Self-Management Application in Human Resource Field

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Importance of Self-Management
Self-Management Defined
Stages of Self-Management
Training and Self-Management
Self-Efficacy
Self-Assessment
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

In human resource management, training and development of employees is closely connected with self-management and self-evaluation. A wide range of behaviors, including spending time on the phone, leaving one’s own work to assist others, failure to get to work on time, writing a plan, following the plan, and dealing with subordinates’ deviations from the plan, are identified by managers as behaviors they want to improve upon in order to increase their effectiveness on the job (Armstrong 920. With systematic application of self-management, the managers have a chance to improve these behaviors and increase their effectiveness.

Importance of Self-Management

In working life, as in personal life, individuals can play the major part in managing their affairs. A successful employee manages his or her own progress. A successful manager manages his or her own team. Campbell (1997) underlines that a manager is expected to plan, set deadlines, direct and supervise others, maintain high morale and satisfaction among the employees, and achieve his or her own performance objectives (Campbell 55).

In the face of competing demands on time and resources, it is essential that a manager have clearly stated objectives; objectives alone, however, are not sufficient for effectively managing within an often unpredictable work environment (Becker 43). Self-management can provide a personalized program for improving an individual’s own behavior and exercising greater control over aspects of his or her decision making.

Self-Management Defined

Self-management or self-regulation is an effort by an individual to control his or her behavior. Following Reed (2001): “Self-management involves goal setting, establishing a contract, monitoring the ways in which the environment is hindering the attainment of the goals, and administering reinforcement or punishment based on self-evaluation” (43). The first step here is for the manager to set and commit to specific goals. In other words, self-monitoring–obviously a precondition for self-evaluation–has no effect on behavior. Written contracts increase goal commitment by spelling out the reinforcing conditions for accepting the goal.

Taylor (1998) described self-management as a “substitute for leadership” (54) in that it teaches a subordinate to exercise control over the same contingencies of reinforcement available to the subordinate’s supervisor. Implicit in this view is that employee self-management can be instrumental in furthering organizational goals by freeing supervisors to perform other important tasks (e.g., strategic planning).

Taylor work has involved the use of self-managed work groups in industrial settings, the use of self-management training for entrepreneurs, and development of self-leadership capabilities in subordinates. In the face of competing demands on time and resources, it is essential that a manager have clearly stated objectives. Objectives alone are not sufficient for managing effectively within an often unpredictable and chaotic work environment. Training in self-management can improve an individual’s behavior and lead to the exercise of greater control over aspects of his or her decision making and performance. Further empirical work is needed in this area to examine the effectiveness of this training for employee performance in organizational settings.

Stages of Self-Management

The process of self-management can be divided into several stages. First, self-observation or self-assessment gives the individual a baseline for evaluating change. On the basis of the individual’s past experience and expectations as to what should happen in a given situation, he or she sets specific performance goals. Second, the person compares the information provided by self-observation with the behavior goals.

At this stage, self-monitoring begins. If the behaviors are exceeding the goal, he or she can set higher goals (Becker 92). The third stage involves self-administration related to the degree to which the behavior diverges from the performance goals. Support for this model has been obtained in both laboratory settings and clinical settings. It is important to note that these self-management stages are interrelated. Self-monitoring and self-evaluation without goal setting have no lasting effect on behavior following a performance appraisal. Obviously the chief test of self-management training, once it has been accomplished, is maintenance. (Campbell 44).

Social learning theory holds that a person can consciously manipulate his or her environment to produce the end results aimed for. Self-management training teaches skills that enable people to take active control over their affairs–goal setting, establishing a contract, self-monitoring, and administering reinforcement or punishment based on self-evaluation (Campbell 72). Recent research suggests that self0management training can dramatically affect employee attendance in the workplace. Examples of measurement tools that can be used by self-managers include wall graphs, charts, diaries, performance reports, and timing devices.

Although it may appear time-consuming to a busy individual, self-monitoring of one’s progress toward goals is critical, since goal setting in the absence of self-monitoring has no effect whatsoever on changing behavior (Becker 101).

Training and Self-Management

Training leads to positive outcomes by enhancing a person’s sense of self-efficacy (Dessler 297). Self-efficacy is a measure of a person’s conviction that he or she can successfully perform the behavior or behaviors that a given situation requires. Such conviction influences both the acquisition of coping behavior and the effort that a person is willing to expend in order to maintain that behavior in the face of real or perceived obstacles (Armstrong 72).

People who judge themselves unable to cope with environmental demands perceive their difficulties (for example, family problems, transportation) as more formidable than they are in actual fact. People with a strong sense of self-efficacy, by contrast, focus their attention and effort on the demands of the situation (for example, coming to work) and are spurred on by perceived obstacles to an increase–rather than a decrease–in effort.

Training in self-management relates directly to a person’s desire and willingness to practice more self-control than previously (Campbell 82). Self-controlling behaviors are initiated when a choice point is reached: when a person’s attention is directed toward a specific behavior (for example, a supervisor announces that continued absence from work will lead to a one-day suspension), when changes in reinforcement occur (for example, a good attendance record formerly ignored by management is now noted and praised), or when expected outcomes are no longer forthcoming (for example, taking the day off from work loses some of its enjoyment). The choice point has been reached; the self-management process can begin (Mayo 33; Robertson et al 54).

Training in self-management teaches an individual to assess what the problem is, establish a specific goal(s), monitor the ways in which the environment is hindering the attainment of the goal(s), determine whether the intervention is successful, and refine or change tactics when necessary (Armstrong 52). Training in self-management has only recently received attention in the organizational and human resource management literature for increasing employee effectiveness.

Most of the advocates. The managers’ self-monitoring and self-rewarding procedures for overcoming such problems as spending too much time on the phone, leaving one’s own work to assist others, and failing to get to work on time were effective in changing the behavior (Mayo 33). Self-monitoring and self-evaluation, for example, are forms of feedback. Feedback by itself–without goal setting–had no effect on behavior following a performance appraisal.

When self-monitoring is used alone, its effects are at best short-lived. Goal setting in the absence of feedback had no effect on behavior. Thus organizational psychologists such as Campbell (997) have argued against trying to separate the effects of feedback, reinforcers, and goal setting.

Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is defined as an individual’s judgment of his or her capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain certain types of performances. These expectations regarding personal mastery determine whether people will try to cope with difficult situations. In addition, efficacy expectations serve to determine how much effort people will expend and how long they will persist in their efforts to overcome obstacles or aversive events.

The stronger the efficacy expectations, the more active one’s efforts (Armstrong 112). Efficacy judgments vary on three dimensions–magnitude (or level), generality, and strength–all of which have important performance implications. Scale of self-efficacy is a function of the perceived level of difficulty of the tasks or situation at hand. Generality refers to an individual’s overall sense of self-efficacy with regard to a particular set of behaviors.

People may judge themselves as efficacious only in certain performance situations or across a wide range of activities and situations. Strength refers to the effort an individual will put forth in a situation. Self-knowledge about one’s efficacy, whether accurate or faulty, is a synthesis of information from a variety of sources including performance attainments, observations, verbal inputs, and emotional states. Behavior change programs are said to be effective to the extent that they alter relevant efficacy expectations. In contrast to self-efficacy, the predictive ability of outcome expectancies has not always been supported (Schuler 44).

Self-Assessment

Self-assessment provides the foundation for self-management. This technique involves systematic data gathering about one’s own. behavior. The aim is to identify when, why, and under what conditions the person behaves in certain ways and achieves certain levels of performance. For example, a manager who believes that he or she is unable to address longer-term strategic issues adequately because of too many interruptions during the workday should study the distractions (Schuler 76). By observing the amount of time spent on repetitive administrative tasks or informal conversations, for example, the individual can learn more about this behavior.

The individual should record the type and number of such conversations in each workday and the conditions that existed at the time. If three hours are spent chatting informally during an eight-hour day, it becomes a bit more clear as to why the performance goals are not being accomplished (Armstrong 62). Furthermore, if most of the individual’s conversations begin at the coffee room, the person has useful information for managing the behavior, for example, by cutting down on trips to the coffee lounge.

Pinpointing the interruptions as specifically as possible can help the manager or employee decide which interruptions are the most troublesome and which should be targeted for modification through self-management. Self-reinforcement involves the self-delivery of pleasant consequences after the achievement of a goal. By providing rewards for achieving self-set goals, a positive influence on future actions can be exerted. The rewards need not be tangible. They may consist of simply “a pat on the back” or telling oneself, “I did a heck of a job,” when the self-monitoring activity reveals that, for example, the goal of one hour of informal conversations per day has been achieved (Schuler 143).

Effective self-management allows managers to create benefits and opportunities for employees and other managers. From a cost-benefit perspective, this method of training is an effective tool because it involves less expense in terms of dollars and time than traditional hierarchy-based techniques. Self-management is more effective than other methods of control and improvements generating the desired behavior and outcomes.

Conclusion

In sum, self-management is generally introduced through training individuals in the basic techniques and then measuring their performance over time. The training program is straightforward, flexible, and easily adaptable to fit the individual’s job demands and schedule. Specific strategies and procedures help to develop self-management behavior in employees in the sequence in which they should be practiced and implemented.

It is important that the individual record the behavior in a timely, accurate manner, such as daily or weekly, and as close in time to the occurrence of the behavior as possible. Following self-management practices, employees should be allowed to practice the desired skills and encouraged to practice them in different situations, and continually self-monitors his or her performance. The managers are responsible for maintaining relationships with each of the employees and evaluation of their practical skills and knowledge. This job is often challenging, because the manager must respond to all of the objectives, goals, and cultures as well’s to geographic distances.

Many of the performance problems have been linked to the complex managerial situations that these ventures lead to. The complexity arises from the coordination of two or more organizations-who may well be competitors–as well as problems in communication both with one another and with the jointly owned company. Self-management is an effective tool because it involves employee and meets his desires, aspirations and career strategies.

Works Cited

Armstrong, M. Human Resource Management. 8^th edn. Kogan Page, 2001.
Becker, G. Human capital. New York Columbia University Press, 3^rd edn, 1993.
Campbell, D.J. (Organizations and the Business Environment. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997.
Dessler, G. Human Resource Management. Prentice Hall, 2007.
Mayo A. Creating a Training and Development Strategy. London: Institute of Personnel and Development, 1998.
Reed A. Innovation in Human Resource Management. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2001.
Robertson, I. T. Smith, M. Cooper, D. Motivation, Institute of Personnel Management, London, 2002.
Schuler, R. Managing Human Resources. Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western College Publishing, 1998.
Storey, J. New perspectives on Human Management, Routledge, London, 1999.
Taylor, S. Employee Resourcing. London: Institute of Personnel and Development, 1998.

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