Employability Skills and Professional Self-Development - Assignment Example

Employability skills: A personal reflection on preparedness for employment BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE Employability Skills Preamble The fashion retailer Next Retail Ltd. has 700 different stores throughout the world, with approximately 500 of these in Ireland and the United Kingdom. In the year 2012, Next managed to surpass the retail successes of Marks and Spencer (one of the company’s most significant competition), sustaining a market cap of over £5 billion (Shannon 2012). Next has been successful in its retail strategy by offering consumers many name brands and private label products produced under the Next label, focusing on catering to women, mean, children and also many different household consumer products. The major target market for Next is the 18-35 year old consumers and the firm’s major successes are due to offering lower- and mid-priced merchandise that make its fashion offerings desirable to the lower-resource consumer. Many of the firm’s sales come from its online website, referred to as NextDirect, which contributes to over 40 percent of the company’s total revenues (Next 2012). Why the business is so successful is that the company has established a low cost pricing strategy and the capability of procuring trendy and chic fashion merchandise that is relevant to the contemporary, younger consumer with a need for fast, mod fashion at an affordable price. Next competes with major retail companies such as Zara, Matalan, Debenhams and even New Look (to suggest only a few competitors). Internally, Next operates under a functional organisational structure where each division associated with the value chain is grouped and maintains reporting structures according to the purpose of the division. The company has a marketing department, a procurement division, a sales department, and customer service division (to name only a few) with each being responsible for their own activities. This is one of the disadvantages of Next’s internal structure as it does not provide many opportunities for cross-collaboration and inter-group consultations. 2. A discussion of professional self-development Having had a lower-level management position in the women’s clothing department at Next, I gained valuable insight into what responsibilities and performance targets required development for future employment. At Next, there was little emphasis on teamwork throughout the entire business model and, therefore, I was not given many opportunities for networking, collaboration, or working within a group environment to solve organisational problems. Stover (2004) asserts that in order for a business to generate more valuable solutions to problems and innovate, it is critical to interact with others. Whenever there were division-related problems, it was common for employees to receive a memo or other form of written communication and it was expected that managers of each division discuss these problems in weekly informal meetings with subordinate workers. This did not serve as an effective method of solving problems and coming up with creative solutions to issues within the women’s clothing department. Hence, I realised that in order to work in an organisation with a different structure that does encourage collaboration, I would need to develop my teamwork and leadership skills. At Next, the higher-level management team did not emphasise using leadership talents and instead wanted managers to maintain more control over employees with an emphasis on delegation. However, I found that this de-motivated workers, did not provide opportunities for coaching, and built an us versus them culture where there was no cohesion or unity about the mission and vision of the organisation. Next, unfortunately, had a very high turnover rate and there were many negative attitudes as a result of a fragmented organisational culture. Fairholm (2009) states that in order to build an effective organisational culture, it is necessary to role model behaviours, open lines of communication, provide positive feedback, consistently emphasise the firm’s vision, and serve as a mentor or coach. Contemporary business literature often asserts the importance of leadership (sometimes more paramount than management capability) to build a positive culture and build human capital (Resick, Hanges, Dickson and Mitchelson 2006; Luthans and Peterson 2003). As a future, employed manager, I determined that I would consult with many different journals and published empirical studies about the dynamics of leadership and recommended models to improve organisational culture and gain employee commitment and dedication to achieve strategic goals. Understanding contemporary and research-supported best practice strategies is a responsibility for a future manager that wants to build a positive culture, motivate workers, reduce turnover rates, and make the organisation work more effectively as a team. At Next, where true leadership was lacking, I realised that competency development in leadership, rather than management ideology, is critical for improving organisational performance and providing quality outcomes related to individual worker job roles. At Next, the quality of engagement in customer service was critical to achieving customer loyalty and satisfying diverse demographics. It is critical, first, when developing performance targets, to identify critical business drivers and create a metrics system that will ultimately identify failures or successes in achieving strategic goals (Grafton, Lillis and Widener 2010). I need to develop competency in assessing profit and loss statements that will assist in determining the proportion of sales to expenditures. I determined that future performance targets would include improvement of customer complaints returned to the business, measurement of the time it takes to fulfil a customer’s transaction, measure product returns, and also the operational expenditures that were occurring within the budget of the women’s clothing department. Matrices such as the balanced scorecard, cause and effect diagrams, value stream mapping, and even statistical methods such as scatter diagrams can assist in achieving desired performance targets and achieving high quality business activity. Therefore, my personal development competencies related to performance target setting will require learning more about these statistical processes and metrics measurement methodologies to align the business according to quantitative findings to achieve desired performance outcomes (Upadhaya, Munir and Blount 2014). These systems were not largely present at Next which often led to poor performance and poor quality of customer service engagement with customers. Without workplace experience in these objectives, my own managerial and leadership-based performance, in reflection, was rather inadequate to generate any real organisational performance outcomes. There was one situation at Next where the volume of customer complaints had risen sharply in a short period of time. Informal discussion with employees indicated that they were largely de-motivated as they felt that the company did not provide opportunities for bonuses or other rewards when achieving service-related performance targets. A study conducted by Ming, Zivlak and Ljubicic (2011) recruited real-world participants in a retail organisation where turnover rates were much higher than industry averages. The study found that 78 percent of employees surveyed maintained intention to leave the organisation as a result of pay and bonus related dissatisfaction. I indicated to the employees that such decisions were out of my managerial control and, faced with this frustration, only provided employees with positive feedback and did not explore solutions that might better motivate the employees. Within a period of about six weeks, I lost three valuable employees who sought employment elsewhere. I realised, in retrospect, that I should have consulted with higher management about creating opportunities to reward high performance, especially in an environment where customer complaints were rising as a result of poor interactions with employees. To gain management commitment, I could have constructed a short report highlighting the many advantages to a business of motivating employees through incentive programs and illustrated to employees that I was making a concerted effort to improve the motivational environment at Next. Trust in a manager is one of the essential foundations of gaining followership and motivating performance. I realised, in reflection, that I could have worked more diligently to gain approval for new motivational strategies that likely would have reduced turnover rates and built more employee commitment that would lead to better performance outcomes. 3. Workplace solutions, communication and time management strategies With considerable rises in customer complaints, I approached my higher management group that the business should develop online customer surveys accessible on their purchase receipts to provide a metrics systems to determine what was driving the majority of these complaints. Rather than targeting individual employees, I tried to convince the group that this would provide valuable data necessary to achieve better service systems and restructure the women’s clothing division to provide superior quality of service. I was met with considerable resistance and irrational emotional responses from management which Ford, Ford and D’Amelio (2008) say is common when change is proposed. I realised that the higher-level management team felt that this would pose a threat to their high level of management control and put more responsibility for change and measurement in the hands of lower-level management. I was not assertive enough in communication style to gain commitment. The assertive style of communication not only asserts one’s agenda strongly, but also takes into consideration the needs of others, iterating personal self-confidence, and asking directly for support for needs to be met (Fisher and Ury 1998). In retrospect, I believe that my body language illustrated frustration upon the realisation that this change request was being rejected as a result of organisational politics. Hence, management found that I was using overtly aggressive communications styles, likely perceived that I was attempting to create a win-lose situation in favour of my own suggestion. What I should have done is recognised the reality of managerial politics and used a more submissive communications style, characterised by a more passive voice, avoiding confrontation, and trying to please the management team. In a political environment where management is resistant to relinquishing control to others, the aggressive or assertive style was likely not appropriate for gaining management commitment to a change-related request. I should have sought a win-win strategy through more submissive communication style that would have identified opportunities to satisfy both parties whilst also iterating the importance of improving service measurement. At Next, daily tasks changed on a regular basis which made it difficult to juggle all departmental responsibilities. Morgenstern (2004) suggests using a Task List Organization strategy. What this method does is rank priorities according to a tiered list, assigning a number to each daily task related to urgency. This ensures that one remains focused on getting the most paramount tasks done first and then working on less-priority items throughout the course of the day. Yet another time management approach is delegation. This means recruiting others to take on various tasks needing completion to ensure that all departmental tasks are completed daily (Chapman and Rupured 2008). At a large retailer like Next, it is unrealistic to believe that all tasks can be achieved by a single individual, therefore delegation skills can better achieve departmental performance and provide a realistic framework for achieving tasks productively and within deadline. Time management in retail is critical as it reduces the effort being put into non-priority tasks and ensures better organisation with an emphasis on efficiency and productivity, crucial needs in an environment where customer perceptions of staff competency are important for gaining customer loyalty. 4. A team-based analysis At Next, there were some team-based strategies used. Managers were involved in weekly management meetings to discuss issues, problems and solutions to identified organisational situations. However, higher-level management controlled the context of discussion in nearly all situations, providing little opportunity for free expression of ideas and potential solutions. This severely limited the ability to come up with creative ideas and higher volumes of ideas that could potentially benefit Next. The team leaders in meetings did not motivate a participative environment or work to motivate a feeling of membership so critical to motivating team performance and participation (Leigh and Maynard 2002). Higher-level managers did not realise the importance of the social environment in team meetings and therefore created an in-group versus out-group perception that severely de-motivated being communicative and offering potential solutions. Management did not consider that goals being discussed were shared goals and maintained a politically-motivated team environment where delegation and an autocratic approach were used regularly. The management team should have utilised an interpersonal relationship management strategy to build a sense of social belonging as contributing members. Psychology recognises that belonging is one of the most fundamental motivations and serves as the foundation for self-esteem development and commitment from an organisational perspective. In many ways, the team meetings at Next were a type of political performance that was really just an effort to use authoritarian behaviours to gain lower-level management compliance to new change strategies. In teams, there should be open communication and a sense of psychological safety whereby colleagues can speak up and share ideas, whilst asking questions, without fear of reprisal or rejection (Terrell 1989). At Next, to achieve legitimate, positive team outcomes and solutions that would benefit the problems being faced by the business, the higher-level management controlling the team should have provided opportunities for feedback to be offered and worked on building a more positive social environment. Often after the meetings, those who recognised the “team” concept was just a performance would exhibit frustration and anger at this autocratic leadership style. Managers should have provided opportunities for some degree in autonomy in using managers’ own ideas to try to create change solutions and motivate better employee performance without simply the expectation of compliance to higher-level management-created ideas that were disseminated in the team meetings without opportunities for suggestions. As a result, when the managers’ strategies were enacted, they rarely led to high performance outcomes. If managers had been more considerate of the socio-psychological needs of employees, such as granting autonomy, being more transparent, and providing opportunities for creative discussion, it is likely that members would have been more motivated and enthused about new departmental solutions. 5. An evaluation of a work-based problem One situation that occurred at Next was employees leaving their work areas in non-break periods, leaving customers to have to track down service help in other departments. Previous efforts to write-up employees for this recurring activity met with little performance change. The DMAIC model shown in Figure 1 is one of the most respected problem-solving models in business. Figure 1: The DMAIC model of problem-solving Image Source: Wikipedia. (2014). DMAIC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMAIC Whilst the problem was defined appropriately, measurement, analysis, improvement and control needed evaluation. Faced with this problem that was a direct responsibility of my management position to correct, I set about establishing a measurement system. I determined that direct visibility on the sales floor and observation would be the best qualitative methods of ensuring that I discovered which employees, specifically, were causing this problem. I also briefly interviewed regular customers that I had grown familiar with to determine their perceptions of customer service competency with specific employees. This provided valuable data needed to consider potential corrective actions. Having measured performance, I set about analyzing the potential root causes of what might be causing employees to leave their work areas regularly. I also considered the employee voice and began asking questions about why non-break periods were experiencing more employee disappearance. Much to my surprise, analysis determined that employees were doing this simply because they were getting away with it and feared no reprisal for these actions. They insinuated that higher-level management did not care about support workers and would not give management the authority and autonomy to take corrective actions; which was a misguided perception. I immediately set about determining the most appropriate disciplinary implementation system that would put a stop to this problematic behaviour as part of improvement methodology. After gaining approval from higher management to create a new departmental policy outlining disciplinary actions for being caught leaving work areas on non-break periods, I disseminated this new policy to employees with a very transparent and clear language that it would lead to immediate termination of their positions. Within a week, an employee was caught having a cigarette on a non-break period, talking with friends who had come into Next to visit their working friend. To emphasise the seriousness and legitimacy of this new policy, the employee was terminated publicly to set an example that such behaviours would not be tolerated. This created a fear of management authority that ended the problem rather instantaneously. This method was highly effective and established a new type of respect for departmental management authority. Whilst contemporary business studies always reinforce how positive feedback and autonomy motivate workers, disciplinary systems are iterated as part of management control in situations where employee behaviours are causing problems to achieving quality of service and positive performance outcomes. Publicly terminating an employee for violating this new policy with clear language about consequences achieved better service quality related to customers having to track down assistance to satisfy their shopping needs. It was the most relevant problem-solving strategy in a situation where warnings and motivational strategies had failed to stop this negative behaviour. Not all workplace situations require leadership, but strict management controls in order to ensure compliance and Next achieved some level of reduction of customer complaints related to this particular problem of being unable to find employee support. Higher-level managers, too, were inundated with concerns from headquarters about the issue and were highly satisfied that my policy and strategy to end this problem had worked. This improved some level of relationship with higher management (as it pertains to myself) and created a new type of respect as a competent manager capable of exerting control when necessary. I found that cutting the level of complaints about missing employees made managers more responsive to future suggestions (for certain situations where there were problems) and granted me a little bit more autonomy in management direction and strategy where once I was often considered incapable of making independent management decisions. This boosted my own motivation and made me feel a sense of better social belonging that improved my own performance and commitment to achieving organisational goals. References Chapman, S.W. and Rupured, M. (2008). Time management: 10 strategies for better time management, The University of Georgia. [online] Available at: http://www.wiu.edu/advising/docs/Time_Management_Strategies.pdf (accessed 18 November 2014). Fairholm, M. (2009). Leadership and organisational strategy, The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 14(1), pp.26-27. Fisher, R. and Ury, W. (1998). Getting to yes: negotiating agreement without giving in. London: Penguin Books. Ford, J.D., Ford, L.W. and D’Amelio, A. (2008). Resistance to change: The rest of the story, Academy of Management Review, 33(2), pp.362-377. Grafton, J., Lillis, A. and Widener, S. (2010). The role of performance measurement and evaluation in building organisational capabilities and performance, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 35(7), pp.689-706. 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