Being an Effective Team Member - Essay Example

? Activity 3 The top RAISEC scores are of conventional, investigative and enterprising. The difference in the top 3 scores and the bottom three scores is quite prominent. Interests of investigative, enterprising and conventional have scored close to each other with points of 7, 6 and 9 respectively. On the other hand, interest of realistic, artistic and social have score low on the point scale with points of 4, 1 and 1 respectively. Reviewing the compete score chart it can be analyze that all interests, except artistic and social, have score points close to each other. 2. The profile result is a good illustration of my work-related interests. The top 3 interests show what exactly what I look for in a job. I’m habitual of focusing on doing things nicely and completely, rather than messing it up for the sake of creating something new or extraordinary. The investigative interest is also what fanaticizes me, and I would love to adopt a profession, which requires investigative and analytical tasks. Enterprising is another interest, close to my personality. It is because of my interest in drawing innovative ideas and strategies for businesses or projects and the potential of leading a group of people to a desired goal. 3. The occupational matches of my interest are of sales and marketing. I find these occupations interesting as they offer room to potential ideas and investigating public behaviour. The occupation of marketing covers all the basic interests I look for in a work or occupation. That includes a conventional working environment, where winning the trust of customers is the key element. Moreover in the marketing field, innovation and enterprising are always valued and serve as essentials of one’s recognition and success in this occupation (Ehret and Galanakis). Activity 4: e-Learning Business Skills Demos (Being an Effective Team Member) 1. The course being selected for this activity is “Being an Effective Team Member”. This course draws a nice outline of elements required in forming a stronger and productive team. The learning environment serves as a powerful tool in understanding the benefits of working in a team and prioritizing team’s interest over self interests. Another positive feature that this course offers to its participants is the knowledge of different behaviours that commonly exists in any team and how to deal with those effectively (skill Soft). One negative feature of this learning environment is that, it does not cover the hidden problems of mistrust, free loaders and political activities among team members. These are areas that affect the productivity and willingness of a person to work in a team, or to put additional efforts (skill Soft). 2. Some of the major learning outcomes of this course include motivation and zest of an every team player, to work as a unit. The course focuses on the concept that, for a team to be productive, each of its members should be motivated and feel good about the team he or she is associated with (Dettmann). To achieve this outcome, this online medium of learning can prove beneficial as it uses practical and real life scenarios, to build a sound understanding about the topic. Examples and activities for team building and working proactively, can be taught nicely in this method of learning, by providing a cluster of theories and examples (skill Soft). 3. Online learning is not a recent method of studying, but was introduced many years back. Tough we can see that the awareness about e-learning has grown substantially over the years, but still its usage is limited to a group of people. This is because its benefits and adaptability varies with the type of people and their professions (Tellefsen). A particularly essential element in e-learning is computer literacy and accessibility, and those who do not have knowledge or access to computer, cannot adopt this medium for learning. However, there are several types of people, which have switched from the conventional method of studying to e-learning, due to its ease and flexibility. Those students who are employees and are enrolled in a graduate, masters or other program, are the ones who prefers this mode of learning. The reason being that, e-learning saves their travelling and lecture attending time, which ease their schedule and work load. Furthermore, the collision of work hours with class timings is also eradicated (Voce). House wives are another group of people which is best suited for e-learning. Many females cannot take any time out in the day for their studies, due to which they have to quit from their higher educational programs. Therefore, with e-learning facility they can take course notes and lectures at any feasible time (Tellefsen). 4. No, I would not be interested in e-learning as I cannot sit in front of a computer for a longer duration. Moreover, the concentration and understanding that develops in a classroom environment cannot be replicated by e-learning. I would not quite encourage if my company starts e-learning programs as it kills the benefits of one-to-one interaction and active learning of a student or employee (Voce). ETB PAPER Training and development of employees and executives has become an essential element for any organization. With the growing issues of job satisfaction and high turnovers, the need of addressing employee’s issues has been augmented over the years. Many researches have highlighted key areas where the need of T&D programs is of high regard. The area chosen for this paper is a company’s approach towards “Rewards, Career Management and Well being of the employee.” It has become a trend in many companies to praise employees for their achievements and performances. The primary reason for this management approach is to motivate employees in sticking with the company and putting extra efforts in to achieve the given tasks. Many companies do not pay a fixed salary but have adopted the policy of paying its employees as per the amount of work they do (Theen and Heng, pp.211-212). This strategy is considered to be effective in motivating employees to work more without management reinforcement. Out bound Call Centre can be taken as a relevant example, where the salary solely depends on the number of sales a person do (Theen and Heng, pp.211-212). Researches made on this regard reveal the fact that many companies negates the use of performance outcome based rewards, considering that it kills the sentiment of team work from an organization. Therefore, it might seem to increase the individual performance to some extent, but limits the overall productivity of the organization (Theen and Heng, pp.211-223). The topic of Career Management of employees has been particularly popular in the T&D programs for employees. These programs help employees in determining their core interests and characteristics, for recognizing their strong and weak areas and choosing a field where they can best serve the company. The motivation for organizations for conducting such programs is to place the right person at the right job, so to optimize the outcome (Skromme and Portwood, pp 700-701). However, such programs have negative consequences too as highlighted nicely by Skromme and Portwood. In his article, he describes the fallacious assumptions a company make while conducting such training programs. In reality, the T&D programs on career management can lead employees towards high job expectations, which the company cannot meet. Furthermore, an employee might learn from such a training that his career plans or strengths do not match with opportunities present in the organization, and that might lead to job dissatisfaction and eventually in quitting the job (Skromme and Portwood, pp 700-701). Building stronger communication within employees is another key area of T&D sessions and programs in companies. The increasing influence of globalization has brought people from diverse cultures under one shade, and the need to unite all employees as one unit is essential for a company’s progress (Skromme and Portwood, pp 710-720). Workshops on team building and group work are the most common as they help in creating a friendly environment within the company. The need of being socialize and developing a communication network among employees can be easily achieved by these training programs. However, from companies benefit point of view the effectiveness of these programs is still debatable. Often the real motive of such programs is not achieved, due to mismanagement and lack of resources. This in turn, creates a poor impression about the company in the minds of employees. Moreover, many times the cost of such T&D trainings and activities overpass the cost of benefits it would provide to a company. Therefore, its effectiveness is questionable from company’s perspective (Skromme and Portwood, pp 710-720). Hence it can be concluded that to optimize the gain from T&D programs, the nature of job and environment have to be critically analyzed. Managers and executives should evaluate departments and areas individually, to realize which training is appropriate for the organization, to avoid wasting company’s resources and time. Works Cited Dettmann, Terry. Effective Teams .... Some Guidelines. Research Report. Kansas: Consulting Services NW, 2000. Ehret, Michael and Kostas Galanakis. Marketing Innoivation. Research Report. Nottingham: Nottingham Business School, 2012. skill Soft. Being an Effective Team Member. 2012. 11 December 2012 . Skromme, Cherlyn and Granrose Portwood. “Matching Individual Career Plans and Organizational Career Management.” Academy of Monagement Journal 30.4 (1987): 699-720. Tellefsen, Robyn. What Types of People Are Best Suited to Online Learning? 2012. 11 December 2012 . Theen, Ong and Teh Heng. “The Reward Strategy and Performance Measurement (Evidence from Malaysian Insurance Companies).” International Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology 2.1 (2012): 211-223. Voce, Julie. E-learning at UCL: a student perspective. Research Report. London: VLE Evaluation Working Group, 2007. Read More