Individual Reflective Report - Essay Example

More than half of the workforce employed on temporary basis with limited or no perks and benefits i.e. employee discounts, lunches, T&D allowance etc, offered other than market competitive salary. Lack of contractual obligations often resulted in unannounced resignations from junior employees with no notice period. Also, as a result of major policy changes, middle managers mainly store managers were made contractual and course of career progression within ABC was made restricted. Therefore, the interest of such managers in developing and retaining basic talent as a business leader was rather limited due to their own limited career growth.

The store owners who were the founders and directors of the store were the only stable position holders in the organization and maintained a distant relationship with rest of the workforce with communication mainly through emails or meetings at head office. Resultant was no communication of management’s values, beliefs and goals to rest of the employees. Furthermore, HR department was responsible for providing menial support in terms of recruitment, payroll and employee management instead of playing a role of HR business partner.

A critical analysis of the situation illustrates that there were eminent issues faced by ABC in terms of lack of leadership display, employee motivation, managerial control, communication of vision and strategic partnership between HR department and rest of the business. The given situation was observed by senior management when a surprise visit was paid by one of the partners to the store which was met by a series of change in some basic policies. During an open meeting with senior managers, I shared my views by stating that that most of the employees perceive their compensation and benefits to be highly uncompetitive and was willing to switch for minor raises.

With the help of this input, management increased some of the benefits while keeping the basic salary structure same and also began the regime of employee recognition through best sales man of the quarter and monthly birthday celebrations etc. Despite the fact that these strategies were expected to increase employee’s morale, there was a limited increase in employee retention rate. Therefore, the interventions designed were not addressing the root causes of the problems faced by ABC. Self-Evaluation and Application of Organizational Theory Analyzing this scenario in the light of organizational change models, it was found that internal formal and informal subsystems along with industry related factors were triggering this change in employee retention (Waddell et al., 2011). The management identified lack of reasonable perks as the key factor behind low employee motivation and retention ignoring lack of leadership and managerial control at ground level.

The change that was induced by the senior management had an episodic impact with no continuation in betterment of existing policies. Resultant was a convergent change followed by small adaptation to existing market practices, loose support from managers and leaders along with small positive output. Analyzing this progress in the light of change offered by Plowman et al (2007), it was observed that ABC needed a continuous and radical change since the internal system was undergoing major instabilities.

The discrepancies were existing organization wide and a frame-bending adaptation was required. Another major lacking observed in