Congratulations on making it to the last lesson of the last module of this course. Let's reflect on where we've been in this course. Now remember the People Manager Value Proposition provides a guide to the key HR related task of effective people managers and HR professionals. And this provides a road map to the entire HR specialization. In the upcoming courses, we're gonna look at how to attract and retain employees. How to manage their performance, and how to motivate and reward them. So in this course, my goal has been to lay a foundation for those followup courses by looking at this part of the value proposition. Managers need to be able to translate organizational objectives into concrete accomplishments that workers need to pursue, and need to figure out how to devise a strategy for motivating and leading employees to fulfill those work objectives. But remember, as we've look at in this course, this doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's influenced by the legal environment, norms, labor unions and other factors. Now, when devising an HR strategy, remember that you have choices. Organizations and managers often default to very simplistic ways of managing people. Typically hierarchical, controlling ways of managing people, and often they blame it on the competitive landscape. Well the competitive dynamic is such that I don't have a choice. I have to manage my employees in a way that focuses on labor cost management, keeping labor cost under control. All right, but as we've seen in this course, that isn't necessarily the case. We looked at comparisons of companies in the same industry that have different HR strategies. You don't have to always go down the HR low road. Follow our courses in this specialization to a better way of managing people. What I've called the HR high road. Now part of going down the HR high road is understanding what makes your workers tick. What drives them to work? What can you use to engage them? So you need to understand what makes workers work. Why are workers working? Some workers are working primarily for income, others are looking for more psychological rewards, like positive self esteem, maybe a sense of belonging. Still others might be wanting to care or serve others, or fulfill other personal goals. Remember work is so complex that each of us puts together pieces in different ways. So it's not that work is about income, or fulfillment, or social belonging. It's that work can be different parts of income, fulfillment, social belonging, serving others, put together in different combinations in different ways for different people. Now this can be very challenging for a manager to figure out. However, that's why we've spent two modules thinking about the different reasons why people work. So hopefully, this can give you a basis for trying to think about the different pieces that people are putting together in different ways. Now, we also saw how economic, psychology, and sociology can be very useful for managers, but only if the assumptions of these different paradigms match the nature of your workers. So in thinking about, should I apply insights from economics or psychology or sociology, don't just apply the lessons blindly. Think critically and carefully as to whether the assumptions of those paradigms match the nature of your workers. So look at your workers, and do you see workers who fit the assumptions of economics, or of psychology, or of sociology? If they do, then I encourage you to apply the insights that we've talked about in this course. If they don't, then remember it's going to be dangerous to apply these insights and should be very careful about doing so. So don't try to fit square pegs into round holes. And remember you don't manage in a vacuum. There's a swirling vortex of organizational norms, social norms, laws, unions, and other factors comprising a very complex environment in which you're managing. This includes paying particular attention to employment and labor law in your country. However, don't manage offensively where you're going through the motions simply to try to avoid adverse legal action. Yes, you should always be consistent and non discriminatory. You should always focus on legitimate employee performance issues, legitimate job needs, but not because that's what the law often requires. Rather, you should do that because that's what good managers do, and use the law as a reminder of these sound managerial practices. Now also, if you're an HR manager, don't be the HR police. If you're a line manager insists that HR in your organization is a partner, not an enforcer. Lastly, embrace your role as a manager. Pay attention to policies and procedures so that you can hire people, evaluate their performance, reward them, but do this in a way that is inspiring, that shows vision, that uses strategic deployment of resources, and is able to drive change when things aren't working as effectively as they need to be. So putting all this together, embrace your role as a manager and a leader, and you're well on your way to being an effective people manager.
