Over the past decades, managers have been important assets in organizations and had a great influence on staff. They have a high influence on the way employees are committed to achieving their goals, objectives, and mission of the organization. Depending on leadership styles and behaviors some managers have achieved their targets and goals while others have failed significantly to achieve their sets targets. Generally, depending on the nature of an organization, managers have different roles and duties, which are mandated to conduct them. Despite their own roles and duties, they had been mentors and supervisors of other employees making sure they have assisted accordingly for them to accomplish their targets. However, managers have faced many challenges in the workplace with some even opting to resign and start their own companies and other resigning from their organization and start looking for a job somewhere. Due to these interactions, role, and challenges facing managers in their workplace, the report is aimed to find out what managers really do, what challenges they face and what is a solution of the problems experienced in the organization. The report will further analyze the responses of Account manager at HCL Technologies Company during an interview.
Employees in the organization require an effective guidance from their managers and assurance of good leadership that makes them feel part of the company. The duties and responsibilities of managers have been the reason why employees are rebelling against the management operation while others adapt to change. Managers have faced these challenges because of factors like poor leadership, poor motivation, and lack of managing conflicts within the workforce effectively. Leadership in an organization has been linked with effective performances. A research by Stanislavov and Ivanov (2014) indicated that just like we have good managers that positively influence employees, bad leaders are also characterized by traits like determinations, high energy, strong power for power and achievement, intelligence and decisiveness. Furthermore, bad managers have sets of skills ranging from good decision makers to good communicator. Moreover, many managers are failures because of their authoritative leadership styles that result from increased communication gap with their workforces. A research by Currie & Hill (2012) shown that managers play a key role in turnovers absenteeism by the experience workforces. According to Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee (2013) “bad leadership is equivalent to lack of relationship management competencies and self-management. Furthermore, lack of good guidance and communication from managers have exacerbated potential problems leading to employees feeling of no one listens to their concerns and the relationship that existed between them and management may start deteriorating.
Motivation issues also experienced at HCL Technologies Company are determined by the relationship that exists between the management and employees. The organization’s managers must realize that employees are different. Some of the employees like continuing support and feedback from their leaders while others prefer to work independently. Darcy et al. (2012) stated that “employee one-size-fits-all approach does not work as some challenges may motivate on the person and discourage other. Furthermore, some individual’s need high recognition and praise for them to feel motivated even if their work mediocre while others do not need praises and recognition for them to feel satisfied and motivated. According to Darcy et al., (2012) “people are different and their skills need to be mastered in order to reward different people”. The needful employees can be motivated through monetary rewards and also the manager must be aware that motivation always depends on age, skills, and experience. Furthermore, not motivating employees leads to departmental or inter-departmental conflicts especially in a situation that employees do not believe in equality.
Workforce conflicts at HCL Technologies Company have positive and negative effects on the organization. Occasionally, conflicts have led to improved results, better decision-making and creativity since managers have the capabilities of managing the conflicts. However, when the conflicts are high it decreases group cohesion and performances. Further research by Keashly et al. (2011) has indicated that when conflicts are constructive it can result in improved communication between employees and management hence allowing legitimate differences of beliefs and interests. Furthermore, if managers are not well responsible, organizational culture can be created when habits and beliefs of one group dominate the workplace norms. Therefore, the manager’s failure of managing conflict can affect organizational bottom line impacting organizational objective of serving customers. Generally, conflicts must occur in an organization because different people have different behaviors, perceptions and personalities.
HCL Technologies is an IT firm based in India and were started in 1976. The company deals in various segments like IT hardware, remote infrastructure management, BPO services, Enterprise and applications consulting and distribution and integration of technology and telecom products R&D (Ramaswamy, 2009). After 42 years in service, the company has a huge workforce of estimated 90,000 employees. It has expanded into 31 countries across the world and has 505 foothills in India. Merging and expansion have generated the company high revenues and helped it survive significant competition in the technology industry. The company generates a revenue of $ 2.02 billion in India an approximately $4.3 billion globally.
Managers at HCL Technologies have many responsibilities and duties to undertake every day. Apart from being a team leader, managers are decision makers, problem solvers, coaches, cheerleaders, organizers and planners. Consequently, the schedules of managers are jam-packed. They often find little spare time on their calendars due to various activities they undertake including strategy sessions, unexpected problems, being busy with employee meetings, solving employee disputes, directing employees and monitoring organizational activities to ensure that they are running smoothly. In general, the roles of managers are classified into decisional, informational and interpersonal roles. Managers must have conceptual, human and technical skills which result in performance that is desirable so as to be in a position of assisting the employees in becoming more powerful.
Managers in all organizational and business activities get people together for the accomplishment of desired objectives and goals by effectively and efficiently using available resources (Papke-Shields, Beise & Quan, 2010). At HCL Technologies Company, the accounts manager controls, leads, direct staff, organize and plan for all activities in relation with accounts department. In addition, the manager invests his efforts for the purpose of accomplishing set goals and objectives. According to Gibbons et al. (2010) Accounts and human resource managers ensure that the resource for the best talent by deploying and manipulating natural, technological, financial and human resources for the achievement of the organizational objectives and goals. Since an organization is generally viewed as a system, the act of management can be defined as the actions of humans employed for the facilitation of all activities aimed at producing outcomes that are useful from a system. Therefore, managers ensure that they first manage themselves since it is a pre-requisite to managing other people. Furthermore, accounts Manager at HCL Technologies Company is given various powers and responsibilities that assist in making decisions for the financial management activities taking place in the organization.
Primarily, HCL Technologies Company’s accounts manager is responsible for the satisfaction of the organization’s stakeholders. Furthermore, when the manager notices the overall financial performances are not in accordance with management standards, he provides employment opportunities that are rewarding to employees, ensuring the creation of quality and fair price products for customers and makes sure shareholders profits are increased. In addition, the manager also has a mandate of keeping the faith of donors. Furthermore, the accounts manager communicates to employees frequently and motivate them to work hard for the success of the organization. The manager also ensures that he create a team through pay decision, promotion and placement and further maintain communication with the team which is an integrating function of managers.
By planning, HCL accounts manager ensure that he decides what needs to be done in future, how it is to be done and generating action plans. According to Devesa, Laguna & Palacios (2010), planning results in a high degree of satisfaction if the resources are available. Therefore, the manager plans include developing of strategies, goals and schedules that are required for an organization to carry its future business success and ensures the customers are satisfied.
By organizing, the manager ensures that he optimize the use of available resources required to enable the carrying out of organizational plans successfully. In collaboration with the organization’s human resource managers, the account manager ensures that the staffing of the organization is appropriate through the screening, recruiting and hiring individuals for the jobs that best match their knowledge and abilities (Hwang & Ng, 2013). The organizing makes sure the HCL accounts manager have competent and organized employees who are keen to details. Furthermore, directing and leading employees ensures that in a particular situation, the manager has determined what is to be done and get people to handle the tasks. Moreover, the manager monitors and controls by ensuring that he check the progress of organizational activities to ensure that all tasks are being handled according to ensure the smooth running of the organizational financial activities.
However, since motivation is a basic management function, HCL Technologies Company’s accounts manager has the responsibility of motivating their team for the effective working of employees. Motivation is an important function of management since, without motivation, employees will be discouraged to work hard in contributing to other functions of the organization. Moreover, undertake the role of evaluation by assessing and reviewing the success of the plan, goal and the allocation of the employees and resources through the use of reliable and solid measures. Accounts Managers at HCL Technologies Company perform additional activities as assigned from time to time by the managing director or CEO of the organization. Generally, the duties and responsibilities of accounts managers are diverse and only depend on the size of the organization, its goals and objectives and reasons for its existence. The development of employees through training and supervision is also a critical aspect in the managers’ responsibilities since employees are recognized as a vital tool of organization.
Generally, Managers face various challenges while executing their duties. According to Benjamin & O’Reilly (2011), some challenges arise from the organization’s cultural beliefs. Organizational culture refers to the way things are done in the organization and could be used as a way of finding out the behavior of people in a complex setting. Organizational culture can be the experience and perception of people or abstract within a setting that is organized. Further research by Aishah, Kamarazaly, Mbachu & Phipps (2013) shows that the culture of a certain group of people is the way of thinking, practices, customs and set beliefs which people share with one another through working and being together. HCL Technologies Company’s accounts manager face a challenge in managing cultural change in a company which depends on how the culture which exists is strong and the weight of the change which has been proposed. In addition, the manager also faces challenges of changing jobs, especially when moving from the private to the public sector. For example, managers who work in the private sector are highly focused on accounting and profits to shareholders have power and authority attached and decision making is simplified which is not the case in the public sector. To minimize the challenges, managers make sure that they recruit people who will best fit into the organizational culture by questioning them to know their awareness of what is good for the company.
Accounts Manager at HCL Technologies Company also face challenges posed by organizational structure, culture and design which has sometimes led to employee conflict due to confusion on who should report to who. Additionally, the manager has also faced a hard time sorting and managing issues between employees that have sometimes been hectic. Generally, poor motivation from the manager’s superiors has sometimes demoralized the managers which may have resulted to some of them losing interest in working for the organization and have tried to seek better employers who treat them fairly. Poor leadership from the top management has a negative effect on business operations in all organizations and may affect other managers and employees. Moreover, firing employees has been a challenge to the most manager, as it has become a confusing decision to make since the organization may lose committed employee because of minor mistakes. Furthermore, it is hard to break the bad news to employees who have served in the company for many years.
Interacting with the accounts manager from HCL Technologies enabled me to realize that being a good manager does not require a lot of experience as having leadership qualities and a positive attitude. In addition, I realized that management is a hard task which requires knowledge, passion, dedication and perseverance in order to excel in the field. Furthermore, I also learned that some managers in different organizations lack leadership skills although they serve in the management positions of companies. Moreover, I learned that being committed and having a good working relationship with employees can be good at making the work of managers easier.
The manager also highlighted that the reason behind human resource managers indulging in a sophisticated and lengthy selection process is because selecting a good candidate is not easy since knowing the best candidate to select is an essential component. I also learned that the high compensation of managers matches the kind of jobs which they do since some managers are even overworked. When processes fail in the organization or when deadlines are not met, managers are answerable. Therefore, it leaves managers with the sole responsibility of having the fate of the organization in their hands. If they fail, the organization fails hence the interest of shareholders depends on the effectiveness of the management.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The paper concludes that HCL account’s manager faces several challenges posed by changes in organizational culture, structure and functionality. The way the manager leads and engages employees has adverse effects on the organization. If the manager leads the organization with a high degree of competency, the employee’s morale is boosted and they contribute significantly hence increasing customer delivery and customer satisfaction. In order to make sure employees are motivated the manager has been offering good compensation and reward benefits. Benefits like sick leaves, bonuses and good salaries have retained skilled employees in the organization. Poor leadership and unaddressed issues if not managed appropriately may lead to an influence on the level of employee’s motivation. Furthermore, the lack of managing employees appropriately leads to workforce conflicts. The poor leadership arises because of employees not being properly directed to meet organizational goals. Lack of motivation on an employee results to decrease in employee productivity. Lack of appropriate management conflicts leads to low morale especially when employees believe there are inequalities among the workgroup. Therefore, managers should have a mindset of focusing on developing and empowering employees so that they can achieve the goals they have set. The main goal of every organization is to maximize profits to shareholders that are achieved through the integration of strong leadership with information and informal communication. Therefore, employees should frequently communicate with managers and learn new trends from them.
References
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