Team Work

Teams are created by individuals with different knowledge and skills to complete a task. For our first assignment for the module People and Organisation, we were asked to work as a team and analyse what motivates an organisation and their staff and what techniques and methods organisations use to motivate their employees. Our lecturer allowed us to choose who we wanted to work with. I decided to work with my class mate and friend Younus and two other class mates, Angie and Jessie.  However, Angie and Jessie did not co-operate with the group and did not attend any group work meetings therefore they were dismissed from the group.

My team member, Younus and myself, followed Belbin’s theory who was a theorist who discovered the reasons why some individuals in teams and groups get along and others don’t. Belbin believed that individuals with similar personalities show negative attitudes within the group. (Belbin, R. M. Team Roles at Work, Butterworth-Heinemann (1993). Belbin created a questionnaire which can identified eight stages of team roles and which characteristics match each person. These are:

• Plant type team workers strength is that they are creative, imaginative and are able to solve difficult problems and their weakness is that they are in a world of your own to communicate effectively. 
• Resource investigators are people, who are enthusiastic, explore opportunities and develop contacts and their biggest weakness is that they are over optimistic about things and lose concentration easily. 
• Individuals who are Co-ordinator are mature, really confident and they show there aims and goals clearly to others but they can be really manipulative to other team members which is a bad disadvantage. 
• Shaper are people who are really challenging, have strong opinions and like to get thing done and be heard within the group. There weakness however is that they can come over as being too strong and may hurt people feelings and also can provoke others. 
• Monitor-evaluators are people believe in accuracy and what everything to be just perfect but this can cause issues as they can lack ability to inspire people. 
• Team workers are individuals who co-operate, involve every team members in decisions making and allow them to give their opinions. 
• Implementer team worker are highly disciplined, reliable and are hard working however they can lack in flexibility.

Younus and I completed his questionnaire, which was shown in our second assignment, Reflection on team work. The role that Younus ended up with was being a shaper. I believe this was true as he was really dynamic and outgoing and I believe he had the drive and readiness to fight inertia and self-deception. My result showed that I am a company worker, as I had good organisation ability and was really hard working as so said by my partner.

The result showed his weakness to be impatient. I don’t believe this is true as he had great patients with me when we were running out of time however he did get irritated at the beginning of the assignment as two other members of the group didn’t participate so he dropped the out on the first week. I also had a few weaknesses as being unresponsive to unconfirmed ideas, which is accurate as it often took a lot of time to convince me about ideas that he had.

Younus and I also had back up roles which ended up being really similar and showed we did have similar characteristics. Younus’s back up role showed that he was a company worker and I was a shaper. I believe that having similar characteristics allowed us to get along as we thought of similar ideas and also we were really good friends.

The second theory we related to was Tuckman’s stages of development. As a group of two, we was able to make it through stage1, however due to the lack of communication outside of the class room it took time to form the group, as certain members were unable to attend. Therefore it took time for roles and responsibilities to be set. The member who wasn’t able to attend had to be disqualified from the group as they weren’t participating.

Due to this disadvantage, we weren’t able to reach stage 2 as roles and responsibilities weren’t stated clearly so no-one really had an idea of what’s happening within the group. However, there was a benefit as there was no conflict. As we manage to reach stage 2, two members from the team, Jessie and Angie, lost contact with Younus and me. After reaching this stage, we got conflict as we had to get rid of a member from the team, Jessie was no where to be seen.  We had a little communication with Angie as she did come to 2 meeting were we was discussion the roles and responsibilities but then we lost contact with her, therefore we also lost her from the group. Then it was just left with Younus and me.

After we managed to sort out the roles and responsibilities between myself and Younus we started performing, which was the 4^th stage of Tuckman’s theory. However, due to time shortage, few mistakes where made and we wasn’t able to detail our assignment as it should of been.

After reflecting on our team work, we could have improved ourselves and become a better team if we used the theories more effectively and if we worked through the stages properly. I believe that we did a good job as a team as we managed to complete our assignment on time and managed to avoid any confrontation. Overall, the team work task was fun and Younus and I bonded while completing our assignment. 

Reference:

• Berne, E. Games People Play, Penguin (1996)  
• Tuckman, B. W. ‘Development Sequence In Small Groups’ , Psychological Bulletin, vol. 63, 1965, pp. 384-99  
• Belbin. R. M. (1981) Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail, The

Selection

Many organisations such as Tesco’s use selection to gather more information about the candidate and to figure their personality and how they really are. This is also use to evaluate the candidate and assess them by given them situations to deal with and to also examine their performance overall. There are different types of selection methods that organisations like Tesco use before selecting their candidates. The methods that Tesco mainly use are:

• Screening
• Interview
• Assessment centres

Screening:

When an organisation uses screening as a method of selection, it means the organisation decides which applicants should go forward to the later stages of the recruitment process. When candidates get screened, their application gets read and the one who match the job requirements get put through for assessment. Screened candidates are usually greater than the candidates who get put through to the finally process as they get narrowed down to the best suitable for the job. Roberts, G (1997). This process is needed to reduce the full response of applicants to a manageable number of applicants that should get put to consideration. The main techniques for screening are application forms and CV’s, telephone screening and biodata.

Using screening does have its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of screening is that it saves a lot of time for the employers to go through each candidates application and CV’s and narrow them down to the most suitable candidates. Screen will do that for them which will save a lot of time. Another advantage of screening is that it can provide information of the qualities of the potential candidate which may not get identified by other methods and screening  is also an unbiased method of selection as this can select candidates only according to the information and be chosen from personal opinions of an employer.

Along with the advantages, the disadvantages are that it can give false information as a candidates CV’s may contain false information can this can get scanned through which can be a big mistake and the wrong candidate can be chosen. Another disadvantage is that too many application is involved and by using screening in and screening out method to cut down applicants, good candidates may get rejected and the non suitable candidates may get put through because of the information given in their CV’s.

Interview:

Interview is the most used selection technique for an organisation. In an interview is when an organisation invites a chosen candidate to come in and answer various questions that the employer asks relating to the job or themselves. Roberts, G (1997). An interview can be done either face to face or by the telephone. The most useful way would be face to face as the employer and see and examine the candidate’s personality. There are two types of interview, structured and unstructured. A structured interview is mainly focused on specific information about the criteria and the answers are scored within a scoring range. 

Recent research in UK’s organisations such as Tesco has showed that the most effective structured interview is behavioural and experience interview. This is when the interviewers questions are aimed at past experience and linked with specific competencies then the answers get compared to positive and negative description of the behaviour by the interviewer and then the judgement is made based on the scores. Roberts, G (1997). This type of interview also allows interviewers to assess how candidates cope under pressure which is an advantage for them to decide if the candidate is suitable or not.

An unstructured interview is when interviewers provide the candidate with a free range of question for them to answer then the interviewer judges the answers by looking at candidates overall performance and deciding which they are suitable for the job or not. Roberts, G (1997). Unstructured interview encourages candidates to take over and answer questions freely so they feel comfortable to respond to set questions.

Interview does have its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of an interview is that the interviewer can dig deeper into a response made by the candidate and can expand on the answer to find out more about the candidate. Interviews also allow higher response rate which is useful for the interviewer to assess the candidate. Another advantage of organisations using interview as a selection technique is that the interview can be undertaken with less training, does not require a lot of preparation and is very flexible for the candidate. The biggest advantage of an interview is that the interviewer has the chance to assess the candidate performance which is really effective.

The disadvantage of using interview as a selection method is that it can be very costly and time-consuming as the interviewer has to review all applications, design and prepare interview questions, set up interview times with the best eligible candidates, do the interview, analyse each candidates skills after the interview, provide feedback to other staff members and then pick the best candidate for the job. Another big disadvantage is that only one person from the company gets to choose the best candidate in their opinion which may not be agreed by the rest of the employees in the organisation. Some members of staff may think the chosen candidate is not suitable this can cause issues for them to bond with the new employee.

Assessment centre:

This final method of selection is used by organisations as assessment centre is a comprehensive procedure which uses techniques to evaluate candidates who have been short listed for the job. This process involves different techniques and group of assessors to assess different candidates and then make the final decision based on the assessment. The assessment centre involves many interviewers, different types of exercise and candidates are given personality tests for the assessors to evaluate and they will also observe each candidate to see their overall performance and analyse their behaviour toward certain situations. Roberts, G (1997).

This method of selection also has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of organisations using assessment centre is that they focus mainly on the key elements of the role of the job and are very specific in measuring the suitability of the applicants. Another advantage is that they use range of techniques instead of just concentrating on one technique and by using a variety of techniques will help them and the validity of the process is improved. Also, this can be useful for the candidates as they get provided with different activities and opportunities to meet other candidates and the assessors. Roberts, G (1997).

However, the disadvantages of using assessment centre are that some candidates may feel uncomfortable around other candidates and may not be themselves around them. This can affect the chances for them to be accepted for the job role. Another disadvantage is that it can be very time consuming and costly for both organisation and the candidates. This is because it requires organisation to arrange the activities for the candidates and they need to provide many assessors which can be costly. For candidate, due to travel and taking part can become costly and time consuming.

In my high school, year 11, our school organised a mock interview day for the year 11 students to help them prepare for interviews for a job, university or other things in the future. They did this by calling in different people from different organisations, such as BAA, The Army and universities. Everyone had to dress smart for the interview and was giving a time slot for their interview and who they were going to have their interview with. Before the interview, the teachers made us fill in some questionnaires about ourselves and what we would like to do in the future. These were given to the interviewers to evaluate. I had an interview with a principle from Uxbridge College. She had my details in front of her so she knew what to ask me and could analyse my performance. They had given us feedback few weeks after the mock interview took place. This helped us look at where we went wrong and how we can improve that error in the future. The feedback I was given was that I was confident to speak up and answer questions however not confident enough to talk without hesitation as she could tell I was extremely nervous. I found this quiet helpful as I was being prepared for an interview and now have an idea how an interview works. The downfall of this interview was that it didn’t relate to as when it comes to what I want to do in the future but even then it did still help from the feedback to see what I needed to work on.

After looking at how Tesco uses the selection process, in my opinion, I would recommend only a few changes that they could make to improve how they select their employees. Below is a diagram of how Tesco uses the selection process to find the best candidate for their business. 

This diagram shows that Tesco advertises on their website and the national press to let people know they have jobs available. I think as Tesco is a huge business, they could expand by advertising their vacancy on T.V. even though it would be costly, majority of the people in the UK watch T.V and this will give a wider range of people that can apply instead of people who only may see it online or the national paper.

Another change that I would recommend is that instead of sending letters to the unsuccessful candidates, an employer should call up the candidates and tell them verbal. By dong that they can explain what went wrong and it seems more professional.

To conclude this section on selection, I believe business have to use the selection process by looking at the type of business they are, if they can afford to use up the money and time to go through the process. I believe that it is important that organisations use the correct method as it will help them choose the right candidate and not make a mistake by losing out on the right employees. 

Reference:

• Roberts, G. (1997) Recruitment And Selection. The Cromwell Press: Wiltshire
• Mullins, L J. ( 2007) Management And Organisational Behaviour. 8th Ed. Pearsons Education Limited: Essex