Factors for Improving Employee Efficiency

1. You have been asked to use the OB theories on organizational change that you have studied to advice a group of managers on how they can effectively bring about change in their employees working practices.

2. The concept of organizational culture is an important and popular one for academics and practicing managers.

1. The best of Managers do not need any diploma’s or certificates to bring efficiency in working capacity of their employees, all they need is a good know-how of what motivates each employee (Rao, 2010). After all, employees are different individuals with different driving factors. Therefore, every Manager needs to assess each and every employee as to what is the unique driving factor for each employee (Appannaiah, Reddy and Kavitha, 2010).

Following are the factors taken from theories; Managers need to keep in mind to improve the efficiency of Employees:

Theory of Motivation:

Managers need to be frequent and enthusiastic communicators to be successful leaders and to bring out maximum efficiency among employees. Managers need to be regularly interactive with the employees on individual basis. This gives the employees a sense of belongingness towards the Organization. Thus, the employees feel satisfied and deliver better work and stay at the workplace for longer period (Wilson, 2010).

Successful Mangers/leaders need to build an atmosphere that is very encouraging and persuasive for the employees to work. Moreover in this era of high competition, where every sector is flooded with various competitors, employees need to work with very high levels of dedication. Therefore, a positive and conducive environment is required for an efficient working by the employees (Robbins, 2010).

Enthusiasm is a thing which passes from one person to another, thus, it is mandatory on part of every Manager to be an enthusiastic, passionate and a very determined leader. This helps to breed resourceful ideas and passion amongst employees, which in turn, generates energy and bring in efficiency (Martin and Fellenz, 2010).

Manager also needs to focus on perks to be given to the employees. For example, organizing a cake cutting ceremony of employee on his/her birthday, giving gifts on the occasion of marriage of any employee or giving present if any employee is blessed with a child. If feasible, organization should also organize a small party amongst the employees on the last day of every month (Beulens, 2006).

Theory of emotional intelligence:

Successful Managers need to communicate with employees collectively and in a way which infuses a sense of oneness amongst them. For an Organization to excel, it is very important that all employees work collectively for common goals of the Organization. Thus, if Managers interact with the employees in a way that infuses a way of oneness amongst employees towards the organizational goals, it will build the functioning of the employees in that manner (Langton et al., 2014).

Theory of Motivation

No matter, business/organization is big or small, for better functioning of the overall organization, different teams are required that need to finish different tasks. Thus, good leaders need to make different teams for better functioning. Every team requires a different Manager for supervising. Thus, later, the main Manager/leader will better synchronize the different team tasks, which in turn will be over-all organizational task at the end (Singh, 2010).

Leaders/Mangers define various tasks to be done as per the understanding/skills of different employees. For example;

If an employee is better at handling clients/managing people or good with the workforce, the Manager will give him more works related to that, so that after delivering a better work, his morale is also enhanced and it is better for the Organization as well (Osibanjo and Adeniji, 2013).

If an employee is better at marketing side, he will be put in marketing strategies etc. so that it benefits the employee as well as whole Organization.

Theory of Attitude and Behaviour:

Good Leaders value the diversity of work styles, cultures and skills. Leaders should never discard new styles of working bought in by any employee as it may prove to be more beneficial than the existing one.

For being an efficient leader and someone that should be appreciated, one needs to appraise not just whole team but each and every member of the team separately and collectively both. So to maintain the perfect balance between individual employee’s morale and also to maintain a sense of collectiveness/oneness amongst them.

A leader affects the code of conduct of each employee in the team (Legace, 2002). Thus, it is very important for the leader to be a role model and act correctly to set an apt example, reflecting what the team needs to do and in which direction. Moreover, a good leader should also help in moulding an employee in a disciplined manner by his own example (Martin and Fellenz, 2010).

A Manager also needs to advocate/appraise his/her employees to stand up for what is right and what is wrong. Managers should inculcate social responsibilities amongst employees. As in today’s world, where Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives are mandatory on part of Organizations and more than being mandatory, they are the need of this era, Managers should inculcate such CSR initiatives amongst employees so that it forms a part of legacy of the Organization. This will set a benchmark for the coming generations of Managers to meet such standards or even achieve higher levels (Alvesson, 2011).

Theory of Emotional Intelligence

Successful leaders not just focus on skilled educated workforce; they also bring better initiatives/incentives for unskilled/semi-skilled labourers. This helps in fulfilling two tasks, one is retaining trustable workforce, another is the Manager will be appreciated (Hardcopf and Shah, 2014).

Corporate world in today’s time has no time for sensitive discussions. Thus, for being a distinguished leader, one needs to be a bit sensitive towards employees. This does not mean talking to an employee about his/her personal relationships, but holding individual session with an employee who looks stressed or unhappy at the workplace as to discuss the reasons for his/her unhappiness or stress at workplace. This will lead to two things, one would be that employees will be satisfied at the workplace and would stay for longer years. Secondly, this will also benefit the organization as a whole (King and Lawley, 2012).

Like employees are different individuals and have emotions, Managers too are human beings who have emotions or different perceptions about different people of different cultures, social strata, etc. Therefore, successful Managers never look up at someone with personal perceptions; rather judge them as per their deliverables/work. For example, if a Manager has negative perceptions about a person from a particular community, he should not reject that person in the interview itself just on the basis of his/her caste/community (French, 2014).

Thus, to conclude, it can be said that Managerial tasks are mainly required to maintain thin-line balance between achieving organizational tasks and every employee’s individual development. Thus, the factors stated above are important requisites for Mangers to follow and become distinguishing leaders like being great motivators, someone who sets standards/code of conduct for the employees as the Managers need to look for employees’ individual needs also and train them to work for Organization’s overall collective goals also. To sum up, it can be said that Managers need to be enthusiastic, sensitive towards society and employees; need not bring in personal perceptions in between the professional Managerial capacity, also he/she should be a good mentor to be a distinguishing Mentor/Manager or in real terms a leader. In other words, need to set such benchmarks for the Managers of future generations which are not easy to achieve.

2. Organisational behaviour is a concept wherein an organisation is developed with shared beliefs and values and the internal environment of the organisation is governed by the behaviour of the people in the organisation. The values in an organisation have an impact on the way the people of the organisation perform, dress, and act and how their performance is in their work (Alvesson, 2011).  These work performances differ from organisation to organisation depending on the type of work culture the organisation develops. Therefore an organisational culture is of great importance for the people involved in any organisation.

Theory of Attitude and Behavior

For managers and academics a professional environment with closely knitted values is important as the internal environment of an organisation requires leadership and professionalism along with an effective communication. An organisation requires certain factors to succeed such as growth, communication, balancing between professional and personal streams of the employees, employee’s satisfaction, rewarding the employees to culminate motivation in the employees, this can be achieved only from a professional organisational cultural. The organisational culture cannot be seen or set through parameters/indexes of any kind; it can only be felt by the people working in the organisation, by the behaviour of the organisation, the leadership skills that the managers and the other people involved in the organisations show. These factors that make an organisation are compromised, the ills of the factors are reflected upon the organisation which makes the organisation look bad, the productivity falls and the graph of the return drops (Uddin, Luva and Hossain, 2012).

Managers have the most important role to play in the organisation as stated by in a research by the Gallup Organisation, whereby it was concluded that the manager is the ‘key’ of the organisation and not the ‘pays, benefits, perks” or other incentives of it. The culture determines the bond of the manager and the employees, their relationship is coexistent with the generation of profit and benefits for the employees and the management. The manager is responsible to set out the action plan for the employees to perform in nexus with the objectives of the organisation that it is suppose to achieve. Therefore all is dependent on the relationship the manager maintains with the employees else, the organisation fails as a whole. Managers being the leaders in the organisation are looked upon as role models for the employees, and their behaviour is responsible for the behaviour of the employees as it is shaped by continuous observation and the experiences that the employees get from their managers. This in turn is a resultant factor of the philosophies and the values that the organisation is knitted with (Sweeney, 2014).

Managers are involved in the role of planning, by setting the agendas for the organisation to achieve through the working of the employees; it is the managers who have an influence over the employees due to which the organisation thrives and is successful in its long term goals as the employees in a cohabited organisational culture are able to strive for excellence by working together to fulfil the agenda of the organisation (Safiullah, 2014).

Conclusion

A positive organisational culture has its merits that help in the growth of the organisation which are as follows (Cameron and Quinn, 2011):

Innovation: The cooperation that exist in a positive work culture of an organisation inhibiting sharing of knowledge, ideas and experiences, if the organisation has an open culture then the employees can equally participate and put in their efforts which leads to success for the organisation, however if the work culture is narrow or restrictive and authoritative, the employees are unable to put in their complete efforts and restricts innovation or new ideas and approaches from the employees. Employees require support and motivation from the mangers so as to bring out the goodness from themselves and perform task in a challenging manner to come out with better and innovative ideas (Osibanjo and Adeniji, 2013).

Unity: When an organisation has a shared environment of values and belief then the relationship between the employee and the manager is healthy even though the people in the organisation come from various backgrounds. This indeed helps the organisation as they are able to cater and understand the needs of diversified culture, which brings them together through understanding due to better communication building up cultural gaps and avoiding conflicts (Harwiki, 2016).

Loyalty: motivation can be achieved only if the leaders of the organisation make the employees feel respected and encouraged by appreciating their work, this boosts up their self esteem and they find themselves to be as a part of the organisation. This makes the employees want to put in their efforts to the fullest for the success of the organisation. This kind of a work culture makes the employees loyal towards the organisation (Hardcopf and Shah, 2014).

Competition: healthy work environment is crafted in a shared organisational culture; a healthy competition is not only good but necessary for the organisations growth as well as for the growth of the employees individually. Healthy competition is achieved from the efforts of the managers and the ones sitting in the hierarchy of the organisation (Awasthi, 2012).

Direction: It is the role of the managers to provide an action plan for the employees, as being the leader and the managing authority it is his duty to guide the employees through the work and correct them when they are wrong and direct them towards working in the right direction so as to ensure the agendas are fulfilled. Providing the employee with deadlines also helps in this task which is done by the managers only (Erkutlu, 2012).

The importance of organisational culture can be felt through the example of IBM wherein IBM according to Legace (2002), “IBM’s extraordinary success in the ’60s and ’70s was built on one of the most dynamic sales cultures in the world”. Earlier IBM applied the approach of decentralisation but by the 1990’s they realised that organisation can thrive only by coming together and sharing the experiences and knowledge. Google is the most frequently used search engine, it has achieved huge success because of the principles that the organisation has which were adopted by its founders. They believe in making the employees happy and satisfied. Google has not only been ranked as the largest used search engine but has also been ranked at the top by its employees and considered as the best place to work at. Importance of an organisational culture can be seen at Google as it encourages its employees by taking risk and indulging into innovative practices. In one of the instances when an employee made mistake in the advertisement department at Google and caused millions of losses to the company, the vice president supported and encouraged the employee for taking risks and working out of the bounds. At Google, engineers are allowed to spend 20% of their time on their own ideas, so that the employees are encouraged to step out and experiment.

There has to be a synthesis in the organisational cultural, this instil a set of values and principles within the culture and brings out benefits for the organisation. Organisational culture is a collection of values, symbol, experience, growth etc. these qualities make the members connect with the organisation. The importance of culture is that it shows the potential of the employees and the efforts that the employees put in making the company successful. It is hence important to adapt an organisational culture and also study about the trends of other organisational culture so as to know to learn from the faults and move towards growth without repeating the faults and learning from successful organisations.

References

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