Personality week11

                    Personality                                           week 11

Nature and nurture are two different things. Nature is something that is inherited and that cannot be changed. It is something that is inherited from the parents and it is God gifted. Nature is something that we cannot change because it is from the day we are born. Whereas nurture is a different thing that means that humans can adapt behaviour from their surroundings and their personality is developed from the surrounding environment. Like if the environment is good then the personality will be the same like of those people around them. But according to me personality is from the start and it cannot be changed. Like when twins are born they live in same environment they eat same they wear and drink same but still the is a lot of personality difference. This is just because the environment can effect a person but can’t change the personality.
Nomothetic approach is same as of nature as it also claims that personality is largely inherited and resistant to changes. Whereas idiographic approach of personality matches the same as of nurture. This means that in this approach personality might change with the surroundings.

http://ponderosatcchs.wikispaces.com

There were five things that were tested in the personality test:

Openness: which measures the artistic sensitivity in this I scored 3.1 out of 5 that was low. So the personality test gave the answers that I’m very practical, reliable, traditional and very realistic way of thinking. He also said that this kind of personality is in demand in case of hardships as its practical and capable personality. In hardships the more the realistic way of thinking is the more accurate will be the future plan as this kind of personality is reliable so majority of members will support them.

Conscientious: reflects how well we plan and exhibit self-control. I scored 4.1 that was a high score which showed that I have a personality that makes me organised, reliable, rule abiding, self-controlled, good planner and don’t get distracted from the work I’m doing. The results showed that this kind of personality is the employers dream. This means that the employee with such qualities are in demand by the employees as they are reliable and work according to the laws.

Extrovert: is linked to positive emotions and energy. I scored 3.3 which is a medium score. In this it showed that this kind of personality is comfortable meeting new people and enjoy social occasions. And personalities like this have a positive outlook on life. This score shows that I am of very friendly nature in real and I accept all the things in my surrounding.

Agreeable: how much we care about feelings of others and how much we trust them. 4 out of 5 is not a bad score but still this personality finds easy to get along with people and are usually sensitive to feeling of people. I think people like me who get score high in this one can get easily trap in emotional things as we are sensitive by nature and we start trusting others very quickly which is indeed a very bad habit.

Neuroticism: is linked that how we perceive threats. Personalities like this are likely to be comparatively level headed about perceiving threats. Such personalities deal easily with all the conflicts and threats that are being received as my answer was medium so it proved to be just ok kind of situation.

On the whole the combination of score shows that such a personality can result in a powerful work ethic and a will to succeed. Personality test took a few seconds and it showed the results that how my nature is and how I adapt changes in the new environment. I believe whatever that was in the result of personality test was write and matched with my personality.

http://www.bbc.co.uk

Conclusion:
Every individual is unique in personality and might develop some skills with the passage of time. Some social scientists say that whatever the personality a person has is from the day he was born and it remains the same. On the other hand there are few social scientists who say that people adapt from their surroundings and they do whatever they have seen people doing around them. On the other hand I will say personality test proved to be very informative as it told me everything that what kind of personality I have and how I will behave in future when I will get a job.

References:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/whatamilike/index.shtml Accessed on 11-05-2011

http://ponderosatcchs.wikispaces.com/file/view/masks.jpg/121453021/masks.jpg  Accessed on 11-05-2011

Performance Management Week 22

Performance Management                           week 22

I recently had an appraisal at KFC where I work. I think the team works very well, the managers communicate very well as well. I had a brief induction and then was trained for the job (taking orders and serving customers) and I worked under supervision for the first week where I was being monitored by the supervisor.

After the first week of work was over I had a meeting with the manager who went through the checklist with me, told me about my progress which he said was very good and I have a bright future if I continue the way I started. My manager was very happy with my work and praised me which boosted my morale and confidence and motivated me to work well and do well in the future. I think the key to my success was the help I got from the management because they went through the cultural aspects with me as I am an international student and come from a different country. The management told me you must always meet the customers demand, must always keeps the customers happy, if you think you cannot meet their demand politely excuse yourself and call someone who can (manager, supervisor). I was told in the UK fast food is very popular and everyone consumes it from students, to busy workers and also busy families.

I think the most important and effective skills that are needed to be a mentor is to have knowledge, understanding and experience. This is because if you are going to teach or guide some one to be successful or how to do something you must have practically gone through it yourself in order to explain it to someone else. I also think if a person has struggled in life it makes them stronger because every step is crucial and they know how to cope through hard times. I think a person should always work with the thought expect the worst and work for the best that way they will always try harder. On the other hand I believe that there is a mentor inside every human who makes them think what is write and what is wrong but it’s us who usually adopt the wrong means instead of doing work by good means.

http://www.daveblackonline.com/mentoring.jpg

There have been 2 people who have been my mentors and they are my parents. They are also my friends, they've always taught me discipline in life and have always said “it is your life, do what you want be what you want but always remember who you are and never forget at first you are a human being.” I will always remember this, now I am an international student and have come to the UK from Pakistan to study and I always remember what my mentors have taught me. Especially my dad he used to tell me every aspect of life that how to deal and react to different situations. My dad had always been my source of knowledge and guidance. He was highly educated and I was too much impressed by my dad and his personality. For others he was a leader and for me he was a friend, a mentor and he was a source of knowledge for me. I always wanted to be like my my dad highly educated and very influential too others.

I am on my own in the UK no one is guiding me, helping me, motivating me or even keeping an eye on me. I remember what my mentors have taught me,now I’m on my own I am grateful to have been given such mentors who have taught me how to be a good human being. I think a person behaves what he has been taught or what kind of environment he has grown up. Mentors play an important part in ones life because if someone gets a bad mentor he might get into wrong things at an early stage of life so its very important to have a good mentor so that you know the difference between good and wrong. 

Conclusion:
After reading this topic I have known the importance of mentors that how they impact on ones life. Apart from this, this blog has cleared up my mind that how we develop our nature and how we accept others as our mentor as they have a great influence on us.

References:
http://www.daveblackonline.com/mentoring.jpg  Accessed on 11-05-11

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/entrepreneur/article3778514.ece  Accessed on 11-05-11

Equal Opportunity week 16

Equal Opportunities                                  week 16

What is the difference between equality and diversity? Equality means being equal, everyone is equal in the sense we are human despite different backgrounds, cultures, religion, race and sex. We all should be dealt with equally. Equality can be made or can discuss in many ways as equality means to be fair enough with everyone even if he is your friend or enemy.

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com

Diversity is almost as diverse as subject itself. Diversity means accepting different things like people working at a same place but with different background, different colour, different cultures etc etc. Diversity is an involvement with the wider community and a better understanding of society. There are many leaders who spent their whole lives in fighting for the acceptance of Diversity and in the list of those leaders Nelson Mandela is one of those who spent their life in telling people to accept diversity.

http://vator.tv/images/attachments/010310090941HEAD_citizenship_diversity.jpg

So basically equality concentrates on the fact people should not be discarded by employers or anyone because they might be different to someone, while diversity concentrates on the fact that it is good to have people from different ethnic backgrounds, religions, communities, age groups as this will bring more skill and strength into a team.

The age legislation act means an employer cannot discriminate against employees or potential employees because of their age. In this current world where competition in markets is very high, the fact is that the majority of younger generation thinks the older generation is useless and vice versa. Stereotypes are younger people think older people are past it and don’t know what to or how to be successful in the current world and older people think that young people are just trying to show off fake intelligence (degree certificates and hold no significant sense on work or decision making.

Two ways on how employees can cope with these in my opinion is first of all be fair in the work place and not make redundancies because of age. Companies think that there work is done slowly and can be done more efficiently if they hire someone young and experienced. Many firms are handing redundancies to older workers as the government announced after a specific date this will not be allowed to be done. Secondly I think firms should get younger people to work with older people, this can break the barrier in my opinion because older people have loyalty, sincerity and dedicated experience which will benefit the younger generation a lot and possibly the generations to come as it will be passed on.

I think ASDA is a good example for equality when employing people. First of all they don’t ask for applicants age, the good thing is they may shortlist a suitable application without knowing the age and after the interview will come to know the person is the right for the job or not . Also ASDA scrapping age pay schemes, the company said we will pay all employees same because they are doing the same job it doesn’t matter if they are under 16 or over 40, they are doing the same type of work so will be paid equally which is a fair policy in my opinion. This is one of the visible aspects of ASDA which can be seen in their stores that young and old people both are working on the same level as others.

According to me I think age and equality are both good things that employers should take into notice. People should not be declined a job because they are of a different religion, race, sex, age or even they support a different football team, potential employees should be judged on their potential and their skills and knowledge. But still there are many people who do not offer jobs if someone is too young or old because the employers think that they will work slowly as compared to other employees.

Conclusion:

I think by bringing diversity it will make the work force stronger because everyone is different and will bring individual specialities into work which will shine as a united team. I took the benefit of learning the factors of diversity from this topic that how it increases productivity and competition amongst employees which is beneficial to the employer as it would increase in rate of generation of new idea’s as different minds have different perspectives so as UK is a country that has mixed population from all over the world but still there are few societies in UK that do not accept others as part of them so diversity is what breaks away all such barriers and makes a step close to success for an organization. I also learnt how much equality is important nowadays while getting job or working in a company. This topic tells that organizations should treat all the employees on equality basis.

References:
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_262/1209207805AwQBu7.jpg   Accessed on 10-05-2011
http://vator.tv/images/attachments/010310090941HEAD_citizenship_diversity.jpg   Accessed on 10-05-2011

Participation and Involvement week 26

Participation and Involvement                             Week 26

Employee participation is a process in which employees are also involved in the decision making process rather than just acting as puppets who act as they are ordered to. Employees can just be involved in decision making when they are given authority or empowerment. Empowerment is a method that involves passing down the authority to perform tasks to workers. Empowerment goes further away, by allowing workers some degree of control over how the task should be undertaken. This is also termed as delegation of powers. Delegation involves passing down of authority to perform tasks and take decisions from higher to lower levels of organisation. It should be remembered that it is only the task that is assigned to the subordinate but the final responsibility rests in the hands of the manager. So employee participation is the involvement of employee after they are given delegated powers.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com

Whereas Employee Involvement means that every employee is unique in nature and each employee means a lot to the company. It also refers that every employee is important for the success of the business as they are working hard to achieve the goals that are set by the organisation. Each employees’ input is valued and respected by the management of the company and each employee is involved in the day to day running of the business. Employee involvement is something that makes the employees feel that they are of too much worth to the company and the company really needs them which eventually results that the employees are highly motivated.

There are many differences between Employee participation and Employee involvement. Employee participation is something in which power is delegated to employees and they can take part in decisions whereas employee involvement is something in which employee do not take part in decision making but they are shown that how important they are to the company and how much company values them and their hardwork.

As I’m using Facebook only so I just looked about Microsoft that how it is using its page on facebook so I just found out that they are providing information to the people about their new products and services that are out for selling in the market. Apart from this Microsoft is also using it as a medium to promote its goods so that people get to know what they are working on what are the company’s future or upcoming plans. Microsoft is using its page on Facebook to keep its employee up to date as well by posting news that are running in the company. The page also shows a link to the history of the formation of Microsoft that how it was formed and the changes came as the time passed. Apart from Facebook there are other social websites that are also used as medium to provide information are twitter, orkut etc

These social networks are used because of huge audience that is using such social sites which lets people to look for information when they are free rather than searching on other websites. These social website pages are updated with every news as this is the only attraction to people.

References:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/career_and_jobs/best_100_companies/  Accessed on 9-May-2011
http://www.facebook.com/Microsoft 10-May-2011
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6AM-kb0mkbAFrqbnmSkJ3eGgHzrs5CwxB_lAE8luMkARh_PvtYF2mAEXDSZMpX7NJM7ZGb576xovet0h0-b0-SP9GrgLl02SGEgWC-xHfik8wKCm5nuwzZDI5mFSJy6MHv075qWZ5xh-h/s1600/Class+Participation.jpg Accessed on 8 May 2011.

Reward week 23

Reward                                                  week 23

The organization with whom I’m familiar with is Volvo. The reward the employees in many ways in order to motivate them.  There are two types of rewards that are given by Volvo, one are financial rewards and second one’s are non-financial rewards. It’s very important to reward employees who work at their best and who work efficiently and effectively at the tasks which they are given by their managers. Giving rewards to employees motivates them through which the productivity of employees’ rises. Here are some financial and non-financial reward given by Volvo to it employees.

Financial Rewards:
Piece Rates: this the term used when the pay is given according to the pieces or the level of output. Which means that the higher the pieces the higher would be the pay. But there are high chances that the quality might be compromised due to the quantity but still to avoid this Volvo has set its standards.

Commission: this is given when a certain amount of sales are met and with that the target pieces are also made for that specific period. So Commission is the extra money paid to the employees as the sales are increased.

http://www.avonconnects.co.uk

Performance related Pay: this is the pay that is totally based on the performance e.g. it is just given when the certain target is met.

Time Rate: it is usually called as overtime. Overtime pay is more than the normal pay but this is just given to employees who are active so that production and quality does not effect.

Fringe Benefits: these are usually for the high ranked employees like managers’ who get company car or house etc free from the company till they are the employee of the company.

Non-Financial Rewards:
Empowerment: this method involves passing down the authority to perform tasks to workers. Empowerment in Volvo goes further, by allowing workers some degree of control over how the task should be undertaken. This is also termed as delegation of powers.

Team Work: it is established fact that workers perform their duties more effectively if they were given a chance to operate in form of a group. Volvo is famous for this as it highly appreciates teamwork. They employees at Volvo work as a cohesive unit and pursue goals successfully. Moreover, this practice makes work enjoyable and less monotonous.

http://www.ceridian.co.uk

Job Enrichment: this is a non-financial reward given to senior and experienced employees at Volvo that allows them to work with greater independence and hold a more authoritative position in the company. Such arrangement is very helpful in making an employee more responsible and confident, and also enhances his overall motivation level.

It differs from different group as Volvo appreciates teamwork so employees are divided in different groups so the group that performs the best gets more pay due to commission and the supervisors are also paid more and receive more bonuses as they are senior than other workers and so the manager gets the most of the bonuses as he is the senior most amongst all of them.  According to me this is fair because everyone is getting what they deserve and every gets for his/her hard work. I think company I quite fair with everyone as the teams which meet the targets will get the bonuses.

Chief Executive Officers (CEO) is the senior most officers of the organisation. They belong to the top management, in many cases they may also be the owners of the company. They get their own certain amount from the profits of the company, which are known as salaries plus the bonuses they get. To decide that CEOs should be given bonuses even when they underperform is difficult as every employee of the company must get a pay for the work they have done. If they are not given an incentive to work harder, their productivity and efficiency might deteriorate for the coming time as well and the company might further suffer through losses because of that. Getting pay is the right of every worker and i think CEO should get incentives may be a little so that he gets motivated and may bring new ideas to the business due to which the company might progress in the near future.
If CEOs are paid large bonuses even after the company has underperformed then it is really unfair with all the other employees as well. And the company again would never be able to succeed because of being unfair. Other employees will be demotivated due to this as they would think that their hard work is not paying of because they wont be getting bonuses if company is not earning profit.

References:
http://www.avonconnects.co.uk/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-8159-4346/rewards.png Accessed on 7 May 2011
http://www.ceridian.co.uk/hr/images/applause1.jpg Accessed on 7 May 2011
http://www.volvogroup.com/GROUP/GLOBAL/EN-GB/CAREER/Pages/career.aspx Accessed on 8 May 2011

Selection Week 20

Selection                                               week 20

This blog is about the selection process for an organisation and the three selection methods I choose are:

Interview: interviews are usually a one to one with interviewer and interviewee and at times the interviewer is accompanied by someone. The whole reason for an interview is to for the employer to speak to a potential employee and talk to them. So the employer just wants a formal/informal talk with the potential employee to ask open and closed questions to assess the body language, confidence of the applicant.

http://www.elec-intro.com

The positive thing about this process is the fact it is a face to face discussion between two potential colleagues to discuss a possible job contract. And also to check whether the person is capable of delivering the output that the company expects or not.However the negative aspect is that interviews can often go wrong easily with interviewers like not making interviewees feel comfortable and making them feel nervous, asking too much closed questions or even using an inappropriate tone. Interview should be done in a way that the interviewee is in a normal condition and interviewer should make them feel relax so that they can show the best of themselves.  

Tests: are held mainly to test the applicant. This is when an applicant has to fill in answers on a sheet, where the applicant may get a choice of multiple choice answers or their opinion. Tests are generally held to test the applicants’ skills, knowledge, confidence etc about the job. The reason an employer uses this method is to assess how suitable the applicant may be and to check what they would do in different situation and what their point of view is about the company and the related skills for the job.

The positive about this is that the employer will get a good insight of the applicants’ potential abilities to succeed. Employer will also get to know that what kind of thinking the employee has got and how his behaviour will vary in different situations. The negative is the applicant may easily lie and put in answers that will make the applicant look good. Apart from this the employer will try not to show the real himself if he is not putting the answers correctly but later on he might get fired due to the fraud he had done with the company as hid decisions in future might cause problems.

Assessment centres are occasionally held, it is a selected panel from an organisation to take short listed candidates through different tasks and offering the job to the person they judge the best the job. They put a group of people in different situations to check how they behave and how well they are at certain things. Like they will do tasks that are teamwork oriented, some those are related to knowledge, some that are related to skills and some that reflect their personality etc.

http://www.urthebrand.co.uk

The good thing about this method is the fact employers will be able to see their potential employees in action that how they perform in different tasks so that employer can choose the best out of all of them. These activities will reflect the real insight of the employers which they won’t be able to hide in so many activities as those activities will show what skills they all have got. However the problem with this is that some people maybe shy or even nervous in these cases and will not perform to their best ability so the panel of judges may not see the best in the candidates. Apart from this people might do more to what they are in order to impress the employer and by doing this they might be ignoring the team work and that over confidence might lead them to a wrong way.

I applied for a job at cineworld and I was quite happy when I received the call for an interview, to be honest I was sure that I will get this job because I was very well motivated and I had a bulk of knowledge about movies which made me think that im the perfect guy for such a job. So I went for the interview and I saw there were around sixteen people for the interview. They divided us into groups of four and gave us a topic to write a story on, at first I was like what kind of interview is this then our group made a success as we won that activity and as a reward our group got free tickets for a movie. Later they asked us to ask and talk to the guy next to you and at the end they called for an individual interview. Next day I received a call that I was not chosen as a part of team member for cineworld. I think for me the interview was really very effsctive as this was the first time I went for such an interview so it was  a new experience for me. I learnt that its never just you who has to do all of it or its never you who will get the credit its always the team effort that gives an effective output and its always the team who is rewarded when you are working in a team. Apart from this I also got the thing that one should never be too confident as over confidence got me lose that job.

I am familiar with Anglian Home Improvements and Zenith Windows (sales companies) as my colleagues work there and I think the selection process could be improved. The organizations listed above will advertise a vacancy and will hire anyone who turns up for the interview, no real training is given for sales and when they see the employee is not as to what they expected they will sack them even though it was the employers who did not ask relevant questions. So I think interviewers for the above organizations should ask questions that will help them assess the employees’ confidence and also maybe run a role play. If not possible the employer must give some training related to the job they have to do so that they can meet up to the expectations of the employer in the near future.

Conclusion:

The selection process is important when an organization looks to employ people, they should conduct the process appropriately and make sure they get the best out of their potential employees. Selection process is very compulsory these days as most of the organizations are doing it so that they do not have to look for a new employee in the near future.

References:
http://www.elec-intro.com/EX/05-13-14/Interview.gif Accessed on 7 May 2011
http://www.urthebrand.co.uk/images/assessmentcentres_467x242.jpg Accessed on 7 May 2011

Teamworking week 13

Teamworking                                         week 13

At school we had to give a presentation in groups of three on the recession in Europe and its affects all over the world. I would say we applied the Belbin theory within our group, although there were only three of us in the group which obviously means the three of us could not take more than a role each. But what we did was picked a role each and tried to put our best into it. One of the member was very creative and he had a lot of knowledge as compared to the others in the group, so he was the one who gave the ideas and suggestions. The second member collected and finalised the required piece of work that was needed and later he explained all the work in points to the whole group so that no confusions could be left behind. The third member piled up all the work and jotted all the points inform of slides on PowerPoint so that the presentation could be delivered in a way that everyone gets attracted to it. We were all satisfied with the work because we all knew we put in equal effort into the work as we all had done it together so our team work and advance planning shows that we applied Belbins theory which tells the ways to avoid future problems.

http://www.istockphoto.com

 Though we were a small group but everyone had some qualities. One member of our team was action oriented as he was well disciplined; task oriented and was a good finisher. The second member was people oriented as he was committed to team goals, he was a good listener as he was getting all the knowledge and he was the one who motivated the team that how well we all were doing. The third member played Cerebral role according to Belbins theory as he was highly creative, hardworking with lots of knowledge and he was the one who used to take crucial decisions

According to the theory of Bruce W. Tuckman there are four stages of group development; Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. Adjourning is also a stage but it is after the work is finished.

http://www.theflyingdoctor.nl/blogs/media/tuckman.jpg

Relating my group to these stages:
Forming is a process in which group comes together and start to get to know each other and further plan out the tasks that who has to do what. So on the next day when we were given the assignment we had our meeting in which we all had casual chat to get to know each other and then we started planning our assignment. We planned everyone’s role that who is responsible for doing what work. So this situation exactly matches with the first stage.
Storming is the stage when group acquires some sense of security as they clear up the issues of what they should be doing. In our next group meeting we sorted everything that who is the group leader and what role each one of us has to play.
Norming is the stage when group decides that how they are to operate together. We sorted the barrier of communication by exchanging our cell numbers and our email ids so that we could tell and ask what we all are doing so that we could inter-relate all the work. We also motivated each other when anyone of us brought a good idea or did a good piece of work.
Performing is when the group produces what it has gathered together. This is the last stage and it was the day before the deadline when we finished all the work and helped out each other if there were any confusions. Our group gathered all the work and we all discussed how it all went for all of us.
Adjourning is the final stage when the task is finished and everyone shares his/her feeling that how well it was. So after submitting the assignment we all had a good chat that how helpful the information was in the assignment and how much we all enjoyed during our meetings.

‘’Management and Organisational Behaviour’’ by Laurie J. Mullins

Two companies out of hundred top companies to work for:

The best company to work for I think is Microsoft. They are enjoying their success in the whole world just because their teamwork n hard work is paying off. Their strategy is that the owner Bill Gates selects employees by vision that how they will prove to be a success for the company. Not just this Microsoft sets targets for its employees which are obligatory on them to accomplish. At the end of every year the employee is seen as the least motivated or not goal oriented is fired from the job so this makes the employees more motivated to their work.
               
The second best company according to me is Blue arrow which is a recruitment agency. Teamwork plays an important role in the day to day dealing of the company as they have certain jobs to which only specific or appropriate people can apply so they help the people and the company to choose the best out of the people with related skills needed for the job to be done. People have to register with the Blue Arrow if they want to seek employment from the company. So Blue Arrow has lots of branches in UK and are well established as they are helping both the company and the employees.

References:
http://www.theflyingdoctor.nl/blogs/media/tuckman.jpg  Accesses on 16 April 2011
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/2055573/2/istockphoto_2055573-teamwork.jpg  Accesses on 16 April 2011
‘’Management and Organisational Behaviour’’ by Laurie J. Mullins. Ninth Edition (Prentice Hall). Page no 318