How Organizational Culture Affects the Mental Health of Employees - Research Paper Example

How Organizational Culture Affects the Mental Health of Employees. There is no questioning on the immense potential organizations have in today’s world to grow. Organizations are speedily reaching news markets, finding new customers, building profitability of the retained customers and then broadening the market share by tapping potential in the new markets. With this comes the great responsibility of taming organizations accordingly that is making organizations compatible with the needs of today’s markets that come with the immense competition, ever increasing inflation, cognitive dissonance and unforeseen circumstances. By taming organizations I mean the organization must have a recognition of its own, which is it should have a strong organizational culture that has no parallel and it should be able to attract a strong team that is ready to work zealously for it. Organizations should also make sure that in order to have a sustainable culture, it’s necessary to incorporate green culture [1]. A lot is put into organizational structure, culture and profile of its prospective employees and customers, for any organization to grow it should have a strong foundation and it should build up on the pre defined foundations that have been laid. These foundations should be strictly adhered to and followed by incoming employees. The whole organization should revolve around the laid principles and focus on reinforcing to the extent that the organization is known for its culture and quality. Simultaneous quality check and adherence is also as important building strong culture for the organizations. There are many organizations that do exhaustive study on employing tactics to tame employees towards the direction of the organizational goals attainment. The literature on behavior in organizations is immense but it has to be scanned and thoroughly filtered to meet the requirements of the organizations. With this in place, the question is how to find principles that will help in attainment of the goals of the organization. For example, a media firm may apply increased employee involvement concept rather than an organization that manufactures computers. The later organization , the manufacturers of computers , is responsible for routine job , nothing creative is expected out of employees on routine basis so involvement of employees in the decision making of the organization may be there but very limited as compared to the one required when making managerial decisions for a media firm . The reason for this discrepancy is that the media firm is a very diverse and flexible organization with no standard or fixed underlying foundations, its recognition lies more in creativity and quality of the content that they broadcast. Similarly there are millions and millions of examples like this, where one principle may be pre requisite for one organization but on the other hand the same principle will not help organization to achieve its objectives if it is applied because it is not in line with the objectives of the organization. In today’s theory of the organizational behavior, a common ground is reached between inherent characteristics of the employees and the behavior of the employees that is expected from them to help organizations achieve its goals of profits optimization or value addition. The organizational behavior discipline encompasses almost every element important to organizations in today’s world. Some of these include : Decision Making , Motivation ,Group Behavior , Communication , Power and Politics , Organizational Structure , Organizational Culture , Human Resources Practices and Change Management . Decision making is a whole discipline which unfortunately has not been given independent importance hence many organizations have failed because lack of decisiveness or making wrong decisions. Similarly motivations are a key factor in retaining employees but the question is how to build motivation. Motivation may be explained by the organizational behavior as a tool to further interest of the employees in the organizations by finding a common ground between organizational goals and the perceived employees personal aims or goals. According to the U. S Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number one reason employees leave their jobs or designations is because they do not feel appreciated or motivated to do better. The trick is that even of the employing is not performing well; translate his lack of effort to motivated effort by correcting his negatives constructively. High pay is not indicative of the employees’ retention, many employees rank feeling valued or self recognition higher than their salary or wages. Many organizations have learned that the desired outcomes can also be achieved through positive group behavior and free flowing communication (other than decision making and motivation tactic applied for employees) and reducing work stress. Many employees love to work in teams, the teams may be cross functional (across many departments / subject areas but in the same hierarchal level) or longitudinal structure (same department / subject are but the different hierarchal level, linear). Similarly, the teams should be assigned a leader who encourages free flow of the ideas and remove barriers to communication. The idea is to encourage culture of freedom of expression in the organization and help free flow of ideas and encourage positive exchange. Another new aspect which has successfully embedded itself into underlying foundations of the most organizations is improved human resource policies. A good human resource policy at place will ensure smooth working of employees; it will help in hiring of the right people at the right places and also at proper delegation of the tasks. With these aforementioned tactics many organizations have achieved right direction towards their goals if not the goals themselves. Also, many organizations manipulate these tactics to achieve and to build on improved and strong culture to which working staff adheres to. Positive enforcement will raise morale. Also, scientific researchers have concluded that the companies that employ positive reinforcement tactics such as individual attention to the employees, participative decision making, premiums, discounts etc to increase desirable behaviors expected of the employees will also generate more profits. Many multinational companies that apply literature of the organizational behavior and do in depth studying and analysis of its concepts and also its application to environment of their respective scenario have gone far ahead in terms of success and revenues. They manipulate these variables and measure its relative performance; however, these tactics need to be applied with careful consideration. Since so much is invested before application of these tactics, one would want to capitalize profits on it. But there have been instances where organizations or the companies have suffered losses due to over application of these concepts or due to their under estimation , these concepts need rational consideration and should not been forced into the organization , on the contrary they should be applied gradually by making incremental changes to the company . Some of these concepts may require training of employees, some may require changes to the hierarchy of the organization while others many require centralization of the management. The impact of these concepts on the organizational performance should be monitored to know whether it is positively affecting the organization and that the organization is going in the right direction. One of the multinational companies that have successfully translated correct concepts of the organizational behavior in to its foundations is Mc Donald’s. Mc Donald’s has initiated program of rewarding its employees every month on criteria of “who makes most sales? “, “who has least customer complaints?”, “who works most hours per week? “. On these criteria and the similar ones, Mc Donald’s rewards it employees. If employees then the customers are happy too because Mc Donald’s is a highly customer service oriented company hence the internal controls should be established to satisfy the customer. Also not just rewarding employees in the form premiums etc, Mc Donald’s also makes sure that it is always ready to give ear to employees’ problems. It has done a lot of societal marketing by investing community services, like it has initiated program of employing disabled people, providing training to them and paying them. This is a great noble practice for which Mc Donald’s has enabled a lot perceived organization support for its other employees and created a belief that organization is willing to cater to the needs of the employees and belief them to be an important asset to the company / organization . Mc Donald’s is not alone in this, many companies such as Disney, Adobe Systems, Chevron, Microsoft, Google etc. employ various tactics in the literature of the organizational behavior to trigger positive reinforcement towards the achievement of the goals. Chevron is an oil marketing company , which has operations of downstream and upstream all over the world , for example , in Pakistan only downstream exists but in India only upstream exists and in some both up and down streams exist. Before we the detailed organizational behavior of the company, let us first go into the profile of the company. It is fifth largest integrated oil marketing company in the world and has head quarters in the San Ramon, California and is currently present in the 180 countries all over the world. It is involved is exploration, production, refining, marketing and selling aspects of the oil and gas company. With a company like that of Chevron and having massive operations almost over the world, it is very interesting to get in to depths of how it manages its work force that stands at approximately 53,000 employees. Each and every employee is taking great pride in commitment to community partnership, social responsibility and also environmental up gradation. The company has literally achieved excellence in everything from exploring and marketing the oil and gas products to its responsibility to the environment. The reason for its excellence is that it optimally established fundamental principles laid in organizational behavior to reduce work stress, these include: 1) Decision Making For instance in the Logistics department, the end decision has to be made by the Logistics Area Manager but the entire decision is not under his control, several district managers work under him who research for the problem , check for the alternatives and select the best alternative . This alternative is then presented before the Logistics Area Manager, now it is his / her responsibility to check the viability of that alternative and then approves it. Sometimes in times of the time constraints, the decision may be needed abruptly so the Logistics Area Manager may abruptly take the decision. In other cases the decision making falls under managers of various departments such Logistics and Procurement Managers may need to decide together on some issue so then the authority to final decision lies with both of them. Hence, in general everyone in the company is involved in the decision making. b) Motivation For the motivation of the work force, Chevron employs tactics which make employees feel that they are one family. For example, every Chevron company will celebrate Independence Day of their respective country; this is to foster sense of nationalism in them. Also recently, Chevron implemented photography competition in which every employee wanted to participate because of the incentives offered on the participation. Also , Chevron rewards one employee in every department monthly and that employee places the reward in his / her office which creates a perceived organizational support in his / her mind and also makes other staff to look up to him/her and compete for that reward for the coming months . c) Communication Since Chevrons expands worldwide and is global, communication at all times is important. Chevron has its own IM Messenger through which all employees from secretaries to the General Managers are connected. Other than that, each Chevron employee has an independent telephone connection to foster disruption and barrier free communication [2]. d) Organizational Culture One of the biggest assets Chevron has is the respect. Respect for everyone from clerks to Managers. The words “ Thank you “, “ Please “ etc courtesy words are rampant among the employees , any violation of the rules can cost that employee his or her job . Chevron knows that respect for any individual is important than keeping employees therefore it would not shy away from losing employees who are otherwise very productive but lack respect for their fellow workers. e) Change Management: Another rampant tactic recently used by Chevron is Change Management. This change management was recently implemented when it acquired Texaco and Caltex brands. This enables Chevron by expanding their work areas and developing on new fields also it benefited Caltex with the reputation of the already brand of Chevron [3]. f) Organization Structure The organizational structure is more that horizontal. Once you step in the Chevron, you won’t be able to distinguish that where the clerks sit or where the Manger sits. In cafeteria you will see General Managers and secretaries talking on different subjects. General Manager will give respect to internees and help to adjust to its culture. The culture of Chevron is very rewarding, in the sense that it helps employees to act socially responsible inside or outside organization. A culture conducive to working of employees always helps in significant work stress reduction. The problem in most organizations today is that they do not understand the paramount importance and appreciation of the relationship between the customer, employee and revenue generation. If this equation is disturbed, this can lead to significant deviation from the goals that the organization wants to achieve. Each culture can thrive in today’s world for example the two multinational companies Tabao and Ebay China (both in China) have different culture, if one values innovation, other values steadfastness but both companies are doing well and thriving well. No culture is superior over another [4]. Therefore, the work stress is one of the elements that prevents the employees to work or function at their best capability or to use their talents optimally. Work stress can be due to a lot of reasons, it can be relative. It depends on the individual capability of the employees to handle with the stress. Some can live up to the expectations of the industry and some give up to the rising pressures of the organization or industry. But there are many reasons that are generally responsible for the work stress of most of the employees and managers of the organization or industry [5, 6]. These include credit crunch, long working hours, less salary, too less work, a lot of work, work that does not match the expertise of the employee or communication gap. The reasons are plenty. Recession in particular has caused a lot of unrest in the organizations these days. The crunch is being felt everywhere, in households, hospitals, companies etc. In family firms, the work stress can increase even more if trust element lacks, this is predominantly a major reason for breakups in partnerships, however trust may not be a major reason in non family firms [7].There is a dire need for organizations in order to tackle this problem, they should frame out the causes of the work stress in their organization. For example, the work stress as the consequence of the global recession is very rampant in many industries. The credit crunch has caused organizations to reduce their budget. The question is to use budget optimally, to look for avenues to spend budget upon and keep the customer – employee – organization goals equation stable. The budget utilization is not as relaxed as it was in pre-global credit crunch era. The work stress can also be reduced by making the organization culture receptive to the needs of the employees, particularly recreational ones. Notwithstanding the credit crunch, the recreational activities are important. As discussed earlier, the company’s culture has a massive role to play in reduction of the ever increasing job dissatisfaction and work stress. Too less work is a work stress because the employee does not feel wanted or appreciated by the organization. The employee feels his or her expertise is being wasted or being underutilized and he or she is not learning anything new. However, a lot of work or too much of it can be a source of work stress too. It is relative, be the employee be workaholic or not, there comes a point when he or she feels too much pressure and gives up. In order to make sure optimum working of the employees, it is an imperative to make sure that whatever tasks are being assigned to the work force have to match their interests, expertise and in the quantity that the employee can handle. Some employees love working under pressure and love taking risks accordingly place them in those categories. That is why the most direct and easiest way to lead to work stress reduction is to make sure that the employees’ needs and interests are being understood. It is indeed of a lot of importance to keep the tasks given to the employees in line with their interests. This is what will keep the employees retain and keep their interests intact. Also, this will pull the organization through the work stress. Also, many other work stress problems. The culture of the organization should therefore be conducive to the needs of the employees and also the interests of the employees. This is how they will feel important and wanted by the organization, make them secure and will feel that the organization respects their needs and interests. If the employee is made to work on project he or she has no interest in or has no expertise in it, he or she will face dissatisfaction. Motivation is a key factor in retaining employees but the question is how to build motivation. For the motivation of the work force, organization can employ tactics which make employees feel that they are one family. For example, celebrating Independence Day, this is to foster sense of nationalism in them. Competitions implemented in organizations in which every employee wants to participate because of the incentives offered on the participation. Also , company can reward one employee in every department monthly which creates a perceived organizational support in his / her mind and also makes other staff to look up to him/her and compete for that reward for the coming months . Incorporation of technologies to keep competitive is necessary to tame organizations culture [8]. The culture of any organization should be very rewarding, in the sense that it helps employees to act socially responsible inside or outside organization. High pay is not indicative of the employees’ retention, many employees rank feeling valued or self recognition higher than their salary or wages. Many organizations have learned that the desired outcomes can also be achieved through positive group behavior and free flowing communication (other than decision making and motivation tactic applied for employees) and reducing work stress [9]. References : 1. UNEP (2007) “Sustainable Culture: More Than Turning Off the Light.” 2. Leidner, D. E. And Kayworth, T. (2006) “Review: A Review of Culture in Information Systems Research: Toward A Theory of Information Technology Culture Conflict,” MIS Quarterly. 3. Ralston, D. A., Holt, D. H., Terpstra, R. H, And Yu, K.C. (1997) “The Impact Of National Culture And Economic Ideology On Managerial Work Values: A Study Of The United States, Russia, Japan, And china,” Journal Of International Business Studies. 4. Qiang Ye, Qing Ho, Yijun Li “How Organizational Culture Shapes Competitive Strategies: A Comparative Case Study Of Two Ecommerce Firms In China” 5. Edvardu Dave, Diane Gabrielle (2004) “Organizational Culture and Social Performance: Insights from the Experience of Family Organization.” 6. Protecting Workers Health Series “ Work Organization & Stress” 7. Steier, L. (2001). Family Firms, Plural Forms of Governance, and the Evolving Role of Trust. Family Business Review, 14(4), 353-367. 8. Kunda, G. (1992). Engineering Culture: Control And Commitment In A High-Tech Corporation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 9. Kotter, J. P., & Heskett, J. L. (1992). Corporate Culture and Performance. New York: Free Press. Read More