Communication and Involvement

All jobs have the potential to be alienating, making the job holder indifferent or hostile both to the job and to the management, who are seen responsible for obliging the employee to continue doing the job. According to (Torrington and Taylor, 2005) employee relations are largely concerned with preventing or alleviating that type of alienation.  These issues are usually often collective, concerning a number of people. 

According to (Bratton & Gold, 2007) employee participation is to help with quality movement and improving the human resources within the organisation. So the employers are trusted to make important decisions for the organisation as well as themselves.  

Employee participation is part of a process of empowerment in the workplace which consists of decentralising power within a company. Team members encourage each other to make important decisions for themselves with guidelines and support. 

Employee Relations involves the body of work concerned with maintaining employer-employee relationships that contribute to satisfactory productivity, motivation, and morale.   Essentially, Employee Relations is concerned with preventing and resolving problems involving individuals which arise out of or affect work situations. 

Advice is provided to supervisors on how to correct poor performance and employee misconduct. In such instances, progressive discipline and regulatory and other requirements must be considered in effecting disciplinary actions and in resolving employee grievances and appeals. Information is provided to employees to promote a better understanding of management's goals and policies. Information is also provided to employees to assist them in correcting poor performance, on or off duty misconduct, and/or to address personal issues that affect them in the workplace. Employees are advised about applicable regulations, legislation, and bargaining agreements. Employees are also advised about their grievance and appeal rights and discrimination and whistleblower protections. 

Mark and Spencer use questionnaires to encourage staff involvement. They send out questionnaires every six months and encourage their own staff to fill it out; one incentive they use to ensure that the employees fill out is that they will be eligible for a mini reward. Another organisation that tries to encourage staff involvement within their business is New Look. They have a suggestion box, where the employees are able to put forward any ideas they may have. 

Social networking has grown in popularity in the UK over recent months. The site Facebook, for example, has witnessed a membership growth of 3 million over the last 6 months. Sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo allow people to communicate online through a variety of networks and share photos and videos. Each user has a profile with a certain amount of personal information visible to the public.

As the years have gone by, the technology world has improved. A lot of businesses are now using the internet to recruit potential new staff to their business. According to a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey, more companies are recruiting on social networking websites and even more organizations not using the sites currently are open to utilizing them in the future.  Only 21% of surveyed companies stated that they currently do not use social networking sites and have no plans to do so.

Linkedin, naturally enough, is the top site for social recruiting, followed by Facebook and Twitter:

• LinkedIn - 95%
• Facebook - 58%
• Twitter - 42%

Ernst & Young, which created a Facebook community showcasing the company with flashy videos and a Q&A section. More than 9,500 people are part of this group.They send out messages and inform people on what they will need to exactly do to apply for the jobs available

Conclusion

It is essential that staff are free to have their own opinion whilst working in the workplace for the reason that it will the business work more efficiently. Another reason is that it will help them motivate the employees. It is also useful for businesses to undertake new ways of communicating to their employees for example via Facebok.
Social websites like Facebook provide a lot of information which can be considered important to different businesses for example their age and marital status.
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References
B net (n.d) Business dictionary [online] Available at: http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/employee+involvement.html [Accessed 4 May 2010]

Bevan, S and Reilly, P (2001) Employee financial participation. Ise [online] Available at: http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/pubs/summary.php?id=373 [Accessed 4 May 2010]

Evans, D (2004) Supervisory management principle and practice [online] Available at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=b6Of2LsJV0kC&pg=PA520&dq=employee+participation+management&cd=2#v=onepage&q=employee%20participation%20management&f=false [Accessed 30 April 2010]

Taylor, S and Hall, L (2005) Human resource management [online] Available at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CIcmwkH_C8wC&pg=PA462&dq=individual+involvement&cd=1#v=onepage&q=individual%20involvement&f=false [Accessed 4 May 2010]

Top Ten Review (2010) Social networking websits review [online] Available at: http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/ [Accessed 2 March 2010]

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Performance Management

One of the essential tools of performance management is appraisals. Appraisals are a regular review of an individual performance preferably at a work place, where potential is highlighted and training and development needs are identified.

Whilst I was working at Marks and Spencer I had regular appraisal meetings, where my strengths and weaknesses were identified. During this meeting the manager would usually base my performance on the results from the mystery shop that usually visited our store every month. They made it known what was expected of me and made it aware what they was going to measure me on. This was effective for the reason that they gave me suggestions on how to improve my performance.

The appraisal meetings I received helped me to identify my strengths and weaknesses and indicate how such strengths may best be utilised and weaknesses overcome. It was also beneficial for the reason that it improved communication between me and the managers; I was also comfortable on expressing what certain aspects of the business needed improving.

The out puts of the meeting was to basically identify where I needed improving, and ways I can go about doing this. Also it also allowed me to express my feelings as well towards the workplace.  

Management and Organisational Behaviour 5^th Edition – Laurie J Mullins

From reading the article the skills that would need to be required to be an effective mentor are that you will need to have good communication skills so that you will be able to interact better with other people and to cope with challenges. Another skill they will need to have is good listening skills so that they are able to listen to people effectively. They will also need to be empathetic and sensitive towards them, it is also important that they are good encouraging people for the reason that some people seem low and may need some encouragement.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/entrepreneur/article3778514.ece

When I was in secondary school I had a mentor for the reason that I always had bad attendance so my school provided me with a mentor to find out the reason why this always occurred.  I used to have regular meetings with mentor and these meetings we used to talk about for example school and family problems. The mentor was a good listener and always gave me good advice about problems I may have had. This was effective for the reason that it gave me the ability to talk about problems I may have had. It also helped me to improve my attendance for the reason I began to enjoy attending my lessons. My mentor affected my life for the reason I am now on time to my lectures and any other meetings that I will need to attend. My mentor also gave me understanding of how important it is to be on time for things for the reason that in the business world, attendance is vital.

Equal Opps and Diversity

Diversity - You can have a mixture of races working in the same company, of which there maybe some have different needs, for instance if someone is of a religion that has to pray at certain times of the day, the employer would need to accommodate this if not they could be seen to be treating them unfairly which could lead to tribunal. Now once the employer does accommodate this then they need to ensure that it is done in a fair way, so they would not be able to give them extra breaks, as this would again be treating them differently to other staff and this could lead to complaints/tribunal from the other members of staff, this is diversity.

Equality - Equality defined basically means equal rights for people regardless of what factors they might have that is different. Equality states that because they are human they must be equal. For example men and women doing the same job, men has starting wage at £18,000 women's starting wage £16,000 the woman complains and then discovers that it is only her not all women who have this starting wage, she can then ask them to put her inline with everyone else so then she would be equal.

A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all member of the group, regardless of actual variations among group members. Stereotyping involves an act of categorization where we look at a person and by virtue of an attribute, physical feature, or behaviour we can assign that person to a group. Some basic features on which people stereotype others are age, race, and gender; however, there are probably an infinite number of categories in which we can stereotype someone. The use of stereotypes is pervasive. 
The media can be a powerful tool in creating or reinforcing stereotypes. An example is the public perception that youth crime is on the rise, or out of control.
This impression has been created largely through media coverage of alarming stories about property crimes, and incidents involving so-called youth gangs. Negative stereotypes not only affect how adults see teenagers, they influence how teenagers see themselves.

There are several ways in which organisations can attemt to change these attitudes, one is that they can start following the new legislations.

Personality

The word personality means habitual patterns and qualities of behaviour of any individual as expressed by physical and mental activities and attitudes; distinctive individual qualities of a person, considered collectively. 

The word personality means habitual patterns and qualities of behaviour of any individual as expressed by physical and mental activities and attitudes; distinctive individual qualities of a person, considered collectively.
Each person has a unique personality, a way of experiencing the world and participating in it that is all their own. Many ways have been proposed in different periods in history. These different propositions can be placed into three categories: personality is influenced by the environment; personality is inherent in our genetic make-up; personality is a mix of both genetic and environmental influences. [Ref: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro06/web1/ttomasic.html]

There are two different views as to whether all traits exist in all people:

• Idiographic: people have unique personality structures; thus some traits (cardinal traits) are more important in understanding the structure of some people than others
• Nomothetic: people's unique personalities can be understood as them having relatively greater or lesser amounts of traits that are consistently across people (e.g., the NEO is nomothetic)

The Idiographic view emphasizes that each person has a unique psychological structure and that some traits are possessed by only one person; and that there are times when it is impossible to compare one person with others. This viewpoint also emphasizes that traits may differ in importance from person to person (cardinal, central and secondary traits). It tends to use case studies, bibliographical information, diaries etc for information gathering.

The Nomothetic view, on the other hand, emphasizes comparability among individuals but sees people as unique in their combination of traits. This viewpoint sees traits as having the same psychological meaning in everyone. The belief is that people differ only in the amount of each trait. It is this which constitutes their uniqueness. This approach tends to use self-report personality questions, factor analysis etc. People differ in their positions along a continuum in the same set of traits.

Most contemporary psychologists tend towards a nomothetic approach (and the trait approach is often viewed solely as a nomothetic approach these days), but they are aware of how a trait may be slightly different from person to person in the way that it is expressed.

Openness

According to the Big Personality Test this trait was medium. It has been said that people that score the same scores as tend to have fairly broad range of interests and may be a bit sensitive to art. The test also stated that I am likely to find it easy to come up with original solutions to problems and usually hold unusual beliefs.

Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness describes how dependable, organised and hard-working a person is likely to be. This may be the reason why, of all the personality traits, Conscientiousness is the most consistent indicator of job success. It has been said that people who have similiar scores to me are less likely to be workaholics, instead achieving a good work-life balance.Conscientiousness often gives clues to the amount that a person plans. From the results I recieved it is likely that I enjoy planning certain aspects of my life and indulge in occasional list-making but unlikely to be averse to behaving spontaneously.Some studies have shown the more Conscientious an individual is, the more disciplined they are likely to be about exercise and diet.

Extroversion



According to the big personality test my results for the extroversion trait was medium. Usually extroversions have a positive character and have a tendency to seek out pleasure - stimulating or risk - taking activities. It also says that extroversions are comfortable with meeting new people. I agree with this for the reason that I am very comfortable with meeting new people another reason why I agree with this result because this one thing that I am comfortable doing.

It also says that extroversions generally have a positive outlook on life and may display a greater gift for leadership and also enjoy social occasions.    

Agreeablness

I also scored on medium on agreeableness in the big personality test. The test shows that people who score medium on this trait are more than likely to show concern for the feeling of others which I agree with. It also says that they are inclined to help those in need and also get along with people in easily.

Neuroticism



For this trait in the personality test, I scored quite low for the reason that, I am seen as low tempered and can handle stressful situations in a good manner. I agree with this statement for the reason that I don't like confrontation and always have a solution to of getting out of situations that may lead to a heated argument.