Working with Leading People - Essay Example

?Delicious Food is a growing fast food company, operating on a 12 hour a day, seven days a week basis. The company is planning to expand the businessin four locations within the UK. It is looking for experienced managers who have relevant skills, knowledge and experience in the fast food sector. A few months ago, 63 people applied for the post but only a handful applicants came anywhere near the required standard. Clearly something is not going well. You have been appointed as a HR officer, tasked with improving the standard of recruitment and selection in the company. 1. Prepare a job advertisement for a Marketing Manager for Delicious Food. Delicious Foods UK requires a Marketing Manager to spearhead and executive strategies such as planning, market research, promotions, sales, advertising and PR for the Organization. Candidate should be able to educate and motivate the sales team. Ideal candidate should have at least five years of experience in the relevant field which demonstrates pro-activity, team management and positive sales results. The Marketing Manager will be responsible for key marketing functions like planning marketing strategies, conducting research, advertising and promotions, public relations. The role also involves managing the productivity of the marketing team and carrying out period reviews of all the marketing activities. 1. Provide an example of a marketing activity that you have successfully carried out in the recent past. 2. What are some of the typical challenges that you face in marketing? 3. Give an example of a situation where a marketing campaign that you handled was not a success. Give reasons. 4. What would be the first few things that you would do if appointed as the Marketing Manager of Delicious Foods? 5. Provide an example of a scenario where you have marketed your product to a difficult client. 2. As the HR Officer, what contribution could you make to improve the selection process for Delicious Food to make it more effective? As an HR Officer, it is necessary to ensure that the right candidate gets appointed to the role. For that, I would take three steps. Firstly, the resumes would be scrutinized more closely to make sure that the candidate has the right experience – preference would be given to candidates from the food industry. Secondly, the preliminary interview would be more comprehensive so that only the best of the lot move to the main interviews. The third step would be to make sure that two rounds of interviews are conducted by senior Marketing officials who would be able to gauge whether the candidate meets the necessary brief. 3. Discuss the legal, regulatory and ethical considerations in recruitment and selection process. As per the employment legislation, an employer is bound to provide certain specific rights to the employee. Therefore, an employer should always provide the right to equality and a workplace without any discrimination (Williams et al, 2010). This should also be applicable during the recruitment process. In addition, many organizations are also likely to face conflict of interest during the recruitment process because of previous associations. Such conflicts also should be avoided and a fair and equal chance should be given to all the candidates. 4. Evaluate the key factors that are essential for the success of the recruitment and selection processes in organizations. The key factors that are essential for the success of the recruitment and selection process of any organization include the availability of budget and resources, ensuring that the procedure is carried out with fairness in an ethical manner, detailed process of arriving at job description and role description, comprehensive and evaluative interview process and employee friendly hiring process (Hughes and Rog, 2008). In addition, it is also necessary that these processes are carried out in such a manner that everyone gets equal opportunities. 5. “One-fourth of interviewers around the world look at candidates' pages on social networking websites to gather information on whether they will be suitable employees, new research has revealed.” ( Source:www.managers.org.uk) In your opinion, justify the use of social networking sites (face book, LinkedIn) during the recruitment and selection process by organizations. Suggest whether you would recommend the use of social network sites in the selection and recruitment process. Over the past couple of years, the employers have been using the social network to find out many details of their prospective employees. LinkedIn, a social network for professionals provides a good forum for both the employees and the employers. The employers can go through previous experience, specific roles and view the endorsements given by previous employers. Hence, it is a very useful forum for the recruiters. While Facebook is mostly for personal social networking, people often include professional information which can be used by recruiters. However, it is necessary to be cautious because the information may not always be genuine and hence, it is necessary to carry out a proper background check. 1. Discuss the skills and attributes needed for leadership and management in organizations. For any organization to be successful, it is necessary that their leadership and management functions have the necessary skills and attributes. As leadership and management are different terms, the skills and attributes needed are different for each of these roles (Nienaber, 2010). As leaders are visionaries, the leadership skills are more of behavioral in nature. Hence, leaders should be experimental and should have broader vision. In addition, they should also be much more flexible and adaptable to various situations. Leader should be able to handle the various changes that an organization may go through. Also, leaders should not be hesitant to take risks. One of the key attributes necessary for a manager is to be analytical (Nienaber, 2010). They should have the necessary skills to think through tough issues and solve them. It is also important that they are organization and can carry out rational thinking to ensure the completeness of the task. In addition, as they interact directly with people on a regular basis, it is also necessary to lead by example and motivate them. They should be able to use logical and solve tough issues and organize a given set of people to finish particular tasks at hand. They should also be good at conflict resolution. 2. Explain the difference between leadership and management Leadership and Management are two terms that are often used interchangeably. Leadership means providing a vision and a direction for the organization or for particular teams whereas management is directing the resources towards the vision set by the leadership. Therefore, it can be said that while leadership provides the vision, management executes the achievement of that vision (Nienaber, 2010). Typically, leadership has a softer approach because it uses the influence to bring about the necessary change, whereas management has a harder approach because authority is used to bring about the change. While leadership provides the necessary empowerment to the organization, the management is the body which wields control over the power to regulate it and to ensure that the desired objectives are met. It can also be said that while leadership has a higher focus on the broader picture, management often has more focus on specific, smaller things – hence, leadership is a combination of strategies that are internal and external facing, whereas management is more oriented towards internal activity of the organization. 3. “The unexpected win by Chelsea FC over Barcelona in the Champions League and then their victory over Bayern Munich to win the championship has been put down to the inspirational effect of the new manager Roberto Di Matteo. The basic skill of management involves man-management, and he has carried that out brilliantly while Andre Villas- Boas the new young manager was sacked in March implying that he spent too much time thinking about the longer term strategy and not enough on getting things right in the short term.”# ( Source:www.managers.org.uk) On the basis of the above scenario and your own research, compare the leadership styles of the two of managers and explain how such leadership styles would serve to motivate staff to achieve objectives. Roberto Di Matteo had a chief goal to make sure that the team is well-integrated and hence, he worked hard to bring the senior players back to the team. This resulted in a strong team which thoroughly supported each other and hence, proved to be victorious. In a game like football, it is always necessary to focus on short term goals and integrate it with a long term strategy, which is what Di Matteo carried out. Essentially, he played the role of a manger who is analytical, organized, motivated and who could build a cohesive team. The leadership style followed by Di Matteo was that of a manger with more focus on specific instances, thus increasing the motivation levels leading to an overall victory. However, Andre Villas-boas, the earlier manager had adopted more of a visionary approach to leadership. He was focused on long term strategy for the club and did not give much attention to the shorter goals at hand. This strategy can be good in organizations, provided there is another manager who can work on short term goals to integrate it with the longer vision. However, in a game like football, it did not see much success. A long term vision takes the broader picture into account and hence, it is difficult to motivate the organization in specific instances. 4. Discuss the additional factors that contribute to the motivation of staff in helping to achieve organisational objectives. A motivated staff is very important for achieving organizational objectives. Apart from the support and inspiration provided by the leadership and management, there are certain other factors that are critical in ensuring high motivational levels for the staff (Martocchio, 2006). The manager should be able to provide guidelines and approaches that the staff can adopt. This method proves to be motivational because they know exactly what to do and whom to approach in the event that they face a problem. In addition, involving the staff in discussions related to decisions also provides motivation because they feel valued. Providing incentives and rewards for good work also is a good way to motivate the staff. From a management perspective, if the leader or manager is directly involved and leading from the front, it increases the motivation level of the staff. However, the manager should be careful that this involvement does not become micromanagement. Additionally, providing support through training, improving the skill sets, receiving appreciation and providing a good work environment are some other additional factors that provide motivation to the staff in helping the achievement of the organizational objectives (Martocchio, 2006). 5. Evaluate the use of Blake’s Managerial Grid in identifying the leadership styles in an organization Blake's managerial grid model, which was developed by Blake and Mouton in 1964 is one that uses the parameters of concern for people and concern for production to arrive at five different leadership styles. These styles are Country club style (High concern for people and low concern for production), impoverished style (low concern for both people and production), middle of the road style (medium concern for both people and production), Produce or perish style (low concern for people but high concern for production) and team style (high concern for both people and production) (Blake and Mouton, 1965). Using this grid is a very good approach to understand the leadership style because through grid training, an organization can evaluate the stances taken by the various managers. Based on the results it can also motivate the people to reach the state of team management style. However, there are certain limitations - for example, various external factors are not taken into consideration in this grid evaluation. Scenario 1: You are a team member in the HR department and you are experiencing high levels of staff turnover. ASSUME The role a team member would perform in trying to improve staff retention. 1. Provide a written report which includes a self-assessment of your role in the team and your suggestions for increasing staff retention. Being a part of the account strategy and analysis team of the marketing wing, my role in the organization is to carry out rigorous analysis of how the strategies for particular short term goals are progressing. The day to day activity involves providing extensive evaluation reports and updates on the progress towards the objectives. I have successfully met all the reporting needs and have worked on developing new reporting ways to make the task easier for the team. I have also provided my inputs in terms of various steps that can be taken to ensure the achievement of goals. With regard to increasing staff retention, my opinion is that roles/tasks should be allotted on the basis of what interests the employee. In addition, frequent task rotation, appreciation of work and rewards program can ensure that there is no monotony and higher motivation levels. 2. As a team leader, you experience high levels of conflict when trying to resolve the retention question. Suggest how you would overcome this conflict within the team. If the team dynamics is such that there is a high level of conflict among the team members, then retention of the team members becomes a challenge as employees do not want to work in such a team. Here, the first and foremost step is to understand the reason for the conflict. The reasons could be varied in nature – starting from unfair division of the work to individual attitudes and egos. In addition, the conflict could also be due to a combination of reasons, rather than one reason alone. After the reason is identified, various solutions can be arrived at. For example, if the conflict is due to unfair division of work where some people get overworked and some do not do any work, a fair division of work can be done to overcome the challenge. Similarly, if the conflict is due to clashes in individual attitudes, then open discussions, courses on team work and providing perspective on achievement of goal through collective operations can be done. 3. Assess the benefits of team work in an organization. Working in a team has very high benefits for the organization (Davies and Kanaki, 2006). Firstly, the tasks in hand get divided and hence, high productivity and achievement is seen. Secondly, if a team is involved in a task, newer methods and techniques can be arrived at because more ideas pour in. Thus, coming up with innovative ideas is much easier in a team environment. The chances of errors also reduces because more people working on the team would mean that at least one person would catch up the possible errors. Team members can also play an important role in motivating the rest of the team and thus, cohesiveness can be established. Working in a team is also beneficial because it increases the opportunities to learn more and improve the skill set because team members have the chance to learn from each other. 4. Review the effectiveness of team work in achieving goals. As mentioned in the previous section, one of the most obvious advantages of team work is that it becomes much easier to achieve the organizational goals as a team. Working as a part of a team results in a cohesive vision towards the goal. Furthermore, it can help in breaking up the goals into smaller tasks to improve efficiency. A team will have people with various skill sets working at various levels, thus, it would have an advantage of utilizing these skills for goal achievement (Davies and Kanaki, 2006). Also, motivation to work towards a goal would be much higher in a team environment. 5. With reference to 2 relevant models and theories, explain how team work can be made effective in achieving the common goal. According to Belbin's team role model, people can be classified into three groups - Action Oriented (which have the shapers, implementers and complete finishers), People oriented (coordinator, team worker and resource investigator) and thought oriented (plant, monitor evaluator and specialist) (Belbin, 1981). This model can be effectively used to fulfill the organizational goal by identifying the categories to which individuals belong and assigning them to the relevant tasks. If the right individuals are given particular tasks based on their characteristics, then it is much easier to fulfill the organizational goal. Richard Hackman's model of team effectiveness also strengthens the argument . According to it, there are five conditions that are necessary for successful teams that contribute to the achievement of goals. These are - the team must be a real team and not something for just the name, it has a strong direction towards work, it has a necessary structure that creates a productive environment, it receives the necessary support from the organization and finally, it also has expert team coaching(Hackman, 1987). If the team is strong on the five factors mentioned above, then goals would be achieved effectively. 1. Explain the various factors involved in planning the monitoring and assessment of work performance. Evaluation and assessment of work performance is very important in any organization. While each organization has specific parameters based which this exercise is carried out, there are some basic guidelines which can be used (Kagaari, 2010). The first step is to identify the various parameters that would be used to evaluate. Along with this, it is also necessary to set an evaluation schedule so that the process happens in a systematic manner. For managers who are in a sales role, one primary criterion would be how their team performed against the sales target. If the role of the manger is purely people management, then the employee satisfaction would be a primary criterion. Along with this, certain secondary parameters also would be identified such as feedback from team members, motivation level of team members etc. Techniques such as peer reviews, self-review and 360 degree feedback can be used for performance evaluation. The next step is to gather the information from various sources such as statistics, feedback and discussion sessions (Kagaari, 2010). Next step is to collate this feedback and remove out any errors that would have arisen and finally to provide the feedback to the manager and discuss the next steps. 2. Scenario: You have been appointed as the Training and Development Officer for the McDonalds chain of fast food restaurants in the UK. In your first training and development exercise with the senior management team, you notice that there are several managers who have development needs in specific areas. Mr. Jones – requires cultural and diversity training, aged 63, length of service – 20 years Mrs. Patel – requires report writing training, aged 24; length of service – 2 years Miss Salazar – requires training in nonverbal communication, aged 30; length of service – 1 year. Mr. Adebayor – requires assertiveness training – aged 45; length of service – 8 years In a report, plan how you would assess the development needs of each of these senior managers. For Mr. Jones, who has an experience of 20 years in the field, a cultural and diversity training should be carried out keeping his experience in mind. I would carry out an observation of how Mr. Jones deals with the diverse employee base of the organization. In addition, I will also have a one on one session to understand Mr. Jones perspective on culture and diversity. This can help in the assessment on what level of training is needed – whether a basic sensitivity training is enough or a detailed overview of culture and diversity management needs to be provided. For Mrs Patel, I will go over some of the reports that she has written in the past to identify specific areas of improvement - such as how she integrates statistics and how her format of writing is. Also, I would meet her for a session to gain inputs on any specific problems that she faces. Based on these inputs, I would arrange a training that addresses these specific aspects. For Miss Salazar, the main approach would be to observe her during the work hours to see and judge if there are any aspects of non-verbal communication such as body language or responses to clients non-verbally that need improvement. Based on these observations, I would have a meeting with her and ask her for her inputs on these aspects. Her response would help me understand the level of training need to improve her non-verbal communication. For Mr. Adebayor, again, observation would be a methodology adopted to see if he is able to assert his points across to the juniors and seniors in the organization. Also, during a personal interaction I would assess if he can talk openly about his ideas and attitudes. Here, the training would be focused on confidence building and assertiveness. 3. Analyze how an individual’s skills needs can be identified and developed within an organization. Employees in any organization always look at different ways to improve their individual skill sets. When an individual takes up any role, the contents of the role, the responsibilities and the methods of operation are decided through a job design (Baptise, 2008). These parameters can determine basic training necessary for the individual. Once the employee gets comfortable in the job design, he or she may want to learn more skills and this can be done through strategies such as job rotation, job enrichment or job enlargement. Job rotation is a process by which employees can do another job for a specific set of mind. This can not only enhance the skills of the employees, but it can also take the monotony away from the job. Job enrichment is the process through with additional responsibilities that require a higher level of skill set are provided to the employee (Baptise, 2008). This helps the employee to learn skills that are required for a higher level in the career. Similarly, job enlargement is expanding the scope of the job design to make sure that employee skill sets get improved constantly. 4. Evaluate the success of the assessment process in an organizational context. Performance assessment is a challenging task in any organization. However, it is also necessary to assess the success of these measures. A good evaluation system should be one that appreciates the success, provides constructive feedback, highlights areas of improvement and provides good motivation to the employees (Kagaari, 2010). The system should be designed in such a way that a visible difference is seen in the whole organization once a few cycles of assessment are carried out. In the long term, it should lead to better individual and team performances, improved skill sets and higher motivation and improved bottom line for the company. However, if performance reviews are not transparent and are not carried out in an organized manner, it can result in lower motivation levels, dissatisfaction and also higher employee turnover. Also, it would not provide an indication to the employees on what needs to be done to improve the performance and hence, no visible improvement would be noticed even after a couple of performance review cycles. 5. Performance appraisal is one of the key tools to measure employee’s performance but it could result de-motivation if it is not properly managed”, (Armstrong M.2009) Critically evaluate the statement. The above statement is very true for any organization. Often, performance evaluation focuses only on the negative aspects, leaving the employee de-motivated. While performance evaluation is important, it is also necessary that the evaluation is carried out in such a manner that the employee feels motivated, rather than getting de-motivated (Kagaari, 2010). To ensure that the motivation levels remain high, the evaluation process should be fair, consistent and transparent. The employee should be made aware of the criterion of evaluation beforehand. In addition, periodic feedback sessions throughout the period of evaluation should also be provided to the employees. This can give them a clear idea of any areas of improvement that they need to focus on. The delivery of the evaluation should be done in a professional manner, showing both strengths and areas of improvement and additional inputs should be provided on taking the career to the next level (Kagaari, 2010). The feedback session should never be one where the individual gets insulted. If these steps are not followed, the employee may not understand the feedback and would consider it as a personal attack, rather than feedback resulting in de-motivation. References Baptiste, N. 2008. Tightening the link between employee wellbeing at work and performance: A new dimension for HRM, Management Decision, 46(2), 284 – 309 Belbin, M. 1981. Management Teams. London; Heinemann. Blake, R., Mouton, J. 1964. The Managerial Grid: The Key to Leadership Excellence. Houston: Gulf Publishing Co. Davies, M., Kanaki, E., 2006. Interpersonal characteristics associated with different team roles in work groups, Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(7), 638 - 650 Hackman, J. R. 1987. The design of work teams. In J. Lorsch (Ed.), Handbook of organizational behavior (pp. 315-342). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Hughes, J., Rog, E. 2008. Talent management: A strategy for improving employee recruitment, retention and engagement within hospitality organizations, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 20(7), 743 – 757 Kagaari, J., Munene, J and Ntayi, J. 2010. Performance management practices, employee attitudes and managed performance, International Journal of Educational Management, 24(6), 507 – 530 Martocchio, J. 2006. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Nienaber, H. 2010. Conceptualisation of management and leadershi", Management Decision, 48(5), 661 - 675 Williams, S., Heery, E and Abbott, B. 2010. Mediating equality at work through civil society organisations, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 29(6), 627 – 638 . Read More