Questions:
1. Analyse the different ways or methods in which Frishco’s HR department engages its employees.
2. Critically discuss the potential consequences of an organisations’inability in addressing employee engagement issues including how it would affect their motivation.
3. Evaluate which methods you feel would create the most impact in achieving the highest level of employee engagement within Frishco.
Answers:
Introduction:
“Human Resource Management” is a function of an organization that aims to organize, engage and promote the involvement of the employers of that organization, to achieve a maximum outcome from the employers work. This department mainly focuses on various strategies, policies, and systems of the organization. According to Beardwell Claydon (2010), the key activities of the HRM department involve recruitment, employment benefits, training and development, reward and appraisal. One of the significant functions of the HRM department is the development of a competitive edge for a company by relatively engaging the workers of the particular organization. Frishco is a renowned retail company and a brand that is known for its quality of service globally. The Organization has successfully accomplished international reputation by installing the brand values of the organization. The HRM department has undertaken certain strategies that have discovered an effective way to keep the members engaged. This would be discussed in Task 1 of the report. In Task 2 the impact of a company’s inability to focus on the employee engagement and the effect on worker’s motivation would be highlighted. Lastly, in Task 3 the most effective method of employee engagement in Frishco would be discussed (Armstrong 2010).
1. According to Breevaart et al. (2014), the employees of this company play a key role in maintaining its brand values since the members of this organization are considered as a vital resource. The HRM department of this organization has identified that in order to achieve success in the business it is very important to engage the employees at the proper time and required areas. As stated by Mondy and Mondy (2011), a high “employee turnover rate” have negative implications for business relating to the cost and performance. Thus, in order to reduce the “employee turnover rate” and improve the employee engagement, a survey was conducted in Frishco. Several changes were made to bring about improvisation in the employee engagement after the survey (Price 2011).
Change in the organization structural framework –
The top management identified a hierarchical pattern of the organizational structure. The new structured bestowed more responsibilities to the employers to enhance their job satisfaction.
Changing leadership –
The ground level workers were given more leadership duties by establishing transformational leadership model. According to this model the vision and mission are set by a top management individual but every employee gets the opportunity to participate in the decision through personal leadership quality (Price 2011).
Improved communication-
Better communication aids in keeping the employees updated about all the policies and strategies of the organization. Frishco HRM department developed the communication mode for informing the employees about the operational plans to directly impact their job. The radical improvement was promoted for obtaining the employers views (Price 2011).
Sustaining the brand value –
This was planned just to assure that every member of Frishco understands the importance of the brand values.
The HRM department has assured the establishment of the cultural changes in order to improve the engagement of the employees. The policies constructed by the HRM department of the organization to promote employee engagement were:
Morning Briefing – Information distributed to the employees regarding the whole day work plan and recent sales statistics (Bal et al. 2013).
Magazine for the internal employee – The magazine published was named as “Your Frishco” which helped the employees to remain up dated about the company’s charity features, personal snapshot, interview news and also give the employers opportunity to give their feedback about the company in the “Agony Aunt Column” (Torrington et al. 2008).
Intranet – The intranet facility allows the workers of the company to stay connected and hare information relating work.
Quarterly Forum – This forum created involves a set of volunteers within the employees which enables employees to address issues and contribute to the organizations benefit.
Other forms of policies – A scheme (Bright Ideas) has been designed which allows the employees to share their innovative ideas and contribute to further improvement of Frishco (Menguc et al. 2013).
Additional to this the HRM department of Frishco identified the requirement of restaurant modernization for providing the staff with good health and also an opportunity for making healthy communication through meetings. The existing leadership of Frishco is based on the democratic leadership. In this type of spectrum the ideas and the advice of the employers are given equal importance as the senior authority. This policy not only encourages the better involvement of the employers, but such policies also improve the quality of the service provided to the customers. The culture that is present in the organizations rests upon trust and respect for each other. Moreover, the company persuades job rotation to provide career growth opportunities. Rotational mode offers development of new skills in the various sectors (Anitha 2014).
2. Consequences of an organisations inability in addressing employee engagement:
Engaged employees are those people within an organisation who help the organisation to achieve its targets and live its values. However, employee satisfaction is different from engaged employees. Employee satisfaction refers to the level of happiness or discontent in employees of an organisation. Employee satisfaction does not address level of motivation, emotional commitment or involvement (Salcito et al. 2014). As opposed to engaged employees is disengaged employees who have less level of involvement and motivation in an organisation. Disengaged employees can have unconstructive effects on the organisation only because they are not happy with the prevailing work environment in their organisation (Rainey, Wicks and Ovey 2014).
Disengaged employees affect culture of the company, the reason behind this is that they fail to understand the vision and mission of the organisation and tend to follow ideals that are different from the ideals of the organisation. This affects the overall working of the organisation (Porsdam et al 2016). Disengaged employees affect the brand name of the company, employees are the biggest brand ambassadors of the company and if they are not happy or motivated then they may create a negative impact in the market allowing their competition to stand out from the market competition (Turner and Popovski 2013). Other than brand and culture, one more section can be extremely affected by employees who are disengaged and that are the bottom line of organisation (Bratton and Gold 2012). An organisation can lose 628 pounds per year by failing to inspire its employees. Additionally, disengagement kills morale of the employees, affects the customers or clients and decreases job performance of employees (Berman et al. 2015). It also creates a negative impact on the quality, teamwork, innovation, customer relations and absenteeism. Such work conditions discourages team building allowing talented and engaged employees seek a more favourable environment elsewhere (Bennett and Ho 2014).
Motivation is the degree to which an individual wants and chooses to engage in certain specified behaviours. The performance of people at work is determined by what motivates them at work. The performance of people at work is an outcome of motivation and ability. There are two types of motivation involved in team performance and staff motivation those are, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation means salary and promotion of people at work and intrinsic motivation is related to work satisfaction and and receiving appreciation. The main theories of motivation include content theories and process theories. In content theories, emphasis is laid on what motivates individuals to work and process theories include the actual process of motivation. Employers should focus on both content theory and process theory of motivation. The hygiene at work place should be good such as conditions, salary and policies of the company. If such factors are satisfactory then employees will be motivated to come to work.
Hence, organisations should focus on overcoming the problem of employee disengagement and they should incorporate rules that are more employee friendly and ease prevailing working conditions. As per the survey that was conducted by Frishco, it was concluded that Frishcho has focused on recovering employee appointment and trust. Frishco incorporated four main elements in their existing strategic plans such as incorporation of a more flat organisation, adopting a democratic style of leadership, improved communications between employees and management and living the value of brand (Rainey, Wicks and Ovey 2014). These changes allowed Frishco in becoming a more employee-focused organisation. One of the reasons why Frishco is booming today is because it gives its employees a voice for alteration (Bratton and Gold 2012).
For an organisation to overcome issues with employee disengagement, it is important for an organisation to be aware of the factors that contribute to employee disengagement. An organisation should pay heed to leadership style that is incorporated within an organisation (Rainey, Wicks and Ovey 2014). Organisations should follow a more democratic style of leadership that allows the employees to voice their opinions if needed. Autocratic style of leadership is a major contributor of employee disengagement. Additionally, organisations should also pay heed to the factor of reactive decision-making, as this contributes to employment disengagement (Bratton and Gold 2012). The style of management should be participative this means that the management takes decisions based on the consensus of the employees. Such style of management is the most popular kind of management style amongst all other styles. A autocratic style of management is the most unwanted style of management within an organisation (Turner and Popovski 2013). Communication also plays a very important role wherein if the employee feels that he or she is being heard. It is important for an organisation to make their employee feel important and this sense of satisfaction can be achieved only with effective and efficient communication with all the employees (Berman et al. 2015).
3. Methods that would create the most impact in achieving the highest level of employee engagement:
The methods that would create the most impact in achieving the highest level of employee engagement in Frishco are changing leadership and improved communication.
Changing leadership: this means creation of an environment where employees are expectant to make decisions on their own. The senior managers continue to generate a trade vision but ground level employees are “delegated leadership” roles, for example, dealing with the customers (Bratton and Gold 2012). The best model that mangers can employee is transformational style of leadership where the aims and objectives are by way of personal leadership, formed by the senior managers but executed by ground level employees (Salcito et al. 2014).
Improved Communications: good communication within an organisation allows employees to be aware of the strategies of the company. This allows the employees to outline the aims and objectives of the company. Additionally, they also allow the employees to have knowledge about the day-to-day operations of the organisation allowing them to plan their day accordingly. Employees should be aware of what their organisation is doing. They should know how important they are as part of the organisation and what role they play in the working of an organisation (Bratton and Gold 2012). Communication does not only mean having conversation with employees, it rather means making an employee aware of the strategic plans of the company (Salcito et al. 2014).
If Frishco adopts the changes, it may formulate a more people focussed culture in which it will be easier for employees to adapt to the changes within an organisation. The culture of an organisation is the most powerful part of an organisation; it is like the DNA of the organisation. Hence, as an organisation Frishco should focus on becoming a more employee eccentric organisation rather than a dictatorial organisation. Human Resource Management should be seen as strategic function of an organisation. It helps in building a competitive edge for an organisation by allowing engagement of employees by placing a proper leadership style and effective two-way communication with employees.
Conclusion:
Frishco is a retail organization that has enlarged globally based on certain high level management policies and brand values set by the “Human Resource Management” department of the organization. It has been observed from the above report that an informed and an engaged workforce has lead to various tangible profits. The policies developed by the HRM department of the company based on the democratic process have resulted to be beneficial for the organization. However, if a company cannot address the employee engagement properly, then it might lead to a downfall in the quality of service, employee motivation, a decrease in company benefits and also “employee turnover rate” increases. It has been identified that communication and change in leadership would have a maximum positive effect on the company’s outcome. It would help to recognize the operational and personal issues both by the top and bottom management and according to address and resolve the problem for the betterment of the organization. Thus, it can be concluded certain effective policies regarding employing engagement has proved to be beneficial for Frishco and more improvement in the democratic leadership could continue to hold the status of the organization high in future as well.
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