Managerial Decision Making Strategies For Low Employee Morale At Woolworths

Problem background and problem definition

Discuss about the Managerial Decision Making Strategies.

The aim of the following report is to apply problem-solving stages upon a particular organizational problem. In order to accomplish this goal, specific objectives will be to identify the background of the problem and define the issue thoroughly, which will be accompanied by the objective of generating and evaluating the best possible solution for alleviating the identified issue. Finally, to meet the fundamental purpose, the following report will establish a concise implementation plan after selecting a proper problem solving technique.

It is required to mention here that for the mentioned purpose, the paper has considered the issue of weak staff morale of Woolworths. Recently, the considered organization has unveiled their plan of cutting more than 500 staffs and closing near about 30 stores, which are criticized for their underperformance for a long time. According to the analyst of UBS retail, 2016 Woolworths is facing a challenging market and weak employee morale is one of the predominant causes for settling such a situation.    

Low employee morale has turned to out to be a staple issue of Woolworths for past few years as the morale of the organization has been tagged as “all time low” (news.com.au, 2017). The particular situation is being fueled up by Woolworths’ decreasing rate of opportunities and continuous disengagement with the internal staffs. The phrase “weak employee morale” can be defined as the lack of self-confidence among the employees of an organization (Kube et al., 2013). In terms of consequence of the particular internal issue, an organization goes through lack of standard productivity and suffers from disappointing interpersonal relationships. More specifically, due to low employee morale, an organization fails to retain its valuable employees (Svenson et al., 2009).

The low morale crisis of the staffs of Woolworths is accompanied by the weak morale of another prime stakeholder of Woolworth, which are the existing suppliers of the organization. Consequently, the turnaround growth of Woolworths is running slow than the expectation and at the same time the probability rate of the price war has enhanced by more than 35% (abc.net.au, 2017). It is understandable that the recent decision of cutting more than 500 staffs from the present outlets is driven by the consequence of weak morale of the internal stakeholders and specifically of the work force. If the scenario of weak employee morale can be viewed through the framework of root cause analysis, then it would be

Root cause analysis

The identified issue is the lack of morale among the employees of Woolworths. It is important therefore to know the reasons behind this staple issue.

The problem has occurred in almost every outlet of Woolworths in Australia.

The issue is recurring repetitively and has been labeled as one of the staple issues of the organization. Therefore, a temporary solution would not help and a firm solution would be required immediately.The present and former team members are the victims of the issue.

The identified reasons for the decreasing rate of employee morale in Woolworth are the leadership style, which lacks transformational and transactional traits. In this respect, it is to mention that Woolworth has been previously criticized for providing unsatisfactory revenue and fewer benefits to their employees.

According to the current employee reviews, employees often suffer from backbreaking labor, extremely heavy lifting and unpaid overtime. On the other hand, more than 976 existing workers of Woolworths have claimed that there are fewer opportunities for promotion and the highly strict demands along with “unfair hours” are affecting on their productivity (dailymail.co.uk, 2017). It is unfortunate and shameful for the considered organization that several former team members of Woolworths have revealed that employees find it hard to achieve self-esteem as verbal bullying is involved within the workplace (dailymail.co.uk, 2017). Therefore, it is understandable that employees in Woolworth suffer from stress, which directly harms their morale. Most important to mention in this respect that the identified problems could be considered as dynamic problems because the issue of low morale among employees recurs repeatedly in the organization (Brown & Chandrasekaran, 2014).                

After identifying and understanding the current issue of Woolworths, possible alternatives for resolving the issue should be generated with the help of relevant problem resolving techniques. For the considered case, most convenient solution generation technique will be the model of De Bono’s six thinking Hats. It is because De Bono’s six thinking Hats helps in considering and thereafter incorporating creative ideas in terms of solution (Kivunja, 2015). Most importantly, the method is suitable for recognizing different sides of singular problems (Aithal et al., 2016). For generating solution for the long running low morale issue among the workers of “supermarket giant” – Woolworths, it is required to apply new ideas as the problem is considered as a dynamic issue. For generating an apt solution, an application of De Bono’s Green Hat would be

Solution Generation

The fundamental aspect of the “Green Hat” or “creative thinking cap” segment of De Bono’s six thinking Hats says that the way of generating the new ideas should be a freewheeling way, which should not involve any kind of criticism (Chen et al., 2015). In other words, with the help of Green Hat segment, an individual or a group can concentrate in forming creative ideas (Geerling et al., 2014). Therefore, considering the fundamental principle of the considered method, a brief list of new ideas would be –

• Modification of existing management style: Revamp the existing management or leadership procedure. More precisely, the idea would be to change the management style from authoritarian to transactional and transformational. The purpose behind the idea is to employ the trend of motivating employees through rewards.
• Enhance interpersonal relationship: An alternative idea would be to improvise the interpersonal communication between management and employees by increasing opportunities for face-to-face interaction (Jensen et al., 2014).
• Payment adjustment and implementation of employee facilities: Another alternative would be increase the present rate of payment and modify the shifting hours. More precisely, the idea would be to increase employee benefits such as weekend holiday, free lunch and medical facilities.
• Interpersonal bond through modified leadership and payment adjustment: On the other hand, a combined effort of above three can also form as an efficient option. More specifically, the idea would be to increase the interpersonal relationship by practicing transactional and transformational leadership and by increasing salary rate and carrier growth opportunities for the employees.   
• New recruitment: A final alternative would be to recruit new employees in place of them whose production reports and morale are most disappointing. In this case the HR (Human resource department) of Woolworths would have to select those candidates who are experienced and possess impressive moral.

Solution evaluation after the elaborated procedures of problem identification and solution generation depends on the premise of convergent style thinking. It is because; the convergent style thinking fundamentally narrows down the defined issue and eliminates the irrelevant options identified in the solution generation process to select the most convenient one (Brown & Chandrasekaran, 2014). The predominant motive of the solution evaluation process is to evaluate the potentiality of the generated ideas and consider the most effective one for alleviating the identified organizational problem (Vohs et al., 2008). In this context, it is to mention that for evaluating and selecting the appropriate solution from the generated ideas, the evaluation procedure of “Categorization, Elimination and Ranking” is recognized to be apt to apply (Nezu, & Nezu, 2014).

The procedure of “Categorization, Elimination and Ranking” involves a firm organization of generated ideas in the framework of categories, eliminate the ideas, which do not meet most of the criteria and rank the ideas formulated in the solution generation process. The chief purpose of considering this procedure is to identify the right idea, which can serve fruitfully for the considered concern of Woolworths. Application of the chosen solution evaluation method would be as per the following –

Ideas	Category 1: Mitigate the main problem of employee dissatisfaction	Category 2: Mitigate issue of lack of motivation	Category 3: Elevate the issue of low payment and lack of opportunities	Category 4: Resolve the issue of low interpersonal bond
Modification of existing management style		ü		ü
Enhance interpersonal relationship		ü		ü
Payment adjustment and implementation of employee facilities	ü		ü
Interpersonal bond through modified leadership and payment adjustment	ü	ü	ü	ü
New recruitment	–	–	–	–

After identifying the capabilities of each of the generated options’ capability to fit into the essential criteria, now a brief evaluation of the ideas should be performed to finally select the most effective one.

The above table is indicative of the fact that first, second and third options are in the position as each of them has show capability in addressing any two criteria among the four. Therefore, it indicates that selection of any of the first three alternatives those have been generated earlier do not seem convincible enough in combating the concerned issue of Woolworths. It is unfortunate to identify that the idea of “new recruitment” could not meet any of the criteria whereas fortunately the fourth idea have met all the criteria.

Green Hat

After understanding the status of each of the generated ideas, it is understandable that only idea number four deserves to be selected as it accomplish each of the necessary criteria. Selection of the first idea would not prove successful as it does not address the need of resolving employee dissatisfaction and the issue of underpayment. Similarly, the second idea should also be eliminated as it only takes concern regarding the issue of lack of motivation and low interpersonal bond. At the same time the third option would be eliminated as it is only capable of mitigating the issue of payment and employee dissatisfaction. However, the last option should be eliminated at the first place as it does not take concern of any of the predominant attributes of key issue. Therefore, option number four will be selected as it single-handedly resolves the issue of low payment, lack of interpersonal bond, low motivational direction and employee dissatisfaction.

In order to implement the considered solution fruitfully, the process called “What if” should be applied. The “What is” process helps to manage difficulties by developing a contingency plan (Cong et al., 2013). With the help of the particular framework, an organization can successfully implement as well as can assess the probable risks related to the implementation (Svenson Salo & Lindholm, 2009). More specifically, the procedure helps in anticipating possible outcomes and probable obstacles regarding the implementation of the considered idea.

Selected idea	Actions for implementation	Anticipated scenarios	Management of the anticipated scenarios
Implementation of employee facilities, interpersonal bond through modified leadership and payment adjustment	ü  Reconstruct the salary scale and give hike to those who are working for more than one year ü  Facilitate a half yearly free medical checkup service ü  Train the managers for performing transactional and transformational leadership ü  Organize a meeting immediately between all existing managers and employees of Woolworths	ü  Strong resistance from the management ground ü  Satisfactory feedbacks from the employees ü  Disappointment among the employees who working for less than one year	ü  Convince managers by discussing the need of the implementation through frequent meetings ü  Increase the amount of incentives for the new joiners and for them who are working foless than one year.

Conclusion

From the above assignment, it can be deduced that low employee morale due to underpayment, unfair working hours, manipulative management and lack of facilities has been a staple problem for Woolworths. Furthermore, the above report indicates that for the concern regarding Woolworth’s present issue of low employee morale, five adoptable alternatives would be – modification of existing management style, enhance interpersonal relationship, Payment adjustment and implementation of employee facilities, interpersonal bond through modified leadership and payment adjustment and new recruitment. However, with the help of “Categorization, Elimination and Ranking” procedure, the later part of the report indicates that only the option of – interpersonal bond through modified leadership and payment adjustment should be considered for the considered issue.

References

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