Organizational Behaviour In XYZ Consultancy For Employee Engagement

Motivational factors existed in the organization

Describe about the Organizational Behaviour in XYZ Consultancy for Employee Engagement.

 

Figure 1: Employee engagement theory

(Source: Saks and Gruman 2014)

Employee engagement is about how to gain an organization’s strategic goals by developing the circumstances for human resources to flourish and, for each employee member, manager and supervisory to be fully switched on in their jobs (Saks and Gruman 2014). The goal of employee engagement is to help the employees mentally and physically to deliver their best efforts in the best interest of the business.

According to Andrew and Sofian (2012), employee engagement theory states that, fairness among employees, managers and leaders must exist in a workplace. In case of XYZ consultant, previously Tim trusted his training consultants and support staffs; thus, they were involved in all aspects of the business (McShane et al. 2013).

Frequent communication is another major factor of employee engagement that stimulates free flow of information (Bal et al. 2013). In XYZ consultant, communication between Tim and his employees were recurrent and employees used to walk into his office anytime to discuss issues.

Employee empowerment is another important factor of employee’s engagement that allows employees to take part in all levels of planning and decision making (Saks and Gruman 2014). This aspect was also followed in XYZ consultant as employees were consulted before providing them with their work schedules (McShane et al. 2013). The personal commitments of the employees along with their personal life were always respected by Tim. Therefore, he used to communicate with them before finalising any job or project.

Job profile was broadly formulated in XYZ consultant when Tim was in charge. He allows other employees to develop their skills by providing full-time training. Reward systems such as merit increases, performance bonuses and additional holiday leaves existed in the organization in order to motivate the staff. Weekly yoga sessions were performed to improve well being of the employees.

Unlike Fiona, Tim was a democratic leader and never believed in structured policies and procedures. He strongly believed that written policies might hamper decision making process and would reduce the amount of independence (Gelens et al. 2014). That is why; he decisions were made based on Tim’s relationship with each staff member. Besides, performance appraisal system was fair and transparent as Tim’s ideology was “If you did good work, you will be rewarded.”

Fiona’s leadership was a perfect example of autocratic leadership. First thing that was demolished under her leadership was frequent communication. She developed three departments and appointed a head for each of those departments. In this way, employees were deprived of communicating with Fiona directly (Bell and Marti 2012). They had to depend on head of department in order to let the management know about their issues or concerns. She also implemented new grading system for training consultants without consulting with the employees. Performance bonus and merit pay increase incentives were also closed and these were replaced with annual across-the-board increases.  

Elements that were removed under Fiona’s leadership

In addition, the friendly work structure created by Tim was also demolished by Fiona as she restructured the workplace where she and the HoDs were allocated with private offices on the ground floor. This hampered the relationship among the higher authorities and employees as they started to believe that XYZ is no more a good place to work (Bell and Marti 2012). Besides, as a result of biasness, employees lost their trust on performance appraisal system. Employees were also not getting proper training and that is why; they started using their older training packages. Besides, Yoga sessions were also dismissed by Fiona as according to her it was a waste of time (McShane et al. 2013).  

Organizational justice:

This theory refers to employee perceptions of equality in an organization. These perceptions can be divided into three categories which are distributive, procedural and interactional justice that contains informational and interpersonal justice.

Distributive: Distributive justice helps to understand whether all the employees are being paid fairly or not. It also evaluates if all employees are receiving career opportunities and promotions fairly or not (Mahajan and Benson 2013). Distributive justice was absent in XYZ as employees had to enlist them in the “good books” Fiona in order to receive better clients, work schedules and promotions. That is why; they were angry and staring calling the system sick and unfair.

According to Andrew and Sofian (2012), distributive justice theory is divided in their theories which are utilitarianism, justice as fairness and entitlement theory. Utilitarian theory believes that the only moral compulsion is to maximize the total number of happiness in the world. In general utilitarian will serve in favour of a limited king of distributive activity such as taking away money from the rich and giving it to the poor people. In business organization it can be implemented in way where salary of the CEO will be reduced so that employees can get better salary (Lăzăroiu 2015). On the other hand, justice as fairness is to understand how things will work in a workplace. Entitlement theory states that it would be unfair to interfere in someone else’s freedom. 

This theory states that employees are motivated by fairness in the organization. According to Lăzăroiu et al. (2015), the higher an individual’s perception of equity, the more motivated they will be. It also states that if some is treated unfairly in an organization then he will be de-motivated. The same thing is taking place in XYZ consultant as employees are not treated fairly (McShane et al. 2013). Head of the departments along with Fiona never gave importance to their employees and to their decisions. They started making rules, schedules and other decisions without consulting it with the employees. Besides, they are discarded several motivational factors of the organization. As a result, employees started feeling de-motivated and started to quit their jobs (Shields et al. 2015).

Organizational justice and equity theory of motivation

The core of this theory depends on the principles of balance or equity. While calculating fairness, employee compares the job input in terms of involvement to outcome in terms of compensation. Equity theory perceptions is shown below (Mahajan and Benson 2013),

O/I a < Under-rewarded (equity tension)

O/I a = O/ I b Equity

O/I a  > Over rewarded (equity tension)

Equity is professed when the ratio is equal. If this ratio is unequal then it will exhibit equity tension.  Assumption of this theory includes that the individuals are concerned not only with their rewards but also with what others get in their comparison.  On the other hand, employees normally expect a fair and equitable return for their job and for what they contribute for their organization. Employees who think that they are in a situation that is inequitable will attempt to reduce their inequality by distorting inputs and/or outcomes psychologically (Gelens et al. 2014). On the other hand, in some cases, employees quit the organization after being treated unfairly. Besides, four main propositions of equity theory are,

Each employee seeks to maximize their outcomes.

Teams and groups have the skill to exploit collective rewards by developing accepted systems for equitably apportioning rewards and expenses among the members.

If employees find themselves in inequitable relationship, then they will become distressed.

Those people who find them in the state of inequality will try to eliminate it by restoring equality.

References

Andrew, O.C. and Sofian, S., 2012. Individual factors and work outcomes of employee engagement. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 40, pp.498-508.

Ayim Gyekye, S. and Haybatollahi, M., 2014. Relationship between organizational justice and organizational safety climate: do fairness perceptions influence employee safety behaviour?. International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, 20(2), pp.199-211.

Bal, P.M., Kooij, D.T. and De Jong, S.B., 2013. How do developmental and accommodative HRM enhance employee engagement and commitment? The role of psychological contract and SOC strategies. Journal of Management Studies, 50(4), pp.545-572.

Bell, R.L. and Martin, J.S., 2012. The relevance of scientific management and equity theory in everyday managerial communication situations. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 13(3).

Gelens, J., Hofmans, J., Dries, N. and Pepermans, R., 2014. Talent management and organisational justice: employee reactions to high potential identification. Human Resource Management Journal, 24(2), pp.159-175.

Lăzăroiu, G., 2015. Employee Motivation and Job Performance. Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, (14), pp.97-102.

Mahajan, A. and Benson, P., 2013. Organisational justice climate, social capital and firm performance. Journal of Management Development, 32(7), pp.721-736.

McShane, S., Olekalns, M. and Travaglione, T., 2013. Organisational behaviour: Emerging knowledge, global insights.. Ryde. New South Wales, Australia: McGraw-Hill.

Norman Yachya, S.T., MM, M., BA, N.Y. and ST, M., 2016. INFLUENCE OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP STYLE AND ORGANIZATION CULTURE TOWARD EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION A CASE STUDY AT PT XYZ (CONSULTING COMPANY). DERIVATIF, 10(1).

Saks, A.M. and Gruman, J.A., 2014. What do we really know about employee engagement?. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 25(2), pp.155-182.

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.