Acting Human

In consideration of the increasing globalization the mobility of employees seems to more important than ever. In Europe around 60% of the company’s record stays abroad. Very common are single-status-postings where employees are send abroad without their family for a special amount of time. Even the number of women who work a while abroad is increasing in Europe.

A company who sends its employees abroad should consider a couple of points. First of all there is the question about the costs. Sending an employee in a foreign country means normally around one and a half up to four times more costs for a company compared to the hiring of a local worker. Especially if an employee takes his/her family abroad the costs can increase quite fast: apartment or house, costs for education, special payments and so on.

A company also must be clear about the ROI (Return of investment) for the deployment abroad. There are different factors of success which can be considered: will there be an increase of returns, is it meaningful to build up a base of high qualified managers, how important is a global corporate culture and competence, does the deployment abroad fit together with the expectations of the employee, will there be a development of local competences and will there be an increase of the market share in the destination country.

The main problem companies have is the re-integration of employees who worked abroad. The re-integration including better job perspectives and a job guarantee are the main aspects. Furthermore a company must know that the returnees might suffer a cultural shock especially in the beginning. The loose of an employee with experience abroad might be very pricey in the end. Eventually the employee ends up at the competitor.

Of course the Human Resource Department needs to take care of most of these aspects. It’s important to figure out if the deployment abroad fits the expectations of an employee, to talk about the leaving, problems which might occur and also the return. The employee should get an idea what he/she can expect when he/she returns. And as said also the re-integration is important because time can change many things in the end.

The term “work-life-balance” describes the balanced relation between job and personal life. The work-life-balance should be important to companies because if the balance is not right it influences the work of an employee.

Concerning the job an employee needs to feel comfortable at his/her working space. The job itself should bring fun and challenging without being always just stressful. Also a good relationship to other employees and superiors are important. Mainly the factors of job satisfaction are playing an important rule.

If the personal life offers support to someone and also the family supports an employee it is easier to cope with stress at the workplace. This includes that people with problems at home won’t be very effcient on the long term in the job. Some people think if one area of life works out well the other one will follow somehow. But people with family and job know that this normally isn’t true. Every area of life needs its tributes and you have to set the right priorities. Because after all you’ll figure that time is a rare good.

For a good work-life-balance the employee itself probably needs to put up with a less income. Other possibilities to reach a good balance are part time jobs, time outs, downshifting and a high level of flexibility from both sides - the employees and the company.
An employee should try to consider a couple of points to reach an optimal work-life-balance. As said he needs to know and to accept stressful times in the job. Afterwards there should be more time for himself/ herself and the family again. This knowledge also applies the other way around. On normal working days whereas it is advisable to go home early enough to spend the evening with the family. Also meeting friends regulary is important. Furthermore it might be helpful to make meetings for yourself where you take the time to do things you like to do.

The employee also should be confidient with his/her own goals and values. Regular time outs are helpful for that to figure out where you stand and which step you need to take next. Always review what you already reached, where problems occured, which steps to take next, what are the longterm and shortterm goals which are also realistic for your own situation and so on.

Other simple things to take care of in the daily routine is to eat something for the meals and to take enough time for them. Regular breaks and small walks at the air make the head clearer and can give new impulses. Also small excercises help to find a good balance: get of the metro station one station earlier and walk the rest or go by bike to the work, don’t take the elevator, get up once a while from your seat and walk around or stretch yourself.

After all also your health is important. If an employee feels fit and strong enough to its way then he can go his way and reach an optimal work-life-balance.

Nowadays it is the custom that employees have to do unpaid overtime hours. One of the main reasons for it is the fear of losing the job. Of course there are plenty of companies which pay the overtime or at least other benefits such as compensatory time off.

But not only the missing payment for overtime hours are a problem for employees. Also emotional stress lets the work results suffer. An unmotivated employee doesn’t perform the same like a motivated does.

Unpaid overtime and the resulting stress from it can be seen associated with each other. If an employee regularly needs to work overtime and doesn’t get it paid, the company especially the human resource department needs to figure out what the causes are.

One main reason might be the fear of losing the job if everybody else also works so long. Another reason might lie within the fact the worker is just slower thn others. Then it is normally up to him to catch up with his work. Here the human resource department should check out if the worker is just slow or his work load is too high for one person and for that he cannot meet his goals.

Upcoming overtime might also depend on the economic situation. If employees need to work longer because of a positive economic situation it should be natural that the company takes care of a fair compensation. That might by individual from company to company. For some companies the paying of the overtime might be useful while for companies with seasonal products the compensatory time off might be more useful. On the other side it also depends on the personal situation of an employee: does he has family and needs extra money or extra time, is it a single person who wants some extra time for traveling or is he more interested in spending his money in new goods and so on.

After all overtime means more stress for an employee especially emotional. After all it is a loss of his free time which every person needs to regenerate to get new motivation, to relax, to be creative again and so on. Overtime normally means stress. Stress because the work is not and the boss might get angry about it. Stress because the employees are afraid of their job every day and cannot take care of the family and pay the bills. And stress again leads to mistakes and a poor job performance what probably shouldn’t be in the interest of any company after all.

The main way of posting job advertisements used to be in newspapers. But nowadays the internet offers new possibilities for gaining new employees. Meanwhile job portals are getting more important than the classical newspaper job advertisement.

But why are job advertisements in newspaper are still so successful? Newspapers reach another target group than the internet. A printed job advertisement might reach people who are actually not looking for a new job. The advertisement reaches the attention of the reader who might be interested in it. That explains in turn the costs of insert an job advertisement.

Job advertisements in the internet however reach another special target group. Job portals are normally visited by people who actively search for a new job. For a company it means that they might miss to reach an important target group. But looking on the financial site the posting of a job is much cheaper. Furthermore online job advertisements contain much more information. A printed one needs to be reduced to the most important facts. Online however a company can provide a huge amount of information. Simple by adding a company link the interested person can gain much more information about the company.

More information can be an advantage or disadvantage. On one site interested parties can win plenty of information to see if the company fits their interests and provides a wished working atmosphere. On the other site it might lead to the fact that interested parties are overwhelmed by the amount of information and doesn’t want to apply anymore. That might mean the loose of a potential employee for the company.

After all a company needs to figure out their own needs and then decide which way might lead to the wished result. Other ways might also be relevant like announcing a job in the radio or just winning new employees through the word-of-mouth effect. Especially the last opportunity might be quite efficient in regard to costs and the wished result.

An efficient intern communication process is important for a good performance of the company. Further it allows a better job satisfaction for the employees. Advanced technology has brought new possibilities of intern corporate communication. But also the classic way have their advantages. Within this post I summarize the different possibilities for the intern communication process as well as their advantages, and respectively their disadvantages.

Intranet

The Intranet is basically a network where the employees of an organization can share information or operations securely. It is restricted to the employees of an organization and requires a special authentication. The Intranet might also only be the company’s own internal website. Normally it can only be accessed by the employees during their working hours.

Sort of a variation is the so called VPNs (virtual private networks). Here the organization provides an access through a gateway with a firewall, along with user authentication and encryption of messages. The advantage here clearly lies within the fact that off-site employees also have access to the company information, their computing resources and internal communications.

Intranets mainly shall increase and advance the productivity of a company. They can give employees an easy access to needed tools and applications e.g. corporate directories, CRM tools, sales tools, space for collaboration and project management and so on. Mainly the thought that the employees can discuss and exchange each other is interesting for companies because through internal forums new ideas might turn out. Different points of view can lead e.g. to a better a service or a new product.

Circular

In the origin a circular was a paper document which had been send out on the postal way to the addressees in multiples copies. Nowadays the advanced technology enables a company to send the circular around via the electronically way as an internal Newsletter.

On this way multiple persons receive the sent information. The disadvantage lies within the fact that the addressees cannot really discuss about the information because they are more of a given fact or final decision. Even in a form of a newsletter the main aim consist on broadcasting relevant and updated information concerning the company.

Bulletin board

The bulletin board provides people the possibility to leave messages and provide information comparable with newspaper advertisements. The messages might consits of advertisements for buying or selling things, announcement for events or free positions, renting apartments. It also can be used as for retention and passing on of thoughts and notes.

Especially the exchange of thoughts and notes is a nice old fashioned way of communicated with each other even if there is no direct contact. But the visualization of different things on the bulletin board might turn into new ideas. The bulletin board also allows that people from different sections get into contact.

This communication tool is not eligible for providing deeper information. Also the bulletin board probably won’t reach every employee in the company because people need to grab the information from there on their own. So it is not recommendable for important information.

Internal communications through employee magazines

Internal magazines or periodicals focus both active and passive employees of an organization or company. It’s also known as Corporate Publishing.

The aim of such magazines or periodicals consist in the information brokerage. Normally the department for Public Relations is responsible for it. The publication of such print articles serves as information source for other employees. It also represents as a connection between the employees and the management.

The content may diversify and includes relevant information of the company, explains decisions of the management and makes them transparent, contains free positions, possibilities for advanced trainings, farewells, and so on.

Weblogs

A weblog can be described as a Website which is permanantly updated with new entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Blogs allow it to leave comments and therefore can be seen as an interactive platform. The articles written appear in a reverse chronicle order so that the newest entry is always on top of the first page.

There are mainly two options how a blog can be integrated into a company or organization. The first option consist in a corporate blog written by mainly one person like the pr responsible like for marketing purposes. The second options would be that the blog is maintained as an employee blog. In that case different employees use the blog as a platform to write about their experiences and thoughts in the company.

The use of a blog can enhance the communication and culture of a company. There are also external effects as already adumbrate. It is good for public relations, marketing purposes as well as branding.

The problem here is that most employees won’t be open to blog. It’s not only a matter of time to do that. Most employees probably are just not open to give out sort of personal details especially since everybody out there might read it. There might also be sort of fear that they write something wrong and the management is not open enough for that. So a weblog written by employees might not reflect their true thoughts.

Information meeting of the management

This form of internal communication only concerns the management itself and not the interaction with the employees. But after all it is also needed. A regular information meeting of the management is helpful to figure out where the company stands, if goals where reaches, which problems need to be solved, and so on. The management normally has to discuss a lot of points always with the welfare of every employee in their mind.

After all a company or organization needs to find the right tools for an optimal internal communication. There just shouldn’t be an information overload because that probably would just lead to a resignation through the employee. So the right mix is important. In a company where the employees mostly work with the PC the electronicaly way probably might be the best way to spread information. But on the other hand classical ways like a magazine might be a nice change.

Once a while companies have to deal with travel expense reports handed in by their staff. Travel expenses are costs which arise during business travels. Depending on the duration they differ in the extent. The travel expenses also include such things like costs for meals, hotels, admissions for business relevant exhibitions and similar ad hoc expenditures.

Clearly there must be distinguished between travel expenses and the private ones. Sometimes it happens that an employee decides on staying longer and uses a trip for private purpose. That is his right as long as he neither doesn’t harm the business of a company in anyway nor uses company’s money for his private business.

Mainly there are two different ways a company can handle travel expenses. The first one consists in that the employee collects all bills from his business trips and cedes them to the responsible person in the company afterwards. The company may then refunds or reimburses the incurred costs. An itemized list is also helpful in that case because it gives the responsible person (normally the HR Manager) the possibility to compare the costs. On that way the company can avoid that it pays too much.

The second possibility is to provide the employee a budget which allows him to cover his costs. This opportunity is also known as pay a per diem, pay per day or day money.  The budget then covers all needed travel expenses even so the traveler can choose a more expensive hotel or flight and pay the additional costs on his own. Here, too, an itemized list can be helpful.

The longer a company is in business there more experience it will get on how much the travel expenses are to different locations. Doing business with mainly the same clients helps also to get a good overview about costs incurred. That doesn’t mean that travel expenses will always stay on the same level. Special factors have also to be considered like economic ones. So might e.g. the price increase of oil lead to higher travel expenses because of the increase of prices for airline tickets.

Nowadays the accounting of travel expenses is much easier with the help of PCs. There are Excel Sheets and free programs available as well as professional business solutions. Depending on the size of the company and the amount of business trips made in a year - every company needs to find their best solution for handling travel expenses and reports.

The other day I tripped over the term “Lean Manufacturing”. The principles sounded interesting to me especially since they seemed to be contemporary. Before having a closer look to the human site of that it is need to know what the term means and where it comes from.

Lean Manufacturing originates from the Japanese automotive manufacturer Toyota. The method was developed in the middle of the 20th century. The aim of the Toyota Production System (TPS) consisted in the creation of a stable process organization which forms the base of the reached quality level of their products. Toyota describes it as follows:

A production system that is steeped in the philosophy of the complete elimination of all waste and that imbues all aspects of production with this philosophy in pursuit of the most efficient production method.

The term was first used by Professor James P. Womack and consultant Daniel T. Jones. They spent years analyzing the success of Japanese companies. Nowadays the lean principles are used in all division like lean production, lean administration or lean maintance. The most usable definition which covers probably the best way the different use of the term “Lean Manufacturing” is the following (Source):

(Lean Manufacturing) is a manufacturing phenomenon that seeks to “maximize the work effort of a company’s number one resource, the People.” Lean is therefore “a way of thinking” to adapt to change, eliminate waste, and continuously improve. There are a number of tools and techniques, to be used in concert, to achieve maximizing the effort of the workforce and to operate as a “lean” company

For reaching those targets it is necessary to eliminate redundant activities and adjust the value added chain in an optimal way. On the one site the needs, wants and wishes of the consuments need to be considered like quality, price, availability and individuality. On the other site the company has to realize that to act profitable and keep its competitiveness on its market. That means that the base for the companies work forms the customer preference with processes orientated towards the customer and with a high efficiency.

For reaching all that the company needs adequate process definitions, descriptions of the cut surfaces, clear responsibilities, and timely reactions on errors, simple organization methods and stable processes.

The question now is what that means for the Human Resources? The targets only can be met when the stuff is embraced early in the conception and realization. The sensitisation of the stuff for errors are important with the aim of motivate them and integrate the knowledge of every single worker.

But for reaching a sensitisation of the stuff it is first necessary that it stands behind the company and its philosophy. If a worker doesn’t share the company’s views he probably doesn’t care of possible errors which might occur. Or he might not be aware of the needs of a client. After all he might not stand in the “full service” of the company. Also the motivation will be hard then.

Further it might be hard for a worker to distinguish problems. Even if there are guidelines, the human acting might differ from it out of his known routine. For him other things might occur right and he probably will act in his way according to the guideline.

So after all it is important for the company to win the stuff for what it does. This also includes reaching a maximum of job satisfaction not only through money.

The job satisfaction is one of the main tasks of the Human Resource Management. Actions taken by the HR department are aimed to reach an optimum of job satisfaction. The background lies within the goal of reaching a sustainable and increased company management.

Nowadays one of the central theories for the job satisfaction is the “Two Factor Theory” of Frederick Herzberg.

The Two Factor Theory distinguishes between (Source):

1. the Hygiene factors which are needed to ensure an employee does not become dissatisfied. They do not lead to higher levels of motivation, but without them there is dissatisfaction.
2. and the Motivation factors which are needed in order to motivate an employee into higher performance. These factors result from internal generators in employees.

Typical hygiene factors are such as job security, salary, company, status, working conditions, job, quality of supervision, company policies and administration and interpersonal relations.

Typical motivation factors are achievement, recognition for achievement, responsibility for task, interest in the job, advancement to higher level tasks and growth

The combination of the two factors results into four possible scenarios:

1. High Hygiene and High Motivation: The ideal situation where employees are highly motivated and have few complaints.
2. High Hygiene and Low Motivation: Employees have few complaints but are not highly motivated. The job is perceived as a paycheck.
3. Low Hygiene and High Motivation: Employees are motivated but have a lot of complaints. A situation where the job is exciting and challenging but salaries and work conditions are not up to par.
4. Low Hygiene and Low Motivation: The worst situation. Unmotivated employees with lots of complaints.

The criticism of the Herzberg theory lies within the fact that it neither doesn’t say anything how to measure hygiene and motivation factors not does it distinguish between the individuality of a person.

Many other theories can be found like e.g. the Range of Affect Theory of Edwin A. Locke, the Dispositional Theory and the Job Characteristics Model of Hackman & Oldham.

The Range of Affect Theory e.g. postulates that satisfaction is determined by a discrepancy between what one wants in a job and what one has in a job. Also it states that how much one values a given facet of work. This leads to a special degree of satisfaction when expectations are met or dissatisfaction when they aren’t met. The application of that theory in the daily life turns out to be much more complicated since there are normally a couple of factors which influence the job satisfaction. Also it needs to be considered that wants and needs change.

After all there is still the question if people work faster and more efficient: are they satisfied with everything? After all job satisfaction seems to be a dynamic process which changes constantly. This already is the case when a person works for longer and longer for a company. With the time he gets more new tasks and starts earning more trust and responsible tasks.

One of the main problems in companies seems to be the missing communication mainly from top to bottom. It can be pretty frustrating for a worker when he for example doesn’t get a useful feedback to keep on going with a special task and reach something valauble.

A good communication culture in a company - also known as social embeddedness - is essential for the job satisfaction. The communication process is an essential need of people and leads to social interaction. The aim of it is to resolve problems and eliminate deficits. A good communication enables for a better team work - and in a team you can as is generally known reach more. For that special rules are needed and the critic of every single person needs to be considered what is part of the work of the Human Resource Management.

Common terms which are connected with the job satisfaction are job enlargement and job rotation:

1. Job enlargement concerns new tasks in the horizontal area with a constant aspiration level. That means that a worker, who had been limited to one activity, accomplishes a variety of actions with the same aspiration level. The aim of it is to change the single impact, avoid psychological and physical monotony and get some recovery without stopping the work.
2. Job enrichment is a process of vertical restructuring. The worker gets a higher scope of work with a higher aspiration level. This is reached through advanced training so that a worker can work more on his own responsibility.

If these concepts work out as wanted also depends on the special situation of a worker. The Human Resource Management needs to figure out what the problem is and where they can intervene: is it the communication, is it the work itself or are there other circumstances why a worker is not satisfied in his job. For that a company needs adequate concepts, an organizational structure and regular trainings. There needs to be a together of the company and the personal organization as well as a complete view which doesn’t only focus on one thing.

Then after all - viewed from marketing aspects - a company is more successfull if people talk positevely about it. So why not start with the own staff which can do word-of-mouth for the company?

Like every company also the people working there are individual. There are a couple of factors which have influence on the performance of a company which need to be considered.

The essential factors can be distinguished in external and internal aspects. The externals are the macro environment (demographic, technological, political, economical, legal and socio-cultural aspects), the social class, the meaning of reference groups and the family.

The internals include psychological aspects which are the needs and motivation, the perception, the learning progress and the memory, the attitude as well as the personality and the self-image of an individual.

Those factors form the personality and the acting of a person. For a company and the human resource department it can be essential to know “where” people come from, why and for what they work. The origin of the performance of a person lies within that. Manifold examples for that can be found easily e.g.:

• does a worker perform bad because his surrounding told him that this job is great but he actually doesn’t like the work because it doesn’t meet his dispositions
• is somebody motivated because he needs to earn money to supply his family
• does someone constant work because he is just not interested in learning new stuff and keep on developing his skills

As already said there are a lot of factors which influence the performance. Companies can intervene partly on these factors especially those concerning the macro-environment. Knowing the people who work for a company furthermore helps to work out special incentives to reach a better performance. Nowadays that doesn’t mean that a higher salary leads to more motivation. Also things like e.g. a better workplace design, taking care of a good, internal communication progress or the creation of an acceptable work-life-balance can already mean a great benefit to the workers and motivate them to increase their performance.

There are many different ways in the end to value the work of people and show it to them. Then no company can exist without the work of people who perform it!

When talking about Human Resource Management, it is also necessary to consider the individuality of every company. The theory gives us examples how the structure of a company should be which normally is the hierarchical system.

The Finance and Investment Dictionary defines the term “company” as follows:

“Organization engaged in business as a proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or other form of enterprise. Originally, a firm made up of a group of people as distinguished from a sole proprietorship. However, since few proprietorships owe their existence exclusively to one person, the term now applies to proprietorships as well.”

This definition already shows that people are necessary for forming a company. But it doesn’t answer the question for what a company is need. A company undertakes it to produce something of a special value. Not only material goods are having their value. Also immaterial goods are valuable as the economics tells us. That implies that even social institutions, public and private households create things of a special value. Simple examples therefore would be the raising of children or the collecting of money for a relief action.

For reaching the targets of every individual company you need people working for them what is considered as human capital. The people bear an employment to create things of value. The surrounding they work in is the actual sphere of action – also named company- which determines the job satisfaction. The company itself can also be the cause for the absence of it.

Organizing the company with the people working for it is one side. As already mentioned the job satisfaction is task of the Human Resource Management. Therefore it also has to consider the different targets of the individual human and what they want to reach while working for the company.

After all it should be evident that every company is special in their own way. Not only because they produce different goods but also the people working for it are different and consequently form the individuality of a company.