There are two important aspects of this article, which are technology and empathy. What do you understand by technology and empathy? Technology is a general term for the processes by which human beings customize tools and machines to increase their control and understanding of the material environment (i.e., developing a more advanced tool from the pre-existing ones, the mobile phone evolution).
It is very interesting to note that most people think of technology only in terms of tangible products; computers and software, aircraft, pesticides, water-treatment plants, birth-control pills, and microwave ovens, to mention a few. There are other factors such as engineering know-how, manufacturing expertise, various technical skills and so on which are equally important.
Empathy can be defined as the human ability to put oneself in another’s place to understand better what others feel or think. When discussing technology, empathy shouldn’t be considered. Still, through the evolvement of technology to the productions of mobile agents who interact and work on behalf of their users, the word empathy came into the scene. Empathy is a core part of human reasoning and communication. With the rise in technology leading to the development of communication tools, it has become more crucial and important in the human relationship with technology.
Some time ago, I was opportune to be in a technology seminar tagged “Artificial Intelligence and its Ethics.” During this seminar, the speakers dwelt much on technology and empathy. How has technology affected the way of doing things and what is its result? For instance, with the emergence of new technologies in artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, and so on, empathy and ethics come into question because these gadgets don’t create themselves. They are products of humans and they relay whatever is programmed in them (and even the best of them that learn from the regular happenings and occurrences still learn from humans).
Relationship Between Technology And Empathy
There are lots of questions we ought to ask ourselves when considering a subject like this. Initially, technology doesn’t deal with human empathy; it is developed to assist humans in various activities. But over the years, the more technology advances, the more the empathic relationship. How technology affects human empathy depends on your view and opinion; you cannot just say technology has reduced human empathy just because that’s the way you view it, or that’s the way it affects you. Looking from both the negative and the positive sides of technology to empathy, there are important points to behold. Technology is learned and discovered daily, so the empathic relationship also changes as we learn new and advance in technology evolution.
Technology and empathy will become a vital discussion in the future because as mobile agents’ development comes around, it is surely going to affect human empathy. So many people have argued that empathy is not a keynote for discussion when talking about technology so far. The technological means does its job well and doesn’t cause any harm. There are further discussions about this and several questions must be asked. What was the state of interpersonal relationships between human beings before technological innovations such as social media came in place? How has it improved communication and relationships? How has it improved heart-to-heart discussion and human expression of the truth?
The relationship between technology and empathy wouldn’t have existed if there were no human technological aids. As said before, technology is not created to end human beings’ existence, but the wrong use of it might spell an end to it. For instance, if a bad person creates a bot (robot) to perform his or her bad atrocities but presents it in a good way or if it’s been hacked by outside to do a different task rather than its initial programmed task.
Influence Of Technology On Human Empathic Behaviour
So much has been said about the relationship between technology and empathy, now we are checking what has been the influence over the years of technology on empathy. If there is a relationship between the two, no matter how small it might be, we cannot talk about influence. Because of the rise in social media use, there has been a rise in research investigating the influence of social media use on adolescent’s psychological development.
As one of the arms of technology, social media has been at the most important and prioritized daily adventure by the old and young. There have been many positives about it, including improvement in self-esteem, social competence, friendship closeness, digital marketing, talent showcase, and assistance or help online.
There have also been negative reports on how social media has affected human empathy, which is the inappropriate use of social media, which includes social bully, exposure to pornographic content to underage groups, the easy spread of fake news and information, and an increase in the number of internet scammers.
Reports have shown that social media gave rise to an increase in internet fraudsters and scammers. Empathy leads us to experience and understands what other people are feeling, but in a world where you can keep yourself busy online without having to relate with peers. It has been said that children who grow alone without having to relate with peers or people find it hard to relate with people later in their lives.
From this perspective, it is safe to say that empathy is reduced among people. The goal of empathy is “interrelationship,” but with the rise in technological appliances where people can be alone without feeling the need of anybody. A survey was carried out among some American college students. The result shows that with the increase in the use of the internet, especially social media, empathy among these students is on a decline.
There are some arguments for why technology use, especially social media, has negatively affected human empathy. One of these arguments is that, even though social media has given us the opportunity to make new friends and facilitate connections online, it doesn’t enhance communication and social skills during offline meetings.
Another argument that is similar to the first one is that it is hard to tell how the person at the other end of the chat is feeling. You can’t tell what their body language is or their facial expressions, and you are limited to what the chat says. This means that a person might pretend while online and easily get away with it. Also, people have argued that technology has reduced empathy through social media because anybody can claim to be anything online.
Why Technology Requires Empathy
Engineers in various fields of technology do not undermine the experience of one important figure, which is the “End User.” Whenever there is an innovation, the engineers have the end user’s experience as their main priority. The end-user is the person who relies on technology to solve some critical problems and ease their workload. So, the users’ experience will prompt the engineers or the developers to improve on their subsequent editions of the device.
How can this be achieved? A thorough understanding of human behavior plays an important role in creating a user-friendly application or device. This is where empathy is needed in technology innovations. The developers and engineers are not creating for animals. Their sole goal is to assist humans in reducing their workload and getting jobs done easily.
This cannot be done without putting human feelings and relationships into consideration. Even in the creation of games, one of the things that makes it very interesting for the end-users is getting themselves immersed in the game (i.e., they can relate to the gaming experience). Since we know that empathy is the ability to understand and share feelings, in technological creations, empathy is needed to balance the act of being able to think and feel like an end-user. What is the gain when one creates assistance and people find it so hard to use or relate with it? So, the developer or engineer must use empathy to understand the behavior of the end-users.
Moreover, it is known that people who take a very logical approach to understanding an end user’s perspective are at risk of over-analyzing the situation on the ground and getting disconnected at the end. When attached and engrosses in emotions over a situation, trying to understand what the end-user might be feeling might result in sympathy.
Sympathy brings about an unproductive cycle of criticism. It won’t lead to any solution because sympathy only leads to feeling (sorry) for the potential end-users of the technology to implement rather than feeling with them. When the concept of empathy is applied to technological implementations, it leads to a stronger end-to-end process. It provides viable solutions to the problem of why the technology innovation in question was thought about.
Finally, the relationship between technology and empathy has come a long way to what it is presently, right from its (empathy) application in the development and implementation of the technological appliances down to how it influences the technology’s end-users.
The worldview and Belief System is an individual’s approach to understanding, encountering, and answering the world or a way of thinking of life. It can incorporate, yet not be restricted to, thoughts regarding God, nature, morals, and the natural world’s ideas. An individual’s worldview and belief system might be a combination of both strict and non-strict thoughts and may likewise be switching in light of the world up to them.
Everybody has a worldview, even little youngsters, and therefore they should be trained with the scholarly abilities and information to foster this. There are schools that aid kids in comprehending and exploring the different ideas of faith to help them incorporate worldview and belief systems in their education. Do you think your kids can include worldview and belief systems in real life?
What Does the Worldview and Belief System Teach You?
Here we are talking about What Does the Worldview and Belief System Teach You?
Worldview and belief systems help you understand the viewpoints.
Whether perusing entries in an SAT, completing books for your AP Lit class, or finding out about recent developments, understanding the basic worldview and belief systems will give you meaningful context-oriented data. You can grasp a creator’s contention by recognizing what they hold to be true regarding the world. An original decision of a questionable storyteller seems OK considering the creator’s faith in human instinct.
Government policies will be more reasonable with the information on the political philosophy of the political entertainers. However, the worldview and belief system do not only shape the student’s perspective in gaining knowledge; they learn how to look beyond the practicality of the work.
Without understanding contradicting sees, you will not have the option to safeguard your worldview. How might you guard Christianity without grasping the mentality of an unbeliever? What is the distinction between a polytheist and a nonbeliever? Where does profound quality come from? Understanding another worldview will assist you with addressing questions that your companions who can’t help contradicting you could inquire. Wouldn’t you want to defend your religion and know its facts for any counterargument?
Examining the worldview and belief system drives you to resolve a few essential inquiries. What makes something right or wrong? If God is great, where does insidious come from? What does achievement indeed mean? How might you integrate God into all that you do? These are significant inquiries that you may be starting to inquire about.
Right now is an ideal opportunity to begin contemplating those inquiries; examining a scriptural worldview will assist you with responding to those inquiries. What’s sad is that none of these teachings is taught in the current education system. Students only get to learn the practical implications without the opportunity to relate them to worldview and belief systems.
What Does Education Have to Offer About Worldview and Belief System
Education additionally consistently offers a worldview and belief system; it is rarely impartial. It depends on a dream of being a prospering individual and the meaning of gaining and deciphering information. So students should foster abilities to perceive, interpret and investigate the hidden presuppositions in any assemblage of information or conviction.
They ought to be urged to think about their worldview and its turn of events and perceive the intricacy of the connection between the individual and the institutional in worldview advancement. This piece of educational arrangement plans students for Worldview and belief system experiences with contrasts, whether convictions, thoughts, or ways of behaving, which they will meet in their classrooms and the more extensive world.
Conclusion
Worldview and belief systems can be advantageous for kids in schools, even preschoolers. It allows them to think with an open mind and teaches them to involve both the practicality of the world and the teachings of a belief system. However, some schools and colleges cannot incorporate worldview and belief systems in their curriculum. Do you think it is essential for your children to focus on their practical education and ignore the teachings of their worldview and belief system?
Technology has been a great gift from humans to humans. Today we cannot imagine our lives without it to the extent that we depend on it for our daily lives. In this article, we will remind you about the greatest positive impacts of technology that has been bestowed upon us by the Gods of Technology.
Here are some positive impacts of technology.
⦁ A Way to Promote Business
Technology has made it easy to reach out to people, making marketing more effective and less costly. Before social media had taken over the world, technology brands and organizations could only market their products and services through magazines and newspapers. Then came the era of television, where brands were marketed through costly television ads.
However, when social media became popular, the marketing cost dropped, and the potential reach increased. Internet marketing reached out to masses of people, which was not possible before. The biggest advantage came to small businesses, which did not have the budget to use television and radio as a marketing facility, but who could now market themselves on social media at a lower cost.
Social media has not only allowed businesses to cut their costs but has made audiences more accessible. Businesses can now find their target audience, identify their needs and cater to them personally. Businesses also benefit from social media’s analytical capabilities, which help them evaluate their business and become more responsive in the future. Analytics help them make adjustments in their marketing strategies and gives them a better overview of their campaigns.
It’s the 21st century, but still, many people are unable to attend college due to the large financial commitment they necessitate. However, unlike in the past, technology has made access to education, concise courses very easy. People who cannot attend college physically because of their jobs can enroll themselves in online courses and take them from the comfort of home. They can choose from a variety of courses and training to contribute to their careers. Its also due to positive impacts of technology.
For professionals and students who enjoy seminars but cannot do so because of travel issues, web seminars are present on the internet that they can access at very affordable costs. They can schedule their seminars and attend them virtually. They even get their certifications delivered to their homes.
This is also an opportunity for schools that want to educate their students through seminars but cannot accommodate them during school hours. Teachers can stream live seminars in the classroom, and the students can learn and enjoy collaborating in the seminars.
Even though online courses, training, and seminars were common before, the pandemic has led to an increase in these online education ways. The pandemic has definitely reminded us of the positive impact of technology!
⦁ Easy Access to Research
Research has definitely become easier thanks to the internet. Students can access journals online. They save their trips to the library and no longer need to spend hours searching for the right material. The right article is now just a click away. You do not have to go through dozens of books to carry out your research; you can type what you need and immediately get various options to cater to your research topic.
Research through the internet saves time and money that you previously had to spend on buying books and makes finding resources simpler.
⦁ Transportation
Positive impacts of technology has not only made it easier to travel but made travel much more accessible. Think about the past when it took months of travel on the sea when one had to go from one county to another. Now, airplanes have cut this time down dramatically. You can fly across the world, and it would just take you hours to do so.
Airports are nearer too so traveling to them is also no hindrance. Time is money, as they say, and technology has made traveling through a time fast. We have more time on our hands, which allows us to work, spend it with our loved ones, or do the things we love.
We talked about traveling to different countries and big cities, but have you ever appreciated the everyday transport available to you? Bullet trains travel at least six times faster than traditional trains. They give you more time and cut downtime spent traveling. Some years ago, you wouldn’t have thought about working in one corner of the city and living in the other, but the bullet trains are a gift from technology, offering safe and efficient travel.
⦁ Household Technology
How Positive Impacts of Technology changed life style? Imagine doing your laundry with your hands, and imagine washing the dishes after every meal. Can you imagine your life without the dishwasher and the washing machine? You can’t. Now think about all the other home appliances that you use daily. The television, blender, refrigerator, microwave, electric heater and what not! Technology has advanced so quickly that it allows people to control home appliances from their smartphones. Appliances like refrigerators can be connected to smartphones and allow the user to order food online or go through recipes.
Life without household appliances is unimaginable, with life getting tougher and faster with each day. Home appliances not only help us clean up and do our chores, but they let us do our chores faster, so we have more time on our hands for our families and ourselves.
Now people do not spend hours washing clothes or cleaning dishes; they want it all to be done in minutes, and these home appliances allow you to do it. Home appliances give us a hassle-free life. What would we have done without the positive impact of technology making our everyday life simpler?
There is no doubt that positive impacts of technology has made our life simpler and easy, but too much technology can cause burnout. It would help if you learned to keep a balance in your life. If you’re making too much use of technology, then stop and recharge by connecting to nature. Living in the concrete world for too long can be unhealthy, so take a break once in a while and recharge by staying away from technology!
Just as you budget your money, it is essential to budget your time because lost money can be regained, but it is gone forever if your time is gone. Doing financial planning and sticking to the budget goes a long way toward reaching your money goals. You have to think similarly about time also. You can always make more money, but you can’t make it when it comes to time. This is the reason you should budget your time like you budget your money.
Budgeting your time can help you keep your life in balance always. It bridges the gap between the significant goals and high-level responsibility areas and the external demands, including the practical tasks. As an extra perk, budgeting your time allows you to deal with productivity killers effectively like procrastination, perfectionism, and focus with just one swoop.
Why Do You Need To Budget Your Time?
If you have to choose between your health and family, what will you choose? Yes, this question is silly and lacks any sense as both are equally important and require your attention. Although you can’t select between family and health, at any moment, you need to select between their sensible equivalents “call dad” and “go to the gym.” When you break down the complex areas into distinct tasks, it quickly forgets and how important they are, making bad priority decisions.
Unfortunately, it is the easiest way to make such decisions. Similarly, you can start paying extra attention to just one aspect of your life unconsciously and forget the other things. Suppose you are focusing too much on the activities related to work. And after some time, you will notice that you have been overlooking another crucial aspect, like your family. So, you try to get family affairs on track to realize that another aspect of your life gets neglected. Then you handle that aspect, and it goes on.
You get trapped into this vicious cycle that always keeps you in reactive or proactive mode, and you lag in most aspects. Everyone faces these problems of bad prioritizing to an extent in their lives. But, you can replace this with a better strategy- time budget.
The time budget is one of the best methods to balance your life in a better way and fight neglect-based prioritizing. Budgeting your time means preemptively allocating your time to the tasks that are important to you. Invest the perfect amount of time in each vital aspect of your life, and then follow the budget for the duration of the allocated period.
Just as you budget your finances, budget your time. Following the time budget will prevent you from wasting your time on inessential activities. With this, it will help you gain insights on how to spend your precious time. It is as easy as it sounds. Your time budget is a practical book to a complex decision on how and what to invest your valuable time in. It frees your mental energy and offers you peace of mind to focus on other tasks you have allocated a specific amount of time.
Benefits of Budgeting Your Time
Time budgeting teaches you to stay motivated, aware of your abilities, and disciplined. Budgeting your time helps you have a better life balance as you have more time to spend on valuable activities. Besides, it reduces procrastination and makes you a more efficient and productive human being.
Let’s have a look at the benefits of time budgeting:
Self-Awareness
While handling a task, either you are reactive or proactive, which means your time relies heavily on your nature and habits. If one can complete a specific job in one hour, it might take just thirty minutes, and it depends from individual to individual. Thus, you can create a more accurate time budget by assessing how much time you need to complete a particular task. Being aware of your abilities will help you analyze your time spending and improve your habits, making you more productive.
Prioritization
If you devote more time to an unimportant task, you may end up accomplishing nothing. By budgeting your time, you can recognize your vital tasks accordingly. You may feel like you are putting on your best foot forward but still falling short on time. It is because you consider essential work and more work as the same thing. So you end up spending more energy and time on less important things, which deprives you of accomplishing more important goals. Once lost, time can never be regained. It is a valuable resource that needs a calculated investment for better productivity. It would help if you did the right things at the right time.
Realizing Value of Time
Time management and budget require commitment. You can’t just set aside two hours a day, three days a week, and expect to get excellent outcomes as you desire. You have to plan and prioritize. Then you must set the deadlines to get your tasks done. You must discipline yourself to resist multitasking and avoid procrastinating. You will ultimately have more free time and will manage your time efficiently. You will learn how to take control of your life, stay more productive and use shortcuts.
Track Your Progress
Budgeting your time can help you to be more accountable. If you take your time and realize that you have spent most of your time scrolling through Instagram reels, that’s a clue that you might need to slim down. You can take the help of various tools such as time-tracking apps or reminder apps to keep you on track with the time budget. They can help you to be on schedule. You can use apps to ensure due submissions, and they can enhance your tracking experience and measure your progress. Besides, it also helps you to analyze the areas where you need more time.
Motivation
Time budget can turn your hectic day-to-day life into an easy-to-manage routine. Having an overview of your daily activities and having a sense of control can make you feel more productive. A balanced life requires more than just paying bills and getting food on the table. And it needs taking time out for the family, having fun, and getting relaxed. It is next to impossible to fit everything into your schedule between family, kids, and work. However, if you plan, time can ease you of the pressure.
How to Budget Your Time?
Organize Yourself
Just for a moment, forget about the tasks. Instead, focus on the elements at a high level of your life, the significant roles, big goals, huge responsibilities, or whatever feels best for you. These areas of your life must get regular attention, and consider them the important ones of your life. You can think of anything you feel necessary, be as broad or as particular as you wish.
Allocate Time for Every Area
After outlining the key areas, you must learn to allot time for every one of them. It is a personal decision. However, here are some helpful points:
Ignore present tasks. Time budgeting means allocating your available time in an ideal way as considered by you. Keep some time extra for crises or other unexpected circumstances that are just temporary.
Conserve your budgeted time. Don’t budget your entire time. Always keep a window for random tasks and unavoidable external demands that might pop up. Start by budgeting half of your available time and adjust it to feel more confident in the process.
Review time budget regularly to make it work. Please don’t wait long for its evaluation and make it more practical. Seven days are great for planning the time budget and reviewing it.
Time Tracking
Like a money budget, you must track your time spending to ensure it comes achieved or come close to what you have planned at first. You can use tools and several ways for time tracking. Divide your time into separate units, like an hour each making it simpler to track. You open your calendar and enter the time needed to complete a task. You can track these separate units instead of tracking the running time. Besides, you can add more mixes to it, such as increased focus, overcoming perfectionism, conquering procrastination, and others.
Review Your Time Spent
It’s completely normal not to match the entire plan of what you have planned in your time budget, and it’s OK! Reviewing your time, your performance, and adjusting the budget accordingly is equally essential. It helps keep your system flexible and dynamic as the priorities change from time to time, and to know more about yourself and spend your valuable time.
Conclusion
Sticking to a time budget is quite challenging, but it’s worth the effort in the end. However, most people fail to stick to their time budgets because there is seemingly no loss on the surface, and it occurs to them only later when they deal with busy schedules and harsh deadlines. Thus, you design a daily schedule or week-long, it needs to be valuable and focus on time-saving.
By budgeting your time, you can organize and balance your personal and professional life in a more meaningful and efficient way. You can realistically accomplish your goals with a flawlessly executed time budget that offers you the needed leverage.
Performance improvement is a form of organizational development focused on increasing outputs and improving efficiency for a particular process or procedure. Performance improvement is simply a strategy under the umbrella of performance management to help improve employees’ work efficiency and growth.
According to Wikipedia, it can also be said to be measuring the output of a particular business process or procedure, then modifying the process or procedure to increase the output, increase efficiency, or increase the effectiveness of the process or procedure. In a normal organizational setting, performance improvement is put in place by the managers and the governing bodies to measure the current level of performance of every employee in the organization and then develop ideas to improve their performance and efficiency to achieve higher output.
Performance improvement can be employed by an individual or an organization. For instance, a soccer player can access his performance and decide on his performance or a team as a whole can decide on how they can improve their performance. Performance improvement can be at an individual level or a group level and can be addressed with formal and informal approaches.
Performance improvement can occur at different levels which include the employee level (individual level), unit level (subgroups), and the organization as a whole (the team). When there is a drop in performance, it might be very difficult to find out what went wrong. Questions will be asked to find out why there is a drop in performance and productivity. For instance, if an organization doesn’t meet its set goals for a particular time, it will need to find out what the problem could be. If performance is evaluated, performance improvement will be very easy.
Performance management is a very large scheme that involves quality control, performance evaluation, performance improvement, and so on. Quality control is also a form of performance management that focuses on the consistent quality of performance and productivity. Quality control helps to maintain a high stake of performance, and keep every worker and employee on a high level to produce high productivity.
When employing quality control, as said in the keyword, it deals with quality maintenance and it is most of the time employed by companies with a high number of competitions. This is why performance improvement is essential because poor performance will lead to poor and below-par productivity which is detrimental to the growth of the company.
Performance Improvement Plan
It is often regarded as PIP (Performance Improvement Plan). A performance improvement plan can be defined as a formal document targeted at helping employees to improve their performances through talent management and a specific strategy. An organization needs a performance improvement plan to carry out its plans effectively.
It is known that plans are written down and effectively carried out than plans created and left in the head. You will be able to track the success rate and performance improvement with a proper performance improvement plan. Performance improvement plan gives managers and employers the opportunity to strategize and work on effective plans to improve individual performance.
It is also called an employee performance improvement plan. It is a formal document that expresses continuous or recurring behavioral and performance issues as well as planning achievable goals for individual employees. The performance improvement plan usually outlines a specific work frame for individual employees to regain and maintain an acceptable level of standing in an organization.
The improvement plan is used to help employees to meet specific goals which they are struggling to achieve, as well as trying to stop some wrong behavioral advances. A performance improvement plan is essential for both the employees and the employers in the sense that, when the plan works out well, it pays both parties off.
At first, when an employee is first offered a job in an organization, he or she is reviewed over some time and then the organization decides on what improvement plan suits that employee. When there is a well-written plan for improvement, it is very easy to follow up.
The employee performance improvement plan is also a structured developmental approach targeted at improving employees’ performance through talent management strategy and formal documentation. That is why managers and employers need to have an active plan aimed at improving performance. A good leader or manager must have a good plan in place and must know how to relate with individuals.
The management of each organization will have to work with the employee to design a plan that works for them and also prompt discussion sessions to know the exact areas for improvement. It also involves performance reviews because if there is no performance review, the managers might not know where to improve on. Performance reviews help to ensure that the employees are working towards the outlined plans.
Managers need to monitor the progress of these plans to get necessary feedback as regards the work performance if there is an improvement or disciplinary measures are needed.
Way for Performance Improvement
There are ways to improve performance, we will discuss a few of them.
Set Clear Goals: Goals and objectives are the foundation of performance improvement; this gives the employee a total understanding and clarity of what the company’s goals are. The more precise the goals of a company are, the easier it becomes to complete and achieve them. If you don’t have a set goal for your company, the employees will not have clarity on what you are hoping to achieve. A performance review is easy when the goal is clear and then you can think of performance improvement.
Communicate with the employee: To maintain a high-performance level, it is collaborative work between the managers (or employers) and the employees. A good communication skill is required by the managers to know where the employees are lacking and what are the necessary steps they must take. Communicating your expectations to the employee helps to show clarity of goals to the employees. When there is no proper communication between both parties, the employees become disengaged and may act opposite to the laid down plans.
Set regular checkups: As humans, we tend to off way without proper checkups from superiors or managers. Regular checkups provide and ensure that the employees are on the right track and more importantly it helps the company’s structure. It is also important to run regular checkups to improve effectiveness, guide and encourage the workers.
Highlight performance reducing issues: There is always a reason behind a fall in performance by the employees, finding out what is the issue and discussing with the affected employee how best to solve the issue. Some might be faced with family issues, personal issues and even some might not find the working environment very convenient and conducive for work.
Single out best performance: One of the ways of implementing a good performance improvement scheme is to single out the best performer among the employee and praise them. This encourages the rest of the team to want to do more. Probably, if prices are in place to appreciate the best worker, it will serve as an encouragement to the rest of the staff.
Develop a good performance improvement plan (PIP): After all the steps above have been done, the next thing is to develop a good and working performance improvement plan. You must understand the nature of the work as the manager and a working improvement plan that is not too strenuous and effective.
Provide extra support or training when required: After doing a performance review of the staff, you might find out that the drop in performance is in lack of knowledge, organizing extra training or support won’t be a bad idea.
What Are The Benefits Of Performance Improvement?
The effect of performance improvement on employees and the whole organization cannot go unnoticed because it affects the productivity and effectiveness of the whole organization at large. So, what are the benefits?
It improves productivity: The main goal of performance improvement is to improve productivity. After a successful performance improvement scheme is done, managers and employers should expect a massive change in the productivity level of their workers. The poor performers would improve, the average performers will become top workers and the initial top performers would get better.
It gives room for improvement: Nobody is an island of knowledge; one can only get better. There is room for improvement when a performance improvement plan is in place. It gives room to become more versatile.
Improved quality and error reduction: The quality of work becomes better when there is performance improvement and there is a drastic reduction in the number of errors they usually commit.
It improves employee satisfaction: Performance improvement improves employee satisfaction; this happens when they find out that they have improved and found easy things they couldn’t do before.
Performance improvement is good and has a lot of results but may be challenging at times. Part of the challenges includes the implementation of the plan, difficult management, and the inability to respond to change.
If you want to learn more about performance improvement and you are a thought leader, you can contact us and join the community of people like you.
What is Informational Influence? Information can be said to be a piece of related knowledge about a subject topic while influence can be defined as the power to affect, control, or manipulate something or someone. Informational influence is those step by step processes that challenge an individual’s belief and orientation about something or his way of life.
It can also refer to a piece of new information or argument an individual stumbles upon or presented to, so that he can change his beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. Someone described informational influence as a situation whereby an individual reacts or makes decisions based on the information someone else had provided and has convinced him to be true.
It is very easy to convince an unstable notion about a thing. For instance, someone whose belief about some aspects of life is shaky can be easily manipulated. This means that a person with an uncertain notion about what is correct about a particular subject topic is easy to bend to the informational influence around him.
We must ask ourselves some real questions so that we will be able to have a deep understanding of this topic. Why do people behave the way they do? What are the things that influence a man to make certain decisions or react in some kind of way? What causes a man to exhibit some kinds of behavioral traits?
What are the roles information plays in changing individuals? Informational is powerful that is why the information reaching children when they are growing up must be filtered by their parents or guardian. The information has a way to influence our interpersonal relationships.
Individuals might choose to depend on the views of some experts or the opinions of some trusted peers who they believe are credible. The endpoint in their minds is to arrive at a correct conclusion when they conform to those views. Informational influence is seen as powerful on people who are new to a subject topic or people who don’t know what to think about the subject topic, they try as much as possible to gather relative information and at the end conform to the one, they feel is likely to be realistic and correct.
Why Is Informational Influence Important?
There are times in one’s life when we don’t know how to behave, we simply copy other people or use their ideologies. These people we copied have indirectly served as sources of information to us and our belief the information is reliable because these people are credible. In making decisions that involve others, we care so much about what they would say or think about us, following this credible information gives us a certain level of assurance that we are on the right course.
Informational influence as we know is often the best result an individual arrived at after comparing opinions. Comparing opinions helps to get a level of accuracy or correctness with the information on the ground, so this helps to guide our decision-making and opinions. So, why is informational influence important? Informational influence leads to real, long-lasting changes in beliefs and opinions.
Informational influence happens mostly when there are choices but we do not know which one of the options is correct or is the right decision to take when an urgent decision is needed or conforming to experts because we believe they know better than us. In situations like this, we forsake our abilities and rely on other people’s opinions.
What Is The Difference Between Informational Influence And Normative Influence?
Informational influence occurs when people conform to experts’ views, peer views, or information available to compare and contrast opinions to find the most likely to be the correct answer. Normative influence on the other hand is when people conform to rules or information to be accepted or gain ground in a group or society.
Normative influence is conformity based on one’s desire to fulfill others’ expectations and gain acceptance (Myers, 2009) while informational influence is conformity under acceptance of evidence about the reality that has been provided by others (Myers, 2009). In Normative influence, individuals change their beliefs not necessarily seeking correctness but acceptance.
For example, if you are in a gang of people that takes alcohol before you can fit into that group, you must also join them in doing whatever they are doing.
This happens both in good behaviors and bad ones depending on the group you want to fit in. Someone who engages in bad acts such as drug trafficking, smoking, drinking, theft, and other bad acts will earn the respect of the lords and cabals of such group, and the more dangerous the act he is involved in, the more respect he gets.
Informational influence helps in finding the truth and also testing the correctness of a piece of information.
Normally, we can rely on our instincts to do some things but getting information and data from credible sources and applying them to our reality tends to set us on the right path.
Relationship Between Informational Influence And Thought Leadership
Thought leaders are notable experts that are recognized as an authority in a specialized field and whose expertise is sought and often rewarded. They are also opinion leaders and figures people go to meet in their area of expertise. Thought leaders are notable experts and visioners with positive reputations for helping others with their experience, knowledge, and insight.
They are also said to be people who based on their expertise and perspective in their area of specialization inspire people with innovative ideas, offer unique guidance, turn ideas into realities and replicate success in their other areas of life. You can read more on thought leadership on our website.
What is the relationship between thought leadership and Informational influence? It is very direct because of who thought leaders are, they exert a change on their followers which indirectly influences their opinion and beliefs. Leadership and influence go alongside, a thought leader must be careful of what information he gives out because some people out there have so much reliance on any information he gives out.
As individuals, people develop a likeness for some people and like to follow their principles which indirectly puts them under the thought leader. A thought leader is a direct source of Informational influence on his followers.
Constraints To Informational Influence
There has been a major constraint to whether the informational influence is good because an individual decides and agrees within himself if an opinion is right or wrong. Here comes the issue, so many people have argued that deciding on whatever is right is relative because our view on many things differs.
For instance, in a group of people where decisions are meant to be made by the group, opinions are tendered and the majority wins in such a situation. The majority’s opinion that won doesn’t mean it is the right or the correct thing to do but it won based on the majority’s influence, causing the minority group to conform to the views of the majority group.
Many have also argued that there is no difference between normative influence and informational influence depending on the context of the argument because at times the informational influence the majority group is having on the minority group causes them to change their opinion and conform to theirs in not to achieve which option is correct but to comply to what the entirety of the group wants and fitting into it.
This kind of situation satisfies both the Informational influence and the normative influence depending on the correctness of the opinions tendered by the majority group. It can be said to be an informational influence if the majority group’s opinion is correct and the minority group’s opinion is incorrect.
An opinion cannot be equally correct to everybody in the group, be it right or wrong. So, if the right opinion is raised by the majority group, the opposition is expected as well. The situation said above can also be said to be a normative influence if the majority group’s opinion is not in the best interest of the group but to satisfy some selfish gain by the leaders or the majority group.
Summary
This can be seen in a democratic government, when votes are cast to elect leaders into government positions, the ruling or the majority party might influence the interest of the people by buying them to their side even when they are not the best for the post. It can also be seen when impeachment is about to happen since the majority will decide, the votes favor them whether they stand for the right thing or not.
In conclusion, as rightly said above, informational influence can be measured with the level of acceptance by people of a person’s opinion, view, or judgment about an unclear situation. Informational influence is good to follow when the sources are credible, reliable, and not misleading.
