Acting Human

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.

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!