EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES

2. EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES • • EmpowermentGiving employees authority and responsibility to make decisions about their work. • Sharing Information and Decision-Making Authority • • Keeping them informed about company’s financial performance. • • Giving them broad authority to make workplace decisions that implement a firm’s vision and its competitive strategy. • Linking Rewards to Company Performance • • Employee stock ownership plans • • Stock options

3. TEAMS • • TeamGroup of employees who are committed to a common purpose, approach, and set of performance goals. • • Hold selves mutually responsible and accountable for accomplishing objectives. • • Ability to work on teams often emphasized during the hiring process. • • Work teamA group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose. • • Two-thirds of U.S. firms currently use them.

4. FIVE BASIC TYPES OF TEAMS • Work teams • Problem-solving teams • Self-managed teams • Cross-functional teams • Virtual teams

5. TEAM CHARACTERISTICS • Team Size • • Can range widely, but most have fewer than 12 members. • • Research says ideal size is often six or seven members. • Team Level and Team Diversity • • Team levelAverage level of ability, experience, personality, or any other factor on a team. • • Team diversityVariances or differences in ability, experience, personality, or any other factor on a team.

6. Stages of Team Development • Forming • Storming • Norming • Performing • Adjourning

7. Team Cohesiveness and Norms • • Team cohesivenessExtent to which team members feel attracted to the team and motivated to remain part of it. • • Team normInformal standard of conduct shared by team members that guides their behavior. • Team Conflict • • ConflictAntagonistic interaction in which one party attempts to thwart the intentions or goals of another. • • Cognitive conflict • • Focuses on problem-related differences of opinion. • • Affective conflict • • Strongly decreases team performance.

8. THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION • • CommunicationMeaningful exchange of information through messages. • • Managers spend 80 percent of their time in direct communication with others. • • Company recruiters rate effective communication as the most important skill they’re looking for in hiring new college graduates.

9. The Process of Communication Step 1: the sender composes and transmits a message through a communication channel, such as a conversation or e-mail message. Step 2: People who receive the message, called the audience, decode the message. Step 3: Feedback from the audience helps the sender determine whether the intended message was received. Noise affects each transmission. Noise = any interference that influences the transmission of the messages.

10. • All communication occurs in a situational or cultural context. • • Low-context and high-context cultures • Basic Forms of Communication • • Oral and written • • Formal and informal • • Verbal and nonverbal communication • • Listening Receiving a message and interpreting its intended meaning by grasping the facts and feelings it convey. • • Cynical listening, offensive listening, polite listening, and active listening • • Grapevine Internal information channel that transmits information from unofficial source.

11. EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION: CRISIS MANAGEMENT • • External communicationMeaningful exchange of information through messages transmitted between an organization and its major audiences. • • Keep operations functioning • • Maintain position in the marketplace • • Build customer relationships by supplying information about topics such as product modifications and price changes • • Crisis management • • Stick to facts and avoid misstatements • • Communicate through images • • Acknowledge problems and explain solutions