Let's get practical!
HR tools
Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School attaches great importance to translating theory into everyday business practice. With this in mind, the teaching staff and researchers develop evidence-based tools that managers can use in the field.
Team Performance Generator
Background
Line managers are in charge of much of a company’s practical performance management. Their involvement, feedback and guidance determine whether their staff and their team carry out their tasks properly and are willing to go the extra mile. But what exactly do managers have to do to get their staff to this point and to improve their team’s performance? HR is often required to set up a consistent performance management system for the whole organisation. Line managers have to apply that system to several categories of staff, and this is not always self-evident.
Tool
The Centre for Excellence in People Performance’s guidelines for line managers concerning performance management systems.
Objective
Professor Koen Dewettinck: “We intend the Team Performance Generator to be a practical working tool that line managers can use to improve the performance of their individual staff members and their team.”
Method
Professor Koen Dewettinck: “The tool briefly discusses the three core actions that line managers need to take to guide and motivate their people in their work. These are stimulating passion and drive in individual employees, creating team dynamism by instilling confidence in the group, celebrating successes etc. together, and channelling energy by means of target-setting and feedback. The organisation’s performance management system is consistently applied to the management of line managers’ own teams. For instance, the tool asks managers to think about the organisation’s objectives and then to examine how these impact on their own targets and those of their subordinates. There are several reflection exercises linked with each action, as well as practical tips and tricks for getting started.”
Benefits
Professor Koen Dewettinck: “The tool is practical, but has sound academic underpinning. It isn’t just one more evaluation instrument; rather, it’s a practical aid for line managers in their specific context.”
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Talent Engagement Solution
Background
Employees’ expectations of their employment relationship have a significant impact on their own level of commitment, in terms of their loyalty, dedication and motivation. Organisations sometimes fail to live up to those expectations.
Tool
Tool developed by the Centre for Excellence in Career Management (CECM) to be used by employers as the basis for an interview with an individual employee or a group of employees about their ‘psychological contract’, and to enable any action points to be identified.
Objective
Professor Ans De Vos: “The TES gauges employees’ perception of what the organisation has explicitly or implicitly ‘promised’ them in terms of job content, career prospects, training opportunities, financial rewards, social atmosphere, work-life balance and job security, and also allows employees to assess the extent to which these perceived promises have been kept.”
Method
Professor Ans De Vos: “The TES assesses how employees describe their own commitment to the organisation, in terms of performance, amicable relations with colleagues, professionalism, flexibility, loyalty and employability. This commitment is set against the employee’s expectations of the organisation. This exercise results in a kind of psychological contract that can be ‘firm’, ‘weak’, ‘strong’ or ‘loose’.”
Benefits
Prof. Ans De Vos: “By following up this psychological contract more closely, with individual key employees, specific target groups or within the organisation as a whole, a company can respond more effectively to employees’ concerns about the employment relationship, and hence manage expectations better.”
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Career Focus Tool
Background
Companies often assume that staff members think proactively about, and want to direct, their own career. But many employees do not know how to manage their career. They do not concern themselves with career planning and give little thought to how to cultivate people who might help them get ahead in their career.
Tool
Development tool of the Centre for Excellence in Career Management (CECM) to help individual employees gain more insight into their career and ambitions and into how to manage these. Organisations can use the tool as preparation for individual career development interviews or during career planning workshops.
Objective
Professor Ans De Vos: “Every employee can get started with this tool, regardless of their level or sector. They can use the Career Focus Tool for their own benefit, but also, for instance, as preparation for a career development interview.”
Method
Researcher Kirby Van Laere: “The Career Focus Tool consists of four modules on four core themes concerning how individuals perceive their career: my values, my career prospects, my strengths, my network. Each module starts with a questionnaire built around a particular theme. What am I looking for? What are my values? What career moves are open to me? What are my skills? What kind of network do I have? The questions are paired with reflection exercises that encourage participants to think about their own answers and identify a practical course of action.”
Benefits
Kirby Van Laere: “The tool helps employees to think about what they want to do and what they can do and links these two aspects to several action-oriented questions. This questionnaire is not a personality evaluation. It’s an analytical tool intended to spark action.”
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Info: Kirby Van Laere |
Learning management questionnaire
Background
An organisation can change from within at the initiative of employees or through natural development, but the changes can also be imposed from outside. In each case, several internal variables determine the organisation’s willingness to change. An overall view of the variables can help the organisation to do a better job of managing change.
Tool
This questionnaire on learning management from the Organisational Behaviour department identifies the key variables that determine an organisation’s willingness to change.
Objective
Professor Herman Van den Broeck: “This tool focuses very specifically on organisations’ dynamics of change. Companies can critically examine their entire organisation, but can also compare departments.” Inge Degraeve: “Each employee can fill in the questionnaire. The more answers that come from different departments and levels in the hierarchy, the more complete will be the view of the organisation’s way of working, willingness to change and learning capacity.”
Method
Professor Herman Van den Broeck: “Change management is not a personality questionnaire to assess individual performance. It’s a questionnaire in which respondents shed light on their organisation and how they perceive it.”
The questions focus on four variables:
- Entrepreneurship measures the extent to which the organisation allows its activities and the way they are coordinated to proceed spontaneously and informally.
- Modelling level measures the extent to which organisations systematise their activities beforehand.
- Politicisation measures the extent to which conflicting desires lead to politically strategic intrigue and plotting.
- Value level measures the extent to which employees discern a clear mission in the way the organisation operates.
One original aspect of this questionnaire is that it also gauges dissatisfaction on these four elements. Knowledge sharing, openness for discussion and useful redundancy are also assessed. The answers to these questions prompt organisations to reflect on their willingness to change and on how to improve it.
Benefits
Inge Degraeve: “The questionnaire’s 47 questions make it relatively succinct and easy to complete. The answers are grouped per variable and set against European benchmarks. The various departments’ scores can also be compared in-house.”
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Info: Inge Degraeve |