Managing Group Performance And Minimizing Turnover Rate

Part A

One of the specific incident from my life, which I could have managed more effectively is the dancing competition during my school days. I was the lead dancer of my group and was given the responsibility of leading of the dance team. Though, it was a difficult task on my part to handle such a diverse group personalities of 12 members having different interests, strengths and talents, I believe that I have managed the responsibility sharing effectively and efficiently. My responsibility scope mainly includes maintaining such an organisational behaviour that the group members should follow my instruction and dance accordingly to the team requirement (Martin and Siebert, 2016). However, the problem was the limited time period given for rehearsal before the actual dance show. In the limited time period, I was busy with my dance performance and could not justify the strengths of other team members. In a group dance, the prime focus should be on the coordination in dance among the members, which was lacking in our performance (Shields, 2015) . This was the result of my lack of experience and inefficient planning, organising and leading the group in limited period.

According to my point of view, I could have more effectively and efficiently handled my team and led it towards success. As an efficient leader, I was not able to properly plan, organise, lead and control the group members (Shields, 2015). Because of my lack of experience and time, I did not evaluated individual’s performance which created problem during organising the team members in the performance. Moreover, the lack of knowledge and support from the team members also created problem in decision making during critical situation (Hinojosa, McCauley, Randolph-Seng and Gardner, 2014, pp. 595). My inefficient management was also due to lack of guidance and support from the teachers. Furthermore it is also important to use the most appropriate strategy for a particular conflict situation. My inappropriate use of strategy during the conflict situation for my team (Mowday, Porter and Steers, 2013).

From the analysis of my personal experience, it is justified that a good and cordial relationship of leader with its team member is very crucial for a successful team work. In future, for effective management I will always try to be supportive and friendly to the team members to gain their confidence. It is also to evaluate the strength and weakness of each group members so that it can be used during my decision-making process for the team members (Kantor and Streitfeld, 2015, pp. 74). During lack of time and resources, I should discuss the problem with the higher authority to get any assistance.    

The company choose for depicting the organisational problem is the Amazon Australia. It is an American based ecommerce company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. It is one of the largest online retail store in world including Australia according to the total sales of 1.1 billion AUD in 2015 (Roy and Charaborti, 2017, pp. 45). The company offers online retail, consumer electronics, computing services, and other local services such as groceries and daily deals. According to statistics the net sales of Amazon for the year 2016 is 136 billion U.S. dollars. It is considered as the most valuable product all over the world because of its global scope. As per reports, the company have more than 310 million of active customers account globally. The company also provides its own manufactured products such as Fire Tablet and Amazon Kindle, as an effort to reduce the cost associated with the middlemen. Amazon is in the mission to be the world most customer-centric company, where the customers will be able to buy online anything they want. To accomplish the mission Amazon implements the approach of cost leadership strategy, which offers high quality products at lower price (Boies, Fiset and Gill, 2015, pp. 1080). It has hired 222,400 number of employees in the year 2015, however with the employment tenure of 1 year, the company is found to have the second least loyal workforce among the Fortune 500 companies.   

Selected Incident

According to report by Goetsch and Davis et al. (2014), Amazon.com has been ranked as second among the Fortune 500 companies of having the highest employee turnover rate. It is noticed that the newly hired employees leave the company after 9 and a half months. Employee turnover is an indicator of bad working condition of the company and the improved job market. Recently the contract workers criticized the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos regarding the temporary hiring policies of the company. Thus it is the leader-follower relationship which creates a friendly work environment and promotes commitment among the employees. Apart from leader-follower relationship, the peer relationship is one of the most important for increasing the employee’s organisational commitment (ref).

However from various evidence it is clearly analysed that the present management policy of Amazon is quite detrimental towards the leader-follower relationship and thus ultimately resulted in increased turnover rate. It is found that each year Amazon’s manager used to fire the least capable employees, who has still potential of becoming effective workers. Although this approach helps to maximize the productivity for the short run, but it will lead to distrust among employees and leads to loss of productivity for the long run. This policy prevents the employees from creating a friendly and cordial relationship with their managers. This stressful situation may often provoke the employees for quitting the job during any critical situation. Secondly, the tremendous pressure on the workers creates the job dissatisfaction employees and demotivates them as the leaders fails to understand the employees and recognise their potential (Hinojosa, McCauley, Randolph-Seng and Gardner, 2014, pp. 595).  Another major issue in Amazon which led to employee turnover includes employee negligence and customer obsession. For providing fast delivery service and other great services to customers, it pressurises the employees to work hard and neglects their problems (Shields, 2015).  Another major problem in the company’s management system is the absence of encouragement and support for the employee’s professional development. The supervisors behave irresponsive towards new employees, who struggle with the new work (Martin, G. and Siebert, 2016). This style of management makes the new employees to struggle in this transition process and creates dissatisfaction. In addition to this, another critical issue is linked with communication problem, which tends to reduce the efficiency of team performance, tends to facilitate negative emotion at workplace which in turn is responsible for employee turnover as well as reduced performance of the firm.  

For resolving the problem of increased employee turnover rate at Amazon, it should implement certain strategies in its management system. The managers and supervisors should try to create an emotionally comfortable environment and provide motivation and guidance. In addition to this, during tough times like accident or pregnancy, they should sympathize and support them. Thus, as a transformational leaders they should motivate them and help them to achieve their goal through optimism which as a result generates loyalty and commitment among employees. A high friendship centrality should be encouraged among employees for creating a comfortable environment for them. Friendship in the workplace provides encouragement, support, and reassurance against any adverse situation in the job (Kantor and Streitfeld, 2015, pp. 74). Amazon should create its organisational vision, mission and culture in such way that it bond people together from different backgrounds. Moreover, it is the high concordance perception among both the employees and the organisation which tie them together even in the absence of the leader. It should provide opportunity to the employees to explore their skills and capabilities, which in turn makes them feel trusted and motivated to work harder. Amazon is recommended to eliminate the annual staff comparison to lessen the stress on employees and helps the manager to build a friendly relation with them. Moreover, it should alter the Anytime Feedback Tool in a better way for improving the peer relationship. It is recommended that if it wants to take advantage of ranking system it should use the 360 degree feedback tool instead of the present one (Hausknecht and Holwerda, 2013, pp. 210). Furthermore the company should initiate to arrange several bonding events for improving their relationships with the employees and also create a work environment of close-unit.  Managers should be involved in effective decision-making process to fire the employees, so as to avoid any further loss. It is also needed that managers should identify the qualities and needs of the workers to maintain job satisfaction. Even to increase the retention rate, Amazon should increase the employee’s benefits such as provision for sick leave and other emergency leave without putting any pressure on them. Thus the company should strive to hire transformational leaders who can effective manage the organisation and workforce in a fair and organised manner and helps to improve the organisational commitment and reduction in the turnover rate.

References:

Boies, K., Fiset, J. and Gill, H., 2015. Communication and trust are key: Unlocking the relationship between leadership and team performance and creativity. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(6), pp.1080-1094.

Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.

Hausknecht, J.P. and Holwerda, J.A., 2013. When does employee turnover matter? Dynamic member configurations, productive capacity, and collective performance. Organization Science, 24(1), pp.210-225.

Hinojosa, A.S., McCauley, K.D., Randolph-Seng, B. and Gardner, W.L., 2014. Leader and follower attachment styles: Implications for authentic leader–follower relationships. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(3), pp.595-610.

Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D., 2015. Inside Amazon: Wrestling big ideas in a bruising workplace. New York Times, 15, pp.74-80.

Martin, G. and Siebert, S., 2016. Managing people and organizations in changing contexts. Routledge.

Mowday, R.T., Porter, L.W. and Steers, R.M., 2013. Employee—organization linkages: The psychology of commitment, absenteeism, and turnover. Academic press.

Roy, S.K. and Charaborti, R., 2017. Case Study 5: Amazon. in: Surviving in a Jungle. In Services Marketing Cases in Emerging Markets (pp. 45-59). Springer International Publishing.

Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., Johns, R., Robinson, J., O’Leary, P. and Plimmer, G., 2015. Managing Employee Performance & Reward: Concepts, Practices, Strategies. Cambridge University Press.