Organizational Discussion, Essay Example

“Both discretion and flexibility have a positive effect on productivity and sales effectiveness.” (Hitt, 2010). With relation to banking business, the branches of business that have the worst performance have low-involvement work practices. Branches that have either flexibility or discretion perform better than braches that have both at their disposal. It seems to be a consensus that human resource management has a positive organizational performance regiment on workplace performance. This is because innovative work systems are designed to enhance worker participation and achieve the flexibility of the deployment of workers and to decentralize responsibility and decision making. Work practices are associated with superior outcomes in the business world.

Traditional businesses and high-performance businesses differ in terms of operational effectiveness, workplace stress and organizational dynamics by the mere fact they are associated with superior key operating dimensions such as “productivity, time-to-market, and production quality.” (Hitt, 2010). The high-performance workplace has gotten its name chiefly due to the manufacturing setting and through the auto assembly production facilities as described by McDuffie (1995). There has been great employee rotation, higher labor productivity and lower levels of production defects associated within the company. Arthur (1994) has found that top-performing steel mills have implemented similar sets of innovative work practices. Team work has achieved higher-production in the clothing and apparel industries. High-performance work places tend to “exercise broad discretionary decision-making authority rather than suspending their independent judgment whilst making management or operational commands. They further rotate and deploy workers across a relatively broad range of tasks rather than constraining the work to individual workers.” (Hitt, 2010). In other words, most of the employees are able to multi-task.

Research and Methodology

For the purposes of this study/research three visits were conducted to banking branches having interviews with dozens of managers and workers. The visits allowed yield of field context information to be obtained viable to the study to find specific performance outcomes and work practices that could be compared to other banks and branches in the same industry. The sampling size was approximately 135 banks. There was homogeneous bank policy in all of the branches. Supermarket branches and telephone banking branches were excluded from the study. Financial measures were not especially looked at because they were not useful for the purpose of this study. We focused on operationally based outcome measures. Full-time employees only were represented in this study. “Capital inputs were represented by the number of tellers and the number of terminals in the branch. Outputs were represented by the number of demand deposit and accounts housed in the branch.” (Hitt, 2010).

Stress Reduction Techniques

The best way to manage stress in the workplace is to take responsibility for your own physical and emotional well-being. The second most important aspect is to keep a positive attitude toward your work and avoid negative pitfalls that could bring you towards a negative attitude. Do not involve yourself with gossip that could bring on extra and unneeded stress. Improve your relationships with your co-workers through open communication and listening skills. Listen to what your managers require out of you and try not to demand, instead command what you desire. Companies that incorporate stress free environments tend to achieve higher production levels. There will always be a level of stress during peak performance times such as meeting inventory and quota, but collaborative efforts and team management efforts can smooth the way to a healthy outlook with regards to stress and top production levels.

Conclusion

Discretion and flexibility have a direct effect on production and sale of an operational business. The more involvement management and workers are with the business the higher the output the organization should be deemed to have, statistically speaking. Innovative work systems are designed to enhance worker participation and increase production. High-production companies usually possess employees that have the ability to multi-task in various jobs within a department as well as multi-task in different departments within the organization. They can produce the product quickly and efficiently and get it to market on time through innovative means and measure where the traditional company is not capable of meeting these demands at regular intervals. In order to stay on top a company must produce regularly, have a collaborative and comprehensive work force and be constantly self-motivated. The company must possess an innovative leadership quality from management and the majority of employees.

References

Hitt, L. (2010) What Makes a High-Performance Workplace? Evidence from Retail Bank Branches Retrieved June 26, 2010 from, http://fic.wharton.upenn.edu/fic/papers/00/0030.pdf

Stress at Work Retrieved June 26, 2010 from, http://helpguide.org/mental/work_stress_management.htm