Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology - Business Goals, Employee Motivation, and Organization Culture - Example

Student Name: Business Name: QUEENSLAND INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY (QIAT) Mission Statement To delight our customers, enhance the social and economic well being of our stakeholders and expand our market share by aligning our training with best practice benchmarks of the industry and providing education that is of world class quality through use of modern equipments in a conducive learning environment. Business Goals To increase enquiries and registrations yearly by 20%. To expand by starting two other branches in the next 5 years To retain employees and increase their loyalty for the next 4 years. Introduction Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology is a hypothetical business. It is a small college providing Information Communication courses from the certificate to diploma level. The institution is headed by a Centre Manager and has eight classes, eighty computers, nine IT instructors, a receptionist, Customer Service Assistant, and IT Technician, two office assistance and two marketing executives. This paper will discuss Job Design, decision making, employee motivation, teams or groups, and organization culture, and how they relate to the organization. Job Design Job Design is the way an entire job or set of tasks are organized to determine what tasks are to be done, how they are done, how many are done and in what order they are done. It considers factors that affect work and organizes tasks and content to ensure that the whole job does not become a risk to the employee. The administrative areas involved in the job design include work breaks, job enlargement, machine or task pacing, working hours and job rotation (Mathis & Hackson, 2010). At the Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology, a job is designed depending on the need of a certain position that needs to be filled. For instance a Customer Service Assistant is responsible for welcoming customers and attending to their needs which include giving them information on the courses the institution offers, registering them for the courses, handling customer complaints and receiving feedback. There are procedures and policies provided for the Customer Service Assistant to follow. Tea break is for twenty minutes, lunch break for one hour and work hours are between 8.30am and 5.30pm, Monday to Saturday. It is important for organizations to reconsider the distribution of roles and responsibilities periodically, especially as they grow and mature. Individual’s strength in the roles they play in the organization is reflected in their job descriptions within the organization structure. Current and future goals may not be pursued effectively by the existing job design. An effective team is built by the architectural framework provided by the job design and the organizational structure. This is done through clarification of individual roles, authority and relationships. Various responsibilities thus must form a logical whole job. Authority to make decisions in the organization must be aligned with responsibilities (Clegg &Spencer, 2007). Job design at the Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology is meant to increase productivity and motivation of employees. It increases the institution’s value and engages employees as well as reduces organizational and individual risk. Employees bring better results and the organization receives great effectiveness and efficiency. Employee Motivation Motivation is an employee’s drive to accomplish work related activities. It is an internal drive that causes employees to decide to take action. Employee’s motivation may be influenced by emotional, social, intellectual and biological factors. Motivation exists in the consciousness and actions of each person (Munir, 2011). The challenge organizations have is to figure out ways to inspire employees to be motivated at work. Motivation of employees involves combining their expectations and their needs from work and the factors at work that enhance their motivation. The management of Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology understands the need to provide a conducive work environment that creates motivation in its employees. The management strives to avail factors in the work environment that motivates employees. All employees are treated with respect and are recognized regularly. Regular and transparent communication about what is important to employees and leadership actions that empower them are also motivating factors. The management ensures that it lays down clear goals and expectation as well as measurement s of those goals in a positive way. Employees at Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology are motivated when they feel they belong to the in-crowd which includes participating in a team and meetings, understanding the decision making formulas of the management, and receiving timely information and communication. Other employees in the organization are motivated when they have an opportunity for growth and development including team participation, career paths, education and training, and succession planning. Despite all the motivational factors, monetary incentive still takes a major place. Good monetary incentives enables employee to produce high quality products, perform high quality services and improve the organization’s quality process (Ricky & Moorhead, 2011). In the Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology, monetary and rewards are given tow workers to generate improved ideas, save on costs, reduce employee absenteeism, boost productivity and reduce employee turnover. To make it effective, the management ties it directly to the accomplishments and ideas of employees. But since a monetary incentive is short-lived, it is coupled with other non-monetary motivators. Organization Culture Culture is covers the norms, values, assumptions and artifacts of members of the organization and their behaviours. Organizational culture is the organization’s personality. Culture differs from one organization to another. For example the culture of a university differs from a hospital. An organization culture can be noticed from the way things are arrangement, what they talk about mostly, what staff wear and so on. Organization culture aspect is vital when managing organization change. Organization change must include change of corporate culture despite changing processes and structures. When there is lack of understanding the role culture plays in the organization, failure of organizational change is manifested. That is why it is important when creating a mission and vision for the organization to place emphasis on identifying strategic values (Cummings & Worley, 2005). Organization culture is very important at Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology. It decides the way employees interact in the organization as it encourages them to be motivated and be loyal to the management. The organization’s culture enables healthy competition among employees and thus enhancing performance. Queensland Institute has predefined policies that guide employees on their work. This provides clear roles and responsibilities to employees and enables them to know how to accomplish the tasks within the deadlines (Black, 2003). Culture provides the identity of the organization and distinct itself from other organization. For instance Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology advertises at the back page of a national newspaper most of the time. When readers go through the newspaper, they expect to find the institution’s advert at the back of the page (like it is automatic). It is a culture of the institution to call each other by their preferred names without use of formalities like ‘Mr.’, ‘Sir’, ‘Miss’, or ‘Mrs.’. This brings employees to a common platform and provides a sense of belonging and unity. Subordinates can easily interact with their seniors without feeling the wide gap of authority. Groups/Teams A team is defined as two or more interdependent people who work together and influence each other in order to achieve a common goal. A group is defined as two or more interacting people who have a stable relationships pattern between, share a common purpose and recognize themselves as a group. In most cases individuals use groups or teams as they mean the same thing (Sheard & Kakabadse, 2004). The need and desire for workgroups has been created due to competition in business. The purpose of a team in an organization is to solve a problem or improve a situation. The reason for initiating teams is because it was believed that workers respond best or become productive when they have an identification or self-worth feeling the organization success. Strategies to empower, reengineer and restructure can provide employees with more control in dealing with their change in jobs. Jobs entail more responsibilities that need employees to be responsive and flexible to changing demands. The manager’s role changes as employees’ job change. The management of Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology is encouraged to develop employees’ self-motivation. It also encourages employees to set their own goals and evaluate their efforts. This is because however much they are individually important; their importance is more recognized when they contribute to the team. The management of the institution recognizes that teams help in dividing and organizing work. They break down barriers between branches and departments, provides time for other tasks, obtains feedback from other organizations, improving service, identify issues and divide up responsibilities. Teams or groups increase productivity in the organization, decrease absenteeism and theft, and reduce error rates. To avoid team failure and build successful teams, the management encourages employee involvement in team matters, trust and respect for other people, full participation, open-mindedness, and effective listening. When responsibility, information and authority are distributed, strong team is built. The management encourages the team and employees to possess characteristics that include leadership, participation, purpose direction, communication and problem-solving and decision making (Campion et al., 1993) Decision Making Decision making is a thought process which results in the choosing what to do among several alternatives. The process of decision making produces a final option which can be an opinion of choice or an action. Life is made of choices which result from many alternatives and options to choose from, and based on an individual’s judgment (Shapira, 2002). Decision making is very important to the management of Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology. Management understands that it is not just about taking care of the organization, but more of creation and executive of effective strategy. Meaning, it I all about decision making and ensuring that they are executed. Whatever the decision the management makes affects the performance and morale of employees, as well as the overall business performance. Management ensures that things are done in the most efficient way. As an organization, Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology understands that its ability to make decision will affect the role it plays in the world. An organization can easily fail if it lacks people who make and execute decisions. The institute strives to make smarter decisions by learning from experience and avoiding repetitive mistakes. The best course of action which has a high chance of successes is to be chosen There are different types of decision making in Queensland Institute of Advanced Technology. Strategic decisions are made by owners or board of directors, whose decisions are long-term. Tactical decisions are medium-term decisions made my middle managers; how to implement a marketing strategy. Operational decisions are short-term decisions made by operation managers or most employees, which entail making a delivery (Monahan, 2000). Types of Decision in the organization References Black, R., J. (2003) Organizational Culture: Creating the Influence Needed for Strategic Success, London UK Campion, M. et al (1993). Relations Between Work Group Characteristics and Effectiveness: Implications for Designing Effective Workgroups. Personnel Psychology. 46, pp. 823- 847. Clegg, C. & Spencer, C. (2007). A circular and dynamic model of the process of job design. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. 80, 321-339. Cummings, T., G & Worley, C., G. (2005), Organization Development and Change, 8th Ed., Thomson South-Western, USA Mathis, L., R & Hackson, J., H. (2010). Human Resource Management, 13th ed. , Cengage Learning, pp. 116-117 Monahan, G. (2000). Management Decision Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 33–40 Munir, A., (2011). Motivation of Employees through Performance Appraisal: Factors of employee motivation, Lambert Publishing, London, UK, 319-351 Ricky, G., W & Moorhead, G. (2011). Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations,10th ed. Cengage Learning, pp. 159-170. Shapira, Z. (2002). Organizational decision making. Cambridge University Press, pp 111-115 Sheard, A., G & Kakabadse, A., P. (2004). A process perspective on leadership and team development. The Journal of Management, 23 (1): 7–11,13–41,43–79,81–106. . Read More