Work-related attitudes

INTRODUCTION

ATTITUDES AND VALUES

IN SHORT:

• Your attitude towards work is important in terms of success at work place.
• Your values play an important role in terms of your job satisfaction.

What are attitudes?

Work-related attitudes refer to how you feel, what you belief and how you act towards various aspects of a job, your work environment and the people involved.

HOW ATTITUDE AFFECTS WORK PERFORMANCE

Your work-related attitudes determine your job satisfaction and job performance.

• Positive attitude towards colleagues and supervisor: It is important to develop good interpersonal and social skills at the workplace. Be friendly and cooperative to your colleagues, respectful to your supervisor, and polite and helpful to customers.
• Positive attitude towards learning: Being new to the job, you should know and learn the job fast. Seek help from your colleagues and ask when you are in doubt about an assignment or project. Do not draw lines as to what you are supposed to do and what you are not supposed to do. Be willing to accept responsibilities for tasks outside your scope of work. This will not only enable you to learn new skills, but also result in job enrichment and personal satisfaction.
• Positive attitude towards change: As companies face new challenges, employers need workers who are flexible and willing to try new or different plans in order to achieve new set of goals and targets. Don’t say “But we’ve been doing it this way for a long time”. Find out first if the new way of doing things is better. If it is, spend time learning to do it the better way.
• Don’t wait to be told what to do: Learn to be pro-active and take the initiative to get things done without being told. Employers appreciate workers who can work without close supervision.
• Be Punctual: This applies both to being on time for work everyday and meeting the deadline for a project or assignment. Being late for work frequently sends a message to your supervisor that you are not interested in your work.

VALUES

It is important to match your values to any setting you wish to fit in. This exercise will help you to

assess your values what is important to you. You may use this information to evaluate types of jobs, industries or study options. For example, you are considering a job as a sales representative, and you find out that the job will involve a lot of travelling. You value family as very important – a lot of travelling and time away from your family will probably be very difficult for you.

Please read through the following list of values and tick in the appropriate box whether a particular

value is always important to you, sometimes important or never important.

Values

• Basic convictions about what is important to the individual
• They contain a judgmental element of what is right, good, or desirable.

Values

• Types of values

• Terminal: Goals that individuals would like to achieve during their lifetime
• Instrumental: Preferable ways of behaving

• Importance of values

• Values generally influence attitudes and behaviour.

Ethics

• Ethics

• The science of morals in human conduct
• Moral principles; rules of conduct

• Ethical Values are related to moral judgments about right and wrong

EMPLOYEES’ ATTITUDES IS KEY TO EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATION

A landmark study finds that employees’ emotions about work can adversely affect organizational success.In its study on work and human emotion, HR consulting giant, Towers Perrin and its research partner, Gang & Gang, found that more than half of the 1,100 North American workers they surveyed had

“negative” emotions about their work, while nearly a third had “intensely negative” emotions about their work.

The study, Working Today: Exploring Employees’ Emotional Connection to Their Jobs, completed earlier this year, noted that workers’ negative emotions adversely affect productivity, profitability, performance, and retention, key factors in organizational success.

In a surprising discovery, researchers cited that among the intensely negative group, a full quarter of the workers planned to remain with their current employer. Their conclusion implies that workers may be just “hanging on” to their present jobs without being engaged in, or by, their work, and that they may be only moderately engaged in their work. The implication is clear: workers who are not fully committed to their work may be hampering organizational success.

Another conclusion that impacts organizations, researchers concluded that disengaged employees may adversely affect coworkers with their negative attitudes.

Changing employees’ attitudes

With such dour news on the workfront, how can managers change employees’ attitudes from negative to positive, and enhance organizational success? What are the factors that influence positive attitudes and increase worker engagement?

First, workplace leaders must understand some of the underlying elements that may create emotionally distant workers. Researchers in the study reported that five elements contributed to most of the workers’ negativity, including:

• excessive workload;
• concerns about leadership effectiveness;
• anxiety about job and financial security;
• lack of challenging work, boredom, frustration; and
• insufficient recognition.

Negative emotions stemming from these factors spell trouble for employers, especially regarding retention. The study found that among the intensely negative group, nearly 30 percent were actively looking for new jobs, as opposed to only 6 percent of workers, who had positive emotions about work.

In the study, workers were asked to describe what their ideal work experience would entail. Their answers focused on the following elements:

• having a sense of self-worth – having confidence, feeling competent and in control of their work and work experience;
• seeing results – the contributions workers make in helping their organizations succeed; and
• being rewarded and recognized – knowing that their contributions are recognized and compensated.

Knowing some of the factors that cause employees to be emotionally distant from their work, as well as some of the elements they value, work leaders can develop plans to dispel negativity, and increase positive emotions among their staff. Some elements managers should include in their plans:

Identify and communicate priorities. Managers can start changing employees’ attitudes to a positive mindset by identifying and communicating priorities. Setting priorities with employees helps them to focus on important tasks, and may help to lessen some of the stress they feel when they’re overwhelmed by a heavy workload. Identify work process breakdowns. Determine whether there are better or more productive work methods that staff members can employ. Get the right tools. Frustration often occurs when employees have insufficient or ineffective equipment to work with. Make sure employees have the appropriate tools to do the work.

Give them space. Managers should set expectations for the outcome, and provide direction only when needed. Allowing workers a greater sense of autonomy and authority in deciding how to conduct the work breeds trust, and invests employees in the process, as well as the outcome.

Provide training. Training helps employees to feel more competent in their jobs, and prepares them for greater responsibility and more challenging assignments. Confidence is a result of competence; training is the tool.

Talk to workers. Let employees know what is expected of them regarding performance, as well as how and where they “fit” in the organization. Employees need to know that their contributions make a difference. Select specific work examples to demonstrate their contributions. Staff meetings and one-on-one conversations are perfect venues to discuss how employees help the organization to succeed.

Keep employees informed. Employees want to feel like they are “in the know” about their department, and the organization as a whole. By sharing information, work leaders send the message that they trust and respect their staff. Employees will feel valued and will return their leaders’ respect.

Listen. Talk to employees about their workplace concerns. Also, keep abreast of the grapevine for simmering issues – address them quickly and confidently. Dispel rumors with the facts. Be honest about mistakes and problems. Twisting the truth is never advised – employees have long memories and their trust may be lost forever.

Help employees feel less anxious about job security. Offer feedback about job performance – don’t wait until review time to discuss behavioral issues. Talk to workers about their work challenges, and help to find solutions. Also, keep employees informed of departmental functioning; informing employees of events as the year progresses is better than communicating bad news later.

Reward employees for their efforts. Finally, managers must make sure employees are rewarded for positive behavior and contributions. Studies show that money isn’t the motivator of choice for most people. Ask employees what motivates them. Showing genuine appreciation for an employee’s work is often enough. Some workers, however, might appreciate having a positive letter placed in their personnel file recognizing a particular contribution. Others might appreciate greater challenges or consideration for high-profile assignments. For others, small perks can go a long way.

ATTITUDES – JOB BEHAVIOR

Attitudes are evaluative statements, either favorable or unfavorable concerning objects, people, or events. Attitudes are not the same as values, but the two interrelated. You can see this by looking at the three components of an attitude: cognition, affect, and behavior.

The belief that discrimination is wrong is a value statement. Such an opinion is the cognitive component of an attitude. It sets the stage for the more critical part of an attitude & its affective component. Affect is the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude and is reflected in the statement ,(I don’t like Jon because he discriminates against minorities?) Finally, and we will discuss this issue at considerable length later in this section, affect can lead to behavioral outcomes. The behavioral component of an attitude refers to an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something. So to continue our example, (I might choose to avoid Jon because of my feeling about him).

Viewing attitudes as made up of three components cognition, affect, and behaviour is helpful in understanding their complexity and the potential relationship between attitudes and behavior. But for clarity sake, keep in mind that the term attitude as it is generally used essentially refers to the affect part of the three components.

Also keep in mind that, in contrast to values, your attitudes are less stable. Advertising messages, for example, attempt to alter your attitudes toward a certain product or service: If the people at XYZ Motor Co. can get you to hold a favorable feeling toward their cars, that attitude may lead to a desirable behavior for them purchase of a XYZ product.

In organizations, attitudes are important because they affect job behavior. If workers believe, for example, that supervisors, auditors, bosses, and time-and-motion engineers are all in conspiracy to make employees work harder for the same or less money, then it makes sense to try to understand how these attitudes were formed, their relationship to actual job behavior, and how they might be changed.

ATTITUDE SUCCESS

It is believed by knowledgeable people that there is an x-factor which sets apart successful people from the rest, without pondering much on this is the unanimous belief is their attitude.

Having the right attitude is crucial to the kind of image created about one self and this for a fact holds more importance at one’s work place. Adopting the right attitude is a step towards personal excellence which in turn helps us to add value to everything we do. Hence, it is time tested fact that ‘Attitude’ and ‘Success’ go hand in hand.

The first step towards having the right attitude is to define success in own terms. It is like sitting at a dining table and trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. The first thing that one does while solving a jigsaw puzzle is look at the picture on the box. The same holds true for success. Success should never be measured by what others have or have not done; rather it is something very subjective. At workplace, it helps avoid inter-office comparisons, in terms of either job responsibilities or recognition. Right attitude is seeing what one can be best at, rather than seeing what others are better at.

Developing discipline is another requisite to foster a positive attitude. Today’s preparation determines tomorrow’s achievement. However, there is a price to pay for it. One will need to find what it takes to be the best time, practice, commitment, sacrifice. In this highly competitive scenario one requires discipline and commitment to meet targets and deadlines and facilitate prioritization of tasks and duties. Ones attitude assists him in maintaining the discipline he has developed.

Asking for advice is another approach that helps one to cultivate a proper outlook. One can get a lot of advice if he wants at his workplace. All he needs to do is to be humble and ask. There is hardly anyone who will refuse to help, if one asks him for it. When one is modest and ask his seniors, peers and even subordinates for their advice, and in a way compliment them for their expertise. One will grow from their wisdom and knowledge. The ability to be a constant learner, to learn from everything around him is a trait that compliments his attitude.

Why is feedback so important? Well, feedback is fondly called ‘advice not asked for’ – unsolicited opinions about ones work. These comments are sometimes more valuable than what one intends to ask for. In work it is needed to occasionally measure ourselves with someone else’s yardstick. If one is getting the same feedback from several sources either positive or negative then one has to pay attention.

Having the right attitude helps one enjoy what one does. It takes care of those certain days of drudgery that do happen now and then. The ‘hero’s journey’ doesn’t necessarily involve moving mountains. What it does involve is the constant reinforcement of a winner’s attitude the right attitude.

ARCHIVES FOR WORK ATTITUDE AND VALUES CATEGORY

There are two ways wherein you can become optimistic in your job and put your conviction at work. One way is to visualize a job greater than what you have. While you may not be a CEO or not even a manager, imagine yourself to be at least a team leader. How would you settle possible problems that your company may encounter? It’s not so much of having an illusion of being THE top man but it’s more of putting yourself in a bigger responsibility in order to train yourself for the actual sense of duty that you will meet later on. Having this self-commitment to undertake a greater role, you will be able to open up a panorama of brilliant business ideas that are sure to contribute to your company’s success.

The other way to put your commitment to work is through sharing of your imagination. Most of us are afraid to be deemed as eccentric or foolish upon having images in our heads. But little do we know that these kept images can be the genius that will change things positively. You just might have a “business intuition” that not anyone can realize in himself. Every company needs a business “artist” and eccentricity can be the key. Don’t be afraid to share your vision/s. As long as you know that you can make it work, hinting your associates about what you see can start things to get moving. Think of yourself as a “mission maker” – both to yourself and to your colleagues.

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

To be effective in our communication, we could learn about the basics of communication. Let’s study the principles, the concepts, the parts and the processes because the more we understand it, the more we can control it. After gathering information, we must apply that knowledge in our everyday living. In doing so, we gain skills that we can use anytime you need to. But of course, we must have resolve in continuing to practice what we learned while keeping in mind that we must adapt to the different challenges that come our way. And of course, let’s take the focus off ourselves. Not only that it increases our self-esteem, it also enhances our communication with others.

THE RIGHT MOTIVATION

Sometimes we wonder what really drives us to do better, or at least what makes us do the things we do. There are a lot of reasons, but behind these reasons, there are always principles that determine the way we carry out our actions. It is very important that we know our values and that we are not uncertain to enact them. We may have all the goals in mind but if we don’t put value first, the end result won’t be what we expect. Putting value in everything that we do, especially in our work, would prove that there is more to just living life in the economic sense. Upholding values proves that we answer to a calling of survival and success that will last a lifetime.

INTERNAL MOTIVATION

We believe that if we wish to succeed, we should be responsible for our choices and actions. We set goals but our thinking and belief in ourselves prevent us from achieving the best.

The best plan would be to do our best regardless of the circumstances. Focus on what is important, make the best choices, deal the best hands, and make the most of the hands you are dealt with. Use your talents, resources, work, relationships, everything that you have on hand and suppress negative thoughts.

By doing this your motivation is permanent and maximized, and external incentives are secondary.

EXTERNAL MOTIVATION

There are two kinds of external motivation: fear and incentives. Fear is a powerful motivator and it is a usual response to a threatening situation. It is highly soul destroying and stressful. It stifles imagination, limits one’s potential and makes one stagnant. Failure causes the person to lower their standards.

Incentives, on the other hand, challenge you to respond positively to a reward, such as bonuses and commissions. You get to enjoy something because you’ve done well.

The only thing is that the impact of external motivation is temporary. They are short-lived, set limitations and cannot sustain us through bad times.

MOTIVATING FACTORS

There used to be a notion that people were motivated purely by money in their work and the performance of work related functions. In today’s world however, people have begun to realize the importance of not just earning a nice amount of cash but to have time for other pleasures such as time with the family and others. Time out is one of the best ways of relieving stress from work, specially in sales where it’s always a hit and miss game.

Today, as the recession begins to bite hard, sales is going to become tougher by the day but a long as there are people that can be convinced, sales are a good possibility. maintain a positive attitude inside and out so a failed sale doesn’t have after-effects on the next customer that comes along. Say thanks, even for a failed sale for they listened to your sales pitch just the same. Recognizing people and making them feel important is one of the keys, making them more than just victims but customers who are respected and cared for.

HOW TO REVERSE NEGATIVE STAFF ATTITUDES :

Staff and management do not establish goals to infuse a negative culture into their department or company. The predominance of negativity is typically insidious because it happens over time. Much like the culture of “losing” that afflicts athletic teams, including the feeling that the players know the outcome before the game begins, some corporate teams, departments, and companies unknowingly adopt this attitude.

At other times, the reasons are not only obvious but understandable. Corporate downsizing, with many employees separated from the company, often create negative attitudes among the majority of remaining staff members. Unlike layoffs, which imply (at least) that the company will re-employ the separated employees, downsizing contains no such unwritten promise.

Unfortunately, downsizing indicates the former employees will not be rehired, which removes the always important human value of “hope.” When hope is removed from the personal or professional equation, a form of “workplace depression” often emerges. These negative attitudes can become damaging to performance, teamwork, and goal achievement.

The key for management is to identify negative staff attitudes and, once discovered, take immediate action to reverse these destructive issues and behaviours. Here are some suggestions for managers to consider.

REVERSING NEGATIVE STAFF ATTITUDES

Unfortunately, the reversal of negative staff attitudes cannot be compartmentalised into a simple, neat, and technical answer. Humans tend to be complex organisms. There is little consistency in their behaviour and attitudes. Further complicating this issue is the reason for the negative staff attitudes or behaviours. Understandably, management may not care about the motivation. Yet, they must take action to reverse the condition.

Some combination of the following actions often cures the problem.

• Be upfront and acknowledge the negativity problem. At first, this may seem like a useless or, at best, ineffective activity. However, remember two things: The staff is well aware of the negativity of one or more team members. Second, management attempts at being “subtle” often indicate to employees that they (management) are either unaware of the problem or choose to ignore it. Acknowledging the negativity problem is a critical component to its resolution.
• Display positive behaviour at all times. Much like political candidates and stage actors, management, regardless of their true feelings (they may also be a bit negative because of downsizing and uncertainty), must publicly display total positivity. Employees should witness the positive alternative to their negativity.
• Publicly identify any and all positive issues. Unless the company has already scheduled a meeting with legal counsel to prepare Chapter 11 bankruptcy paperwork, the business has many positive features. These factors tend to be overlooked during conditions that generate negativity. Management should be diligent – and very vocal – with staff to identify every positive aspect of the company and its products or services.
• Recognise every positive contribution by staff members. Always a successful procedure, public recognition of individual employee performance and contribution can be as “contagious” as its opposite – negativity. When management faces a negative-oriented staff, the importance and rewards of public recognition of superior performance take on majestic proportions.
• Encourage individuals and teams to contribute to decision-making. The popular term is “empowerment” but that is more appropriate to textbooks. When management gives its staff the ability to contribute ideas and suggestions to marketing, operations, or financial policies, employees typically respond with great positivity.

Starting and running a new business can be frustrating. There are times when you wish round pegs would fit into square holes. And occasionally you wonder why round pegs don’t fit into round holes. Things don’t always go as planned.

More often than not the problem lies with neither the pegs nor the holes.

As my father used to say, “You’re not holding your tongue right.”

In other words, you need to look at things from a different angle – get the pegs straight up and down so they fall right into place.

Here are five key ingredients to building your business with a determined, purposeful, and successful attitude… an attitude of increase.

1. Release Your Old Attitudes About Money

Money, in and of itself, has no value. You can’t float on it, you can’t shower with it, you can’t eat it, and you can’t drive it. If you tell it to roll over, it just ignores you.

Starting a business with the goal of making money is meaningless. Your business is more likely to do what money is good at doing by itself: Playing dead.

Okay, this is obvious stuff, right? You already knew that. You want money to buy a boat that floats, a shower head that pulsates, and a fast car to get the really good Chinese food.

Unfortunately, wanting money for those reasons still isn’t good enough.

We can agree that money is a tool by which you purchase or provide something of value, but now we need to go a step further. We need to get in sync with the golden calf of economics: Growth.

Growth comes from giving without receiving, and if you’re selling, giving more use value than you receive in cash value. But, wait a minute? Whom are we talking about? Your growth or the other guy’s?

Yours, of course. Well, both actually. You see, what this does is create in your mind an attitude of increase. Hoarding money or providing minimal use value creates a mindset of stagnation and decrease.

Some of the wealthiest people the world has known understood this principle well. Andrew Carnegie gave tens of millions in money, gifts, and services during his lifetime. Early in his life, John D. Rockefeller was gifting more than half his paycheck while making less than five dollars per week. An attitude of increase was firmly set in their minds. The more you give the more you get.

2. Practice an Attitude of Gratitude

What’s really going on when you thank someone? What is the attitude you are expressing? It’s an attitude of receiving with appreciation. Receiving. That word has a nice tone, don’t you think?

Gratitude is the compliment of giving. Giving clears the path for growth, and gratitude brings the good stuff to you– and keeps it coming. It’s all part of the attitude of increase.

The great part about gratitude is you can even do it alone. Give yourself a pat on the back for everything that brought you to this exact moment. Heck, congratulate yourself on having the good fortune of finding this great lesson about being grateful. And in all modesty, might I add how grateful I am you’re reading it!

Practice sincere gratitude several times throughout your day. In this way you are able to stay connected with an attitude of increase and recognize abundance as it comes your way.

3. Create An Attitude of Daily Success

When you awake each morning, decide on at least one thing you can do that day to further your business aspirations. Write it down and declare it out loud.

Next, give thanks for the opportunity to create a successful day. It’s your first act of gratitude for the day and sets the tone for a winning attitude. And don’t forget to implement your attitude of giving throughout the day. Give your customers an extra 10% discount, or if your business isn’t off the ground yet, give the dog an extra doggy treat. The important thing is to keep the flow going.

Creating daily success takes practice and hard work. Start small to build up confidence with a series of quick successes, then keep raising the bar. But who’s afraid of a little hard work? The rewards are fantastic. As the great 19th century orator Henry Ward Beecher once said, “It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.”

4. Expect The Unexpected

What happens when you practice an attitude of increase? The unexpected happens. The clarity of purpose you defined at the beginning of the day is ever-present around you. The gratitude you express regularly along with the growth value bestowed upon others screams to the world, “Winner!”

Now you are free to notice, from among the thousands of pieces of information entering your brain each day, those things which encapsulate your purpose. Opportunities appear out of nowhere. Unexpectedly, it would seem. Expect it. You are plugged into an attitude of increase.

5. Winners Start Out With Winning Attitudes

Why do some people create lives of abundance and success, while others lament about the cruel hand life dealt them?

You are what you think. You can only achieve what you believe is achievable.

By accepting as fact a success that has yet to come, you allow your future self to effectively define your present self. Successful people are successful before they become successful. This happens instantly in the moment you define and announce your focused, unwavering intent. Success is automatic.

ARTICLES

ARTICLE 1

A META-ANALYSIS OF RELATIONS BETWEEN PERSON-ORGANIZATION FIT AND WORK ATTITUDES

Authors:Michelle L. Verquer, Terry A. Beehr and Stephen H. Wagner

Source: http://www.homebiztools.com

ABSTRACT

This article presents a meta-analytic review of 21 studies on relations of person-organization fit with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intent to turnover. Four specific moderators were investigated: the type of fit measure, method of calculating fit, dimensions of fit, and use of an established measure of person-organization fit. Mean effect sizes for the outcome variables ranged from -.18 for intent to turnover to .28 for organizational commitment. Subjective fit measures, the use of correlations to calculate fit, value congruence as the fit dimension, and the use of an established measure of person-organization fit increased effect sizes. Recommendations for future research on person-organization fit are suggested.

ARTICLE 2

A PROPOSAL TO INTRODUCE VALUE BASED MANAGEMENT IN NGOS OF BANGLADESH

Author:Munima Siddika

Introduction:Bangladesh has largely failed to assist the poor or reduce poverty because of limited resources and faulty planning, while Non Government Organizations (NGOs) have grown dramatically and ostensibly to fill up this gap. There are more and bigger NGOs here than in any other country of equivalent size. Bangladesh’s NGO sector is remarkable for the speed with which it grew to its present size and prominence (World Bank, 2005). It is difficult to find out the real number of NGOs operating in Bangladesh, because they are registered under different Government agencies as development partners.

Abstract: Presently the rapid growth and diversification of the gigantic NGO sector of Bangladesh has given rise to questions and concerns, about their trade-offs between sustainability and pro-poor orientation; the impact and quality of services; corporate governance; management and accountability. The paper is based on a proposal to introduce a modern management system viz. value based management (VBM) in the NGOs of Bangladesh. Value-based management can be defined as an integrated management control system that measures, encourages and supports the