HRM OTG

Orienting Employees
Employee orientation:
A procedure for providing new employees with basic background information about the firm.

Orientation content:
Information on employee benefits
Personnel policies
The daily routine
Company organization and operations
Safety measures and regulations
Facilities tour

A successful orientation should accomplish four things for new employees:
Make them feel welcome and at ease.
Help them understand the organization in a broad sense.
Make clear to them what is expected in terms of work and behavior.
Help them begin the process of becoming socialized into the firm’s ways of acting and doing things.

Regulate Your Emotions During a Negotiation

You’re in the middle of a heated negotiation with your colleague. You want to come across as confident, but inside you feel timid. During these difficult situations, there are actually two conversations happening at the same time. One is obvious: It’s the conversation you’re having with someone else. The other is the conversation you’re having within yourself about how willing and able you are to stretch outside your comfort zone. To negotiate successfully, you need to question your position in both conversations. When you’re negotiating with someone else, look beyond your stated position to find commonalities. And when you’re negotiating with yourself, your “position” might be that you’re unwilling to be more assertive. Dig a little deeper and ask yourself why. Is it an emotional challenge? Are you afraid of being assertive? Or is it a skill-based challenge? Getting to the bottom of why you’re unwilling to step outside your comfort zone is the first step in becoming a better negotiator.
Credit: HBR

Get the Crowd to Weigh In on Strategic Decisions

In most organizations authority for the most important strategic decisions is left to the highest-paid person’s opinion (HiPPO). But relying on the judgement of one person or a few individuals is bound to lead to trouble. HiPPOs often are wrong, due to inherent biases, misinformation, and other types of noise that can cloud one person’s opinion. To cancel out much of that noise, companies should integrate crowd voting into their decision-making strategies. Crowd voting integrates the expertise, knowledge, and perspectives of many people. These opinions can help shape a more well-rounded frame of reference, and can vastly improve the chances that a strategic decision will lead to success. Crowd voting doesn’t render HiPPOs obsolete; rather, it encourages HiPPOs to work with the crowd in order to develop more-successful strategies.

The Best Way to Solve Recurring Work Problems

Problems at work tend to be repetitive. No one complains because their boss was angry one time or a colleague failed to pitch in once. The next time you’re in a familiar noxious work setting where someone is doing the same thing as usual, try something different: improvise. Break the routine. For example, if you have an employee who’s chronically late to meetings and reprimanding her in the past hasn’t solved the problem, the next time she’s late, stop the meeting and praise her for all that she’s doing right. Everyone will be caught off guard, and it may actually resolve the problem once and for all. By introducing an unfamiliar dynamic, you encourage your counterpart to respond differently in turn.

Credit: HBR

Focus on What You Have in Common When Working Across Cultures

When working with a person from another culture, your instinct might be to try to identify cultural differences so that you can alter your own behavior to avoid any faux pas. But focusing on differences alone won’t help you build connections. To do that, you have to focus on similarities. Perhaps it’s a hobby you have in common, a shared love of football (European or American), or the fact that both of you are trying to Skype your families back home. You can discover these commonalities in conversation, through basic research, or simply by noticing the pictures and memorabilia on the person’s desk. The possibilities are endless. By focusing on similarities, you have the power to create connections and build relationships that either supersede cultural differences or make them irrelevant.
Credit: HBR

Develop New Productivity Habits That Will Stick

Productivity systems are the behaviors we repeat consistently and methodically to get more done. People often change their systems in order to improve productivity but find themselves reverting back to old habits. It’s hard to change your productivity system without modifying your environment, since previous behaviors may have been mapped to certain spaces. And even when new behaviors make sense, it’s easy to remain convinced that old habits are more effective. However, you can change the way you think about your routine. Start by identifying parts of your daily routine (such as arriving at the office) that happen with relative consistency and use them as cues for new behaviors: “When I arrive at the office, I will let my task list dictate the morning’s priorities instead of checking email like I used to.” Just don’t overthink it — the whole point is to create new habits that become automatic.
Credit: HBR

Playing Favorites (to Some Extent) Can Enhance Team Productivity

Nearly all leaders play favorites and subconsciously treat certain team members differently. This is because leaders’ preconceived notions can lead to differentiation in the relationships they have with individuals. Employees generally accept this sort of differentiation as long as certain conditions are present, such as a climate of fairness or high team interdependence. Studies have shown that when leaders invest more in capable members and less in those not integral to team success, team performance is often maximized. Moderate levels of differential treatment contribute to an atmosphere of productivity, but leaders should be careful not to take such treatment to the extreme. When taken too far, favoritism usually results in tremendous internal friction, which lowers team performance. Finding the right balance is essential.
Credit: HBR