Bonus a motivating tool

An Incentive or bonus is something that motivates an individual to perform an action. The study of incentive structures is central to the study of all economic activities (both in terms of individual decision-making and in terms of co-operation and competition within a larger institutional structure). Economic analysis, then, of the differences between societies (and between different organizations within a society) largely amounts to characterizing the differences in incentive structures faced by individuals involved in these collective efforts. Ultimately, incentives aim to provide value for money and contribute to organizational success.

They can be classified according to the different ways in which they motivate agents to take a particular course of action. The different categories are following:

Class	Definition
Remunerative incentives	are said to exist where an agent can expect some form of material reward – especially money – in exchange for acting in a particular way.
Financial incentives
Moral incentives	are said to exist where a particular choice is widely regarded as the right thing to do, or as particularly admirable, or where the failure to act in a certain way is condemned as indecent. A person acting on a moral incentive can expect a sense of self-esteem, and approval or even admiration from his community; a person acting against a moral incentive can expect a sense of guilt, and condemnation or even ostracism from the community.
Coercive incentives	are said to exist where a person can expect that the failure to act in a particular way will result in physical force being used against them (or their loved ones) by others in the community – for example, by inflicting pain in punishment, or by imprisonment, or by confiscating or destroying their possessions.
Natural Incentives	such as curiosity, mental or physical exercise, admiration, fear, anger, pain, joy, or the pursuit of truth, or the control over things in the world or people or oneself.

It's also worth noting that these categories are not necessarily exclusive; one and the same situation may, in its different aspects, carry incentives that come under any or all of these categories. In modern American society, for example, economic prosperity and social esteem are often closely intertwined; and when the people in a culture tend to admire those who are economically successful, or to view those who are not with a certain amount of contempt prospect of (for example) getting or losing a job carries not only the obvious remunerative incentives (in terms of the effect on the pocketbook) but also substantial moral incentives (such as honor and respect from others for those who hold down steady work, and disapproval or even humiliation for those who don't or can't).

Incentive and bonus structures, however, are notoriously trickier than they might appear to people who set them up. Human beings are both finite and creative; that means that the people offering incentives are often unable to predict all of the ways that people will respond to them. Thus, imperfect knowledge and unintended consequences can often make incentives much more complex than the people offering them originally expected, and can lead either to unexpected windfalls or to disasters produced by unintentionally perverse incentives.

For example, decision-makers in for-profit firms often must decide what incentives they will offer to employees and managers to encourage them to act in ways beneficial to the firm. But many corporate policies – especially of the "extreme incentive" variant popular during the 1990s – that aimed to encourage productivity have, in some cases, led to failures as a result of unintended consequences. For example, stock options were intended to boost CEO productivity by offering a remunerative incentive (profits from rising stock prices) for CEOs to improve company performance. But CEOs could get profits from rising stock prices either (1) by making sound decisions and reaping the rewards of a long-term price increase, or (2) by fudging or fabricating accounting information to give the illusion of economic success, and reaping profits from the short-term price increase by selling before the truth came out and prices tanked.

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive

http://www.worldatwork.org/community/discussions/discuss.jsp?did=14572

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Gamified Exposure

Gamification is the process of taking something that already exists – a website, an enterprise application, an online community – and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty.

Gamification offers the opportunity to simulate the working environment and create a selection technique that chooses the best talent. For example, Marriott Hotels launched a mobile app that makes candidates virtually perform hotel industry tasks. This provides insight into how the candidate would approach real work and it helps eliminate those applicants lacking the patience or aptitude for the job.

Gamification offers new ways to align candidate behaviour with organizational goals. So instead of telling an employee that he “meets expectations,” it is better to say that he did not clear the second level of the game. Instead of creating performance ratings, HR representatives can create transparent leader boards with badges attached to each level, so that an employee knows how he or she is doing in his business unit, region, country or globally. If an organization has an internal social media portal, the conversations and chatter around the game can create employee engagement at this “virtual water cooler.”

The cases for using gamification are numerous and growing. SAP uses games to educate its employees on sustainability; Unilever applies them to training; Hays deploys them to hire recruiters and the Khan Academy uses it for online education. According to the Aberdeen survey, organizations with gamification in place improve engagement by 48%, as compared to 28% with those who do not, and improve turnover by 36% as compared to 25%.

Year 2015 will be the year of gamification inside the workplace migrates from a few isolated pilots to a new way to engage and recognize high performing employee.

         Gamification takes the essence of games — attributes such as fun, play, transparency, design, competition and yes, addiction— and applies these to a range of real-world processes inside a company from recruiting to learning & development.

Gallup’s latest research shows why companies are increasing their interest in gamification. The Gallup study finds 31% of employees are engage at work (51% are disengaged and 17.5% actively disengaged) but what is most interesting is how this data compares when you apply a generational segmentation.It turns out Millennials are the least engaged generation, according to Gallup, with only 28.9% engaged as compared to 32.9% for Gen X & Boomers. What is going on here? Gallup findings segmented by generation point to low engagement among Millennials who say they do not have the opportunity to show their best work or have a vehicle to contribute their ideas and suggestions. Using gamification to address this will influence not only engagement levels but also help a company become a magnet for best of breed talent. After all, Millennials will reportedly make up 75% of the global workforce by 2025!

How HR Can Use Gamification

HR teams can leverage gamification to achieve business goals by

• ·        Improve Talent Acquisition and Management

Company can easily turn the hiring process into a gamified experience by rewarding prospects with both acknowledgement and rewards for completing each step, from application to start date. Providing incentives can not only help attract qualified candidates from the start, but can also dramatically increase onboarding efficiency, as candidates are motivated to complete various steps to earn rewards.

At the same time, much like a sales function, HR teams can also use gamification internally to reward top recruiters and incentivize employees to refer top candidates. The opportunity for an employee to earn Referrer of the Year status can encourage employees to take a more active role in talent acquisition, and even help relieve some of the pressure from the HR department itself.

• ·        Cultivate Corporate Culture and Retain Valued Employees

Keeping employees engaged and feeling that they are part of the team is critical for retention and retention is paramount in maintaining valuable personnel assets, institutional knowledge and consistency, and avoiding costly turnover.

              Gamification can be used to promote a positive corporate culture by rewarding employees for cross-departmental collaboration, providing process or product improvement suggestions, or even participating in company-wide volunteer programs, for example.

           Company can use a gamified platform to track these activities and opportunities, as well as showcase employee participation to their co-workers to provide intrinsic motivation. As an added benefit, the platform maintains a record of all employee activities in the program, which is quite valuable information when it comes time to consider promotions, raises and other tangible rewards.

• ·        Motivate Employees to Learn and Participate in Training

Mandatory HR training, like harassment, diversity and other compliance programs, are often not high on most employees’ priority lists, especially when they do not see a relationship to their day-to-day job duties. Motivating them to take time out of their busy day to complete these programs in a specified period can be challenging.

Adding a gamification experience to the online learning program can spur action. Employee who earn rewards and recognition for having completed these tasks, or missions in the gamification lexicon, are far more likely to make it a priority and HR benefits from the ability to check those boxes for compliance in a timely fashion, without the pressure of having to hound employees to complete the programs.

• ·     Incentivize Paperwork and Other Administrative Requirements

No one likes to complete paperwork, especially when other tasks are more pressing — and exciting but paperwork is unavoidable in areas such as completion of benefits enrolment forms and expense reports, So why not make it fun?

Similar to training applications, rewarding employees with either peer or management recognition — or even tangible incentives — for completing required forms can create a friendly competition where employees try to out-do one another for the title of best expense reporter or quickest to complete benefits update forms.

•             Map the Path to Career Success

Employees see colleagues earning praise, achieving goals and climbing the proverbial ladder, and they want to know how they can achieve the same results. Using gamification, HR departments can create transparent, mission-based career paths that show the steps employees have taken to level up in the organization.

For example, perhaps the top salesperson completes refresher training annually, turns in expense reports within a week of travel, keeps his/her prospect pipeline up to date, logs five new leads every week and follows up on two.

By highlighting this behaviour in a gamified platform, other employees can see what it takes to become the top salesperson as this mentor provides a breadcrumb path to show peers the way to the top.

You can even design such programs to allow team members to recognize one another for contributions made toward a common goal and all of this data is tractable, creating a valuable historic record to capture employee and organizational knowledge.

By consulting the platform, it’s easy to identify employees who have achieved certification in specific skills, worked with clients in a specific industry or make other connections throughout the data. All of this combines to create a more efficient, collaborative, productive and upwardly motivated workforce.

To some, the idea of gamification sounds like a thinly veiled attempt to bait employees into doing what they should already be doing But the truth is organizations can use gamification as an effective way to combat the employee engagement crisis in the U.S.

According to a recent Gallup poll, 71% of American workers report feeling not engaged or actively disengaged in their work. This two-thirds majority translates into nearly $350 billion in lost revenue.

Using gamification, HR executives and their teams can create a more interactive, rewarding and attentive workforce. It can help ward off worker malaise by leveraging intrinsic motivators to drive desirable employee behaviour and improve efficiency and ROI, while reducing turnover and churn costs.

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Human capital with reference to economy

A measure of the economic value of an employee's skill set. This measure builds on the basic production input of labour measure where all labour is thought to be equal. The concept of human capital recognizes that not all labour is equal and that the quality of employees can be improved by investing in them. The education, experience and abilities of an employee have an economic value for employers and for the economy as a whole.

            Economist Theodore Schultz coined the term in the 1960s to reflect the value of our human capacities. He believed human capital was like any other type of capital; it could be invested in through education, training and enhanced benefits that will lead to an improvement in the quality and level of production.

            The value of human resources contribution for any productive work depends on the deployable skills and competencies for creating wealth for the organization in terms of sell able products and services. The skills and competencies of any person are developed and accumulated as capital over a period of time by means of education, training, development and employment in the specified work.

The research has clearly shown that the productivity and performance of human resources will increase with increase in human capital, so the growth in the employability, remuneration and employment rate in the country. Human capital management is a strategic activity for the well being of any organization and the society at large, and is the fulfilling reason for setting up an organization in the name "Human Capital" for its systematic development and management.

Companies can invest in intellectual capital, just as countries invest in human capital, through training programs and hiring practices. Human resources departments can develop a long-term strategy to maximize human capital. Social investment in human capital is a matter of public policy. Examples of policies that tend to increase a country's stock of human capital include using the human capital of women, investing in higher education, supporting dropout prevention programs, and encouraging highly skilled immigrants to enter the workforce.

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What Employee Relations Seeks For

Happy employees are productive employees. Successful businesses know how to manage relationships to build lasting employee satisfaction.The most important part of any business is its people. No business can run effectively without them. But people don't work in a vacuum; they need to communicate and work with others to get their jobs done. To be successful, employers need to manage relationships in the workplace to keep the business functioning smoothly, avoid problems and make sure individual employees are performing at their best.

Employee relations mean managing employer-employee relationships. Generally, employee relations isa term used to describe a company's efforts to prevent and resolve problems arising from situations at work. The goal of an employee relations program is to increase employee satisfaction and maintain good morale among workers. Happy workers are more productive, and more productivity means a better bottom line for the business.

Employee relations seeks to:

Ø  Develop and maintain a positive relationship between employees and the college through programs and policies that ensure fairness, respect and consistent treatment for all employees,

Ø  Provide means for conflict resolution,

Ø  Enhance clear and accurate communication,

Ø  Recognize the efforts and contributions of employees to the college and it's mission.

Human Resources (HR) Specialists in Employee Relations aid managers and employees in administering HR activities through their knowledge of legislation, regulations, case law, and principles. These specialists are responsible for understanding the rules, practices, and precedents related to employee conduct, performance problems, awards, and dispute resolution.

Many typical employer-employee relationships will vary on the scale of closeness and familiarity, but it is essential that all employer-employee relationships involve at least these four major characteristics:-

a) Mutual respect                                    d) Gratitude

b) Mutual reliance

c) Openness and communication

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EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION COMPARE IN ACROSS COUNTRIES

Executive Compensation:

Executive compensation packages consist normally of various components. In order to categorize executive compensation, several distinctions can be made. It is possible to distinguish between fixed and variable compensation, between compensation in cash and non-cash compensation and between deferred and immediate compensation.Fixed compensation comprises in the first place the salary of the executive which may be regarded as the basis of the compensation package. In addition, many companies grant their executives certain benefits and allowances in kind, including the private use of company cars, aircraft's, financial counselling and home security. Certain companies also provide for are imbursement for tax liabilities produced by other components and perquisites obtained by the CEO. The determination of fixed compensation is usually based on a “competitive bench marking” which employs a general salary survey and detailed analysis of specific industries or market peers (Murphy, 1999, p. 9).2 Variable compensation can be structured in a variety of ways and may be granted on an annual or a long term basis. Annual variable compensation is either accorded on a discretionary basis, or based on predefined performance criteria.3 Performance criteria can be based on individual, business unit or corporate performance and may include thresholds or ceilings limiting the amount of payment (Lynch and Perry, 2003). Criticism in some countries, for instance in the UK, has focused on the fact that the bonus targets remain frequently unpublished. Further, Bruce et al. (2007) find an increasingly complex structure of bonus targets which is linked to higher bonus pay but not to higher shareholder return.

EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION   COMPARE   IN ACROSS COUNTRIES

This section looks at executive pay in six countries where disclosure practices permit comparisons. The six countries in question cover a wide geographical scope. They are Australia; Germany; Hong-Kong, China; the Netherlands; South Africa; and the United States. For each of these countries, executive pay in the 15 largest companies is examined. The companies are selected on the basis of the “Forbes’ “Global 2000” ranking of 2008”.4 This helps to identify companies according to the same uniform for all the countries. As suggested by theory (Murphy (1999)) and established by empirical research in various countries, including in the US (Tosi et al 1998), Australia (Merhebi et al (2006)), Portugal (Fernandez 2008) France (Dardour 2008) and Germany (albeit with mixed results according to Haid and Yurtoglu (2006); Rang 2006), executive pay increases with company size. This implies that the level of executive pay in the 15 largest companies is likely to be higher than average executive pay for the economy as a whole. The purpose of the data provided here is not to furnish an all-embracing account of compensation practices but rather to provide a snapshot of developments in the countries concerned in order to show structural similarities, differences and common trends.5 Because of the above-mentioned methodological difficulties concerning the calculation of share-based remuneration, the comparisons are confined to pay components which do not depend directly on share values (i.e. salary and perquisites, bonuses and deferred compensation). On average, CEOs earn between $ 1.4 million and nearly $ 10.3 million per year (plus stock options), that is between 71 and 183 times the wage of the average worker Executive pay in 2007 for the 15 largest companies in the six selected countries is shown in Table 1. The best paid executives are in the United States. In that country, average CEO pay exceeds $ 10 million per year, that is about 183 times the wage of the average American worker. Executives in Hong-Kong, China and South Africa are paid much less than their US counterparts. However, even there, CEO pay represents between 54 and 148 times the wage of the average worker in the two countries.

Tab. 1:

 Average Compensation by employee category, 2007

 CEO Average Executive

USD Ratio of compensation per employee USD Ratio of compensation per employee Australia 6,001,060 135.3 2,415,012 54.5 Germany 6,796,643 147.8 3,767,554 81.9 Hong Kong (China) 2,723,425 160.2 1,075,757 63.3 Netherlands 3,578,286 71.4 2,171,016 43.3 South Africa 1,370,824 104.4 934,378 71.1 United States 10,309,701 182.6 6,297,870 111.5

It is important to note that these data provide an underestimate of the total remuneration of executives. Indeed shared-based compensation is not taken into account. A rough estimate based on available information suggests that the represent between 25 percent (in Germany) and 60 percent (in the United States). This rough appreciation illustrates that the total amount of executive compensation would be considerably higher if share-based compensation were taken into consideration. To a significant extent, executive pay depends, in principle, on individual and firm performance. In Australia, German, Hong-Kong, China and the United States, the variable component exceeds the fixed component. But even in the other two countries (the Netherlands and South Africa) the variable component is significant.

Ongoing policy debates on Executive Compensation

 In many countries proposals have been put forward with a view to mitigate the problems regarding executive compensation which have been illustrated by this study. Given the strong differences across countries regarding executive compensation, the proposals are highly country specific. A number of proposals deal with the institutional framework in which executive compensation is determined. Some of those proposals argue for an enhanced role of the shareholder meeting, usually referred to as “Say on Pay”. The focus of the debate in the United States is current on a non-binding vote of share-holders on executive compensation matters. While not providing shareholders with a veto on compensation packages, shareholders would have an institutionalized platform to express their disagreement with the remuneration policy of their company (Gopalan, 2007).24 Similarly, a recent proposal of the Austrian trade unions argues for the strengthening of information rights of the shareholders on executive compensation matters (Arbeitnehmerkammer Wien, 2008). Other proposals favour an enhancement of the committee in charge of determination of compensation. For instance, German trade unions argue for a stronger role of the German supervisory board and in particular for a more intensive participation of the employee representatives in the compensation determination process (German Trade Union Federation 2008). Certain proposals also deal with the amount and the criteria employed to fix executive compensation. Proposals from German and Austrian trade unions suggest that, when determining executive compensation, not only personal performance and firm performance but also other criteria such as social and environmental sustainability should be taken into account (German Trade Union Federation 2008 and Arbeitnehmerkammer Wien, 2008). A third group of proposals deals with a more rigid taxation of executive compensation. It is suggested that companies should no longer be able to deduct executive compensation as a business expense. According to these proposals, this would set a negative incentive for excessively high executive compensation by increasing the compensation costs of the company. Proposals along those lines have been put forward, among other, in the US and in Austria (Anderson et al. 2007 and Arbeitnehmerkammer Wien, 2008).

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Eliminating Performance Appraisals

Should organizations stop doing performance appraisals? The argument in favor of eliminating them is that they frequently do more damage than good. Among the damage that they do, the least troublesome is wasting time, and the most troublesome is the creating conflicts between employees and their supervisors.

There is no doubt that in many organizations appraisals are poorly done, and that they create a number of problems. However, it is important to point out that they exist because of the need to motivate, direct, and improve the performance of individuals and organizations. Those who advocate eliminating performance appraisals don’t disagree with these needs, but they point out that managers can and do this anyway.

It is hard to argue with the point that “good managers” do what a good performance appraisal is supposed to do. The fact that they can and do it supports the argument that appraisals can be eliminated, or at least, radically simplified. The “problem” is that many managers do not manage in ways that make performance appraisals unnecessary. Despite this, some companies have declared that they are performance appraisal-free organizations.

Organizations do not have to make a choice between no performance appraisals and everyone having a performance appraisal. An interesting alternative is to require performance appraisals only where they are necessary.     One approach organizations can take to eliminating unnecessary performance appraisals is to focus on identifying those managers who have the motivation, management skills, and behaviours that make their doing formal performance appraisals unnecessary. In essence, this approach identifies managers who are good managers and leaders and, as a result, do not need to do performance appraisals. They can be certified as not needing to do performance appraisals with their direct reports and their part of the organization can be declared performance appraisal-free.

One needed feature of an appraisal-free approach is a training course for employees about what they should expect from their manager given that there will be no formal performance appraisal. Unfortunately, in most organizations today, employees are not even trained in how they should behave in the performance appraisal. This is one of the many reasons why they are not particularly effective in most organizations.

Of course, even the best performance management system cannot make all managers effective at setting goals, coaching, and giving feedback. The answer for them is not eliminating the appraisal system; it is eliminating them.

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Performance Mapping: How Training can attain it.

In the recent down economy, internal training departments sometimes seemed to be the first to feel the effects of downsizing. In these cases, it seemed that  the battle was actually lost months or years earlier, as training developed an internal reputation as a soft discipline unconcerned with business impact (and so easy to scale down). In other words, the departments, fairly or not, were perceived as not really making a difference, as producing a series of events that could be quickly forgotten. In other cases, these departments may even have created over-training and burnout, because the department focused on content output and not competency measurement. Hearing people describe some of these programs,

One of Franklin Covey’s 7 Habits is to begin with the end in mind, and it has been found to be a useful perspective with many applications. At Allen, I’ve seen this same disciplined thinking play out in designing training. Specifically, our instructional designers have developed a performance model that provides a line of sight from the business goals directly to recommended learning activities. We call this process Performance Mapping.

When one creates Performance Maps, the goal is to provide a meaningful learning experience that produces real business results and has a lasting effect on learners. Performance Mapping drives ones decisions when selecting strategies and activities for training.

The performance mapping process has generated enthusiasm for  clients all around the world for creating training with purpose.  Organizations that are considered to be the best companies to work for are the ones that understand the value in the commitment to training, realizing that if done right the cost of training is truly worth the investment. Let your next training initiative be one that really makes an impact for both the learner and your business.

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Performance competencies Mapping

In this world of cut throat competition, companies are putting tremendous effort to hire competent employees and to develop relevant competencies in their existing employees. These are one of the few ways in which companies can gain competitive edge over each other. In this slowing economy where so many companies are fighting for limited resources and talent, it is very important for organizations to incessantly reassess their competencies, update it and have the courage to make the necessary changes. It is equally imperative for a firm to define a set of core competencies which corresponds with its key market differentiation. This is where competency mapping plays a key role. It is the process of identification of the competencies and the level of proficiency required in it to perform a given job or role efficiently. Every job requires some set of attributes whether it is technical, managerial or behavioral to perform the same successfully; these attributes or skills are known as competencies.

It is important to correlate performance result with competencies. Performance management system should be competency based and not just result based. Competency based performance management would focus on “HOW” of performance and not on “WHAT” of performance i.e. not on results but how the results are achieved.

Effective Performance Competencies should provide link to the development of an individual and not just to rewards. Performance Competency mapping helps employees in clearly understanding what is expected from their job at hand. It specifies the level of competencies required to perform their job effectively. This helps employees in honing the skills in which they lack. The intent of this article is to trace the concept of competency mapping and its impact on HR practices.

Competencies may be grouped in to various areas:

Ø  Technical or Functional Competencies (Knowledge, Attitudes, skills etc. associated with the technology or functional expertise required to perform the role.

Ø  Managerial (knowledge, attitudes, skills etc. required to plan, organize, mobilize and utilize various resources);

Ø  Human (knowledge, attitudes and skills required to motivate, utilize and develop human resources); and

Ø  Conceptual (abilities to visualize the invisible, think at abstract levels and use the thinking to plan future business).

 Competency mapping can ultimately serve the individual who decides to seek employment in an environment where he or she perhaps can learn new things and be more intellectually challenged. Basically, it is not only done for Confirmed employees of an organization and it can also be done for contract workers or for those seeking employment to emphasize the specific skills which would make them valuable to a potential employer.

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Focusing on employee relations in the recession is a cheap means to boosting profitability.

During tough economic times, it’s usually the most abstract aspects of a business that get trimmed to save money and streamline business. Such can be the case with employee relations, an element of business that often is taken for granted.

But experts and analysts warn that owners and operators should not only be sparing their employee-relations programs during this recession, they should be strengthening them. Solid, consistent employee relations are fundamental to a restaurant’s success, and during these fiscally dour times, these programs may make all the difference.

Jackie Wells Smith is the publisher of Your Employee Handbook and a former human resources executive and consultant of 25 years. She says fostering positive employee relations is the single most important area owners and operators should focus on, especially in the small-business sector. Not only does it improve productivity, but it may also address larger problems occurring at a restaurant.

“In my experience, lack of attention to employee relations is usually the source of whatever problems [an owner or operator] is having,” Smith says. “If they have retention problems, turnover problems, problems with frequent accidents, I generally find that the source of it was always the same place: Employees were unhappy with their jobs.”

Restaurant consultant David Scott Peters, founder of Smile Button Enterprises, says that most quick-service managers have an overly simplistic understanding of why employees are discontented with their jobs, which breeds an even more simplistic understanding of what their happiness looks like.

Even more important than fostering positive morale, Peters says managers need to give employees a sense of how their performance will be measured. The absence of that understanding breeds displeasure, and that, in turn, leads to poor performance.

“I believe there are five major reasons why your employees leave you, and the first three are critical,” Peters says. “They don’t know what they’re supposed to do, they don’t know how to do what they’re supposed to do, and they don’t know how well it’s supposed to be done.”

This, Peters says, is yet another example of underestimating the importance of employee relations. It all begins with management clearly communicating to the employee what his or her goals are, and what will be the measurements of their success. If each staff member knows the “what, how, and how well” of his position, he will be more self-motivated on the job.

“The games, the manager bonuses, the prize incentives, they’re all great. And they may create a new behavior for the time being,” Peters says. “But they don’t change and motivate everyone. The key is creating an atmosphere that motivates. If you don’t have the fundamentals down, none of that warm and fuzzy, one-minute-manager stuff will work.”

Dan Simons is co-founder of Vucurevich|Simons Advisory Group, a hospitality and restaurant consulting firm that works with chains like Fuddruckers and Terra Burger. He, too, believes employee relations is the area to which owners and operators should first look if they are needing to boost profitability.

“Human performance is directly related to human emotion,” Simons says. “You simply cannot separate your restaurant’s culture from your profitability. If I have a client with a food cost problem, I start with their employee relations. How do they feel? How do they look? Do they have pride in their appearance? The self esteem and the pride of the employees translate in measurable ways.”

But fostering that culture of profitability has less to do with nurturing the egos and emotions of one’s employees and more to do with creating an atmosphere where high performance and efficiency are expected and rewarded. Simons says that too often, owners and operators talk about the workplace culture in terms of being soft and caring and possessing good listening skills. But that’s just the surface.

“I’m talking about a high-performance environment that inspires people and holds people accountable to give their best,” Simons says. “Humans play to the level of the competition, and the boss has to set the bar high.”

In addition to setting clear employee expectations, owners and operators can also encourage a culture of high performance by making sure each staff member feels important to the overall operation. This is something that restaurant consultant Ron Wilkinson says is often overlooked in the realm of employee relations.

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Attrition a major challenge

Attrition simply means “A reduction in the number of employees through retirement, resignation or death. “Attrition can be conceptualized in many forms; the two prominent forms of attrition for the constraints of this endeavor are attrition due to employees leaving 

Attrition has always been a sensitive issue with firms. Despite offering the highest salaries across all business segments, the industry has been plagued with attrition across the board, particularly in the past few years. This ever-growing wage inflation and attrition rates have put financial pressures on firms.

For a generation used to constantly seeing and adapting to change, "getting bored" will happen quickly and easily. Jobs will be increasingly treated like projects and assignments that workers would like to complete and move on. And they would want to have the option of multiple employment contracts - full-time jobs, consultancy, and project-based jobs to retain them. Companies will have to either cater to these needs or lose them to competition.

It is not easy to find out, who contributes and who has the control on the attrition of employees. Various studies/survey conducted indicates that everyone is contributing to the prevailing attrition. Attrition does not happen for one or two reasons. The way the industry is projected and speed at which the companies are expanding has a major part in attrition. If you look within, the specific reasons for attrition are varied in nature and it is interesting to know why the people change jobs so quickly. Even today, the main reason for changing jobs is for higher salary and better benefits.

Employee attrition rate can be never being entirely eradicated. It can only be influenced to keep it in control. How a company can best retain its staff in a competitive environment is the topmost challenge of HR professionals. When employees leave, it is usually due to either lack of appreciation or due to an inability of nurturing employees according to their skills. Following are some strategies to combat the attrition problem

Some ways to curb the Attrition are:

o   Exit Interviews

o   Mentoring

o   Align Career to Business Goals

o   Strategic Compensation Package

o   Learning and Development

       The current scenario where every organization wants to be at its competitive best, high attrition rate can really act as a threat to success. Attrition is a very serious challenge.

         Especially to rapidly growing organizations. Before it explodes, the organizations should seriously workout strategies to reduce the turnover so that the organizations should not suffer. Organizations planning for the future should be giving close attention to why attrition is occurring in the present.

Attrition is not bad always if it happens in a controlled manner. Some attrition is always desirable and necessary for organizational growth and development. 

                                                                                                                         - Ajeya Krishna

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Employee Engagement

In today's cut throat competition scenario, employee turnover is a very delicate issue. Attrition rates are increasing. Most employees tend to leave a company due to disengagement. Disengagement at work is considered a costly and  highly frustrating problem. Treating employees as human and not experimental robots makes reducing the problem a little simpler. In order to counter this issue engagement has become a major buzzword across all corporates. According to a survey recently taken by Deloitte, Seventy-eight percent of leaders say it is both an urgent and important priority. Employee engagement is a measure of an employee’s positive attitude towards his/her work and commitment to remain attached to the organisation for a long period of time. 

Engaged employees care about the future of a company and act as their brand ambassadors as well as endorse the brand as an Employer of choice. All core business measures – profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction, quality, retention and sales are significantly higher at companies with a concentration of engaged employees.  

Practitioners and academicians have argued that an engaged workforce create a competitive advantage to any company. In short, it can be said that Engagement is the new currency of the current economy.

It is said that if a company wants to improve their engagement, they must not think of complicated strategies but instead make an effort to create a dialogue with and among their employees. According to Michael Papay and Alexandre Santille the following four strategies turn real time feedback into real time employee engagement:

1.     Focus On What Matters Most

Organisational alignment occurs when top level management focuses their employee’s energy on the most important issues on hand. Solutions for issues come from the most unexpected source at times!

2.     Use Open Ended Questions

      Excessive surveying of employees leads to dehumanizing and increases   further drag on the intentions of improving employee engagement. So once a basic survey has been carried out for the employees it would more feasible to send out open ended questions instead of testing a pre-existing set of solution.  It is better to make the experience of a survey more conversational so that there is a two way communication.

3.     Offer Anonymity and Transparency

Employees should be free to express what they think. It is important for the employer to create an environment for the employees where they feel secure and keep the information exchange flowing to all so that everyone adds on.

4.     Take Action

Before doing anything else it is imperative to put away the ego and pride, be polite and acknowledge people.

The key to employee engagement is to keep the employees involved and motivated. Employee engagement if utilized correctly could be a very powerful tool. It not only has the potential to significantly affect employee retention, productivity and loyalty but also is an essential link to customer satisfaction, company reputation and overall stakeholder value. 
                      
                                                                                             - Sarthak Daing

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