Modern Government HR Vs Traditional Government HR

Since a decade, the staffing system of governmental jobs has been found more and more structured, fair and competitive.

Gone are the days, where people used to take government staffs for granted.

The Public Service Commission has been found to be successful in digging out the best resources from the market, by conducting -

·         -Written exam

·         -Practical exam

·         -Interview

·         -Any other ways as per necessity of the commission

It is said “warriors must have best weapon to win the battlefield”. Same is the case with these filtered human resource. They can perform their best only if they have sound non-human resources within their set of parameters. The staffs are always willing to work day and night for the benefit of the organization.

The over qualified staffs has been appointed for the governmental jobs. This has brought both opportunities and threat for the organization. On the one hand, the organization is benefited from the capabilities of the human resource, on the other hand, they find difficult to cope up with the volatility of the employee turnover. This has given rise to a paradigm shift.

I strongly believe that, in order to achieve success for any organization, the demographic composition of different group of people plays an important role in the society. All new, semi-old and old generation staffs are equally important. A flowing river (young and energetic staffs) must have two definite boundaries (older staffs) and a bridge (semi-old staffs) to get it into the right track. Absence of any, or higher presence of any, will definitely bring challenges to cope up with the dynamism of environment. 

Technological change has definitely shorten the period of generation gap. There is a great degree of threat from getting technologically obsolete day by day. The communication system of web 2.0 has compelled human resource to either boom or get doomed from the market.

The new era of human resource employed in governmental jobs has been provoking the traditional rules, structure, framework, working patterns, and ethical behavior as the pace of change.

Out of the thousands of prospective candidates, only limited people are selected for the appointment. Although, students puts their utmost effort in order to be a part of government jobs. However, due to limited seats, only the best are able to get into the list. 

So, the general public must be aware that, new governmental employees are much more energetic, capable, smart, flexible, dynamic, visionary and ethically governed –as compared to the traditional staffs. Therefore, it is the time to change the mind set of people.

BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION (OB Mod )

As the environment is dynamic, so is the behaviour. Behaviour of every people keeps changing. Different situations leads to different kind of behaviour. Same people shows different kind of behaviour in individual, different in group and different in organization.

As per Kurt Levin, Behaviour is the function of person and environment around him.

Mathematically, B = f (P, E)

Here,

P (Person) consists of two factors:

• Biographical Factors (like : age, sex, education, abilities, marital status ) 

• Psychological Factors (like: personality, perception, attitudes, values and learning) 

Similarly,

E (environment) consists of Political, economic, Social, Cultural, Technological and Legal factors.

Since, both variables (person as well as environment) are dynamic so, any behavior is not permanent.

The theory of organizational behavior modification was basically derived from B.F. Skinner (American psychologist) Operant Conditioning Model. As per this theory, human behavior is the function of its consequences. In simple words, people learns to behave on the basis of the reinforcements (rewards) and punishments.

According to Moorhead and Griffin :
“Organizational behavior modification or OB Mod. Is the application of reinforcement theory to people in organizational settings. ”

According to S.P.Robbins :
“OB Mod. Is the application of reinforcement concepts to individuals in the work setting.”

Here, reinforcement means anything that the learner finds rewarding, increasing the intensity of response - that helps the behavior to repeat.

As per Moorhead and Griffin, the organizational Behavior modification consists of following steps:

1. Identify performance related behavioural events:

Under this step, managers needs to identify three kinds of activity. They are:

• Behavioural events 

• Performance and 

• Organizational consequences. 

2. Measure : baseline the frequency of response :

Under this step, the baseline of frequency of response is found . It can be found by finding the frequency of identified behaviour under present conditions

3. Identify existing behavioural contingencies through functional analysis :

Under this step, behavioural contingencies are identified through A-B-C model of behaviour modification.

Here,

• A stands for Antecedent (what happens before the behaviour?)

• B, stands for Behaviour (what the person says or does?)

• C, stands for Consequences (what happens after the behaviour?)

4. Develop intervention strategy:

Under this step, intervention strategy is used to make the desirable behaviour either strong or weak through proper reinforcement and punishment strategy. Here, environment variables are considered like:

• Structure, 

• Technology 

• Task, 

• Process and 

• Groups 

5. Apply appropriate strategy:

Under this step, high level performances are made more rewarding through appropriate reinforcement principles:

• Positive reinforcement 

• Negative reinforcement 

• Extinction 

• Punishment or 

• Combination 

6. Measure chart frequency of response after intervention:

Under this step, Modeling and Shaping are made. If the problem is solved then next step is initiated otherwise the steps are repeated again from step number 4.

7. Maintain desirable behaviour :

Under this step, schedules of reinforcements are developed. They may be :

• Continuous, 

• Intermittent, 

• Self-reinforcement etc. 

8. Evaluate for performance improvements :

This is the final step. Under this step, evaluation is done to make sure that- whether the intervention strategy that was applied earlier has actually made the performance improvement or not.

Therefore, behaviour modification is the application of behaviorist’s operant conditioning principle to individuals in the organization setting.

The application of it in respect to organization are :

a. Improving the productivity of employee: 

High level performances are made more rewarding through appropriate reinforcement principles that ultimately improves the productivity of the employees.

b. Reducing absenteeism: 

The appropriate reinforcement and punishment strategy makes employee motivated toward the job.

c. Improving the discipline of employee: 

The intervention strategy is used to improve desirable behaviour and weaken undesirable behaviour. This helps to improve the discipline of the employees.

d. Minimizing the faults:

As the employees’ performance is improvised, faults are automatically minimized

e. Developing training programs:

Training programs could be given to the required employees for improvement of performance of the employees after knowing the evaluated performance improvement.

It is to be understood that, change of behaviour is influenced by stimulus and response.

It takes:

• Internal stimuli (like : personal characteristics, personality, emotions, values, beliefs, attitudes, ability ) and external stimuli (like: hearing, seeing, smelling, touching and tasting) as an inputs, 

• Processes -physiological (biological factors), cognitive (perception and thinking ) and psychological processes (learning and motivation) and 

• produces Output as - productivity, absenteeism, turnover, job satisfaction

• .  Finally, Feedback is received. The type of feedback determines the nature of stimulus and response. 

Behaviour of an individual is a continuous change process. Once the behaviour is understood, behaviour modification could be easily done. Behaviour modification helps us to understand the behaviour of human and helps to improvise the organizational performances.

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Psychological Capital

The term 'Psychological Capital' also means 'Positive Psychology'. Its is commonly known as 'PsyCap'.

First of all this concept was introduced in 1990's through the research conducted by Prof. Martin Seligman in the field of organizational behavior. However, this concept was explored by Luthans and his colleagues in 2004 in the USA.


Every business need human and non-human resources in order to establish the business. Human resources can be skilled, semi-skilled as well as unskilled. Similarly, non-human resources consists of land, capital, finance, machines, furniture and so on. Even to operate the non-human resources, we require human resource. Therefore human resource is the key resource of any organization.

An organization’s success depends upon the psychological and physical participation of humans resources (workers, employees, managers, and so on). Physical participation can be seen but psychological participation can only be felt. Human beings are not machines. They have emotions and feelings. Their behavior affects the organizations and vice versa. Therefore, human resource must be dealt very sensitively.

You can easily observe that, 

the behavior of human beings are different in individuals and different in groups. 

This is due to their psychological ingredients.The psychological participation of human resource makes a heavy impact upon the performance of individual and group behavior.
The concept of positive psychological capital has been originated in “postmodern positive psychology”. It includes the strengths and positive aspect of human behavior. Psychological capital (“PsyCap”) focuses on “who you are becoming” rather than “who you are”.


You may be eager to know that........Why it is named as Psychological Capital ?


It is known as Psychological capital because it emphasizes personal psychological sources with their basic four components i.e self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resiliency.
In simple words, Psychological Capital is the process of examining the psychological capacity of human resources. It processes :

• Positive attitudes 

• Feedback and 

• Criticisms 

- of an individual, group or corporation.

There is a direct relationship between Psychological Capital and Positive Organizational Behavior. This means, higher the Psychological Capital, higher will be the 'Positive Organizational Behavior'.

The four fundamental characteristics or key factors that forms the structure of Psychological Capital are :

• Self-efficacy 

• Hope 

• Optimism and 

• Resiliency 

Positive characteristics of a person or groups will help to maintain and improve - a sustainable positive psychological capital, in the workplace and general life. It simply brings positive experiences and relationships. A positive experience explores the activities of one’s personal capacity, realize their full potential and achieve high performance levels.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL AND POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL

The terms 'psychological capital' and 'positive psychological capital' are used synonomously by various authors and sources .

Psychological capital or positive psychological capital emphasize positive approaches, meanings and results - both in personal and organizational levels.. 

It is described as “a common underlying capacity considered critical to human motivation, cognitive processing, striving for success, and resulting performance in the workplace” .

Hughes has argued that, 

Psychological Capital can be “measured, developed, and effectively managed” for improving the work performance.

The focal point of psychological capital is the positive side of human life, defined as hope, creativity, courage, wisdom, responsibility, and so on. The relationships between psychological emotions of employees, their performance and efficiency are hypostatized.

BASIC COMPONENTS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL

These four components shows a “motivational propensity” to accomplish the organizational goal. The following are the four components which contribute to positive psychological capital:

a) Self-efficacy/Confidence :

In simple words, Efficacy is a perception or belief regarding your personal abilities. Self-efficacy is the general belief of people while they performs and makes a sense beyond the actual abilities . High self-efficacy can influence the motivation in both positive and negative sides.

People who are self-confident knows how to improve their motivation. They choose challenging tasks to extend their performance and motivate themselves against the obstacles faced.

According to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy affects learning in following three ways:

• Self-efficacy influences the activities and gaps - that individuals choose for themselves. 

• Self-efficacy influences the effort that individuals puts on the job. 

• Self-efficacy affects the determination to solve complex task. 

The Research made by Stajkovic, underlined that there is a strong and positive relationship between self-efficacy and performance. Moreover, because of the positive and significant relationship between job satisfaction and performance; it can be easily found that there is also a positive relationship between self-efficacy and job satisfaction.

b ) Hope :

Hope is related to the attitude of mind. It plays a directive role in work performance. It is an energy-focused on the personal goals that directs people to its target. Hope is a tool that motivates people while doing their job requirements.

Hope includes 'The will power (agency )' and 'The way power (alternatives)'.

Achieving the desired goals require the sense of expectations which provide “internalized determination and willpower to invest the energy” to the people. Workers take an example by the leaders in general. Thus, leaders’ hope impacts the employees’ job satisfaction, performance, and motivation.

It is possible to confuse hope with optimism. Hope is the seed of Optimism. Hope supports the desires of positive outcomes. It gives the feeling of being good to make the dreams come true in human life.

Higher the hope, higher is the motivation, higher job satisfaction and higher is the performance of human resource.

c ) Optimism :

Optimism is a positive expectation. It is less related or connected to an individual’s actual ability. It is a psychological intention and expectation - to hope the best possible and positive outcome. It can positively influence peoples’ mental and physical health. This gives individuals a rid of stressfull life.

Optimism must be 'Realistic Optimism' that are attainable and not the 'False (unrealistic) Optimism'.

Researches by Hmieleski, demonstrated that optimism and personal well-being have a positive relationship in psychological capital. It has been supported by Luthans , that optimists have high level of job satisfaction.

d ) Resiliency:

To understand the concept of resiliency in a simple way, let me give you an example :

Say,

Mr X is a student pursuing his Chartered Accountancy course. He has constantly failed for 7 years. If he still faces the exams, then he is said to be highly resilient.

Resiliency is defined as the tendency to recover from adversity or depressing process. It allows people be optimistic in any situations. It is an ability for bouncing back. It is coping skills of people in case of uncertainty, negative situations, and obstacles. It contains all other components ( hope, self-efficacy, and optimism ) in itself. It is a complex process for the people. It includes:

• Endurance (that is - the power to standby in hardships or stress ) 

• Tolerance 

• Reactions

• Flexibility and 

• Psychological pressures . 

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

Positive Psychological Capital can be managed through developing all the components (self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resiliency ) of Psychological Capital.

Well-managed positive psychological capital will help to establish the criteria for long-term business success and gain the competitive advantages. For this sense, organizations should focus on the positive behaviors of employees .
Psychological capital provides people an opportunity for training and improving themselves. 

Developing workers’ self efficacy provides a deep knowledge experiences.By, targeting individual’s hope toward which people can conduct their manner and gain a control. 

If optimism is developed and popularized among people then- they will learn to derive lessons from their mistakes or success.

Practically, resiliency should be taken as a “lifelong developmental journey”. 

Positive psychological capital focuses on the positive sides and properties. It improves personal and interpersonal communications and relationships. It is necessary to adapt psychological capital management and development - for gaining competitive advantages. This will decrease any negative impacts incurred in an organization.

Therefore, psychological capital represents much more meaning than the sum of all of the mentioned components such as; hope, resiliency, self-efficacy, optimism, different life situations, stress, motivation, feelings, pressures, orientation, difficulties, risks, positive and negative sides and so on. The concept of synergistic effect works here. when any one component is influenced, it is most probably that the others will also be eventually influenced.

As per the modern concept of management, human resources are treated as an asset of an organization. So, the managers are suggested to invest upon psychological capitals of their human resource.













Some important links:

• Stress Management

• Psychological (Mental ) Accounting

Mental Accounting or Psychological Accounting

Mental accounting is simply a psychological process of accounting of impact upon any transaction or events incurred. It is also called 'Psychological Accounting', because whole processing is done within mind.

It refers to the way in which the consumers encodes the product, categorizes it and finally evaluates its financial outcomes from available alternatives. 

It is to be noted that, different people derive different kind of utilities (mental accounts) under same circumstances. Therefore the values may differ as per person and circumstances.

There are no logical patterns for categorization, however there is certain trend to categorize funds and quantify a certain value for it.

Let us see an example for this,

when you get any income from any source than what do you do?

you allocate your budget in different parts (accounts), like you fix some portion of your budget in consumption, rent, household expenses, health, education, investment, savings and so on. However, you can easily shift your allocation into other heads as per the necessity. This implies that, although there is a certain trend to categorize and quantify a certain value, but there is no set of any logical patterns for such categorization.

Now, let us see next example to understand the flow of mental accounting:

Situation i :

You have decided to drink a cappuccino costing Rs 300 in the reputed restaurant. you purchased it but found it to be tasteless. what would you do?

Well !, I don't know about you, but i would definitely throw my drink. If you have the same state of mind, then the actual loss for your cappuccino is Rs. 300. you may not consume the same product again.

Situation ii:

Assume that you have realized that, you lost Rs 300. ...What happens?

In this case, you are more likely to purchase cappuccino because the money that was lost, didn't belong to any account, so you had not exceeded your mental concert budget.

However, in the first case you had allocated the money for the drink. So, the purchase of another drink will exceed your mental concert budget.

Richard Thaler (an american economist) of Chicago has said that - the mental accounting is based upon the following core principles :

• consumer tend to segregate gains. 

• consumer tend to integrate losses. 

• consumer tend to integrate smaller losses with larger gains.

• consumer tend to segregate small gains from large losses. 

The principle of mental accounting is derived from 'Prospect theory'.

Prospect theory is the theory which says that, people choose between probabilistic alternatives that possesses risk, where the probabilities of outcomes are known. This means that, the people makes decisions based upon potential values of losses and gains rather than final output. In simple words, consumers frame their decision alternatives in terms of gains and losses as per the value function.

So, the propensity to consume depends upon the level of mental account. Similarly, mental accounting depends upon the utility one derives. It also depends upon how one stimulate and respond towards such stimulation. Higher the mental value, higher will be the urge to consume. Therefore, the whole process is subjective. So, the researchers have found out that, the consumers use mental accounting to handle their resources. 

Some important links:

• Stress Management

• Psychological Capital

Picture Credit : www.ryansaplan.com

STRESS MANAGEMENT

We work in the environment which is dynamic and contemporary. The environment influences us and we too get influenced by the environmental forces. These forces could be internal as well as external. 

Internal forces comprises of customer, competitors, suppliers, stakeholders and employees. Similarly external forces comprises of political, legal, economical, social, cultural and technological factors.

we cannot leave without doing anything. Even doing nothing, we still do something. 

If we do our work without being affected by the internal and external environmental forces we remain happy and our work flow automatically becomes productive day to day. 

Practically, getting uninfluenced by the environmental forces is inevitable. The world is getting globalized. The people who is adaptable are kept and others are doomed. The competition has compelled the resources to be utilized in most efficient manner. In order to provide maximum valued products and services with high quality at minimum cost, the acts that are followed is full of stress.

STRESS

In simple sense, 

Stress is a physiological chain of reaction which is set by the human brain which occurs due to perception of :

• Ethical dilemma 

• Threat 

• Unusual changes 

• Unusual demands 

• Actions 

• Behavior 

• Setting limits 

• Unpleasant situations 

TYPES OF STRESS

The types of stress are as follows :

A ) Types of stress as per outcomes :

In general, on the basis of outcome level, stress can be of two types. They are as follows:

1.) Positive Stress:

This stress is technically called 'Eu-stress'. They are also called 'functional stress'. These stress makes one realize about its potentiality and productivity. This stress constantly provokes the people to do good.

It is something that people should work upon in order to shine. 

2.) Negative Stress: 

This stress is technically called 'Distress'. These are unproductive stress. It has dysfunctional consequences, so this kind of stress is also known as 'dysfunctional stress'.

These stress has to be recognized, prevented and controlled up to minimum level.

B ) Types of stress as per forces of environment :

Stress comes from different forces of environment. These sources of stress could come from : individual, group, organization, Extra organization.

1 ) Individual Stress

Individual Stress could be:

• Body oriented (sleep disorders, staying unfit, appetite loss, etc.) 

• Emotion oriented (loneliness, depression,frustrated of work, feeling of failure, anger, etc) 

• Relationship oriented (being unsupported by organization and staffs, uninterested in enhancing skill, getting uninvolved in work etc.) 

• Event oriented (death, job changes, divorce, break ups, etc) and 

• Personality oriented (working without breaks, taking work at home, setting unrealistic targets , etc). 

2 ) Group Stress 

Group Stress could be mainly due to lack of:

• Group cohesiveness 

• Social support and 

• Conflicts 

3 ) Organizational Stress :

Organizational Stress could be mainly from administrative policies, organizational designs ,working conditions and organization processes.

Similarly,

4 ) Extra organizational stress :

Extra organizational stress could be mainly from social changes, family and life changing elements ( rise of price levels, unemployment, rescission, etc.).

STRESS MANAGEMENT

Stress can create physical, physiological, psychological as well as organizational problems. Therefore, it is very necessary to identify the stress and adopt a suitable strategy to manage it.

The strategy to manage stress is very simple which is as follows:

• Identify the type of stress (positive or negative). 

• Use suitable techniques as per the nature( individual, group, organizational, extra organizational) of stress . 

If the stress is individual then the methods to be adopted for managing stress can be:

• Exercises like brisking, jogging, swimming, etc. 

• Self control if it is negative stress. 

• Relaxation techniques like yoga, listening to the music which is pleasant to ear, reading motivational books, watching inspirational video, etc. 

• Getting Social through making friends, communicating with family members and surrounding people having positive attitude. 

• Eating hygienic food. 

• Taking sufficient sleep. 

• Using Time Management Techniques. 

• Consulting the doctors if problem is diagnosed. 

• Reorganize the work place. 

• Set realistic goals. 

• Work in present. 

• Set personal limits. 

If the stress is from the groups then following stress management techniques are to be followed:

• Predefined set of protocol should be made, so that the goal will be lucid to all members of groups. 

• Define clear roles, responsibility and accountability of the work among groups. 

• Equal opportunity is to be given to group members. 

• Proper decentralization of work is to be made, that means, right work should be given to right member. 

• Problems are to be shared. 

• Members are to do their allotted job without getting overdependent upon others. 

• Communication should be done as and when required. 

If the stress is from the organization then following additional stress management techniques are to be followed:

• Creating harmonious work culture. 

• Working through proper project planning.

• Redesigning the job, that is right people are given right work. 

• Providing training on stress management techniques. 

• Motivating through examples. 

• Training the people to enhance their qualitative productivity. 

• Counseling the stressed people. 

• Managing the conflicts. 

Similarly, if the stress is Extra organizational then following stress management techniques are to be followed

• Identify the changes in External environmental factors (political, legal, economical, social, cultural and technological factors) that creates stress. 

• Adapt to such changes. 

• Proactive strategy is to be adopted rather than being reactive to the changes. 

From all the above, it can be said that -

• Stress is neither good nor bad. 

• Low level of stress is not found to be good because it makes- individual, groups and organization unaware of their actual potentials. 

• Similarly, high level of stress destructs even the normal working environments. 

• So, there should be a balanced level of stress to increase the productivity of individuals, groups and organization.

The effect of stress depends upon psychological capital. Higher the psychological capital, lower will be the effect of stress.








Some important links:

• Psychological (Mental ) Accounting 

• Project Planning

Picture Credit : justhealthlifestyle.com