Overview of Russian Eurpro Automotive and Activities Involved in the Company - Case Study Example

Reflective Diary Introduction This reflective diary presents an account of my experiences during my visits to Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе between 12th October 2014 and 20th November 2014. The diary gives details of the tasks that I performed during my visits and the observations that I made during my participation in the company’s workplace activities. The report will also highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation that can be identified from the experiences in relation to theory from studies. Before going into these details, the report presents an overview of the organisation. This information is vital as it helps the reader to understand the nature of tasks performed at Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе and the types of employees that perform the various tasks. In the end, all this information will help in explaining the relationships between management or human relations theories as reflected through self-directed learning, analysing the theories and determining areas that need improvement in the organisation. The information will also act as a guide in critiquing my own abilities as an upcoming person in the management profession, and in particular one striving to help and improve the society through my career. Overview of Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе and activities involved in the company Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе is located in Fyshwick, Canberra. It has been in operation for more than 30 years. The company offers a wide array of automobile services including automotive repairs, servicing as well as transmission specialising. It also offers extra services such as courtesy cars, pickup and delivery services, and emergency services for customers who need them. The company therefore employs staff of various specialities. These include automotive mechanics and technicians, automotive service consultants, parts specialists, repair technicians, automotive painters, collision damage estimators, vehicle inspectors, tyre and wheel experts, automotive electricians, lube technicians and alignment technicians, among others. Some of the employees are skilled in more than one job area and can therefore do a multiplicity of jobs. There are also employees in jobs that are not directly related to automotive repair services. These include administration and office jobs such as customer service jobs, office manager, accounts jobs, secretary and receptionist among other jobs (Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе, n.d.). The different categories of employees at Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе can generally be classified as either line or staff employees, and they perform different duties for the organisation. Line operations are in charge of advancing the actual work of the organisation (Borger, 2005). For instance, all the employees who are directly involved in automotive repairs, servicing and transmission specialising perform the line functions of the company. On the other hand, staff operations augment the work of the organisation by offering services that ensure that the company continues to produce its products or deliver services (Borger, 2005). For the case of Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе, employees in the personnel and office departments such as customer service, office manager, accounts, secretary and receptionist are categorised under the staff function in the organisation. These types of employees offer support services that facilitate the functioning of the various line departments, but do not carry out the actual work involved in the line departments themselves. Therefore, the main difference between staff and line activities in an organisation such as Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе is the difference between doing (line function) and supporting (staff function). The two categories of employees are critical in an organisation such as Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе because it is only when the various departments cooperate and coordinate their activities effectively that the organisation’s delivery of services can be successful and consistent (Haque & Rehman, 2014). During my internship at Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе, I served in a staff (supporting) role and performed a variety of duties on a day-to-day basis. During this period, I also made observations and recorded them. The tasks that I performed and the observations that I made during the exercise of my duties are outlined in the next section. Tasks performed and observations made Tasks As person posted in a staffing role, my functions involved updating customers’ records, conducting payment transactions with customers, writing and posting information about who would handle which task, answering phone calls from customer and other clients, taking customers’ orders, arranging for various materials and supplies to be bought by the company and keeping records of daily transactions in the company. On a day-to-day basis, during my visits to Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе between 12th October 2014 and 20th November 2014, my duties in the company, were as follows: On arrival at the workplace, I needed to look at the work to be done on each day. This involved determining how many cars needed to be repaired and the number of cars that needed replacement of various types of parts. After doing this, I would then arrange for the people to do the different types of work available. For instance, someone would have to do vehicle inspection, someone would do mechanical repairs, others would fix the electrical installations of cars, and so on. This assigning of duties would be made possible after inspections were conducted on each of the vehicles (by a vehicle inspector) to determine the types of repairs or other services that they needed. At the end of each day, the mechanic or person assigned a given car would submit a report on the types of repairs done on each vehicle for the purpose of keeping records and determining the type of work that each person in the organisation was doing. During the course of the day, I would answer phone calls from customers and other clients. I would write down the personal details of the customers, their car model, as well as the problem experienced with the car. I would then allocate each customer a specific time to visit the workshop. This was meant to ensure that the workshop was not overwhelmed with cars parked but not being serviced. Essentially, the plan of the company’s management was to ensure that cars were repaired as soon as they arrived at the workshop, hence the need to have schedules for each customer’s arrival. Also, I was in charge of ensuring that the company offered emergency services as soon as a customer needed them. For instance, in case a customer indicated that his or her car had broken down by the roadside or on the road, I would make arrangements for the appropriate services to be provided to the customer immediately. Since Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе buys some car parts only when need arises, I was charged with the responsibility of ensuring that any parts that were required would purchased in time for the repairs. For instance, a mechanic would submit a list of parts that needed to be purchased for given repair work, and I would see to it that the items were purchased. This would involve calling the relevant supplier to inquire about availability of the required part and comparing prices to ensure that the parts were bought at competitive prices. This also gave me an opportunity to relate with people of different cultural backgrounds. I was also responsible for processing transactions between customers and the company. That is, upon completion of any car repair work, customers would have to pay the appropriate fees. Along this line, I was in charge of processing the relevant bills by indicating the types of services offered such as repairs done, new parts bought and so forth. This interaction with different types of customers also enabled me to practice using English as a language of communication. While not talking to other employees of the company or clients, I would update customers’ records, such as their addresses and phone numbers, the date of the last visit to the company and their feedback regarding the services offered by Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе. Such records were meant to ensure that the company had up-to-date records of customers, so that they could be used to contact the customers in case the company wanted to introduce them to new services or to offer them discounts on some services. At the end of each day, I was required to scan all bills prepared during the day so that the company could have them in both hard copies and soft copies. Observations made During my visits to Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе, I observed that the company really values its employees and likes to engage in activities that improve their satisfaction with the job. For instance, many employees would be available to do different types of jobs each day. Similarly, as it can be seen from the description of my tasks, I was doing duties that would ordinarily be done by different categories of employees. For instance, I was receiving phone calls, interacting with other employees in regard to the types of activities that they were to do, processing payments, organising for purchases to be made and so on. Essentially, I was doing the work that would be done by a receptionist, a customer care person, an accounts person, and the purchasing department among others. In theory, doing multiple tasks in a given organisation can be related with job enlargement and job rotation. Job enlargement refers to increasing the scope and variety of duties within a given job (DuBrin, 2012; Werner & DeSimone, 2009). This technique was designed to assist employees in combating boredom. Since the tasks have almost the same level of requirement, this ensures that the employee does not get bored by doing the same tasks repetitively or by having nothing to do when one task is completed. For instance, by doing various types of tasks, I was able to keep myself busy throughout the day as opposed to what the situation would have been if I was to do only one type of task. Organisations can also use job enlargement to reduce compensation costs (DuBrin, 2012). For instance, they can advertise a mid-level job combined with a junior position, implying that it will require one person to do the respective jobs instead of two people. Job rotation on the other hand implies a temporary shifting of job assignments (DuBrin, 2012; Werner & DeSimone, 2009). For instance, employees in an automotive workshop can be made to work on small vehicles for some period and then be assigned tasks involving large automobiles for some time. The same tasks can be rotated back and forth. As well, employees with different types of skills can be assigned different types of tasks periodically so that they can hone their different skills and learn other skills through the different types of activities that they do. From my observation, this was common at Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе since the workers there were doing jobs in different departments from time to time. According to DuBrin (2012), job rotation not only provides an opportunity for employees to learn new skills, it also gives them an opportunity to learn more in regard to how the organisation works. Relations between line and staff employees in the organisation Application of management/human relations theory One notable aspect about Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе is how the company is able to coordinate line and staff functions to ensure smooth operations. As mentioned before, the company ensures that any car that is brought for repair at the workshop takes the least possible time there and that different customers are allocated different visiting times to reduce wait times and increase operational efficiency. This also helps avoid a situation whereby very many cars would need to be parked at the workshop, yet the company has limited parking space. The effective coordination of activities at Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе can be explained using the theory of relational coordination. This theory argues that the efficiency of work coordination is facilitated by the quality of communication amongst the people involved in a work process, which is dependent on the quality of the underlying relationships between the people, especially the degree to which they have shared knowledge, goals and mutual respect (Gittell, Weinberg, Pfefferle & Bishop, 2008, pp. 154-155). The quality of communication takes into account factors such as the frequency of communication, timeliness, focus on solving problems rather than pointing fingers at others, and accuracy of the information that is conveyed among the work participants (Gittell et al. 2008). Coordination is defined as “the management of interdependencies between tasks” while relational coordination is defined as “the management of the interdependencies between the people who carry out those tasks” (Gittell et al., 2008, p. 155). At Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе, relational coordination is seen through the constant interactions between line and staff employees, the timely delivery of information regarding issues such as tasks and purchases, and rotation of employees across various departments to learn more about the different tasks in the organisation. This ensures that customer orders are processed in time, purchasing is done as soon as need arises, and that employees have good working relations, which increases efficiency. As indicated in literature, relational coordination improves performance in several ways (Gittell et al., 2008; Farrell & Strauss, 2013). For instance, frequent and timely communication generates rapid responses to new details as they emerge, resulting in minimised delays and maximum responsiveness to the needs of customers. As well, accurate information lowers the possibility of errors, and communication that is based on problem-solving avoids negative issues such as blaming others or hiding information, thus promoting learning within the organisation. In addition, high quality relationships promote effective communication, thus enabling participants in an organisation to listen to each other and to reflect on the impact of their own actions or inactions on others, thus being able to act on new information in a coordinated way, which further contributes to effective performance (Gittell et al., 2008; Farrell & Strauss, 2013). One of the weaknesses that I observed at Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе is that because of job enlargement, the company tends to have very few employees doing many tasks. Understandably, one of the downsides of job enlargement is the perception of overwork (Hoye, Smith, Nicholson, Stewart & Westerbeek, 2012). Consequently, some aspects of the organisation have been neglected. For instance, the office is untidy and so are many places in the workshop area. This is because the company does not have a specific team to deal with cleanliness of the workplace. How the situation in the organisation could be improved To deal the challenge of untidiness in the work area, the company needs to have a specific team of people dealing with cleaning tasks. This will not only ensure that employees work in a clean environment, but will also attract customers since they will perceive the company to be organised in its work right from the office area. Critique of personal strengths and weaknesses while at the organisation I found the aspects of job enlargement and job rotation to be effective in reducing boredom at the workplace and promoting learning of various types of skills. With the variety of tasks to do, I was also able to interact with different kinds of people and this positively impacted my interpersonal communication skills. I have also become better placed to interact with people and form networks through the skills that I acquired. In deed, this is one of the benefits of interpersonal communication as noted by Gainforth, Latimer-Cheung, Athanasopoulos, Moore & Ginis (2014). In contrast, my weakness is related to the fact that I was not used to doing as much work as I did at Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе. Hence, I felt exhausted by the different activities during the first few days at the company. Therefore, even though job enlargement and job rotation help in improving task variety and raising the level of learning, I think they should be introduced to employees in small steps at the start. Conclusion Overall, the experience at Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе was good because I was able to learn about various aspects of types of jobs in the organisation, human relations, job performance and the related strengths and weaknesses. In particular, I learned about how job enlargement and job rotation can benefit both employees and organisations by reducing boredom, increasing efficiency and promoting learning. I found the theory of relational coordination very critical not only for Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе but also for other organisations that have employees working in different but interrelated departments. References Borger, H. (2005). Career FAQs human resources Australia. Ultimo NSW: Career FAQs Pty Ltd. DuBrin, A. (2012). Essentials of management (9th ed.). Sydney: Cengage Learning. Farrell, J.B., & Strauss, K. (2013). The people make the place, and they make things happen: Proactive behaviour and relationships at work. In R.L. Morrison & H.D. Cooper-Thomas (Eds.), Relationships in organizations: A work psychology perspective (pp. 107-136). Melbourne: Palgrave McMillan. Gainforth, H.L., Latimer-Cheung, A.E., Athanasopoulos, P., Moore, S., & Ginis, K.A M. (2014). The role of interpersonal communication in the process of knowledge mobilization within a community-based organization: A network analysis. Implementation Science, 9(59), 1-8. Gittell, J.H., Weinberg, D., Pfefferle, S., & Bishop, C. (2008). Impact of relational coordination on job satisfaction and quality outcomes: a study of nursing homes. Human Resource Management Journal, 18(2), 154-170. Haque, S., & Rehman, N. (2014). Modern organization theory: Analyzing the complexity of coordination and cooperation in the modern organizations. International Journal of Management and Sustainability, 3(5), 261-268. Hoye, R., Smith, A.C.T., Nicholson, M., Stewart, B, & Westerbeek, H. (2012). Sport management: principles and applications (3rd ed.). Melbourne: Taylor & Francis. Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.rusdeneuropro.com.au/ Rusdеn Еurорrо Аutоmоtivе. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.rusdeneuropro.com.au/services.html Werner, J., & DeSimone, R. (2009). Human resource development (5th ed.). Sydney: Cengage Learning. Read More