Activity 1: The effective HR professional:
Introduction:
Industries have possibly never been under additional pressure than they are at this point in time. Living in the uncertain economies and financial challenges where organizations are downsizing and keeping an eye on the market behavior and changing demands, facing the influence of shifting technology and new regulation causing great impact on resources and utility costs.
It’s a big challenge to carry day to day activity and plan strategically. According to Richard Daft (2007), it is necessary to understand the organizations vision and mission specially the strategies implemented to achieve those set goals, your techniques should be aligned to it. Always stay open for discussion it with your managers to seek guidance.
Start brainstorming about the new techniques and methodologies which can play vital role in current specifically in current task or project you are dealing with. Break down into Pros and cons to analyze the one positive step to drive forward. It could be change in the current values to get more market opportunities, it could be at organizational level to have diversification in the product line. At the personal level most important is empathy, personal considerate and affinity, and a commitment to yourself to achieve personal objectives.
Professional Map:
The CIPD Profession Map is a road to success. It is designed to monitor each aspect of the cycle. The circle split into eight behaviors i.e. role model, decisive thinker, skilled influencer, personally credible, collaborative, courage to challenge curious. Ten Professional area’s i.e. organization design, Service delivery and information. Employee relations, employee engagement, performance and reward, learning and development, resourcing and talent planning and organizational development. And four bands of professional competencies.
Diversity is the saying here. The day you are working with the management on attracting and developing the talent to achieve our goals and on the other side you are engaged with the employees and create grounds of motivation. We have to be comfortable associating with line managers in the business and be ready to support or challenge them when they lead their teams. They will be following you for intuitions which can help in leading to performance improvements.
The wide range of knowledge, activities and behaviors in different professional areas But I am going to focus on below mentioned areas.
Professional Areas Behaviors Bands of professional competency
Learning and development Collaborative and Courage to challenge 1 and 2
Performance and reward
Learning and development:
In Learning and development, When a firm wants to get best of their employees they always compare their skill set and what they are capable of. As an HR professional this is the best point where you can work on to build your workforce up to the level where they can play vital role in achieving organizational targets. It also helps on individual prospective to explore their potential and strengths. It can be junior staff, line managers or could be senior executives. As HR professional it will help organization to execute strategy by aligning leaning with business priorities. It will support and could be more effective in hierarchy to work efficiently. The business targets can only be achieved if it breaks down into separate focal points and plan learning modules to train all management and further break down to managers and junior staff to help them to align their task impactful. The in house training should be regular and designed on the best practices across the world. It is extremely necessary to assign professional courses based on the existing qualification and position in the organization to help their employees to gain more knowledge and adopt best standards to work effectively and efficiently.
Performance and Reward:
In Performance and reward profession, the reward function plays an important role in any organization. It creates and sustain high performance standards ensure each individual that the skill set, behaviors, values and attitudes will be rewarded and recognized. As HR professional, it is very important to motivate your workforce by creating and implementing reward strategy in supporting of business needs as well as benefiting employees. It covers aspects like setting pay grades against the market trends, preparing salary frameworks that support fair and unbiased decisions, develop incentive schemes Along with practical reward, to do so it is very important to engage management and employees to set examples for employees to value skills and it will be rewarded. Personally, I love working in reward as it has a hard commercial edge and provides a great combination of operational delivery (i.e. salary review) with the chance to do some thought leadership.
Elements of CIPD Professional map:
CIPD has really uplift the dynamics of HR professional model. The use of knowledge for the betterment of the society, indicating an ethical responsibility. Capability to make knowledgeable choices about activities, and a consistent need of performance. In some areas it is critical because of professional opinions.
Situational judgment is also important to develop practical understanding applicable to specific situations, while often resolving any conflict of interest between stakeholders. It helps developing self-commitment to excellence by learning professional practices. It also helps you to develop your decision making skill based on limited information.
As HR Business Partner, I am the face of my HR department. Really is about managing two dynamic, entwined affairs. Two days never be the same. I have to build good repute, giving trust to team members, giving and opportunity to express their thoughts.
Activity 2 – Group dynamics and conflict resolution:
Introduction Group Dynamics:
According to Forsyth (2010), Group dynamics seems to be the set of procedures and approaches that effect personalities through the groups or actions made by the group can effect large group. In general terms, a group with sole objective, they know they are team, they interact with each other, take responsibility and accountability, share knowledge to achieve their goal effectively and efficiently.
As an HR professional our management has decided to gather all the information about the employees who want do professional certification and check their background education, skill set, manager review and recommendation. So we have decided to create a 6 member team including one member from each department.
Factors which influence group dynamics:
In order to understand about mechanism of group dynamics it is very important to address the issues in team formation and its functioning. There are number of factors involved internally and externally which effect the group performance and impact of the project assigned to them. In general, there are number of factors like natural factors, technical material, socio cultural and specific social factors.
In Natural factors it consist of natural environment effect physical conditions of work group like temperature, humidity, lighting, noise, vibrations, etc. whereas technical material environment consist of for example, workers working in machine shop, no of tools given to group, no of persons in allotted space, Zlate (2008). In case of technical and material environment factor, it influence directly to the work group like techniques, procedure, communication etc. Another key factor is Socio cultural consist of family, neighborhood, living environment and residential preparations etc. lastly social factors which revolves based on the history of your terms with your coworkers and existing group members.
Tuckman’s Model (1965) (1977):
By continuing with my example, we faced bit difficulties in formation of the team and assigning the task. But if take Tuckman’s model then it would help me to simplify all sections and help to manage accordingly.
First and second stage would be combined (forming and storming) in which I would like to include all team members whom I worked occasionally on different tasks or have good relationships and belong to different cultural backgrounds. It will remove the socio culture factor with in the team which will help to build strong bonding within the team members. It will help in explaining the target and what we need to be achieve as a team. Set goals, set mission, periodic meetings and establish roles
Transition from the Second stage to third (Storming to Norming), discuss techniques, methods, approach can be more effective in getting exact information about the potential employees. Members should get feedback from the line managers about the current performance of the potential employee and would he recommend for his employee to let him to take additional education to perform better. Discuss the outcomes within the members of the team. As a team lead I prefer to discuss and take opinion from all members and appreciate their feedback. We may face some issues with team member due to his urgent family commitments but our schedule and commitments but leader should be flexible in their commitments to remove the natural factors. Every team member should honor each member’s responsibility and trust their role and feedback.
Transition from Third stage to forth (Norming to Performing), should maintain tradition, communicate each other, praise efforts, share achievements, and follow commitments. As a lead, I would rather to delegate few tasks among team members to give self-ownership and self-evaluation. Always welcome new team member and help him to train. All the data related to potential employees gathered took to feedback from the department line managers, senior managers, HR managers to set timeline for certification.
At last stage, after completion of the assigned task the group the team will be breakup and assigned to other tasks.
Conflict Resolution, IBR Model:
Interest based rational model is one the commonly used model in most of the situations. (IBR) approach Fisher and Ury in ‘Getting to Yes’ (1981) is best model in my current example which is as follows;
1. Make sure that good relationships are a priority – As a lead in the project of gathering data we might face conflict but in order to resolve it is best to be courteous, and communicate in a constructive manner, keeping a positive attitude will result to get desired outcome.
2. Separate people from problems – As a lead always remember it’s about situation not person. It is essential to consider about the root cause of the situation.
3. Listen carefully to different interests. – It’s one of the core leadership skill also to listen and respect each opinion and let them explain their approach even if it doesn’t work out then it will help them to remove their confusions.
4. Listen first, talk second. Listening is key according to the brightest executives of the world. Let your team explain their view points and encourage the other members to ask questions so that they have clarity. A display of empathy at this step is vital.
5. Set out the “facts.”, Let both parties present the facts on the table. Sounds facts of the situation might help individuals change the way they perceive a problem.
6. Explore options together, as we know Brainstorming is key at this stage. Arrange meeting to invite all team members to take feedback on different options, members of the team might bring some innovative idea to make a win-win situation for management and employee.
While taking TKI Approach:
I would rather focus of Collaborating in which it is both assertive and cooperative. Opposite of avoiding. Collaborating is highlighting all concerns or view points from the management and the employees and clear the conflict if any. Make a bridge between management of employee to make them understand that educating employees will ultimately benefiting the department and organization.
Compromising is modest in both assertiveness and cooperativeness. The basic need to find way out to address solution and make comfort for both parties. Sometime it’s damaging for the employees to not let them train and focus only on management decision but there is always mid-way to resolve any conflict. In my work environment, the TKI approach is more preferred depending on the need of the situation.
Activity 3 Project management:
