Rothwell W.J. - Beyond Training and Development[c] The Groundbreaking Classic on Human Performance Enhancement (2004)(2-e)(en)

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How Should Equipment and Tools Be Used to Lead to Enhancements in Human Performance?

The methods for enhancing human performance by improving equipment and tools are similar to those used for improving feedback. HPE specialists should identify performance problems stemming from inadequate, unavailable, or inappropriate equipment and tools by asking employees and other stakeholders, feeding the results back to decision makers and others, and establishing action plans to improve the adequacy, availability, and appropriateness of equipment and tools. If necessary, they can double-check employee perceptions by observing the equipment and tools in use.

What Key Problem Can Affect the Use of Equipment and

Tools?

Perhaps the greatest problem confronting HPE specialists who undertake an HPE strategy geared to improve the use of equipment and tools is management’s unwillingness (or occasional inability) to invest in the necessary equipment and tools to do the work. Government agencies and some private-sector companies occasionally freeze purchases of equipment and tools. Yet employees are expected to continue production unabated—or even realize improvements— despite the inadequate equipment and tools they are given.

In such cases, HPE specialists should undertake studies to find out whether investments in new equipment or tools will yield a payoff. If they lack the skill to undertake such studies, they should request assistance from production management and accounting professionals. It may be possible to show that investments in equipment and tools will yield returns far greater than the initial investments. Such studies may also underscore the fallacy of across-the-board freezes on purchasing.

Using Job or Performance Aids

A job aid is designed to help workers do their jobs and may be applied on or off the job. A performance aid is similar to a job aid, except that it is used in real time and on the job. According to the human performance technologist Joe Harless, ‘‘[I]nside every fat training course there is a thin job aid crying to get out.’’25

When should job or performance aids be used? How should they be de-

signed and used? What problems can affect the use of job and performance aids for enhancing human performance?

When Should Job or Performance Aids Be Used?

Job or performance aids are particularly useful when employees need real-time assistance to help them perform. Examples of effective job or performance aids include procedure manuals, context-sensitive help on computer systems, labels or signs, reminder cards, brief informational brochures, and checklists. Particularly lending themselves to job or performance aids are work methods that are infrequently performed (so that people sometimes forget what to do), that rely on a worker’s imperfect memory, and that do not pose health or safety hazards.

How Should Job or Performance Aids Be Designed and Used?

Job and performance aids represent such a broad array of possible performance support tools that there is no universal way to design and use them. However, if work procedures can be broken down using task analysis, then aids such as checklists can be designed around them, using the format depicted in Exhibit 12-7. Such checklists can then be conveyed to workers in procedure manuals, in company employee newsletters, and over electronic mail. They can guide workers through infrequently used, but important, procedures as the need arises. They can also supplement training, providing workers with useful aids that they can apply on the job to help them transfer what they learned in training sessions.

Exhibit 12-7. A format for a procedure-based checklist.

246 SELECTING AND IMPLEMENTING HPE STRATEGIES: INTERVENING FOR CHANGE

What Problems Can Affect the Use of Job and Performance Aids for Enhancing Human Performance?

Job or performance aids should not be used when they will date quickly, when reliance on them will undercut the credibility of performers, or when the information required to act is too detailed or complex to lend itself to abbreviation.

Improving Reward Systems

People will do what they are rewarded for doing. They will also avoid doing what they are punished for doing. They may—or may not—do what they are neither rewarded nor punished for doing. Despite the obvious common sense underlying these dicta, decision makers have for many years persisted in ignoring these simple facts of organizational life. Some managers staunchly (and wrongly) maintain that people perform merely to keep their jobs; others believe organizational loyalty always outweighs mercenary motives involving personal profit or loss. Such thinking belies human nature and shows na¨ıvete´ about both human performance and good management practice.

What is a reward, and what is an incentive? When should rewards and incentives be applied to enhance human performance? How should they be designed and used? What problems can affect the use of reward and incentive systems for enhancing human performance?

What Is a Reward, and What Is an Incentive?

An incentive precedes performance and induces performers to seek an expected result. A reward, in contrast, follows performance and reinforces the results.

In many respects, an incentive and reward system resembles a feedback system (see Exhibit 12-8). Just as a feedback system is based on a loop of information in which information flows back to the performer after a behavior or result, an incentive and reward system is based on a loop of reinforcements and their results. That is especially appropriate because the best-known feedback system in many organizations—the employee performance appraisal process—is usually linked in some way to the incentive and reward system (compensation). If workers value the rewards they expect to achieve and if they believe that the work environment will permit them to realize those rewards through their own efforts, then expectations and incentives will motivate desired behavior and/or results. This key principle underlies so-called expectancy theory,26 one of the best-known and most widely researched views of motivation.

248SELECTING AND IMPLEMENTING HPE STRATEGIES: INTERVENING FOR CHANGE

Employees are not rewarded or are punished for behaving or performing as desired.

There are no rewards.

A mismatch exists between the size, quality, or value of the rewards and the level of effort necessary to achieve them.

How Should Incentives and Rewards Be Designed and

Used?

When analyzing reward systems, HPE specialists must first identify the existing incentive and reward system and define what is currently happening. How are people currently being provided with incentives and rewards? What complaints exist about the way incentives and rewards are allocated? How much truth exists to those complaints? Do employees and other stakeholders believe that there is an effective match between desired results (performance), the instrumentality and expectancy of desired rewards, and the valence accorded to the rewards?

HPE specialists must next turn to desired results. What should be happening? What performance or accomplishment is sought? First, the goals of the incentive and reward system should be compared to strategic goals and objectives. What does the organization seek to achieve? Do the goals center on increased production, improved quality, reduced time to achieve results, or increased customer satisfaction? Second, at what level is it desirable to provide incentives—at the individual, team or work unit, departmental, divisional, or organizational levels? Why?

Third, HPE specialists need to examine measurement methods. How is the organization presently measuring performance and allocating rewards? How effective and efficient are those measurement methods? How equitably and consistently are they applied?

Fourth, the timeliness of rewards is also evaluated. How much time elapses from the demonstration of desired performance and the reinforcement that rewards provide? What side effects, if any, have resulted from long time lapses? How much turnover, absenteeism, or other negative side effects have resulted from them, if any?

HPE specialists should, finally, evaluate possible improvement efforts. In what ways could the organization encourage a better match between desired results and incentives or rewards? How could improvements be made? HPE specialists and decision makers should think beyond simple and traditional employee compensation programs to consider alternative and nonfinancial reward

systems as well as innovative compensation practices such as team-based pay, gainsharing, broadbanding, knowledge-based pay, and competency-based pay.

The worksheet in Exhibit 12-9 can help stimulate dialogue among employees, decision makers, and stakeholders about desirable approaches to incentive and reward systems.

What Problems Can Affect the Use of Reward and Incentive

Systems?

Many problems afflict incentive and reward systems in today’s organizations. They may be generally categorized as problems with expectancy, instrumentality, and valence.

Problems with expectancy and instrumentality stem from employee experience. Individuals see what happens to others. If they see that desired performance yields rewards, then they will perceive that their own efforts will pay off. On the other hand, if they see that desired performance is not rewarded or is punished, they will act accordingly. Perceptions of truth are as important as, if not more important than, verifiable truth.

Problems with valence stem from a common misperception that all employees prize financial or money rewards more than anything. That is not always true. It is important for HPE specialists to help decision makers clarify what rewards are most important to individuals, teams, and other targeted groups. More than 1,000 ways to reward employees have been identified, and they should be considered.27 Some cost nothing but can yield dramatic improvements in employee productivity.

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Exhibit 12-9. A worksheet for stimulating dialogue about incentive and reward practices as an HPE strategy.

Directions: Use this worksheet to stimulate dialogue among employees, decision makers, and stakeholders about desirable ways to enhance human performance by improving the organization’s incentive and reward practices. For each question appearing in the left column, ask respondents to answer briefly in the space at right. (There are no right or wrong answers in any absolute sense.) Collect the results, feed them back to respondents, and then ask them to suggest some ways to enhance human performance by improving the organization’s incentive and reward practices.

1.What is the current incentive and reward system?

In other words, what is currently happening?

How are people currently being provided with incentives and rewards?

What complaints exist about the way incentives and rewards are allocated? How true are those complaints?

How well do employees and other stakeholders perceive there to be an effective match between desired results (performance), the instrumentality and expectancy of desired rewards, and the valence accorded to the rewards?

2.What should be happening with the incentive and reward system?

What performance or accomplishment is sought?

How clearly are the goals of the incentive and reward system listed?

How well do the goals of the incentive and reward system match up to the organization’s strategic plan? strategic goals and objectives?

At what level is it desirable to provide in- centives—at the individual, team or work unit, departmental, divisional, or organizational levels? Why?

3.How is the organization presently measuring performance and allocating rewards? How effective and efficient are those measurement methods? How fairly and equitably are they applied?

4.How much time elapses from the demonstration of desired performance and the reinforcement that rewards provide?

What side effects, if any, have resulted from long time lapses? How much turnover, absenteeism, or other negative side effects have resulted from them, if any?

5.In what ways could the organization encourage a better match between desired results and incentive rewards?

252 SELECTING AND IMPLEMENTING HPE STRATEGIES: INTERVENING FOR CHANGE

What Is a Competency?

A competency is perhaps best understood as the underlying characteristics of successful performers.1 It can include bodies of knowledge, skills, traits, abilities, attitudes, or beliefs. In short, a competency is anything that distinguishes an exemplary performer from an average or below-average performer.

Competency identification discovers the underlying competencies of successful performers.2 The result is a competency model, which describes the competencies of a job category, work team, department, division, or organization.

Competency identification has captured attention because it has greater flexibility and descriptive power than other methods of skill assessment, such as traditional task analysis, in its ability to distinguish between the characteristics of exemplary performers and average ones.3 Focused on individuals rather than on the work they do, competencies get at such hard-to-define qualities as feelings, attitudes, and decision-making strategies—qualities that are becoming more important as work becomes less physical and more dependent on intellectual skills and as the workforce shifts from manufacturing (with its focus on tangible work products) to service (with its focus on intangible service). Competencies can be future-oriented in a way that is different from that of alternative approaches to describing work or workers.

When Is Competency Identification Appropriate as an

HPE Strategy?

Competency identification as a strategy for HPE can be used in these circumstances:

There is a need to integrate organizational strategic goals and individual characteristics.

Clarifying the underlying characteristics of successful performers is desirable to direct attention to the hard-to-define qualities that are the underpinnings of success in a corporate culture.

Nobody in the organization is sure what characteristics are—or should be—most prized or cultivated.

HPE specialists or other stakeholders see value in integrating all facets of HPE around identifiable characteristics.

How Are Competencies Identified?

Many methods may be used to conduct competency identification. However, the basic steps resemble those in any research investigation. These steps are depicted schematically in Exhibit 13-1.

To conduct competency identification, follow these steps:

1.Clarify the problem to solve or the issue to be studied. In competency identification, then, the issue is this: Why is competency identification

Exhibit 13-1. Key steps in conducting competency identification.

Clarify the problem to be solved or the issue to be studied.

(Why is a competency study worth doing? What prompted it? Who wants it, and why?)

Articulate questions to answer or objectives to achieve. (What are the parameters of the study?)

Collect available information. (What information already exists about the

group whose competencies are to be assessed?)

Plan the study. (Write out a detailed plan.)

Gain acceptance from key stakeholders, develop a schedule for the competency assessment,

and identify who will conduct the study.

Conduct the study.

Prepare a competency model and plan to use it.