MOTIVATING AND ENGAGING EMPLOYEES FOR BETTER BUSINESS

Unit 14: Working With and Leading People

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Executive Summary
This assignment is divided into four parts of learning outcomes. All the tasks have been
completed in the context of Dixon group. In the first phase I have discussed about how to
recruit, select and hold employees for better performance. Second part contains understanding
leadership and different style of leadership that are used in organizations. The third phase
contains information and description on how to be able to work effectively and efficiently within a
team and how to improve employee skills. The final section has elaborative points on assessing
the performance and development needs of employees and providing training and tools to the
managers for improving employees capability.

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................... 3
1.1 Employee recruitment and selection process at Dixon Group..........................................3
1.2 Assess the impact of legal, regulatory and ethical considerations in the recruitment and
selection process of Dixon Group.................................................................................. 4
1.3 Taking Participation in the Selection Process.............................................................5
1.4 Evaluating my own contribution to the selection process at Dixon Group.......................5
2.1 Explain the skills and attributes needed for leadership................................................6
2.2 Explain the difference between leadership and management.......................................7
2.3 Compare leadership styles for different situations.......................................................8
2.4 Explain ways to motivate staff to achieve objectives...................................................9
3.1

Assess the benefit of team working in Dixon Group..............................................10

3.2 Demonstrate working in a team as a leader and members towards specific goals, dealing
with conflict or difficult situation................................................................................... 11
3.3 Review the effectiveness of the team in achieving the goals of the Dixon Group...........11
4.1 Explain the factors involved in planning the monitoring and assessment of work
performance............................................................................................................ 12
4.2 Produce a plan for assessing the development needs of staff and carry out a sample
assessment for a member of staff............................................................................... 13
4.3 Evaluate the success of the assessment process.....................................................14
Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 15
References................................................................................................................. 16

Introduction

Employee involvement is the stage of psychological and intellectual engagement employees

have in their business. It represents the 'voluntary efforts' staff members want to give their jobs,
to obtain the organisation's goals. There exists a powerful link up between engagement and
different performance evaluation such as employee retention, satisfying customers, overall
performance as well as increasing productiveness.
Selecting skilled individual is only the initial step regarding success. But keeping employees and
making them provide their fullest extent is critical to business accomplishments. The
achievements of organizations need the active engagement of all workforce. (Gberevbie, 2008)
An active employee understands business situation, and works with peers to enhance efficiency
in the job for the advantage of the organization.

1.1 Employee recruitment and selection process at Dixon Group

In recruiting and selection process the job description and the person specification are regarded
as the most basic task. As a human resource assistant at Dixon group I have developed my own
way of selecting and recruiting new employees. All have been discussed in details below:
Job description: it means all the tasks and specification that a job holder dies.
Principal Job Responsibility:
Creating scripts for advertisement copy.
Clearly stating the job title and duties to avoid further confusion.
Stating working environment and duties clearly.
HR administrator must review the advertisement copy.
Statement to comply with policies.
Major Job duties
Making a document by compiling the information from different reports, log files and forms of
HR tasks.
Updating the records when necessary.
Payment calculation and management of records.
Checking email and phone calls
Person specification
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It means primary and secondary skills that require a person to carry out their job duties
successfully. These specifications are:
In terms of physical attributes, essential demand is good health and desire need is age (25-40
years is preferable)
Good academic degree is essential and relative experience on HR is desirable.
Knowing HR functions and implementing properly.
He must have interpersonal skills to communicate properly with all levels and managing good
customer relationships. (CAMPBELL, 2012) And desirable skills are having excellent analytical
power, ability to work under pressure and working on late shift.

1.2 Assess the impact of legal, regulatory and ethical considerations in the recruitment and
selection process of Dixon Group
New staff recruitment at Dixon group is a very complicated process. At all levels, there have
been some legal and ethical restrictions which have been described:
Impact of law on advert copy: as an HR assistant, I must ensure that no discrimination is
occurring inside in terms of sex, race, religion and ethnicity.
Impact at interview: the interview board should avoid by asking any questions that are related
to candidates religion and nationality. They must treat all equally without any personal biasness.
Right to employment: during the interview, we must check if the candidate has many issues
with legality to work in the UK.
Statement of employment: New candidate is given a statement of employment within 2
months of appointment where details about his job are enlisted. (CAMPBELL, 2012)
The impact of sex: as an employer, we must have a look at the issue of sex and marital status.
Even imposing restriction for personal business is also prohibited.
The influence of age regulation: both fresh and experienced candidates must be given equal
opportunity in the hiring process.
Race relation act: if any priority is given for a special race in the advertising copy, then it will
break race relation act.
The impact of disability discrimination act: both normal and disable people should be judged
without any biases.
Tax issues: as an employer, we must ensure that candidates have clear information about tax,
loans and other pending debts.

1.3 Taking Participation in the Selection Process

1. To ensure the right selection process for the candidates I will follow the seven point plan
which are listed below:
2. For physical attributes I will check the candidates' appearance, fitness, attire, speech
etc.
3. For attainment, I will check the required qualification, extra degree and experiences.
4. For intelligence, I must check how much stronger his intellectuality is.
5. For aptitude, I will check his skills, an additional area of expertise and artistic knowledge.
6. I will check candidates core interest and their achievement in the respective field.
7. In disposition dependence, influence, acceptance, and reliability is considered.
8. Major domestic environment and situation are checked.
Specific requirements at Dixon group:
1. Qualification: candidates must have a business degree with relevant experience for at
least 3 years.
2. Must have exceptional communication skills.
3. Bilingual will get preference.
4. Having good skills on MS office package.
5. Ability to work under pressure and fresh environment with good performance.
6. Working with team, managing the team members, effective interpersonal skills are
essentials for all candidates.
To avoid future turnover rate, we also check aptitude and intelligence test. To pass the aptitude
test, a candidate must have these skills:

Working with people from several stage and helping each other.

Organizing and leadership skills

Creative and analytical skills

Perception and critical reasoning

Use of language

1.4 Evaluating my own contribution to the selection process at Dixon Group

Person specification must ensure that the candidate possesses the essentials skills necessary
to be shortlisted and performed the job effectively. Secondary focus will be on the desirable
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skills that will benefit the person and accelerate his /her job performance (Catapano, 2005). For
applicants screening and selection I always check 3 criteria first;

Achievement

Intelligence and

Aptitudes

Person specification is a crucial step in the selection because it states the requirements to do
the job successfully and helps me to impose criteria to pick the best candidate.
1. I use achievement criteria to evaluate candidates academic qualification, skills and
experience to meet the vacancy requirements exactly.
2. Intelligence criteria are used to judge individual qualities, competencies and the
necessary skills to ensure the minimum standard candidate possesses for a particular
post. I also focus on cultural and emotional intelligence that enhances leadership
capability of a person.
3. Aptitude test includes verbal and numeric reasoning is used to know if candidates can
understand the problem and provide the solution logically in a short time period.
So I can sum up that to pick the right HR must ensure this 3 core criteria along with their
respective requirements.

2.1 Explain the skills and attributes needed for leadership

Definition: - "Leadership is actually a function regarding knowing yourself, possessing a vision of

which is well conveyed, building trust between colleagues, and using effective action to
appreciate your own command potential.
Core skills and attributes: it means the qualities which enable us to be able to apply
knowledge within a practical way to be able to get something completed. Specific skills and
attributes determine whether or not the job is accomplished well. Principal skills and attributes
are:
Social and communication abilities having these skills capable HR manager or assistant to
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communicate efficiently and manage individuals easily.

Crucial reasoning, Problem-Solving Abilities with these abilities HR manager can analyze
the given situation logically plus formulate a technique to come up with a solution.
Psychological Intelligence working with team requires understanding their emotions and
managing the complex situation. HR manager must inspire the stuffs along with himself. Each
individual behaves differently and during tensed situation many problem will arise for an
emotional reason (Bruce, 2011). Capability to manage this will help manager to control and
survive easily.
Specialist knowledge candidate must have in depth current knowledge, business insights in
their field that will match job requirements. Who meet the criteria well, they must be hired.
Motivation, incentives in addition to capacity motivation means initiating, directing,
intensifying, and perseverance of behavior. (Bruce, 2011) Whereas incentives help to influence
the behavioral and motivating factor of an individual. A leader must possess these skills to
accelerate employee performance.
2.2 Explain the difference between leadership and management

Leadership means motivating the employees, making them inspired, and helping and managing
effective teams for optimum performance (Kumari, Usmani and Hussain, 2015). Whereas
management is the job of planning, organizing, coordinating and monitoring (Catapano, 2005).
Major difference between manager and leader:
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The manager does to manage the project, tasks and subordinate whereas the leader does,
innovates.

The manager simulate others, copy others work to perform better but the leader is always in
original.

Managers job is to maintain whereas leaders job is to do development of methods and

systems.

Focus point of manager lies on the system and other structural elements. But the leaders
focal point is the people or person they work with.
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The manager has to depend on control procedure; the leader does inspire bond and trust
among staffs.

Manager works to accomplish short term objective but a leader always work for long term
goals.

Question like how and when are asked by the manager but leader always sticks to getting
the answer on a question like why and what.

Managers focus is on the bottom level and the leaders put their focal point and thinking on
a wide horizontal view.

The manager simulates whereas the leader always innovates and brings new ideas.

Manager does command others but the leader completes his job by working closely with
the subordinates.

For failure, manager passes the responsibility to the subordinates. But the leader takes all
the responsibility as his own burden.

The manager does command to complete task whereas the leader does motivate and
inspire to have the job done.

2.3 Compare leadership styles for different situations

Discussion associated with leadership style with regard to the following 2 situations:
Introduction Process of the particular new employee:
2) Communicating with the long term goal and company vision to the rest of the organization.
Among all kinds of leadership and management style of democratic management is best. Due to
the fact in democratic management all workers take part in decision making procedure. Hence,
they sense motivated. If the particular person follows the exact autocratic leadership, this will
increase discontentment among employee. (Kumari, Usmani and Hussain, 2015) Owing to the
fact in autocratic management the manager just takes all choice. If the individual follows the
paternalistic approach of management, it will similarly have the opportunity of raising
discontentment among staff. (McColl-Kennedy and Anderson, 2002) Due to the fact in a
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paternalistic strategy of leadership simply no employee has self-reliance. All decisions will be
taken by the particular manager. But within real case worker demand freedom in addition to they
wish to be able to consider part inside making decisions method. So, paternalistic method of
leadership is generally not suitable regarding the Dixon group.
Inside Laissez faire method of leadership where all the employees take part in making
decisions. This creates conflict between the workers as the manager does not necessarily play
any function in decision getting. Laissez faire method of leadership is usually not suitable with
regard to the new branch (Grinblatt and Titman, n.d.). Based on graphical evaluation we can
determine that the democratic style is finest suitable approach.
2.4 Explain ways to motivate staff to achieve objectives

The 2 methods are less expensive and efficient to boost staff motivation:
Listening to employees and engaging
Conducting daily meetings to hear what employees think, their needs and demands, problems,
take ideas. This will get them to think that they are core part of the organization and boost
confidence. Besides many conflict can be prevented and resolve with this system. Second
approach is developing intranet to interact openly and add the social aspects of business and
the organization (Runde, 2014).
Performance appraisal
Recognizing performance and appraising will boost motivation and productivity. Creating
employee of the month to reward the best performer with some gift, flower or handwritten
appreciation. This will make additional staffs to perform better next time. Whether the
contribution is large or small, employee must be appraised and give an incentive to keep up with
good performance.
Training program
One main reason to leave a job by an employee is the absence of promotional opportunities.
With the pace of technology, workers must be updated and trained to cope up with. Without
training, its not possible. And doing the same job for a long time makes employee bored. To
overcome this, cross training and job replacement will be more effective. Periodic training and
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workshop program with lunch will enhance employee morale, motivation and performance.

3.1 Assess the benefit of team working in Dixon Group

Professional from diverse background works, in a team for a short time on a specific project.
Advantages of team working are:
1.

In team different ideas, knowledge, practical experience are discussed and shared that
help to clear any problems and deepen knowledge on several fields.

2.

Team working enhances interpersonal and leadership skills of an individual that will be
useful for their career. (Salas, Goodwin and Burke, 2009) Every employer wants these
capabilities that come from team performance.

3.

Team working increase unity and bond among members that assist in making confident
and feeling settled in the relative role. Job satisfaction actually comes from a team where
positive working environment exists.

Disadvantages of team work

It is seen when working with teams that some members do less task and let others to do all the
complex job. This creates problems when the overall team performance is measured for the
whole team but not by judging individual contribution. Future conflict arises if this continues for a
long time.
Loners cant work in team
There are always have some person who prefers to work alone rather than team. They may
perform excellent alone but problems arise if they are forced to work in a team. (Salas, Goodwin
and Burke, 2009) So this type of person must be identified during the selection process.
Not enough space for creativity
When working within team, members are focused on the overall concept of the team. New ideas
or doing something differently are not a core priority in team work. Which left the members not
to think so much for a project.

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3.2 Demonstrate working in a team as a leader and members towards specific goals, dealing
with conflict or difficult situation

When I was working in a team at Dixon group, one of our members has been died. For this loss
our team members were affected in many ways such as shock, anxiety, sleep disorder,
frustration and emptiness.
How is our workplace affected?
Either team or whole department where death has been occurred by team member or his family,
faces many problems like less productivity and attendance.
Steps should be taken are:
At first does contact with that employer immediately. Create an open environment of
communication and express sympathy for the loss. Show the person that your organization
cares most for your loss and be sensitive to disclose personal information.
Listen to the employee more than talking. Pay attention to what he/she wants to share, what
company can do, which things will help etc. (Falcone, 2009) Its common that some employee
share their grief many times during work, be careless in productivity and indifference in team
work. This will be overcome automatically after a certain moment. Give him time, patience,
compassion to be easy with task.
3.3 Review the effectiveness of the team in achieving the goals of the Dixon Group

List of quantifiable factor that assist in reviewing team effectiveness are:

Low turnover: for low turnover rate our productivity is high. Because each employee knows,
understand and trust each other whereas a high ratio of turnover cant make such relation.
Low absence rate: Within team employees are recognized and rewarded for their performance
which makes them feel not isolated.
Increase in productivity: productivity comes from effectiveness and efficiency of work. At
Dixon group, we measure productivity in daily, weekly and monthly period.
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Other factors are good output. Low accidental rate and personal target is being achieved.
Qualitative factors of effectiveness are:
Cohesiveness: high volume of cohesiveness in the team will ensure the good implication of
business strategy. (Gberevbie, 2008) Team member with high cohesiveness gives best effort
until ends. And feeling of integral part of company their self-esteem increase which help to high
performance.
Mutual help: team performance are contribution of all members who give their best efforts.
During work their strength and weakness are identified and other make suggestion to improve
their skills. (Falcone, 2009) Thus work perfectness comes for their mutual help and
development.
Solving problems together: within team others does constructive review and criticism which
help to overcome difficult situations and conflicts. Team members give positive feedback for
good performance and discussion to solve critical conflict and if they fail then call a third party to
resolve the issues (Hibbert, 2013).
Other factors are understanding work critically, sharing the idea, innovating new idea.
4.1 Explain the factors involved in planning the monitoring and assessment of work performance

Three factors are considered most:

Managing performance: performance management helps employees to track their
performance. To achieve goal needs many activities such as identify the result, ways to
measure the progress, giving feedback each other etc (Hibbert, 2013). Also corrective actions
are given with feedback if performance doesnt match with the target. And particular strength
and weakness are given through appraisal review techniques that help to improve and ensure
optimal effort (Saran, 2014).
Appraisal: this method include observing, recognizing and giving feedback to the employees
(Cook, 2008). Managers are given training to learn performance correctly. The most important
part of the appraisal is to give feedback on what the employee has learned well, his area of
expertise and show the area where he needs to be improved. Then training is provided to
overcome the weakness that ensure high performance later.
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Feedback: through feedback employee knows what the exact expectation of the company is
and how to achieve the goals. Two types of feedback are important:
Motivational feedback is utilized to strengthen the positive attitudes and courage. (Forsyth,
2010) Main purpose is to enhance confidence to flush out the latent talent of the workers.
Development feedback is used to enhance employee competence in identifying the area in
which they need development and ways to improve their skills and come out from weakness
(Rao, 2005).
4.2 Produce a plan for assessing the development needs of staff and carry out a sample
assessment for a member of staff

Analysis of training needs identify which staff needs training and which area they need to
strengthen. It also helps to recognize the person who doesnt need training. The following
assessment has been done to know the development needs for employees,
Name

Identifying

Technique

Resources

Assessme

Specific

date

Suppor

need

for

nt

to review and

tive or

manager

success

complete

additio

to

recognise
the needs

Mr Sam

of

for

task

nal

particular

informa
tions
7 weeks. And
twice

Communicatio

Courses

Time

strategy
Course

n in English

and

flexibility

completion

training in
a

the

in

week

flexible

Mr.Paul

Microsoft

time
Giving

Practice

Complete

15 weeks and

Mathew

excel

training in

facility

the training

once in a week

flexible

during job

time

and

Completio

3 days- 2 hour

a day

other

flexible
Mr.

Training

on Training in

Hension

weight lifting

flexible

time
Training
facility
13

on

of

workman

time period

the job.

Flexible

On

sofiat-

time

practice

Data entry

schedule

opportunity

with

training

less

skills
Mr. Mark

IT

job

On

12 weeks- 3

completion

days a week

operator

4.3 Evaluate the success of the assessment process

4 most efficient methods are used to evaluate success:

Setting up a SMART goal: performance management ensures that every person is tied up with
the objective to enhance productivity of overall work effectiveness. Whereas performance
appraisal is used to evaluate and recognize past performance that uncover main weakness and
strength of the employee to improve later (Saran, 2014).
Documenting success and failure: over the time, many events and situations occur in
business ground. Manager must keep the records, either good stuff or bad, for future evaluation
(Grinblatt and Titman, n.d.). Without successful recorded data, you just have to depend on
memory which will give different interpretations of reality. Thus evaluation wont be pleasant and
accurate.
Evaluate periodically: Dixon group does evaluate employee twice a year. This serves to collect
data for all and finding the evaluation at year end a lot easier (Cook, 2008). Some prefer to
quarterly evaluation. This is not a good practice because it seems they are assessing more than
doing work.
Constructive feedback: Quick feedback, both bad and positive, in addition to no time regarding
sidestepping problems. We would prefer to be able to hold weekly half-hour meetings for
comparatively new employees (or for veteran staff if there have been issues to end up being
resolved and satisfy once every a couple of weeks with staff who knew the work and were
executing well (Forsyth, 2010). And of training course theres no level wasting valuable moment
in meetings; when everything is flawlessly fine and there is nothing to go over, just end typically
the meeting after a couple of minutes and acquire back to job.

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Conclusion

Identifying staff development and training needs proactively help any manager to uncover the
true and full potential of productivity for any employee. Assessment of where to give training,
how many times and for how long will ensure long term success of organization. Up-to-date and
trained staffs can give better customer service and cope up with any complex situation. This
reduces conflict, dissatisfaction, frequent turnover rate and finally beef up the bottom line of an
organization.

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References

I.

Bruce, A. (2011). Managers guide to motivating employees. New York: McGraw-Hill.

II.

CAMPBELL, D. (2012). Employee Selection as a Control System. Journal of Accounting

Research, 50(4), pp.931-966.

III.

Catapano,

S.

(2005).

Performance

Appraisal:

From

Isolation

to

Interaction. PsycCRITIQUES, 50(28).

IV.

Cook, S. (2008). The essential guide to employee engagement. London: Kogan Page.

V.

Falcone, P. (2009). 101 tough conversations to have with employees. New York:
AMACOM.

VI.

Forsyth, P. (2010). How to motivate people. London: Kogan Page.

VII.

Gberevbie,

D.

(2008).

Employee

Retention

Strategies

And

Organizational

Performance. IFE PsychologIA, 16(2).

VIII.

Grinblatt, M. and Titman, S. (n.d.). Performance evaluation. [S.l.]: [s.n.].

IX.

Hibbert, S. (2013). Giving effective employee feedback. In Practice, 35(3), pp.149-151.

X.

Kumari, K., Usmani, S. and Hussain, J. (2015). Responsible Leadership and Intellectual
Capital: The Mediating Effects of Effective Team Work. JOEBM, 3(2), pp.176-182.

XI.

McColl-Kennedy, J. and Anderson, R. (2002). Impact of leadership style and emotions

on subordinate performance. The Leadership Quarterly, 13(5), pp.545-559.

XII.

Rao, M. (2005). Knowledge management tools and techniques. Amsterdam: Elsevier

Butterworth-Heinemann.

XIII.

Runde, C. (2014). Conflict Competence in the Workplace. Employment Relations Today,

40(4), pp.25-31.
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XIV.

Salas, E., Goodwin, G. and Burke, C. (2009). Team effectiveness in complex

organizations. New York: Routledge.

XV.

Saran, S. (2014). Employee Engagement: Leveraging Strengths and Underpinning

Weaknesses (Identifying the Factors Underlying Employee Engagement Levels in an
Organization). Journal of Human Resource Management, 2(3), p.47.

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