Assessing/Mapping Employee Attitude during Competency Mapping (Assessment)

[AMIT BALLAL]

Hi!

I've searched on the forum, but couldn't locate "how to assess attitude (willingness to do) of people". Hence starting a new thread.

We are ISO/TS16949:2009 certified. (And I know it is not requirement of it to assess attitude.)

We've defined generic competencies required specific to the job.
But till date we haven't done any competency assessment of people.

I want to assess competence of people & also attititude of people, but not sure how to assess attitude.

Can anybody help/guide about how attitude (willingness to do) of employees can be done?

Thanks in advance,
Amit

 

[AMIT BALLAL]

Hi!

Can anybody help?


Thanks,
Amit

 

[Wes Bucey]

Hi!

I've searched on the forum, but couldn't locate "how to assess attitude (willingness to do) of people". Hence starting a new thread.

We are ISO/TS16949:2009 certified. (And I know it is not requirement of it to assess attitude.)

We've defined generic competencies required specific to the job.
But till date we haven't done any competency assessment of people.

I want to assess competence of people & also attititude of people, but not sure how to assess attitude.

Can anybody help/guide about how attitude (willingness to do) of employees can be done?

Thanks in advance,
Amit

Why? What do you intend to do with the information if you have it? Do you want to know how folks feel about the prospect of performing a task? OR, how they feel after they've been performing it for a while?

I spent a lot of my life as an executive trying to assure a good fit between worker and task. My empirical data over forty-five years seems to show the manager's attitude is as crucial to employee job satisfaction as the employee's OWN attitude. Thus, the INTENT of the managers in using the data (if it can be accurately measured) is as important, if not more important to know than the employee attitude.

 

[normzone]

A person's attitude cannot be quantified - what it seems to be to you will be wholly different from what it seems to be to me.

It may also be wholly different to them - what seems like whole-hearted enthusiasm to them may seem like a complete sarcastic slacker to you, or vice versa.

The only thing you CAN quantify is performance.

 

[Dean Frederickson]

Hi!

I've searched on the forum, but couldn't locate "how to assess attitude (willingness to do) of people". Hence starting a new thread.

We are ISO/TS16949:2009 certified. (And I know it is not requirement of it to assess attitude.)

We've defined generic competencies required specific to the job.
But till date we haven't done any competency assessment of people.

I want to assess competence of people & also attititude of people, but not sure how to assess attitude.

Can anybody help/guide about how attitude (willingness to do) of employees can be done?

Thanks in advance,
Amit

You can't measure "Attitude" so you could never show evidence of good or bad attitude. The best you can do is have employees fill out a survey of how they feel about their job and file it with their training file. To me it seems to be a waste of time with no certain results. No way of knowing if they would lie or tell the truth. Competency can be proved by schooling, work history and any on the the job training.

 

[Wes Bucey]

You can't measure "Attitude" so you could never show evidence of good or bad attitude. The best you can do is have employees fill out a survey of how they feel about their job and file it with their training file. To me it seems to be a waste of time with no certain results. No way of knowing if they would lie or tell the truth. Competency can be proved by schooling, work history and any on the the job training.

I had a psychology professor back in college more than 50 years ago who, in a remarkably candid moment when we were discussing questionnaires, said,

"The safe way for any employee or job applicant to answer a company-issued questionnaire is to make the answers consistently follow the model: 'God, country, family, Mom, baseball, and apple pie are good; never steal and never cheat.'"
​

 

[BethP]

The organization that I work for conducts an employee satisfaction survey annually using a 3rd party company to run the survey and summarize the results. The survey promises anonymity, but employees feel that the promise of anonymity is a joke, since results are grouped by department. The survey is used to benchmark satisfaction from year to year and determine opportunities for improvement.

I much prefer the approach of another organization I worked for in the past. Each month, based on employee anniversary, the company owner would have a lunch with a group of employees. Every employee got a chance to do this 1x per year. The purpose was to get to know staff and get suggestions for improvements. Some of the suggestions in the meeting were actually taken and changes made, which added to the credibility of the whole lunch.

I agree with Wes - attitude of staff is in large part driven by the attitude of management. If the management is not respectful and careless of employees, employees feel it and take a similar attitude toward work or leave the organization.

 

[lfrost]

The organization that I work for conducts an employee satisfaction survey annually using a 3rd party company to run the survey and summarize the results. The survey promises anonymity, but employees feel that the promise of anonymity is a joke, since results are grouped by department. The survey is used to benchmark satisfaction from year to year and determine opportunities for improvement.

I much prefer the approach of another organization I worked for in the past. Each month, based on employee anniversary, the company owner would have a lunch with a group of employees. Every employee got a chance to do this 1x per year. The purpose was to get to know staff and get suggestions for improvements. Some of the suggestions in the meeting were actually taken and changes made, which added to the credibility of the whole lunch.

I agree with Wes - attitude of staff is in large part driven by the attitude of management. If the management is not respectful and careless of employees, employees feel it and take a similar attitude toward work or leave the organization.

BethP,

I agree with what you said (in agreement with Wes) that management has to play a big role with the attitude of the employees.

Near the end of last year, our General Manager retired and the new GM has been here for over a year helping out our sales department. However, what he should have been doing is getting to know the different employees in their positions. He's now just "floating" around and not really moving forward that the employees see. Many I have heard in the lunch room complain that he just doesn't seem to care about the employees. One of the biggest things he's done is stopped the raises that employees receive around the first quarter of the year. Even though at the Christmas Party, the President of the company stated that last year was our best year ever! Morale now is at an all time low, and I have been tasked to try and raise it. I told the GM that I was the QA Manager, not the Attitude Manager, and told him he was the one that would have to raise the morale.

I've taken a "wait and see position" as I'm supposed to perform the internal audits this month. I wonder what he is going to do in the scheduling those audits as he is also the Lead auditor and the MR.

 

[John Broomfield]

Hi!

I've searched on the forum, but couldn't locate "how to assess attitude (willingness to do) of people". Hence starting a new thread.

We are ISO/TS16949:2009 certified. (And I know it is not requirement of it to assess attitude.)

We've defined generic competencies required specific to the job.
But till date we haven't done any competency assessment of people.

I want to assess competence of people & also attititude of people, but not sure how to assess attitude.

Can anybody help/guide about how attitude (willingness to do) of employees can be done?

Thanks in advance,
Amit

Amit,

The leaders largely determine the attitudes of workers.

Your recruiting process should result in people who have the required attributes and exhibit the required behaviors but have you included recruiting as part your formal management system?

New employees may then be trained, coached or mentored until they are verified as competent (they can do their job to the required standard).

How well they motivate themselves to do good work once they are competent is largely down to leadership.

Lastly, attitude (and competence) is not a process so it cannot be mapped. You could instead map the process of leaders monitoring (see clause 8.2.3) so they show to the operators how much they care about their employees receiving what they need for effective processes.

Of course, they'll be listening and observing carefully while treating everyone with respect.

John

 

[AMIT BALLAL]

Thanks to all of you.!!

So, I reached to a conclusion as per your comments that- attitude cannot be mapped. And even if we do, won't add any value.

One more question:
Can we map & assess behavioral competencies of people? If yes, how ?



Thanks,
Amit