Employee Empowerment and Workplace Culture at Organisation - Case Study Example

Workplace Report [Case X] Student’s Name: Course: Tutor’s Name: Date: Overview of organisation X Organisation X has 50 workers in five departments, which include human resource, sales and marketing, operations, production and finance. Like other commercial enterprises, X seeks to attain organisational effectiveness by providing its customers quality products and thus building a brand that is reliable and of high quality. In addition to the workforce, X has invested in technology that enables employees to conduct their designated tasks faster and with enhanced accuracy. The organisational culture at X revolves around doing the right things, and in the right way. As such, all employees are requested to familiarise themselves with the mission statement, which is: ‘providing customers with quality products through the right production, packaging, promotion, and pricing practices’. In X, every new employee receives training, which is essential for such an employee to understand how the organisation functions, the hierarchy of command and the responsibilities attached to the job. In the marketing department, employees have a basic salary and are also entitled to sales commissions upon meeting set targets. At the end of every year, the individual marketer with the largest sales portfolio is promoted to the managerial rank, hence becoming a team leader in charge of a specified number of marketers. To handle the related duties efficiently and effectively, such promoted managers undergo training where they are trained on efficient communication, motivation methods, and other skills needed in leading their team members. Only 20 employees are employed on permanent and pensionable basis. Usually, the bulk of such employees are in the management and departments such as finance, operations, and human resource. The rest of the employees (mainly working in the sales and marketing department) are employed on contracts, which are renewable after every two years. At X, there is an evident chain of command. Employees communicate to their immediate team leaders, who are then responsible for communicating to middle level managers. The middle level managers then pass the information to the senior manager who sits at the apex of the company. Rarely does he interact with his juniors or other employee, but when a serious error in production occurred early this year, he called a meeting that was attended by all employees. In the meeting, he threatened all employees, warning them that serious consequences would be meted on all staff members should such a mistake ever occur again. Sales and marketing appears as the most vibrant department in the organisation. Marketers are charged with pushing sales for products manufactured by X since that is the only way the company can remain competitive and profitable. Marketers often complain that they do not receive enough budgets to address all their marketing needs like advertising and promotions. On its part, the finance department argues that enough capital has been invested in enhancing the quality of products, to an extent that consumers will most likely buy the product based on its quality but not on the hype created through advertisements. Besides that, the finance department argues that marketers can engage in direct sales as a mode of engaging the consumer on a personal basis. Employee empowerment at organisation X Employee empowerment is a difficult concept to define in literature. One of the concise definitions of the concept is given by Fox (1998), who defines it as the process where information (i.e. goals, visions, and decision-making boundaries) is shared, competency (i.e. training) is developed, resources are provided, and support (i.e. encouragement, cultural support and mentoring) is provided. Usually, empowering employees makes them more willing to work or remain attached to an organisation for purposes of helping it accomplish its goals. Additionally, employee empowerment mitigates any uncertainties created in the workplace and to some extent, makes employees who had an intention to quit stay on (Ugboro, 2006, p. 233). According to Ugboro and Obeng (2001), the responsibility of devising employee empowerment strategies lies with the top management of an organisation. Specifically, the top managers need to consider strategies that will enhance the skills and potential of the employees in view of including their job performance and by extension, customer satisfaction. Ugboro and Obeng (2001) further note that employee empowerment usually leads to a workforce with enhanced job satisfaction, and this in turn creates an organisational climate where quality performance and customer satisfaction are given pre-eminence. Although workplace theories differ, it is evident that organisation X abides by some theoretical conjectures in regard to employee empowerment. This is evident in the training that the workers receive upon joining the company, the continuous training carried out annually, and the leeway that management gives workers especially in the sales and marketing department to make as much money through sales commissions. The interaction between department managers and the workforce is also part of employee empowerment as identified by Wilkinson (1998, p.48) who posit that information sharing is a central component in empowering employees. It is worth noting that employees at X do not belong to any trade union. Hence, any communication or negotiations are done directly between employees and their employer. As Wilkinson (1998) points out, bypassing trade unions means that employees lack the capacity to engage in collective bargaining. To counter this however, employees are often encouraged to voice their grievances to the management with the promise that they will be addressed. This is evident in X where employees are asked to voice any issues that they may face with a promise that the middle level managers will discuss with the senior manager with the view of finding the most plausible solutions. Employee empowerment at X is also evident in problem solving procedures. Complex problems that employees feel they lack the capacity to handle are communicated to the management, who are then responsible for dealing with them. However, other problems involving customer-related decisions, such as replacing a defective product is within the problem-solving capacity that the employees can handle. Such kind of empowerment is especially evident in the sales and marketing department where in addition to employees carrying out their designated tasks, they are also required to collect responses from the customers regarding product improvement. Notably however, employees in X do not have the capacity to order for the implementation of changes on products. They therefore communicate the desired changes to the management, who discuss the viability of the proposals. Once approved, the management communicates the desired changes to the production department who then implement them. At organisation X, teamwork is a common feature especially in the sales and marketing departments. Every team is led by a manager who is responsible to devising effective strategies for pushing product sales to meet specific benchmarks. If Wilkinson’s (1998) assertion that task autonomy is part of employee empowerment, X therefore lacks in this aspect since teams are managed rather than being self-managing. According to Wilkinson (1998, p. 48) however, autonomy can either pertain to skills discretion or means discretion. In the former, employees have the freedom to use their skills in the best way they deem fit for purposes of solving problems they face in the workplace. The latter on the other hand implies that employees have the freedom to choose the tools or means of accomplishing their tasks. In the sales and marketing department, there is some evidence that employees have autonomy to use the means discretion since they are allowed to earn commissions for their sales. This in turn means that a sales and marketing employee can use whatever means they deem effective to attain maximum sales. Evidence of employee empowerment through attitudinal shaping is seen in the training that organisation X employees receive. According to Jones et al. (1997), training or educating employees is a psychological approach to empowerment, which aims at internalising desirable values in them for purposes of making them more confident in their jobs. Ideally, training and education imparts new skills, knowledge and behaviour in the target workers hence enhancing workplace performances and attitudes. Although it is evident that X does not abide by Max Weber’s bureaucracy theory as indicated in Cole (2003, p. 26) to the latter, some of practices are similar to the principles included in the theory. For example, departmentalising the workplace in X means that there are fixed and jurisdictional areas, the hierarchy of command means that the work structures have senior and subordinate employees, and the training indicates that there are rules and practices that the organisation considers necessary for attaining set goals. Workplace culture at X Cole (2003, xii) defines culture as “the predominant value-system or ethos of an organisation; usually a mixture of implicit beliefs/values, and explicit systems”. On his part, Schein (2004) advances a concept that identifies underlying assumptions, espoused values and artefacts as the three aspects of culture. For a culture to be established in an organisation therefore, a shared understanding that is dominant in the “collective thinking of the members of an organisation” must exist (Cole, 2006, p. 104). On his part, Harrington (2008) proposes that creating a workplace culture should be a deliberate undertaking by the management, which should be attained primarily through embedding specific mechanisms in the workplace. Such mechanisms are identified as : paying attention to processes and controls in the work environment, reacting to critical incidents in the workplace, deliberately coaching, modelling and teaching, allocating rewards, and using a well-thought criteria in the “recruitment, selection, promotion, and firing” of employees (Harrington, 2008, p. 55). The culture at organisation X seems to revolve around the organisation’s vision statement, which underlines the need to do the right things in the right way in order to enhance customer satisfaction. The training of employees upon being hired is also a characteristic of the predominant organisation culture therein. Another predominant culture aspect is the top-down communication and the management hierarchy that evidently leaves little or no room for interaction between the senior managers and junior-level employees. According to Cole (2003, p. 105) different aspects in an organisation interact to form the organisation culture. They include the purpose and goals of the organisation; rules and procedures; decision-making mechanisms; employee attitudes and skills; organisation policies; the external environment; the communication channels; technology use; and the organisation structure. Ideally, the purpose and goals envisaged by the founders in an organisation form the backbone of the culture therein. At organisation X, this seems to be a culture of doing things right using the right techniques and methods. According to Cole (2003) however, the extent to which an organisation’s vision affects its culture depends on other factors which include leadership and charisma of those charged with managing an organisation, its external and internal environment, technology use and organisational structures. At X, its is rather obvious that in addition to the vision articulated in the organisation’s mission statement, the arms-length approach by the senior manager also constitutes or shapes the culture therein. The attitudes of employees (for example, the finance department’s insistence that product quality will aid the marketing department in selling the product) could also set a cultural precedence whereby the two departments are always disagreeing on policy issues such as marketing budgets. Overall, much of the cultural practices observed at organisation X conform to theoretical aspects as expressed by Cole (2003). True to Cole’s (2003) assertion, there are bound to be sub-cultures even in organisations that have a predominant culture. At organisation X for instance, subcultures are evident in the various departments. In the production department for example, the prominent value seems to be in the production of quality goods which satisfy consumer needs. The predominant value which underlies the subculture in the sales and marketing department on the other hand seems to be selling as many products to the consumer market. Aggressive marketing behaviour is therefore at the core of the departmental sub-culture in sales and marketing, while optimal production practices are deeply entrenched in the production department. Overall, the subcultures compliment each other since without superior products; sales and marketing personnel would have a hard time pushing their products to the consumer market. On the other hand, without the demand created by sales and marketing through their efforts, the production department would have no demand to respond to. Suggestions for change To enhance employee autonomy, the management should consider devising strategies that allow employees more flexibility to use their skills and talents in the workplace. Additionally, the intimidating approach of the senior manager does little to empower employees. Hence, the senior manager should be encouraged to interact more with the employees and lower-level managers with a view of understanding how best he can engage the workforce to devise solutions to problems, challenges or threats facing the organisation. The management should also devise a solution for dealing with the differences between the finance and sales and marketing departments. This is especially important considering that employees in the sales and marketing department may feel that the organisation is undermining their efforts by not boosting product sales through vibrant marketing strategies. If such a thing were to happen, the employees would be unsatisfied in the company and would always be looking for better employment opportunities in other companies Appendix Organisational Chart References Cole, G. A.(2003) Management theory and practice, 6th edition, Cengage Learning, London. Fox, J. (1998) ‘Employee empowerment: an apprenticeship model’, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT, Unpublished Master's Thesis, Viewed 04 October, 2011 < http://members.tripod.com/j_fox/thesis.html#definition%20of%20empowerment>. Harrington, B. (2008) ‘Creating effective workplace cultures: the work-life evolution study’, WorkSpan Magazine, vol. 2, no. 8, pp. 53-56. Jones, C., Taylor, G., & Nickson, D (1997) ‘Whatever it takes? Managing ‘empowered’ employees and the service encounter in an international hotel chain’, Work, Employment and Society, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 541-54. Schein, E. H. (2004) Organisational culture and leadership, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Ugboro, I.O (2006) ‘Organisational commitment, job redesign, employee empowerment and intent to quit among survivors of restructuring and downsizing,’ Journal of Behavioural and Applied Management, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 232-257. Ugboro, I. O. & Obeng, K. (2000) ‘Top management leadership, employee empowerment, job satisfaction, and customer satisfaction in TQM organisations: an empirical study’, Journal of Quality Management, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 247-272. Wilkinson, A (1998) ‘Empowerment: Theory and practice’, Personnel Review, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 40-56. Read More