Discussing My Company - Case Study Example

My Company, Part of the company and what it does The company I am taking helm of is a trading company categorized as General Merchandise Store. The company covers a large region of the US through its hundreds of low price stores distributed across the US. The company aims at offering the most convenient and pleasant shopping experience across the US and it accomplishes this through three categories of stores namely discounts stores, neighborhood markets and supercenters. Every single store features wide, non-slippery and brightly light aisles and their shelves are stocked with a large variety of quality, value-packed goods. Discount stores offer a variety of general merchandise ranging from pet supplies, housewares, healthy and beauty aids, jewelry, family apparel, sporting goods, home furnishings, hardware, toys, lawn and garden items to automotive products, and a selection of groceries. The company has also established a number of supercenters in major cities to meet the increasing demand for one-stop family shopping. These stores combine general merchandise and full groceries ranging from bakery goods, beverages, fresh sea food, fresh farm produce, condiments and spices, frozen foods, caned and packed foods, meat, and dairy products to dry goods and staples. Most of these are open 24 and have specialty shops like cell phone store, pharmacy, restaurants, hair salon, tire and tube express among others. The neighbourhood markets bridge the gap between the supercenters and the discount stores by offering a limited range of general merchandise but full range of healthy and beauty products, groceries, pharmaceuticals and photo developing services. Desired characteristics for the key players in the company and how they would impact on organizational behavior. The characteristics of the key players of a company have the potential of impacting on organizational behavior and this in turn will financial performance directly and indirectly. Because of this, there are some characteristics I would like to possess and would like to see them in other key players of the company like the chief finance officer (CFO) and the chief operations officer (COO). The first is having a vision. All the key players of the company must have a common picture of what the company aims at attaining. Having a vision will lead to the creation of a company where all employees work toward the attainment of a common goal. All key players should be self-less collaborators and team builders. These traits will go a long way into encouraging the spirit and mindset of teamwork and collaboration across the company among all ranks of employees. In relation to this, the key players should have strong interpersonal relationships. In businesses, especially retailing, people skills are as valuable as technical assets because of high levels of constant interpersonal engagement. This characteristic will therefore lead to the creation of a company where employees treat customers with the utmost respect leading to the best customer experience. The key players should also be of good character and highly ethical. This trait will lead to the creation of a company whose policies, procedures and business activities indicate a strict adherence to ethics. In addition, key players should have passion. Both employees and customers want passion if the employees embraced this character, it will lead to the creation of a customer-focused culture where everyone is willing to go an extra mile to give customers a passionate shopping experience. Analysis of motivational theories discussed and determination of how best to motivate company employees. The motivational theories discussed so far indicate a variation in views among psychologists regarding what best motivates workers. To some, workers are best motivated by pay, to others, workers are motivated by satisfaction of their social needs and to some, a satisfaction of psychological needs. However, it would be unfruitful to lay a framework for employee motivation basing on a single factor. For example, a highly paid employee can quit their job because of stress and a lowly paid but well-cared for employees could leave their jobs in search of more paying jobs. This means that the best way to motivate employees is to strive towards a balanced satisfaction of financial, psychological and social needs. Because of this, Frederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory of motivation becomes the best theory for motivating employees. In order to motivate the employees of the company I would improve the conditions under which work is done. This includes ensuring a democratic approach to company leadership, and ensuring that employees have opportunities for gaining recognition for work done, getting extra-responsibilities and getting promoted basing on their performance. Herzberg et al (1959) reveal that strategies for this include job enlargement and job enrichment. Job enlargement is where employees are exposed to variety of tasks to make their work interesting while is job enrichment where the employees are given challenging tasks regularly to boost the sense of achievement. Employees should also be given a chance to decide where to work, provided they quality, to increase their levels of empowerment. These will increase job satisfaction and motivate employees to work hard. In addition, I would improve the conditions surrounding the job. Herzberg et al (1959) explain that these are the needs which their absence leads to de-motivation although their availability do not create motivation. These include ensuring safe working conditions, job security, reasonable salary, reasonable working hours, fringe benefits, and good benefit schemes. A performance-based rewards program on that is appropriate for the company. The most appropriate performance-based rewards program for this company is that which focuses on employees who go an extra mile to increase the performance of other employee, supervisors and customer experience. In this program, customers and employees nominate an employee(s) who did any of these and the winner(s) receive gifts. To ensure uniformity and to eliminate potential biases, the program will have a set of performance measurement guidelines. These are presented in form of a set of actions that can make an employee to win a reward. An employees who; 1. Goes out of their way to help a customer. 2. Goes out of their way to help a fellow employee. 3. Goes out of their way to help a supervisor with a special job or project. 4. Goes out of their way to help themselves improve a process in the company and make the job easier. The program will be composed of financial rewards like cash prices and gifts, and non-financial rewards like recognition, praise, promotion and responsibility. Every winning will be a chance to get points for annual performance-based bonuses or promotions. This approach is the best for this company because it is hard quantify the exact output of each employee compared to direct sales jobs. However, this program will serve to boost the image of the company and its financial performance by motivating employees to go an extra mile to improve their own performance, that of fellow employees and the supervisors, and improving customer shopping experience. Company, Part 2 Stressors that the employees in the company are likely to face and recommendations for reducing them According to Hicks and McSherry (2007), employees of an organization experience job stress if the requirements of their jobs do not match with their personal capabilities, needs, and the available resources. The stressors require adaptive response and this makes employees to display harmful emotional and physical reactions. Some of the stressors the employees in the company are likely to face include feeling undervalued, having to take on another person’s work, increased workload and responsibilities at certain times of the year, lack of control over the working environment and working day, threats to job security, improper colleague behavior like bullying, and dislike for task given. In order to reduce these stressors, the company will ensure constant recognition of employee performance, appreciation for hard work, proper compensation for extra working times and guarantee two full resting days per week for each employee. These will reduce stress arising from feeling undervalued, many responsibilities and high workload. To increase sense of job security, the company, by way of writing, will guarantee job security for employees who take leaves for medical reasons or to deliver. To eliminate or reduce stressors arising from the behavior of colleagues, the company will outline strict disciplinary measures for employees found bullying or stressing others at the workplace. Employees should also have the autonomy to choose the type of work to do to avoid being placed in a position they hate. The best possible work teams for the company. The best possible work teams for the company are self-directed teams. This is where the employees are free to choose when they would like to work and tasks to do. For example day or night and working as cashiers, display changers, stokers among others. Apart from promoting employee autonomy, another reason for this is that the company employs people of all kinds including college students. This group and those who would like to earn more are likely to take night shifts. Mackin (2007) identifies the majority effect, minority viewpoint, directive leadership, abilene paradox, groupthink, polarization, information sharing as examples of issues in group behaviors. These issues in turn affect development of groups and decision-making in the groups. In order to deal with the majority effect and promote good minority viewpoint, the company will deliberately include a principled employee in each group. Their roles will be to bring the dissent effect by consistently advocating for the rational ways of performing tasks. This will stimulate a consideration of better problem solving methods in the group. Directive leadership will be used to insist on constrictive positions taken by the company that are not supported by employees. The company should also assign expert roles to group members believed to have unique information to stimulate them to share and use it. However, there should be a close supervision of group decisions and actions of the groups to ensure that they do not engage in risky decisions/polarize, act against their will because of fearing each other/experience abilene paradox. This will also reduce the negative impact of group thinking. Company’s approach to leadership and recommendations for best practices The company takes a functional approach to leadership. This is where leadership roles re defined by the responsibilities or functions of the person holding to the role instead of their behaviors or traits. Under this approach, the company leadership always aims at identifying tasks, directing the skills, controlling the teams and satisfying needs. These needs are individual needs, task needs and group maintenance needs. A leader is therefore expected to develop a group into a team, maintain it to work as a team, manage it to complete their task and satisfy the requirements of its members. Leaders therefore divide their time between the team, the task and the individual. From an analysis of traditional, contemporary, and emerging leadership theories, it is imperative that the company has to improve its approach to customers and employees. There are three best practices that can be done to achieve this. The first is to incorporate the ideas of the humble servitude type of leadership to the current leadership. This is where the company will engage in intensive and continuous listening to customers to create a customer-focused organization. The second is to insist on the demonstration of the Golden Rule among all employees while dealing with each other and customers. Thirdly, the company leadership should take an emphatic approach when dealing with the employees. Emphatic leadership will enable the company to develop a pool of happiest store attendants and this will influence customer attitude towards the store. Likely causes of interpersonal conflict expected in the company and how to mitigate them. The likely causes of interpersonal conflict I expect to see in the company are difference in values, lack of emotional intelligence and behavioral difference. Others include evidence of favoritism, demanding bosses and inconsistency between word and deed in the company. Lack of emotional intelligence is where an individual irritates others through their upsetting behaviors like constant use of offensive language but they do not seem to notice or mind that they have hurt others. Employees conflicting in their behavior and values are more likely to conflict in their expectations and even reactions regarding issues like workplace relationships or how to accomplish tasks given. Leung (2008) advices that to mitigate interpersonal conflicts, organisational leaders should adopt cooperative strategies like building trust. This encourages open communications and clarification of issues instead of suppressing hidden conflicts. The company will also make a strict adherence to the outline a code of conduct to ensure fairness in disciplinary measures and suppress further unwanted behaviours among people lacking social radar/emotional intelligence. This will also promote a standardisation of employee behaviour and reduce the effect of difference in behaviours. Employees will be encouraged to air their concerns if they feel they are being forced to work beyond their capacity. Every promotions and delegation of duties should be done with a lot of openness to eliminate favouritism or suspicions of favouritisms. The company leadership should strictly adhere to the company policies and their promises to employees. References Herzberg, F. Mausner, B. and Snyderman, B. (1959). The Motivation to Work. John Wiley. New York. Hicks, T. and McSherry, C. (2007). Workplace Stress. Boca Raton, Florida. Universal Publishers. Leung, A. (2008) "Interpersonal conflict and resolution strategies: An examination of Hong Kong employees." Team Performance Management. (3/4) pp 165 – 178. Mackin, D. (2007). The team building tool kit: tips and tactics for effective workplace teams. (2nd Ed). New York. AMACOM. Read More