Low Morale as the Problem - Solutions - Case Study Example

Problems and Solutions Introduction This case study is about Dick Spencer. Dick has worked with the Tri-American company for 14 years. After graduating at the age of 22, Dick Spencer was hired as the salesman at the Tri-American company. Later he successfully worked as an administrator. Currently, Dick is serving as the vice-president and plant manager at the branch in Canada. This case study captures different challenges that Dick encountered in his career at different points in time because of factors that varied from one branch that he worked in to another. Problems that Dick faced included but were not limited to low morale, employees’ resistance to the changes he wanted to implement, and negative perceptions of the employees regarding his micromanaging style. This paper discusses these problems and recommends practicable solutions. Low Morale as the Problem At various points throughout the case study, Dick’s low morale can be witnessed along with the causal factors. For example, three years after his first switch of role in the company, Dick was made the assistant plant manager of an English branch in London. Dick found himself in lesser control than his supervisors that kept him from bringing innovation in the branch. Consequently, he left the branch with mixed feelings when he was made the plant manager of a branch in Birmingham. The reason Dick had these mixed feelings was that his morale had been low while working at the branch in London because he was assigned more responsibilities than the power required to fulfill them. Dick did not have such issues with the supervisors at the branch in Birmingham which was why he was able to utilize his potential to solve the problems at the branch. Dick was successful in leading the branch to display profit for the first time in years. After about three years, he was made the junior vice-president of Modrow in Canada. Low morale is fundamentally a consequence of rise in frustration. Frustration increases because of lack of understanding between employees and managers. Besides, “[e]mployee morale can also be a psychological disposition that is subject to environment, work, economic factors and corporate culture” (Ngambi, 2011, p. 765). At the time when Dick was made the plant manager of the branch at Modrow, large scale changes had already been planned and were implemented including expansion of the branch, incorporation of new machinery in the system. Workers at Modrowwere frustrated by such massive changes and had a low morale. The main reason of workers’ frustration was that they did not know the significance of integration new machinery and technology into the workplace and how its incorporation in the work setup would affect their individualistic and collective performance. Clearly, a massive change was being introduced into the organization without taking the necessary steps to minimize workers’ irritation and retaliation to it. Dick’s own private life was no less affected by this change, and was a potential cause of distress and low morale for him. Work-life balance is a fundamental element that is required by an employee to have the right frame of mind and a healthy psychology to boost his/her productivity in the workplace. Problems in the relation between Dick and his family were growing constantly as he plunged deeper into the work to gain more control over things. An employee who proves successful in one or several roles on the job must not be expected to be successful in every setting. Everybody is a human being and has certain strengths and weaknesses that show up in different cases and work settings. When too high expectations are made from a certain employee because of his outstanding performance in the past, this has a negative effect on the employee’s psychology as he feels frustrated. Same happened with Dick and in an attempt to come upon the expectations of the managers who had seen his outstanding performance in the past, Dick gave work more time than it required. Clearly, Dick was not able to maintain work-life balance. The same factor i.e. lack of work-life balance caused tensions in Dick’s first marriage, and ultimately, he and his wife parted ways primarily because Dick wanted to be freer in order to concentrate more upon work. The second time also, Dick was compromising upon his private life to accommodate the growing needs of the work. Ways to Improve Low Morale of Employees Although the decision making authority fundamentally rests with the top management, but it is always a good idea to seek subordinates’ comments and/or opinions while making the decisions. This not only provides the top management with more ideas and potential ways to resolve the organizational issues, but also increases employees’ respect for and loyalty towards the top management since employees feel involved in the decision making process. Schaefer (2012) suggests five ways to improve the employee morale; development of trustworthy relationship between the employees and top management, showing respect, nurturing creativity, building effective teams, and more interaction between employees and top management. Bowles and Cooper (2009) suggest that the most effective way of identifying the potential causes of low employee morale is conduction of a morale survey. “Later one can follow up with the results of the survey, implement an action plan, carry through with the plan, ensure that top management continue building trust within the institution, and finally ensure that ongoing departmental and company-wide meetings are held” (Ngambi, 2011, p. 765). Conduction of the morale survey provides the employees with an opportunity to express their frustrations and their causes as well as makes them feel respected since it is an attempt of the top management to understand the factors that are troubling the employees. “Anything a manager does to foster positive results will bring a certain amount of healthy self-respect to the work place and that leads to heightened morale and reduced turnover” (Hacker, 2000, p. 66). While work-life balance is very important to maintain in order to optimize on one’s potential for work, there is not much the leaders or the top management can do to make the employees maintain it since every organization’s prime interest is to have the employees spend maximum time working and minimum elsewhere. It is every individual’s responsibility to consider work and family equally important and not compromise upon any one of the two because of the other. Resistance to Change as the Problem One of the effects of decentralization of the Tri-American organizational structure is that it provided the plant managers with increased power and autonomy as well as pressed them harder for increased profitability since they were in a competition with the plant managers of other branches. In order to obtain competitive advantage and outperform the other branches, different branches frequently engaged in introducing change in the organizational setup and work culture. Like all those branches, Modrow also took certain initiatives to enhance the profitability of the business. The modernization and expansion project undertaken by Modrow incurred the branch cost but it was more than balanced out with the increased sale of the twelve new siding patterns that the branch introduced in the market. However, this was not easy to achieve and Dick had to deal with numerous challenges in order to lead the branch to the point where it made profit. Ways to Reduce Employees’ Resistance to Change To reduce employees’ resistance to change, management should first create readiness among the employees for the change. “[O]ne rationale for this failure to manage change through to success is a failure to create readiness for change in the first place; however, by managing the creation of readiness for change, an organization is more likely to achieve that desired success” (Self, 2007, p. 1). This readiness can be created by explaining the need for change to the employees. Since retaliation is shown by employees, measures needed to suppress the retaliation also have to be employee-centered. A potential way to manage the change and reduce employees’ resistance to it is by taking them into confidence while the change is in its conceptual stages. Top management needs to demonstrate the issues and challenges the organization is facing because of the current practices to the employees, and conduct meetings and conferences with them to work out objective solutions to the problems. Some of the solutions could be change of roles and responsibilities of the workers or incorporation of new machinery and technology in the system. Top management needs to discuss the merits and implications of all possible alternatives with the employees, and the solution offering maximum benefits and minimum inconveniences should be selected with mutual consensus. “By identifying specific resistance beliefs and then applying to each of them specific elements that lead to readiness for change, a means of changing these resistance beliefs is identified” (Self, 2007, p. 1). Such interactive sessions between the top management and the employees are extremely essential to create readiness among the employees and to let them know that the management knows how the introduction of change makes them feel. “Employees are more likely to hang on to the fear, uncertainty, resentment and other emotions that big changes bring if it seems to them that management has no clue about how they feel” (Marks, 2010). Leadership style plays a very important role in the management of employees’ resistance to change. One particular leadership style cannot be generalized to manage the employees’ resistance in all kinds of situations. There are numerous factors that affect the suitability of a particular leadership style to a leader that include but are not limited to the personality of the leader, the complexity of change that is being introduced, and the centralization or decentralization of the organizational culture. In Dick’s case, even the adoption of a charismatic leadership style would have solved many of his problems and would have helped him in the change management. He had achieved noticeable success as a salesman during the first year of his job and different kinds of factors played a role in that including his looks, charm, and ability in golf in addition to his business skills. This means that his fellow workers looked charm and charisma in his personality, which are the fundamental traits required to be a good charismatic leader. Later when Dick’s role in the company changed from a salesman to the special assistant of the production department’s senior vice-president, Dick also succeeded as an administrator and was able to troubleshoot the problems of the departments he worked in. For a leader who was known for his charm and charisma, something like a casual dressing of all the attendees of the meeting including himself was a big deal. Therefore, depending upon the circumstances and the individualistic strengths and weaknesses, one needs to select the most suitable leadership style to reduce employees’ resistance to change effectively. Micromanagement Style as the Problem One of the main issues that can be assessed in the case study includes the perceived micromanagement style of Dick by the employees at Modrow. Different branches of Tri-American dealt with different operations of Aluminum, some processed it while others fabricated different kinds of building materials and products of everyday use from it. The 22000 employees were working in a decentralized organization where each branch had its own strengths and weaknesses, and means of obtaining competitive advantage. The decentralization was so overpowering in effect that the branches were more like distinct companies than simply the branches of the same organization, exhibiting different levels of profitability. In such conditions, it is obvious for an individual like Dick who is certainly transferred from one branch in Birmingham to another in Canada and made the plant manager of the new branch to take some time to study the new branch’s history and the way work is done there because the new branch is just like a new company for him. In order to achieve this, there is no wonder that Dick used a micromanagement style to understand everything firstly because of the enormity of differences between the branches he had previously worked in and Modrow and also because Dick had to discover everything on his own since there was no help available from the former controller whatsoever. It took Dick some months in the start to adjust in the branch, study its history and records, and familiarize with the managers. Cost reduction was Dick’s prime emphasis. To acquaint himself with the branch’s culture and work ways, Dick frequently visited different areas which upset the supervisors and managers though the workers in general had developed a level of comfort with him after his numerous visits yielded no changes. The resulting micromanagement style raised many concerns among the employees at the branch. “Either because they're control-obsessed, or because they feel driven to push everyone around them to success, micromanagers risk disempowering their colleagues. They ruin their colleagues' confidence, hurt their performance, and frustrate them to the point where they quit” (Mind Tools, 2012). Knowledge management is one of the most important factors that has an impact on the productivity of the workforce and efficiency of the system. Dick had to invest a lot of time and energy in collecting information that could have easily been generated by the former controller. In order to enhance the productivity of the organization, and reduce the cost incurred by the waste of time in lost productivity, it is imperative that the data is kept in an organized fashion so that everybody knows where to go and whom to approach for a certain kind of information. Like it is important to organize the data, it is equally important to organize the whole system. This includes introducing a new employee or manager properly to the existing workforce and vice versa so that the new and old employees spend minimum time understanding each other and developing the level of comfort that is necessary for the two to work in close collaboration with each other. Dick had to deal with a lot of pressure in the Modrow branch in Canada. First, the Canadians did not feel comfortable in his presence and Dick could feel their subtle resistance while the president in the home office was waiting to see Dick either fall flat or take the lead as usual. Everybody in the organization including the accountants felt that Dick was more monitoring them and their performance rather than planning strategies that could take the organization to the next level. Dick’s frequent visits to workers and managers around the plant made them spend more time discussing him and the meaning of his visits than concentrating upon their duties, thus resulting in loss of productivity of the employees as well as more increase in frustration for Dick. “When employees don’t know what’s required of them, morale issues begin as people push attention away from themselves in an effort to define their own standards” (Martin, 2000, p. 30 cited in Lloyd and Chief, 2003, p. 8). Another negative effect of Dick’s micromanagement style was how it affected his private life. Dick’s attempts to engage in lengthy discussions with the accountants to know the procedures frustrated everybody including himself, as well as left him with lesser and lesser time to spend with his family. Ways to Improve Employees’ Perceptions Regarding the Micromanagement Style One factor that complicated things for Dick at Modrow was his lack of skill of maintaining good human relations. He even made this confession to his friends that human relations was one of the subjects in the Master Program that he was the weakest in. Developing good relations with the employees is the key to improving their perceptions regarding the micromanagement style of the top management. This requires high level of emotional intelligence, sociability, and articulate mannerism on the part of the top management. Employees’ wrong perceptions about the micromanaging style can be removed by helping them develop a level of comfort with the manager. One way managers can achieve this is by listening to their concerns. “Part of being a good manager, one often lost on those of the micro variety, is listening. Managers fail to listen when they forget their employees have important insights – and people who don't feel listened to become disengaged” (Mind Tools, 2012). Rather than being a silent observer, the manager should talk about things and listen to what the employees have to say so that nothing is left undiscussed between the manager and the employees. The manager should “encourage open communication with structured decision making” (Henry, 2010) to break the communication barriers between the manager and the employees, so that they can alter their perceptions about the management for the better. Warning the employees without establishing penalties for them if they show non-compliance does not lead to objective results for the top management. Dick’s case study provides a strong evidence for the same. Despite all the frustration that resulted from Dick’s habit of wandering around the plant and observing things, a very useful outcome of the activity was Dick’s observation of how the workers assigned the responsibility of disposal were wasting a lot of time cutting the scraps with high-speed saws to fit them into the disposal barrel when they could easily be bent and disposed off to save the time of labor as well as the use of equipment and all the overhead costs associated with the practice. When inquired, the workers could not generate any reasonable justification for their practice of cutting the scraps rather than bending them to dispose. Despite Dick’s repeated attempts to get the workers responsible for disposal to bend the scraps, they did not listen and rather started using hand shears when power saws had been taken off. This primarily happened because the foreman was not warned against any liabilities or penalties if he did not follow Dick’s instructions. Dick had to make lengthy discussions to convince the foreman to spare the wrong practice which caused both him and the foreman a lot of frustration. Dick also had to behave rigidly in order to emphasize upon his points. All of this hassle could have been avoided had a system of rewards and penalties been established upfront. “Generally people learn through a combination of reward and punishment, usually involving some trade-offs in the process” (May, 2010). Conclusion The case study of Dick Spencer provides a comprehensive insight into the potential problems commonly faced by international corporations with chains and branches in different parts of the world. The main problems that can be identified in the case study include low morale of employees, employees’ resistance to change, and Spencer’s perceived micromanagement style. Top management assumes the prime role in enhancing the morale of the employees because low morale is mainly a result of employees’ frustration resulting from their distance from and lack of communication with the top management. Top management needs to make its strategies more transparent to the employees so that they can understand them easily and play their constructive role in bringing the top management’s plans to life. Top management also assumes the main role in reducing employees’ resistance to change since employees need explanation from the top management regarding their steps that induce any kind of change in the organization. The most effective way to minimize employees’ ambiguities and perceived threats from the micromanagement style of the top management is proper organization of the system, which includes knowledge management, as well as creation of channels of interaction between the top management and employees so that the top management can derive the required information with minimal inconvenience to itself as well as to the employees. References: Bowles D, Cooper C (2009). Employee morale: Driving performance in challenging times. Palgrave Macmillan. New York. Hacker, C. A. (2000). The high cost of low morale and what to do about it. Boca Raton: FL: St. Lucie Press. Henry, M. (2010, Sep. 29). 4 Steps to Overcome Micro-Management. Retrieved from http://leadchangegroup.com/4-steps-overcome-micro-management/. Lloyd, H., and Chief, B. (2003, Nov.). Morale Matters. Retrieved from http://www.usfa.fema.gov/pdf/efop/efo36355.pdf. Marks, M. L. (2010, May 24). In With the New. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703558004574581623057482970.html. May, B. (2010). Behavior Rehabilitation: Rewards vs. Punishment. Retrieved from http://www.cavemannews.com/BehaviorRehabilitationRewardsvsPunishment.htm. Mind Tools. (2012). Avoiding Micromanagement. Retrieved from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_90.htm. Ngambi, H. C. (2011). The relationship between leadership and employee morale in higher education. African Journal of Business Management. 53(3): 762-776. Schaefer, J. (2012). The Root Causes of Low Employee Morale. Retrieved from http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/The-Root-Causes-of-Low-Employee-Morale.aspx. Self, D. R. (2007). Overcoming resistance to change by managing readiness for change. Retrieved from http://business.troy.edu/Downloads/Publications/TSUSBS/2007SBS/2007OvercomingResistance.pdf. Read More