Effective Strategies For Employee Management

Transformational Leadership

Question:

Discuss about the Emotion Regulation and Performance Pressure.

As the new General Operations Manager of the company, it is my responsibility to ensure employee well-being by lifting employee morale. Since the Store Manager has unnecessarily yelled at the managers, whose motivation level might have been affected, I would call the Store Manager to interact with me personally. I would request him to control his emotions of stress and anxiety at workplace, and would ask him to contact the Marketing and Distribution team for organizing a meeting to formulate strategies to boost the store sales growth. Also, I would make him understand that each business has its ups and down, but as a leader, the Store Manager’s duty is to retain and develop an optimistic outlook amongst its employees, and keep up their morale, instead of sounding too “bossy” to them.

Further, in order to model positive leadership behaviour at workplace, I would arrange in-house training as well as external workshop training sessions for the leaders of the organization so that they can learn to lea, control and motivate at the same time. I would hold a meeting with the Team Leads and Managers proposing the implementation of the Transformational Leadership style at workplace, so that the employees’ efforts do not get unrecognized and unrewarded during the peak hours (Laschinger et al. 2014). In order to build an employee-leader rapport, the organization will introduce its performance recognition policy, where the Departmental Managers will be asked to recognize the best talent in their department, and reward the employees with their own hands, instead of the General Managers doing the same.

The Store Manager failed to exhibit two important elements of Emotional Intelligence while dealing with the employees. First of all, he lacks self-regulation, as he was unable to control his emotions of frustration and anxiety while dealing with his employees. Secondly, he also lacks the motivation element, as he fails to cheer up his employees, and inspire them to accomplish sales growth, despite the odds.

The Store Manager should have called all the Departmental Managers for an interactive session, where he should have communicated the crucial issue affecting the company and ask them to offer innovative strategies to improve the same. He should have called in the Marketing and Distribution team as well, asking for their opinions, while announcing reward and recognition for the 2 best performing departments in the store, who would have over-achieved the sales target and provided the best quality service to the consumers. This would have created an urge amongst the employees to work more productively, without suffering from a fear of job loss.

Performance Recognition and Rewards

The Store Manager, as the management body, represents the vision and outlook of the company, and his behaviour should essentially reflect the organizational culture the company believes in. His aggressive approach towards the managers deflated employee morale, who might interpret his behaviour as a reflection of the organization’s attitude towards them (Goleman et al. 2013). This would have easily led to the problem of low employee motivation and engagement, ultimately resulting in low productivity, higher staff absenteeism and turnover rates. The Managers would have held grudge against the management, and their disengagement would inevitably lead to low store performance.

First of all, it may happen that an Asian worker is working in collaboration with an Australian employee on a specific project. Owing to the highly individualized culture of the latter, the Australian would tend to be highly professional, avoiding invasion of personal space, while the Asian coming from collective culture, may find his co-worker’s behaviour cold, unfriendly and rude. Again, in American organizations, apart from hard work and dedication, an employee must be able to speak loudly about his accomplishments to facilitate his career progression. However, the same man coming in Latin America, speaking of his achievements may  be interpreted as rude and proud, as hard work with a humble behaviour is the key to success, as believed by the Latinos.

I would appreciate the effort of the employee for communicating the issue that has been bothering the team. Next, I would explain the employee some basic issues about the woman, who having come from a different culture, might not be comfortable in engaging certain activities which are apparently “normal” for the other co-workers. I would research a bit about the cultural background, and the basic ideals, norms and beliefs of the people of that culture, to make him identify and appreciate the inherent differences lying in the cultural outlook of the new employee and that of the other employees.

In order to avoid cross-cultural differences and ensure effective communication, I would introduce cross-cultural training sessions and workshops at workplace that would help in enhancing the cross-cultural communication and behavioural skills of the employees. Further, I would myself hold an interactive session with the employees, explaining them about various cross-cultural concepts and theories, including the famous Hofstede’s theory of Cultural Dimensions (Ishihara and Cohen 2014).

Empathy and social skills are the two important elements of emotional intelligence that I would utilize here to solve the situation. I would call the employee for a one-to-one session, and would ask him why he stays aloof. I would try to empathize with his situation, and understand if he feels too new to interact, or he is shy by nature, or if he had any unfavourable experience at workplace in the past (Baojuan and Qing 2017). I would try to extract as much information as possible from him regarding his personal emotions at workplace, and would first try to understand his own perspective on interacting with his fellow co-workers, before forming any opinion about him.

Cross-Cultural Communication

Before forming opinion about an individual, it is important to develop an in-depth understanding of the various factors influencing the behaviour of the individual. Accordingly, i would research about the personality type of the employee to understand the implications of his behavioural patterns. He may possess the Systematic Personality Type, whereby he is more of a deadline-driven, professional personnel, who appreciate strictly formal behaviour at workplace, and refrain from anything that he finds to be irrelevant for his job role. In this case, he needs to be called in and made aware of his professional and career benefits of attending the workplace training sessions (Laborde et al. 2014). Again, he may have a passive communication style for which he fails to assert himself and his needs properly, and prefer to remain aloof, instead of the team-building exercises. In that case, the other co-workers especially the managers should be asked to approach him, and initiate conversation with him, until he feels at ease with them.

I would first try to understand the employees’ perspectives, in terms of his behavioural patterns or communication style, and accordingly I would try to adjust the same with the needs of the organization. Being aware of the employees’ social and emotional needs, will help me counsel him and make necessary arrangements to communicate the issue with the team leads or departmental managers so that they can take up strategies to create employee rapport (Shaw et al. 2014). This can be done through frequent ream outing plans, interactive game sessions including not more than four people in each team, that will help the employee develop bonds with the other members, and appreciate the company more than a mere professional sphere (Côté 2017).

Since the organization has decided to delay the training sessions, and enhance performance targets, the emotionally effective employees might interpret this move of the company, to be insensitive, and they may experience high level of employee dissatisfaction and disengagement, thinking that the company policies are not at all employee-friendly, and the same will eventually lead to their oppression and exploitation at workplace as well. Now, needless o say that these employees will feel frustrated and depressed with the sudden change in their targets, and will eventually disassociate themselves from any productive work at workplace (Kaplan et al. 2014). While their disengaged behaviour would lead to absenteeism and high employee turnover rates as well, they might also end up frustrating their co-workers, further de-motivating them. Consequently, all these would impede the accomplishment of goals in the company. 

Emotional Intelligence

It is highly important to assess the emotional impact of any decision on the minds of the employees, before taking any decisions, simply because it helps the management authority to evaluate the possible emotional responses of the employees to the situation, and act accordingly (McMann et al. 2017). For example, in the present scenario, the organization has decided that it will enhance performance targets of the employees, which means the employees will have to work for longer hours. In absence of effective communication, explaining the scope, purpose and benefits of the sudden change in the working policy, the employees might feel frustrated, and get disengaged, while resisting change.

A decision-making process that takes into account the emotional impact of the employees, must involve effective engagement of the employees’ perspectives and opinions in the decision-making process and proper communication amongst the staff members and the managers. Any change such as increase in targets or delay in the training program is always implemented on the employees, and hence even though the management has the last word to say, the employees should feel heard (Hun ad Kaplan 2015). Next, proper communication to the employees about the duration and benefits of the change will help in receiving more sensible and mature employee reactions.

In order to help employees manage emotions at workplace, the company will adopt counselling, relation training as well as stress management training at workplace. The employees will be made aware of the nature and source of stress and anxiety at workplace and are to be trained to combat the same. My every channel of communication such as email id and contact number will be given to each employee, so that they can communicate to me, in case they feel emotionally tortured and low, and wish to inform me of grievance. Strict human resource policies will be enforced in the company prohibiting employees from using any form of aggressive means of communication, deemed inappropriate in a workplace scenario.

Reference List:

Anthony?McMann, P.E., Ellinger, A.D., Astakhova, M. and Halbesleben, J.R., 2017. Exploring different operationalizations of employee engagement and their relationships with workplace stress and burnout. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 28(2), pp.163-195.

Baojuan, Y. and Qing, Z., 2017. The Effect of Psychological Empowerment on Job Satisfaction of Principals in Rural School: The Mediating Role of Professional Identity and the Moderation Role of Emotion Intelligence. Journal of Psychological Science, 3, p.027.

Côté, S., 2017. Enhancing managerial effectiveness via four core facets of emotional intelligence: Self-awareness, social perception, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation. Organizational Dynamics.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R.E. and McKee, A., 2013. Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.

Hu, X. and Kaplan, S., 2015. Is “feeling good” good enough? Differentiating discrete positive emotions at work. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(1), pp.39-58.

Ishihara, N. and Cohen, A.D., 2014. Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Routledge.

Kaplan, S., Cortina, J., Ruark, G., LaPort, K. and Nicolaides, V., 2014. The role of organizational leaders in employee emotion management: A theoretical model. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(3), pp.563-580.

Laborde, S., Lautenbach, F., Allen, M.S., Herbert, C. and Achtzehn, S., 2014. The role of trait emotional intelligence in emotion regulation and performance under pressure. Personality and Individual differences, 57, pp.43-47.

Laschinger, H.K.S., Wong, C.A., Cummings, G.G. and Grau, A.L., 2014. Resonant leadership and workplace empowerment: The value of positive organizational cultures in reducing workplace incivility. Nursing Economics, 32(1), p.5.

Shaw, W.S., Besen, E., Pransky, G., Boot, C.R., Nicholas, M.K., McLellan, R.K. and Tveito, T.H., 2014. Manage at work: a randomized, controlled trial of a self-management group intervention to overcome workplace challenges associated with chronic physical health conditions. BMC public health, 14(1), p.515.