Human resource management - appunti

Selection

Reliability = consistency of measurement (how much noise/error has influenced the measure)

Validity = the extent to which scores on a test or interview correspond to actual job performance

Selection tools:

1. Letters of recommendations
2. Application forms (asking info regarding past jobs or present employment status) to determine whether a candidate has the minimum requirements for that job. Ex: biodata forms
3. Ability tests (Ex: cognitive ability tests specific of a certain area)
4. Personality tests to asses traits like extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness to experiences
5. Honesty tests (Ex: polygraph test measure a candidate pulse, breathing rate while asking a series of questions)
6. Interviews criticism of interviews because: poor reliability and validity because of human judgement limitation, interviewer's biases and the fact that sometimes are conducted differently from a candidate to another

Solution: STRUCTURED INTERVIEW = job

1. related questions consistent across all candidates (all responses are scored the same way) valid predictors of job performance
   • Ex. how a worker would respond to a particular work situation (situational questions), basic knowledge (job knowledge questions), if the worker wants to perform under prevailing job conditions (worker requirement questions)
2. But unstructured interviews remain popular because they can better predict the candidate's degree of fit with the organization and identify inadequate candidates.
3. Assessment centres (set of simulated tasks or exercises that candidates have to perform) used for external recruitment or internal promotion (usually managerial positions)
   • expensive way to reduce costs could be conduct it only for the middle range candidates
   • effective technique to judge competences (organizing, planning, decision-making, leadership)
4. Drug tests
5. Reference checks (look at past employment record)
6. Background checks (look at criminal background, academic)

Handwriting analysis!!

Link between performance and fit with the organizational culture you can improve skills by training programs but you can't change persons' values

SOCIALIZATION:

Aimed to integrate workers in the organization and to the units in which they will be working (making him feel member of the team)

APPRAISING AND MANAGING PERFORMANCE

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL = identification, measurement and management of organizational performance

Administrative purpose

Deciding employees' working conditions, promotions, rewards, terminations

Developmental purpose

Improving employees' skills with feedbacks, trainings, learning opportunities

Sometimes appraisal cost > benefits because performance is not measured accurately

Identification of performance dimensions (what is to be measured)

1. Quality
2. Quantity
3. Interpersonal effectiveness (interaction)

Performance dimensions has to be linked with the organizational objectives.

Measuring performance

Measurement tools:

1. RELATIVE JUDGEMENT (supervisors compare an employee's performance with the one of the others doing the same job)
   • + enables supervisors to differentiate among their workers
   • - with a rank it is not clear how great or small is the difference between employees' performance
   • + more fair if employees are all good
   • - avoid conflicts among workers
   • - supervisors may not be able to differentiate among workers
   • - force supervisors to identify differences among workers even if there are none
   • - managers cannot determine how good are employees at the top and the bottom of the rank
2. ABSOLUTE JUDGEMENT (supervisors compare an employee's performance with performance standards)
   • + not ambiguous
   • - employees have clearer the outcomes if
   • - focuses too much on the results at any costs (ex: if)
3. TRAIT
4. BEHAVIOUR
5. OUTCOME
   • - too ambiguous
   • + not ambiguous
   • - legally defensible

Achieving person rather on the which type of behaviour to a n° of units produced performance adopt to do well in the then workers may neglect organization quality)!! No best appraisal tool it depends on your purposeEx. if your concern is obtaining the desired results, then is better to adopt an outcome-based approach

Source of the appraisal: worker supervisor (more common), workers themselves (self-review), workers at the same level in the organization (peer review), workers review supervisors (subordinate review). WHEN YOU COMBINE ALL OF THEM THE APPRAISAL IS CALLED 360° FEEDBACK (picture of employees performance from all perspectives)

Challenges in measuring performance

1. Rater error and biases (errore di valutazione)
• Halo error = tendency to rate similarly across dimensions (example: I rate a person low in all 3 dimensions even though his performance in quantity and quality is high)
• Restriction range error = a manager restricts his ratings to a small proportion of the rating

scale (example: ratings are restricted to the high portion of the scale (leniency error), middle portion of the scale (central tendency error), low portion of the scale (severity error)

A supervisor may always rate certain workers lower or higher than others because of BIASES (sex, race, national origins, age...) develop FRAME-OF-REFERENCE (FOR) TRAINING to avoid negative biases and develop a common frame for performance evaluation- expensive (time, people, effort)+ increase efficiency of performance rating

2. Influence of liking = raters allow their like or dislike of an individual influencing their performance evaluations a solution to the problem could be routine RECORDKEEPING of how workers are doing- no way to avoid the problem but it helps to reduce it- no replace discussion of problems with recordkeeping

3. Organizational politics = worker performance depends on the supervisor's goals

4. Individual or group focus = if the organization has a TEAM STRUCTURE, then the

manager has to evaluate performance at two levels: 1. BALANCING Performance of the individual inside the team 2. Team performance as a unit 5. Legal issues 3. Managing performance APPRAISAL INTERVIEW = after the performance rating, the supervisor provides employees with feedback 1. Performance discussion 2. Salary discussion makes the employees understand that the feedback is useful → Performance improvements STEPS: 1. Identify the cause of problems - Ability (workers' skills, knowledge...) - Motivation - Situational factors (e.g. poor activities coordination, material quality, information quality, supervision, training, work environment...) 2. Take action by developing an action plan to control them and find remedies 3. Direct communication at performance between workers and supervisors TRAINING THE WORKFORCE TRAINING = providing employees with skills to correct deficits in their performance vs DEVELOPMENT = providing employees with skills they will need in the future Training can have a

Negative connotation because puts the emphasis on the fact that the organization wants to correct employees' deficits need to see training positively - Challenges in training

Training is not always the solution if employee's problems are beyond their control (situational factors)

To be successful training has to be linked to achieve attainable and clear goals

Training is costly organizations have to determine whether training is a good investment measuring its benefits in

Hard areas (ex. machines adjustments)

Soft areas (ex. team work)

Managing the training process

1. Needs of assessment phase = determine if the training is needed at 3 levels
• Organizational: if training can help the organization to reach its objectives
• Task: identify KSA to be trained to perform the job better
• Person: if employees needs training
2. Sometimes training is too costly and it is better to terminating or transferring the worker

Training and conduct phase

LOCATION - ON-THE-JOB

TRAINING under the guidance of an expert worker, supervisor, trainer:

• what you learn is directly linked to the job
• less costs using workers as trainers
• costly because on the job trainees may cause customers frustration (slow work)
• costly because trainee may make mistakes or damage equipment
• good workers may not be able to teach

Ex.

• Job rotation (employees can gain experience in different narrow areas)
• Apprenticeship (learn from an experienced worker)
• Internship (job experience for students)

OFF-THE-JOB TRAINING (formal courses, simulations, lessons in classrooms…):

• avoid employees' distraction and the study is more continuous
• what you learn may not be transferred to the job

PRESENTATION OPTIONS (slides, teletraining, computers, simulations, virtual reality, classroom instruction):

• TYPES OF TRAININGS (skill training, retraining, cross-functional training, team training, creativity training, literacy training, diversity training, crisis training, ethics training,

customer service training) 3. The evaluation phase = assess the effectiveness of the training program 4 LEVELS FRAMEWORK FOR TRAINING EVALUTATION 1. Reaction of trainees (satisfaction scale) 2. How much trainees learnt (skill exercise) 3. Trainees behaviour (observing work operations) 4. Results (impact on ROI) more important of the training program has achieved its goals!! legal issues in training employees must have the same opportunity to access to training programmes without discriminations MANAGING COMPENSATION Compensation is one of the most important mechanisms that firms use to attract, retain and motivate competent employees. It is one of the most important costs for the firm. TOTAL COMPENSATION = BASE COMPENSATION + PAY INCENTIVES + BENEFITS The relation between the 3 varies from firm to firm: Base compensation = fix pay an employee receive on a regular basis Pay incentives = programs designed to reward employees' good performance Benefits = indirect compensations like health insurance, vacations.unemploymentcompensation, prerequisites (benefits given to employees with a special status likeupper-level managers) Designing a compensation scheme

1. Internal equity (if the pay is fair for the employees within the firm) vs external equity (if the pay is fair for employees compared to the pays for the same kind of labour outside the firm)

DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE MODEL = employees exchange their contribution to the firm (skills,