Approaches to People Using Human Resources Lecture Topic

Approaches to People (Using Human Resources) Lecture Topic 3: Dr. Craig Kasper

Introduction • Main point: People are THE key to productivity. • Productivity reflects on you, the manager! • And we all want to look good, right? ?

Highlights • • Contingency Theory Importance of people orientation Maslow’s Hierarchy Active Listening Writing a Performance Standard Efficiency and effectiveness Self Assessment Five steps to improve productivity

Contingency Theory • We’ll discuss contingencies for physical emergencies later, but what if your “disaster” is an employee? ? • Human behavior is very complex. • Ultimately, you manage through understanding and feeling for the people. • A good manager must know the people who work for him.

Good Management • Select the right people. • Develop talent • Reward superior performance!! (Penalize suboptimal performance. ) • Treat justly (may be different than what people’s sense of “fair, ” or “unfair” is…) • Set high standards (people will either meet or exceed them, or wash out. ) • Insist on achieving your set goals (people may surprise you with their ingenuity. ) “Wolf” Pike’s Place Market, Seattle

Leadership Revisited • We already mentioned that good leaders do so by setting good examples. • However, good leaders also have the ability to influence people (not the power to require). • REM: If all your employees leave due to your daily bad attitude, then you do a lot of work yourself!

Leadership Defined • Struggle!!! • Strive to achieve clairity of purpose. • Competant, assurred, confident (not arrogance), courageous • This attitude can be contageous and often attracts followers! (A selffullfilling prophecy of sorts, since this is what make a leader great anyway!) • Mentor, doesn’t panic. • Explains difficult decisions (especially when they must be reversed. )

Maslow (1954) • Yes, this stuff still applies…Wait, who’s Maslow? • Everone has basic needs and your employees certainly qualify. • They all revolve around self-fulfillment.

Maslow 1. Basic: air, water, food, rest, shelter. 2. Safety (security): Protection. 3. Social: sense of belonging, sharing, friends, love 4. Esteem: respect, achievement, competence, confidence. 5. Independence: working toward personal goals, authority, freedom 6. Self-fulfillment: Be all you can be!!, learning, growth, selfactualization (ambition).

• When these core needs aren’t met, it often shows up in an employee’s attitude! • Unsatisfied needs become motivators for other behaviors. • You’ll see it coming in some folks long before you actually have a confrontation. James Greenwood “Whoa! Too much coffee, Bob? ? ”

Communication and Active Listening • We choose to communicate verbally. • Non-verbal communication (NVC) is automatic. (Even when you sayin’ nuttin’, you sayin’ sum’in’!) • Personal perception is a powerful influencing factor in NVC. • Also, recall that you can’t please everyone, all the time.

Active Listening • “You can let your walk, talk…or you can let your talk, talk; but never let your talk, more than your walk, talks!” • Learn to speak less and listen more (insight)! Reduce your listen/talk ratio. (TEOM=2 ears + 1 mouth) • This gives you a powerful upper hand in determining the best course of action when dealing with conflict. • What you hear from people in the most innocent situation may provide valuable insight into what their true nature is (TAROT).

Setting the Bar • Evaluation of performance of workers is critical to any operation. • Each job should have a set of standards to “live up to. ” If it doesn’t, then employees don’t know what is expected. • Employees are often involved in defining their job standards. This is good for both employee and manager.

Standard “standards” 1. Resemble a contract between the employee and the firm. 2. Address the most important aspects of the empolyee’s duties and responsbilities. 3. Guide the employee to accomplish important tasks. (As defined by the supervisor. ) 4. Be directed at specific tasks or requirments. 5. Act as units of meaure (goes back to employee comparision/evaluation. )

Standard “standards” 6. Be brief, clear, concise, believable and easily understood!! 7. Enhance communication between employee and supervisor. 8. Encourage productivity and efficiency. 9. Enable employeeand evaluator to agree on whether the accomplishements failed to meet, met, or exceeded the standards. 10. Be taken seroiusly.

“Unstandard” standards 1. Nebulous, challenge your team, but don’t “give ‘em enough rope to hang themselves!” 2. Overemphasis on doing the “boss’” job. If your’re doing his job, why is he there? It works the other way, too! 3. Include unimportant tasks—those not necessary for the position. 4. Unclear. 5. Difficult to measure. 6. Discourage productivity. 7. Cause mistrust. 8. Mislead employee. 9. Waste/abuse of time. 10. Unused/unenforced.

Standard Development • This can be a daunting task, especially if you don’t have prior experience. • Communication (language) must be clear. • Often units of time, quality, and quantity are inserted within a document. • Don’t use directives, but require an outcome (and communicate it. )

Productivity • Usually a good manager is rewarded by a highly productive group (TAL). • Periodically the manager needs to assess the work or workers and make refinements as needed. • There is no rule of thumb here, but several basic steps will be discussed…

What is productivity? • Efficiency = output/input • Productivity = doing the right things right. • How to increase productivity? – Increasing efficiency – Response (speed) – Lower costs – All this may decrease production and/or delivery time.

The Manager’s Mandate • Make goals clear from the start (syllabus). • Rate yourself as a manager (performance eval’s. ) • Involve people in looking for opportunities. • Analyze and measure before and after a change. • Choose opportunities.

The Manager’s Mandate • Make goals clear from the start (syllabus). -Explain what you intend to do (and why) at the beginning. -You may have to spell it out (put in writing).

The Manager’s Mandate • Rate yourself as a manager (performance eval’s. ) REM: Your ingenuity is your most powerful tool. Are you providing the following? : Clear direction with routine feedback? Challenging work? Striving for harmonious crews? Giving workers a choice? Advancement? Making workers feel part of the team?

The Manager’s Mandate • Involve people in looking for opportunities. – Be open and honest here! What needs improvement? What obstacles stand in the way? What tasks can be done more efficiently? What can be shortened, simplified, cut out? i. e. —What could we NOT do? ) (Most people like this one!) What are the employees unhappy about? How can performance appraisals be used to improve productivity? What can YOU do to improve productivity?

The Manager’s Mandate • Analyze and measure before and after a change. a. Analyze your objectives and problems along with opportunities for improvement. b. Decide what ought to be measured c. Define the measurement output parameters (quality, pounds). d. Determine the input measures (labor). e. Establish the collection system. f. Analyze the validity and usefulness of the system.

The Manager’s Mandate • Choose opportunities for improvement. 1. People-make the people better, not just hire more people (exc. seasonal) 2. Procedure-flow charts 3. Environmental-fish/people ergonomics go a long way to help increase productivity. 4. Capital Investment-improve the workplace.

Aquaculture Certification Team • Manager: Joshua Lembeck • Task: Help design a set of steps to achieve an aquaculture certification component of Aqua Program at HCC. • Goal: Develop State Recognized Aquaculture Technical Skills Certification

Aquaculture Certification Team Helpful Suggestions: 1. Must show performance measures of technical skill attainment. 2. Must be able to document completions (certificate) 3. Must be able to show/document student retention and transfer. 4. Must collect data (or be able too), how? What data? 5. Must account for non-traditional enrollments: i. e. Westmark. 6. NSF funding to initiate project possible: contact: Dr. Eric Roe: roe@fl-ate. org

Service Learning Team • Manager: Ed Walkuski; Players: D. K. , M. A. , R. K. • Task: Design a service learning component to a course within the aquaculture curriculum. • Goal: Implement service learning into the program this fall. • Contact: Barbara Ritter: britter@hccfl. edu • Helpful suggestions: Pick a topic, or task in aquaculture and write up a series of “how-to” steps for it. Then think about how we can develop it into a “service” a. k. a. job for students. Write it up and present the report to the group for critique and refining.

Greenhouse Production Team • Manager: Ryan Karcher, Players: J. Patten, M. A. , Doc K. • Task: Manage fish production this semester in the HCC greenhouse. • Goal: Consistent quality fish production, staffing, fish husbandry, delivery for sales, increase production, new species, expand capacity for holding fish. . . etc. • Contact: Dr. Craig Kasper • Helpful suggestions: Look for ways to improve efficiency and consistency of production. Develop as much talent as you are able, including your own!

Marketing and Sales Team • Manager: Daniel Kroegel, Player: J. L. , M. B. • Task: Marketing and sales of fish • Goal: By low/sell high. • Contact: Chris Watts @ Ekkwill Waterlife Resources Telephone: 800 -237 -4222 Fax: 813 -677 -1542 • Helpful suggestions: Find new sales opportunities for the program.

Fish Nutrition Team • Players: W. R. , M. B. , M. A. , J. P. ? ? ? • Task: Design, conduct and analyze a fish feeding study at the greenhouse. • Goal: Collect some preliminary data on a potential citrus product used in several aquaculture feeds. • Contact: Dr. Craig Kasper • Helpful suggestions: Start soon, start early, never give up. . .