Organizational Learning - Employee Engagement and Talent Management - Essay Example

Name: Tutor: Title: Organizational Learning Institution: Date:   Table of Contents Title: Organizational Learning 1 Table of Contents 2 Organizational Learning 2 Introduction 2 Employee engagement 3 Talent management 5 Cultural change 7 Conclusion 11 Bibliography 12 Organizational Learning Introduction Organizations have to adapt new strategies and means of keeping up with competition in the business market. There are many initiatives that organizations use to improve their efficiency and productivity. Talent management, employee engagement, and cultural change are some of the vital aspects that have to be incorporated into the business operations to ensure continuity in good performance. Flexibility in strategies applied allows for barriers of successful employee engagement, cultural change, and talent management to be overcome. A deeper understanding of the environment of the organization provides an opportunity for the management to understand how to approach change management. This essay provides an insight into the three aspects that entail preparation of a new level that encompass organizational change. Employee engagement Employee engagement is whereby workers express and employ themselves cognitively, emotionally, and physically in the course of their role performances. This is achieved where there is a holistic sensation that felt by workers when they are totally involved in something. Organization that ensure there is employee engagement realize higher job performance results since workers are fully absorbed in their roles in various departments. The degree of involvement and commitment an employee has towards values of organization and the organization itself is what describes employee engagement. An employee who is fully engaged is cooperative, has business context awareness, and works towards improvement of his performance for the good of the company or organization. It is the role of the organization to nurture and developed engagement. A good relationship between the employee and employer is required to ensure employee engagement development. Organizational profitability and efficiency is also enhanced by employee engagement. Employee engagement is an indicator that measures the association that exists between the organization and an individual. Workers are motivated differently in order to lure them to take part in an undertaking which is collective. Some of the incentives that are employed include prizes, cash rewards and other promotions. People can be stimulated differently in order for them to take participative role in company’s activities (Bonabeau, 2009, p.49). When cultural change and talent management are incorporated into employee engagement, the chances of meeting organization objectives are very high. Employee engagement enhances the performance of the business and results into value creation. Where success in employee has been There are several barriers that exist that can hinder development of employee engagement within an organization. One of these barriers is absence of knowledge sharing in the company owing to rigid channels of communication or culture norms of the company as expressed in the cultural practices. This hinders communication and close relationship between the employer and the employee. Workers can not be fully absorbed in their duties and obligations if there is no effective communication. Secondly, if there is poor balance of work-life for staff owing to being regular work that involves long hours of working in a company that allows application of overwork schedules, the workers may feel alienated to the company for being treated unfairly. Management styles that are inconsistent founded on the attitude of individual managers can occasion unfairness perceptions. The management styles being use by managers can lead to low levels of employee engagement by acting as a demoralizing factor. Low perceptions of managers who are senior in the organization owing to absence of interaction and visibility with employees act as another barrier. These barriers discussed above have to be overcome before successful change occurs in the organization. Talent management Talent management is the practice of applying interrelated human resources processes in the provision of a benefit to an organization. Talent management is aimed at making employers understand employees while ensuring that organizational goals are achieved. Learning organizations depend on talent management services and solutions for acquisition, management, onboard, engagement, development, and reward rewarding talent while significantly reducing costs, reducing risks, improving hiring quality, and realizing high degrees of performance. Organizations comprises of people who create value through processes, customer service, innovation, sales, and many other important activities. While an organization braces to achieve its business goals, it has to ensure that there is a continuous and integrated process of training, recruiting, supporting, managing, and finally compensating the workers. These processes are the ones which are responsible for the whole process of talent management. The most widely witnessed barrier for talent management is lack of allocation of adequate time and resources to devote to activities that concern talent development. Many executives talk about talent management theoretical but not insist on allocation of resources and time of its development. Absence of collaboration across the entire organization poses another critical challenge to the talent management. Various departments should stipulate their requirement to the human resource department and participate full in talent development. Talent management has succeeded where there is cooperation in the organization and resources an time are devoted towards improving available talents. Operating in the 21st century is different others that have come before. In case of complexity, organization increasingly encounters contradictory demands, inconsistencies, and other dilemmas in decision-making. Signs of malfunctioning systems are widely spread in many forms of organizations. Traditional forms of productivity can lead to exhaustion of human resources. Learning organizations with chaordic systems in making discoveries that avoids complexity and chaos are used in order in understanding of discontinuous growth in social systems that are complex. Interaction in human organization prepares the way for the change process (Van Eijnatten, 2004, p.430). Some of the features of chaordic system include Consciousness, connectivity, indeterminacy, dissipation, and emergence. Connectivity refers to the aspect of the organization being whole and part, concurrently. This means that there are no cases of mutual exclusive occurrence. Every part relates to the other, and hence no part survives without the help of the other part. In redesigning boundaries, practitioners have to look at minimization of boundaries and divisions. Change in the organization can be implemented as a whole and not as a part. Consciousness means that mind as compared to matter is a vital driving force of an enterprise observed as a chaordic system. Re-designing of an organization has to start from the outside using the organizational mind. When the organizational mind is unable to hold systematic change that is profound as both desirable and possible, any means for effecting change strategy will not succeed. The internal potential expressed in chaordic systems is very important. Indeterminacy shows that dynamic complexity of an enterprise, all events is made up of effect and cause. The future is not known in advance owing to complexity. A redesigning an enterprise has to maximize resilience and fluidity in all structural aspects. The main goal is to emphasis on preparation as opposed to planning for surprise (Van Eijnatten, 2004, p.437). Dissipation involves the engaging of a cycle in the enterprise in both creation and destruction. There is need to prepare for risk that may occur during implementation of cultural change (Brodbeck, 2002, p.169). The ability to adapt faster to change defines the success of the organization. Cultural change Cultural change refers to alteration of beliefs, norms, and values of an organization in order to adapt to a certain environment or improve the company’s productivity. Cultural change has a strong impact on employee engagement since it concerns with the identification of employees to the organization true values. Cultural change enhances the transition of an organization from level to another. Constructivism refers to appreciation of perspectives’ diversity and valuing knowledge bases that present options. This provides a path way for a co-developmental as opposed to top-down approach to change (Goldspink, 2007, p.78). Every member of the organization has to be included in the change process. New cultural values are hard to embrace for all members of the organization and adequate preparation for change has to be done. The biggest barrier to cultural change in organizations is the rigidity of structural functions and behavior. Human agents are described as being cognitive. Human cognition is said to have nervous system activity in places that have sensory cells where any external disturbance n the sensory services occasion a set of behavioral responses and dispositions to the respective environment (Goldspink & Kay, 2010, p.53). Novelty happens owing to the emergence of unique micro-configurations in the space of possibilities permitted by the lower level. Causation can be attained in the manner in which higher order patterns alter the boundary conditions of lower degrees and hinder the existence of the specific interactions that occur due to the process. The change process has to overcome objections that are raised by members of the organization concerning any change. Self-organization is important in overcoming individual barriers that as a result of change management process. Demonstrating the benefit of change to the organization helps in making the members of the organization see the change process as positive and advantageous to the company. Hierarchical control and command structures that existed in the past are still viewed as the prevalent structures in the present world. The characteristic of management is that of being is that of observing conservatism, with little change in the work activities and stakeholder power. Leadership in this type of scenario stresses observing prudence in conservation of the past. Procedures are used for guiding people towards the outcome which is desired via a framework that embraces self-organization framework that is structured and consistent with an organization that uses a deeper level of natural law intelligence or human consciousness. Organization change has to be engraved following a certain type of pattern (Brodbeck, 2002, p.378). Cultural change has to deal with overcoming the conservatism mentality among the leaders that still use tradition structural design to lead their organizations. From a perspective that is theoretical, the issue of organizational change has a close correlation with the social theory of change and conflict theory. Historical perspective shows the mounting interest in change management since there being fundamental shift in the organization structure Cultural change can be evaluated by looking at how fast employees in organization can adapt to change. New product designs adoption and changing operational schedules are some of the aspects that can be used to indicate how effective an organization is to change. Organizations that take change positively and ensure it is inclusive of all aspects required in the achievement of organizational goals, show a high level of cultural change and adaptability. Depersonalization acts like a barrier of removing element of natural behavior that is emergent which mostly is seen among traditional behaviorist’s effort to control behavior using authority. The outcome of being made to obey rules is employees losing their capacity for independent thought ad hence resulting in trained incapacity. The cycle of internal depersonalization may be covered if complexity theory is able to initiate re-personalization of procedures, and therefore, permitting emergent behavior to recur. Organization learning is divided unto broad perspectives which include cognitive learning and social learning. Cognitive learning is formed on the basis of individual and psychological learning, and it is described as being rational oriented. Social learning has a basis in sociology and it contains a high degree of being rational oriented. Consequently, as described in employee engagement, the latter learning happens through workers engaging in organizational activities. This results into formation of units, communities, or groups whereby innovation, work, and learning takes place. Using social perspective it is appropriate to relate organization learning one of the practices in the company such as management of product design (Styhre, 2002, p.168). Social learning seeks to demonstrate the social context that is most suitable in case of organizational learning and looks at community, organization, and group instead of looking at an individual’s mind. Research that has looked at the correlation between performance and design provides almost results that are similar. Studies that have been carried out show that design is responsible for improvement of the financial performance of a company together with its exports and market share. It is believed that that some of the most important factors in organizational performance and competitiveness of any organization is embedded in the quality of its products and designs. Empirical evidence has demonstrated that companies that possess a view, which is positive of design, and are able to manage it in an efficient manner realized greater export, sales, and profits growth than those that ignored it. Product design management and organizational learning have a close link that contributes to organization performance (Styhre, 2002, p.168). Cultural change has a role to play in cementing relationship that exists between the employer and employee of an organization. It is the important to consider the interrelationship between different functions before deciding on any strategy to implement. Design management efficiency depends on an organizational setting which favors learning. The setting within the organization can be a barrier towards organizational learning. The organizational learning concept has expanded rapidly in the past few years, both among practitioners and research. Organizational learning has grown in importance in different business environment. Researchers explain that new characteristics environment, and its use as an extensive value as a tool for analysis since it improves understanding of organizational activities (Chiva-Gomez, Camison-Zornoza, & Lapiedra-Alcami, 2003, p. 167). Initiation of change is not easy and agents of change have to be identified to lead the change process in the organization. Knowledge processes in an organization involves information acquisition, group and individual language (Firestone, 2004, p. 178). The organizational setting has to accept the kind of cultural change that is intended to be introduced. The barriers of organizational cultural change include inadequate preparation and the staff rigidity or conformity to traditional ways of change. Conclusion Organizational learning comprises of cultural change, talent management, and employee engagements are some of the important aspects that have contributed to increasing the competitive edge of organization in the 21st century. These initiatives have been the backbone of organizational profitability and efficiency. There is need for organization to prepare thoroughly for cultural change. Organizations engage in different ways that are used to overcome inefficiencies and complexities in organizations. Overcoming barriers of cultural change and employee engagement gives an organization an upper hand when it comes to competition. Bibliography Bonabeau, E., 2009, Decisions 2.0: The power of collective intelligence, MIT Sloan Management Review, 50(2); 44-54. Bonabeau, E., 2007, Understanding and managing complexity risk, MIT Sloan Management Review, 48 (4); 61-69. Brodbeck, P.W., 2002, Complexity theory and organization procedure design, Business process Management Journal, 8 (4); 377-402. Chiva-Gomez, R, Camison-Zornoza, c, & Lapiedra-Alcami, R, 2003, Organizational learning and product design management: towards a theoretical model, The learning organization, 10 (3); 167-184. Goldspink, C., 2007, Transforming education: Evident support a complex systems approach, Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 9 (1); 77-92. Goldspink, C. & Kay, R., 2010, Emergency in organizations: The reflective turn, E:CO, 12(3); 47-63. Styhre, A., 2002, Non-linear change in organizations: Organization change management informed by complexity theory, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 23(5/6); 343-351. Van Eijnatten, F.M., 2004, Chaordic systems thinking: Some suggestions for a complex framework to inform a learning organization, The learning Organization, 11 (6); 430-449. Firestone, J.M., 2004, Viewpoint: Organizational learning and knowledge management: the relationship, The Learning Organization, 11 (2/3); 177- 184. Read More