Managing and Leading People - Literature review Example

ADAM)Managing and Leading People Evaluate the importance of the role of management in the learning and development of anorganizations workforce. Employee development is one of the important ways through which organizations can enhance and foster performance of the employees. Facilitating employee training and development in an organization is part of the responsibilities of management of organizations. Management of organization is the center of planning for organizational progress timed within a given period. Learning and development of workforce are parts of planning roles performed by managers (Lucas, 2003). In planning, management assesses requests for workforce learning and development. In cases that the organization has to sponsor particular learning requests, the management in its planning activities allocates necessary resources for the purpose. In addition, the management allocates time for any learning requests and ensures linearity with the operations of an organization. For learning requests that do not anticipate financial support of an organization, the management gives permission for learning expedition by establishing necessary agreements and conditions (Davis, 2007). In some cases, the management can issue paid leave. The management can also offer financial rewards for workers willing to participate in certain areas of training and skill development. For instance, management can give allowances to workers who spare extra time in the evenings to attend classes instead to returning home to enjoin with families. Nilson (2003) argues that management of organizations bears the responsibility to assess the skills and abilities of the workforce. The management also understands the objectives and goals, and skills required of the workforce to fulfill the purpose of the given business. In that line, management bears the responsibility to train and facilitate development of employees in accordance with the purposes and requirements of particular organizational needs. The management also plans for seminars purposed to enlighten the workforce about relevant institutional changes and developments (Stewart & Graham, 2004). Some seminars form platforms for training of the workforce on operation of new instruments and machines so to reduce injuries and breakdowns. Employees’ development sometimes depends on teamwork that supports sharing and exchange of ideas that are innovative in nature. It is the responsibility of managements to create sustainable environments, which can support team building. In fact, organizational managements have been the initiators of the teams built for the purposes of employee development (McConnell, 2003). Successful teams that facilitate development of workforce have been receiving supports of the management in the forms of finances, materials, and tools. To create trust among the workforce to the level that team building is possible managements have been ensuring enforcement of institutional discipline. Immediately the organizational workforce understands, adopts, and identifies with organizational discipline, it is becomes easier to bring people together because there are neutral grounds and standards for interaction. Fadal (2004) states that to ensure further creativity and innovation among the workforce, the management can organize for incentives and rewards. The management can also offer incentives and rewards to employees with unique knowledge to encourage sharing and spreading of the unique capabilities. The management is responsible for all formal communications in organizations. In the case of learning and development of workforce, managements have the responsibilities to articulate expectations clearly for employees at different levels of an organization (McDowall and Mark, 2010). Proper articulation of expectations and future opportunities enable employees to assess their skills and determine viable strategies to develop selves for the future (Buick and Muthu, 1997). Clear articulation of performance expectations in the future enables workforce to self-assess to understand individual positions in the future of the organization. Through clear communication of institutional strategies and goals, managements supply employees with vital clues to use in shaping and aligning career with the goals and strategies to ensure proper compatibility. Managements can also use communication to inform the workforce about newly available opportunities (Jaiswal, Gupta and Singh, 2014). The management can then encourage internal transfers of the workforce to ensure progressive development of the worker’s skills and competences. Making employees serve in different functions is important in building a bigger base of knowledge about an organization that can be useful in developing vital leadership skills. Powell (1996) elucidates that interaction with different people in different functions can help an employee understand the concepts of diversity, tolerance, understanding, and flexibility that are crucial for making effective leaders. Furthermore, understanding different levels of operation ensures mastery of an organization that can prepare a worker to take leadership role and ensure smooth running of different levels of operation. In addition, management can facilitate communication between and among employees in different departments so to foster relationships that help in exploration of new opportunities within the particular organization (Jayakumar and Sulthan, 2014). The contemporary society and globe in general is very dynamic and demands that people respond to every change to cope. The rapid technological innovations could be responsible for the most changes that occur within our societies and environments. The growth in technology has managed to affect both people and businesses such that any party that fails to accept change is subject to face rough moments in the course of its life. Businesses must undergo transformations almost constantly, and with respect to the environmental changes so to attain competitiveness. Effective response to change by a business requires proper organizational management to foster or guide the particular business towards the imminent need for change. Managing change in line with the forces of the external environment demands that managers adopt effective communication habits (Lipman, 2013). Managers are the sources of every communication that is crucial in the running of an organization. In that line, managers are the ones to identify areas and need for change in collaboration with other organizational ranks and then communicate effectively to the employees. To ensure effective communication for change, managers can decide to hold meetings with supervisors and team leaders who can be efficient conduit to channel the communication to the junior workers. Managers can also use communication channels such as posters and booklets distributed to junior employees urging needs for change. The content of communication for change should clarify the nature of the needed change. The communication should also clarify reasons for which the particular business requires change in a particular direction. This communication should not be detailed as it can disclose certain secretes that are inappropriate for the awareness of the workers. Reasons given for need to change in a certain way should limit at the objectives and goals targeted upon a particular change. Benefits of the given change platform are also crucial considerations in communicating the desired organizational change. Starting a change without effective communication from the management may trigger resistance right from the supervisors and team leaders to the team players. According to Gill (2013), managing change effectively requires that managers play advocacy roles in the respective organizations. Advocacy in this context surpass the simple element of supporting the message of change and spans to proactive promotion of the message. Proper advocacy should involve active illustration of the benefits of the particular changes through practical daily actions. In fact, the manager should train the supervisors on the techniques and skills for a particular change. Under advocacy, managers can also display figurehead characters to foresee creation and reinforcement of the visions and missions of the organization. Through advocacy, managers can convince team player into understanding and accepting the purported benefits of change as realistic, timely and practical. Managers also must play the coaching role to achieve any desired change in an organization. It is the responsibility of managers to predict the likely challenges and barrier in the process of effecting change and be ready to support team players through the barriers. Coaching is the viable way for managers to help juniors overcome the barriers faced so to adopt the designed change in a proper manner (Ermel and Bohl, 1997). Different changes affect individuals in different ways and this presents management with complex and multiple challenges. For that reason, managers should exhibit flexibility and patience during coaching to ensure proper accommodation of employees as they struggle to implement the desired change. In addition, the coaching process should characterize with tolerance, understanding, motivation, rewards, and proper compensation of the workers. In the case that the manager fails to conduct a successful transition into the change process through the challenges, the particular organization is likely to lose productivity. Failure to foresee effective transition through coaching may also lead to high employee turnover and increased dissatisfaction among workers and customers. Managers intending to enforce change in their respective organizations have to play the liaison role. Acting as liaison officers, the organizational manager are able to link the two sides of change process that are current and future states. As individuals with informed knowledge of the change process and the anticipated goals and objectives, managers are in the best positions to link the two sides of change (Sigler, 1999). Linking the two ends of change that are current and future states is important in establishing proper transition phase characterized with limited challenges. Liaising should enable bridging the aspects of strategic governance and operational phase of the individual organizations. Failure to ensure or implement the liaison role may lead the management into isolation from the reality of the operations level. Consequently, the team may end adopting change with uncertainties and ill motives that are dangerous to the functionality and prosperity of an organization. In a competitive international context, it is important that managers effectively work to keep their most talented employees. Critically analyze the importance of this assertion. The currently international business environment is very competitive. For a business venture to survive effectively, it must have unique enhancements such as highly qualified and most talented employees (Frank, Finnegan and Taylor, 2004). In fact, human resource is the main competitive platform that businesses at local, regional, and international levels target. The reason that human resource is the central focus besides technology relates to the shift of competition to innovations and creativeness of business ventures. Talented, innovative, and creative workforce is a basic need for every transnational and multinational corporation. Retaining talented workers has many benefits to the management of any international corporation. The first benefit of retaining the most talented workers relates to the difficulty of hiring new employees. Even though this seems a challenge to all business, it is particularly complicated for multinational corporations. To attain the status of a multinational organization, businesses rely on the efforts and inputs of the most talented workers. The talented workers use their knowledge and expertise to create differences that establish unique competitive advantage. Losing such workers will mean that a given business embark on recruiting process to replace the lost talents. In most cases, finding mature talents comparable to that of the leaving employees is difficult and nearly untenable. This view relates to the fact that competitors outside there also struggle to find, and would wish to retain talented workers. For that reason, a company may spend a lot of time struggling to find talents that match the lost ones. As the search continues, it is obvious that the output rate or production processes that depended on the lost talents shall stall. The resultant implications are underperformance and lose of the previously enjoyed competitiveness. Retention of the most talented employees as can be the wish of organizational managements is important in reducing time and resource wastage that would go into training a new recruit (Sharif, Ashraf and Khan, 2013). It is usually necessary that management plan for training and induction of new recruits. The process requires time and patience as well as resources that support training program besides the wages of the newly recruited employees. Absorbing and inducting as well as training of a new employee are not a guarantee that the person will stay with the organization for longer time to enable recouping resources invested. This fact exposes businesses to conditions of uncertainties. In case the given employee leaves before recouping of the benefits, the, the business shall have lost crucial resources (Holmes, 2009). Again, this early exit will necessitate the need for employing another person to be subject to the same processes. These complexities and uncertainties are big risks that businesses face every time they lose longer serving and talented workers. As a business go through the messes, it continues to lose the crucial competitiveness in the market. All the messes are avoidable if management of an organization considers using very strategy possible to retain the longer serving and most talented employees (Kundu and Vora, 2004). It is also important to think of the market competition and competitors in the business environment when analyzing the benefits of employee retention. With the high competition in the global business environment, every business requires talented and experienced workforce. In that respect, losing a talented employee means transferring your competitive advantages to the opponents. While understanding the value of the talented worker you lost, competitors will struggle and even propose hefty salaries to attract the worker. When this happens, a business becomes exposed to all forms of competitive risks (Boland, 1998). The lost talented worker may disclose business secretes and success strategies to the competitor. Consequently, the competitor may use the disclosures to create strategies that would work to ruin the rival business. In some extreme cases, the competitor employing the lost talented worker may start producing goods or enhancing services to imitate those of the rival with which losing side used to outdo other industry or market players. Current employees especially those having spent longer time in an organization have wider understanding of policies, goals, and guidelines of their organizations. For that reason, such employees make supervision and management easier considering that they know their limits and things that the specific organization requires to grow. Such attributes becomes even better when imminent in the most talented workers (Sara, 1999). This expression relates to the fact that the talented employees can use the attributes to train, support, and encourage other workers to optimize service to adhere to the expectations of the organization. By understanding and accepting guidelines as well as expectations of an organization, employees are likely to demonstrate loyalty to the given business venture. The health and well-being of employees is an important factor in a company’s success; critically examine the role of individuals and managers in the creation of an appropriate staff workload. Creating an appropriate workforce is a responsibility shared by both the management and employees in an organization. Staff workload is the responsibilities or duties allocated to each individual or groups in an organization. Establishing and allocating appropriate workloads helps in ensure sustainable health for the employees, which eventually can be productive and steer an organization towards success (Thorne and Machray, 2000). Managers as the organizers and planners of organizations’ operations bear a greater responsibility when it comes to regulating workloads of workers. As planners and organizers, managers have to identify the nature of work and duties that need completion. The managers also have to understand and identify skills required for successful completion of certain tasks. Managers also have the duty to synchronize the skills and abilities of workers against the magnitude of the duties (Kisling, 2015). In addition, it is the responsibility of the management to approximate the quality and standards expected from particular jobs. It is also important for the management of an organization to understand and estimate period within which particular workers can complete a particular task(s). In terms of skills, the management can identify the magnitude of the duties for completion and the number of employees who can perform the particular duties to the required standards. It is then that the management of an organization should divide and allocate the workload with respect to the ability of each person. Each person should get a workload in proportional manner so that none views self as overburdened (Lockhart et al., 2010). Any feeing by a worker as given a biggest workload can work to discourage hard work and commitment to duties. In respect to time, it is important to remember that every duties and tasks in organizations have time limits or deadlines within which to complete. Managers can use time element to regulate the magnitude of workload allocated to employees. Short deadlines for big tasks may require many employees to share the workload. In case, on few employees can manage the particular tasks, it can be necessary for the management to allocate big workloads to each worker, increase work hours and pay for the extra service. Paying for extra work hours for urgent tasks is important in motivating workers and encouraging hard work. Kisling (2015) elucidates that motivated employees are unlikely to develop health problems considering that motivation results in emotional stability that restrains depression that can drive a person into sickness. Allocating duties to staffs that lack skills and abilities relevant for the given work may appear as huge and untenable workload for the particular employees. The management also has the responsibility to investigating if a worker has administrative responsibilities besides the actual roles (Flynn, Kellagher and Simpson, 2010). In the case that the worker performs some administrative responsibilities, it will only be appropriate to reduce the workload of the actual roles and balance with administration. For instance, a lecturer of Sociology in a college may be the head of the head of a department. It will be unfair to allocate the person lessons similar to colleagues who have no administrative responsibilities. For the sake of fairness, the management may relieve the person some lessons so that they can also handle issues arising in the department. Individual employees are the implementers of the plans established by the management for the running of an organization. Employees understand their skills, abilities and work preferences. To ensure allocation of appropriate workloads, the employees have the responsibility of communicating their skills, abilities, and work preferences to the management (Wade and Zimmerer, 2003). They have to demonstrate that their skills and abilities can manage particular workloads. The employees also have the duty to share any health or physical disabilities to the management that can prevent them from managing and accomplishing particular workloads. This form of information will help managers in avoiding subjecting workers to workloads that are injurious in nature to the health of the individual workers. Kellagher (2010) states that family commitment is another issue that requires consideration when allocating staff workload. Employees have better understanding of their backgrounds and the need to balance between work and family. In that line, employees have the duty to communicate with the managers in case of any pressing family issue that require significant commitment. For instance, pregnant mothers understand their conditions especially for pregnancies that are not visible. It is in order for such workers to inform their managers about their conditions so that their workload may be different from other staffs. This move will work to reduce development of health complications. References BOLAND, A.S. (1998). Recruiting and retaining IT staff. Health management technology, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 74-7. BUICK, I. & MUTHU, G. (1997). An investigation of the current practices of in-house employee training and development within hotels in Scotland. 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