1. The candidates can undergo training to make them into team players. If this isn’t possible or doesn’t work, the other two options are
2. To transfer them to another unit that does not have teams (if possible)
3. Not to hire them

In established organizations that decide to redesign jobs around teams, some employees will resist being team players and may be untrainable. Unfortunately, they typically become casualties of the team approach. Creating teams often means resisting the urge to hire the best technical talent no matter what and hiring for technical and team skills instead.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: When hiring team members, be sure candidates can fulfill their team roles as well as technical requirements.

One of the most important findings about the size of a group concerns social loafing, the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than alone. It directly challenges the logic that the productivity of the group as a whole should at least equal the sum of the productivity of the individuals in that group. A common stereotype about groups is that team spirit enhances the group’s overall productivity. But that stereotype may be wrong. Experiments with individual and group performance on a rope-pulling exercise tells the tale (try it for yourself).

You would anticipate that three people pulling together on a rope should exert three times as much pull on the rope as one person, and eight people eight times as much. The research shows, however, that one person pulling on a rope alone exerts an average of 63 kilograms of force. In groups of three, the per-person force drops to 53 kilograms, and in groups of eight, it falls to only 31 kilograms per person.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: If you are problem solving or brain storming ideas, more group members is probably better than less. In fact, about 12 is ideal. If you want to get things accomplished, limit the team to six or seven people. This size of the team will probably act faster and put in more effort in to accomplishing the task.

Employee recognition programs range from a spontaneous and private “thank you” to widely publicized formal programs in which specific types of behavior are encouraged and the procedures for attaining recognition are clearly identified. Some research suggests financial incentives may be more motivating in the short term, but in the long run it’s non-financial incentives.

An obvious advantage of recognition programs is that they are inexpensive—praise, after all, is free. It shouldn’t be surprising then that they’ve grown in popularity. A survey of 391 companies found 84 percent had some program to recognize worker achievements, and 4 in 10 said they were doing more to foster employee recognition than they had just a year earlier.

Despite the increased popularity of employee recognition programs, critics argue they are highly susceptible to political manipulation by management. When applied to jobs for which performance factors are relatively objective, such as sales, recognition programs are likely to be perceived by employees as fair. However, in most jobs, the criteria for good performance aren’t self evident, which allows managers to manipulate the system and recognize their favorites. Abuse can undermine the value of recognition programs and demoralize employees.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: If you have an employee recognition program: GREAT! But don’t just accept that it is working well. Check that your employees perceive it to be fair, otherwise it may just have the opposite effect on employee motivation. If you don’t have an employee recognition program then think about starting one, but make sure that it is designed to minimize favoritism.

Job rotation is appropriate if employees suffer from over-routinized work. At Singapore Airlines, for example, a ticket agent may take on the duties of a baggage handler. Extensive job rotation is one of the reasons Singapore Airlines is rated one of the best airlines in the world and a highly desirable place to work.

Many manufacturing firms have adopted job rotation as a means of increasing flexibility and avoiding layoffs. Managers at Apex Precision Technologies, a custom machine shop in Indiana, train workers on all the company’s equipment so they can move around as needed in response to incoming orders. During the 2001 recession, Cleveland-based Lincoln Electric moved some salaried workers to hourly clerical jobs and rotated production workers among various machines. This manufacturer of welding and cutting parts was able to minimize layoffs because of its commitment to continually cross-training and moving workers wherever they’re needed.

The strengths of job rotation are that it reduces boredom, increases motivation, and helps employees better understand how their work contributes to the organization. An indirect benefit is that employees with a wider range of skills give management more flexibility in scheduling work, adapting to changes, and filling vacancies.

But job rotation also has its drawbacks. Training costs increase, and productivity may be reduced by moving a worker into a new position. Job rotation also creates disruptions when members of the work group have to adjust to the new employee, and supervisors may also have to spend more time answering questions and monitoring the work of recently rotated employees.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: Look for opportunities in your organization to introduce job rotation as a way of maintaining employee motivation and providing cross-trained, more flexible employees. Focus initially on jobs that have a high level of repetitive work but be prepared for some short term downsides such as more time spent in training and answering employee questions.

There is little current research available to answer this question, but research done in the 1970′s indicates that individuals with high-growth needs are more responsive to challenging work. However, these workers number only about 15% of the work force.

The research indicated that many workers meet their “higher order” needs off the job. After all, there are 168 hours in a week but work rarely consumes more than 30 percent of them. That leaves considerable opportunity, even for individuals with strong growth needs, to find higher-order need satisfaction outside the workplace.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: Some employees relish challenging work, but this desire may be over generalized by managers and HR professionals to all workers. Organizations increasingly have pushed extra responsibilities onto workers, often without knowing whether they want or can handle the increased responsibilities. So be selective about who you challenge with extra duties—according to the research only about one employee in five will be motivated by the growth opportunities offered by extra responsibilities!

Even more interesting, these differences affected evaluations of employee performance. Asian managers focused on both types of motivation when evaluating their employees’ performance, and Latin American managers focused on intrinsic motivation. North American managers, though believing employees are motivated primarily by extrinsic factors, actually focused more on intrinsic factors when evaluating employee performance. Why the paradox? One explanation is that North Americans value uniqueness, so any deviation from the norm—such as being perceived as unusually high in intrinsic motivation—is rewarded.

Latin American managers’ focus on intrinsic motivation may be related to a cultural norm termed simpatía, a tradition that compels employees to display their internal feelings. Consequently, Latin American managers are more sensitized to these displays and can more easily notice their employees’ intrinsic motivation.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: The cultural background of managers can play an important role in how they evaluate employees. Misunderstanding regarding performance evaluations between North American employee and Asian or Latin American managers may have their roots partly in differing cultural attitudes towards motivation.

* S. E. DeVoe and S. S. Iyengar, “Managers’ Theories of Subordinates: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Manager Perceptions of Motivation and Appraisal of Performance,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, January 2004.

1. Define the problem.
2. Identify the decision criteria.
3. Allocate weights to the criteria.
4. Develop the alternatives.
5. Evaluate the alternatives.
6. Select the best alternative.

This model relies on the assumption that the decision maker has all the information they need to make the best choice possible. But we know that the real world is not like that. Another way to make decisions is based on intuition. Intuitive decision making is an unconscious process which draw upon an individual’s past experience. It occurs outside of our awareness and relies on the unconscious links and associations we make between various experiences and pieces of information we have tucked away in our unconscious mind from the past.

But while intuition is not necessarily rational—it is not necessarily wrong. Nor does it always operate in opposition to rational analysis; rather, the two can complement each other. Intuition is not superstition, or the product of some magical or paranormal sixth sense—it is a highly complex and highly developed form of reasoning that is based on your experience and learning.

So her is today’s Daily HR Tip: Be aware that you may overemphasize analysis and rationality in certain instances and recognize that using your intuition may improve your decision making, don’t rely on it too much, however, it is so unquantifiable that it’s hard to know when our hunches are right or wrong. The key is neither to abandon nor rely solely on intuition but to supplement it with evidence and good judgment.

The concept of emotional labor emerged from studies of service jobs. Airlines expect their flight attendants to be cheerful; we expect funeral directors to be sad and doctors emotionally neutral. But emotional labor is relevant to almost every job. At the very least, managers expect employees to be courteous, not hostile, in interactions with co-workers. The true challenge arises when employees have to project one emotion while feeling another. This disparity between felt and displayed emotion is called emotional dissonance, and it can take a heavy toll. Bottled-up feelings of frustration, anger, and resentment can eventually lead to emotional exhaustion and burnout.

Effective managers have learned to be serious when giving an employee a negative performance evaluation and to hide their anger when they’ve been passed over for promotion. A salesperson who hasn’t learned to smile and appear friendly, despite his or her true feelings at the moment, typically won’t last long in the job. How we experience an emotion isn’t always the same as how we show it.

Displaying fake emotions requires us to suppress real ones. Surface acting is hiding inner feelings and forgoing emotional expressions in response to display rules. A worker who smiles at a customer even when he doesn’t feel like it is surface acting. Deep acting is trying to modify our true inner feelings based on display rules. A health care provider trying to genuinely feel more empathy for her patients is deep acting. Surface acting deals with displayed emotions, and deep acting deals with felt emotions. Research shows surface acting is more stressful to employees because it entails feigning their true emotions.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: Employers can support employees in high emotional labor jobs by giving them regular breaks and a chance to relax and recharge their emotional batteries. Furthermore, employers should tell employees that they understand the difficulties of continuously keeping up a happy and welcoming approach to customers and they should use their break times to rest and regroup so they will be better able to interact with even difficult customers in a positive and supportive manner.

1. Mentally Challenging Work – Generally, people prefer jobs that give them opportunities to use their skills and abilities and offer a variety of tasks, freedom, and feedback on how well they’re doing. These characteristics make work mentally challenging.
2. Equitable Rewards – Employees want pay systems they perceive as just, unambiguous, and in line with their expectations. When they see pay as fair—based on job demands, individual skill level, and community pay standards—satisfaction is likely to result.
3. Supportive Working Conditions – Employees want their work environment both to be safe and personally comfortable and to facilitate their doing a good job. Most prefer working relatively close to home, in clean and up-to-date facilities with adequate tools and equipment.
4. Supportive Colleagues – People get more out of work than merely money and other tangible achievements. Work also fulfills the need for social interaction. Not surprisingly, therefore, friendly and supportive co-workers lead to increased job satisfaction.
5. The Boss’s Behavior – Employee satisfaction is increased when the immediate supervisor is understanding and friendly, offers praise for good performance, listens to employees’ opinions, and shows a personal interest in employees.

The notion that managers and organizations can control the level of employee job satisfaction is inherently attractive. It fits nicely with the view that managers directly influence organizational processes and outcomes. Unfortunately, a growing body of evidence challenges this idea and recent findings indicate job satisfaction is largely genetically determined

It seems that approximately 50 to 80 percent of people’s differences in happiness has been found to be genetic. Identical twins, for example, tend to have very similar careers, report similar levels of job satisfaction, and change jobs at similar rates. Analysis of satisfaction data for a selected sample of individuals over a 50-year period found that individual results were stable over time, even when subjects changed employers and occupations. This and other research suggests an individual’s disposition toward life—positive or negative—is established by genetic makeup, holds over time, and influences disposition toward work.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: Given these findings, most managers may be able to do little to influence employee satisfaction, despite manipulating job characteristics and working conditions. Managers and HR can have a significant influence of worker satisfaction, however, by paying attention to the “satisfaction factor” in the selection process. If managers want satisfied workers, they need to screen out negative people who derive little satisfaction from their jobs, irrespective of work conditions.

For more information, refer to:

1. L. Saari and T. A. Judge, “Employee Attitudes and Job Satisfaction,” Human Resource Management 43, no. 4 (2004), pp. 395–407.
2. R. Ilies and T. A. Judge, “On the Heritability of Job Satisfaction: The Mediating Role of Personality,” Journal of Applied Psychology 88, no. 4 (2003), pp. 750–759.

Despite the results from this and other studies, many managers seem unconcerned about employee job satisfaction. Others overestimate how satisfied employees are with their jobs, so they don’t think there’s a problem when there is.

An article published in the NY Times titled “Inside the Minds of Your Employees” cited a study of 262 large employers in which 86 percent of senior managers believed their organization treated its employees well, but only 55 percent of employees agreed. Another study found that 55 percent of managers in a large corporation thought morale was good in their organization, compared to only 38 percent of employees.

So what can organizations do to ensure that they have an accurate reading of employee satisfaction and morale? Conducting regular surveys can reduce gaps between what managers think employees feel and what they really feel.

One example of how surveys can be used is a KFC restaurant in Houston who survey their employees every 3 months. This resulted in making changes such as giving employees greater say about which workdays they have off and other inexpensive solutions which were important to the employees. The overall conclusion was that the process itself is valuable. Employees really love giving their opinions and having their voices heard.

So here is today’s Daily HR Tip: Don’t assume that you have an accurate reading of what is on the mind of your employees. There may be things that can be done quickly and inexpensively that that will increase employee satisfaction and morale if managers only took the trouble to find out about them. Employee surveys are no panacea, but if job attitudes are as important as the evidence suggests then organizations need to find out where they can improve. The incentive? – better bottom line results!