1.4 - managing people Flashcards
What are the 2 things employees are to a business?
- Employees are an asset to a business - the skills and abilities of staff mean that they are able to add value to a product
- Employees are also a cost to a business - employers have to pay their employees a wage or salary, as well as financial incentives such as bonus’
What is the difference between a wage and a salary?
- A wage is paid to a worker based on the amount of work they have done. Wages are often used for lower skilled or manual workers
- A salary is a fixed amount that is usually paid monthly. It’s the amount earned for doing a particular job, the worker doesn’t get paid any more for doing extra work
What is a contract of employment?
A contract of employment is a legally binding agreement between the employer and the employee about what the duties and rights of the employee and the employer are, including hours, salary etc.
What is the difference between redundancy and dismissal?
- Redundancy occurs when the employees job role is no longer required
- Dismissal occurs if an employee has breached their contract of employment
Why do modern workplaces have a flexible workforce?
It’s beneficial to a firm if its workforce is flexible, as it means it’s easier to match the work done by employees to the needs of the business.
What are the different types of contracts employees can have?
- Full time contracts - works at least 35 hours a week
- Part time contracts - works fewer than 35 hours a week
- Zero hour contracts - when a firm employs a worker but does not offer them guaranteed hours
- Permanent or temporary (fixed term) contracts - a permanent contract has no end date, whereas a temporary one does
- Shift work - when a job role needs filling for more hours in a day than can be completed for a single worker
- Home working - employees can work from home some or all days of the week
- Flexible hours (flexitime) - workers complete a set number of daily/weekly/monthly hours at times that suit them
- Outsourcing - businesses can outsource some tasks to external businesses
What does it mean to a business of having a multi skilled workforce?
Having a multi skilled workforce means that a business can employ fewer workers, as it doesn’t need to hire and train a different worker for every single different job.
This can lower a firms recruitment costs, and save them time from training employees.
Why are employer-employee relationships very important?
Employers and employees need each other. Employers need hard working staff to contribute to the production of products that can be sold for a profit.
Employees need a secure income to support themselves and their families.
A successful employer-employee relationship maximises cooperation and minimises the potential for conflict between these two groups.
What is collective bargaining?
Collective bargaining is when a group of employees is represented by workforce representatives - these negotiate with the employers on issues such as pay and working conditions.
What is recruitment?
Recruitment is the process of finding and hiring someone for a job role that needs filling
What are the different stages of recruitment?
- Identify vacancy
- Write job description and specification
- Advertise job
- Process applications
- Shortlist most suitable candidates
- asses most suitable candidates
- Appointment most suitable candidate
What is the selection process and the different stages of it?
The selection process involves assessing candidates:
- Interviews
- Assessment days - a range of activities used to test candidates
- In-tray exercises - where a candidate is given a scenario in which they play a member of staff
What are the two types of people firms can focus on recruiting?
Businesses can recruit for a positive attitude or skills.
Hiring em
What is internal and external recruitment?
- Internal recruitment - when a business recruits someone for a job role who already works for them
- External recruitment - when a business hires someone from outside the business
What are the pros and cons of internal recruitment?
Pros:
- Candidates already know the business
- Short and cheap process
- Motivates workers to go for a promotion
Cons:
- Leaves a vacancy in another department
- Can cause resentment among colleagues who arent selected
What are the pros and cons of external reecruitment?
Pros:
- Brings in fresh new ideas
- Brings in experience from other organisations
- Larger number of applicants
Cons:
- Long and expensive process
- Candidates will need a longer induction process
- Will have only seen a candidate at recruitment, might not be a representative of what theyre like at work
Why does recruitment and training have costs for a business?
Recruitment:
- The cost of advertising the vacancy
- A business might pay a specialist recruitment agency to recruit professional staff
- Shortlisting and assessing candidates may require the business to give their employees who assess extra pay
Training:
- The business needs to pay for people to deliver the training
What is induction training?
Induction training usually starts with an introduction to the business.
During induction training an employee will also be given more information about their job role, such as training on how to do their job.
Induction training needs to be effective so the employee does their work effectively, otherwise the business could have increased costs from mistakes made due to poor training.
What are the two types of training?
- Off the job training - studying to gain skills for the job not at the workplace and at a college for example
- On the job training - where the new worker is trained by an experienced worker in the workplace
What are the pros and cons of off the job training?
Pros:
- Trainers are specialists
- New ideas and brought to the business
- No job distractions during training
Cons:
- Can be expensive
- No benefit to the business while training
- Training might not be specific to their day to day job
What are the pros and cons of on the job training?
Pros:
- easy to organise
- Lower cost of training
- Training is job specific
Cons:
- Trainers are not fully productive during training
- Bad practices are passed on
- No new ideas are brought to the business
What is an organisational chart (hierarchial structure)?
An organisational chart sets out who has authority and responsibility to make decisions.
It shows who individual employees are accountable to, and who employees are responsible for.
It also shows the chain of command, which is the path of communication and authority up and down the hierarch.
It also shows how the organisation is divided up.
What are the different hierarchys in a businesses organisational chart?
- Board of directors
- Managers
- Team leaders
- Supervisors
- Shop floor workers
What is a tall organisational structure?
Organisations with lots of levels in their hierarchy are called tall, they have long chains of command.
In tall structures there are lots of layers of management o there are more opporunities for promotion, which can be motivating for employees.
Tell structures can negatively impact communication and efficiency, since communication can take a long time and decisions can take a long time to make.
What is a flat organisational structure?
Flat organisations only have a few levels in their hierarchy.
People are given more responsibility and freedom, which can be motivating for employees.
What is a span of control?
The span of control is the number of people who report directly to a manager.
Managerts in flat structures have wide spans of control, meaning they have a lot of workers answering to them.
Mangagers in tall structures have narrow spans of control, they arent responsible for many people.
If the span of control is too wide, managers find it hard to effectively manage and can become demotivated.
What is a centralised and decentralised organisation?
- Centralised organisations - all decisions are made by senior managers at the top of the business
- Decentralised organisations - authority is shared out to more junior employees
What are the pros and cons of being a centralised organisation?
Pros:
- Business leaders have lots of experience making business decisions
- Decisions are consistent throughout the business since managers get an overview of the whole business
- Senior managers arent biased towards one department
- Senior managers can make big decisions quickly becayse they dont have to consult them with anyone else
Cons:
- Not many people are expert enough to make decisions about all aspects of the business
- Excluding employees from decision making can be demotivating
What are the pros and cons of being a decentralised organisation?
Pros:
- Involvement in decision making motivates employees
- Employees can use expert knowledge of their sector
- Day to day decisions can be made quickly without having to ask senior managers
Cons:
- Junior employees may not have enough experience to make decisions
- Inconsistencies may develop between divisions in a business
- Junior employees may not be able to see the overall situation and needs of an organisation
What is a matrix structure?
Matrix structures organise staff by two different criteria.
Businesses might use matrix structures if their operations tend to be project based.
The matrix structures organise staff ensures that staff are pursuing clearly defined objectives, and it encourages departments to build relationships with on e another, which can lead to increased employee motivation and efficiency
Why is employee motivation valuable to a business?
- A motivated workforce is likely to be more productive as they are happy in their jobs and are willing to work hard for the firm to do well
- Motivated workers are more loyal which can lead to a decrease in labour turnover
- High employee motivation can build a business a good reputation
What is Taylor’s scientific management theory?
Taylor believed that workers were motivated by money, he believed workers would do the minimum amount of work if left to their own devices.
Taylors goal was to figure out the most efficient way to do a job, and to make sure that every worker did it that way.
He believed in division of labour - breaking work down into a lot of small repetitive tasks
He also believed in paying workers according to the quantity they produced
What is mallows hierarchy of needs?
Maslow said that people start by meeting the needs at the bottom of the pyramid.
Once they’ve sorted out those needs, they can move on to the needs on the next level up.
The needs in the pyramid includes:
- Self actualisation
- Self esteem
- Social needs
- safety
- Basic physical needs
What is herzbergs two factor theory?
Herzberg identified two groups of factors which influenced the motivation of workers:
- Hygiene factors - company policy, supervision, working conditions
- Motivating factors - interesting work, personal achievement, recognition of achievement
What is mayos human relations theory of motivation?
Mayo discovered factors that affect workers productivity:
- Employees who were exposed to changes in working conditions, had more rest breaks showed an increase productivity
- It also showed that employees productivity increased if they worked in teams
What are some examples of non financial motivation?
- job enlargement - gives the employe a greater range of work to do at the same level
- Job enrichment - gives workers more challen going work
- Job rotation - where workers occasionally move from one task to another
- Empowerment - gives people control over their work
- Consultation - shows employees that their opinions are importantly and valued
- Delegation - give employees more responsibility for decision making
- Team working - puts workers into small teams and lets them organise their own work
- Flexible working - can allow employees to work and have time for personal roles
What are some examples of financial motivation?
- Piecework - when workers are paid per unit produced
- Commission - Money paid to workers for completing tasks, which is often a bonus on top of their salary
- Performance related pay - workers are paid based on their performance of the performance of the business
- Bonus schemes - workers are paid extra on top of their salary once an agreed target has been reached
- Profit sharing - setting profit targets and sharing a proportion of the profit if these targets are met
What is the difference between leaders and managers?
- Leaders - have a vision which they share with others, while pushing them in the right direction
- Managers - make decisions that affect the day to day running of a business
What are the different leadership styles?
- Autocratic style - the leader makes decisions on their own
- Paternalistic style - a softer form of the autocratic style and is used in similar situations
- Democratic style - the leader encourages workers to participate in the decision making process
- Laissez fire style - leaders might offer employees coaching and support, but they rarely interfere in the running of the business
- transformational leadership - used when a business needs to drastically change, the leader has highly innovative ideas about how to improve the business and will need to inspire the employees to make these changes
