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From: "HRinIndia@yahoogroups.com" <HRinIndia@yahoogroups.com>
To: HRinIndia@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Fri, 14 May, 2010 1:16:56 PM
Subject: [HRinIndia] Digest Number 2789
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From: "HRinIndia@yahoogroups.com" <HRinIndia@yahoogroups.com>
To: HRinIndia@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Fri, 14 May, 2010 1:16:56 PM
Subject: [HRinIndia] Digest Number 2789
Messages In This Digest (7 Messages)
- 1.
- Article: Harvesting Innovation From: Harvinderjit Kaur
- 2.
- Article: Background Screening: A Crucial Step When Hiring Talent From: Harvinderjit Kaur
- 3.
- Article: Three Keys to Making Behavior Changes Stick From: Harvinderjit Kaur
- 5.
- Article: A Little Positive Psychology Goes a Long Way From: Harvinderjit Kaur
- 6.
- Article: Promotion Innovation as a Business Discipline From: Harvinderjit Kaur
- 7.
- Article: Helpful Hints to Effectively Communicate Across Generations From: Harvinderjit Kaur
Messages
- 1.
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Article: Harvesting Innovation
Posted by: "Harvinderjit Kaur" harvinderjit_kaur@yahoo.com harvinderjit_kaur
Thu May 13, 2010 5:57 am (PDT)
Harvesting Innovation
by Craig Mindrum
Innovative ideas are lurking somewhere in most organizations. In this uber competitive global business environment, it is incumbent on talent leaders to create systems that can harvest these ideas and follow them through to the bottom line.
The greatest obstacle many leaders face in creating an innovative organization may well be themselves. U.S. politicians who fail to support their party's policies are sometimes called RINOs and DINOs (Republicans or Democrats "in name only"). Many organizations today are IINOs -innovators in name only. They say all the right things, but when it comes to truly listening to the people most likely to generate good and practical ideas - their own employees - they suddenly become deaf.
A New Era of Innovation
We're poised on the brink of the fourth era of corporate innovation. The first and longest era was the command-and- control period, when a handful of executives, or even one person, the owner, would generate ideas for the workforce to execute. The second era found corporations establishing R&D centers or innovation specialists - either full-time innovators or hired guns charged with reinventing products, processes, workflows or management structures.
In the third and most recent era, innovation broke out of its traditional boundaries as companies began to embrace crowdsourcing and recognize that the answers to many corporate questions and challenges probably lie somewhere in the broader organization, not just within the executive team or R&D function.
Each of these three eras of innovation remained primarily driven from the top down: from "Here's my idea" to "Here's our specialist's idea" to "Here's the idea I want you to work on." But a fourth era of innovation will take organizations more dramatically outside their command-and- control comfort zone. It will require executives to finally admit that the organizations they run are, collectively, smarter than they are.
The innovations that drive future value need to come from somewhere or, more accurately, from somebody: the people who constitute any organization' s intellectual assets. Getting at those ideas is the big challenge.
On the one hand, many companies have bottlenecks in their innovation infrastructures that constrain their ability to locate good ideas or to convert those ideas into profitable products and services. On the other hand, many organizations don't have enough infrastructure in place to even create a bottleneck.
Creating an effective innovation network - a two-way flow of learning and ideation that is both abundant and relevant - is every bit as crucial to sustained business growth as an IT breakthrough or the launch of a game-changing new product. And because innovation begins with people, especially those with front-line responsibilities, the talent management function within the contemporary organization is best positioned to make such an innovation network a reality.
Positive Deviance and Dialogical Innovation
One of the most important principles at the heart of both the third and fourth eras of innovation is that the next breakthrough idea is already sitting out there, somewhere, in most organizations. Several years ago, in an article in Harvard Business Review, Richard Pascale and Jerry Sternin popularized this principle as something they called positive deviance.
Positive deviants are workers who have not allowed themselves to be constrained by the habits of the larger organization. Essentially, they do not always prescribe to " the way we've always done things." Often they work on the periphery of power and orthodoxy. Pascale and Sternin argued that the uncommon actions and insights of these positive deviants enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers.
Several illuminating case examples of positive deviance have come from government and international public policy. In the 1990s, Save the Children, an organization that works in more than 40 nations around the world to help disadvantaged children, was studying malnutrition in Vietnam. Although the vast majority of families in the rural areas of the country suffered from malnutrition, Save the Children found one small group of families that had discovered a way to supplement their children's diet with tiny shrimps collected from rice paddies along with greens from the tops of sweet potato plants. These were traditionally seen as junk foods even to the starving, yet clearly the children being fed this diet were in better health than others throughout the country. Save the Children was able to get this knowledge to others throughout the country. As a result, between 1991 and 1999, 250 communities rehabilitated some 50,000 malnourished children in Vietnam.
This example, applied to a corporate environment, means that innovation does not have to be a major program funded with millions of dollars. Instead, companies must cultivate an openness to good ideas, create the means to find and capture them, and develop the infrastructure to push the ideas to others who can develop and apply them to the company's advantage.
If identifying and capitalizing on positive deviance is a characteristic of the third and fourth innovation eras, one additional principle is a hallmark only of the fourth era: Innovation arises out of dialogue and collaboration among people who may or may not know they are on the cusp of a big discovery.
On the one hand, innovation can occur when an organization can harness a number of positive deviants, direct them toward a known problem and bring them together to find a solution that none of them separately could have created. Pascale and Sternin cited the example of high-tech company Hewlett-Packard, where one engineer in the late 1990s harnessed the brainpower of his colleagues to solve a problem that others had abandoned as either unimportant or unsolvable: thermal transfer, in which heat builds up within a computer, speeding its ultimate demise. Through the ultimate solution, the company has reaped millions of dollars in value by creating machines that are less prone to failure, and Chandrakant Patel, the engineer who helped make it all happen, saw his career advance more rapidly than usual.
The other aspect of dialogical innovation is more free-form, which is often more threatening to organizations' managerial presumptions: bringing together disparate parts of an organization - or different people, both internal and external - for dialogue with no particular problem or challenge in mind. Exposing people to what is going on elsewhere in the organization and to the fresh air of thinking from the outside can produce ideas and practices that are not yet being used anywhere, even by positive deviants.
Innovation isn't about coming up with something out of nowhere; it's an act of synthesis, of bringing together several things in a novel combination. Innovation is often wrongly conceived of as a lonely or heroic process. In fact, breakthrough ideas are more likely to arise out of dialogue or, even better, out of people going about their everyday jobs with each other.
Making It Happen
The most urgent, doable step that organizations can take to increase their innovative capacity is to begin putting in place the era-three technologies and social networks that can harness innovation from positive deviants.
Communications company BT's Dare2Share network is one such example. Its social learning and collaboration platform is equivalent to an enterprisewide YouTube system with a strong social dimension. Dare2Share leverages Microsoft SharePoint to enable employees to create, find and view learning segments - podcats, documents and links - and discuss and evaluate the content being created.
The free-form environment encourages people to experiment, innovate, collaborate, communicate and share their experiences and knowledge in engaging ways. More importantly, tapping into the experiences of the company's positive deviants has had a positive impact on how other employees serve customers, find information and solve problems. BT's original business case argued that a conservative estimate for total efficiency savings was more than $12 million each year in employee time as well as travel costs.
Crowdsourcing also will be part of an optimal way to harvest ideas. Wells Fargo & Co. bank, for example, created an innovation network in late 2006 to tap into its workforce for ways to improve its customers' experiences. In the first application of the network, more than 250 employees submitted 50 separate ideas resulting in seven high-quality innovations for the company, many of which have generated value for the bank. The innovation network is now a permanent part of the bank's learning infrastructure.
Beyond these current capabilities and tools, the best is yet to come. The smart money will be on future solutions that can measure the innovation energy going on within an organization. This is more than achievable. As collaboration, knowledge management and social networking solutions grow more sophisticated, talent leaders should be able to track where the ideation is occurring within their companies, almost in real time. By correlating such activity with other indicators, such as patent creations or sales, companies will have a much better chance of locating innovation centers - teams or individuals - and moving into harvest mode.
A second collaboration- related influence is exemplified by the self-forming communities of wikis, blogging groups and other social networking Web sites. These collaborative groups will be a distinctive component of level-four innovation: self-forming, self-organizing communities coming together not in response to orders from management, but to serve a common interest or in search of solutions for a common need.
A key success factor to bear in mind: Executives must be prepared to trade a bit of their traditional control for the energy that comes from an always on, always connected network of people. Such a network can push communications and support to a workforce, sure. But more important is that the network not only sends signals, it receives them. It locates the intellectual energy with the highest potential and sets in motion the processes that can create a breakthrough innovation, the kind that fuels competitive advantage.
[About the Author: Craig Mindrum is a strategic talent management and communications consultant, author and college professor.]
Regards,
Harvinder
http://harvinderjit .multiply. com
- 2.
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Article: Background Screening: A Crucial Step When Hiring Talent
Posted by: "Harvinderjit Kaur" harvinderjit_kaur@yahoo.com harvinderjit_kaur
Thu May 13, 2010 5:57 am (PDT)
Background Screening: A Crucial Step When Hiring Talent
by David C. Fowler
Background screening every single candidate is not cost-effective, yet maintaining a safe work environment is critical. There are a number of ways to verify an employee's identity before he or she comes on board so as to ensure a no-surprises approach to hiring and on-boarding talent.
The term "identity theft" conjures up images of hackers stealing credits cards for online purchases or scenes from "The Bourne Identity." In the workplace, however, a more common scenario is when someone uses someone else's name and Social Security number to land a job in the United States. Oftentimes, it is an illegal immigrant seeking legitimate employment - a paycheck and benefits - who cannot apply for a SSN firsthand. In fact, experts suggest that almost 75 percent of illegal aliens are using fraudulent Social Security cards to obtain employment.
One of the biggest issues employers must tackle when recruiting new talent is to verify the individual's identity and authorization to work; however, this cannot be done until an employee is actually hired.
Many companies with high-volume hiring requirements are considering proactive measures to make sure employees are really who they say they are.
An action that can be easily implemented pre-hire is asking a series of knockout questions during the application process, such as, "Do you have a driver's license?" In this way, applicants can be sorted into those who do and those who don't. Additionally, letting applicants know during the interview process that any job offer is predicted on the successful completion of a background check, drug screening and identification verification will help filter out those applicants who know they cannot successfully pass these.
Post-hire, employers can ensure that their staff members are legal by using a combination of the federal government's E-Verify system and the Social Security Number Verification System. Other companies offer services to verify identity against public databases and provide a detailed report. For example, the person with real estate holdings in multiple states is unlikely to be applying for work in a poultry processing plant.
Being audited by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement means lost productivity and brand damage. Employers who knowingly hire or knowingly continue to employ unauthorized workers face civil penalties from $250 to $11,000 per violation. Even in high-volume, minimum-wage hiring situations, some employers have chosen to put pre-hire assessment testing in place. In addition to interview knockout questions, these pre-hire assessment tests require candidates to be consistent in their responses to behavioral and skills-related questions. Some tests are designed to help determine who is truthful as well as what their tendencies will be once they're hired into the job. Even in high turnover situations, a penny spent on pre-hire assessments can help significantly lower costs over the long term.
There's another significant aspect of identity verification employers ought to consider. Hiring is on the increase, but the supply of candidates still outweighs the demand. With no additional recruiters or HR staff to help qualify the plethora of candidates, employers can consider instituting a "rehire eligibility check" as part of the pre-hire qualification process. Not all former employees are qualified candidates for positions in other employer locations. This approach can be particularly helpful in preventing someone fired for stealing at one location from being hired at another. These checks are especially meaningful in industries such as staffing, retail and restaurants.
Identity theft cannot be dismissed or ignored when it comes to hiring. Whether the illegal employment is intentional or merely due to an oversight or lack of knowledge, the employer bears the burden of the fines, and the person whose identity has been compromised may be subject to years of red tape to undo the damage. Rather than risk compromising their companies' reputation, employers should consider reliable employee verification checks to remove uncertainty in the recruiting process and have the protection and assurance that the candidates they hire really are who they say they are.
[About the Author: David C. Fowler is vice president of product strategy at Talx Corp., an Equifax business unit.]
Regards,
Harvinder
http://harvinderjit .multiply. com
- 3.
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Article: Three Keys to Making Behavior Changes Stick
Posted by: "Harvinderjit Kaur" harvinderjit_kaur@yahoo.com harvinderjit_kaur
Thu May 13, 2010 5:57 am (PDT)
Three Keys to Making Behavior Changes Stick
by Vivien Price and David Robertson
Done right, investing in sustainable learning enables workers to close the knowing vs. doing gap. For sustainment to work, however, a real shift in thinking is required.
For years, "main event" components of learning - such as virtual or face-to-face programs or workshops that introduce new concepts, skills, tools and behaviors - have dominated learning interventions. This approach has neglected the importance of ongoing sustainment and reinforcement of the new knowledge and behaviors. We call the neglectful approach "spray and pray."
Our experience shows that for sustainment plans to be successful, they need to fit with the learning environment, the nature of the work, and the work styles and capabilities of the target audience. A successful approach includes the following three actions.
1. Assess the learning environment.
Leaders should think about the environment for learning whenever they embark on an initiative that requires changing behaviors in the workforce. A significant range of conditions exist in organizations that can impact choices about how to support and improve adoption and mastery of new knowledge, skills and tools. A comprehensive assessment will identify what learning practices, processes and tools currently exist in the workplace and then evaluate them at three levels: organizational, work group and individual.
2. Identify ownership levels.
In the spray-and-pray world of performance improvement initiatives, organizations fail to define who is expected to drive the behavior change and application of new skills and tools. Rather, it's assumed that everybody has a role, with the manager population implicitly central in supporting individual learners back on the job. But in the case of everybody owning it, nobody owns it.
In the "sustain to attain" approach, the learning environment assessment defines the primary- and secondary-level ownership of sustainment activities. They fall into three categories:
a) Organization drives.
The learning and development organization invests in centrally driven reinforcement activities and events.
b) Leaders lead.
The ownership and responsibility for sustainment and reinforcement work lies primarily in the hands of managers.
c) Learners seek.
Sustainment efforts are in the hands of the individual learners. They select what they will do and how to sustain what they are learning.
Once the primary and secondary owners have been identified, the appropriate sustainment activities can be chosen to fit with the ownership, and the owners of these activities can gain a clear definition of the specific expectations of their roles.
3. Choose sustainment activities.
There are four categories of sustainment activities:
a) Examples ("I see it.")
Activities in this group help learners see and know what they should be applying back on the job. These activities allow learners to experience what it feels like to successfully master the new behaviors and tools.
b) Assessments ("I need it.")
Assessment activities uncover gaps in performance and opportunities for improvement. These activities allow the learner, line manager, coach and organization as a whole to rate current performance and then use the feedback to establish or update improvement goals.
c) Opportunities ("I do it.")
Deliberate practice is at the heart of behavior change. Opportunities for application of new skills and tools don't have to amount to 10,000 hours, but they do need to be more significant than a couple of notes in an action plan at the end of a formal workshop or e-learning event. The nature of the work determines to what extent deliberate practice needs to be in a safe or simulated environment or whether practice drills can be done on the job.
d) Supports ("I live it.")
Activities in this group include significant catalysts for change. Affirmation and encouragement are often underrated but have been shown to be highly effective in helping people change a behavior and move through any short-term performance dip on the way to lasting improvement.
Sustainment might not be as immediately obvious an undertaking as the initial introduction of new behaviors, but without it, the impact of learning is blunted. Lack of support and reinforcement can cause learners to lapse into old behaviors, defeating the purpose of the behavior-change initiative. Given the strategic importance of behavior change and the resources organizations dedicate to achieving it, learning organizations should abandon ineffective spray-and-pray approaches in favor of those that sustain to attain. By doing so, they'll help learners develop and master new behaviors that stick for the long term and lead to the desired performance and impact.
[About the Authors: Vivien Price and David Robertson are executive consultants with The Forum Corp., a global professional services firm.]
Regards,
Harvinder
http://harvinderjit .multiply. com
- 4.
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Wish to attend train the trainer program, in Mumbai. any advice
Posted by: "Priya" priyarao22@yahoo.com priyarao22
Thu May 13, 2010 6:00 am (PDT)
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Article: A Little Positive Psychology Goes a Long Way
Posted by: "Harvinderjit Kaur" harvinderjit_kaur@yahoo.com harvinderjit_kaur
Thu May 13, 2010 6:01 am (PDT)
A Little Positive Psychology Goes a Long Way
by Agatha Gilmore
If you think your employees seem a little downtrodden lately, you're probably right. After all, it's usually around this time of year that people are starting to get worn out from winter anyway, and if you add record levels of job dissatisfaction, high unemployment and the continued economic recession to the mix, you've got a recipe for burnout.
However, it's during tough times that the need for inspired, engaged employees is especially great. Just ask Shawn Achor, founder and CEO of Aspirant, a global positive psychology consulting firm, and author of the forthcoming book The Happiness Advantage.
"Companies oftentimes are seeing people [wallow in] helplessness and despair," Achor said. "What we're finding is if you can train your brain to be positive in the midst of a challenge, you significantly raise your ability to be able to deal with it."
The main tenet of positive psychology research is that - contrary to many current business models - it's only when people have attained a base level of happiness and satisfaction that they can increase productivity and performance at work.
"The problem is that each time we have a success, we change the goal post of what success looks like. So if you met your sales targets last quarter, now we move the sales goals further," Achor said. "We push happiness over the horizon. [But] what we find is that individuals that are positive have significantly higher levels of productivity, creativity, resilience, [and are] significantly more likely to stay with the company and have less burnout. So what we find then is that the formula is backwards. Happiness is actually a precursor to greater success."
The good news is that it's possible to teach employees to adopt positive mindsets - even during challenging periods - and the benefits are long term. For example, Achor said Aspirant recently worked with KPMG, a global provider of tax, audit and advisory services. In the middle of the busy 2009 tax season, KPMG's auditors and managers engaged in a three-hour course designed to teach them how to find and focus on positive elements within their environments and reach out to their social support networks instead of retreat.
"We get them to create positive habits and change their energy to make those positive habits easier," Achor said.
Aspirant then tested the managers who received the training and compared the results with those of a control at three different times: immediately following the training, two months later and four months later.
"Within one week, the managers who had been trained were reporting significantly higher levels of optimism, performance as a leader, greater levels of social support and less stress," Achor said. "When we tested those individuals again four months after the three-hour training, we weren't necessarily expecting to see that effect continue for so long, but we were thrilled to find out that the group that received the positive psychology training showed significantly higher levels of life satisfaction - which is job satisfaction and quality of life put together. This is the reason positive psychology is so important as a field, because we're looking at how we can make long-term changes to performance and happiness at work."
Achor said his firm has engaged in positive psychology training across various industries in 38 countries, and the results have been similar.
"I've seen this work for bankers in Zurich, and yesterday I was with truckers in Florida. I've worked with schoolteachers, HR departments, technology firms, with farmers in Zimbabwe. And what we're finding is that the human brain works the same everywhere," he said. "I've heard so many people say, 'If I can get through the next eight to 14 hours of work, then I'll be happy,' or 'If we can get through this quarter, then we'll be happy.' [But people] shouldn't wait till the end of work to be happy and be positive. A positive brain will always outperform a negative or stressed brain."
[About the Author: Agatha Gilmore is a senior editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine.]
Regards,
Harvinder
http://harvinderjit .multiply. com
- 6.
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Article: Promotion Innovation as a Business Discipline
Posted by: "Harvinderjit Kaur" harvinderjit_kaur@yahoo.com harvinderjit_kaur
Thu May 13, 2010 6:01 am (PDT)
Promote Innovation as a Business Discipline
by Wouter Koetzier and Adi Alon
Because it is associated with free-spirited creativity and inspiration, innovation is often seen as a mysterious phenomenon rather than a manageable business process. Thus executives struggle not to commit to innovation in principle, but in their ability to execute innovation initiatives effectively in practice.
Organizations need to regard innovation as a business discipline and then manage and execute it as an end-to-end process moving from insight development to idea generation to development to marketplace launch.
Five key factors can help successfully manage innovation as a discipline.
1. A clear statement of mission and strategic direction.
Creating a business discipline focused on innovation begins with a precise definition of its role in the overall corporate strategy. This should be based on an organization' s industry, marketplace, consumer and competitive environment.
To be effective, this definitional approach to innovation must be broad enough that no one is let off the hook. If innovation is about continuously finding new sources of value, defined in whatever terms are appropriate for a particular industry, then executive teams must look at the processes they currently have in place to identify new sources of value, set up teams to explore and execute on these sources, manage the teams and then measure results.
2. A formal, accountability- based innovation infrastructure.
A clear definition of innovation's mission must be mirrored by similar clarity in accountability for innovation initiatives. If innovation is "everybody's job," as a well-intentioned CEO might say, then it is no one's job. True, everyone must contribute to innovation, but unless organizational structures are put in place with clear job titles, roles and accountabilities, innovation will remain a lofty ideal.
3. Dedicated budgets and resources.
For the same reason that HR or marketing cannot accomplish their respective missions without access to the full menu of corporate resources - including personnel, budgets and senior executive time - innovation will not have the necessary impact on business performance if it is not supported financially and organizationally and if that support is not clearly spelled out as a long-term commitment.
4. Repeatable, accessible tools and capabilities.
If senior executives expect to achieve repeatable and ongoing improvements in business performance, the innovation discipline needs to be supported by tools, capabilities and resources that are accessible across the organization. These resources should support the broader organization throughout the innovation process from insight generation to idea conception, idea development, resource allocation, program management, performance tracking and training. Wikis and crowdsourcing tools, for example, are becoming excellent ways to harness innovation.
5. Clear performance indicators and milestones.
Two kinds of innovation measures must be considered. One is a reporting-oriented or backward-looking set of metrics: How much revenue has a company generated from new products or services, how has time to market been reduced by process improvements and so forth.
Two, organizations need to implement a set of forward-looking measures. For example, executives can look at the project or idea pipeline to determine if idea sources are diverse. By making sure the innovation pipeline truly reflects the diversity of the organization, a company can avoid the risks of taking too narrow a marketplace focus.
In the end, creating a disciplined process for innovation can enable a company to take bigger leaps with less risk. Certainly there is room at the innovation table for many kinds of initiatives, even small improvements. But organizations looking to drive profitable growth through innovation should remember the old saying: "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
[About the Authors: Wouter Koetzier is the managing director for innovation in the Accenture process and innovation performance consulting group. Adi Alon is a managing director in the innovation practice, part of the Accenture process and innovation performance service line.]
Regards,
Harvinder
http://harvinderjit .multiply. com
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Article: Helpful Hints to Effectively Communicate Across Generations
Posted by: "Harvinderjit Kaur" harvinderjit_kaur@yahoo.com harvinderjit_kaur
Thu May 13, 2010 6:01 am (PDT)
Helpful Hints to Effectively Communicate Across Generations
by Damon Kitchen
Numerous surveys and studies reveal that large segments of the workforce in the United States share common work values, preferences and attitudes based on life experiences. While it is erroneous to assume an employee's values and needs are similar to another's simply because of proximity in age, it's also a mistake to ignore shared generational values and perspectives that predominate in the workplace.
In many workplaces, there's a fairly significant age difference between the oldest and youngest workers. While this isn't a new phenomenon, what is unique today is that the workplace is much more "age diverse" than in past times. As American life spans continue to increase, more and more members of the so-called Silent Generation are returning to the workplace from unfulfilling retirements to work alongside baby boomers, Gen Xers and millennials.
Although historically the more senior employees in the workplace were found in the higher tiers of the business organization, that is no longer always the case. Today, it's not uncommon to have a significant number of high-level managers and supervisors who are younger than their subordinates.
Based upon this changed demographic, some older workers may feel resentment toward younger authority figures whom they perceive to have not paid their dues. Similarly, some younger employees may feel frustration with having to conform to workplace policies and practices that they perceive to be antiquated, dogmatic and baseless.
Employers who are challenged with managing a diverse age group of employees must be innovative in establishing effective ways to communicate with and motivate their employees.
1. Develop a culture of respect in the workplace.
Managers develop and maintain respect by treating people with courtesy, fairness and an even hand. It's far too easy to draw conclusions about people based on age; these conclusions are often wrong and damaging to an office environment. Age-based stereotypes abound in many workplaces, but good managers will get to know their subordinates and assess their individual strengths and weaknesses irrespective of age.
2. Be flexible in your management style.
Different generations often have different work ethics, so supervisors with rigid management styles may encounter problems when trying to manage and motivate an age-diverse workforce. A flexible management style can often be an asset in managing employees in widely divergent age groups.
Managers need to communicate clearly the particular tasks and functions to be performed, the time periods in which they must be performed and the standards to which they must be performed. Beyond that, they should assess whether it's essential to adopt a "business as usual" or "that's the way we've always done things" approach. As long as employees perform their assigned tasks and functions effectively, a manager who can learn to be flexible in his or her management style often can win the support and allegiance of subordinates.
3. Be guardedly open to new ideas and technologies.
Regardless of age, employees who are technologically sophisticated will want to incorporate new technologies into the workplace. In today's workplace, many employees may prefer to communicate via e-mail or Web conferencing rather than physically attending meetings or conferences. If business productivity, office efficiency and employee morale do not suffer as a result, managers should consider allowing the introduction of such technologies in their workplaces.
On the other hand, managers should be cautious about the manner in which they introduce new technologies into their businesses. Employers should have clearly written telephone, e-mail and computer usage policies that specify what is and is not considered appropriate usage.
4. Preach tolerance and practice patience.
Sometimes, employees from one generation view others with disdain because they do not share the same values, attitudes and work ethics. Good managers realize that while they cannot always change the way their subordinates think, they can control the way those employees behave and interact in the workplace. Managers should make it clear that employees should not only be tolerant of each other's personal views and beliefs, but also be patient and realize that personal views and beliefs are usually deeply ingrained and do not change overnight.
For instance, some office disputes involve differing opinions on dress codes. Many younger employees fail to see the utility of wearing formal business apparel; by contrast, older members of the workforce often view tattoos and piercings with disdain. Employers can avoid conflicts on this issue by developing carefully crafted yet flexible dress codes and grooming policies and then enforcing them consistently.
[About the Author: Damon Kitchen is a partner in the Jacksonville, Fla., office of national management-side labor and employment law firm Constangy, Brooks & Smith LLP.]
Regards,
Harvinder
http://harvinderjit .multiply. com
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