phd project summary & invitation to participate in research
TRANSCRIPT
Study on Individual and Team performance: how workplace environment and
individual competencies affect performance?
Introduction How do you assign staff to work teams for projects? Do your managers treat employees in a right way? Does this provide systematic and sustainable business outcomes and performance level? The HK Polytechnic University is conducting a research on linking individual and team performance with competencies and workplace environment to solve these issues. What is it about?
Competencies in practical way are some underlying personal characteristics (personality,
knowledge, skills, etc.) manifested in typical behaviors that produce key business outcomes. Thus,
they are causally related to individual performance and business results. Employees’ competencies
are affected by personal characteristics and social context as well. Social context at workplace is
created by corporate culture, climate in the team, values and beliefs shared by team members and
manager, as well as real practices (skills) of manager.
The study purpose is to align these factors to enable key competencies that provide higher
performance and business results.
Value for your organization You will receive a description of overall results and for your organization. These include:
1. Which of the three context variables is most impactful on competencies? 2. How does each variable impact competencies. For example, for the manager variable, what
do managers do that strengthens their impact on competency improvement. What behaviors hinder that? What do teams do that impact competencies the most.
3. What competencies are the most important drivers of performance? 4. How all these results may be applied to improve performance in your organization?
How to participate?
1. Define teams you want to analyze competencies/improve performance. (Team size: at least 4 employees and a manager. Focus on teams in product development, R&D or other technology and innovation related job.)
2. Prepare a name list of members and manager for each team. (It will be used to prepare questionnaires)
3. Manager and team members of each team will answer 3 questionnaires in 3 phase process. (Questionnaires are in electronic form. Each includes 50-60 questions. Duration of each phase is 1 week.)
4. Feedback and description of overall results will be prepared. (In 4 weeks after collecting data)
The most useful results for your organization can be provided by involving around 20 teams. However, even for 1-2 teams good feedback and useful applications will be obtained. Please, contact me: MIKHAIL ROZHKOV
PolyU, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Tel.: (852) 5414 0507
WORKPLACE CONTEXT AND ITS EFFECT ON INDIVIDUAL COMPETENCIES AND PERFORMANCE
IN A WORK (PROJECT) TEAM
Chief Supervisor: Prof. C.F. Cheung (ISE)
Co-supervisor: Prof. Eric Tsui (ISE)
Mikhail ROZHKOV
Hong Kong, 2014
Purpose
Highly competent employees produce the best results. But how are competencies most effectively developed and supported?
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Background
• Many things impact employees’ competencies – upbringing, education, past experiences, etc. But, once a person is on a job, what are the most effective ways to improve competencies?
• This study is designed to determine how, in your company, daily behaviors are impacted by: organizational culture, team climate and manager skills.
– Maybe manager assignment is the most important way to strengthen competencies. Or, maybe belonging to a strong team is the best way.
– What is the relative impact of culture, climate and manager skills to the daily behaviors (competencies) of employees?
• The purpose of this study is to find out these questions.
• The results will help your company understand how to best increase competencies of their staff. For example, if the answer is being on a high performing team, then how can teams operate to accelerate individual competency development?
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What is “competency”?
The observed behavior
Motivation
Knowledge and skills
Personal traits
Competency
*adopted from presentation of Gregory Finkelshtein, ECOPSY Consulting
Figure 2 – What is competency? 4
What competencies are studied?
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We have focused on seven competencies that impact success in an innovations, R&D and product development environment:
1. Achievement Orientation (ACH)
2. Concern of Order and Quality (CO)
3. Initiative (INT)
4. Information Seeking (INFO)
5. Innovation Orientation (INNOV)
6. Team Working (TW)
7. Team Leadership (TL)
Pilot study results
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Best performance employees have higher scores for key competencies
Team Climate
Organizational Culture
Manager Skills (Practices)
Employee Performance
Employee Competencies
Research model
How to participate?
1. Define teams you want to analyze competencies/improve performance. (Team size: at least
4 employees and a manager)
2. Prepare a name list of members and manager for each team. (It will be used to prepare questionnaires)
3. Manager and team members of each team will answer 3 questionnaires in 3 phase process. (Questionnaires are in electronic form. Each includes 50-60 questions. Duration of each phase is 1 week.)
4. Feedback and description of overall results will be prepared. (In 4 weeks after collecting data)
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Value for your company
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You will receive a description of overall results and for your company. These include: 1. Which of the three variables is most impactful on
competencies? 2. How does each variable impact competencies? (For example,
for the manager variable, what do managers do that strengthens their impact on competency improvement. What behaviors hinder that? What do teams do that impact competencies the most?)
3. What competencies are the most important drivers of performance?
4. How all these results may be applied to improve performance in your company?
