Blog Ten - Equality and Diversity

Blog 10 – Equality and Diversity

Equality occurs when people treat others as equal and with fairness. Employers treating staff with a level of respect in which they would like to receive equally. Their are legislation acts which have been put in place for employers to follow to ensure that staff are treated fairly, for example the Equal pay act 1970. Diversity looks at people with differing values, beliefs and backgrounds within a business. This includes bringing different skills to contribute to a business such as communication skills, team working techniques and integration (Anon., 2012). ‘The basic contrast with equal opportunities is an acceptance that there are differences between people, that such differences can be valued and that they are the source of productive potential within an organisation’. (Bratton and Gold, 2007)

Age legislation act came into force in 2006 to ensure no discrimination towards people according to age. This includes all ages including young and old and all areas of work including private and public sector employment (Nielsen, 2006). As an employer this may affect their balance of staff as they will be encouraged to employ staff of all ages and failure to do so may have certain effects. If there are a significant number of workers employed within a specific age group, other applicants may feel they have been treated unfairly as it may be evident that the employer may only wish to employ workers of a specific age. This may be due to the type of work tasks in which will be carried out, for example employers of a building company may only wish to accept young workers with a specific strong physique enabling them to benefit most from increased productivity from work carried out. However in the long term this may have an effect on their image in the public eye as workers may feel they are being treated unfairly due to age discrimination and therefore refrain from applying for jobs with the company in the future.

People can hold many stereotypes about the younger and older generation of workers. People may have a generalised belief that younger workers are unwilling to find jobs due to little motivation and employers may also carry this similar belief therefore being less inclined to employ such workers. This may be due to a reduction in overall productivity and possible reoccurring absenteeism. ’A benefit to businesses of spending more time with young people is that they might also come to recognise the vast reservoir of talent that exists, rather than perpetuating negative stereotypes of an army of unskilled, unmannered hoodies’ (Rayment, 2011).Older workers may be perceived as having insufficient skills to be able to carry out everyday working practices. ‘2.8 million people over the age of 45 are without paid work in the UK’ (Knight, 2006). Due to age concerns, employers may be hesitant to employ older workers due to the lack of academic qualifications, however this may be argued with the amount of relevant experience gained from older workers.  Therefore employers must ensure they balance the diversity of employees that fill their job roles to ensure equality is met.

When looking at how organisations can attempt to change these attitudes and stereotypes people have on age of workers, they could start a scheme to ensure they take on a certain number of each age group of workers each year and adapt job roles to suit the employees. This would ensure that all applicants had equal chance of employment and can engage in a job role which suits their personality, skill set and work life balance. Secondly, businesses can employ workers on a voluntary basis to begin with to see how well different age groups of people work in the specific sector of the organisation. This ensures young and old members of the community that may need financial government support in the format of claiming beneficial allowance to demonstrate their skills to potential employers encouraging younger and older workers to find work for themselves. ‘The Work Programme is part of the Employment Skills and Enterprise Scheme. It aims to get people claiming certain benefits into sustained work’ (Anon., 2012) . The work programme described is a similar idea which would benefit potential workers of certain age groups to help them back into paid work and therefore benefiting their lifestyle and the community in the long run.

Sainsbury’s shows that they take into account equality and diversity when employing their workforce and show the importance of equal opportunities to their organisation. ‘Our aim is to create an environment where everyone is welcome and where everyone can be the best they can be’ (Anon., 2012) .This statement shows that all members of the public who apply for jobs at Sainsbury’s are eligible to work regardless of factors such as background or social class. By incorporating diversity into their business ethics, they have a ‘Diversity champion programme’ involving 140 of their managers. Through this programme, they can gather feedback on diversity within their organisation and find ways of improving how the programme will improve diversity within their employees. They have also developed a ‘Disability confidence programme’ in collaboration with sponsoring the London 2012 Paralympic games. Through the programme, managers are trained on how best to serve and treat customers and colleagues with disabilities. This programme ensures equality is delivered to all members of staff to ensure equality and diversity is met by the organisation.

To conclude, equality and diversity is evidently becoming more important to all organisations. This may be due to continuing introduction and development of legislation in which businesses must abide by. Also it is beneficial for businesses to take into account such factors to ensure they follow a competitive strategy with rival companies but also to engage with the public to ensure they are aware of the policies the organisations uphold. Overall this will not only benefit an organisations public image but also will develop social relationships with consumers encouraging loyalty and therefore improving profitability in the long run.

References

Anon. (2012) Equality and Diversity (E&D) [online]. London South Bank University. Available from: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/diversity/resources/definitions.htm [Accessed: 2 May 2012].

Anon. (2012) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion [online]. Sainsburys.Jobs. Available from: http://sainsburys.jobs/information/diversity [Accessed: 2 May 2012].

Anon. (2012) Government Employment Schemes [online]. Citizens Advice Bureau. Available from: http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/work_e/work_self-employed_or_looking_for_work_e/government_employment_schemes.htm [Accessed: 2 May 2012].

Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2007) Human resource management - Theory and Practice. 4th ed. China: Palgrave Macmillan.

Knight, J. (2006) How UK 'turned its back' on older workers [online]. BBC News. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5324146.stm [Accessed: 2 May 2012].

Nielsen, C. (2006) Age regulations 2006 [online]. University and college union. Available from: http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/9/t/ageregs_guidance_1.pdf [Accessed: 2 May 2012].

Rayment, N. (2011) Guardian Careers [online]. The Guardian. Available from: http://careers.guardian.co.uk/careers-blog/career-perceptions-sector-stereotypes [Accessed: 2 May 2012].

Blog Nine - Flexible working

Flexible Working

Flexible working occurs when a business’s working practices allow employees a certain degree of freedom in deciding how the work will be done and how they'll coordinate their schedules with those of other employees (Anon., 2012). Therefore flexible working relates to when, where, how and what work is done (Anon., 2012). There are different forms of flexible working including part time work, job sharing and taking on a zero hour’s contract. Flexible working has occurred more regularly in the present day due to different factors such as changes in technology. ‘Rapid advances in ICT have a significant effect on work patterns, work location and work times’. (Gold and Bratton, 2007). Other impacting factors of flexible working on businesses are a reduction in operating costs and motivating the new generation Y workers. ‘FTSE 100 companies are much more likely to offer flexible working arrangements than SMEs’ (Woods, 2010).This statement suggests that larger companies have more funding available to offer flexible working within their contracts to employees. However an increased amount of companies lately are offering this incentive within their working contracts to potential applicants.

John Lewis offers a wide variety of flexible working contracts for employees. One programme of flexible working follows a ‘working mum’s partnership’ where parents of children working at John Lewis can arrange their hours around their lifestyle. Therefore enabling parents to be able to work for the supermarket chain however being entitled to choose a plan of when these hours will be worked.  This secured John Lewis an award in the employee engagement category of the ‘working mums awards 2010’ which was due to ‘the way we constantly consult one another regarding the business, and for everything we do to make working parents' lives easier’ (Garner, 2012). However flexible working is not solely offered to working parents but to all partners as Jo Faragher explains that employees are entitled to request flexible working arrangements regardless of their family or carer commitments (Faragher, 2007). This also benefits employees’ future careers at John Lewis as they can change departments within the supermarket and choose which career path would favour them.

Secondly, BT offer a range of flexible working contracts to employees including home working, mobile employees and office based employees as part of their ‘Work anywhere portfolio’ (Anon., 2012). This strategy has benefited BT by optimising property usage, reducing costs and increasing employee productivity. The offered home working contracts have shown to increase home workers productivity by 20% compared to office-based colleagues and absenteeism has reduced by 60%.

Virgin media offer many jobs to employees around the UK however they have outsourced a lot of their work within the call centre and technological department. It was announced in May 2011 that Virgin media had plans to move its technological operations after shutting a call centre in Wiltshire. This caused Virgin Media to outsource work to the multinational outsourcing company ‘Accenture’. This can have a negative effect on the morale of employees due to altering the company’s operations however Virgin Media ensured all employees affected by the closing of the centre will be redeployed or relocated to others roles within the UK.(Anon., 2011)

Other part time working contracts

Part time working occurs when an employee works less than 35 hours a week however is still entitled to sick pay and holidays accrued. Employees can benefit from more time available within their lifestyle to work around their job hours and employers can more part time staff willing to work different shifts within a week which will vary. For example students would take up part time jobs to fit around their university course and employers can call these workers in if needed on certain shifts.

Home working entitles employees to work from home therefore not having to be connected to the work location during business hours. However a certain amount of work hours must be completed by the employee according to their contract. This may benefit an employee that may not work well in teams as working from home is individual to the employee and employees can live far away from the location of the business and travel is not needed. Employers can offer work to people at home reducing location costs and the need for meetings in person which may be time consuming.

Annualized hours occurs when employees working time is organised according to the number of hours to be worked over a year rather a week (Gold and Bratton, 2007). This benefits employers who are in charge of a workforce in a company with altering peaks of business between seasons. For example in the summer, tourist businesses such as theme parks may incur more customers therefore demand for workers during the summer period will be higher than other times during the year. This type of flexible working is similar to term-time working where employees can take unpaid leave during the school holidays which follow a similar pattern each year and particular benefits parents who have child care commitments. Both annualised hours and term time working follow numerical flexibility within an organisation as the amount of staff on the work force changes according to peaks in work during different times of the year.

Compressed hours allow employees to work their total number of agreed hours with their employer over a shorter period of time i.e. working three days instead of working the agreed hours in four days. This allows employees to work their full hours during a week however have more days off and therefore a longer break from work which could improve motivation and morale.

Zero hours occurs when employees are not offered a contract with a specific amount of hours available to work, hours of work may alter from week to week. Employers therefore have the opportunity to ask employees on a zero hours contract to work any time during the week dependant on availability however this will help with peak times of work. However the line manager may be uncoordinated as to which employees are called in to work on certain days and therefore some employees may be called in more than others giving a disadvantage to some members of staff on this contract.

Job sharing involves two employees working on a part-time basis however covering a full time post. An employer can benefit from two employees with different skills and ideas working on the same task increasing productivity.

Flexi-time allows workers to choose the amount of hours they wish to work over a period of time allowing maximum flexibility for employees on this contract and benefit employers during busy periods of work. However if many employees are contracted to flexi-time work, the line manager may lose the span of control in their department losing the structure of communication and work focus.

‘9 day fortnight’ is another flexible working contract where an employee is contracted to work 9 days within a fortnight and incurs 5 days off work within the two weeks. This benefits full time workers who wish to work during the week and have weekends off and benefits the employer as they have insurance of full time workers.

Lastly, employees can take career breaks during their working contracts to finish work for a fixed period of time and returning to work after the break. This may benefit mothers who wish to take longer time periods off work to raise children and then wish to return to work after this time period.

Although employees can benefit from the flexibility of these working contracts, it may however affect motivation as businesses may see these employees as less important to the company and employees may feel demotivated by this. Research into workers views in a variety of different settings found that people on fixed-term contracts generally had a positive psychological contract. A reason of this finding was that employees on fixed contracts had more focused work to complete (Gold and Bratton, 2007).

Overall, offering flexible working contracts can benefit a company due to retaining and attracting staff, saving costs and offering a better work-life balance for employees. Also it can help to reduce the businesses environmental impact due to offering home working contracts. Furthermore some companies may offer flexible working contracts which other businesses do not offer therefore gaining a competitive advantage over other companies. One of the main benefits is that employees on flexible contracts are adaptable to change benefiting the companies’ productivity. Flexible employees have the potential continuously to learn new skills and to broaden the range of skills possessed. (Gold and Bratton, 1994)

References

Anon. (2011) Virgin outsources techies, pulls plug on Trowbridge call centre [online]. The register. Available from: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/04/virgin_cuts/ [Accessed: 26 April 2012].

Anon. (2012) Flexible work [online]. BusinessDictionary.com. Available from: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/flexible-work.html [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Anon. (2012) Flexible working services [online]. BT. Available from: http://globalservices.bt.com/LeafAction.do?Record=Flexible_Working_Services_solutions_uk_en-gb&fromPage=Furl [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Anon. (2012) Organisations and people [online]. flexibility. Available from: http://www.flexibility.co.uk/flexwork/general/hr2.htm [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Faragher, J. (2007) John Lewis Partnership: Working in partnership [online]. Personnel Today. Available from: http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2007/04/17/40155/john-lewis-partnership-working-in-partnership.html [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Garner, M. (2012) John Lewis [online]. Working Mums. Available from: http://www.workingmums.co.uk/top-employers/2613546/john-lewis.thtml [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Gold, J. and Bratton, J. (1994) Human resource management - Theory and practice. Kent: The Macmillan press.

Gold, J. and Bratton, J. (2007) Human resource management. 4th ed. China: Palgrave Macmillan.

Woods, D. (2010) Flexible working [online]. HR Magazine. Available from: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/news/1018699/ftse-100-companies-offer-flexible-arrangements-smes [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Blog Eight - Corporate Social Responsibility

Blog 8 - Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility can be defined as the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as that of the local community and society at large (Anon., 2012).

The Body Shop is a manufacturer and seller of beauty products to consumers. This company shows that they have undertaken corporate social responsibility (CSR) in to their strategy and views of the business as a whole. There are many ways in which the body shop have shown CSR in practice and have provided an informative channel to show these strategies both within their stores and through their website to ensure the public understand their views on certain issues involving CSR. ‘HRM innovations have an important role to play in creating an organisational culture that builds trust, flexibility, cooperation and a commitment to organisational goals’ (Bratton and Gold, 2003). This shows that through the HR department developing ways to incorporate CSR strategy into their ethics of the business, they can build trust with customers and show their ethics and beliefs of CSR being incorporated into their business culture.

One way in which The Body Shop expresses its CSR ethics is through the creation of a sustainable supply chain strategy. This includes The Body Shop working with their suppliers who manufacture the products and the farmers who provide the manufacturers with the fair trade stock used to make the produce. They ensure that ingredients put into products sold are gained from economical communities from across the globe and were also the first company to bring fair trade to the industry. This strategy also requires fair trade ingredients to be used and that they are bought at fair prices negotiated with the farming suppliers. This shows that they follow a positive CSR strategy ensuring that the suppliers of the ingredients retrieve fair pay for their stock and therefore maintains the lifetime running of the farming work. Creating this sustainable supply chain strategy benefits over 25,000 people in 22 countries worldwide therefore helping these communities to create a sustainable future. (Anon., 2012)

Another way in which The Body Shop show CSR is through engaging in community-based projects including launching a campaign to stop sex trafficking of children and young people and another campaign in 2008 focused on stopping violence in the home. Through these campaigns, they were able to provide women with tools, help, guidance and support on this particular issue. ‘We strive to treat all people in a fair and open fashion, to respect and value their integrity’ (Anon., 2012). This statement on the Body Shop’s website mirrors their belief through the work they carry out within the community aimed at helping the public.

The Body Shop also helps non profitable organisations through donations of their profits from the creation of their own charity, The Body Shop foundation launched in 1990. ‘The Body Shop Foundation's focus is to assist those working to achieve progress in the areas of human and civil rights, environmental and animal protection’(Bilson, 2010). Therefore they offer financial support to communities with little funding to support their projects of improving their lifestyle and making a living for themselves financially showing they invest heavily in corporate social responsibility within their business.

The benefits to The Body Shop of these initiatives are that they show to customers they value CSR highly throughout the operation of their business and this is evident to their target market. This benefits sales growth as customers may be more inclined to shop at The Body Shop following its positive ethical guidelines and may entice new customers to begin buying their products. This may also reduce their need to compete on price as their CSR strategies may have a positive impact on differentiating them from other competitors. Overall, investing in CSR has a positive impact on the company’s image and therefore if sustained will help to incur long term profits.

References

Anon. (2012) corporate social responsibility - introduction [online]. tutor2u. Available from: http://tutor2u.net/business/strategy/corporate-social-responsibility-introduction.html [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Anon. (2012) Our values [online]. The Body Shop. Available from: http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/services/aboutus_values.aspx [Accessed: 20 April 2012].

Anon. (2012) Values and Campaigns [online]. The Body Shop. Available from: http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/values-campaigns/community-trade.aspx [Accessed: 20 April 2012].

Bilson, J. (2010) Corporate Social Responsibility at The Body Shop [online]. Suite 101. Available from: http://jo-bilson.suite101.com/corporate-social-responsibility-at-the-body-shop-a215660 [Accessed: 20 April 2012].

Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2003) Human resource management, theory and practice. 3rd ed. Bath: Palgrave Macmillan.

Blog Seven - Personality

Personality – blog 7

Personality is the sum of a person’s characteristics including features in which make their identity unique to another person. Personality theorists are interested in the structure of the individual, how are people "put together;" how do they "work;" how do they "fall apart" (Boeree, 2006).Personality differs from one person to the next and can shape someone’s background, beliefs and their attitudes in daily life.

There are two main ideas as to where a person’s personality stems from including the Nature approach and the Nurture theory. The Nature theory explains that a person’s personality is heredity and therefore personal traits are obtained through genes and DNA which shapes a person’s personality (Powell, 2010) . However the Nurture theory explains that personality is shaped through environmental influences and therefore personality can change according to a person’s lifestyle. Therefore it can be debated as to whether either approach has a greater influence on personality than the other or whether a combination of both factors act towards the shaping of a person’s personality. There are two different approaches to personality where the nomothetic approach looks at personalities on a generalised scale stating that groups of people have similar personalities whereas the idiographic approach shows a personality of an individual as being unique to that person.

Nature Theory

The nature theory explains that personality follows a Nomothetic approach explaining that personality is relatively fixed and therefore is consistent throughout lifetime with very few changes. Psychologists such as Cattell and Eysenck follow this theory explaining their own concepts of how a person’s personality develops. Cattell’s theory explains that personality can be identified by 16 different traits known from carrying out the 16PF questionnaire. Such personality factors include Abstractedness, liveliness and perfectionism which Cattell proposed as measuring a person’s personality. These traits are set on a continuum and how far along this continuum a specific trait lays will give a description of an individual’s personality. Therefore Cattell follows the belief that people have each of these specific traits however it depends to what extent these traits are evident.

When looking at an employee’s personality when recruiting for a job role, a person following nomothetic traits would benefit a company as the employer would know the traits of its employee and these traits would remain similar for the remainder of the contract. Therefore the employer would know that what they see from the employee during the interview, they can expect when giving out different tasks for completion. However it may not be beneficial when an employer would benefit more from differentiating personalities for different tasks as jobs may not be completed to the best ability with consistent traits and little change.

Nurture Theory

The nurture theory explains that a person’s personality can alter according to the environment and changes can occur throughout lifetime. The idiographic approach can be linked to this theory as an individualistic personality will be adaptable to change according to environmental influences. Skinner’s theory of Radical Behaviourism supports the idea of personality altering through environmental influences. ‘Radical behaviourism assumed that behaviour is determined by a desire to gain positive reinforcement and to avoid negative reinforcement’ (Grice, 2010). This shows that an individual may alter their personality due to rewards being received through specific behaviours. In relation to a job role, an employee may act differently to their own personality if they have learned that positive reinforcement is gained from certain behaviours. This may be beneficial to employers as employees can adapt to working in different situations and learning new working practices of the business. However it may hinder some employer’s views during the recruitment and selection process as candidate’s personality traits may be hidden if they are acting in a way in which the interviewer would like to see them in order to be selected.

The extent to which either theory of personality is more dominant than the other is dependent on a person’s opinion however it may be that both theories contribute to the overall rounding of a person’s personality. ‘Both a body and experience are probably essential to being a person, and it is very difficult to separate their effects’ (Boeree, 2006).

In my opinion, I believe that both theories of how personality is formed have evident explanations however I believe the nature approach to personality has a more dominant influence than the environment on shaping an individual’s personality. This is because I believe a personality is mostly gained from traits that are innate and therefore inherited from parents and although personality can be altered a little by the environment, many of the innate traits will still be underlying and these traits help to shape a person’s beliefs and attitudes which they carry with them throughout life. However there are some drawbacks with personality testing on future applicants including a negative view of an employer on a potential applicant due to their personality not matching the typical personality an employer would want for the job in line. There are doubts about an overreliance on personality tests with respect to their use in predicting future performance (Bratton and Gold, 2007). Therefore even if personality testing has a large benefit on looking at potential employees’ attitudes and beliefs, it can distort an employee’s skill of adaptability to different skills if employed by a company.

Personality questionnaire

Through completing the personality questionnaire I found that I excel mostly within a work situation when I am interacting and presenting information during work tasks. The questionnaire also highlighted that I am moderately likely to organise and execute through decision making and assigning colleagues to different tasks within a team working situation. However I would be less effective carrying out a role which requires analysis and interpretation of information which could incur faults within a team working situation. Also when working with others, I may be less likely to be able to support and cooperate with others needs and therefore I would be more suited to working alone when developing a work plan.

Overall, the questionnaire shows that I would be more effective to a business in a more leading role giving guidance and delegation to others but also discussing and presenting new information to help others understand the job role in place. Therefore a business would benefit more if I could take information already retrieved and present it to others rather than creating ideas to be put into action in the future running of the task.

Conclusion

Personality is an important factor when considering candidates for job roles within a business. Managers would be most interested in finding an employee with a personality which would fit the job title given and for this personality to maintain throughout the working role of the business. For example an employee working with customers would need a vibrant personality which would be friendly towards customers ensuring their needs and wants are met by the company to give effective customer service. However different methods to a personality questionnaire are used more regularly to establish employees working skills. Organisations now prefer to use reliable and valid psychometric instruments as a way of helping employees to diagnose strengths and weaknesses for a development plan (Bratton and Gold, 2003). Both Cattell and Eysenck’s theories of personality are effective in explaining in detail the differences in personality of an employee and these theories can be used to look into personality differences of employees from a business perspective.

References

Boeree, C. (2006) Personality theories [online]. Webspace. Available from: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/persintro.html [Accessed: 27 April 2012].

Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2003) Human resource management, Theory and practice. 3rd ed. Bath: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2007) Human resource management. 4th ed. China: Palgrave Macmillan.

Grice, R. (2010) Overview of Skinner's theory of personality [online]. Helium. Available from: http://www.helium.com/items/1753679-skinners-theory-of-personality [Accessed: 17 April 2012].

Powell, K. (2010) Nature vs. nurture [online]. About.com. Available from: http://genealogy.about.com/cs/geneticgenealogy/a/nature_nurture.htm [Accessed: 17 April 2012].

Blog Six - Perception and Communication

Blog 6 - Perception and Communication

The importance of how an employer perceives their staff both on first impressions and during the job roles of the business is crucial to making a positive decision during recruitment and selection processes but also contributes to the start of a positive working relationship. Researchers have used a number of organisational performance measures including labour productivity ratios, product and service quality, unit cost ratios and revenue productivity (Bratton and Gold, 2003). This shows that perception can occur throughout an employees working career however these examples show perception of staff through figures and productivity rates. Communication between employees and managers on all levels of the hierarchy is beneficial to ensure the smooth running of the business and efficient methods of communication help to ensure this. People communicate differently depending on the context in which communication occurs, each message may have multiple layers of meaning, and culture influences communication, by which the perception of reality is created, sustained and transformed (Bratton and Gold, 2007). Therefore it is clear to see that perception and communication both intertwine with each other when looking at such factors within a business and is important when ensuring a positive and effective work ethic is maintained.

There are many different factors which can alter a person’s perception of another individual including past experiences and their attitudes and beliefs. From my own experience my perception of a teacher at my secondary school was incorrect. I developed a generalised attitude towards teachers and therefore my belief towards this individual secondary school teacher was incorrect. I realised later on through my school years that this perception was incorrect as I matured and developed my own attitudes which weren’t shaped by others. I got to know the teacher as an individual and found that they could help me positively to develop my work and found a common goal. Therefore I altered my perception of the teacher and developed a positive attitude towards them which I have maintained. To avoid making a similar incorrect judgement again, I would maintain a positive attitude towards a person and not make an initial judgement based on opinions.

Communication can occur in many different forms in an organisation for example speech, writing, actions, gestures and emails (Anon., 2012). Many organisations use multiple flows of communication within their organisation including upward and downward flows between departments within the hierarchy. Downward communication explains messages sent to subordinates whilst upward communication sends information to higher levels in the hierarchy however horizontal communication explains communication that flows between employees at the same level in the business (Bratton and Gold, 2007). Employees can communicate with line managers and managers of departments through discussion boards, meetings and forums to ensure that workers views and information regarding work are communicated effectively throughout the organisation.

Article on ‘How to improve staff communication’

This article gives recommendations on how to improve communication within a business including working collaboratively and measuring results on performance. When using these recommendations to show ways in which Buckinghamshire new university could improve its communication with students, firstly by considering the communication channels from the article the university could create a Social networking site e.g. a Facebook site to inform students of the upcoming events in which the university offers. This would benefit students as most young people use social networking sites therefore communication would be fast and formative. This would also be engaging the universities students as they would be informed regularly of what was happening in and around the university and students would also be able to comment with feedback on the events being arranged. Finally, the introduction of an online forum where the university can upload new information to students about news and events of the university however it allows students to have a discussion about any issues which may arise and the university can give comments back to the students. This creates a fast, active and informative way of communication and reduces the need for face to face meetings which incur time costs to both parties (Clake, 2012).

Conclusion

To conclude, the way in which employers perceive their staff has a large effect on their future employment within the business. Attitudes and beliefs of an employee show specific traits of themselves and can distort the perception of them as individuals to other staff if these views do not coincide with the companies’ ethics. Communication of information throughout an organisation is one of the fundamental factors of a business’s success. Without effective communication where messages are not distorted, businesses can deal with potential problems that may occur and insure the smooth running of the businesses quickly and correctly.

References

Anon. (2012) Business communications [online]. The Times business case studies. Available from: http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/business-theory/people/business-communications.html [Accessed: 27 April 2012].

Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2003) Human resource management. 3rd ed. Bath: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2007) Human resource management. 4th ed. China: Palgrave Macmillan.

Clake, R. (2012) How to. improve staff communication [online]. People management. Available from: http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2010/07/how-to-improve-staff-communication.htm [Accessed: 27 April 2012].

Blog Five - Power and Conflict at work

Power and conflict at work

Conflict is when two individuals or two groups of people have a disagreement on a subject which would involve a resolution. When employees with differing social experiences, personalities, needs and points of view interact with co-workers, disagreements may cause stress. (Bratton and Jeffrey, 2003). Conflict can occur in organisations where individuals have differing ideas or opinions on work set and conflict about the ways in which working practices are carried out to achieve the goal set. Conflict normally involves opposing views on one or more of the following including commodities, relationships, territory and principles. (Anon., 2011)

Conflict within a group

I have been involved in conflict within a football team when playing against an opposing and resulted in being unable to achieve our main purpose and therefore losing the game. Conflict developed when players became frustrated with each other and some of these frustrations were not resolved effectively. The relations of players was unitarist as each player saw that others followed the same aim as them, conflicts were seen to be peripheral and team working was beneficial whilst conflicts were a disadvantage to the team goal. Strategies used to deal with the peripheral conflicts within the team were for players to express their views and frustrations via the captain therefore enabling the players to find some common ground and to calm the situation down. This is due to most unitarist views of conflict believing that conflict arises from communication failure between the people concerned. Therefore players could therefore speak openly about their issues and compromises could be made encouraging conflict resolution. The captain would also clarify the specific goals of achievement in which all players worked together to achieve to ensure players can reflect on having the same common goal. Therefore a strategic approach of having the captain of the team help to resolve conflicts within the team to improve communication flows and using the same strategy each time was beneficial to help guide players to solve conflicts and reduce conflicts from occurring in the future.

French and Raven explains that there are five different sources of power within a workplace which employees may have to gain power when at work. The five different ‘sources of power’ include coercive power, reward power, expert power, legitimate power and referent power.

Coercive power occurs when an employee is able to punish a worker for not complying with the correct working practices of the company. For example an employee choosing to arrive to start work 15 minutes later every day than all other employees in the workforce. This would breach the contract of time in which the employee should work and therefore a line manager of the organisation would have coercive power over the employee to take action. Reward power is the ability of a person to reward another however expects a reward in return for this therefore enabling a person to compensate another for compliance. An example of this is when a line manager of an organisation authorises an employee time off work for holiday which may conflict with another employee being off work at the same time however the employee therefore works overtime for the line manager to enable the holiday time. Expert power occurs when an employee’s knowledge overpowers another employee’s idea and therefore the power of this knowledge results in the opinion of that employee to be taken into account. An example of this is when an employee at a higher level in the hierarchy has greater knowledge of the companies’ practices from working at the organisation for a longer period of time and therefore is able to overpower the employee in terms of known knowledge on the subject. Legitimate power explains a leaders approach in that they have power of ordering employees to carry out certain tasks and expect the employees to follow these demands. For example a manager of an organisation would give out tasks to the line managers of each department and would expect every employee to follow work set out by their line managers and complete the work to a quality standard. Finally, referent power explained by French and Raven explains that an employee may hold power in the hierarchy of an organisation for having an identity or status which is respected by other employees. Therefore respect is given to this employee due to the positive opinions of the worker from the individual’s identity. An example of this may be that most employees at lower levels of the hierarchy may have respect for the chief executive officer of the company as this person leads from the front and has extensive knowledge of the company’s operations. (Anon., 2012)

Recent article on work-related stress

This article explains that more public sector works develop work-related stress than private sector workers. ‘Public sector workers take an average 9.1 days sick leave a year compared to 5.7 days in the private sector’ – research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) (Hicks, 2012).The article explains that this absenteeism may have resulted from work related stress where workers may have added workloads and the need to meet work related targets within the health, social work and education organisations. When linking this story back to conflict occurring in businesses, public sector workers may also suffer work related stress due to the uncertainty of their job security. This has resulted in public sector workers striking due to this issue caused by government cut backs and therefore can create conflict within the workplace. This can be linked to the statistic of almost 50% of unionised public sector organisations being hit by strike action over the past 12 months. Therefore in conclusion, work related stress can be caused by conflicts within the organisation due to strikes and unionised organisations carrying out strike action.

Article on work related stress - http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2012/mar/15/support-stressed-public-sector-staff

Conclusion

Conflict between employees and employers has a negative effect on the running of the business and can affect the environment workers are in. This can affect the motivation of employees and it’s important for the managerial sector of companies to ensure that conflict is kept to a minimum otherwise it can damage the long term running of the business.

French and Raven’s sources of power are beneficial in explaining where conflict can arise from as employees at different levels of the hierarchy in a company can overpower other workers views. Therefore it is also important to ensure that power of different employees is handled correctly so that each employee is entitled to their own opinion. Different employee relations can impact on conflicts although if employees learn to follow a working strategy that coincides with other employees working ethics, conflict will not occur often in most businesses.

References

Anon. (2011) Finding a definition of conflict [online]. In-tuition. Available from: http://www.practical-management-skills.com/definition-of-conflict.html [Accessed: 19 April 2012].

Anon. (2012) French and Raven's five forms of power [online]. Mind tools. Available from: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_56.htm [Accessed: 19 April 2012].

Bratton, J. and Jeffrey, G. (2003) Human resource management. 3rd ed. Bath: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hicks, B. (2012) What public managers can do to support stressed staff [online]. The Guardian. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2012/mar/15/support-stressed-public-sector-staff [Accessed: 19 April 2012].

Blog four - Leadership

What is management and leadership?

Leadership can be defined by being a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organisation in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent (Clark, 2010) . Leaders follow certain traits such as having characteristics of power, creativeness to present ideas for the business to take on board and having the ability to take control on decision making to have a positive effect on the organisations. ‘Leaders demonstrate passion, integrity, curiosity, and daring and also provide a guiding vision. (meudell, 1999)

Whereas a management role explains a manager as being the person responsible for planning and directing the work of a group of individuals, monitoring their work, and taking corrective action when necessary (Reh, 2012) . A managerial role must take on a structure to control the workforce and employees within it and to construct and demonstrate the processes of work to be carried out and looking after the operations of the business.

Therefore when comparing both managers and leaders roles within an organisation, there are subtle differences. Managers work to control and implement strategies within a work force and are assigned to specific areas of the business to control, whereas leaders oversee all aspects of the business and create a certain culture to follow to inspire employees and to lead from the front incorporating decision making of the company in the short and long term.

An example of a leader within an organisation

There are many different theories which can be used as an explanation of leadership within an organisation including Adair’s theory showing a contingency approach. This theory explains there are 3 overlapping areas in which to look at when holding a leadership role including task needs being undertaken, the maintenance of the team to enable its practices to be effective and the individuals needs i.e. the employees. ‘A good leader recognises that a healthy interaction between the team, the task and the individual is vital’ (Anon, 2011). Therefore the three areas identified need to be assessed by the leader to ensure a positive working environment and quality of work is achieved with the control of a leader. An example of a leader within an organisation is a head teacher of a secondary school. The head teacher’s job role stretches across the whole school leading all employees within the hierarchy of the organisation. The head teacher must take on a positive leadership style in order to control the way in which teachers teach the classes and to ensure students follow the correct guidelines of the school and achieve a high standard of grades at the end of their education. The head teacher who worked at my secondary school, took a positive approach to students interacting with pupils to develop positive relationships and involved students opinions in some decision making of the school. This included obtaining a student voice through prefects etc. and therefore ensured students could develop positive working relations with the head teacher. Leadership roles came into action when making more prominent decisions for the school i.e. on budgets and preparing the school for Ofsted inspections. The head teacher also made the final decisions about student’s continuation in education at the school and controlling decisions at the top of the hierarchy. When linking the leadership of a head teacher to Adair’s contingency theory, there are similarities with the head teacher being aware of individual needs such as the employees i.e. the staff and teachers and being aware of student’s interests. Also focusing on task needs for example knowing that the school must achieve certain academic results and therefore decisions should be put in place to help achieve this. Finally a head teacher as a leader must be aware of team maintenance needs and this can be referred within the teaching teams of each department e.g. humanities and sport etc. Team practices would be maintained by having regular meetings with each head of department about the commencing weeks and the programme of tasks occurring. Also any issues can be raised at the meetings and sorted within the time arranged to maintain the team needs.

In conclusion, this shows head teachers can be positive and effective leaders as they take into account the different aspects of an organisation which need control and guidance in order to maintain the way in which to focus on quality of work. There are many different theories of leadership following different areas which make up a positive leader however in evaluation I believe a positive leader maintains personal traits combined with attributes which are learned through the environment to follow a leadership style which will control an organisation. Therefore these theories are helpful in looking at different concepts and ideas of leadership within HR management, however overall an effective leader will work in their environment and will continually learn different ways in which to lead and guide employees to impact positively on work outcome.

References

Anon. (2010) Concepts of leadership [online]. NW Link. Available from: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html [Accessed: 21 March 2012].

Anon (2011) Leadership theories - what do they mean? [online]. management skills. Available from: http://www.practical-management-skills.com/leadership-theories.html [Accessed: 21 March 2012].

Clark, D. (2010) Concepts of leadership [online]. NW Link. Available from: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html [Accessed: 21 March 2012].

meudell, K. (1999) Management and organisational behaviour - a student workbook. 3rd ed. Harlow: Pitman Publishing.

Reh, J. (2012) Manager [online]. About.com management. Available from: http://management.about.com/od/policiesandprocedures/g/manager1.htm [Accessed: 21 March 2012].