Edition 12 - September 2008Word from the Editor
Welcome to Edition 12 of Access HR News! This issue provides you with a fantastic article on how to improve your decision making. With feedback with receive from both candidates and clients; decision making is a common skill area that many would like to improve. And this is the article to show you how to that!! We have also included an Occupational Health and Safety article on stress in the workplace. Well worth the read. Enjoy reading this edition of Access HR News, and remember we at Access HR are here to help you in any way we can. Happy Reading! The Access HR Team | |
How to improve your decision making
Why is it important? Being able to make the right call at the right time, often while under pressure, is a key requirement for any manager or team leader. We make dozens of decisions every day, but when it comes to important workplace choices, too many ‘bad’ decisions or regular displays of indecisiveness could lead to a loss of credibility with employees and could have a detrimental effect on your career prospects. Where do I start? Confirm that the decision is both yours to make and worthy of your attention. Avoid the trap of micro-managing every decision that falls under your control – if one of your charges can do it then let them make the call. Establish whether anyone else needs to be consulted and how long you have to make the decision. Make sure the problem (and its impact) is clearly defined and that you are aware of any underlying objectives and/or the wider business context of the decision. Then detail each concern you want the decision to address and the end-result you wish to achieve. “If you’re clear about what you’re doing and why, you will be able to communicate your thinking and get buy-in from all stakeholders, including those responsible for its smooth implementation,” says Rob Barham, chief executive of sales management training and development consultancy Tack International. Consider your options Once you have sized up the situation using all the information available, you need to work through the alternatives and assess their potential consequences. Weigh up each idea against your stated objectives and grade them accordingly. Consider the pros and cons, the level of risk involved and the worst that can happen. There are techniques and models available that can provide a more structured approach to evaluating the options, such as paired comparison analysis or decision trees. Consult widely Be prepared to cast your net far and wide when investigating possible solutions, as selecting from a restricted range of options may not deliver the best result. The same applies to falling back on safe or previously proven choices. Involve others who you know will have opposing view and different perspectives from you, as they may arrive at solutions you would never envisage. Always make known the rationale for any decision you make. Encourage stakeholders to give feedback and highlight inherent weaknesses in your decision-making methods. Monitor the outcome It is essential to track the effect of your decisions, especially since action taken based on unreliable data or an incomplete picture of the situation could throw up fresh problems further down the line. Set up a framework for follow-up and evaluation with anyone your decision affects. “It is important for everyone involved to agree the key milestones and evaluation criteria so that measuring success becomes a transparent process and encourages greater teamwork”, says Barham. Spot the patterns Aim to make better and more dependable choices by becoming an honest judge of the effectiveness of your decisions. Get into the habit of regularly appraising your recent performance, particularly where you were required to make some critical decisions. Recording these episodes will help you spot the patterns and learn how to make your mind up more effectively in the long run Source: Scott Beagrie. Courtesy of Personnel Today magazine. |
|
Stress Factors
Stress claims under workers compensation and common law are increasing. WorkCover Victoria, for example, reports an increase of more than 200 per cent since 1996. Some commentators say modern work life and social pressures have created a far more stressful environment than ever before. Others note that a stress claim can be a cheap and effective way of pursuing a complaint against an employer, particularly where other avenues, such as unfair termination or internal grievance mechanisms, are unavailable or far less lucrative. Employers clearly need to be more vigilant than ever before. Management behavior and its systems and practices are under attack, and the battleground is not necessarily within the traditional confines of the industrial relations tribunal. Psychologists, psychiatrists and medical practitioners are all becoming involved in pinpointing the work stressors that employees rely on as the basis for their claims. Workplace stress can be broken down into three components: · Physical and environmental stressors – such as work demands, internal relationships and conflict on the job · Physiological and psychological responses – the reaction to the stressors, which may be physical, such as increased blood pressure and heart rate, or physiological effects such as increased anxiety, depression and aggression. · Worker perception and processing of the physical and environmental stressors. The evaluation of these three aspects of workplace stress, together with an interrogation of whether an employer has been acting reasonably in its dealing with its workers, form the backdrop to the Work Choices industrial relations issues currently being played out. A starting point for any examination of workplace stress is the physical and environmental influences, commonly referred to as ‘workplace stressors’. Consider the scenario where a change in role may give rise to a stress claim.
Case Study
“I’ve never been told that before.”
Vijay has been a sales executive for a printing company for 25 years. After a larger company took over, rumors have been rife about staff redundancies and massive changes to the business. For some time, a new state sales manager has been reinforcing that Vijay needs to take the new company philosophy on board. Vijay has been seeking a better understanding of what that is, but it’s still unclear. He feels under a lot of pressure because the company philosophy, such as it is, could be used as the vehicle to performance – manage him out of the organization. Many employees who identify with this category of case would argue that they simply don’t understand what is being expected of them, particularly in regard to less tangible issues such as motivation, teamwork and communication among peers. In 1990, the inaugural Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey identified relationship and communication breakdowns at work as a major contributor to industrial disputes. Relationship breakdowns may be between co-workers and relate mainly to personality conflicts, or perhaps competition for better paid jobs. Then there are the relationship issues that arise from supervisory and reporting roles in an organization. It is here, by far, that the greatest number of problems occurs, and it is here that the modern concept of workplace bullying has been established. Best Practice
Best practice suggests that everyone in a workplace should have some responsibility for monitoring stressors and the stressed. Managerial accountability must include responsibility for precautionary measures to remove or minimize exposure to risks, and responsibility for the fall-out when something goes wrong. Managers must have a good understanding of the issues, the problems, and the potential for stress to become a serious and costly issue. Managers must ensure they have a broad range of people management skills for detecting psychological hazards. Workers are responsible for maintaining a check on their own physical and psychological warning indicators, blood pressure, levels of anger, etc. One of the problems with employee management generally is that it often functions in a cyclical, responsive way. Management textbooks are replete with examples of how performance reviews should take place annually, at which time key performance targets and role negotiations are determined for another year. But management is a daily issue; the needs of personnel should be monitored and maintained on a daily basis. Supervisors need to ask employees “How are you?” and mean it, not because they necessarily like them as people, but because issues may need resolving before they escalate. Workplace stress can be spotted in social behaviors such as taking an increasing number of “smoko” or work breaks. This may be a coping mechanism to deal with increased anxiety or annoyance. Increased patterns of drinking and workplace absenteeism are other indicators. People management and performance reviews should go beyond the mere meeting of numeric targets. People issues require a level of communication and empathy that respects and interprets employee’s concerns in a genuinely supportive way. Source: Andrew See is a Brisbane barrister and employment law specialist. HR Monthly June 2006 |
|
HR and Finance: down with Fridays
Just 3 percent of Australian finance and HR managers thought Friday was their most productive working day, followed closely by Thursday (5 per cent), Wednesday (10 percent) and Tuesday (17 per cent). Monday was voted the most productive day, by 31 percent of managers. They said the best way to encourage productivity work was through: Furthermore, 25 per cent said a siesta would result in a more productivity office, compared to 39 per cent of finance and HR managers in Italy, 33 per cent in France and 28 per cent in Belgium. Source: Robert Half Finance & Accounting |
