Asignment Performance Management Essay Example for Free

Asignment Performance Management Essay Weiss and Hartle (1997) â€Å"A process for establishing a shared understanding about what is to be achieved and how it is to be achieved, and an approach to managing people that increases the probability of achieving success† * In my experience performance management means different things the different people. In the company I currently work for performance management is thought of in the negative as being a process by which managers are able to take employees to task over bad performance and ultimately get rid of them. This may seem archaic and it is the most negative example I have come across in my work life so far, however, even in more forward thinking companies’ employees are often skeptical and suspicious of the performance management process. Conversely I have been fortunate to see performance management at its best. For me performance management is all about taking the core goals of the organisation and ensuring that departmental, team and individuals tasks and behaviors link to and support these goals. In this way employees understand what is expected of them, why the work is important and how it links into the overall performance of the organisation. They are engaged and feel confident in their work knowing that they are contributing to the success of the company. Performance management assists oganisations in motivating and empowering their employees by setting clear goals and rewarding them not only for what they achieve but also the way in which they achieve. In doing this organisations can focus on what is really important to the success of the business. They can recruit and retain the best employees, and motivate and develop by training and challenging the workforce. Performance management allows succession planning so that job roles can be filled with skilled, motivated, experienced employees. Components of Performance Management Performance management is a cyclical process involving a number different components. Goal setting is a key component of the Performance Management process. The organisation’s overall goals should start the chain and depending of the size and structure of the organization these goals. The process should start with the organisational goals which are designed to ensure the performance of the organisation leads to successful business. These goals cascade down to business areas, departments, teams and individuals. For individual employees their job description and the team’s  goals will form the basis of their individual goals. It is important that they understand how their own goals link into those of the organisation, why the work they are doing is important and how it contributes to the overall success of the organisation. There must be agreement on individual goals if they are to be embraced by the individual and they must be SMART if they are to be effective. Specific Measureable Achievable Results Orientated (Relevant) Time bound It is important that individuals are clear on what is expected of them, that they feel the goals can be achieved and that they that they are challenging and interesting. Key to the achievement of goals is regular communication. Communication may be formal or informal but can include updates from the individuals, feedback from colleagues, managers and clients, one to ones or team meetings. This communication is invaluable in employees on track to achieving their goals and making changes when necessary. Performance appraisals are another important component of performance management. These events are often undertaken annually and provide a formal appraisal of the individual’s competence in their role. Individuals and their managers have the opportunity to discuss, provide feedback and evidence of the individual’s achievements (against goals) and, in some organisations, the way in which those achievements were met (behaviours). Some companies also undertake half yearly reviews or appraisals with the view to making sure that that performance stays on track between annual appraisals. This is also an opportunity to review existing goals and set new ones. Performance improvement or development planning is another part of performance management. Areas for improvement or development may be identified at any time during the performance management process but typically come out of appraisal discussions. As with goals it is important that there is agreement on development plans and that activities to develop individuals are varied and effective. If employees are going to achieve their goals and develop their skills, knowledge and delivery within their role they must have access to the appropriate training and coaching. Whether employees require  development because they do not meet their current performance requirements or in order to progress to the next level, training and coaching are also key elements within a comprehensive performance management process. Motivation and performance Management This relationship between motivation and performance management can be complex and individual to each employee. There are numerous motivational theories all of which have elements of authenticity to them. I have looked at two motivational theories, McGregor and Vroom. Douglas McGregor’s theory ‘details two contrasting models of workforce motivation’ ** Theory X suggests that the average person is basically lazy and don’t like work. They prefer to be told what to do and don’t want responsibility. As such there needs to be tight control of the individual and threats of loss or punishment are the best ways to motivate them. Theory Y is the opposite, assuming that most people enjoy work, that they are happy to take responsibility under the right circumstances and that they can be self-motivated to do a good job. This motivation can be enhanced when managers are able to appreciate the employee and develop their trust. Victor Harold Vroom’s theory, to me, has links to the ‘Y Theory’, the theory suggests that factors such as personality, skills, knowledge, experience and abilities drive an individual’s performance. It proposes that employees are motivated by what they expect to receive in return for their effort and what that expected reward means to the employee. This is referred to as ‘Expectancy theory’ and links together in the following way: Expectancy: Does the individual feel the effort they put in will lead to high performance. What is their levels of confidence in what they are capable of doing? Do they have the appropriate resources, knowledge and training to carry out their role? Instrumentality: If the individual achieves a high level of performance is there reward for their efforts and can they be sure they will receive it. Employees must be able to trust that they will. Valence: Is the reward offered/expected one that the individual values. For the reward to motivate it must have importance for the individual, be it financial, recognition, promotion and so on. For me the key to Vroom’s theory and its success in motivating employees is that every individual is different, each has their own needs, wants, expectations and values based on the individuals frame of reference. Management must know and respect the individual and what they want. Reward within Performance management: I have already discussed reward in relation to motivation and how the reward on offer may need to bespoke to the individual in order to be effective. There is, however, a far wider aspect to reward with a performance management process. Reward to attract and to motivate Pay is usually the first thought when talking about reward in employment. It is important that a realistic but attractive salary is offered initially when recruiting new employees. Pay continues to be important for most individuals throughout their employment, however it is not the only way in way employees can be rewarded. Within my current organization pay is only increased annually, across the board, which has little to do with performance except for acknowledging that employees are rewarded for working for the company in line with cost of living rises. Currently there is no performance management process within my organization other than dealing with poor performance in a ‘theory X’ style, employees are serviced with a notice of improvement linked to termination of their contact. Outside of the annual pay increase financial reward is only given if a good employee threatens to leave. Practice is known to all employees via the grapevine and acts to demotivates those who don’t wish to take this approach. I have, however, worked within another organization where annual increases were calculated on performance throughout the year based on a truly robust appraisal system. Engaged and motivated employees were encouraged to collect factual evidence of their achievements and to present and rate this evidence at their appraisal. Ratings were discussed and agreed and then, then to ensure fairness, underwent cross calibration at departmental level. Employees felt they were treated fairly and rewarded not just for their efforts over the year but for their ownership of managing their own performance. Another type of reward for performance, which is being rolled out currently by my employer, is to provide opportunity for high performing  individuals to their knowledge of the business through a shadowing scheme. This has raised employee’s morale as they feel they will be able to perform more effectively and this could, in turn, lead to better opportunities and perhaps promotion. It has also encouraged other individuals to improve their performance in order to be able participate in the scheme. As I have discussed an employee’ perception of the value of reward will vary from one to another. values The need to provide a variety of rewards in line with employee’s expectations and personal preference is supported in the concept of Total Reward schemes. These scheme look at all the rewards and benefits that are or could be provided to employees recognition work/life balance company culture employee development environment, including job design and the physical workspace. *Management and Motivation, Vroom, V.H., Deci, E.L., Penguin 1983 (first published 1970) ** Wikipedia 3 x components of total reward system 1 of which should b non financial Weiss and Hartle (1997)

breaking the norm Essay -- essays research papers

Breaking the Norms  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When each of us was conceived, we did not have anything influencing our perception of the world. While we were growing up and still do this day, our surroundings influenced the way we think and the how we behave in our daily lives. We get ideas about gender roles from our parents, our teachers, television, books and even subconsciously. As part of a project to break the norms of society and push past peoples thresholds, I needed to figure out what made people feel uncomfortable. I thought for a moment and decided to tackle homophobia. I choose this topic because very few men are comfortable talking about the subject of gay men. It is my objective to better understand why men think the way we do. In order to get started I needed to brainstorm.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  After a little bit of deliberation, Juan and some other male classmates decided to hold hands and walk through the student union. Picture four grown men holding each others hands, walking through the middle of campus. As you can imagine, we received a lot of looks. We walked around for about five minutes as if nothing was going on. People seemed to be staring at us for a moment saying to themselves â€Å"what are they doing?† This is something that never happens in society. You hardly ever see men holding hands, much less four grown men swinging each others arms. Honestly, my first thought was that we would look so gay if we did this. Others in the group were skeptical at first to do this as well. When we walked into class, the students seem to cringe when they saw us take our seats.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  After that day I decided to take my project one step farther and push past everyone’s threshold. In order to break the norms of society and truly make people uncomfortable, I decided to wear the color pink for the entire day of school. I went to the local Savers and purchased several items that were very feminine. I bought a pair of pink and yellow striped bellbottoms and a tight pink collared shirt. I wore the clothes to school in the hopes to witness the students reactions to me wearing clothes completely out of the ordinary. After attending two classes that day, I decided to talk to some friends of mine. They all told me that I looked like a â€Å"fag.† I finally had broke the norms of society and at the same time caught my friends stereot... ...ey take it in the rear!† Some of the men I asked even said they felt â€Å"homosexuality is like a disease that you might rub off on you if you get too close.† Many of these men felt like their families would disown them. My feeling is that if you are not gay then you have no reason to be afraid of someone who is. I feel that if you have no doubt in your sexuality then you wouldn’t feel threatened by someone who is.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I don’t feel that men are truly independent or confident enough to let go and feel as comfortable as females do. I feel that the social construction of our society needs to be modified. Men need to be taught that it is okay to show emotion and that whatever their sexuality is, it doesn’t matter. To be more masculine we should learn to cope with our sexuality, and not be afraid. Masculinity does not mean without feeling, it means being strong and coming to terms with who you are. Wearing a pink shirt or holding hands with someone doesn’t mean anything then just that. With so many influences changing our perception of the world, its hard to make the right choices. You should not be so quick to judge someone, and in this case, why does it matter?

British Culture Chaoxiaoqian

My questions are Why does Helena stay with Jimmy and leave Jimmy, why does Alison come back to Jimmy. These are very tricky questions like twisted twines. Here I just air my views, expecting to be complemented by yours. The reasons for Helena staying with Jimmy might be probed from the following: Superficially looking, Jimmy is a person basically worth while. Jimmy is a young man with education, ideas and penetrating insights. Alison breaking through her family's strong obstacles to marry Jimmy from side reflects Jimmy's charms and attractions. Jimmy seems a natural desire and magnet for women if his working-class background?poverty and walled situations are ignored for the moment. As Helena said she took Jimmy to herself because â€Å"she finds that she desires him and wants to have him for a time†. It is an outburst of impulse catalyzed by special occasions. At that time, without digs, Helena had an appointment on the next day and had to lodge in Jimmy's attic; Jimmy is then immersed in bereavement without comfort while Allison and Cliff left him successively. Witnessing Jimmy's bitterness and helplessness, out of her female compassionate nature, Helena offered Jimmy her hand and herself as well. For solace and release, Jimmy dramatically accepted his natural enemy. Thus the two naturally and reasonably moved together. Exploring the in-depth reason, Helena's staying with Jimmy might be considered as a challenge she made for herself driven by her instincts of curiosity and conquest. Helena wanted to make out why the seemingly compatible couple always brawl and torture each other, why Jimmy is always angry?dissatisfied and cynical,always trying hard to be offensive, provocative, irritating. Determined by her inborn authoritative personality and her middle-class inclination to sustain the status quo,she takes Jimmy as a challenge and an attempt, an enemy territory to conquer, to justify her middle-class convictions and consciousness. She expects Jimmy to be changed, back into normal, behaving like anyone else and taking reality like a real man. Naive?romantic and over-confident as Helena is, she fails to change Jimmy. Conversely and ironically, she was within an inch of being changed. Helena was inevitably to lose the war because Jimmy's anger was socially deep-rooted. He had the complex of inferiority and superiority. He showed contempt for uneducated Cliff, irony for educated Alison. He was well educated, but his situation was no better than the two he looked down upon. It was an affliction and sarcasm to him. He lived at the sea of isolation?desperation and inarticulate agony. Without being heard or understood. He found no target to attack, therefore everything became his target. Jimmy was a man born out of his time. To change Jimmy Helena should change the times first. It is difficult and impossible for Helena to change the time, and so with Jimmy. To bridge the systematic and fathomless class and value gap was never a easy task and doomed to be futile and fruitless. Jimmy and Helena's combination was the effect of passionate impulse. It was a kind of insanity or wrong-doings as Helena herself later commented. Once waken up from the dream, the end of their relation was approaching. Helena was a woman of conventionality by nature, she couldn't forget the book of rules anytime. She still believed in â€Å"right and wrong†! Gnawed by the worm of conscience and sense of guilt, she can't †be happy without the book of rules†, she can't †be happy when what you're doing is wrong, or is hurting someone else†. Moreover she lost the war waged against changing Jimmy, the war to restore everything into normal. Unless Jimmy and Helena don't confront with each other face to face, or they will certainly fall into the state of war, the war of ideas, class, values, social reality. There was no middle road to compromise. Helena's exeuntting also meant she lost the war against conventionality, against status quo. Her story is more than a morality one, it further proved every desire or attempt to change the suffocating and inanimate society over-confident and all for naught. Everyone would inevitably subordinate himself to conventionality. My understanding of Alison's return is explained as such: Alison might feel regret about her past behaviors. Though she is the seeming victim of Jimmy's irrational assault, she knows that Jimmy has reason to do so on her. After her abortion, something dormant was aroused from the bottom of her heart and she came back to Jimmy, though shilly-shally. As a young woman, she is a †monument of non-attachment†. †She hasn't had a thought for years!† She is a woman in her 20s without enthusiasm, animation and sincerity. Nothing Jimmy could do would provoke her. Her marriage with Jimmy was a kind of physical and responsive affinity rather than mental and spiritual one. She was nicknamed as ‘Lady Pusillanimous' by Jimmy. Moreover, as a middle-class woman by nature, she kept her arrogant and uppish manner in communicating with the working-class people which was especially exposed when she wrote letter to her mother, discussed Jimmy with her father and Helena, refused to see the dying Mrs. Hugh with Jimmy. She had the sense of inborn class superiority which is a fatal and permanent weapon to sensitive Jimmy. She did betray Jimmy in a sense. In a word, she has never given herself to her husband with the honesty which she knew he demanded and needed. Actually, she knew she should shoulder some responsibility for Jimmy's anger and offered Jimmy more understanding and communication. The problem of their marriage was not sheer Jimmy's fault. Alison left Jimmy in pursuit of peace and relaxation. Tortured by Jimmy's distorted allegiance and loyalty demands for her, Alison wanted to escape from the role of hostage and the war Jimmy declared on †those sections of society†. But Alison never succeeded in escape. Things didn't go in the way as she expected. Alison's coming back could be interpreted as a subjugation to conventionality?reality and failure of Ostrichism. Alison is easily to get used to everything and she is also on the verge of burst. Tortured by Jimmy's distorted allegiance and loyalty demands for her, Alison wanted to escape from the role of hostage and the war Jimmy declared on †those sections of society†. She leaves Jimmy, in pursuit of peace and relaxation. But Alison never succeeded in escape. Things didn't go in the way as she expected. Her abortion brings her shock and disillusionment, awakening something dormant in her heart. She then clearly sees a depressing?aimless?hopeless and futureless reality, without light and outlet. By then she understood Jimmy's anger and discontent to some extent. Without a bright future, Alison had to revert to the past, though vague, remote and suspended it is. She wanted to find herself a position in the conventional and accustomed role of wife. The unpleasant past seems a more lovely memento In comparison with the suffocating and smoldering reality. Finally Alison and Jimmy decide to pick up the bear-squirrel game. It is a seeming communiquà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ by Alison and Jimmy, protesting the reality and fighting against the â€Å"cruel steel traps, lying about everywhere, just waiting for rather mad, slightly satanic, and very timid little animals.† This could be regarded as a faint flicker of hope offered by the protagonists who had a in-depth perception and understanding of life.

Genealogy and Jewish Last Name Origins

Many of the names that people think sound Jewish are, in fact, simple German, Russian, or Polish surnames. You generally cant identify Jewish ancestry by a surname alone. Actually, there are really only three surnames (and their variations) that are generally specifically Jewish: Cohen, Levy, and Israel. Yet, even variations of these common Jewish-specific surnames may not be Jewish in origin. The surnames Cohan and even Cohen, for example, could instead be an Irish surname, derived from OCadham (descendant of Cadhan). Clues to Surnames That May Be Jewish While few names are specifically Jewish, there are certain surnames that are more commonly found among Jews: Names ending in -berg (Weinberg, Goldberg)Names ending in -stein (Einstein, Hofstein)Names ending in -witz (Rabinowitz, Horowitz)Names ending in -baum (Metzenbaum, Himmelbaum)Names ending in -thal (Blumenthal, Eichenthal)Names ending in -ler (Adler, Winkler)Names ending in -feld (Seinfeld, Berkenfeld)Names ending in -blum (Weissblum, Rosenblum)Names  having to do with  wealth (Goldberg, Silverstein)Names derived from Hebrew words (Mizrachi, from mizrakhi, meaning eastern, or easterner) Some Jewish surnames may originate from professions that are exclusive to Jews. The surname Shamash, and its variations such as Klausner, Templer, and Shuldiner, means shamash, a synagogue sexton. Chazanian, Chazanski, and Chasanov all derive from chazan, a cantor. Another common origin for  Jewish surnames are house names, referring to a distinctive sign attached to a house in the days before street numbers and addresses (a practice primarily in Germany, by both Gentiles and Jews). The most famous of these Jewish house names is Rothschild,  or red shield, for a house distinguished by a red sign. Many Common Jewish Last Names Sound German Many Jewish-sounding surnames are actually German in origin. This may be due to a  1787 Austro-Hungarian law  that required Jews to register a permanent family surname, a name they also required to be German. The decree also required that all surnames that had previously been used in Jewish families, such as those originating from a place where the family lived, should be totally abandoned.  The chosen names were subject to the approval of Austrian officials, and if a name was not chosen, one was assigned.   In 1808, Napoleon issued a similar decree that compelled Jews outside of Germany and Prussia to adopt a surname within three months of the decree, or within three months of moving into the French Empire. Similar laws requiring Jewish people to adopt permanent surnames were passed at various times by different countries, some well into the latter half of the 19th century. A Surname Alone Cant Identify Jewish Ancestry While many of the above surnames have a greater likelihood of belonging to a Jewish family, you cant assume that any of the last names are actually Jewish, no matter how Jewish they may sound to you, or how many Jewish families you know with that name. The third most common Jewish surname in America (after Cohen and Levy) is Miller, which is also obviously a very common surname for Gentiles as well. Resources and Further Reading Rieder, Estee. â€Å"Whats in a Name?† Mishpacha Magazine, Jewish World Review, 2007.