From
the Desk Of . . .
Jenny Sherman, Senior Manager, Employee Relations/Training & Development
In
this article, you’ll find references to research findings,
personal musings, and a series of articles that I hope you find helpful
in your everyday work of supervising people. You’ll see that
many of the articles in this issue are reprints from authors published
on the Society for Human Resource Management “Managing Smart” web
library.
My
undergraduate degree, achieved many years ago, is in General Business
from Portland
State University with many courses completed
in the PSU Human Resource Management program. I have worked in a
variety of industries since then – Savings & Loan, Insurance,
Health Care, and now Higher Education – doing work in employee
relations, employment, and training in most of these environments.
For many years, my work also included benefits design, retirement
plan design, leaves of absence, and organizational communications.
Anecdotally, I think I can safely say that the work of a manager
has become much more complex over the 25+ years of my professional
experience. There are times when managing people takes all of our
creative energy and enthusiasm to the lowest lows only to later take
a turn that moves us to our highest highs.
No
two people have the same needs and personal dreams. Our individual
life experiences are often far from static either in our home life
or work life. As managers we may find ourselves not only on our own
roller coaster of life, but to a certain degree we experience the
roller coaster of our employees’ lives. Not surprisingly, they
bring it to the workplace. When this happens it can be extremely
challenging when our energies are concentrated on the consistent
attainment of our department and institutional goals. We are required
to provide work-related leadership, guidance, and coaching to smooth
out the ride for others we count on, keeping staff engaged and productive
in the work of PSU. There’s rarely a roadmap to guide us in
this important responsibility.
According
to a 2003 research study conducted by Towers Perrin HR Services,
titled “Working Today: Understanding What Drives
Employee Engagement,” “At a time when virtually every
organization is struggling with cutbacks and financial pressure – trying
to improve performance with fewer people and dollars – having
a critical mass of employees who freely give that effort (discretionary
effort) is of tremendous value. Think of it as the human power driving
the financial and operational engine. The greater the power, the
better the engine performs on multiple levels, all other things being
equal.”
Accessing
the human power of our dedicated staff requires thoughtful and
informed leadership to create value for those individuals. Some
of the articles contained in this issue discuss effectively providing
continuous performance feedback to employees that builds trust and
personal growth, making the most of an employee’s time in those “dreaded” meetings,
learning about legal and compliance trends in employment, and learning
how a 2006 survey rates satisfaction with leadership.
This
newsletter is one of the many ways we are working to bring useful
information to our leaders to increase your positive experiences
in leading, managing, coaching, and guiding our workforce. We have
created the page so that you can go back to the issues to refresh
on topics presented in this bi-monthly tool. In addition, we are
very interested in knowing what workshop or seminar topics are of
most value to you. Please take a moment to respond to the list of
topics found here,
otherwise, we’ll have to choose. We are
confident that we can do that, but would love to hear from you too.
One final note, annually we participate in the Willamette Valley
Higher Education Human Resource Consortium to bring a management
development series of courses to our leaders. To review the course
schedule for these low-cost and highly rated sessions click
on this link.
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