The concept of wellbeing has intrigued researchers for decades. In fact, the very first mention of wellbeing can be traced back to the times of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. The meaning of wellbeing has shifted several times since then. We will discuss the meaning of well-being and why employee well-being is so important.

What is wellbeing?

Defining well-being is a complex task. Some philosophers argue that well-being is the balance of positive and negative emotions. Others differ and take a more value-laden view of well-being. We will explore the two conceptualizations in detail.

Subjective Well-being

Subjective well-being refers to a balance of emotions and feeling satisfaction in life. It takes a hedonic view of well-being and claims that the pursuit of our life goals, attaining material possessions, and experiencing positive emotions are the key aspects of well-being. Indeed, these factors are important. We need to have well-paid jobs, material possessions, such as houses, clothes, food in order to lead a fulfilling life. However, many philosophers refute this idea of considering material possessions important. Instead, they focus on the importance of relationships, meaning, and purpose in life.

Psychological Well-being

Psychological well-being is a value-laden version of well-being. Researchers of psychological well-being claim that human beings must strive to attain meaning and purpose in life. Therefore, the importance of material possessions in well-being is undermined here. The main focus is on intrinsic motivation and relationships. Several researchers and empirical data agree with this fact. If material possessions were really so important, the happiest countries in the world would be the richest country. However, recent reports claim that Finland is the happiest country in the world.

What does employee well-being mean?

Employee well-being simply refers to the well-being of individuals in the workplace. It is a crucial aspect of one’s life because we spend a vast quantity of our time at or thinking about work. A positive work environment sets the stage for well-being. In addition, individuals with excellent personal life but poor job life end up being sad most of the time. Furthermore, the negativity of one’s work crosses the boundary of the office and leaks into one’s personal family life. Therefore, employee well-being is at the core of individual well-being.

A recent review of research articles on employee well-being point out that the most significant aspects of employee well-being are life satisfaction, psychological well-being at work, and job satisfaction. Life satisfaction refers to one’s level of happiness with one’s overall life. It means how contended we are in our life. Since work is an important part of our life, workplace events impact our life satisfaction. Psychological well-being at work refers to finding meaning in work and having cordial relationships with one’s co-workers. Job satisfaction refers to being contended with one’s job characteristics.

Why is employee well-being important?

The happy worker hypothesis states that happy workers are more productive. A satisfied and engaged employee is more likely to perform better. Therefore, well-being in the workplace is important fo organizations. At an individual level, employee well-being helps each individual achieve more in their lives and be at peace with themselves. Some of the benefits of well-being are:

1. Performance: There is a strong association between employee well-being and performance. Reserach shows that employees with higher well-being are more creative and productive in the workplace.
2. Physical Health: Well-being is directly related to one’s physical health. Individuals with low well-being are more likely to complain of sleep ailments, like insomnia, cardio-vascular problems, like high blood pressure and several other.
3. Burnout and turnover: Happy employees are less likely to reach a stage of burnout. They are able to work in a motivated manner and also help boost the morale of the team. Happy workers are also more likely to stay with the organization longer. Therefore, the organization also benefits from having happy employees.

Steps to increase employee well-being

1. Leadership: One of the prominent reasons of turnover and unhappiness with work is poor supervision. Leaders are often too punitive and output-oriented. They fail to value and respect the employees. Therefore, many employees become reluctant to work and often quit. Leaders need to be trained to value employees and motivate them.
2. Interventions to develop positive resources: Negative events are bound to happen in the workplace. Employees who have good coping resources are likely to deal with such events in a positive way. Therefore, positive interventions like mindfulness training, resilience training and proactivity training may be useful.
3. Social Support: Support from co-workers, supervisors, family and friends are helpful in enhancing wellbeing. Employees must be encouraged to seek social support and cultivate positive relationships with each other.

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Vroom’s expectancy theory was one of the first ones to propose that individuals rationally weigh the relative attractiveness of all possible rewards and outcomes of an action. In addition, individuals also estimate the probability that performance and effort would lead to that desirable outcome. Vroom called them valence, instrumentality, and expectancy respectively.

The VIE theory (Valence, Expectancy, Instrumentality) theory is actually an elegant version of the path-goal theory of motivation. The path-goal theory claimed that if a worker viewed high productivity as a path to achieving a desirable goal (promotion, increased income, etc.), he or she would be motivated to produce more. This simple theory led to a dramatic shift in thinking about motivation: from person-as-machine to person-as-scientist.

VIE Theory

Vroom’s expectancy theory is known as VIE theory of motivation. The three elements of the VIE theory are:

1. Valence
2. Instrumentality
3. Expectancy

Valance

In the field of chemistry, valence refers to the attracting or repelling force of an element. Similarly, in Vroom’s theory, valence refers to the strength of a person’s performance for a given outcome. Vroom argued that just like elements, psychological and physical objects, like satisfaction, money, etc., have attracting or repelling forces. For instance, money may be an attracting force for most people, whereas, frustration due to an abusive boss may be a repelling force.

Instrumentality

Instrumentality refers to the relationship between performance and the attainment of the promised reward. An employee may think that if he or she will receive an increase in compensation if they fulfill the target. Fulfilling a target would also involve working longer hours, more work responsibility, lesser time for family and leisure. Hence, several instrumentalities are involved in a single decision. The individual now behaves like a scientist and combines the information to decide whether the outcome would be more positive or more negative.

Expectancy

Expectancy refers to a person’s belief that increased effort will lead to the desired outcome. For instance, many people might believe that they would not be promoted despite working hard and achieving targets because their boss does not like them. In such a case, expectancy is low. On the other hand, if they believe that working longer hours would enable them to achieve their goal, expectancy would be high.

Put together, these three components make up the VIE theory. In simple terms, individuals ask themselves three questions:

1. To what extent do I desire or value the outcomes?
2. Is the expected outcome likely to yield other negative or positive outcomes?
3. Is the action I am engaging in likely to lead to a desired outcome?

Implications for Managers

The VIE theory assumes individuals to be calculative scientists, who are constantly assessing the benefits associated with a particular task. Therefore, managers need to do the following to get the most out of their employees:

1. They may consider connecting positively valued benefits to outcomes. For instance, they may announce positive rewards like praising good work and try to reduce delinquent behaviors like coming late by sending emails to employees who came late.
2. They may consider explicitly clarifying the instrumentalities. While doing so they should specify all positive outcomes and make them lucrative for employees.
3. They may clarify the expectancy by informing employees that action will definitely lead to an outcome. Managers should make sure to deliver the rewards and avoid making false promises.

The post Vroom’s Expectancy Theory appeared first on Management Weekly.

Pardot is a lead management tool by Salesforce. Pardot pricing for its plan varies from USD 1250 per month to USD 15,000 per month. The plans are based upon the features available in the dashboard. 

Major differences across all Pardot pricing tiers 

All plans except the Premium one has a contact limit of 10,000. On the other hand, the Premium plan has a limit of 75,000 contacts. Therefore, the first important point regarding Pardot Pricing is that you HAVE to get the Premium plan if you need to handle more than 10,000 contacts. Moreover, there’s another difference in terms of scalability between these plans. The growth plan is limited in its scale, and it is suited for smaller businesses. On the other hand, the plus an advanced version is suited towards progressively larger organizations. These features make it the market leader in marketing automation. 

SEO

Firstly, in terms of SEO, the scale is limited in the growth and plus plans. You can monitor only 10 competitor keywords in the Growth Plan. 25 competitor keywords in the plus plan. 100 competitor keywords and advanced and premium plans. Similarly, the SCO keywords that you can monitor are limited to 200 keywords for the growth plan, and it progressively increases to 1000 for the advanced plan. Advanced plan and Premium plan are remarkably similar in their features. It could be an example of the loss leader strategy. The highest plan is priced and featured in such a way that it anchors our reference point for the penultimate plan to be sold. Overall, the advanced plan appears to be the most suited for mid to large organizations. 

Data & Bandwidth

Secondly, we also see a difference in data capabilities. The Growth plan has very limited storage. You get a bare minimum of 100 MB file hosting. It is minuscule compared to the 10 gigabytes available for advanced and premium users. On the other hand, the plus plan has about 500 MBs of storage space. Similarly, there is a capping on the number of API calls possible per day. The growth plan does not include any API access. The plus plan has access to about 25,000 API calls per day. However, the advanced and premium plans have a limit of 100,000 API calls per day. 

Domain

Thirdly, we see a difference across all the plans in terms of the domain features. Domains are custom web addresses. It comes in handy in major campaigns. On one hand, you can customize the URLs across all the plans. On the other hand, plans differ in terms of SSL and dedicated IP support. The Growth plan has 3 SSL domains per account and no support for any dedicated IP addresses. Moreover, the Plus plan offers 10 SSL domains along with paid support for a dedicated IP address ($500 a month). Finally, the Advanced and Premium plans are the same and offer 20 SSL domains along with free support for dedicated IP addresses. 

Dynamic Content

Fourthly, the Growth plan does not offer dynamic content. The Advanced and Premium plans allow you to customize the communications based on the Pardot Lead Score as well as any variable. For instance, you can have a specific mail sent to the prospects who are interested in product A while other prospects with the same score get an email about product B. You can easily integrate it with your marketing mix modeling to get the best results. 

Growth 

Pardot Growth is the most basic plan in their offering. In this plan, two important features are included. Firstly, we have a lead management feature. This is the core of Pardot’s marketing automation tool. Secondly, we have the email marketing and personalization tool. The growth plan has. 50 forms and 50 landing pages included. 

Plus 

The Plus plan offers some extra advantages over the Growth plan. In this plan, two extra features are added. Firstly, advanced automation is included. This feature enables a highly personalized deed nurturing platform. Secondly, it also includes some advanced features in the analytics and reporting dashboard. One of the advanced features is that it includes searching and profile people based on their social media profiles.  

Advanced 

One of the hallmark features of this marketing automation suite is Pardot’s Einstein. It is an artificial intelligence-based analytics and reporting tool. Beyond saying artificial intelligence is only available for advanced and premium users. 

Premium  

The Advanced plan excels in its offering of predictive analytics. These advanced features are highly processor and storage-intensive. Therefore, they are only offered in the highest tier. The users can also get access to highly personalized support. It is also more suited for organizations where there are dedicated developers. 

The post Pardot Pricing & Comparison for All Plans appeared first on Management Weekly.

Here we take a brief look at what Pardot offers in its Pardot lead scoring system. We shall also take a look at the pros and cons of this lead management system. Pardot is a B2B marketing automation tool. ExactTarget acquired Pardot in 2012 for USD 96 million. Subsequently, Salesforce acquired ExactTarget in 2013.

What is Lead scoring? 

A lead is a potential target customer who may get converted into a customer. A lead scoring system helps rank the potential leads based on their propensity to get converted. Usually, the objective of lead management is to convert the leads into sales. However, sales are not the only expected outcome for all cases. The objective may make people sign up for a free account. Now, let us look at an example to illustrate the concept. This is a raw and hypothetical example to explain the concept. Multiple attributes, behavioral data points, and demographics are used in modern lead scoring systems. 

For example: let us consider the case of Spotify, the music streaming service.  Let us say that a person searches for a song on Google and it shows them the link for the song on Spotify. Once they land on the page, they become potential customers of Spotify premium. A tracking cookie keeps a track of their activity on the page. Furthermore, if the person visits the page again from search, link, social media, etc their chances of conversion increase. Let us say they play a curated playlist for 30 mins. Their chances of becoming a Spotify Premium user increases even more. Now, let us consider that you want to run an ad for Spotify Premium. You would rather spend the ad money on the prospects that have higher chances of buying the subscription than bombarding ten different people.

Key features of Pardot Lead Scoring 

1. Focus on B2B lead scoring – Salesforce (the parent company) focuses on B2C while Pardot is for B2B.  

2. Pardot is a focused service for lead management on the other hand Salesforce is a comprehensive customer relationship management suite.  

3. Default scoring system – this is the basic lead scoring that monitors the leads that get converted into sales and then updates the model. Newer leads are then given a score based on their behavior. 

4. Pardot allows users to segregate interaction across different products or businesses. This helps create a different score depending on the specific case for the product. 

5. Updating scoring rules – the scoring rules can be updated by adjusting the automation rules.  

6. Integrated lead management – the users can nurture leads through different channels such as web form, landing page, search engine, social media and news letters. 

Pardot grading automation 

Salesforces Pardot provides Pardot grading automation as a lead nurturing tool. Many of the leads do not get converted. Lead nurturing helps marketers in reducing these dropouts. One of the common ways to segregate leads is based on their recency of interaction. A lead that has recently interacted with a firm is called a ‘hot lead.’ On the other hand, a lead that has interacted with our firm earlier but not recently is a ‘cold lead.’ Statistically, the hot leads have higher chances of conversion. Pardot’s automated grading system helps in increasing the conversion rate of these leads by identifying high-quality cold leads as well.  Automation tools can even connect with these leads and send out an email with upcoming sales or share the company’s latest news with them. 

Another advantage of automating the Pardot lead scoring system is that it is much faster compared to manual lead nurturing. As soon as cold lead’s behavior suggests that they have higher chances of conversion, they can be nurtured. This is almost real-time and helps in increasing sales.  For instance, you find that Thinkpads are more popular among managers and business professionals. In that case, you shall have a higher propensity to purchase Thinkpads from leads that are coming from such professionals.

Einstein lead scoring from Pardot 

Pardot Einstein is an artificial intelligence-based lead nurturing platform. The Einstein lead scoring from Pardot offers a data-driven method to generate the lead scores. This feature is not enabled by default in Pardot. However, you can enable it inside the settings in your Salesforce dashboard. However, Einstein is available only in the Advanced and Premium plans. Other Pardot Pricing tiers like Growth and Plus do not have this feature.

Some of the key features of Einstein lead scoring system are: 

• Automatic generation of the lead score. 
• The score calculation also takes into account the user engagement data. 
• A separate Einstein behavior scoring dashboard is provided. 
• It also includes Einstein Attribution. This also helps in multitouch attribution analysis. 

The post Pardot Lead Scoring: An easy guide appeared first on Management Weekly.

The laptop market is highly commodified(products from different brands that are more or less the same). However, there is certainly a unique selling proposition with each of the top brands. There are certain advantages of ThinkPads over other laptops that is why ThinkPads are so popular.

Some unique features of ThinkPads 

Some of the best points about them are: 

1. Military graded physical structure. In plain English, it means that your laptop is going to be highly durable. ThinkPads undergo rigorous testing that is as per MIL standards. They are dropped from several feet above the ground. Exotic materials like carbon fiber and magnesium alloys are the secret behind this muscular strength. Some of the models even feature water drainage under the keyboard. This makes the keyboard spill-proof. 

2. A top end thing back typically has a battery life between 12 to 20 hours. What is even more important is that ThinkPads batteries are highly modular. It is much easier to swap out a ThinkPad battery than any other laptop. Of the ThinkPad, such as the X series, also featured double batteries. What this means is that once one of your battery is almost gone, you can swap out a spare battery without shutting down your system. If you have a lot of spare batteries than ThinkPads like X280 can run for as long as you can exhaust all your batteries.  

3. Ease of availability of spare parts. ThinkPads have a particular naming convention for their parts. Each part has got its own FRU number. This makes them highly serviceable. On the other hand there are companies like Apple are moving towards non serviceable laptops and mobile devices. A non-functional or broken ThinkPad can be fixed in the middle of African jungle. You just need to order the right parts and wait for them. 

4. Best keyboards among all laptops. ThinkPads typically have one of the best keyboards compared to any other laptop. Firstly, the keyboards have a higher travel distance. This makes typing much easier compared to the shallow keyboards found on many laptops. Also, shallower keyboards tend to fail more often compared with the thicker ThinkPad keyboards. Secondly, the ThinkPad keyboards have a little bit of Ark and they also feature some kind of tactile rough surface. Therefore typing experience on ThinkPad is unparalleled. Some of the laptops that can beat ThinkPads in keyboards are gaming laptops with mechanical keys. However, they are bulky and not very suitable for business environment with glaring LEDs and loud fans. 

5. The Trackpoint. The ThinkPad Trackpoint is one of the navigational devices included in the keyboard. It acts both as a mouse as well as a pointing device. However, the most common use for a trackpad is for scrolling documents and spreadsheets. It makes the job much easier compared to any other inbuilt scrolling mechanism. Trackpoint also acts as a secondary. Or a backup mouse when your touchpad fails. You can use it to point your mouse in any direction and even use it to click on an icon. 

What makes ThinkPads so popular for business users? 

ThinkPads are known for their reliability. We have already discussed some of the key differentiators between ThinkPads and other laptops in the previous section. However, there are certain things that are hard to capture in the spec sheet. One of those things is the reliability and practicality of a laptop. ThinkPads stand against the crowd of different laptop brands in this regard. This was a product strategy crafted almost 26 years ago by IBM.  Lenovo is taking it forward with the newer lineups. Their constant efforts explain why ThinkPads are so popular.

When we talk about the practicality of ThinkPads, one of the differentiators is also the sheer expandability. Generally, ThinkPads have plenty of ports. When you compare that with or diametrically opposite design of a Mac book, it comes as a shock. While many ultra-thin and light built laptops like to have only one USB C port or two USB C ports, you’ll typically find 5 to 6 ports on a ThinkPad. Some of the common missing ports from other laptops are Ethernet(LAN) port and multiple monitor port. Most other laptops provide one HDMI output. On the other hand, many ThinkPads have one HDMI as well as a DP output. Therefore you can connect to external monitors with a ThinkPad. In fact, you can even connect more than two if you Daisy chain the DP port. 

In the end, it is the combination of unique no-nonse design, reliability and functionality that makes these laptops are best business laptops. That being said, Dell and HP also have their own business/enterprise laptops meant for professional use. They have their own unique features as well.

The post Why are Thinkpads so popular as business laptops? appeared first on Management Weekly.

Google workspace is the brand name for Google’s office suite. It was earlier known as G Suite. In fact, even before that, it was known as Google Apps for your domain when it was launched in 2006. How this Google Workspace Review article is structured: 

1. Introduction to Google Workspace. 

2. Google Workspace vs Google Apps. 

3. Overview of the products 

4. Prices for Google office suite 

5. Reviews  

Isn’t Google workspace the same as the free Google apps? 

Well, yes it is and no, it’s a bit different. Most of the office applications like Gmail, Google Docs are available as free services. However, Google Workspace provides enterprise level tech support, more storage and ease of corporate IT management.  

Google first launched the set of free applications in 2006. However, it was more like a beta testing for their corporate apps package which they launched in 2007. It offered 10GB of storage along with support for API. It also guaranteed uptime for their services unlike the free apps which have no such guarantee. Although they are still quite reliable.  

Finally after over 15 years of development and updates, they rebranded their services under the name of Google Workspace on Oct 6, 2020.  

What is new in the Google Workspace? 

The October 2020 changes can be partly attributed to the Covid19 pandemic. Firstly, the pandemic lead to a surge in the use of teleconferencing. It also changes how we look at work from home. It was the first time in history that work from home became the primary way to do work. Secondly, the pandemic also brought user friendly application Zoom to the spotlight. It could become a threat to Google in future.  

This type of reactionary product strategy is to make the Google’s office suite more tightly bound. A stronger eco-system of apps which goes beyond single functionality works better for the organizations in the long run.  

Additionally, Google also believes in progressive changes that help make their apps more productive. One the major changes in the functionality has been cross-app communication. A use in Google workspace can seamlessly connect their Google Slides presentation to a video conference call. File sharing has also been improved between different apps. 

What are the products in the new suite? Google Workspace Products review 

Google Workspace Pricing 

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Google has recently changed the pricing for it’s products. This comes with the Ocotober 6^th, 2020 annoucement for rebranding of the office suite. You can see the overview of all the plans below: 

Business Starter plan 

The starter plan is decent enough for a small business. It offers the minimum pricing of $6 per month for each user. This plan includes all the free apps. Additionally, it also includes email address and added video storage. As we have previously discussed, the focus is now on the video. Google has also added the option of having 100 participants in a video meeting. This is definitely a business friendly addon. 

Business Standard plan 

Business Standard plans adds on some extra features over the business starter plan. This panda users also get an additional 50 participants per video conference. Additionally, there is also an added option for recording. This option is missing in the free and business starter versions. As an added extra benefit, the users also get up to two terabytes of cloud storage. All of this comes at the cost of 12 USD per user per month. 

Business Plus plan 

A business plus plan is the penultimate tier of Google Workspace offerings. This plan comes at the cost of 12 USD per user per month. In this plan you will get some additional features as well. Firstly, the customers get eDiscovery and retention along with the secured business emails. This feature allows for. Keeping a track of the past data, searching the data as well as exporting organizations data. Competitors like Zoho also offer these kinds of features. Finally, this plan also integrates advanced security features. 

Enterprise plan 

This is the highest tier of the Google Workspace plans. In this plan, there are certain additional features which may be useful for larger organizations. Again, we see a recurring theme across the different plans. The enterprise plan offers some extra features for the video meeting participants. Additionally, it also offers enhanced support and security features. However, the pricing is not disclosed publicly. It would be customized according to the organization’s specific needs. Here is a summary of some key additional features in the enterprise plan of Google Workspace: 

1. Unlimited storage 

2. S/MIME encryption 

3. Noice cancelling in Video Meetings 

4. Domain Live Streaming 

5. Advanced data management tools 

6. Endpoint security 

7. Enhanced support 

Review of Google Workspace Support Tiers

Finally, to clarify, here are the support tiers offered: 

1. Free support 

2. Standard support (Business Starter, Business Standard and Business Plus) plans 

3. Enhanced support (Included in the Enterprise plan; paid addon for the Business Standard and Business Plus plans) 

4. Premium Support (paid addon for the enterprise plan)   

The major difference between these support tiers is the time and effort that is provided in resolving customer queries. The support tickets would be handled faster and more efficiently in the higher pricing tiers. Moreover, the same is reflected in the support tiers as well.

Expandability via the all-new Marketplace

Any office suite may not offer everything that the customers demand. One of the way of providing expandability is through external applications. The users would have access to an all new Google Workspace Marketplace.

You can see, that there are already some common apps like Trello and Cisco Webex included in the Marketplace. There are some really nifty tools as well for working with files on the cloud that can be difficult otherwise.

The post Google Workspace Review and Pricing details appeared first on Management Weekly.

Fritz Heider is acknowledged as the father of attribution theory. Heider’s attribution theory is one of the first theories in social psychology to explain how people draw causal inferences for behavior. His basic thesis was that people attribute behavioral outcomes to dispositional (internal) causes or situational (external) causes. Heider’s attribution theory was later extended to formulate the fundamental attribution error and the correspondence bias. We will learn about them in this article.

Types of Attribution

Heider’s attribution theory believes that all human beings are naive social psychologists, curious to know the causes behind actions and behavior. Most often such causal inferences are of two types: dispositional and situational.

Dispositional Attribution

A dispositional attribution means that the outcome is attributed to internal causes. In other words, the locus of control of the behavior is thought of as internal. Therefore, the individual or the actor is held responsible for the behavior. Observers think that such an outcome occurred because of the traits, abilities, skills of the actor and not because of situational or contextual factors.

For instance, if a student gets a low score in an examination, attributing the low score to a lack of intelligence and ability is a dispositional attribution. Here we are discounting the role of all other factors like the health of the student, the difficulty of the questions and the strictness of marking. Instead, we just focused on the dispositions of the student.

Situational Attribution

A situational attribution means that the outcome is assigned to external causes. Thereby, the individual or the actor is not held responsible for the consequences of the action. Instead, we give greater importance is given to contextual and external factors.

In the above example, a situational attribution would mean attributing the low score to external factors like a difficult question paper or a strict marking pattern. We would discount dispositional factors like intelligence and effort by the student.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Although ordinary people are naive social scientists, we are susceptible to making errors in judgment. This error arises mainly because we tend to overestimate the role of dispositions in assessing other’s behavior and the role of situational factors in our own behavior. This bias in our judgment is called fundamental attribution error.

Jones and Harris, a team of social psychologists undertook a social experiment to study the fundamental attribution error. They recruited a group of students and asked them to review essays written by writers on Fidel Castro. These essays were purposefully written either in favor of Castro or against Castro. The reviewers were further divided into two groups. One group was told that the writers were forced to write in favor of or against Castro while the other group was told that they had the choice to write in favor of him or against. The results indicated the presence of fundamental attribution error. This is because the reviewers overestimated the role of dispositional factors even when they were explicitly told that the writers did not have a choice in writing in favor of or against Castro.

In daily life too, we see numerous instances in which we overestimate the role of dispositions in assessing other’s actions. At the same time, we discount dispositional factors in assessing our own behavior. Such discounting serves the purpose of shielding our self-esteem. If we were to attribute all our failures to dispositional causes, we would all have much lower self-esteem. Assigning a situational attribution helps in preserving self-confidence and also kindles hope and optimism.

Correspondence Bias

The correspondence bias refers to the tendency to explain behavior by dispositional causes even when it can be explained fully by situational causes. Like the fundamental attribution error, this too occurs mostly while drawing inferences about other people’s behavior. The role of situational and contextual factors is largely ignored.

Imagine a situation when you are in a hurry to pick up your grandmother from the station. Due to the time crunch, you skip a traffic signal or two and cut the way of a few vehicles. You would think that you drove rashly because you were in a hurry and not because you are a careless driver in general. Now imagine a situation when you have gone for a long drive with a loved one and someone else is driving the way you did in the earlier situation. You would probably not even think that the person may have an emergency. Rather you would jump to the conclusion that the driver is reckless and drives rashly in all situations.

Attribution theory is applicable in all fields of management, like marketing, economics, human resources.

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What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing refers to the use of social media for marketing purposes. However, there are certain specific features and advantages of SMM that makes it unique. At the same time, some of these terms are quite confusing, especially for a newcomer. Social Media Marketing Courses would help you develop skills to enter this exciting field with confidence.

There are around 3.7 billion social media users. Each person spends around 142 minutes every day on social media.

Traditionally, marketing comprises of Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. In the digital world, the concepts remain the same, only the treatment changes. Most importantly, social media is one of the most influential channels of marketing today.

The SMM world

One of the most interesting things about social media is dynamism. The ever-changing Social Media Marketing world manifests new rules every now and then. On the other hand, traditional marketers often find themselves caught between the marketing knowledge they possess the chasm they have to cover to be an SMM professional.

Social Media is an online platform that provides users an opportunity to create and share content with a network of connections.

This provides an opportunity for the businesses to be ‘interactive’ rather than be a mere ‘loudspeaker.’ In other words, the interactive form of marketing of the SMM world means that the firms can now address the customer directly.

Why Social Media Marketing is important?

SMM offers an incredible opportunity for one-to-one interaction. This also helps in inbound marketing. You can target those people who have already interacted with you in the past – these people are in the awareness stage. You can expand the customer reach by targetting a new audience. It offers seamless integration for customer service. It is also a very powerful tool for brand awareness. SMM integrates very well with the automation of marketing processes. Lastly, it is also cheaper than other forms of marketing. You can even reach followers free of cost which is not possible in other channels.

1. Changes the focus of the marketing from firm to the customer
2. Extreme level of tracking the efforts and returns.
3. More interactive
4. Highly accessible
5. Word of mouth is amplified on social media
6. Powerful segmentation and targeting
7. The richness of information – videos can explain complicated product features
8. Higher engagement

Best social media marketing courses online

Firstly, let us structure the courses as per the course structure:

• Broad courses on SMM
• Platform-specific courses

Broad courses on SMM:

1. Hubspot certification on Social Media : FREE

Hubspot is a well-known authority when it comes to online media. Their courses are excellent resources to learn about any topic. This certificate program has about 10 lessons with about 38 videos in total. At the end of each lesson, there is a quiz which you have to pass. It is a beginner-friendly course and a great starting point for anyone starting with Social Media Marketing.

This course is hosted by multiple instructors who guide you through different functional areas in Social Media. Firstly, provide an introduction to social media strategy which is followed by other lessons about increasing your presence and reputation online. It also covers how to build relationships with the customers and how to evaluate your success. Overall I highly recommend this course as it is an excellent place to get an overview of SM.

2. Hootsuite Social Marketing Training: $199

Don’t get put off by the pricing of the course. The course is very well designed. Hootsuite is another reputed organization when it comes to social media. This course is divided into six modules and an end of course exam. Once you qualify for the exam, you will be eligible for the certification.

This course has about six hours of video content. It focuses more on developmental aspects. Firstly, it covers sections like optimizing your social media profiles. Secondly, it teaches you about the different ways to define your goals, measure your success and plan out the SMM efforts. It also has sections on content marketing, advertising and community building.

3. LinkedIn – Social Media Marketing Foundations – PAID

LinkedIn is another great platform for courses. However, if you are not already a member, you will need to subscribe to the LinkedIn premium. If you want to know more about the features and benefits, please check out our article on LinkedIn premium costs and features.

This course is designed to cover key aspects related to the SMM strategy, defining your audience, prioritizing your channels, content marketing tips, community practices. Some unique modules are selling on social media which is not covered on many websites. This could be useful if you are planning to open up a social media shop. The instructor is a university professor. However, the course length is pretty short at under two hours.

4. Udemy – The complete Digital Marketing Course – PAID

This is a ‘mega’ course. Most noteworthy feature is that this course is an amalgamation of twelve smaller courses. It is a whopping 23.5+ hours course with lots of training modules, quizzes, tips and tricks.

There have been over 390,774 enrolments so far in this course with over 85,300 ratings. The current rating of the course is around 4.4 stars which is pretty commendable.

The unique points about this course is that it coves a lot of broad as well as platform specific topics. Specifically, the platforms covered are Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Quora, LInekdin. It also covers the nitty gritties of advertisements as well as Google Analytics. It is an end to end course which can be the best options for all the confused sould out there who are finding it difficult to decide upon one single course from an ocean of online courses.

Platform-specific courses

1. SMM courses on Facebook

1.1 Marketing on Facebook by LinkedIn

This course requires a subscription to the LinkedIn premium. Overall it is an easy course that introduces the beginners to Facebook(FB) marketing. This is a relatively shorter course with a total video duration of 2.5 hours.

The course covers topics like introduction to FB page layout. Setting up your FB page. Intro to different Facebook features that are useful for businesses. It also covers different types of media and post options. Finally, there is a brief introduction to setting up your ad and tracking the page views.

2. SMM courses on Youtube

2.1 Youtube Marketing Course : Hubspot

This is another good free course from Hubspot. The learners get access to a short and crisp course that is less than 1.5 hours long.

You will learn how to develop your Youtube(YT) profile. Optimize your videos, keywords, file names and descriptions. The primary focus of this course is on creating high-quality courses.

2.2 Marketing and Monetization on Youtube : LinkedIn

Youtube(YT) is another incredible platform for social media marketing. Currently, it is also the second most popular search engine. Consequently, it has become a very powerful tool for Social Media Marketing.

This is yet another basic course that gives you an overview of the YT channel. You can learn how to set up a business account and set goals for YouTube. The course also covers other topics like optimizations, monetization and community management.

3. Instagram Social Media Marketing courses

3.1 Instagram Marketing 2020 : Udemy

This course has over 100k students enrolled and around 20k ratings on Udemy. Extremely budget friendly course option. However prices depend on your country.

This course covers tips and tricks to create a business account for Instagram. It is dedicated to teaching you how to grow Instagram followers. The major benefit of this plan is that it covers some newly added functions on Instagram that are helpful for businesses.

It is a 30 day course, which includes 5.5 hours of on-demand videos spread across 8 articles and other downloadable materials.

3.2 Instagram Marketing Courses: Skillshare

This is a very popular course taken by over 9000 people on Skillshare. It is targetted towards beginners on Instgram.

This course covers defining your Instagram goals, debunking myths and creating a powerful and unique brand. Rather than trying to outsmart the algorithm, this ourse teaches you to build a community.

4. Twitter SMM Courses

4.1 Twitter For Business: Udemy

This is an excellent course for beginners. Over 8000 students have enrolled for this course and it has 4.1 star rating on Udemy.

The duration of this course is 2 hours, including 3 artcles and several other useful resources. However, this is not a very extensive course.

It covers basic guides ike creating and using all Twitter features, optimizing the account to look professional and how to attract followers. These tools will help in saving time and increasing engagement on Twitter.

4.2 Twitter Business Basics: Twitter

This course is run by Twitter itself and guides users. The special focus is on increasing followers and giving creative post ideas.

All of the official resources are a concise guide to running your account efficiently on Twitter. The Twitter Business Blog section offers excellent introductions to many important features of Twitter.

Social Media Marketing manager

The SMM manager is incharge of handling the SMM for the firm. Overall guiding purpose of Social Media Marketing Manager is to enhance the presence of the firm on social media, help in executing the marketing goals and co-ordinating with different teams in firm to fulfill their requirements.

As we have discussed earlier in the previous sections, the objectives of social media marketing are creation, development and maintainance of social media accounts. They are directly responsible for increasing customer engagement, improving public relations and managing the sales funnel.

Career & Scope in SMM

SMM is critical for firms of all sizes. Businesses derive value and benefit from different social media platforms. In fact, some of the business models are entirely based on social media platforms. For instance, there are several shops running on Facebook pages or on Shopify without a website or a physical store.

There is immense scope for social media marketing professionals. However, it is a highly competitive field. In conclusion, one needs to be very thorough with their SMM skills. Additionally, SMM managers need to stay abreast of every important update in the social media marketing world. Many of these social media marketing courses online may require you to retake the test every two years or so to maintain the certification.

Social Media Marketing Jobs

We have attempted to list down some of the most sought after marketing jobs here. This list is not an exhaustive list owing to the dynamicity of this field. Essentially, the SMM jobs are posted as per the social media team’s requirement.

The highest-paid SMM job is that of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). However, the job description of CMO includes a lot more than just handling social media. Her/his job is to strategize and execute marketing efforts of a firm in different channels.

Job description for SMM

The job desciption for Social Media manager generally covers the skillsets that are already covered in the online SMM courses discussed above. Above all, these are some common points in job description for SMM:

1. Creation of social media account
2. Planning a social media campaign
3. Strategizing, benchmarking and optimizing SMM campaign
4. Monitoring and reporting of business KPIs
5. Nurturing the online community
6. Enhancing the online presence of the brand
7. Content marketing (Article writing, blog posting, sharing posts)
8. Search engine optimization
9. Social media optimization
10. Sales funnel management
11. Loyalty and retention

Salary for Social Media Marketing professional

The starting salary of social media marketing professional is around 40,000 USD. It depends on several factors:

Firstly, your pay would depend on your work experience. Work experience in related fields would also be helpful in this regard.

Secondly, it is also dependent on educational qualification. Educational qualification like MBA would definitely boost your chances of getting a better job profile as well as higher salary.

Thirdly, it is dependent on the type of skill you bring to the table. For instance, coding professionals earn more than graphic designers, on average.

Fourthly, your salary would also be dependent on the business vertical.

Social Media Marketing resume

Here are some key points to ensure that you have an excellent resume for SMM:

1. Highlight your creativity. Emphasize your ability to create and publish original content.
2. Include links to your online certifications to Social Media Marketing courses for validation. If you did an offline course, store the pdfs on Google docs or Dropbox and share the links.
3. Mention cross-functional skills, if any.
4. Ensure that you have a section to demonstrate your abilities by listing your most important projects and clients.
5. Provide a link to your online portfolio and client testimonials.
6. Rather than using adjectives to highlight your experiences, try to use numbers and percentages. For instance, don’t write “Excellent leads management skills.” Rather write “I increased the conversion rate from 14% to 27% in two months.”

Additionally, here is an example template to get you started. You may use it to create your own resume for social media marketing.

In the same vein as having an excellent resume, ensure that you also create a cover letter that you can modify and send across different job portals.

Recommended social media marketing articles

Finally, before embarking on the learning journey through Social Media Marketing courses, you may check out some excellent articles to get an overview of what is social media marketing.

Here are some top articles on Social Media Marketing:

1. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-marketing
2. https://neilpatel.com/what-is-social-media-marketing/
3. https://medium.com/trapica/a-step-by-step-guide-to-social-media-marketing-d41a4f0636f3
4. https://www.wordstream.com/social-media-marketing
5. https://buffer.com/social-media-marketing
6. http://neilpatel.com/2016/05/06/instagram-marketing-101-grow-your-following-with-these-7-guides-and-5-courses

The post Best Social Media Marketing Courses Online in 2020 appeared first on Management Weekly.

31st March 2020 is being observed as Equal Pay Day this year. There is an interesting story about how this day became a symbol of gender pay gap. In 1996, the National Committee on Pay Equity wanted to highlight the need for equal pay for men and women. Women on average earn less than men so they need to work longer to earn the same pay as their male team members. In order to represent the disparity of the pay, the committee chose it on the first Tuesday in April and called it Equal Pay Day. This Tuesday represents the extra days that women need to work over an entire workweek to earn the same salary as men.

“Latina women earn just 53 percent of white men”

Sections:

• What is Equal Pay?
• Gender Pay Gap by Industry
• Gender Pay Gap by the Level of Education
• Does Zero Pay Gap exist?
• Why is Gender Pay Gap still a Reality?
• How to Attain Equal Pay?

What is Equal Pay?

Equal pay means that men and women be paid equal sums of money for doing equal jobs. For some readers, it might seem trivial because they either assume that this problem will not have an impact in their field of work or they might think that this issue can be solved by policymakers. Here are some facts to prove otherwise:

• Based on data from the USA, women earn 81 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same job.
• 78% of the largest companies in Britain reported a gender pay gap.
• The median salary of Indian men is 19% more than the median salary of Indian women.

However, there is some optimism. The gender pay gap has been decreasing. In 1980, women (aged 25-34 years) earned 33 cents less than their men counterparts while in 2018, they earned 11 cents less than their male counterparts.

This is good news but data also shows that the pay gap widens as age and work experience increases. The World Economic Forum reported in 2020 that it would take another 257 years to close the gender pay gap from all sectors across age groups.

Gender Pay Gap by Industry

Almost all sectors (both formal and informal) report the gender pay gap. The BBC was highly criticized when it released data regarding their top paid presenters and the proportion was widely in favor of men.

Top three industries where the gender pay gap is highest are:

• Agencies and Consultancies
• Retail and Customer Service
• Transportation

Gender Pay Gap by Level of Education

The lowest level of the gender pay gap as reported in the field of Law (data from USA). Top four levels of education where gender pay gap is highest are:

• Management post-graduates
• Non-management post-graduates
• Health care doctorates
• Doctorate (Ph.D.)

Does Zero Pay Gap Exist?

Yes, some companies do report Zero Pay Gap. At chocolate-maker Mondelez India, the gender pay gap is zero.

Their HR-Director, Mahalakshmi R. says, “Women are striving to be independent and seek equal opportunities on all grounds. Men are increasingly considering women to be equals in all aspects of life. We have ensured that we build no bias whatsoever in pay while recruiting and growing our female talent.”

Economic Times

Why is Gender Pay Gap still a Reality?

Although many legislations and policies direct companies to pay women the same salary as men, equal pay is still far from reality. A number of factors contribute to this.

1. Social Factors: The educational system in most cultures teach gender norms in such a way that young girls are nudged to choose low paying jobs that are less valued. Society expects women to take up caring and nurturing roles like motherhood gaps or working part-time to take care of household chores and aging parents. This hampers earnings and dampens their career progress.
2. Organizational Structure: In most organizations, the senior-level positions and highly paid positions have a skewed gender ratio. The representation of women in these posts is very low. Due to the glass-ceiling effect, most women are stuck in mid-management positions and never reach the higher levels. As a result, the median salary of women is lower in most organizations.
3. Implicit Biases: These refer to unconscious biases about members of a particular social group. During hiring and compensation planning, executive decision-makers often fall prey to implicit biases against women. This them to offer less salary to women and hiring fewer women in top management positions.
4. Poor representation of women in technical education: The representation of women in technical education (which leads to the highest paying jobs) is low. In the United Kingdom, only 12.37% of engineers in 2018 were women. Out of all women engineers, only around 21% of them work in core engineering jobs.

How to Attain Equal Pay?

1. Whistle-blowing: Unless cases of unequal pay receive the attention of society, things are unlikely to improve. As employees of an organization, it is our duty to report cases of unequal pay based on gender or race so that the situation can be made better.
2. Societal Changes: It is often seen that women voluntarily choose jobs that do not do justice to their educational and professional skills. This is because they are socialized into believing that their primary role in the family is that of a caregiver and not that of a bread-winner. This leads them to make career sacrifices which hinders their progress and earning potential. Parents and educators have a major role in this. They need to empower their daughters and students and make them understand that it is fine to make career first priority in life. At the same time, they must teach young boys that it is their duty to share household responsibilities and it is fine to be the primary caregiver of the family for men too.
3. Encouraging women to pursue technical education: Most highly paid jobs (AI, Blockchain, Machine learning) require technical education. Worldwide data reveals a very low percentage of women in these fields. School educators and parents need to rise above gender stereotypes and encourage young girls to pursue technical education.
4. Company policies: Organizational policies aimed at encouraging paternity leaves, creche facilities in the workplace vicinity and avoiding implicit biases while hiring and compensating would reduce the pay gap. Also, biases like women cannot be given work that required travel and women are soft-spoken need to be eliminated. Am inclusive organization needs to be created where employees are valued for their talent and contribution.

The post Equal Pay appeared first on Management Weekly.

Kahoot is a fun way to assess learners through a web-based program. Although it was designed to be used for teachers, it is being used by corporations as well. You can create a game-like activity where respondents are presented with questions. They can access this game on Kahoot.it by entering a ‘Kahoot pin’. Once the recipients enter the game, they can answer the questions on their computers or smart devices.

Brands can customize the look and feel of the quizzes to reflect their own aesthetics. Additionally, you can refer to their official design guide for the same.

The word “Kahoot” is a distorted form of word Cahoot. Cahoot as a word has a negative connotation. It is generally used in the form of the phrase ‘in cahoots with’, which means ‘partnership’ of co-conspirators. However, this interactive tool is a game-changer in the field of education. Researchers have found that the use of Kahoot in the classroom can reduce distractions and enhance learning. The platform offers an opportunity for the students to get feedback on their strong and weak areas helping them learn better(Licorish et al, 2018 and Wang and Tahir, 2020).

Psychology & Gameplay!

It works on two psychological phenomena: ‘behaviorist approach’ and ‘gamification’.

Firstly, the behaviorist approach was developed by John Watson in his article ‘Psychology as the behaviorist views it’ in 1913 (Watson, 1913). The approach works by rewarding good behavior. It is posited that all behavior is learned from the environment and termed classical conditioning. This gave rise to a new way of looking at psychology from the eyes of a behaviorist.

Secondly, it works by gamifying the activity. The participants get points for playing and winning the quizzes. When a company wants to increase its engagement, it can try using Kahoot to create and distribute games to potential players.

How does it work?

In a classroom, the teachers have been using rewards like giving a star on an excellent answer sheet. Kahoot is not very different from that. It just takes this ‘rewarding’ ecosystem to another level, the students who ‘win’ the game get highlighted as the star students in a class.

“It is a simple game-show format,” said Johan Brand who is the CEO of Kahoot in an interview with the NY Times. As a company, the approach is to create the tool as a playful interactive interface where there is higher engagement than traditional methods of scholastic assessment. It is essentially a way to gamify the quizzes.

About 30 million public games are being played by 1 billion players

Another way to look at this game is to think of a ‘TV show’ or ‘video game’. The teacher acts as a host who introduces the quiz to the participants. These quizzes typically have multiple choice type questions. Each question is projected to the screen one by one. The students get half a minute to answer the question. If they answer correctly, the students earn points; if they answer faster, they earn more points.

Adding to the fun is a countdown timer that resembles a TV show and has a bell at the end. The board then shows the correct answer as well as a summary of the respondents who answered it correctly and incorrectly. Students who get the highest points make it to the hall of fame of top scorers.

Setting up an account

You need to visit Kahoot.com to set up your account. Please follow the steps given below to create your first Kahoot in 5 minutes:

Create your first quiz

When you choose the live game, the players can see the questions on the projected screen. They shall answer together on their devices. This is the game-show kind of gameplay and timed event. On the other hand, the ‘Create challenge’ mode offers the students a more flexible self-paced option. They can answer the questions visible on their screen.

Once you have chosen the mode, you need to share the game PIN with your players. They need to go to Kahoot.it where they have to enter the PIN. After entering the PIN they have to enter their name. Once that is done, they can play the game. The registered students can also have their gameplay tracked.

Compare the Kahoot premium and Free plans for educators

*Per teacher per month. However, the billing cycle is annual. 7 day free trial for all plans is also available.

As an educator or content creator, you have an option to choose either the free plans or go with the paid ones. The basic plan should get you started with a capping of up to 50 players for a game. This cap is valid for both the live games as well as student-paced challenges. The Plus plan increases the total number of students to 100 and the Pro plan further increases it to 200. However, the premium plan offers connectivity to up to 2000 players.

There are some other differences between paid and free plans, mainly in terms of how you create the content. Only the Pro and Premium plans offer some of these benefits like adding polls and puzzles. There are also some differences in terms of support where the Pro and Premium members are prioritized.

Kahoot Plus corporate plans

Kahoot also wants to tap the vase corporate market. It offers plans for clients like National Geographic. It mainly targets publishers who want to create quizzes or interactive content for their clients. This plan is available for $40 per user per month, billed annually. They also offer a 14-day free trial.

Secondly, in the time of user experience management, this could be quite useful for the brands to create a deeper engagement with their audience. The links can be shared on the website(up to 100 games), social media, email, and other online and offline channels. One benefit for the players would be that there would be no need to register for these games.

The Kahoot lingo

The company

Crunchbase data reveals that the company has gone through two rounds of funding. Series A and B funding total to about $58.9 million.

Kahoot acquired a math game app called DragonBox in May 2019 for $18 million. This has added math-based activities for the educators which were previously missing. Additionally, the company also took over Poio which is a reading app. This acquisition was pegged at about 6.5 million US dollars. Most notably, DragonBox is a Nordic company but Poio is from Scandinavia.

The dark side

Gamification has its own drawbacks. The children who win may develop a sense of elitism. This could be detrimental in the longer run. On the other hand, a majority of the students who lose might develop an inferiority complex.

However, one downside to the behaviorist approach is the habituation of the reward or of punishment. Students who consistently score badly in the Kahoot games may develop a sense of ‘learned helplessness’ and stop trying after a while.

The company has also got into controversies due to students committing suicide. His parents have alleged that the reason for suicide was the amount of pressure he got due to the hyper-competitive nature of the games. He also came across some ‘suicide quizzes’ on the platform that lead to his decision to end his life. However, there are both good and bad things associated with every technology.

The future

The company continues to offer an edutainment platform that is liked by millions of users. Currently, educators can use it to create different types of quizzes, jumbled, surveys, and challenges. Additionally, as a gesture during the Covid19 outbreak, the company announced free access to premium features. This comes as a welcome gesture as other companies like YouTube are struggling to keep up with the internet bandwidth for HD streaming. There are over 70 million monthly active users in over 200 countries. Market penetration is close to 50% in Western European and North American countries. An example of a quiz/game is available here: https://embed.kahoot.it/6bb6ca4f-26f2-4aef-a28d-ca683740db60

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