Promotion VS Development

If you have to choose between an opportunity for promotion and advancement or training and development, what would be your choice? It seems most employees have chosen promotion and advancement over training and development and according to Quantum Workplace, there are some interesting relationship between age, tenure in the company and the employee's choice. Assuming the relationship is true, how can companies utilize this finding in their policies and management strategy?

If the findings are true, perhaps companies should look into the age of an employee and the impact of the employee's promotion. Would shortening the time to be promoted increases motivation and retention rate for younger employees in the company? Maybe companies need to create new intermediate job titles between two current positions to do so. Companies can also based on the findings to refine their intensity and extensivity of their training and development programme for certain age group and tenure in the company. Does that help to keep your employees?

Apparently, more work has to be done to understand how age and tenure of an employee influence our motivational factors and behaviors to devise appropriate policy to have an impact but let's try and see what we can draw from these findings. The following are merely assumptions and yet to be proven, if there are other studies that support my stand or show otherwise, please let me know.

I see age as an time indication of personal experience shaping our values in the way we do things, our beliefs in consequences to our actions, the character of the type of person we want to be and our attitude influencing our behavior. Time itself does not change us but as we grow, our ability to learn and internalize our experience in seek of happiness changes the way we think. Therefore, perhaps it is due to our young state of mind, and the constant reminder of education to get a rewarding job with good compensation and benefits, we desire for recognition, seeking immediate returns for our efforts. We pursue career advancement and focused our efforts in seek of these desires.

These desires never left us but as we age, we start to develop a different state of mind where personal growth and job satisfaction motivates more than recognition and immediate returns. In this case, I am assuming that career success and compensation and benefits corresponds proportionately to age, the older you are, the more well-off you become and that makes you less sensitive to extrinsic motivations. Therefore, there is a shift of preference from promotion and advancement to training and development along with the age of the respondents.

If that is the case, how are intrinsic and extrinsic motivations working us? What is the impact of the different motivations to different groups of employees? Is it true that extrinsic motivations has an increasingly diminishing impact on employees where paying twice the salary will not double the employee's motivation and that the increase in the employee's motivation decreases as the pay increases then what would be the optimal amount to pay? Besides that, how can we utilize intrinsic motivations which are arguably more influential than extrinsic motivations to motivate employees?

Well, I have many questions. But first, promotion or development? I choose training and development. How about you?

Communication plays a vital role in Performance Management

As companies prepare to compete in the 21st century, their ability to innovate and create value has become increasingly more valuable than the sheer numbers on the balance sheet. Technology companies that did not generate revenue are valued more now than ever. It is no wonder why many companies invest heavily in performance management system as we slowly realized that humans are the core of organizations, not for the functioning of organization's operation but due to our ability to think. The performance management system in the 21st century is thus designed to bring out the best of every individual, or is it not?

Many would agree that in order to develop a effective performance management system, companies need to identify the key expected results, translated into departments' objectives and individual targets. This will help to align every individual to the company's goals. Through understanding how their efforts contribute to the bigger picture, employees have a  higher sense of involvement in the company's achievements. However, this is usually not consistently implemented across the entire organization with employees failing to understand how their work link to the company's success or even their personal success. The misalignment is mainly due to the lack of proper communication strategy within the company.

A good performance communication plan should establish agenda, frequent, timely to reinforce the objectives, transparent and objective-oriented. Besides communicating the objectives and establishing targets for the year during the annual performance review, managers should also conduct periodic performance review to recognize outstanding performance and feedback on areas of improvement. It is also for managers to understand the thoughts behind the action and clarify any concerns of the employees. 

This periodic communication removes doubts, distrusts, and develops long lasting relationships with your employees. Motivation is like an asset, it depreciates over time. A timely talk would help in rekindling the passion for the work as well as ensuring employees are on the same page as their managers. This may be time consuming but necessary. As mentioned in the post "Managers are the key to performance management", the secret to high performance is autonomy, mastery and purpose. All of which requires an effective communication system to work, be it finding the purpose of work, establishing expectations and career milestones or giving autonomy to independent workers.

In order to ensure proper communication and performance management procedures are carried out, there had to be certain measures in place. This is also to resolve some of the issues with current performance management system. Some of these setbacks includes the failure of managers to effectively communicate objectives, performance criteria and expectations and the inability to quantify all expectations to measurable targets. One of the ways to reduce these concerns is for a third party to communicate directly to the employees on their understanding of objectives, evaluation criteria and the ratings indicators, comparing it to the standards set by the managers. Another would be to provide an alternative communication channel for the employees to express their concerns.

Good communication system promotes understanding and motivates employees while ineffective communication creates misunderstandings and management issues. How do you suggest improving the communication in the workplace? What are the measures that you had put in place? Comment below and let me know.

Quantifying Qualities

Interviewers use different interviewing techniques to sift out information to aid them in making the hiring decision. One of which is to ask candidates behavioral-based questions, such as describing a situation whereby your decision was challenged. This style of questioning allows interviewers to understand the situation and your course of action, from which they assess your skills. However, the assessment does not account for your inability to verbalize your thoughts and situation accurately which may cause you to lose this job opportunity. So how can you verbalize and demonstrate your qualities effectively?

The only way to do that is to prepare for it. Do your research about the company and the position that you applied for. Analyze the job description to identify the competencies required to do the job. Think of how your accomplishments and highlights of your previous employment can showcase these competencies and prepare it according to the STAR approach. Use the same few examples to demonstrate the different qualities in you. The more you prepare, the more confident you will be, enabling you to approach the questions tactfully at ease, adjusting and modifying the way you answer according to the interviewers' response and reaction.

STAR Approach:

• Situation / Task

Describe the situation or the task that you need to accomplish in details. If it's a situational question, what was the situation? How did you feel? What were your thoughts? Why did that happen? If it's a task, what were the objectives? What are your challenges? What are your options? Make sure that enough details is given for the interviewer to understand and visualize the actual situation / task.

• Action

Describe the action you took and the rationale behind it. Make sure the "How", "What", "Why" were explained adequately. Make sure you focus on the particular situation / task that you described.

• Result

Analyze the results of your actions. Were the objectives achieved? Why did that happened? Is there anything that you would do differently now? How can you do it better?

The STAR approach is an effective way for you to prove your capabilities and to provide evidence to show that. However, you need to substantiate it with a good case to support your stand. Let me know if you have other tips.

3 secrets you don't think your interviewers know

Designed by Freepik

Have you been to a interview lately and felt great about it?
Every question came out exactly how you prepared for it but you were not selected for that position and you are probably wondering why?

Bear in mind, interviewers were candidates before too. We know that you are going to prepare yourself and tell us how wonderful it is to have you. Besides, we know what you came here for and how you are going to do it. Here are 3 things maybe you don't think that we know:

1. You are tensed. You want to put on your best self, look good, answer properly and leave a lasting impression. So you are cautious about your words and actions. Therefore we will smile regardless of your answers and actions, make you feel that you did well and try to be your best friend for the next 1 to 2 hours so you will let your guard down and tell us everything that we want to know.


2. 90% of you came for our offer. You don't come for the interview to know more about the company and see if we are suitable for each other. So you are going to tell us what you think we want to hear. There may be a few trick questions here and there to find out your values and attitude. What we actually want to know is the true you.


3. If we will ask a scenario question, you will probably tell us what you think is the best course of action. Therefore, we prefer to ask you about your past behavior than what you think you will do in the future even though your past behavior may not be an accurate predictor of your future actions. It's because your past behavior would probably be a better reflector of you than what you think you would do. And we will ask you to describe your past encountered situations to make it harder for you to lie.

*We do know your secrets. Don't look at us in a different light, we have a job to do.

5 steps to explain employment gaps

By bpsusf (http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfbps/4607149870/) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Are you worried about how to explain your employment gaps? On second thought, don't I deserve a break? If you are surprised why do you even need to explain yourself, you must understand that this is necessary to maximize your chances of landing the job. There is no sure way of getting a job but there is definitely a way of failing it. So don't jeopardize your chances of getting it. Though employment gaps are normal, how you communicate about this gap is going to make a whole lot of difference to your application. There are 5 steps to explain your employment gaps and be sure to address to the 3 most important interview questions:

1. Be Honest

No matter how long was your break and what was the reason for it, be honest. What did you do in between? What was your takeaway? Maybe you stopped for a year to travel, to experience different lifestyle, to take care of your kids, whatever it is, never lie to your prospective employers. At the same time, rationalize the reason for taking the break.

2. Give Assurance

Now that you have explained your reason, what is the possibility of you taking another break soon? For instance, you have a baby. Will you take frequent breaks for your new born? How do you plan to minimize the disruption to your work? Do not wait for them to ask you. Once you explained yourself, go on to present your work plan.

3. Move Forward

After you covered the gap adequately, move the topic forward. Do not hang there or wait for the interviewers to start questioning you. Be sure to be as natural as possible to move to the next topic. A good topic would be, what is your career plan?

4. Show Interest

How can the interviewers be sure that you are ready to commit yourself back to work? How do you present yourself? Are you interested? Eager to get a job? Do you understand your job scope? Tell the interviewers why you applied for this company, this job. This may be a good time to ask some questions too.

5. Focus Suitability

Round it up by focusing on why you are the perfect candidate for this position. Give examples of your past experience in performing on similar jobs. What are the difficult situations you encountered? How did you overcome them? What were your accomplishments in your previous employment?

Interview is 90% on how well you can verbalize your actions, thoughts and accomplishments. Expecting a group of people to know you and your work capabilities within that 1 to 2 hours is impossible. (HR don't have superpowers!) So if you can't communicate well about your employment gap, try following the 5 steps and start preparing now.

6 reasons why your company does not believe in developing its people

CFO asks: "What happens if we invest in developing our people & then they leave us?"

CEO: "What happens if we don't, and they stay?"

Many people have read and shared this conversation between the CEO and CFO before. Well, what these people didn't know is that the conversation didn't end there.

CFO: "Replace them when they can no longer perform up to expectation."

Whether to invest in training depends on the management philosophy of the company. Inevitably, there will be companies who does not believe in investing in its people. So what are the reasons why companies are not doing so?

1. The company does not recognizes the need to train. Why do companies need to train its people when things are moving and the company is doing well?

2. Difficulty in identifying training needs. What are the areas that requires training?

3. Training incurs cost. Keep cost low, so that the company can be more profitable.

4. Why train when companies can hire?

4. Employees who are trained expect higher compensation. Why pay to train and increase the employees' compensation?

5. No visible return on investment. There must be some form of measurable return on this investment, for example, higher productivity.

6. Employees come and go. No reason why companies would train for their competitors.

Maybe some companies do not intend or expect to keep their employees for long. Is the lack of training one of the reasons you are leaving your company? Let me know.

*Side note: Dear HR, are you able to convince your boss?

Are you paid enough? How much is the 'right' salary?

No one ever complains that he is being paid too much cause no one ever felt that he is paid more than what he should be getting. But how much is the 'right' amount of salary for you?

Qualification

This is most obvious. The qualification requirements on job advertisement gives you an estimation of how much the company is willing to pay anyone to do that job. If you have a college degree but choose to accept a job for 'O' level graduates, then accept the fact that they are only going to pay you so much. OPEN your eyes and look at the job requirements, it's an indication of your salary package.

Experience

You are disappointed with your increment (if any). But how much more should you be asking for? There will come a day when you reached the maximum amount that the company is willing to pay for the job that you are doing and would rather hire someone new to replace you.

10 years of experience does not make you better than someone with 2 years experience. Doing the same thing over and over again for the past 10 years does not increase your value as an employee. Rethink about the value of the job that you are doing. If you feel that you can achieve much more and the company is not giving you the opportunity, then maybe it's time to move on.

Know what you are looking for. Salary comes NATURALLY as you increase your own VALUE.

Interview

You do know that your interview affects your salary package right? If you don't realise, yes it does. Companies have a budget that they are WILLING and ABLE to pay anyone who can show that they can do the job. That 1 hour interview is your only chance to show that you are worth it. That accounts for the difference between you and your colleagues' salary packages.

Job Scope

Lastly, do you know how the company decides how much to pay you? Different job pays differently.

Now, there are two vacancies available. The janitor and general manager role. If the same person applied for both, he will be offered different salary package for the 2 different positions. Why? It's because generally the company is going to pay you depending on the JOB, not the individual. That's why a janitor will not be paid $5,000 a month no matter how outstanding the person is.

If you joined the same company but different department as your classmate (both with same qualification and no working experience), probably you will have different salary packages. The reason is the difference in the JOB SCOPE. Every job has it's own duties and responsibilities and depending on the difficulty of the job, companies pay differently.

Do you know what job pays well in Singapore?