September, 2000
Volume 39 / Number 8
The
Evolution of the Shared Services Business Unit
by Leland Forst, PhD
Corporate staff functions were originally established to integrate related
disciplines or subfunctions, such as training, labor relations, benefits, and
the like. As these functions all dealt with employee matters, they were united
under common management to take advantage of interdisciplinary synergies. Over
time, staff functions gained influence by getting things done on management’s
behalf. But what emerged was typically a "command-and-control"
orientation based on management’s own self-assurance that what they were doing
was right and sanctioned by upward bosses. Staff and support groups behaving
this way are referred to as "provider driven" because they determine
on their own what is needed and when and how to do it.
Shared services starts with a diametrically opposite philosophy that purports
the need for staff to be customer focused, not provider driven. The staff’s
role is to deliver services that internal customers actually want, will pay for,
and satisfy their expectations. These services must also achieve performance
standards that are acceptable to both customers and providers at competitive
rates and through best practices.
The Emotional Side of
Performance Improvement
by Richard F. Gerson, PhD, CMC
For those professionals who are not getting performance improvement results in
their companies or for their clients, the problem may be that they are letting
techniques and technology over-rule psychology. We must first pay attention to
the emotional state of a performer during a given action. We must know how that
performer focuses his or her attention on the task at hand, how much stress he
or she perceives to exist in the situation, and how psychologically rewarding
the performance outcome will be.
We must also overcome negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, worry, and
depression that hinder performances, and replace them with positive emotions
such as happiness, enthusiasm, appreciation, confidence, pride, and faith in
oneself. We must also make performers feel emotionally secure so that if they
"fail," they can "fail forward" and improve. Finally, we
must support the emotional states of performers to get them to experience a
"peak performance" every time.
30
Key Steps to Successful Diversity Management: Mentoring, Networking, and
Sponsorship
by Lenora Peters Gant, PhD
As we move into the new millennium and America’s demographic human landscape
shifts, organizations must understand what it takes to create and cultivate a
competitive work force. A competitive work force is comprised of the best and
brightest workers, core critical and competent human talent. Effective diversity
management programs can play a significant role in helping organizations retain
their very best critical talent. This article emphasizes three essential
components and 30 key implementation strategies that have the potential to
positively impact a company’s diversity management programs.
Enhancing Instructor Evaluation
by Jeffrey Flesher, Chandra Sommers, and Paul Brauchle
Highly skilled instructors are one of the key components of a quality training
program. While they represent a critical part of the process, often the
performance feedback they get is limited to end-of-course evaluations and maybe
a quick and subjective annual review by a supervisor. There are numerous reasons
why instructor evaluations typically do not significantly affect performance. To
address this, Commonwealth Edison revised its instructor development program.
Using the ibstpi competencies as the basis for an instructor certification and
development program has provided the company with a strong foundation for its
instructor evaluation program. A new comprehensive evaluation tool and job aid
promote consistency, objectivity, rigor, and relevancy. In addition, the four
major components of pre-evaluation meeting, evaluation, post-evaluation meeting,
and structured feedback were incorporated into the evaluation process. This
article describes the enhanced instructor evaluation process based on those
efforts.
Making Human Resources
Consulting Visible
by Ken Kaufmann and Carol L. Weaver, PhD
HR consulting is the process used in many organizations to create internal
partnerships that achieve business objectives. In one company’s human
resources consulting process, the authors developed a visual model that made
these relationships visible. Organizational competencies form the foundation of
this model, because they are the basis of an organization’s competitive
advantage. The model provides an effective way to illustrate internal
relationships and highlight alternative strategies, as well as to show how each
effort can contribute to organizational objectives. Managers like the big
picture it provides and how individual projects fit into the organizational
scheme. The authors like the model because it clearly shows how human resources
consulting adds value to organizational initiatives.
Overcoming Managerial Malpractice
by Jerry W. Gilley, EdD
Most organizations do not rely on one of their most important asset to achieve
business success‹their managers. They fail to realize managers’ importance;
therefore, they allow managers to exhibit behaviors that produce inadequate
results. To address this problem, organizations need to identify the conditions
and circumstances that bring about such behaviors and develop strategies to
address each. This article identifies 11 such failures and simultaneously
discusses 11 practices that human performance technologists and human resource
professionals can use to help managers in their struggle to overcome incompetent
practices. These practices include building manager-employee relationships,
mobilizing commitment for performance improvement, conducting performance
outcome inspection, confronting employee performance, identifying performance
priorities, establishing performance goals, identifying performance outputs,
developing performance standards, providing training, motivating employees,
conducting adequate performance appraisals, and facilitating employee growth and
development.
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