Answer to Question #252264 in Management for Naru

Question

Is perception management applicable in current times when we are working from home virtually and not interacting personally with our coworkers and managers? Rationalize your opinion with steps and measures that help you manage the process.

Answer 1

Discussion

Perception management is the practice of ensuring the message a person wishes to send is understood by the specific individuals or groups they want to reach. It also means influencing how people interpret what others say about a person or influencing how people interpret what others say about someone.

Perception is very important for the manager who wants to avoid making errors when dealing with people and events in the work setting. Perception is also important because it offers more than objective output, it ingests an observation and manufactures an altered reality enriched with previous experiences.

With the current pandemic changing the way that people work overnight, companies are trying to figure out if working from home actually is better or worse for their employees. The current perception of working from home is negative though the amount of people that are working from home is continuously increasing. However, there are many positives and a lot of opportunities for change of perception while also maintaining the current culture.  Below are the steps and measures that help manage the perception process.

• Stimulation

The process of perception begins with the stimulation of the senses. When someone is stimulated, something comes to their attention. The five senses stimulate people. They include smelling, seeing, hearing, tasting and touching. The eyes are the most common receptors for stimulation, but tasting a delicious meal or smelling an apple pie cooking can be just as stimulating. Therefore, the first stage of perception begins with the senses. People must first sense stimuli before they can perceive.

• Organization

The body spreads large amounts of information throughout the body. The brain recognizes familiar ideas and concepts and connects them with past experiences. This allows the brain to understand what is happening. During this phase, receptors in the body construct mental representations of the stimulation people experience. This is called a percept. They help in arranging ideas in people’s minds with the help of patterns. Patterns help people group ideas so that they can interpret them.

• Interpretation

When the body recognizes events and features, people apply their own experiences and biases. They evaluate their own experience and relate it to their past, values and beliefs. This helps them determine how to react to situations in front of them. When information is interpreted, it is given meaning. Interpretation is subjective, meaning that each person can have a different opinion or understanding of the same stimulus.

• Memory

When the body stores events and moments in the brain, they become part of the memory. People build associations between these moments and their personal beliefs and experiences. Memories can relate to good or bad experiences. Normally, people may not even realize that have a memory stored until another stimuli reminds them of something that happened. The body stores not only the specific stimuli someone experienced, but also their feelings about them. 

• Recall

People can recall moments from their life to evaluate them. When they do this, they bring a perceived event to their mind to retrieve details. When people recall moments often, they can begin to do so more accurately. They may also realize that over time, the memories they are able to recall change. Their recall may even change some elements of the memory. Perception ultimately helps people of different experiences assign meaning to information and events in their lives. Each person also perceives events differently from others. This makes perception subjective. 

Conclusion

Working from home does pose major challenges to employers. There are no ways to determine how many hours an employee has spent on working from home since the system permits flexible hours. Yet, data from various sources clearly indicates that working from home is a trend that will grow in future.

 

Reference

Elsbach, K. D. (2003). Organizational perception management. Research in organizational behavior, 25, 297-332.