Applications to Human Resource Management

Creating a self-managing team will provide greater team effectiveness and productivity.  This recommendation contributes to the effort to make human resource practices more evidence-based, in that it provides evidence of how to solve turnover issues and how to build employee development by giving team members the ability to self-manage their own tasks and responsibilities.  A main goal of HR is to not only attract talent, but to also retain talent.  One of the ways to retain talent is to make sure employees feel engaged and are satisfied with their jobs.  By giving teams the ability to work without the constant feedback and questioning, teams are able to have and feel more responsibility for the work they provide. Because employees feel valued, they are likely to have higher levels of job satisfaction, which can lead to low absenteeism and turnover for the team.  

Build trust through open lines of communication. HR is often responsible for managing and creating employee engagement so that everyone feels involved in a company’s mission and values.  The second recommendation provides evidence that through open communication, employee involvement will increase.  Employee engagement statistics from this year show that only 13% of employees around the world are actively engaged at work (Bersin 2014).  There might be a number of issues why this is true, but one study conducted by The American Psychological Association showed that 25% of employees do not trust their employers (Yakowicz 2014).  The recommendation to develop open lines of communication will assist HR and managers to increase the trust in its employees so that they are more likely to become actively engaged and involved at work.  

When managers provide employees with developmental feedback, job performance and motivation will increase.  One primary objective of any manager is to increase the performance of their team.  Developmental feedback does not mean that managers wait until the typical annual performance review, this needs to be done routinely.  Often times, employees do not know where they can further develop unless the supervisor informs them of these opportunities.  Most would agree that it is more difficult to provide employees with improvement opportunities, than positive feedback.  Part of HR is driving employee motivation and efficiency; programs that enforce developmental feedback on a regular basis (ie. monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly) can be implemented.  Even if the organization does not require these frequent meetings, as a manager, it may benefit your team to complete them anyways.  Training provided by HR to managers may need to be provided to make this developmental feedback effective.  

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All of the evidence-based recommendations outline how managers should communicate with their team to either build trust or increase output of employees.  There is a fine line between the first recommendation to create self-managing teams and the third to provide developmental feedback.  Employees do not want to be micromanaged, they want to have the ability to make their own decisions.  These decisions may lead to mistakes, the most important outcome of these mistakes is to learn from them.  As a manager, it is not your job to plan out the day to day functions of your team, but to be a support them when help is needed.  Managers need to analyze the progress and results of the team to provide feedback on developmental opportunities.  The second evidence-based recommendation about open lines of communication building trust is enforced in Hard Facts Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense.  Chapter four discusses this trust; nursing “units with the best leadership and best coworker relationships reported making 10 times more errors than the worst.”  This can be explained by the open lines of communication, people felt more psychologically safe to report the mistakes.  

Works Cited

Bersin, J. (2014, March 15). Why Companies Fail To Engage Today's Workforce: The Overwhelmed Employee. Retrieved August 10, 2014.

Guo, Yun, Jianqiao Liao, and Zanhong Zhang. "The Mediating Role of Intrinsic Motivation on the Relationship Between Developmental Feedback and Employee Job Performance." Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal. June 2014. Web. 28 July 2014. <http://ezproxy.chatham.edu:3826/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=17c9a7bb-07cd-428d-bf67-ccd950f1371d%40sessionmgr4002&vid=4&hid=4110>.

Pfeffer, Jeffrey, and Robert Sutton. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-based Management. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School, 2006. Print.

Rousseau, V., & Aubé, C. (2010). Team Self-Managing Behaviors and Team Effectiveness: The Moderating Effect of Task Routineness. Group & Organization Management, 35(6), 751-781. doi:10.1177/1059601110390835

Thomas, G., Zolin, R., & Hartman, J. L. (2009). THE CENTRAL ROLE OF COMMUNICATION IN DEVELOPING TRUST AND ITS EFFECT ON EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT. Journal Of Business Communication, 46(3), 287-310.

Yakowicz, W. (2014). Why Your Employees Don't Trust You. Retrieved August 10, 2014.