Management Articles

6th June 2018 / Farhan Hanif Enormous time is spent by people in meetings with an effort to produce results for success. But, for this, some actions have to be taken that make meetings meaningful. These actions have to be taken by meeting leader before, during and after the meeting is concluded. There are some tips that help in making meetings meaningful and an output producing agent: Before Meeting Begins: Perform Pre-work in order to be successful in your meeting. Smart planning needs to be done with points such as resource requirements in terms of people or tools. Then establish goals that can be done in your meeting rather than going off track. The focus of meeting is actually determined by the purpose of meeting which has to be set earlier. Meeting is actually the best way to go for solving problems and improving processes. So a well planned meeting really brings these results. Make sure that your key attendees mark their presence. And, for this, you need to hav...

If you talk about a Manager, there is a risk that he can convert workload into a nightmare of stress for his subordinates. But a Leader gets into setting the pace for his entire team with proper evaluation and whether there is pressure exceeding the limits. So you must think about it if you want to retain your staff and receive respect from them. You can adapt following points to help you get started in becoming a Leader: Set the pace of work: If you are always in panic due to workload, your team would be into it too. So think about it and keep yourself away from panic. Learn to identify if it's Real or Imagined Work Pressure. Imagined Pressure is when you impose unnecessary pressure on you to meet your deadlines. You need to think about some unnecessary thoughts that are arising in your mind as a hindrance and wasting your time. This happens mostly when managers are weak at anticipating the workload and plan accordingly to accomplishment deadlines. Are you habitual of ...

Many reasons cause employees to quit their job. One of the reasons could be spouses, children, career change or anything else. The art is at keeping the majority of these reasons under control, which is possible. The best approach is to stay in contact with your employees, which will help you know if they are happy at work or not. The main areas where you can look for problems are Communication with supervisor; and, feedback & recognition from supervisor. Following are some of the important points that you can work on to reduce turnover in your organization: Look if employees have well established professional working relationship with their supervisors. It does not need to be friendship. It has to be a professional working relationship involving feedback mechanism and connecting the employee with organization goals. If the kind of work is meaningless or unchallenging, the boredom will occur. So it is necessary for supervisors to work with employees and keep them engage...

This tool, for evaluation process and communication, has been used for years and, at the same time, disliked by supervisors and subordinates equally. Here are some points that give an answer: Supervisors detest performance reviews because they feel it's waste of time and creates a feeling in the subordinate that he/she is being spied on and would lead to employee turnover as soon as employee feels that he is being controlled like an animal in zoo. At the same time, employees hate this because they do not want to be judged. And, when their review happens, they take feedback personally with negative feeling towards the supervisor. Now, how to fill this gap and make this traditional Performance Evaluation System meaningful? Try to follow little piece of advice below: Simply think about the overall plan of your organization which is important for business success and survival. Do this at least even if you cannot make Strategic Goals or conduct Strategic Planning...

Over the years, decisions have been mainly made by the CEO; that is Top Down approach in a business structure. The mechanism works by the movement of decisions by the CEO to the direct reports and then further movement down to people in the organization. This methodology in a chain of command could be appropriate if the world was not to change along with the capability of the CEO having knowledge of everything, which most of them pretend. But it could be disastrous as has happened with many organizations lately due to over confidence of the CEO. So the right approach, in today's changing world, is the Adaptive Style of Leadership. Being a CEO, try to use following points and see positive changes in your organisation within few months: • Keep an eye on changing Business Environments. • Learn about Empathy. • Learn to self correct yourself. • Go for Win-Win Situation. Publication of www.impressols.com

People still stay on their jobs for years and years despite they hate them now but loved in the past. A job admired or coveted for earlier is not necessarily the right career all the times; especially when there is a feeling of uneasiness in balancing work life. Is it that you hate to attend your office everyday or most often? - Then it's the right time to think about your mid-job crisis and take it as an opportunity to come out of it through following tools: Restart your thought process and reinvigorate your ambition. Look for your top favorite things that you would like to do most often. Now use them to make your goals you want to achieve. Anything; Money, Fame, Contribution to Society, Religion or combination. Match your job with your goals. If mismatch, you are in a wrong organization. Now list down the things that you want to do in your life. They could be hundred or more or your dreams like traveling a new country once a year with family. If your job does not al...

Your behaviors at work can damage your career and relationship with others. Regardless if you are highly educated, experienced or you hold a senior position; if you cannot manage interpersonal relationships, you cannot move on with your mission. Interpersonal Work Relationships play a pivotal role in accomplishing your goals, they create promotional opportunities and job engagement. But, at the same time, this should be on merit and as per policies.

Recruitment Agencies exist almost in every part of the world after HR has evolved much better in last 5 years. Credit goes to Social Media platforms; from where organizations got linked with one another and their HR professionals too. But there is a big problem here which this HR world has not yet catered to. I have come across lots of people who lost their jobs due to really normal reasons such as company or one of its units closure, moving back to home country or any other reason that is normal in this world. What happens in other fields such as Real Estate is that both the buyer and seller can contact the Real Estate Agency for property matter and get their task done at a reasonable agreed commission. The same principle had to apply to Recruitment Agencies to which both the job seeker and employer could contact and get help in securing a job; except taking commission from job seeker as an ethical responsibility. But only one side of this is being attended to and that is Empl...

When you come across a situation when an employee of your organization goes through grief due illness or death in family, you ought to step in and express sympathy as your moral and professional responsibility. Regardless of what extent you go to, a simple letter of sympathy is the need of the day for your colleagues.

This is, extremely, a pain point when the organization claims to have the best recruitment team, but ends up with a tiring task of getting the quality people in. Despite having the best database of quality applicants, an organization may face a big problem in the recruitment phase, i-e., making the quality candidates accept the job offer after interview phases. Following are the key points that play an imperative role in pushing away the quality candidates without even realizing: Getting Personal during Interview: Being personal is a common practice followed by many recruiters (even qualified ones). This part is prone to pushing the entire effort under jeopardy as the quality candidate would never like to work with an organization, the HR team and the Hiring Manager of which are fraught with poor interviewing skills. For example, the interviewers are often found degrading the candidate’s School or institution where he/she has studied previously. This is a very delicate situat...

HR, in many countries, is still struggling to form a strong position in an organization and there are many HR professionals with enormous zeal in delivering the best results. But, in most of the situations, it is the CEO’s mindset that ruins the HR department. Ultimately, it ruins the company culture, which leads to heavy costs on HR consultancy when the ball has gone out of the court. CEO(s), with a mindset of using HR to handle company’s bad employment practices, are in a big loss, unfortunately. Many quality HR professionals do not join a local organization just because they know that they will be misused by the CEO(s) during many employee related matters, especially Remuneration. And, if a quality HR pro does join such an organization, then they have just put their career in danger unless the higher management understands the true essence of HR department. It is, definitely, due to the lack of proper policy which has, first, to be followed by the CEO strictly; as many org...

Pay Adjustment Matrix or Pay Guide Chart is a rapidly growing tool for annual pay increases. For this, we would like to give some highlight: This Matrix bases the pay adjustments on an individual’s compa-ratio (the pay level divided by the mid-point of the individual’s pay range). In this way, it depicts the person’s movement in an organization which depends on his/her performance. If a person is placed on this chart with his/her mid-point on Y Axis and Performance Appraisal result (Unsatisfactory, Satisfactory, Exceeds Performance) on X Axis, then a better understanding can be had about what increment he/she can be offered. Experts suggest that HR professionals should not use bell curve as the only tool to help themselves place employees in categories, but they are highly advised to match them with The Salary Adjustment Matrix. For example, your receptionist performed very well and appeared on top of bell curve, but his/her salary is above Mid-Point, so you can give him/her pa...

June 12, 2018 / by Farhan hanif Overall health of your organization can be affected badly if you keep yourself hyper-focused on one area of your job. This is why a 'Balanced Score Card' approach is implemented by prudent business leaders. What is Balanced Score Card and how it can be a beneficial tool to assess the performance of an organization (especially financial performance)? Balanced Scorecard actually gives a positive outcome in determining the performance of an organization in all aspects rather than just Financial Performance. This gives an opportunity to look into strengths and weaknesses in a better way and solve problems. One aspect may be able to provide an insight into problems but it might not help solve these problems. Hence, going through all aspects gives a clear picture of company health. For example: The product manager of a grocery store always looks at company's profit & loss statements and numbers to assess the performance. Bu...

Often people blame HR for things like low salary increment, poor policies and other employee related matters. This leads to the negative behavior at work and a tough situation for HR to deal with. Following points can help HR professionals cope up with such problems and form a positive culture: Stop being Too Lazy:  People do not like HR because they believe that their problems would not be listened to or their requests would not be attended timely. HR should see people from their point of view: A positive behavior is sparked only when HR puts his toe in others' shoe. If there is a belief among people that HR at least tries to look into their problems, then you will see a reasonable difference in people's attitude. Similarly, HR needs to form a culture of feedback to employees regarding their performance. Negativity increases when there is a culture of providing shocks to employees. So HR should try to reduce these shocks. HR should avoid seeing everyone with one p...

Are you tired of job hunting with no results until now? - Sometimes bad luck happens; however, there are ways that you can use to mitigate wrong approach in your job search. Studying following points can help you in your job hunt struggle: You could be with less than required qualification:  It is not necessary to have full skills and qualifications required in the vacant job that you see before applying. But what you need to match is whether your profile matches at 90% with the required skills and qualifications of this vacant job. If you are strong in one area but short of just 6 months of experience, it does not mean you would be rejected. So, altogether, you need to make up 90% of your Knowledge, Skills and Abilities. You could be with higher qualification than required:  Majority of employers want a right fit. Hence, they avoid super qualified people. Try not to over exaggerate on your qualifications; instead illuminate your other areas on your resume. But do n...

June-21-2018 / Ammar Ahmed Performance appraisals and appraisal forms have gone. They are now old school matters and are universally hated by people. How many people in your organization like to be part of appraisal and want to hear whether they were perfect last year? - Practically, no one wants to work in an organization like a school system. The only prevailing concept is linking the salary increase with appraisal scores. If performance appraisal has to be implemented with a true intention, then the only thing to consider is Performance Management System. Now, what is the difference? Performance Management System is about developing employee and linking to organization's future. If you want to really implement a proper performance management system which can make your people happy at workplace, you can use following points at a guide: Create a mindset of participation by employee and manager for performance planning. Purpose of job existence has to be define...