of fire, how to evacuate, how to protect themselves and colleagues. The important thing here is that the induction is tailored to your industry.

A short plan may look like this:

Part one –     lectures on strategic plans, history,

Regularising the recruitment through HR admin processes – contract of employment, provision of copies of policies and other information 

      

Part two –     a workshop on culture, values, missions and others

Part three – Line Manager discussion of the job purpose, support and expectations.

Provision of all the necessary tools and equipment for doing the job even before employee arrives.

Buddy who will help on general access to information, Q&A

These are the basic and generic objectives of every induction; just the fundamentals. Further considerations are required that take into consideration the firms strategic considerations.

Designing your induction is much more than achieving the above for your firm. Your strategic objective affects your options in achieving the above. Like we described in our Attraction and Recruitment Plan, how we intend to achieve our competitive advantage influences that approach to socialising new employees.

The induction process has a cost: the venue, the materials, and the amount of time it takes. The items covered and by whom also have to be consistent with our corporate strategic objectives, culture and values.

As a result, the induction for supermarket cashiers may be about a day long whilst that for programme managers at engineering firm may be more than a week. This is actually the case in two local examples. Shoprite supermarket has a one day induction for their shop floor staff whilst Cummins GH Ltd has a five-day induction programme for its programme managers.

Generally, all employees need to efficiently have their employment regularised through the HR and payroll administrative processes.  However, knowledge workers will need more time and detail information on the strategic mission, vision, and managers need to spend more time with these employees to ensure that the expectations are clear of both sides.

For manual workers, employees at factories or in firms where the job is fairly monotonous and well directed, they may be able to achieve the objective with shorter induction.  

Attraction and Recruitment

Short People Management Articles

Attraction and Recruitment 

We have already established that all organisations desiring of success and longevity should have a People Plan. This plan could be derived from your business plan; be your business plan or determines your business plan depending on your approach and school of thought on people management.  

The three approaches to people planning

    

Business plan      People Plan	Business Plan         People Plans	People Plan     Business Plan
Business plan is superior to people plan and the people plan is for delivering the outcomes of the business plan	Business plan is the same as people plan and usually are in the same document	People plan determines the business plans. This approach is particularly useful where people are the organisation’s source of competitive advantage.

Business plan is superior to people plan and the people plan is for delivering the outcomes of the business plan Business plan is the same as people plan and usually are in the same document People plan determines the business plans. This approach is particularly useful where people are the organisation’s source of competitive advantage.

Each of these approaches could be right depending on the organisation, industry and other contextual information. However, the most important thing is that you have a people plan that is based on quality analysis of information and research.  One part of this plan should be your tactical plans for attracting and recruiting the appropriate talent for your industry. Take note that I used the phrase ‘appropriate talent’. Others may use best, but in any case, what is important is that your tactical plan fits you industry, organisation and competitive strategy.

Attracting and recruiting

Once your People Plan has defined your prime objectives clearly, think through how you can achieve these objectives and write them down. Your objective as set out in your people plan may be to increase profitability by 25% through increasing staff capability across the organisation. Ensure that your objectives are defined in measurable way so you are forced to define your actions more clearly.

Your attraction plan answers this simple question: what do we need to do to achieve our objectives? There are many ways that organization can attract and recruit; but which of these ways will affect profitability by 25% margin with an agreed time? When GE had a corporate objective of being either number one or number two in all of its markets, it had to develop a complimentary plan which would be different from other organisations looking for pure profitability. GE’s focus was on market share and it hoped that profitability will follow. Organisations that seek out pure profits will definitely have different tactical plans.

As in the first organisation with 25% profitability target, the attraction and recruitment plan will rely on:

• Cheap attraction method

• Lower levels of qualifications

• Lower levels of experience and remuneration

Such a recruitment method has to allow for reduction in cost. The organisations will usually use an internal recruitment team for this purpose; design an easy to use template that reduces administrative burden and cause some of the assessments to be completed online for ease of automation and cost reduction. In extreme case, some even use software to do the sifting. Such organisations may set up permanent recruitment desk, webpage and so forth as they understand the impact of such strategy on labor turn over. It may have further implication for upstream HR activities such as learning and development (we will consider this when we get there in a subsequent article)

Example of attraction and recruitment plan for cost reduction and profitability seeking organisations

Overall

• Internal recruitment

• Simple application and assessment process

Attraction

• Attraction through team member recommendations, 

• Permanent internet page, 

• Banner on company webpage, and 

• Occasional adverts in print media when vacancies are higher

Assessment

• Online short assessment usually on attitude than competence

• Automated and administered electronically

• Interview used to confirm the assessment

Consideration 

• Training requirement will be high for such strategy

• Labour turnover will be high

• Time for learning the job should be reduced to allow employee to be able to deliver as soon as they start.

• Job specialization becomes a must 

• Jobs must be broken down into smaller units for ease of training and specialization  

These and other impacts of such strategy can lead to lack of job satisfaction, engagement and a viscous cycle of labour turn over. However, as far as managers understand the impact of the decisions they make, these can be mitigated for.

On the other hand, an organisation that seeking to be either the first or with the first in all of its markets or offering a product /service where it competitive advantage comes from it people needs to have a different attraction and recruitment strategy.

In such organisation, the main source of competitive advantage comes from the people. Such an organisation cannot afford to have people troop in and out of its doors for obvious reasons. Organisational knowledge lost through the resignation of an employee cannot be over emphasised. 

The attraction and recruitment strategy of such firm will and should be different. Such organisation should be looking to recruit the best talent across the industry, attracting known high performers and best potentials from various sources.

 

Overall

• Develop detail competencies for success in the industry

• Understand the personality as well as the attitudinal traits for success through research and analysis

• Provide a mix of Internal and external recruitment procedures. The initial search can be sub-contracted out to professional recruiters to increase the number of applicants. Part of the assessment such as the psychometric and aptitude test can also be sub-contracted to occupational psychologist qualified and able to complete them professionally. However, the external experts should be supervised and at no point should they make the final decision on recruitment. Internal staff should take all these assessment results into account and interview applicants for their fits and competency before making the decision

• Application and assessment process are usually complex with several stages 

Attraction

• Attraction through team member recommendation, 

• Job specific advert on the careers page of company website, 

• Banner on company webpage, and 

• Adverts in print media 

• Headhunting and executive search team

• Industry and professional journals

• Professional recruiters

Assessment

• Various levels of assessments testing competency, aptitude and personality

• Administered electronically and also in person

• Could be several stage  of interviews

Consideration 

• The applicant who usually succeeds after such process requires little training apart from organisation specific skills

• Implications for upstream HR activities should be increased responsibility, further development, appropriate remunerations, engagement and so forth

• Employee recruitment cost increases, but if they are retained and deliver on the value promised, then that will more than make up for the increased recruitment cost.

What I have given here are examples of the two extreme situations. What may be appropriate for an organisation could be a combination of certain aspects. What is important is that the decisions and choices you make should be appropriate for your organisations, based on research and analysis.

The final part of any plan is to have your measures, determine the base line figures, implement, review and amend in a cycle. Please see the diagram below.

Short People Management Articles

The articles will be very simple and easy to read. I belief excellent ideas should be very simple to explain, to understand and to implement.

People management success starts with having appropriate, easy to understand and implement People Management Plan. This plan should be based on your External Analysis (Environmental Context) and Internal Analysis (Business Strategy, People Strategy, Culture and History).

You People plan is a series of decision you make in these four areas to achieve People Strategy:

• Recruitment and attraction
• Induction and socialisation of new employees
• Working policies 
• Managing employee exits  

The articles will comprise

• The External Analysis
• The Internal Analysis
• People Plan
• Implementation
• Monitoring
• Evaluation
• Review and Amendment

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Stress training; an investment?

Stress has become integral part of our modern workplace as we lose the more social and informal work setting to western corporate structures. Traditional roles such as farming may have being more physically demanding, but they allowed for social interactions and individual control of one’s own work, which research indicates reduces stress.

Today, the corporate working environment is definitely less social, more antagonistic and competitive, leading to higher levels of stress. Whilst different work places have different characteristics, stressors have increased in the Ghanaian work environment. Research among university lecturers indicates that the essential causes of stress are clearly linked to work approach in the modern workplace. It also showed that more individualistic approach, loss of control over one’s own work, excessive focus on workload over anything else and competition for senior roles can easily lead to bullying, harassment or a blame culture, which all cause stress.

To determine whether stress training is a [valuable] investment is to identify what is the impact of stress on workplace performance? Job performance is the result of three factors working together: skill, effort and the nature of work conditions. Stress can have negative consequences on performance by affecting all three factors. Stress affects your employees’ competency by reducing their cognitive abilities through anxiety whilst also affecting their physical and emotional wellbeing. The mental ability of employees is affected by poor concentration and decision making abilities; also caused by excessive stress.

In a research on medical trainees, the documented consequences of stress included: alcohol and drug abuse, interpersonal relationship difficulties, depression, anxiety, and suicide. Other studies have also shown stress can be detrimental to professional’s academic achievement and effectiveness in work situations by decreasing attention span, concentration, decision-making skills, and ability to establish productive working relationships.

In addition to affecting psychological and emotional well being, stress can also result in a decrease in physical health, such as the development of hypertension, heart disease, and immune deficiency disorders. The results of the study above indicate that there is a negative relationship between job stress and job performance.

All the conditions as result of stress discussed will affect employees’ energy and the maximum effort they can put forth. Stress can also negatively impact the work environment as it affects the emotional wellbeing and employees’ ability to establish productive working relationship.

Are you emotionally intelligent enough?

Until fairly recent, most discussions on intelligence focused on aspects such as memory –the ability to recall information, problem solving and ability to process ideas, grasp concepts and manage in a variety of forms. These kinds of intelligence are broadly measured by Intelligent Quotient (IQ) tests and are the so-called cognitive intelligence.

However, current research has identified many other kinds of intelligence beyond the IQ, and emotional intelligence (EI) has gained significance especially since the 1980s. In an article for the Harvard Business Review, Daniel Goleman asserted that whilst cognitive intelligence and purely technical skills are threshold capabilities (entry level skills), emotional intelligence is the unique sine qua non for above average effectiveness and performance (Goleman 1998).

What makes emotional intelligence much more superior in determining an employee’s effectiveness and performances? The answer seems intuitively simple: emotionally intelligent or matured employees are more aware and in control of their emotions and those of the people around them! As a result, they are likely to:

·         Be more productive and successful

·         Feel less stressed

·         Have better relationship with their customers, colleagues and bosses

·         Take less time off due to sickness

·         Feel more satisfied with their work

Another reason lies in the sequence of the evolutionary process of the brain and its parts. In the brain’s evolution, the:

·         Emotional parts evolved long before the thinking part of the brain

·         Emotional memory is much more associative and imprecise

·         Emotional responses are processed faster than higher order thinking

·         Emotional responses override higher order thinking

How does EI contribute to superior performance? The researchers tell a persuasive story about the link between a company’s success and emotional intelligence of its staff.  It is only by looking at the component parts of EI critically do we see how it influences an employee’s behavior.  These are:

·         Self-awareness – ability to recognize and understand your own emotions, mood and drives, as well as their effects on you

·         Self-regulation – ability to control and redirects disruptive impulses. The propensity to suspend judgment – to think before judgment

·         Motivation – a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence

·         Empathy – the ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people

·         Social Skills – ability to find common grounds and build rapport

These components work together; people who are Self-aware recognize their emotional tendencies and understand their triggers. They are therefore able to recognize situations likely to lead them in to disruptive impulses in their behaviors or actions. They would then use the Self-regulation to either remove themselves from that situation or to control the disruptive impulse. The Motivation, the drive to achieve beyond all expectations, provides the motive for developing self-awareness and regulating oneself in the first place.

The first three components of EI are all self-management skills. The last two, Empathy and Social Skill, concern a person’s ability to manage relationships with others.  Empathy, the most recognizable of all of the components is the ability to thoughtfully consider others feelings – along with other factors – in the process of making decision. Social Skill is not as simple as it sounds. It is not just a matter of friendliness, but friendliness with a purpose. It is about moving people in a direction you desire for the benefit of all.

High emotional intelligent managers are able to control their emotions in the face of disruptive or angry customer behavior seeking thoughtful resolution and avoiding possible loss of customers and revenue.

  And just as important, research indicates that people can develop emotional intelligence if they take the right approach. One thing is certain, emotional intelligence increases with age /maturity. Yet, even with maturity, some people still need training to enhance their emotional intelligence. For training on emotional intelligence and any other attitudinal issue to be successful, it has to focus largely on the neurotransmitters of the brain’s limbic systems, which governs feelings, impulses and drives. Research indicates that the limbic system learns best through motivation, extended practice, and feedback, which is different from the neocortex, which grasps concepts and logic through reading or experimentation.

A person who may want to improve his/her empathy will need to find the sources of motivation. This may be through self-discovery – becoming aware that he lacks empathy and that it interferes with his ability to read people’s reaction and see their perspectives. To receive regular and consistent feedback,  he may ask a trusted colleague to shadow him for part of his day observing how he deals with people especially those with different opinion. He may also ask his colleagues to remind him if they find him not listening to them, talking over them and remind him of his quest to gain more empathy. He will need to continue to use his work and family situations to practice listening, hearing and considering the opinions of others of different perspectives.  The feedback from the trusted colleague when shadowing him and other colleagues when dealing with him will provide continual re-enforcement.

Developing EI will not happen without concerted effort and a sincere desire. A brief seminar won’t help nor will a how to manual.  It is much harder to internalize any of the EI components as a natural response to people than to become adept at regression analysis. But, it can be done. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”. If your goal is to become a star performer, then you have little option but to develop high emotional intelligence.

Task orientation or relationship orientation

Question from a reader

"For the groups I have been managing so far, we have usually decided upon a minimum level of skills for each task within the project or department. If the person is able to develop the skills in a reasonable amount of time to an adequate level to complete the specific tasks then everything is "ok". The person stays and the manager can also benefit from this persons strengths. If a person is not able to develop skills in a reasonable amount of time then effort is sometimes made to find a better place in the organization for this individual.

The procedure could be slightly different between different managers and project leaders on how they handle these kinds of issues. However low performance is also rewarded with low salaries and the opposite for good performances.How do balance task orientation with relationship orientation?"


My thoughts:

I find your take and personal experience interesting. You came across in your comments as relationship oriented to me because most tasks oriented managers may not even have the time or patience to help some one retrain or find them alternative roles within the company. What do you do when there are no alternative roles within your organisation for the person's strengths? I think unless the job for which the person was recruited for has fundamentally changed, then usually this is a case of poor recruitment.

In my experience and within that my circle of friends, I find that most managers at their early introduction into management are very much task oriented; working hard to a make a mark. A few keep this moment into later careers and remain taskmasters. Majority, however, hit a brick wall of rebellious employees and soon learn that the best way to get best performance is through the application of some of the relationship oriented approaches. However, they may swing too far down this side failing to provide structure and, failing to implement any of the task-related activities. Eventually, as they mature professionally, they realise that they need to combine both sets of orientations to be successful. When we learn to balance our need for achievement/task completion with empathy and care for our team members, then I think we have hit the holy grail of Leadership. I think getting the job done is the priority but your people need to feel satisfied when the job is done.

I work hard to identify the strengths, weaknesses and the attitudes of my team as it helps me get the best out of everyone. I find that performance/strengths are not scientifically measured (I am not saying they should be as some roles do not lend themselves to this form of measurement) and are usually other peoples' opinion. I also find that people's attitude and personality traits affect their performance significantly. As an example, it is often said that someone is poor at presentation when the actual problem is lack of confidence and self belief. I had a team member who seemed to have moments of excellence but usually a mediocre performance. Without any training, his performance shot up when he received some confidence coaching. I always advise managers to look into the person (attitude, values, beliefs) when assessing strengths and weaknesses

Just do it!

Hey,

These words sounded interesting when I head them

Are you doing right now?