Social Dimension Action - Business Plan Example

Ron Steele John Smith Business 500 2 November Personal Knowledge Management Plan A personal knowledge management plan as outlinedby Wright has four dimensions to it: (1) a social dimension; (2) an information dimension; (3) a learning dimension; and (4) an analytical dimension (Wright, 2). This knowledge outline and journal is from my employment perspective as a Human Resources Generalist in a telecommunications outsourcing company. By first stating a personal knowledge management plan, and next making journal entries against the four dimensions as outlined above over a period of approximately three weeks, I hope to improve in my awareness of knowledge management on a personal level. My personal knowledge management plan is as follows: Social dimension objective: My social dimension objective is identifying daily contacts that I can improve upon with use of networking, collaboration, or by engaging in productive dialogue in order to produce enhanced work relationships and work productivity (Wright, 5). Social dimension action plan: My social dimension action plan is to have more focused contact with different departments that I frequently interact with as an HR Generalist. By targeting problem areas with each department I deal with, it should improve the availability of knowledge in a way that can benefit the organization. A few departments that I interact with would include payroll, operations line managers, the information technology department, and my fellow HR colleagues. I plan to do this part of my action plan on as close to a daily basis as possible. Information dimension objective: My information dimension objective is to improve my use of information technology to improve work productivity. This could be through informational analyzing, organization, aggregation, or communication (Wright, 4). Information dimension action plan: My information dimension action plan is to identify one or more areas at my work over the next three weeks that could be improved through information technology. This will involve analyzing the current method of doing work, and in proposing improvements where appropriate. Analytical objective: My analytical objective is to improve awareness on how I approach, process, and make decisions on issues that arise through my employment. Analytical action plan: My analytical action plan involves reflecting on the decision-making process, and attempting to see how to generate ideas along with general interpretation or analysis. I plan to do this after each entry in my personal knowledge journal. Learning dimension objective: My learning dimension objective is to enhance the way I approach processing knowledge or learning. Learning can be by intuition, reflection, resource development, process improvements, or extension of knowledge (Wright, 6). Learning dimension action plan: My learning dimension action plan includes journalizing any reflective insights that I have in how I am progressing with my personal knowledge management activities. ENTRY #1: I interacted with one of the company’s operations managers today with regards the scheduling of new hire interviews. Recently the company has changed from having Human Resources (HR) conduct new hire interviews to having the operations managers themselves conduct and recommend new hires. The reasoning behind this involved Operations not being consistently pleased with the quality of employees hired through HR. As a large telecommunications outsourcing business, there is naturally a large turnover rate, and we have new hire training approximately two times per month. I am trying to focus on how operations managers gauge new potential candidates better than HR was doing. I found that HR might have been unintentionally ignoring ‘red flags’ that the hands-on operations managers were able to pick up on. Operations managers may have a more keen sense of how an employee will function. This is true even though both HR and operations ask the same interview questions, and should be performing the same analysis during the interview process. I relate this best to the analytical portion of my action plan. I feel that more awareness by HR in finding the ‘best fit’ for candidates is of prime importance and might take more extensive learning, knowledge sharing, or social interaction between the two departments in order to achieve this goal. ENTRY #2: After my first conversation and journal entry, I was able to further reflect on the experience to see how better ways of approaching and conducting interviews could have led to more success by me and my fellow HR colleagues with performing new hire interviews. I found that it would have been helpful to be more proactive and talk with operations managers prior to having any concerns become problematic. This would keep the lines of communication open, and would not lead our department to assume that we had all the knowledge needed to give operations the best candidates possible. I also saw from my perspective that how I conducted interviews eventually became too much of a routine practice, and I became somewhat lax in seeing various ‘red flags’ in new hire interview answers, or other communication that I could have picked up on. Focusing too much on filling positions rather than making sure that we were meeting the organization’s best needs was a likely cause. ENTRY #3: Today HR faced the issue of having information in employee files being unable to be located. This is not the first time that supervisors from other departments have expressed frustration over not being able to have information readily available. I agreed with others in my department to analyze why this might be occurring, and why a relatively simple task was causing other managers an unnecessary degree of frustration. Realizing that HR is a support function of operations is sometimes an easy task to overlook since both of our departments shoulder a large burden of work and have little or no idle time. It proved helpful to step back and reflect on the overall purpose of HR, and how that the filing and paperwork are primarily our department’s responsibility for safety and upkeep. This helped me to better shoulder some of the responsibility for occurrence of this error. In order to correct this issue, our department is devoting more time to ensuring that paperwork is up to date on a weekly basis. We will also begin an A to Z file audit as soon as possible to make sure we have the required information in order and available. This aspect involves trying to maintain healthy social networks to ensure HR is performing their role properly. It also involves improved use of information by having employee file information accessible. ENTRY #4: Today was the deadline for all paperwork to be submitted to our corporate payroll department. Employees are paid twice monthly, and any manual adjustments to payroll including any recent hires that are not yet in the computer system have to be either faxed or emailed to the corporate office five days prior to payday in order for the employee to be paid. Given the size of our company, having a check either missing completely or at least missing some hours paid on it is unfortunately not an isolated incident. I feel that each employee should be paid accurately and on time, and any lack of this should be corrected to the best of our abilities given our knowledge and technology. The best way I knew to address the problem was to inquire with our payroll department. The proactive social interaction in this case had positive results, yet the conclusion is still pending. A way was brought up where possibly documents can be scanned 100 percent of the time and sent through scanned email attachments instead of the less reliable FAX method that is often used. This is a superior way to transmit information and makes use of the latest information technologies. ENTRY #5: I feel that I contributed to this scenario by being proactive in asking questions of our payroll department, and in turn, the individual at payroll shared an idea that she had seen work for other locations. It is hoped that this discussion will lead to more information brainstorming to create positive changes. As an HR Generalist, one of my primary duties is the insurance of a good payroll completion. I feel that had it not been a top priority of my job, it may have not received prompt attention. This was a pleasing event since I happened to be in a position to initiate a conversation that led to better knowledge sharing between payroll and HR. I feel that I met an analytical goal as well since I had a heightened awareness of potential problem areas, and hence saw that it may be possible to reduce the number of errors by proactively reasoning on the initial causes of problems such as this. ENTRY #6: One of the duties of the HR Generalist is to conduct pre-employment PC literacy testing. Testing is performed with candidates in several areas including PC literacy; ability to navigate the computer while following directions; and overall typing speed. In the past, testing candidates were directed to a PC, and given brief instructions on the testing process. Once the test in completed, then scoring was tabulated by the PC system, and the results were simply printed off. Finally, the test scores were presented to the candidate along with a rescheduling a date for retesting on the failed portions. I made a proposal of an additional knowledge tool where HR could have a ‘resource list’ to hand to candidates in order to direct them to resources to help them pass all portions of the tests versus simply scheduling a retesting date without further guidance. The proposed list is mostly all information that the public library provides including free PC literary classes, which is another information technology tool. Usually only motivated candidates would take the extra step to perform independent learning so they can pass all portions of our pre-employment screening. However, motivated employees are types of candidates we wish to attract. ENTRY #7: By paying attention to ideas from candidates who were taking the PC tests, I was able to make certain discoveries. One candidate in particular mentioned that he did not have access to a computer at home in order to improve on the typing speed aspect of the test. The only source that I thought of was the free PC availability at the local public library. This triggered me recalling that the other sections of our pre-employment testing such as general PC literacy could be taken advantage of either by: (1) self practice of the candidates by using library books on beginning PC navigation; or (2) enrolling in free classes that the library offers for beginning computer users. This happened to make use of the information dimension of my personal knowledge plan. By obtaining this idea from a potential employee, I made good use of the social dimension. Finally, the analytical aspect came into play, as this was not something the company sponsored, but was approaching the problem in a different way where it was both affordable, yet would be of interest to motivated candidates that we hoped to employ. ENTRY # 8: The HR Generalist is not ultimately responsible for the recruiting and filling of new hire classes, yet does play a secondary role in the function. Our weekly HR staff meeting is where we try to come up with the best ways to meet required staffing demands. Our group made good insights using brainstorming in how we could better reach the public. Traditionally, the company relied on print advertising along with job fairs to promote the company. Little else was provided in furthering recruiting efforts. As a group, we finally came up with potential ideas, and an employee bonus referral program was at the top of our list. This was an important insight since most of our current employees are young, and would be more likely to refer a friend who was seeking employment either for an extended time, or while attending school. This effort used the social dimension of knowledge management since the idea would have been more difficult to find without the group brainstorming technique. It also uses the idea of networking among employees. As the company has several hundred individuals employed, this seems significant. In addition, the analytical side of the process was included as we saw a need and felt that the traditional ways of filling positions was too narrow in scope. Works Cited Wright, K. 2007. “Personal Knowledge Management Planning Guide.” Knowledge Resources. http://www.knowledgeresources.ca/Knowledge_Resources/PKM_Planning_files/PKM%20Planning%20Guide.pdf accessed 3 November 2010. Read More