With the increasingly fierce competition of economy, large quantities of companies need effective corporation management to improve their own competitiveness. For a successful business manager, efficient management is needed which can bring the greatest benefits to enterprises. Therefore, effective management of employees is the most effective way to sharpen the competitive edge. According to Stephen P, a good management system should include planning, organizing, ability of control, motivation , leadership and others which not only harmonize human resources and financial resources in the company but also maximize benefits to the company. This essay will examine diversified features of human resources, de-motivated employees and team work based on reasons and examples.
Since the human resource management plays an important role in the modern economic development, to attract talents and personnel training become the primary task in the modern enterprise management which can improve the overall quality of employees. Apparently, to develop human resources has become a new trend in management. Human resource management refers to a series of corporate human resource policies and appropriate management activities. These activities include the development of corporate human resource strategy, staff recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management, compensation management, employee mobility management, employee relationship management, employee safety and health management. In management, due to the lack of scientific assessment mechanism, employers often ignore the interests and subjective needs of employees, which brings negative impact to employees, especially the positivity of talents, inhibiting the potentials of staff and resulting in a waste of resources. In addition, due to the difference in experience and ability employers will have different views or bias in choosing talents, so it is difficult to keep the competition fair. Therefore, enterprises should have a scientific and effective mechanism for managing and choosing good staff. Due to the enhancement of spontaneity and self-development sense of high-caliber talents, the property and structure of workforce has also changed. The increase of personnel mobility and the emergence of high wastage rate make enterprises pay more attention on talent selection and employment. Meanwhile, HRM requires the recruitment and selection work to change from tactical management to strategic development and to support the enterprise's strategic development targets. All these changes demand us to reconsider the ideas and methods to select and help the enterprises to find employees who are really suitable for them. First is the screening of professional skills. The basic requirement for qualified employees is to be competent at his job. This step is usually performed through written examination to examine the professional skills of employees. It is the so called individual-work matching. The second step of interview aims at individual-organization matching-individual values match with organizations, based on applicants and the property of the applied position. The individual- organizations matching describes the similarity between personal values and organization values. Values govern the behavior of individuals. Those employees who approve the values and objectives of the enterprise are able to blend with corporate culture and employees with the same values can exchange more easily. In that way, working pressure can be lightened and the organization's efficiency can be improved. The last step is to observe the prospective employees who satisfy the former requirements. Theoretically speaking, employees who passed through the former tests are qualified to do the job personally. Then from the perspective of the boss, the development of an enterprise needs the progress of its employees. Those who know how to explore their own potential are talents that can shoulder greater responsibility in the short time.
Training is one of the most important ways in management to build up a high quality staff system. Therefore, training can be considered as the center of human resource development. Human resources have a potential value in the investment of resources. In addition staff training is least risky in all kinds of investment and has the largest strategic investment income. From the social point of view, with the development of information technology and the Internet, the human society has entered the era of information explosion, and learning will become one's lifelong requirement. For employees, with the physiological needs fulfilled, they think working can become a process of learning which can improve their knowledge and experience in the field. Thus, employees not only attach the quality of the work, but also consider learning new knowledge and technology during working. When the training is over, owing to the improvement of employees' skills the enterprise will also develop. Furthermore, employees also get profit from the development of the enterprise, relying on the efforts of their own. Employees and enterprises not only share the training costs but also share the benefits, which means that companies and employees have an incentive to continue cooperation. For example, Disney is the most famous theme park in the world. What is it that makes Disney stand still in the fierce competition of tourism market as the leader of theme parks? In fact, the secret of Disney's success is to provide high quality and meticulous service to visitors. And why Disney can build up its service brand relies on the rigorous staff training system. The staff training of Disney is concentrated on education of their spirit rather than improving their work ability. Therefore, the training process of Disney at first is like religious indoctrination and training becomes the core value of the long- standing project. Disney requires every employee, from the new vice president to ticket collector, to take the new staff training courses of Disney University. This is to help all employees understand the history, achievement and management concepts of Disney. In the few days of training, all new recruits need to immediately learn the following new language of Disney: Employees are the "actors"; customers are "guests"; a group of people are the "audience"; routine work is "performance." since the coverage of training is from culture to language, all employees will have a deeper understanding of the enterprise. Coca-Cola Personnel Claudia said, "Coca-Cola is a company of personnel training. Production of carbonated beverages is only our sideline." Training philosophy has become a part of Coca-Cola. With training centers and management schools all over China, Coca-Cola gives the opportunity of continuous learning and training to staffs of different levels and positions. The important thing is to make employees feel that they have a lot of opportunities of learning, training and development. Training in Coca-Cola is divided into high, medium and low levels. The training of senior staff is mainly based on training programs offered by the training group of headquarters, such as selection of some senior managers each year to Tsinghua University to accept training of a month. The training of middle-level staff is mainly focused on their mastery of new knowledge and skills, and those who are excellent during the training will have chances to take courses in Xiamen University. For the staff of general positions the training will focus on their own professional skills, especially for those who have great potentials. This training provides staffs some new areas of knowledge and skills in order to help them meet requirements after promotion. Generally, Coca-Cola focuses their training on the mid-tier of the hierarchy and grassroots staffs. Therefore, Coca-Cola Company has adopted a fairly complete and systematic training system. It is considered by Scorecard Metrics for HR (2010) that training must combine with the company's career advancement, development strategy and target. Nevertheless, in order to adapt to the change of external environment, a number of businesses put their long-term development through some training contents. Wal-mart is a useful example for training employees. In the practice of Wal-mart, new employees will understand the expectations of customers and what they can do at work. When they pass this stage, the workforce will be trained according to their potential abilities in specific such as learning management skills in the supermarket (Marketing Teacher, 2010). According to the persons who are used to taking part into the training group, they found they have learned more helpful knowledge during the training. Besides, they also want to continue to stay in Wal-mart because they found the company helps them promote. As a result of this, the improvement of Wal-mart can be existed in the future. To sum up, it is clearly to show training can both improve the employee's capability and also the strength of the enterprise.
At the same time, managers can use incentive methods which can give employees different degrees of satisfaction to motivate employees to make great efforts for the final goal of the company. According to Romando (2010), the word "motivation" in Latin means to move, which can be defined as intrinsic driving force, while the theory of motivation is stated that "the processes that describe why and how human behavior is activated and directed." This is said to be one of the most essential aspects of organizational action. There are two motivation theories, which can be divided into two major groups. One is called content theory, describing the particular factors that enable to motivate workforce. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Taylor's theory of scientific management and McClelland's three-need theory are some examples of major content theory. The other is process theory which is concerned with the thinking process that affects behaviors like the Vroom's Valence x Expectancy theory (Hall et al, 2008). The two theories have attempted to provide an explanation of financial and non-financial strategies to help motivate workforce.
The factors of de-motivated workforce can be mainly categorized into three parts. It is reported by Investors in People UK (2008) that approximately 30% of workforces in the UK were de-motivated in their jobs. This research also found out that there are three major negative factors, consisting of unreasonable workload, feeling underpaid and lack of clear career path. To be specific, both unreasonable workload and feeling underpaid among workforces accounted for 18%. The remaining 17% was lack of clear career path. Besides, 44% of workforce thought that their companies were not willing to support their careers. More than one in four people (28%) of them claimed they consider they lost support by their managers. For those employees who have de-motivated factors also concluded that "without the support in the organization, employees are likely to drift and depart rather than stay engaged with their organization's objectives." (Investors in People UK, 2008)
A number of motivation theories emphasize that money is the most vital element in motivating employees at work. To motivate a reluctant workforce, it is necessary to use financial reward such as piece-rate and fringe benefits.
To begin with, piece-rate is one of the useful financial rewards in Taylor's theory, which closely connects with the production lines and pays for a worker per unit in a certain period of time (Tutor2u.net, 2010). It was mentioned by Frederick Winslow Taylor that the best way to motivate workforce were through money. He also focused on industrial production, especially in time and motion studies which has paid off the significant improvement in it (Sandrone, 2009). It is a helpful example that introduces Florida's citrus harvesters for the minimum wage at fruit and vegetable commodities. In 2002, the workers were paid 5.60 dollars per hour with a piece rate of 70 cents per box. However, in 2008 and 2009, the minimum wage increased to $6.79 to $7.25 per hour which means their productivity needs to increase so that they can meet the low minimum wage (Roka, 2009).
Apart from the piece-rate method, fringe benefits are also popular money strategies according to Maslow's theory for firms which want to motivate their employees. Fringe benefits are considered as the items beyond normal wage or salaries such as private health insurance, contribution to pension and a company car (Tutor2u.net, 2010). It is proved by Shah (2008) that Abraham Maslow's "Need Hierarchy Theory" can be divided into a pyramid which can be seen in Diagram One. This pyramid focuses on physiological and security needs which can be connected with the use of fringe benefits. What is more, it is stated by Srivastava (2005) that a considerable number of large companies such as GE and LG built gyms with great facilities for their workforce. The purpose of the firms is to keep employees healthy and provide opportunities for them to relax from the work so that they can be more motivated.
Diagram One:
Sources: Theories of Motivation by Maslow (Shah, 2008)
In contrast, it is pointed out by Worman (2010) that more payment for employees do not mean more happiness because extra money paid to workforce is not the only answer or the best one to motivate employees. The scientific approach, in particular, non-monetary motivation is more useful to solve de-motivation problems for people.
To effectively help de-motivated employees, managers can look forward to developing team spirit among the group members and connecting with McClelland's managerial needs. According to Worman (2010), everybody in a company enjoys being a member of a group which is "the need for affiliation" of McClelland's managerial need which concerns gaining the acceptance of work colleagues (Hall et al, 2008). It is necessary to build "team" theme because it can arouse employees to be responsible and be more motivated in team working. According to Blue Scope Steel (2010), Blue Scope Steel and Toyota Australia constituted a team which investigated intermittent quality problems on the inside door panels of Toyota Camry. Owing to their responsibilities and team spirit, these two companies improved the quality in the product and built great working relationship.
Exclusive of good relationship with other workforce, de-motivated employees are likely interested in receiving training to develop themselves in a company. It is believed by Worman (2010) that a workforce who was trained to improve the skills knows how much the company cares about the person, who tends to continue to stay in the company. IBM's Human Resource Service Center, for instance, diversified their training into three types, including new staff training, refresher training and new program training (Peter et al, 1999). To sum up, these training increases the sense of belonging of the employees and helps them enjoy their work.
Teamwork is the competitive power of company. With the increasingly fierce market competition, the enterprise lay more emphasis on team spirit and establish group consensus to achieve higher efficiency. Especially when encountered with large scale projects, it might be very difficult to gain remarkable achievements alone. A team, besides relying on prominent leaders, every member is an indispensable part to make the team keep merging together.
Teamwork is the basic model in the operation of modern corporations and few major companies don't take the team-pattern. A team is a community composed by staff and managers. It utilizes the knowledge and skills of every member to do collaborative work, solve all the problems and achieve the common goals. To build a cohesive and efficient team, the first and most important procedure is confidence-building. This means that an efficient team member must learn to admit his mistakes and willing to accept the merits of others even if these strengths exceed yours. In addition, the biggest obstacle of team work is the fear to conflicts. What the managers need to do is to recognize inveracious harmony, guide and encourage proper conflicts. This is a messy and time-consuming process, but it is inescapable. Otherwise, it will be an impossible mission for the team to create a authentic commitment.
Companies can motivation their staff by developing a team work spirit. Employees will be distributed into different groups and work together. Form this situation, employees can learn more professional skills from their partners and ll workers will share responsibility in their team. Hall.D(2008) also stated that team working can training a co-operating between employees, which will lead to an efficient working process and more likely to achieve a success. According to Free online research papers (2009), the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz stated that the principle value to their companies is employees, companies usually provide an interactive atmosphere for their employees which can help then share responsibility from works and never get boring from job. The same as VOLVO, team working has put into the Volvos' Uddevalla's prediction. Workers in each individual teams are skilled enough to produce cars in time, hence stocks will be avoided in this situation and the productivity has been improved, wither (Ake.S, 2007) Employees in team work system will make an effort to get their team's goal so that they will fell responsible for their works. However, team work description can be distorted by disagreements between workers and a lacking preparation.
There are four universal types of universal teams. They are problem-solving teams, self-managed teams, cross-functional teams and virtual teams. Problem-solving teams are generally composed by 5-12 employees and supervisors. They gather together regularly to discuss the quality problem they met, investigate for reasons, put forward solutions and take effective actions. And management teams are usually composed by 10-15 members and this pattern is completely self management. They have the right to control their own work schedule; work allocation and even to choose their own members. Cross-functional teams are composed by employees of different domains at the same level. Employees work together in order to complete common tasks. Finally the virtual teams connect people in different places by computers to achieve common goals. This kind of team work can be carried out on line wherever the employees are.
Forming an efficient team can bring huge profits to the enterprise. Optimal teams are generally small, because it is hard to form cohesive force with too many members. Concerning the member selection, we need three different types of person. Firstly, it needs members with technical expertise. Secondly, it needs members with the ability to solve problems. Finally, members who are good at listening, retroaction and solving conflicts are also needed in the team.
On July 20, 2010, 33 miners were trapped in a copper and gold mine 700 meters under the ground. After the rescue that lasted for more than two months, all of the miners were survived. Although people outside thought the miners were died after 17 days of the disaster, they do stay alive miraculously and even caused world-wide concern. The main reason that they could hold on for 17 days was that they were living as an excellent team. The team leader allocated the tasks and food fairly and encouraged the members not to give up. As a result, all the members held the same goal and everyone played his own role. At last, all of them were rescued. From this example, it is not difficult to find that for any organization, there should be a common aim and a cohesive atmosphere. Only in this way can the staff be united together and work for the same objective.
In brief, there is no loser in a high efficient team and nobody would win in an inefficient group. The success of a company relies on teamwork instead of contribution of individuals. Team does not simply mean that one plus one will equals two, but aims at more than two by adding one to one. There is never a perfect individual, but there is always a perfect team.
