Discuss about the Trends in Global Business Environment.
With global changes in the environment within which businesses operate, various organizations in Australia are responding to these changes in order to remain relevant in the market (Hamilton and Webster, 2015, pp. 72). Most organizations are keen to incorporate the changes in their mode of operations to cater for the issues addressed by such global environmental variations. In order to be successful, businesses are keen in identifying a number of issues resulting from environmental changes to align themselves to new ideas of conducting organizational activities with an aim of establishing and sustaining a competitive advantage in the market (Botha et al., 2014, pp. 31).
As a result of the changes, a number of issues are emerging pertaining the way organizations are carrying out their daily operations. The most crucial issue addressed by the dynamic business environment is the employee collaboration at the workplace (Tyler and Blader, 2013, pp. 53). Therefore, the paper covers the essential issue of teamwork at the workplace by focusing on various pertinent questions surrounding the concept of collaboration in the contemporary world of business.
Collaboration at a workplace can be defined as a group of employees working together as a team with an aim of pursuing common organizational goals.
Due to rapid changes in the global business environment, the issue of employees’ collaboration at a workplace is taking centre stage (Hamilton and Webster, 2015, pp. 72). Hence, most companies are paying much attention to how to apply the concept of teamwork in enhancing their daily operations. Therefore, working as a team is important in many ways as the organization strives to maintain its position in the Australian competitive business environment.
Teamwork within an organization helps the employees to undertake a particular activity or project faster and efficiently. Due to the technological advancements, employees within an organization can collaborate virtually with other colleagues through technology-enabled means and seek assistance on how to do something (Turner, 2014, pp. 106). When an employee is faced with a certain task to do, he/she can easily consult with other coworkers who will help in solving it effectively and within less time. Therefore, a collaboration between employees helps in solving a certain task quickly and efficiently thus enhancing organizational operations.
There has been increased competition in the Australian business market. Consequently, most businesses are looking for various ideas from their rival businesses with an aim of enhancing and improving their operations to counter competition posed. As a result of shared business ideas, companies in Australia are striving to encourage collaboration as a way of creating value and enhancing productivity to help organizations compete in the global economy (Adekola and Sergi, 2016, pp. 163). Therefore, teamwork helps in improving and increasing productivity to enable an organization remain relevant in the competitive global economy.
Motivation is derived from the employee’s responsibility to perform his/her duties for the organization. Once an employee is able to tackle a certain task, he/she feels motivated and ready to work more for the organization. Through collaboration and sharing, employees are empowered to consult on how to any task assigned to them. Therefore, all the organizational tasks are possible once the employees accomplish a certain task since they feel motivated to handle even bigger tasks thus ensuring organization’s success in the market (Cascio, 2018, pp. 80).
With technological advancements and increased innovation witnessed in Australia, companies are capitalizing on collaboration to counter the threat posed by the increased technology-based business processes. The increased technology and innovation are impacting heavily on the businesses’ ways of operating. Such business is bound to embrace teamwork in solving problems encountered by employees with little knowledge on handling such technologies (Botha et al., 2014, pp. 31). Therefore, collaboration at a workplace is bringing together a team of employees with various knowledge and skills to help each other in solving a rather complicated task.
When team spirit is common in an organization, there is increased efficiency and job satisfaction. Teamwork helps the employees add more value and meaning on the way they perceive their work (Johnstone, 2014, pp. 18). Collaboration helps in creating a pool of talent with more experienced, able and competent people. By doing so, experienced and strong collaborators help in sharpening the skills of less experienced employees for the purpose of accomplishing a certain task. Therefore, when employees work as a group and achieve something, there is shared victory and team spirit helping the employees feel good and more likely to continue working for the organization.
Just like any other organizational activity, collaboration at a workplace is a process with a noticeable number of requirements including the key players, procedural resources and investment. For employees to work as a team, an organization needs a strong leadership to oversee the proper use of informational, social and personal collaboration resources (Lasserre, 2017, pp. 45). Therefore, a successful teamwork calls for an efficient board team to manage collaboration resources.
Informational resources entail the knowledge and skills necessary for people working as a team in undertaking a given task. Basically, informational resources form part of expertise that can be easily mastered and passed to other employees (Bruce et al., 2014, pp. 151). Therefore, the resources here forms the broader view of experience and skills that employees can learn from strong collaborators with heavy knowledge on how to solve a certain problem.
The other form of a collaborative resource is the social resources. These may involve individual employee’s awareness, position, access and position in the team. Therefore, the social resources are merely used in the interaction process to enable the member employees in an organization come together and successfully work as a team (Turner, 2014, pp. 104).
The other vital part of collaboration resources is the personal resources. During the process of facilitating a strong employees’ teamwork, personal resources form the essential part. Strong collaborators with vast knowledge, experience and knowledge are the main people with personal resources in form of time and energy (Bruce et al., 2014, pp. 152). Therefore, the time and energy used by strong collaborators in helping the less experienced employees to perform a given task or solve a problem assigned to them are what forms the entire bit of personal resources needed in the collaboration course.
Just like any other aspect of change, embracing collaboration and teamwork within an organization is a process which needs proper attention from the organization’s top management. The organization needs a strong leadership team to steer, encourage and motivate the employees to embrace teamwork as a way of helping the company to grow (Cascio, 2018, pp. 80). Therefore, the issue of collaboration at workplace comes up with a myriad of challenges which may bring more failure than success within an organization.
During the distribution of collaborative work, it has been established that most, the work ends up being lopsided. That is, a higher percentage of employees within an organization tend to relax and fail to think critically in regard to given task since they feel that the task will be carried out by other employees (O’Neil Jr and O’Neil, 2014, pp. 211). Therefore, collaboration can lead to laxity and joyriding as most employees fail to participate in the process of solving a given assignment thus leaving the burden to their fellow colleagues especially the strong collaborators.
Teamwork within an organization may end up lowering the performance of some employees. Some key players during the collaboration process such as the strong collaborators tend to use a lot of their personal resources in form of energy and time in helping other employees undertake certain organizational tasks. Therefore, strong collaborators spend most of their time helping others hence lowering their performance since they do not have time to do their specific organizational tasks.
As from the discussion above, strong competitors tend to do a lot of work within the organization. In most cases, they feel overwhelmed due to the burden put on them. The pressure to help other employees perform their tasks becomes too much (Peng, 2016, pp. 31). Most of them succumb to such pressures and decide to quit their jobs. Consequently, then organization end up losing such skilled and knowledgeable people leading to low productivity for the organization.
Collaboration at the workplace may also lead to failure of the organization in terms of growth and production in case the strong collaborators and not there. Once strong collaborators fail to show their input, it means that performance of some tasks cannot continue. Therefore, the organization may fail to continue with certain activities due to the absence of strong collaborators (helpers) thus derailing the organizational progress (Tyler and Blader, 2013, pp. 55).
Just like any other organizational activity, collaboration needs effective management for it produces the desired fruits. There are a number of techniques that managers can use to effectively establish and manage teamwork within an organization (Cascio, 2018, pp. 78). Therefore, for an organization to establish a successful teamwork, managers need to embark on some activities meant to counter the problems facing collaboration in order to encourage and enhance productivity.
The organizational management should keenly track and document the existing supply and demand of issues and activities involving employees’ assistance. It means that managers should use tools such as employee surveys to establish the number of employees who need help and map them against the number of collaborators (helpers) (Myerson and Bichard, 2016, pp. 15). Thus, each helper is assigned a reasonable number of queries to help in reducing the burden placed on the available strong collaborators. Consequently, the issue of high turnover and poor performance among the strong collaborators will be reduced.
The managers should also aim at rewarding effective collaborations to motivate employees who engage in successful and productive teamwork. It is imperative to note that a helper (strong collaborator) may serve a number of required employees who seek help but it does not lead to any achievement of the desired goals (Cascio, 2018, pp. 78). Thus, managers are keen to monitor the collaboration as well as the achievement realized in the achievement of a particular task. To make sure that collaborative contributors attend to the employees effectively, the managers should look at whether the engagement between the employee and helping collaborators brought the desired outcomes. Therefore, the reward of such efficient and result-oriented teamwork will motivate an employee to engaging in more productive and successful collaboration in future (Moutinho and Vargas-Sanchez, 2018, pp. 132).
In addition, organizations and businesses may be forced to hire chief collaboration officers to handle the issue of collaboration. Being a critical issue impacting on the success and productivity of many companies in Australia, the future of employee collaboration at workplace becomes a priority (Lasserre, 2017, pp. 43). The establishment of a senior executive position in charge of collaboration becomes important. Therefore, to ensure that teamwork matters are handled carefully and thoughtfully, the creation of such post will be essential in achieving the desired results for many organizations in Australia.
Conclusion
In the contemporary world of business, the ability to establish and maintain employees’ teamwork dictates the success of most companies in Australia (Cavusgil et al., 2014, pp. 95). With increased competition in the world of business, it has become extremely crucial to inspire creativity and increased productivity by encouraging collaboration and strong relationship between employees (Williams, 2013, pp. 34). The paper covers the whole issue of collaboration at the workplace by exploring the nature and practice of organizational teamwork. Therefore, the paper is meant to give a clear insight on the issue of teamwork by elaborating on its importance, resources needed to steer collaboration at a workplace, challenges being faced in realizing organizational teamwork as well as the role of managers in addressing the challenges hindering the establishment of a productive employee collaboration at a workplace.
References
Adekola, A., & Sergi, B. S. (2016). Global business management: A cross-cultural perspective. Routledge, pp. 156-170.
Botha, A., Kourie, D., & Snyman, R. (2014). Coping with continuous change in the business environment: Knowledge management and knowledge management technology. Elsevier, pp.23-40.
Bruce, C., Partridge, H., Davis, K., Hughes, H., & Stoodley, I. (Eds.). (2014). Information experience: approaches to theory and practice. Emerald Group Publishing, pp. 140-162.
Cascio, W. (2018). Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill Education, pp. 70-90.
Cavusgil, S. T., Knight, G., Riesenberger, J. R., Rammal, H. G., & Rose, E. L. (2014). International business. Pearson Australia, pp.89-102.
Hamilton, L., & Webster, P. (2015). The international business environment. Oxford University Press, USA, pp. 65-78.
Johnstone, S. (2014). Workplace partnership. Handbook of research on employee voice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Google Scholar, pp. 12-24.
Lasserre, P. (2017). Global strategic management. Palgrave, pp. 37-54.
Moutinho, L., & Vargas-Sanchez, A. (Eds.). (2018). Strategic Management in Tourism, CABI Tourism Texts. Cabi, pp. 120-140.
Myerson, J., & Bichard, J. A. (2016). New demographics new workspace: Office design for the changing workforce. Routledge, pp. 1-30.
O’Neil Jr, H. F., & O’Neil, H. F. (2014). Workforce readiness: Competencies and assessment. Psychology Press, pp. 200-220.
Peng, M. W. (2016). Global business. Cengage learning, pp.126-136.
Turner, M. E. (2014). Groups at work: Theory and research. Psychology Press, pp. 100-110.
Tyler, T., & Blader, S. (2013). Cooperation in groups: Procedural justice, social identity, and behavioral engagement. Routledge, pp. 45-62.
Williams, D. J. (2013). Urban education and professional learning communities. Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 79(2), pp. 31-39.
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