Author: admin

Sharing the Wealth – HRD’s Role in Making Incentive Plans Work

Employees do a better job when they’ve got a piece of the business,” declares a Chicago and Northwestern Railroad ad in a recent Business Week. It goes on to suggest that, since C&NW em¬ployees own the business “down to the last spike,” they work a little harder, smile a little wider, frown less, take more pride in their jobs, control costs better and are more profitable, in-novative and productive than people at other railroads.

Though C&NW is an extreme example, a number of organizations are coming to see the point the C&NW ad makes: Employees do perform bet¬ter when they have a piece of the action. Continue reading →

Training from the Trainees’ Point of View

Gypsy trade is the picturesque term given to businesses with inherently high employee turn over. Restaurant employees, whose average national turnover exceeds 200 percent, typify this phenomenon. Speed’s Koffee Shops, Inc., recognized this problem and decided to re-examine its training program and adjust it to the vagaries of a classic gypsy trade.

You can download excellent powerpoint slides on HR management, business strategy and personal development HERE.

They launched their project with a five-question form, to be completed by all employees and returned to their immediate supervisors. Out of more than 400 employees, a gratifying 92 percent obliged. And their responses went a long way toward educating management in its areas of strength and weakness. Continue reading →

Training Evaluation on Behavior Modelling

How to set up, run and evaluate a training program based on behavior modeling principles. At St. Luke’s Hospital Center, 108 supervisors have improved their skills, thanks to behavior modeling. The program is so successful that some of us have spent our va¬cations offering the technique at other organizations. Employees of an international insurance company, a multinational shipping firm and more than 20 health care institutions have benefited from our classes alone, and dozens of large and small consulting firms now offer supervisory training that utilizes behavior modeling techniques. Continue reading →

Tips for Excellent Training and Teaching

The following tips for teaching are provided by Larry G. McDougle, director of the Division of General and Technical Studies at Indiana University at Kokomo. McDougle bases these suggestions on his experience teaching a course called Management Training Techniques. “In a very real sense,” says McDougle, “the program teaches others how to teach.” As a teacher of teachers—read trainers— McDougle has found these thoughts useful to cling to when facing a class. Continue reading →

Selecting and Nurturing Your Best Employees

More and more organizations are using tests and other controversial methods to identify their highest potential employees and managers and put them on an advancement fast-track. Here’s why.

You can download excellent powerpoint slides on HR management, business strategy and personal development HERE.

Plant a handful of seeds in fer¬tile soil. Water well and cull the weeds. Soon sprouts break the soil. Few gardeners, looking at these tiny greens, could pick the bloomers from the stunted runts. Yet some buds will blossom with stunning beauty, some will struggle along in the bloomers’ shadows…and some will never grow at all.

Liken that garden to your organization, and yourself to the gardner. Can you pick the new employee who will grow faster and better than the rest? Can you isolate those who will never, germinate at all? Can anyone? And how can you help those most promising buds blossom best? Continue reading →

Increasing Productivity with Scanlon Plan

If you were asked to develop a plan for your organization that would substantially increase productivity and significantly reduce absenteeism, turnover, and grievances, where would you turn? To save yourself a time-consuming search, you might look at the Scanlon Plan. Executives experienced in administering the plan say that they can demonstrate higher motivation and commitment to organizational goals in employees, reduced tensions in labor-management relations, and increased productivity and profit.

You can download excellent powerpoint slides on HR management, business strategy and personal development HERE.

The Scanlon Plan is the brainchild of the late Joseph N. Scanlon, a union official who became an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scanlon devised a system in which the people who actually do the work and know it best can have the opportunity to find ways to do it more efficiently, and to be rewarded if indeed more efficiency results. The plan differs from a suggestion system in that Scanlon rewards are distributed to the entire group involved in the work rather than to an individual who originates the idea. Continue reading →