Feelgood Management - Requirements and Tasks: Practical Guide with Case Studies

162 Pages·2022·4.116 MB·English

by  Jessica Lange

Jessica Lange
Feelgood
Management -
Requirements
and Tasks
Practical Guide with Case Studies
Feelgood Management - Requirements and
Tasks
Jessica Lange
Feelgood Management -
Requirements and Tasks
Practical Guide with Case Studies
Jessica Lange
WERTEmanagement Dr. Jessica Lange
Bokholt-Hanredder, Germany
ISBN 978-3-662-65793-5 ISBN 978-3-662-65794-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65794-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part
of Springer Nature 2022
This book is a translation of the original German edition “Feel Good Management – Anforderungen und
Aufgabengebiete” by Lange, Jessica, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE in 2019. The translation was
done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human
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Preface
I am delighted that you have chosen to read this book. Considering the needs of employees
or colleagues has actually always been an important topic; however, the relevance is now
intensified by various developments. This need is increasingly being addressed through
Feelgood Management. However, this corporate function is often still unclear in its mean-
ing and design and is interpreted differently by different companies. This book aims to
shed light on this: What is Feelgood Management, and what are the tasks of a Feelgood
Manager.
This book is aimed at existing and future Feelgood Managers who, on the one hand,
want to get clarity and understanding about the position and tasks and, on the other hand,
want to deepen or broaden their knowledge in key areas of responsibility. Furthermore,
this book is not only useful for Feelgood Managers, but for everyone who manages
employees. Every manager can also benefit from the contents of this book. The recogni-
tion and consideration of employee needs is a task of personnel management, which is
often neglected due to the high burden of operational business. However, this book can
provide you with key insights and simple ways to do this despite a busy schedule. A
Feelgood Manager can relieve you of this management task. If you do not have one,
Feelgood Management is still a task for every manager. If the tasks of a Feelgood
Management are carried out – no matter if by the manager oneself or by a Feelgood
Manager – the result will be happier employees who gladly contribute their full potential
to the company. A win-win situation.
So how did I come to write this book? Two paths have led to this in my life, which have
since merged into one broad path.
In hindsight and with today’s knowledge, I would describe myself as a natural Feelgood
Manager. Before becoming self-employed and now teaching for the FOM Hochschule für
Oekonomie und Management, I worked in various companies and in various industries as
an employee. Within a short time, many colleagues came to me with their worries and
problems. In many positions, I always had a good connection to the management and so
many hoped that I would address the problems there – without them having to take action
themselves or even having their name mentioned. A colleague once said to me that actu-
ally someone was always standing in my doorway talking about a professional or personal
v
vi Preface
issue, and then asked me when and how I would even do my normal job. I managed to do
this anyway, thank goodness, but I have been able to take a lot of experience from that time
into my consulting today.
The other way is my academic education. I wrote my diploma thesis in business admin-
istration on the subject of corporate compliance in German SMEs. This was exactly the
context in which I was working as an employed consultant at the time. Even though com-
pliance has a broad legal focus and I worked a lot with lawyers on this topic and on risk
management in general, I became more and more interested in compliance in the broader
sense, which also includes value management, during this time. This led me to the topic of
my later doctoral thesis “Value-Based Management in Municipal Energy Supply,” which
also forms a central basis for my current consulting and teaching activities.
In my former experiences as an employee as well as my knowledge from the studies
and empirical knowledge from current clients, I was taught that missing values, unhealthy
culture, and a lack of consideration are leading to problems with employees and clients.
Different value-based measures can provide these problems and achieve a high impact in
the long run.
With regard to employees, Feelgood Management is a central instrument here.
This book is, first and foremost, a practice book and a workbook. It is written from
practice for practice. It is less about a detailed explanation of theoretical concepts or sci-
entific models, but rather about a practice-oriented understanding. At many points, there
are reflection questions and exercises to help you actually transfer the content presented
into your individual professional practice. In this way, you can derive great benefits from
this book. Work with it, deal with the contents. Ingest the knowledge and try it out in prac-
tice. This book is not so much meant to be read through in one sitting, but rather to be
worked with on a regular basis. Read a chapter, dive deep into the content, and deal inten-
sively with the reflection questions and exercises. Many of the exercises have sample solu-
tions or examples at the end of the chapters. However, do not look at them too early but
deal with the contents yourself. This often brings you an even greater gain in knowledge.
I hope you enjoy reading and working with this book. I hope that it brings you and your
employees or colleagues a benefit, because this is my intention.
Best regards!
Bokholt-Hanredder, Germany Dr. Jessica Lange
Jessica Lange
Contents
1 Introduction to Feelgood Management 1
1.1 What Is Feelgood Management? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Objectives of Feelgood Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Current Status and Future Significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.4 Possibilities of Organizational Embedding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.5 Sample Solutions and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2 Tasks and Requirements of the Feelgood Manager at a Glance 21
2.1 Areas of Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.2 Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.2.1 Professional Requirements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2.2 Personal Requirements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.3 Coaching as a Central Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4 Sample Solutions and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3 Further Development of the Corporate Culture 41
3.1 Companies as Social Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.2 What Is a Corporate Culture? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3 How Is a Corporate Identity Formed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.4 Analysis of the Corporate Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.5 Ways of Changing the Corporate Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.5.1 Change Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.5.2 Dealing with Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.6 Sample Solutions and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4 Improvement of Internal Communication 75
4.1 Basics of Communication in the Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2 Conducting Employee Appraisals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
vii
viii Contents
4.3 Special Communication Tasks of the Feelgood Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.4 Employee Surveys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.5 Conflict Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.5.1 Identification of Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.5.2 Resolution of Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.6 Sample Solutions and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5 Support of the Personnel Management 107
5.1 The Feelgood Manager as Support for Onboarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.2 The Feelgood Manager as a Support for Outplacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.3 Building a Culture of Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.4 Work-Life Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.5 New Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.6 Employee Motivation, Satisfaction, and Loyalty as Central Success
Factors of the Feelgood Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.7 Sample Solutions and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
6 Self-Management of the Feelgood Manager and Support of Company
Health Management 137
6.1 Self-Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
6.2 Time Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.3 Dealing with Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
6.4 Dealing with Burn-Out, Bore-Out, and Internal Resignation . . . . . . . . . . . 146
6.5 Occupational Health Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
6.5.1 Nutrition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.5.2 Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
6.5.3 Workplace Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
6.6 Sample Solutions and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Introduction to Feelgood Management 1
Abstract
In this compact introduction, you will learn about the importance and objectives of
Feelgood Management. It will be shown why Feelgood Management is already impor-
tant today and will even increase in importance due to various social and economic
developments. Feelgood Management plays a decisive role as a competitive factor in
the tightening labor market. It ensures the well-being of existing employees and can
thus also trigger a pull effect on potential new skilled workers. From the objectives of
Feelgood Management in Sect. 1.2, the advantages of Feelgood Management for com-
panies can also be explained. At the end of this chapter, you will learn two basic ways
in which Feelgood Management can be embedded in a company’s organization and
what other organizational aspects need to be considered.
Employee Needs Are Business Needs
For some years now, we have been undergoing a transformation from an employer’s
market to an employee’s market. This is a fact that is becoming increasingly apparent in
many industries due to the universally lamented shortage of skilled workers (cf. Dederichs
2016, p. 26 f.). Companies are less and less able to choose their employees from a large
number of applicants but have to actively source applicants in order to find good employ-
ees for essential positions in the company. The relationship between the applicant and the
company being applied for is visibly turning around. This development, for which the
English term “War for Talents” has quickly established itself, has various demographic,
economic, and social reasons.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of 1
Springer Nature 2022
J. Lange, Feelgood Management - Requirements and Tasks,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65794-2_1
2 1 Introduction to Feelgood Management
1. The population is getting older and older, and there are currently far fewer replace-
ments on the labor market for skilled workers from the baby boomer generation, in
which sufficient employees were available for all sectors. Due to social developments,
the generations after them have had fewer number of children, and these are now miss-
ing. This means that there will be a bottleneck in the coming years simply because of
the number of workers available. This effect will be intensified by tertiarization, i.e.,
the augment in demand for services that increasingly require provision of knowledge-
based skilled personnel (“knowledge workers”). These “knowledge-workers” need to
pass a qualifying education, some of which has only recently been established on the
education market and is often not available in large numbers or at short notice (cf.
Dederichs 2016, p. 26 f.; Deutsche Gesellschaft für Personalführung 2015; Gesing and
Weber 2017, p. 4; Nerdinger et al. 2014, p. 203; Rump and Eilers 2013, pp. 3–9).
2. This quantitative and professional shortage is reinforced by the positive economic
development of the last decades in the industrial nations. Many people have now
reached a level of prosperity that is enormous by global standards, which allows them
to be selective when choosing a job. Potential employees can in many cases afford to
choose a job according to criteria other than salary thanks to social security provided
by the state and family (cf. Dederichs 2016, p. 26 f.). Due to economic prosperity, sal-
ary has evolved from being a decisive factor for the choice to one factor among many.
This poses a problem for many companies. Their personnel management in terms of
recruiting and personnel development is often still based on monetary incentives,
which led to the desired motivation in previous generations. In earlier times, a decent
salary was more than sufficient for the employer attractiveness factor. Today, this para-
digm of human resources is being undermined more and more, leading to necessary
strategic restructuring (cf. Andrew et al. 2016; Gesing and Weber 2017, p. 3).
These can already be seen, for example, in the structure of job advertisements. Today,
in such an advertisement, companies should first introduce themselves before making
demands on potential candidates. The essential question seems to become: What do I
have to offer? The point is to actively compete for potential employees and to express
one’s own attractiveness and distinctiveness as an employer already in a job advertise-
ment. Another point of this development is employer rating portals, such as kununu or
job vote, on which employers are classified according to various factors. These portals
and other categorizations such as family-friendly employers are increasingly being
used as a guide for job selection. HR managers must therefore become marketing
experts for the employer brand. Employer branding is the keyword here. The address-
ees of marketing are now not only customers but also existing and potential employees.
Whereas in recent years the focus of business management has tended to be on cus-
tomer orientation, employee orientation is now moving onto the agenda. Dealing with
customer wishes is the normal daily work for many companies, while the identification
and consideration of employee interests require new structures and instruments.
3. The third factor is a change in the thinking and attitudes of society. The moral sensitiv-
ity of society has generally increased. This can be seen, for example, in the boom of