Smart working. The impact of work organisation and job design - Essay Example

Running Head: ABBREVIATED OF YOUR CHOICE (all caps) Smart working. The impact of work organisation and job design and Section # of course> Smart working. The impact of work organisation and job design It is claimed that the most significant resource of any business is the people it employs, its manpower or workforce. As the world adopts technology at a faster rate with more sophisticated applications and as products tend towards greater similarity there is a growing awareness that a business may differentiate itself by creating a quality, focused and well-motivated workforce. In addition, the world labor market is become more flexible with greater mobility for well-qualified staff to move between major business centers. It is therefore of greater significance than ever before to keep good staff and to continue to attract the best recruits possible. Due to the importance of the people of the company it is equally important and difficult for the managers to manage these people. This paper would evaluate the changes in the work organization made by Centrica and how these changes have impacted the employees. Moreover, it would compare the implementations at Centrica to the traditional approaches of job design. Discussion With the passage of time, the world of work and the workers in it are becoming more and more competitive and aggressive about their success at work. The advent of globalization has demolished the economic barriers that once existed and has opened doors to markets that were once thought to be too out of reach to cater. The change in the attitude towards workforce management has been great and fundamental since the early years of the twentieth century and the introduction of mass production. There are still firms and factories that hire and fire workers on an almost daily basis and offer no training and staff development at all. However, these are now the exception rather than the rule. Modern Human Resource Management has been developed not just in response to the legal constraints on how workers are treated but also as a recognition that a truly successful and competitive business depends on the support and co-ordination of a well trained and suitably motivated team of staff. (Stimpson, 2002) Centrica is a company that has a massive workforce in the UK as well as overseas. Among the many tasks of the Human resource department, recruiting as well as training and developing staff is of great significance. Motivating the employees and making them feel recognized and valuable is a very vital aspect. Motivation results from the individuals requirement to achieve objectives and to satisfy needs. The best-motivated workforce will help an organization achieve its objectives as cost effectively as possible. Employers need to be aware of what these are because the greatest motivation will develop if the workers feel that through working towards the objectives of the organization they are also moving towards achieving their own. This points out towards the concept of Job Design. (Baker, 2001) According to the theory of Davis, Canter and Hoffman, the most imperative factor of job design was the minimization of time that the job takes. Although the concept of job design was not widely adopted earlier due to constraints of training and change management, with the passage of time it was seen as a significant element to improve the performance of the personnel. Centrica has recently adopted new approach to change the job structure of the employees. Job design is basically the process of organizing the tasks and responsibilities and the structuring of the job in a way that the job holder is more satisfied with it and hence, works more effectively. The way in which an employees job structure is organized has a direct impact on the persons job satisfaction, performance and motivation. When creating a job design it is important for the manager to design jobs that will be motivational for particular individual employee. Centrica reformed the idea of work mobility and implemented work options that reinforced the idea of working ‘anywhere, anytime and anyplace’. The aim that has been considered is to design jobs through which the individuals can see what contributions they are making towards achieving the overall objectives of the organization. Job design allows the workers to have some independence over their job timings, work settings and tasks. And this has been the an important factor for Centrica in designing the jobs. Flexibility is a vital characteristic that makes a job more interesting and satisfying. In todays world of works, the concept of leisure time is almost diminished. People are overburdened with work and find minimal time for other activities. This causes a great derailment from work for the employees and makes them feel less motivated and dispirited to work efficiently which directly affects the quality of their work. Also, working too much cause enormous impact over ones health and well being and many illnesses are recorded of being related to over work and stress. Centrica has implemented work environment changes that transform the traditional work practices into more comfortable and flexible work options. Flexibility is important in a job design as it allows the employees to alter their work arrangement according to their needs. Centrica reformed the work place through ‘hot-desking’, ‘touch-down zones’ and ‘break-out’ areas. Each having a specific purpose and transformation the way work is performed into a more contemporary work place environment. Centrica enforced better and stronger communication base among the employees through the provision of laptops, mobile phones and a stronger intranet server. Moreover, the work place had become a more attractive to the employees with the changes in the parking facilities, lockers and better communication. Work place flexibility is generally referred to the autonomy, choice or control that the employees and the supervisors have over when, where and how work gets done. Centrica enabled workers to take advantage of flexible working hours or more commonly known as flexi time, gives the employees a daily choice in their work commitment timings. It is an agreement between the employee and the manager to allow the employees to vary their starting, ending and meal break times while still upholding the total number of hours that are worked over a period. It is becoming an increasingly accepted substitute for structuring work to contain individual wellbeing and requirements. Among the advantages of flexi time to the workers include, shorter traveling times, more time for leisure, more job contentment, and greater sense of responsibility. The advantage of this for organizations is a less rate of turnover and absentees; more commitment from the workers and higher performance levels. Telecommuting is another alternative work option that was implemented by Centrica. This is when work is done while being at home or being in a remote location via use of technology such as computers and advanced communication linkage with a main office or other employment locations. It offers the employees the flexibility in working locations and hours. The benefits of this option for workers are flexibility, the convenience of being home and selection of work locations matching with ones lifestyle. For companies it means cost saving, effectively and improved employee job satisfaction. Centrica has also taken steps to improve the work-life balance of the employees. Work-life balance is the balance between an individuals work life and personal life. This balance is imperative as it leads to considerable decrease in the amounts of stress and anxiety. According to the study of Anderson and Pederson (1980), as there are advancements in technology, there is less personal contact among employees and communication channels are more diverse. Managers have become less controlling than before and there is more empowerment and enablement rather than delegation. With the various changes made in the job structure at Centrica, the feeling of Alienation of employees would be reduced. According to the research of Kirsch & Lengermann, the three causes of Alienation include lack of control over work process, narrow work roles and lack of opportunities for promotion. These factors were overcome by the autonomy that employees were given, the control they had over their work and the new performance measures that were based on output rather than the time spent in the office. In earlier times the concept of division of labor was pertinent and gained a plethora of popularity. Although division of labor made the work simpler and quicker, in the long term it demotivated the workers as the work had become monotonous and less challenging. Hence, the concept of scientific management was criticized for lowering the productivity and restricting the workers. According to the need theory of Abraham Maslow, the employee moves from one stage of the pyramid to another where physiological needs are placed at the lowest level and self-actualization is the top level which the employee strives to achieve in the long run. In order to implement the changes in work design, Centrica held various training programs for the managers in order to implement these changes successfully and incorporate them into the new corporate culture. There are two types corporate cultures, some firms are those in which work is tightly linked and tends to be less flexible and some organizations give their employees to work on their own. The former are likely to use dynamics such as profit sharing, bonuses, vacations, or other fringe benefits, while the latter allow their employees to be much more flexible with their working hours. In general, managers may be faced with the constraints of providing flexible hours, regardless of their desire to. These constraints could more commonly include the process of production, the scheduling of the workforce and the necessity of teamwork and communication. These constraints further depend upon the factors of the production process, the nature of the products, the competition and the business environment. (Murphy & Pyke) Centrica held interventions to prepare managers for the task including road shows, manager coaching, team-building workshops and so on. The needs and expectation of employees from their jobs has drastically evolved from the previous generation. Employees are more inclined to be a part of the organizations decision making and look for more responsibilities. The traditional authoritarian/autocratic leadership is more outdated as employees expect to be more employed. Managers now follow a more democratic approach to leadership. The management faces a challenge when designing work that would maintain a balance between being challenging enough to uphold the feeling of self actualization in the employees and being achievable without being too stressful and threatening. The work that is challenging and helps the workers in exercising their capacity for invention, and the work that develops mental and manual skills contribute significantly to the well being of the worker as apposed to the work that does not being in challenges and does not require real skills, will weaken the minds of the workers and lead to dissatisfaction from work. Managers normally undervalue work by creating job designs that require many workers to execute monotonous and repetitive tasks that are conceptualized by others. This kind of practice causes the cognitive and moral capacities of the employees to deteriorate and worsen. The jobs should provide the workers with the prospects of self-realization and rewards for carrying out complex tasks through job enrichment. The over all advantages that Centrica has include the drastic decrease the incurred cost after losing an employee which is in the form of recruiting and training new ones, the positive effects and impacts that flexible work option and the new work design lays upon the motivation and moral of the workers. Also, the change in work design plays a significant role in forming the ability of the workforce to be able to adapt to new working conditions and the rapidly advancing and evolving economy especially being in an IT company. The increase in competition and the expansion of the economies to a broader more international level is also a factor that is made easier by the flexibility in working conditions that allow organizations to gain competitive advantage not only in the domestic marker but also internationally. Conclusion In the end, it is imperative to recognize the importance of the availability of flexible work options and the effect that they play on the work-life balance. The contemporary work arrangements have advantages for the employees as well as the managers or the organization itself. Employees who feel that they can better work other than the usual routine time, or location may opt for flexible work options and work according to their capabilities and skills. This would make the worker feel comfortable and it would have a direct impact over the quality of work in the form of increased motivation, morale and job satisfaction. Centrica has revolutionized the way that the company operates and has implemented the new approach to work design in contrary to the old mass-production-monotonous work routines. References Baker, M.J (2001). Marketing: critical perspective on business and management. Taylor and Francis. Murphy, J.B & D.F Pyke The two-sided challenge of Job design. Retrieved 14.01.2009, from http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/dave.pyke/downloads/jobdesign.pdf Stimpson, P (2002). Business studies. Cambridge university press Read More