An employee’s work usually consists of two types of tasks or behaviours: in-role tasks, which are the tasks required by the job or position; and discretionary behaviours, which are undertaken by the employee in order to help others or the organization but that are not required tasks or responsibilities. Of course, employees are not always […]
Subject: HR Management
Potential Leaders: Height Helps But So Does Being Smart
Tall men have a greater chance of becoming leaders. As unfair as this may seem, and despite the obvious exceptions from Napoleon to CEO superstar Jack Welch, decades of research have consistently borne out the fact that men in leadership positions — from U.S. presidents to CEO’s — are likely taller than average. Additional research […]
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A Lower Voice Can Take You Higher Up the Leadership Ladder
Research in academic laboratory settings — that is, within controlled experiments with voluntary participants — has shown that individuals with deeper voices are perceived as having more leadership capabilities. Different research points to specific qualities attributed to individuals with deeper voices, including competence, persuasiveness, confidence and trustworthiness. What happens, however, in the real world? Are […]
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Firms Are Not Adapting to the Millennial Workforce
In addition to economic and diversity issues, the Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey for the fourth quarter of 2014 focused on the issue of millennials in the workplace. A majority of CFOs surveyed believe that millennials can add value to companies, especially, according to 70% of the CFOs surveyed, through the technological savvy […]
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Does Employee Satisfaction Improve Company Value? It Depends…
When the most important asset of a company is human capital, attracting and retaining high-quality, motivated employees is the key to sustainable competitive advantage. High employee satisfaction makes the company attractive to the highest-quality potential employees, and keeps current employees motivated to do their best. The impact of employee satisfaction is found in the company’s results. […]
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Does Work/Life Balance Help or Hurt Productivity?
Work-life balance issues bring out the optimist in some, the pessimist in others. For pessimists, the work-life balance concerns of employees will be undermined when a firm faces increased competition — and ‘improves’ its management practices in response to that competition. Examples of improved management practices include: the introduction of lean manufacturing techniques; better tracking […]
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Ways to Encourage Employees to Help Each Other
In a world of business in which cooperation is often the key to success, many companies overlook the damage that infighting, extreme competition or knowledge hoarding by employees can cause to sales, profits and effectiveness. At the opposite end of the scale are the organizations that encourage and facilitate employee cooperation and generosity. Employees look […]
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Competitive Advantage through Individuals Outside the Norm
When in May 2013, software giant SAP announced that it would hire hundreds of people who were diagnosed with autism, the assumption among casual observers might have been that SAP was engaging in a laudable act of social responsibility. However, SAP executives, working with researchers and consultants in the field of autistic individuals in work […]
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Can Employees Be Motivated by More than Money and Benefits?
Motivation can be divided into two dimensions: outcome-focused and process-focused. With outcome-focused motivation, people are driven by the desire of an achievement. They want to finish the task so that the task is done. They want a finished report in hand and ready to be submitted; they want the presentation to be written and delivered. […]
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Surviving a Recession: Seven Lessons from Family Businesses
Family-controlled companies are associated with tradition and continuity, but that doesn’t mean they’re ‘behind the curve’. A recent study suggests that when it comes to sustainable performance, they can beat other companies hands down. The study compared 149 large listed family businesses with similar non-family companies in seven countries — the US, Canada, France, Spain, […]
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