Human Performance Technology

Human Performance Technology (HPT) uses a wide range of interventions that are drawn from many other disciplines including, behavioral psychology, instructional systems design, organizational development, and human resources management. It stresses a rigorous analysis of present and desired levels of performance, identifies the causes for the performance gap, offers a wide range of interventions with which to improve performance, guides the change management process, and evaluates the results. Human Performance Technology Process The human performance technology process begins with a comparison of the present and the desired levels of individual and organizational performance to identify the performance gap. A cause analysis is then done to determine what impact the work environment (information, resources, and incentives) and the people (motives, individual capacity, and skills) are having on performance. Solution to performance problems can fail when they are selected to treat only visible symptoms rather than underlying causes. When the root causes of a problem are uncovered and eliminated, however, the likelihood of significantly reducing or eliminating problems is greatly enhanced. Once the performance gap and the causes have been determined, the appropriate interventions are designed and developed. These may include measurement and feedback systems, new tools and equipment, compensation and reward systems, selection and placement of employees, and training and development. The interventions are then implemented and the change process managed. Evaluation is done after each phase of the process. Initially, formative evaluation assesses the performance analysis, cause analysis, intervention selection and design, and intervention and change phases. Then evaluation focuses on the immediate response of employees and their ability and willingness to do the desired behaviors. The final evaluations are centered on improvement of business outcomes (such as quality, productivity, sales, and customer retention, profitability, and market share) as well as determining return on investment for the intervention. Components of the Human Performance Technology One of the most powerful steps a company can take is to establish measurable, observable criteria whereby a competent individual can determine if a specific, critical task has been done correctly and completely. If individuals have no formal, structured means to evaluate their own performance, supervisors will have no structured, formal means to evaluate an individual performance and provide useful feedback. Training can only address skill deficiencies, that is, the â€Å"can't do† versus â€Å"won't do† behaviors. Nonetheless, training can have a dramatic impact by increasing productivity, decreasing unplanned downtime, reducing the learning curve, and reducing trial-and-error learning. A deficiency that companies must often overcome is the lack of standard operating procedures (SOPs), job aids, and other visual tools that can be used to minimize or mitigate process variations introduced by people. The processes, systems, or methods whereby information is conveyed to job incumbents individually and as a group are integral to the total technology plan. Give the workforce early and frequent information. Give all ranks of employees plenty of advance information regarding the impending technological changes. Help them to understand – in clear and simple terms- project objectives. Educate them as to why these technological upgrades are necessary and how they present opportunities for changes in the way things are done. Let workers know that concurrent with your commitment to technology upgrades is an equal commitment to employee development. Assure them that you will provide them with adequate and timely training support. Finally, set up a structure to harvest process improvement ideas during the debugging and trial run stages. A human performance technologist, high levels of human performance is usually accomplished through instructional technology and performance technology. Instructional technology attempts to improve organizational performance through improving the ability of individual to perform. While performance technology attempts to improve organizational performance through improving the work environment and the work practices of the organization. In today's educational environment, educators use computer applications to perform many rudimentary tasks, such as preparing instructional materials, reporting student progress, and delivering instruction. The objective of most performance technology into a work environment should be to assist the teacher in completing the tasks. So, human performance technology applied to the design of teacher tools, which is an electronic performance support tool for teachers that will help them in their work environment and task performance by recording the occurrences of tasks, such as grading, lesson planning and reporting and the amount of time performing the tasks. But most of the teachers are not proficient in using the latest technology so they revert back to the manual way of doing their tasks. They need enough time to use the new technology because current work responsibilities demanded a great amount of time. However, the perception of more time needed to use the technology can be elimina ted when teachers realize that the technology is an easier method of performing some of their current work tasks. Many students have limited access to technology because some educational institution cannot afford to adapt to the latest technology because of limited resources. In some instances technology is provided but students have not yet develop the necessary skills to learn it (e.g. the client are kindergartens.

Econmics(_Microsoft_case quesitons ) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Econmics(_Microsoft_case quesitons ) - Essay Example Microsoft became a monopoly because the company was able to create and mandate the use of their own universal data interaction standards to be eventually used in all personal computers. Microsoft was successful at implementing their strategy because, unlike their competitors at the time Apple and Commodore, Microsoft’s philosophy was to create an operating system that allowed any computer be it for personal use or business to operate and communicate and communicate with each other seamlessly (Fisher, 2000). 2) When a firm decides to behave monopolistically it recognizes its influence over market price. In the case of a monopoly, instead of allowing supply and demand to determine the highest price the market will bear, monopolies choose a level of production output and pricing structure that maximizes their own profits. For a monopoly profits are maximized when marginal costs equal marginal revenue. A we can see on the graph the point where Q* and P* intersect corresponds to th e point where MC=MR. If marginal revenue is less than marginal costs, its economically advantageous for the firm to choose to produce less than the maximum output since the savings in costs would more than make up for the increased marginal revenue. If a company operates in a competitive environment instead of being a monopoly production output would be in line with the point in the graph (pl) where price equals marginal costs. Thus in general a monopolistic marketplace is characterized by having higher prices and lower production when compared with an open competitive market. As a rule a monopoly will be very inefficient since a monopolist will produce a level output less than the competitive amount and is consequently Pareto inefficient. Monopolies are detrimental to consumer interests since they allow companies to create abnormal profit levels by obligating consumers to pay higher prices and due to a lack of any competition, product quality, innovation and variety will also be ne gatively affected. 3)From its inception, in order to protect is market share, Microsoft purposely created its operating systems to restrict easy integration and interoperability between PC’s using their Windows operating system and group servers not utilizing Microsoft’s server operating system. The company utilized the practice of bundling its browser Internet Explorer to their Windows operating system without providing the user other browser options by default. The company was also guilty of tying its Windows Media Player with its Windows Operating System which currently has a around over a 90% market share in the European Union (Statcounter, 2011).The European Union investigation concluded that Microsoft was purposely and illegally withholding interface information from its competitors in order to put them at a disadvantage. This is in clear violation of Europe’s antitrust laws. 4) The European Union was originally created in 1958 with the purpose of stopping the wars in Europe. Six countries originally joined the EU: Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Soon with the political and economic success of the union many of the other European nations joined the union and today it has over 27 member countries including non European nations such as US, China, and Japan. Today the

Media and Society Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Media and Society - Essay Example The researchers used a survey sampling method and a panel design technique in which the same samples were observed at different points in time (Lowery and DeFleur, 1983) . Locational parameter was in Erie County in Ohio because it was culturally homogenous with a population of 43,000 being stable for 40 years. The people living in Erie County were all white and the farmers and the industrial labor force were evenly distributed. Thus, this would help in classifying the respondents. It was also relevant that the tri-media were present; 3 newspapers, 2 radio stations and all major network channels were represented. Importantly, Erie County had the record of deviating a little less from national voting pattern as far as the twentieth century was concern. During the study, there were 3,000 sampling respondents, 600 persons each for 4 stratified samples referred to as "panel" and 600 persons each also for the 3 control groups. Panel and control groups were used as there were qualms that th e process would greatly affect the results which eventually turned out to be the otherwise. There were several influential factors that could affect voters of Erie County and that included political index, religion, demography, socio-economic status and cross pressures among all others. There were three main patterns of change in cross pressure voting. According to the study, 28% were crystallizers (Lowery and DeFleur, 1983). They changed vote up to the last minute. On the other hand, 15% were waverers. Waverers were those whose decision pattern was like a wave. They started out with a clear decision then during the campaign period slowly changing sides but then later vote on their original choice. Finally, the party changers were self-explanatory and composed 8% of the samples. Cross pressure votes were simply a delay of the final decision of the voter. As such, potential voters whose low interest in the campaign and the cross pressure voters became media campaign targets. The challenge with media-mediated campaign was how to effectively deliver the message that a certain candidate was way far better than the others. The problem also lies on media exposure. How well-spread was the exposure. Surprisingly, radio comprised 50% of those surveyed when asked about the most important source of political information (Lowery and DeFleur, 1983). The media however, was a big contributor in political campaigning through three major patterns of influence; activation (awareness), reinforcement (continuing justification) and conversion (switch sides through persuasion). The two-step flow of communication stated that ideas and arguments would from the media to the opinion leaders then finally to the less active portions of the population. It was emphasized in this chapter the importance of mass media in influencing the voting behavior of the people. There maybe other factors that can affect any individual's vote but media-mediated campaign can greatly affect voter's decision up to the last second of the election period. Therefore, with all these political propaganda and strategy using mass media, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the political race. Chapter 5 Audiences for Daytime Radio Serials: Uses and Gratifications In the late 1930's, America

Labor market Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Labor market - Term Paper Example America’s obsession with Industrial began with Slater’s mills in which textiles became the primary market to produce. Although it may seem a new age, most workers were orphans or children who owed debt to the nation. The drive of capitalism for this country relied on many factors that included slavery, turned raw goods into products, factories, and the ability to produce such a drastic workforce. Hence, Smith’s ideas of capitalism along with an adequate labor force. The labor market impacts the economy through market equilibrium, immigrants, and statutory laws enacted by the government (Abowd, 12). During a recession, when the economy struggles to thrive, employment is diminished as the labor force is not to keep the market equilibrium in check. Consequently, during an economic book, both employment and inflation rise due to the money supply market. Labor, capital, natural resources and entrepreneurship are the key elements that contribute to serve as a catalyst for the economic growth of US. Labor consists of the people who produce the goods and services in an economy while capital is the equipment, machinery, manufacturing plants and office buildings needed to produce goods and services (The Workers Union. 2). Labor is also influenced by government investment in infrastructure, such as schools, roads and parks. These can also have an effect on the wages paid to the labor force because people are willing to relocate depending on the competitive salaries offered. The economic history of labor market is associated with the correlating the forces that drive the allocation of lab or effect in the economy during different times. Labor market institutions are prevalent in society as the formation of unions is the testament towards the collaboration and gathering of the labor market (The Workers Union, 28). In addition, the new decade has witnesses the evolution of labor market as job staffing agencies have been created in order

Bhp billiton PowerPoint Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Bhp billiton - PowerPoint Presentation Example Slide 3 - 5 Panda Pit, BPH Billiton Open Cut Mining, BHP Billiton Crushed product awaiting shipment, BHP Billiton Slide 6 Industry Analysis (Barrile, 2008) Macro-environment Analysis Political issues Operates in countries with different political systems Black Economic Empowerment legislation introduced labor inequalities legislation in South Africa where most of the mining operations are located BHP Billiton has to operate within a broad range of the political (and legal) systems. The global nature of their operations in countries such as Chile, Australia, China and the US means that it must mitigate its activities in light of varying political processes and legal systems. By way of example in South Africa, where the company has considerable mining operations, Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) legislation has been introduced to address inequalities created by past history, particularly the exclusion of black African people from participating in the country’s economy. ... The compliance costs and in some cases remedial costs could increase the group's operational costs which in turn could affect its operating margins (Datamonitor, 2011). Consequently, these regulatory mechanisms could adversely impact the cost, production and financial performance of the group's operations. Furthermore, the interplay of demand and supply, as in other markets, is the key to price setting in commodity markets. In turn higher commodity prices can substantially add to BHP Billiton’s earnings which was the case at the end of the 2007 financial year (Barrile, 2008). Slide 7 Industry Analysis Macro-environment Analysis Social issues Affected by health, safety, environmental and community related issues BHP Billiton is affected by a range of social factors including health, safety, environmental and community related issues. The company uses the term ‘sustainability development’ to implement a broad program of policies, processes and activities that aim to make the company more responsive to social and community needs in the conduct of its businesses. Sustainability development is considered in two dimensions-the ‘business’ and ‘sustainability’ dimensions that come together to produce a more stable and valuable whole. (Barrile, 2008) Technological issues Innovation through the activities of employees such as engineers and scientists facilitate growth Focus on existing and new technologies in exploration and process engineering Science and technology are crucial factors that will bring continued success to the industry. Technological innovation through the activities of employees such as engineers and scientists facilitates growth and improved financial performance. The company focuses on understanding future trends and

Identify the Impact of Pathophysiology, Psychology and Sociology in Essay

Identify the Impact of Pathophysiology, Psychology and Sociology in Determining the Physical and Mental Health Status of the Ind - Essay Example 47). As a common knowledge, Alzheimer’s disease is hereditary. The fact that Lucinda’s grandfather had dementia increases her risks of developing the same illness. With this in mind, Lucinda’s changes in her behaviour such as depression including her difficulty in following conversations, and the feeling of excessive tiredness can be explained by the psychosocial impact of having an Alzheimer’s disease. The role of psychotherapists is to allow newly diagnosed individuals to effectively deal with their negative feelings whereas the social workers are trained to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease deal with their social problems with their family members, at work, or within the community (Thompson and Bass, 2009). In most cases, psychotherapy can be used to initially diagnose the level of Lucinda’s depression. By referring her to a psychotherapist as one of the clinical interventions for her case, Lucinda and her partner may find it easier t o accept and deal with the agitation, anxiety, and depression this couple is going through after knowing that Lucinda is at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Lucinda is having difficulty trying to remember the names of people she worked with every day. For this reason, there is an increased risk wherein Lucinda might end up isolating herself from other people. To avoid making herself or other people feel bad, she made it a habit to cover up some of these occasions from her friends and family members in order to save face. However, the patient should be informed that there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease (Lu and Bludau, 2011, p. 60). To make it easier for the patient to deal with cognitive, behavioural, social and emotional changes, Lucinda should receive psychological and social intervention to make her understand and be emotionally prepared for other serious physical and mental health changes as the Alzheimer’s diseases progresses to a more advance sta ge. To identify the presence of brain damage, either MRI or PET scan can be used. In general, the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by the presence of plaques and tangles in the brain. Common among the aging individuals, the presence of ?-amyloid plagues, neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), and the neuronal cell death are among the main factors that can cause the patients to undergo a neurodegenerative process (Kumer et al., 2010, pp. 1313 – 1317; Jackson-Siegal, 2005). Although these substances can also be found among elderly patients without Alzheimer’s disease, Jackson-Siegal (2005) explained that one of the most unique feature of Alzheimer’s disease is that these plagues and tangles are localized in the brain in parallel to the clinical symptoms. With regards to familial Alzheimer’s disease, mutations on chromosomes 21, 19, 14, 12, and 1 is responsible for these changes (Barlow and Durand, 2012, p. 546; Cummings et al., 1998). Even though Lucinda is experiencing episodes of worsening and frequent forgetfulness, confusion, and difficulty to remember names of people she worked each day; the fact that she can still recognize her partner strongly suggest that she is having a mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease (Jackson-Siegal, 2005). In general, the entorhinal cortex is connected to the hippocampus – responsible for our memory formation, and the cerebral cortex. In the case of Lucinda, her memory loss or the short-term recall can be explained by the presence

Types of information Essay Example for Free

Types of information Essay Analysis of the different types of information used in the business that I chose. This task will be an analysis of how the purpose of information from task 1 will be developed into more detail. First there is verbal information this can be face-to-face or via a phone call with a customer or another person from another company this is the easiest form of communication because it is right there and then you will get a response from the customer straight away this is also called a two-way communication. The purpose of this type of information is for the customer to receive the right information about a product that they are trying to find out about, e.g. vehicle tax, parcels or anything about post office products. There are a few pros and cons of verbal communication. The pros of two-way communication is that you can see the person who is in front of you and you can also look at their body language while you are discussing about a  product and if they look confused you can spot it and try to give more detail so the customer is happy with the response to their question. Another pro is that if the customer wants to ask a question they will receive an answer at that moment whilst if they were on the internet they wouldn’t know when that person is going to be on in order to answer their question. The cons of verbal information are that if it’s a phone call you can’t see their body language so you don’t know if the customer could be confused with the way that the information is being told to them. Another con would be language barrier, this meaning that the person who you are speaking to may have a strong accent and might not be understood clearly and this may create issues while trying to help the customer with what they need help. Written communication is a more formal way and can be very useful in many cases, this is a one way communication as the response is not going to be at the same moment. The way that written communication is showed to post office employee and customers is in leaflets and whenever there is a change in a product they will send a booklet with all the information about the changes. The purpose of written communication is to inform a customer through a message in a way that they are able to understand what the leaflet is trying to say this is also a good reference point for people to go back to. A pro of written communication is that whoever is reading it will not have a problem understating it, whilst if a word was said it could easily be misunderstood and could have a different meaning to what was actually meant to be said. Another pro is that you can always keep a copy of what was written to come back for a reference. There are a couple cons to written communication one of them being is that if it comes by post it could be lost this means that you wouldn’t be able to know what was on that letter and also the people that sent it wouldn’t know that it was received also if its sent by email there is a possibility that it could be hacked. In the business it is essential that all workers have a good level of written skills as this is essential to that type of job. On-screen communication is used in many ways by a company in this case it is used to show the exchange rate money. The purpose of this way of communication is to inform the customers of the exchange rate and how much  of a foreign currency they can get for an amount of money of their choice. A pro to this is that the customer always knows the exchange rate of the product they want to buy also there is no way of the post office person not giving the right amount of money to the customer. A con to this is that if the screen is up to date than the customers wouldn’t be satisfied with the way that a product is being shown and also with incorrect information. Multimedia is used in many ways by companies. There is Facebook and Twitter page/s or TV adverts. The purpose for multimedia in this type of business, generally is just about advertising products, customer’s feedback and Ways of checking new products or finding information about other post offices e.g. news about them and what is happening at Royal Mail, E.g. what they might be planning to bring out. A pro to this is that many people who are/ would be interested in this type of product would be very happy about being able to find out about what products and what alterations are being done to older products. A con to this is that some people might not be able to find out about the changes through websites or TV adverts this could be as a result of not knowing where to look or when the adverts are showing. Web-based communication is used by the company. This is through the Royal Mail website which its purpose is to give the customer an idea about product prices, finding where a parcel is by searching for it through a barcode and shopping for products e.g. stamps. Having this website can make it a lot easier for customers which have queries and this would be the ideal place to share them. Also the royal mail website is a great way to shop for a wide variety of products like special stamps like Common Wealth Game stamps, First World War stamps etc. and business supplies. Task 3 Royal Mail has been a public service, operating as a government department or public corporation. However, following the Postal Services Act 2011 a majority of the shares in Royal Mail were floated on the London Stock Exchange on 15 October 2013 and the company became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index on 23 December 2013. The post office has undergone a lot of changes during the last two years as this has been part of the Royal Mail privatisation. Royal Mail since the privatisation has come up with many new  products in order to keep the customers happy and satisfied with their products. Royal mail is also planning another change during the Christmas time and this is probably to beat off competition. The decisions for this type of product change would have to go through the finance office and if they decide that this is a good decision which will need to be made in order to help the company move forward then the finance is going to be more than likely to fund it. After this decision has been made then it is up to the marketing side to go and make all the product design and specifications which are going to take over the old product. One thing that Royal Mail wants to see as part of this change is if the customers are feeling happier with the new product specifications. If the customers feel happy about the changes then the change was an appropriate decision which was undertaken by Royal Mail. This also means that one decision can lead to another decision. In this case the company would probably decide to keep the new product specifications out in the market. As Royal Mail is always competing against other companies to keep prices lower this would suggest that if more customers were using the post office for Royal Mail products this means that the company is ahead of other competitors. In order for the finance sector to fund any new projects that marketing has required to do them will first need to see a detailed plan of what the cost of the materials is going to be for example when the new idea for the labels for abroad parcels came forward, finance then would probably go to find out what the cost is going to be to supply all of the stores around UK with enough products. Then the next step of the finance – marketing job is for the marketing to find a way to advertise the new products but sometimes this is not the case. Royal Mail could basically just send you the new product and say here you go that’s the new product and it’s going to be available to the public form this date and so on. In their efforts of making the whole Post Office experience better for customers and increase profits Royal Mails is constantly coming up with new ideas and this is not only to beat off competition but also the main reason is to keep their customers happy and if that works then more customers would be happy of using their services. The finance and marketing area are the most important aspect of the Royal Mail company as without them the new ideas wouldn’t not be able to be financed and also the company would not be able do as good as they can and competing against other companies  would be a big challenge. This also means that marketing plays a key role in the company and how they do the advertising could mean the company doing good rather than bad. This all falls down to the decisions which are being made by these two sectors in order to keep the business in good shape. For the marketing sector they will look at many ideas from Facebook, twitter page/TV adverts. They will a lso encourage people to find out about new products through multimedia’s.