WEEK 2

This week we discussed on-boarding, associate engagement, and the performance review process. Speaking through these processes I was able to pull a lot of knowledge from my own personal experiences and apply them to the assignment as well as the discussion posts.
I guess I've always been lucky when it comes to the on-boarding process but this week I learned there are many ways in which the on-boarding process could go wrong. Its always  been very organized and I know exactly where I need to be and what I need to be doing at all times,  even down to where I need to park and what side of the building I need to enter. I think these details made me feel valued as a newly hired employee and that they were really excited to have me joining the organization. I think this initial impression for the organization sets the tone for how the organization values associate engagement.
Associate engagement is a hot topic for many organizations, especially in the sense that they have low levels of associate engagement. Speaking from my employer's view, I think they place a high emphasis on associate engagement, however the activities and events they plan in efforts to increase it don't really work because these things don't really matter to the associates. I think there's a huge gap between leaders and the associates when it comes to associate engagement and the fact that they are on two different pages. Executive put the policies in place that affect the associate and that the associates may not be happy with. I think leaders look more at raw numbers and data versus actually analyzing employee engagement surveys and using that data to make changes.
For this week assignment we had to create our own associate survey and get results from coworkers. Building the survey itself I kind of pulled my questions from my own organization's associate surveys and thought of questions that were actually relevant and would matter to the employee. I also thought it was important to have a portion of the survey in which the associate was able to write out their opinions in paragraph form versus just choosing from a multiple choice answer. The results of the survey pretty much mirrored my own opinions which lead me to believe that the surveys are a good way to measure or pulse what the majority of the associates are feeling and use this to make changes.
Performance reviews were also discussed. My organization is pretty good at conducting performance reviews often and also outlining performance at the beginning of the year as to whats already going well, what needs to be improved, and what direction you would like to go in going forward. Performance reviews are critical to business processes in that you don't know where your going an how to get there if you don't know your current location. By accessing performance  now the associate can put into plan the necessary steps to improve performance and take their career where they would  like it to go.
I thoroughly enjoyed this week's topics because I think we all can relate to these topics and can discuss our own experiences and what went well and what didn't go so well to see what best practices should be as we get into the world of human resources. I think these real life experiences are critical to learning because we can all draw from everyone's experiences and learn about new ideas and concepts in order to reach a better conclusion. Its important to pull from experiences as associates because as leaders we need to remember the perspective of the employee and ensure that perspective is considered when decisions are made.