Develop your organizational culture and leadership  - TheJobNetwork

Develop your organizational culture and leadership   - TheJobNetwork A critical task for any HR professional is to help ensure that their company’s organizational culture and leadership accurately and effectively reflects its values, beliefs, and mission. How does your company fare in this critical area?In today’s impossibly crowded business climate, having a clearly developed culture and identity is essential for an organization. According to Inc., â€Å"Culture has always been important, but today, it’s becoming more than just a buzzword. Culture is an important differentiator to set your company apart from the competition. It’s also what attracts the right talent and brings in the right customers†¦ Plus, with more than 30% of the workforce now made up of Millennials,  according to the Pew Research Center, culture is more important than ever. Millennials want to work for companies that share their same values. They want to feel like their work has a purpose and makes a difference. In short, they want a good cultur e fit.†With companies eager to rise above the noise in their respective industries and connect with their target audiences, all in an effort to be successful, a key piece of the puzzle is developing an organizational culture and presence that’s transparent and elicits positive feelings- both from within the company and from prospective customers. Inc. identifies four primary factors why this is so important:Culture builds brand identity.Your company’s personality and how your organization is perceived by the world at large help form your brand identity. According to Inc., culture is what tells the world who you are as a brand. â€Å"The more your audience understands and identifies with your brand, the more they’ll want to buy from you.† Everyone wants to feel like you’re talking to them personally, and in order to do that, you have to establish a company vibe that people can relate to.Culture increases loyalty among employees.Do you want you r company’s employees to love coming to work each day and feel a loyalty toward helping fulfill your organization’s mission (beyond their paychecks)? Of course you do, and the best way to make this happen is to help them connect with your company’s core culture. According to Inc., â€Å"Companies with a strong culture have employees who like the challenges of their job, get along well with their co-workers and enjoy the atmosphere of the workplace†¦ Culture gives employees a driving goal and purpose for what they do. It connects your leadership team with the rest of the employees and binds them with a set of shared beliefs. Your employees want to feel like they are contributing to something larger than themselves.†hbspt.cta.load(2785852, '9e52c197-5b5b-45e6-af34-d56403f973c5', {});Culture attracts and retains talent.A company with a strong culture and well-perceived brand identity does not have to work very hard to attract and retain top talent from around the world- rather, it will attract talent to you. Once people are a part of your team, they’ll be energized and continually drawn to supporting your organization’s core goals and mission. It will make your job as an HR professional easier while helping your company to operate at peak levels- a real win-win.Culture makes advocates out of employees.When employees genuinely feel good about the work they do and the company they work for, they become effective brand advocates. According to Inc., â€Å"It’s true that good talent knows [good talent]. And when your employees are happy with their work, they are more likely to share with others. They’ll spread the word about their positive experience with your company, and you’ll soon gain a strong reputation.†Hopefully, it’s now clear why having a well-developed organizational culture and supportive leadership structure is important for the health and success of your company. But as an HR professional, how do you affect real organizational change in an effort to develop and maintain your culture? The Society for Human Resource Management recently published an article that discusses the role of HR professionals in the development of organizational culture and outlines key steps you can take to make positive, lasting change.According to the article, â€Å"The key to running a successful organization is to have a culture based on a strongly held and widely shared set of beliefs that are appropriately supported by strategy and structure. When an organization has a strong culture, three things happen: Employees know how top management wants them to respond to any situation, employees believe that the expected response is the proper one, and employees know that they will be rewarded for demonstrating the organization’s values.†As an HR professional, you play a key role in this cultural development. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, â €Å"Strategic thinking and planning must extend beyond merely meeting business goals and focus more intently on an organization’s most valuable asset- its people.†To this end, HR professionals should focus on building a strong organizational culture by:Being a role model for the organization’s beliefsReinforcing organizational valuesEnsuring that organizational ethics are defined, understood and practicedEnabling two-way communications and feedback channelsDefining roles, responsibilities, and accountabilitiesProviding continuous learning and trainingSustaining reward and recognition systemsEncouraging empowerment and teamsPromoting a customer-supplier work environmentRecognizing and solving individual and organizational problems and issuesOnce a strong organizational culture is set in place, HR professionals can do a great deal to maintain the work done in this area, including the following:Mindful hiring practices, including looking at the organization’ s vision and mission and conducting cultural fit interviewsOnboarding programs that help employees become enmeshed in the organization’s cultural frameworkReward and recognition programs that incentivize employees whose behavior supports the company’s values and missionThere you have it- some helpful background on the power of organizational culture and leadership, along with effective tools for building and maintaining your organization’s brand identity. Use the strategies and advice presented here to help set up your company for lasting success!

Meaning of Gender in English Grammar

Meaning of Gender in English Grammar Gender is a  grammatical classification which in Modern English applies primarily to the third-person singular personal pronouns. Also known as  grammatical gender. Unlike many other European languages, English no longer has masculine and feminine inflections for nouns  and  determiners.   EtymologyFrom Latin, race, kind. Examples and Observations Although English and German are descendants of the same branch of Germanic, viz. West Germanic, they are characterized by rather different developments in the course of their histories. . . .While German preserved the system of grammatical gender inherited from Germanic and ultimately from Indo-European, English lost it and replaced it by natural gender, a development which is assumed to have taken place in late Old English and early Middle English, i.e. roughly between the 10th and the 14th century. . . .(Dieter Kastovsky, Inflectional Classes, Morphological Restructuring, and the Dissolution of Old English Grammatical Gender. Gender in Grammar and Cognition, ed. by Barbara Unterbeck and Matti Rissanen. Mouton de Gruyter, 1999)   The Loss of Gender in Middle English[F]unctional overload . . . seems to be a plausible way to account for what we observe in Middle English, that is, after Old English and Old Norse had come into contact: gender assignment often diverged in Old English and Old Norse, which would have readily led to the elimination of it in order to avoid confusion and to lessen the strain of learning the other contrastive system. . . .[I]n an alternative account, it was the contact with French that played the role of a catalyst in the eventual  loss of gender in Middle English: when French entered the English language, the distinction of gender became problematic, because speakers were confronted with two quite different gender categories. Since it is always difficult to learn gender in a second language, the consequence of this conflict was that gender was given up in Middle English.(Tania Kuteva and  Bernd Heine, An Integrative Model of Grammaticalization.   Grammatical Replication and Borro wability in Language Contact, ed. by  Bjà ¶rn Wiemer, Bernhard Wlchli, and Bjà ¶rn Hansen. Walter de Gruyter, 2012) Gendered PetsEven in English, which does not have a full-blown grammatical gender system, there is a tendency to ignore the sex of some animals but still refer to them with gendered forms. Many speakers use she indiscriminately for cats and he for dogs.(Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet, Language and Gender, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2013) American Males and Their Female Cars- I smiled back at him and toyed with all of the gadgets in the car.Oh, shes nice, aint she? This is top of the line here, he told me.Why do men refer to cars as she? I asked just for the hell of it.Because were men, Byron answered. He laughed, a strong hearty laugh. Maybe it was too hearty. He was really pleased with his sale.(Omar Tyree, For the Love of Money. Simon and Schuster, 2000)- American males often refer to their cars as a she, thereby revealing their dominance over the machines and women . . ..(Tony Magistrale, Hollywoods Stephen King. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) Gender and Third-Person Singular PronounsThe 3rd person singular pronouns contrast in gender: - The masculine gender pronoun he is used for males - humans or animals that have salient enough characteristics for us to think of them as differentiated (certainly for gorillas, usually for ducks, probably not for rats, certainly not for cockroaches).- The feminine gender pronoun she is used for females, and also, by extension, for certain other things conventionally treated in a similar way: political entities ( France has recalled her ambassador) and certain personified inanimates, especially ships ( May God bless her and all who sail in her.).- The neuter pronoun it is used for inanimates, or for male and female animals (especially lower animals and non-cuddly creatures), and sometimes for human infants if the sex is unknown or considered irrelevant. . . . No singular 3rd person pronoun in English is universally accepted as appropriate for referring to a human when you dont want to specify sex. . . . The pronoun most widely used in such cases is they, in a secondary use that is interpreted semantically as singular.(Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, A Students Introduction to English Grammar. Cambridge University Press, 2006) Agreement With IndefinitesUnder close scrutiny, [the rule mandating singular agreement with indefinites] emerges as a pragmatically cumbersome, linguistically unreliable, and ideologically provocative rule, which entered the canon under false pretenses.(Elizabeth S. Sklar, The Tribunal of Use: Agreement in Indefinite Constructions. College Composition and Communication, December 1988) Pronunciation: JEN-der