Collaborative Overload: Impact On Employee Productivity And Retention In Modern Organizations

The Impact of Collaboration on Modern Organizations

Discuss about the Idea Of Collaboration In The Organization And Its Effect.

Collaboration has become of the chief mottos of the modern organizations. Due to globalization the structure of the organizations has changed a lot so also the behavior and psychology of the employees. In the article ‘Collaborative Overload’ by Cross, Rebele and Grant, has describe the idea of collaboration in the organization and its effect on the production of the organization. Collaboration is basically the idea of successful team work. As the companies have started to become extremely global as well as cross-cultural, the structure and style of management have started to be change a lot. The connectivity is growing so also the dependency on the technology is also growing.

In the article ‘Algorithms need managers, too’ Luca, Kleinberg and Mullainathan have discussed this issue of employee termination and using technology in their places. The chief idea of this article is that the mangers have the key controlling power who maintain the flow of resources in the organization so that the employees can work effectively. Similarly, they are the chief driving force who are responsible for controlling the function and utilization of the computerized algorithms also. There are different positive as well as negative effects of using algorithms in predicting the future of the business. Over dependency on the algorithms can lead the business to complete destruction.  Hence the management should be careful in managing the human employees as well as the algorithms.

The article ‘Collaborative Overload’ discusses that the employees in the organization need high amount of resources. These resources are to be used in accomplishing their tasks efficiently. For this reason, the managers arrange for meetings, workshops and seminar so that the employees learn from the available resources and then build a pool of resources of their own. As mentioned before the managers encourage the employees to indulge in team works. This is because the team work helps to provide opportunities for sharing personal knowledge with others thus gain more knowledge about one particular subject. in this collaboration process, the employees come across three types of sources. These resources are to be passed on by the collaborators to the subordinate employees or the non-experienced or unskilled. There are people of an organization, who know various methods of doing a complicated task as they possess more knowledge as well as skills than the others in the organizations. These are the factors which differentiate the better and useful employees than the commoners. The three types of resources that the employees need to accomplish a task are basically informational, social and persona. The first two resources are quite different from the third in respect to their efficiency and relevancy. The informational resources are related with the knowledge and skills which the employees acquire through expertise. After that they can easily pass it on to others. Social resources are associated with the individual’s awareness, access and the position in networks. Both of these resources can be shared in a single exchange.

Collaboration and Technology

These resources are used to help the colleagues in teams. The employees share these types of resources quite easily because their sharing do not hamper or deplete the supply of the resources. On the contrary, the personal resources are quite complicated. The collaborators acquire this type of resources by spending a lot of effort as well as time. In addition to this, these resources cannot be replenished easily by the employees as they are rare and time consuming. Therefore, the top collaborators who maintain the flow of knowledge in the workspace do not intend to share these personal resources with others quite easily and “each request to participate in or approve decisions for a project leaves less available for that person’s own work” (Cross, Rebele and Grant 2016).

The employees who possess more resources become the top collaborators of the companies. These people however many intend to help others or do not. The employees who are willing to help others are only consist of 3%to 5% of the total number of employees in an organization. This is because the employees who request for help have defaults demand of personal resources and these employees do not intend to share their hard earned personal resources. In this process of requesting help from the collaborators, there can be some unethical aspects. The employees who seek information may have access to the online sources or libraries to know what they intend to know. This will take much less time but they intentionally request for help from these collaborators. This take much time as well as effort to make them understand the whole process.

These are the reason why these collaborators who have ample knowledge about the subject and can perform diversity of tasks, cannot complete their own tasks within given time. Therefore, the professional career and ambition get hampered. These employees help others to do a job but their efforts remain hidden under the success of others. They do not get proper exposure in the organizations hence do not get rewards and acknowledgements. For this particular reason these collaborators get frustrated with their jobs and think to leave the organization. In order to get the exposure and reputation these employees tray to change their companies where they think they will be honored. They remain in demand always but become disengaged with the organization. These employees ultimately leave their organizations but take with them the most valuable resources like experiences, information, networks and knowledge.

The Role of Managers in Retaining Top Collaborators

The managers are the actual responsible persons to retain their workforce in place securely. These to collaborators of the organization are the most valuable human assets. This is due to the fact that no task of the organizations can be happed without direct intervention of these employees as they are the most resources persons. These collaborators remain as the bottleneck of the organizations and put pressure in the smooth flow of functions of the companies. This is the reason why the managers need to understand some very important aspects and take initiatives according to them

Redistribution of resources: due to the knowledge gap among the employees, all the issues of employee turnover and dissatisfaction emerge. This is the reason why the authors of this article have suggested the managers to identify the demand or crisis area. This can be done through employee feedbacks, and other tools which check the request percentage in the organization. Through these tools and programs, the management gain knowledge about what type of resources are demanded by the employees and how these can be overcome. As the informational and social resources remain available in the workplace, these can be easily accessed by the employees. This do not need much time or effort hence the managers need to make them obtainable by all types of employees. This will reduce the pressure of the collaborators in the organization and they can concentrate on their own tasks. This reduce the factor of discrimination also. As the women employees of the organization seem to be more collaborative than the make employees. therefore, helping others become mandatory for these women. Therefore, they cannot balance these tasks and fail to achieve their targets in the organization.  

Restructure organization: by restructuring the organizations, the managers can motivate the collaborators by promoting them into a higher designation from where they belong. The employees feel motivated through recognition. Therefore, the managers can give them responsibilities only to help others. Hence these employees will be providing various styles of resources to the common employees but will never take part in the production of the companies directly. This will help the common employees in one hand and reduce the pressure of the collaborators on the other. These people therefore will be satisfied with their responsibilities and never think of leaving the organizations in future. In addition to this, these collaborators can help in building a workforce who will replace these collaborators. Therefore, the company will be losing nothing, while these top collaborators leave the companies.

Redistributing Resources to Improve Employee Satisfaction

Employee behavior: one of the major aspects that mandates the collaborators to help others without any question is that they do not have permission to say no to their subordinate employees. The managers of the organization must allow these collaborators to maintain a negative approach so that other employees check alternative ways to complete the tasks. “It’s also worth suggesting that when they do invest personal resources, it be in value-added activities that they find energizing rather than exhausting” (Cross, Rebele and Grant 2016). The mangers can permit these employees to filter the requests. Therefore, these collaborators can save their time as well as efforts and serve only the original help seekers.

The authors of this article have discussed the issues that emerge from the collaborative approach of the organizations. As mentioned before, the chief reason of the employee turnover is unavailability of resources and lack of recognition and rewards. It is obvious from the discussion that the highly resourced employees have experience, skill and knowledge for leading teams. Therefore, their expectation from the companies are also very high. Due to this, most of the employees feel detached from the core business of the companies. The authors of this article therefore have suggested that the mangers must try to motivate these employees through rewards and recognition. In many cases the big companies often lose talents due to lack of rewarding policies in the organization. Hence the managers must recognize the efficiency of these collaborators so that they feel attached to their companies and remain loyal.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the mangers are responsible persons who have power to maintain the knowledge flow of the organization. This is because collaboration is answer to many business challenges of the world. For reducing employee turnover due to knowledge gap, team managers need to check every details and facts of the workplace and mitigate them efficiently. There are various tools and methods through which the managers can get the feedbacks from the employees and then take proper initiatives. The mangers need to have appropriate balance between individual accomplishment and collaborative contribution.  Through arranging for proper collaboration and knowledge sharing, the managers will be able to maintain a healthy workplace culture and increase the productivity and innovation of the organizations. The modern business leaders will be able to cater the importance of managing teamwork considerately as well as provide the important resources compulsory to do it effectively.

References:

Cross, R., Rebele, R. and Grant, A., 2016. Collaborative overload. Harvard Business Review, 94(1), p.16.

Luca, M., Kleinberg, J. and Mullainathan, S., 2016. Algorithms need managers, too. Harvard business review, 94(1), p.20.