Approach of Companies to Customers as Suitable Source of Incentive to Innovate

AbstractCompanies constantly need to adapt to changing business environment, therefore innovations are becoming an everyday reality in business practice. In an effort to innovate towards ensuring, respectively maintaining a strong competitive position, companies seek incentives to innovate at different places. Customers appear to be the most suitable source in this case, as companies try to adapt and thus satisfy their needs by implementing innovations. This paper clarifies the justness of engaging customers in an innovation process of a company and presents results of a research which dealt with whether companies operating in Slovakia focus on customer satisfaction, the level of their mutual communication and how they develop and regulate the behaviour of their employees oriented to customers. The aim of this paper is describe the present state of orientation companies on their customers and design the simple tool to analyse customer orientation

Application of agile management methods in companies operating in Slovakia and the Czech Republic

The current pandemic situation has forced organisations to adapt quickly and change processes through digital transformation. Businesses began to interact with consumers online and generally had to adjust existing processes and develop or improve the products and services offered. The agile transformation as part of Industry 4.0 started several years ago and in the current situation can be considered the best starting point for ongoing changes. The agile approach is mostly used in the field of IT, where it has penetrated mainly into software solutions and project management. Later, this concept began to penetrate deeper into several areas of the organisation, today we can talk about the company-wide transformation into an agile platform. While agility was initially perceived as a benefit, especially for software solutions, today it helps in successful business mainly by penetrating the organisational culture in which organisations define the desired values, ideas and procedures of employee behaviour in the organisation and is able to implement agile management principles. In the presented article, we present the results of research focussed on the analysis of the current state of application of agile management methods in companies operating in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The aim of this paper is to identify the approach to building an agile culture as a basic prerequisite for their effective implementation. The contribution of this article to agile management research is to identify specific aspects of agile culture that support agile management functioning. The size of the examined sample and the comparison of the results between the group of companies in the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic provide findings with a high degree of reliability

Change in Approach to Employee Development in Organizations on a Regional Scale

Human capital is frequently viewed as the only resource that can be constantly developed, and it can be denoted as key in the long term in efforts to increase the level of organisations. This paper aims at analysing the present state of focus of Slovak organisations on systematic education, on comprehensive targeting of education on all employees, as well as on the assessment of effectiveness in education in the context of a relationship to the region in which such organisations operate. Several partial objectives, such as a questionnaire survey conducted in Slovak organisations between 2013 – 2017, were fulfilled in order to accomplish this objective. Statistical hypothesis testing aimed at specifying the relationship between the region of operation of the given organisation and the execution of activities related to systematic education of employees in it, the focus of the organisation on education of all employees, and the assessment of effectiveness in the education provided by them, confirmed a link between the analysed variables. Positive changes in the selected attributes in time were evaluated by the fixed-base index

Human Resource Management Trends in Slovakia

Human potential introduces an enormous range of knowledge, skills, predictable and unpredictable responses, ways of perception, experience, and behaviour. The human potential in the corporate environment, i.e. people and their complex positive and negative abilities are mostly constructive, but sometimes destructive creators of new values and new knowledge. The need to implement changes in management systems is a challenge and a condition for future competitiveness these days. In this paper, the authors focus on the cultural-historical development of human resource management from the time when people were only a secondary component of production to the present when they are a key element in maintaining competitiveness. A survey conducted between 2010 and 2019 analyses how human resource management in Slovak organizations has changed over the past decade. The survey revealed several findings. The most fundamental is the trend of increasing the size of human resource management units or personnel departments in organizations

Management Reflections on Innovations in Digitalization, with an Emphasis on Degree of Work Autonomy

The objective of this research study is to identify the degree of implementation of innovations in the field of job digitalization and to identify whether jobs allow employees to maximum autonomy in the performance of their work. This study uses Computer Assisted Self Interviewing (CASI) to meet this objective and to test the hypotheses. Data distribution and collection were conducted throughout the year 2020; the research sample includes 841 companies from the EU 27 international environment. The holistic finding is that economic sector does not show significant differences in current levels of or expectations for innovations in the field of digitalization. This finding demonstrates that digitalization is a phenomenon that is not only linked to certain specific industries of the economy, but that affects the economy as a whole. The authors’ research demonstrates that EU 27 businesses, regardless of the sector in which they operate, are aware of the need to innovate in digitalization in order to remain competitive

Motivation of Employees for Creativity as a Form of Support to Manage Innovation Processes in Transportation-Logistics Companies

The paper´s objective is to analyse a certain influence of using creative potential of employees on the innovation processes management in the transportation-logistics companies. An important part is the presentation of partial results of a survey (conducted between 2013 and 2016) regarding particular development of orientation towards the level of motivation and support of employee creativity in Slovak companies with over 50 employees. These results revealed significant deficiencies in the employees’ motivation to be creative and in the extent of their involvement in innovations. In the process of creating an appropriate environment, a particular point evaluation is then provided recognizing the actual level of the organizations’ orientation towards the discussed issue. In order to identify certain barriers to improve the innovation processes, a case study was also used to classify the current state of the three selected transportation-logistics companies operating in the Slovak Republic

Employee allocation in Slovak companies

Employee allocation is a part of the process of workforce formation (staffing) in organisation. Its aim within hiring new employees and internal mobility is to have an adequate, stable and satisfied employee in the shortest possible time, and its key objective within employment termination is to ensure a fair departure. Employee allocation results in optimal usage of financial means of organisation as well as in development of abilities of employees and teams in accordance with the aims of organisation. The aim of our research conducted in 2012 was to find out whether organisations operating in Slovakia realize the importance of employee allocation. Research results imply that only 14 % of organisations deal with adaptation comprehensively, i.e. at all three levels. And only 8 % of interviewed organisations deal with outplacement

Methods of Recruitment in the Czech and Slovak Organizations

In the existing highly competitive environment, every organization’s goal is to hire quality employees. To be able to acquire quality employees, the HR processes related to employee hiring must be conducted properly within the organization. This paper uses primary research to identify and assess recruitment methods used by organizations in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, taking the employer’s brand building into account. The research was conducted on the basis of a questionnaire distributed among Czech (n = 364) and Slovak (n = 340) organizations. The results showed that employers in the Czech Republic most frequently present themselves to potential candidates via their organizations’ websites (43.7%), positive references (38.7%) and media advertisements (32.4%). A similar ranking obtains for Slovakia. Organization websites are used 47.5% of the time, positive references 42.5% of the time and media advertisements 33.2% of the time. In both countries, employees are hired for managerial positions primarily using the organization’s own resources, promoting the building of the employer’s brand

Efficient involvement of human resources in innovations through effective communication

Systematic creation and use of human potential enables building and development of strengths of organisations. If organisations can fully use the potential of their employees it will affect their ability to succeed in competitive environment. Our paper focuses on open and broad communication, as it has a significant impact on both formal and informal labour relations, which, along with information share and knowledge continuity, essentially affect team creation. The questionnaire survey focused on finding out whether and to what extent organisations operating in Slovakia focus on communication. The paper also provides a simple method of evaluating the level of communication and engagement of employees in problem solving in companies. This method is a simple instrument enabling the conduction of analysis in a short time interval, while analysing employees are able to identify a current level of their company on the grounds of results, as well as they are able to identify bottlenecks preventing them in innovation potential increase

Influencing organisational culture by means of employee remuneration

The aim of this paper is to particularly define the possibilities of influencing organisational culture by means of employee remuneration. The paper will present the results of research conducted over 2010–2012. The respondent group included 340 organisations operating in the Slovak Republic. The research showed that even though 98% of the interviewed organisations realise the importance and meaning of dealing with the creation and maintenance of organisational culture, only 21–43% have defined an organisational culture strategy in writing within the organisation´s strategy