When workers are absent from work, this can cause many problems for organizations. Although organizations expect employees to take time off for doctor appointments and sickness, excessive absenteeism can lead to decreased productivity (Forbes, 2013). One of the best competitive advantages for organizations is the people that they hire. When talent is absent from work, this can have a deleterious effect on organizational effectiveness. A survey of European countries conducted by Eurofound revealed that, on average, rates of absence across Europe are between 3% and 6% of working time. Taking this into consideration makes absenteeism rate a hidden champion key performance indicator (KPI) for productivity, employee engagement and leadership effectiveness. This blog post discusses the causes and costs of absenteeism as well as how to measure and reduce it.
One of the most important aspects of organizational life is that management and staff feel secure in taking risks. The concept of psychological safety is the belief that a team is safe to take interpersonal risks without negative consequences for their career (Kahn, 1990). Team members who feel accepted within their teams experience psychological safety. Recent research on psychological safety show that it is an important factor for workplace effectiveness (Edmondson & Lei, 2014).
Increasingly, organizations are changing the ways in which they compensate and reward their employees. This is true for the relationship between the employer and management. A management incentive plan is a compensation or rewards agreement between an employer and management. The plan is designed to motivate managers and to align management performance with the strategic goals of the firm. This blog post describes the latest innovation in management incentives and discusses the linkages between incentives and individual and firm performance.
One of the current “trends” in the science of management is examining employees’ resilience. Like “emotional intelligence” and “grit” before it, “resilience” has become a desirable and much-discussed quality that hiring managers seek and leaders work to increase (Leadbeater, Dodgen, & Solarz, 2005). This is not without reason – resilience has been found to predict long-term success in a variety of fields (Klohen, 1996).
Management without goals? Impossible, if you believe the large number of popular science and specialized books about management topics. Goals, target agreements, and bonus systems connected to target achievement are all part of every manager’s toolbox.
Diversity, and the need to productively diversify, presents ongoing dilemmas in the professional world. Numerous fields that were previously relatively homogenous are slowly achieving greater parity in terms of race, gender, disability status, and other sources of distinct experience (Bijak et al, 2007). As organizations change in their demographic composition, a variety of growing pains can occur. This is particularly the case in organizations that have not prepared or adjusted for their changing workforce and its needs.
There is a growing need among managers to understand issues concerning organisational job satisfaction. It is quite tempting to regard job satisfaction as simply being ‘happy’ at work, but this topic is slightly more complex than we would normally expect. Let us start by defining job satisfaction and look into what it involves. One of the most common definitions for job satisfaction came out in 1976 from an American psychologist named Edwin Locke. As he put, it is simply “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences”. In other words, workers draw on their perceptions and emotions to evaluate jobs in some degree of favour or disfavour.
Strategy is a term usually connected to top management, long-term planning, goals, and consulting. This view dominated strategic management in theory and practice since the middle of the last century. Strategy as practice, SAP in short, is a new approach that questions this dominance. In this blog we present to you what’s actually behind SAP.
Whatever the industry, there are certain elements that all high performance teams (HPTs) have in common. When building a HPT, the onus is not only on the employee but on leadership as well. In some regards, HPTs are born. In other ways they are selected, shaped and refined. Of course, a good working definition of what a HPT is and some prerequisites are necessary in order to achieve one. A high level of interpersonal skills are required to get the job done.
