Discuss About The Organizational Wellness Major Scope Emphasis?
Prior to the discussion that would comprise of major section of the report, the following reflective journal has to describe the validation for selecting organizational wellness as its major scope of emphasis. I selected organizational wellness as the topic for reflective journal and intended to draw on major academic sources which are associated with the subject. In the beginning of the course, I had only a vague impression of the learning objectives. However, my emphasis was gradually deviated towards progressive learning and over the course of many weeks of learning I was able to apprehend the important concepts pertaining to resolution of issues related to organizational wellness. Furthermore, the reflective journal enabled me to review the lecture materials and derive adequate inferences depicting organizational learning.
The other notable aspects which could be ascertained in the reflective journal provided below would include an explicit depiction of patterns that have emerged from the theoretical developments observed in context of organizational wellness (Barnard, 2013). The reflective journal facilitates a cognizable impression of the interrelationship between ideas and concepts in the readings alongside the variability of outcomes according to the difference in perspectives for anticipating organizational wellness. The profound themes which would be observed in the following reflective journal refer to employee empowerment, development, growth and employee recognition, role of organizational culture in affecting workplace wellness and implications of respectful cultures in promoting organizational wellness (Blake, 2016).
My critical reflection on the lecture materials pertaining to employee empowerment and employee engagement would be accounted as promising additions to the reflective journal. The concerns of employee empowerment and employee engagement have to be considered as imperative requirements to promote organizational wellness (Cha, 2015). The objective of reflection on literature is largely aligned with the comparison of theory with common organizational practices and determining the disparities thereby implying legible recommendations for functional outcomes.
The concerns of employee empowerment have been generically defined as the motivation of employees to assume personal responsibility for their professional tasks and objectives as well as improvement of approaches intended to accomplish the organizational goals. From a critical perspective, I could be able to discern from this definition of employee empowerment that providing opportunities to employees for engaging comprehensively with their responsibilities and consistent professional development could be accountable for fostering organizational wellness. Employee empowerment has been associated explicitly with four major dimensions of empowerment such as meaning, self-determination, competence and impact (Coates & Howe, 2015).
The individual dimensions of empowerment are intended to reform organizational behaviour with the help of reforms in employee perception of the workplace context. The self-determination aspect of empowerment refers to the perception of discretion and freedom by employees in their work environment. However, the theory can be contradicted on the grounds of unreasonable utilization of discretion and freedom assigned to employees and the impact of varying levels of self-determination among different levels of employees. The meaning dimension of employee empowerment has also been reviewed comprehensively in the teaching material provided to us during the course.
Meaning is perceived by employees as a facilitator of empowerment on the grounds of perceiving significance of their work. If employees perceive that their work is important for them as well as the society then they are more likely to observe their recognition (Coetzee & Van Zyl, 2014). Competence dimension of empowerment has also been described as a determinant of organizational wellness since it helps the employees to perceive their self-efficacy. Furthermore, employees are more likely to be empowered on the basis of the outcomes of their actions and their impact on the success of the enterprise. However, the perception of competence could lead to stagnancy of professional development in certain cases while the impact dimension of empowerment could lead to critical insufficiencies such as over confidence among employees (Dawad & Hoque, 2016).
The concerned literature sources provided in the lecture also emphasized on the reasons for which empowerment is needed which can be validated on the grounds of commitment of empowered employees to an enterprise. Empowered employees are more likely to describe higher levels of engagement which could lead to the prolific outcomes derived from activities of engaged employees with thorough utilization of capabilities as well as their complete potential. Another notable highlight that could be perceived in context of employee empowerment is observed in the form of the outcomes on employee characteristics which were found out to become more responsible, involved and proactive in organizational processes. On the critical side, I can argue that the initiatives of an organization for employee empowerment could result in negative outcomes such as inappropriate utilization of acquired capabilities and training by the employee for favourable employment opportunities (Del Gottardo & Patera, 2016).
The concerns of improving responsibility and engagement of employees through empowerment could be subject to ambiguities since the efforts on behalf of the employees could vary according to the changes in antecedents of employee empowerment. Therefore an organization’s wellness could be substantially affected by the implications of employee empowerment which implies the identification of approaches to ensure engagement through empowerment. Literature has depicted profound references towards the classification of empowerment into two categories which include structural empowerment and psychological empowerment.
The structural empowerment aspect is comprehensively associated with the emphasis on perceiving the different job characteristics. The psychological empowerment aspects are largely related to the approaches of employees for interpretation and reaction to structural employee empowerment conditions. Structural empowerment has been defined as the capability for mobilization of human resources and material resources to accomplish specific organizational objectives according to the lecture studies (Docherty, 2013).
It is liable for providing employees with opportunities to access resources, information, opportunities for learning and growth as well as support. However, structural empowerment could be largely critiqued on the grounds of its application in terms of allocating authority to employees and structural empowerment could invite the implications for large scale changes in the organizational structure especially those which follow a vertical organizational structure. I was also able to draw reasonable inferences into the aspects of psychological empowerment which comprises of three distinct dimensions of verbal, behavioural and outcome related involvement.
Verbal empowerment allows employees to present their involvement in the decision making process through communicating their opinions flexibly (Douvaras & Ukpere, 2014). Behavioural empowerment is realized through the recognition of employee competence to manage the job, resolve issues and acquire novel skills. The outcome related empowerment could be assured through the ability of individuals to reform the approaches for accomplishing the precedent objectives as well as increase productivity. However, I could be able to draw some critical insights into the probable outcomes of psychological empowerment.
The application of psychological empowerment could not derive necessarily positive outcomes related to empowerment since the underlying motivation for different employees are distinct which create confusions for the management regarding the estimation of standard outcomes from employee empowerment (Gcwabe, 2015). The lecture material also emphasized on the significance of the antecedents of employee empowerment which are included as determinants for strategies required for employee empowerment. The four antecedents have been identified as task and social resources, empowering leadership, work changes and personal resources.
Task related resources are primarily vested in job autonomy while social resources are observed in the provision of a workplace environment characterized with support and a cooperative climate. The impact of empowering leadership is also observed as a major antecedent of realizing employee empowerment since the approaches of empowering leaders are characterized by the delegation of authority by leaders to individual employees that are capable of decision making and taking actions without any direct intervention or supervision. Many organizations are not able to realize employee empowerment due to the lack of emphasis on the management of organizational change that would be an inevitable consequence of employee empowerment (Harry, 2015).
Organizational change has been often associated with profound conflicts with the existing organizational structure and could be a major influence on the existing level of organizational wellness. Therefore, it is necessary for organizations to perceive appropriate frameworks in order to prevent any potential damages from conflicts. Planning and implementation of changes should comprise of taking the opinions of different employees into account, mutual support, abundance of staff for addressing relevant objectives and integrate confidence on the process of change. Finally, the emphasis on personal resources should also be affirmed as a major antecedent related to employee empowerment and serves as a promising contributor to organizational wellness.
Personal resources of an organization refer to the employees or human resources of the enterprise which should be subject to promising investments in order to realize profound improvement in skills and competences of employees (Kassiem, 2015). I also realized that the assumptions of strategies for employee empowerment should be reviewed in this reflective journal.
The distinct strategies comprise of references towards assessment and evaluation of employee engagement through engagement audits and workshops on engagement or redesigning job and workplace, improving empowering leadership or workplace training in efficacy beliefs. However, I was able to perceive that the research in the domain of employee empowerment and engagement has led to the proliferation of models that could link the perspectives of organization, employees as well as the outcomes of the empowerment. Furthermore, it is essential to relate the aspects of employee empowerment with other themes obtained as learning outcomes from the lectures related to organizational wellness as follows.
Apart from the concerns of employee empowerment in context of organizational wellness, I was also able to discern from the lecture notes and readings that employee recognition is also a credible theme in context of organizational wellness. It is imperative to understand the most significant individual differences, design elements and contextual factors which promote the growth of employees and their wellbeing for inducing a healthy workplace.
It is also imperative to understand the profound presence of employee recognition program characteristics, effects and counter effects of employee recognition programs from the readings to draw critical reflection. I was able to reemphasize on the scope of acquiring sustainable competitive advantage through development of human capital. It is essential to notice that the skill set of employees could be perceived as a major determinant of success or failure of an organization (King, 2016). Employee development is also accounted as a favourable initiative for promoting employee growth especially in terms of existing and potential job performance which is often realized through formal and informal learning activities.
The prospects of employee development should also be observed in the facilities of classroom training, computer based training, on-job training as well as mentoring which could be applied according to the context of requirement. I was also able to reflect on the learning outcomes in the lectures to present a critical impression of the benefits drawn from employee development (Vundla, 2013). The benefits of employee development as perceived from readings and literature sources include directions towards enhancement of job satisfaction, motivation for learning, self-efficacy and improve the participation of employees in future development activities as well as willingness for assumption of new roles (Limone & Pace, 2016). However, it would be implausible to determine the feasibility of the outcomes without considering the factors that are responsible for employee development and growth. My reflection on the available literature pertaining to employee recognition suggested the impact of the factors such as organization, role of learner and the learning environment on the development and growth of employee.
The role of learner is based on the general mental ability and the relevant differences that lead to issues with organizational wellness. The role of learner is often defined with the abilities for reasoning, planning, problem solving, abstract thinking as well as quick learning. Therefore I would like to communicate that the distinct skill sets and mental abilities of different people belonging to different professional areas could be at conflict thereby implying the insufficiency of the role of learner in employee recognition (Mafunisa, 2014). The organization also has a considerable role in influencing the recognition of employees thereby contributing to organizational wellness.
The support facilitated by the manager, organization as well as the job should be assumed as profound characteristics of organization’s role in promoting the development and growth of employees. However, I would like to present a critical insight into the significance of organization in employee development since the provision of training programs and revision of policies could be subject to the capabilities of the organization in terms of financial and material resources. Therefore it is not possible for organizations to realize their comprehensive involvement in the development and growth of employees which indicates contrast with the teachings of the lecture.
The learning environment has also been identified as a notable factor which influences the outcomes of employee development and growth initiatives. The learning environment is capable of boosting the self confidence of learning through promoting beliefs regarding accomplishment of positive outcomes from participation. The essential characteristics which have been associated with a positive learning environment could be identified in leadership support, feedback, rewards, organizational support and resources. However, I would like to emphasize critically on the varying development and growth outcomes alongside the investment required for employee empowerment. It would be alternatively advisable to consider the singular prospects of employee empowerment which would be provide parallel improvements in terms of employee development and growth. I was also able to recognize employee recognition as a profound theme in the lectures pertaining to organizational wellness (Mahabuke, 2016).
Employee recognition has a profound effect on the improvement of productivity, profit margin, customer retention, and return on equity and employee retention. The different categories of employee recognition programs are necessary for depicting the aspects which influence the organizational wellness. Generally employee recognition programs are profoundly characterized by classification on the basis of personal milestones or contextual performance and generally involve the provision of monetary and non-monetary rewards. Some of the commonly observed characteristics of employee recognition programs which I was able to observe in the lecture refer to emphasis on economic or social rewards, association with performance in certain event or behaviour, formal as well as informal nature and provision of individual as well as group recipients (Makgato, 2016).
The role of employee recognition on the improvement of organizational wellness can be apprehended duly from the dimensions of job satisfaction, stress, exchange relationships and perceived organizational support have been noticed comprehensively in the readings and could be interlinked to the scope of employee empowerment. Employee empowerment could be accounted as a complementing element for realising employee recognition as the motivation of employees to improve their training progressively would be directed towards accomplishing recognition to a certain extent. Job satisfaction could be ascertained clearly from the job characteristics model comprising of references to skill variety, task identity, feedback and autonomy which could be perceived as correlated entities as found in the case of employee empowerment.
From a critical point of view, I would state that while employee recognition has substantially beneficial outcomes the negative consequences could not be undermined at any cost (McGoldrick, 2014). Some negative impacts could be drawn in the form of discouraging of other employees due to confusion over the criteria for rewards. I would also like to emphasize on the uncertainty over the returns from investments in employee recognition programs as well as the requirement of social or monetary rewards in varying scenarios. However, I could go on to make an assumption from the interlinking between theories related to employee empowerment and employee recognition in context of organizational wellness that recognition and empowerment could have a formidable influence on the promotion of employee engagement thereby ensuring organizational wellness.
The dimensions of employee empowerment and the factors for promoting employee recognition as promising sources for realizing organizational wellness could be collated with the implications of culture and communication in similar contexts (van Zyl, et al., 2016). I was able to recognize the comprehensive review of literature to find that organizational wellness is based on the convergence of the organizational health ideologies and personal health ideologies and is largely dependent on feedback. My response to the reading’s references towards the significance of psychological health at workplaces was favourable as I perceived the characteristics of psychologically healthy workplaces.
Psychologically healthy workplaces act as feasible substrates for promoting employee empowerment thereby allowing them flexible opportunities to ensure recognition. I was never able to perceive the significance of models such as the Total Worker Health Framework and the WHO policies which promote healthy workplaces (Miles, 2013).
The foremost aspect of a psychologically healthy workplace is the prominence of communication as an integral element. Furthermore, the impact of organizational culture is largely described in literature with limited concerns over the alignment of organizational culture to communication objectives and organizational objectives differently. The impact of organizational culture on structure and policies could be assumed as a critical gap in realizing appropriate changes in communication framework to deal with the challenges of organizational wellness.
The emphasis of the organizations on the health domain has become a major input for the determination of policies and procedures that govern organizational operations. However, it is essential to perceive the effect of other intangible factors associated with employee empowerment alongside the concerns for implementing the reforms in organizational culture in unison with the existing cultural framework. I was able to observe that communication was largely based on the aspect of sense making in order to accomplish the objectives of instating a formidable organizational culture (Moore, et al., 2017). The formal emphasis on communication as a tool for developing a healthy workplace can be verified from the interlinking of communication with employee empowerment as well the impact of communication in improving the prospects for employee recognition. Communication is largely characterized with the opportunities for employees to align managerial actions comprising of reforms in procedures, informal communication and policy changes. Furthermore, communication could be accounted as a prolific contributor to promotion of exchange relationship that would otherwise assist employees in creating a social construct which would help them to understand and perceive the significance and purpose of the organizational changes.
From a critical perspective, it can be apprehended that communication could imply the inclusion of non-verbal managerial actions, verbalisation and behaviour as well as the development of prioritization of employee interests. I was never expecting the impact of these factors on the development of communication efficiency in organizations (Moss, 2017). The impact of communication on the reduction of change could be apprehended as a major highlight of the preservation of organizational wellness.
My observations from the lecture studies and readings provided notable insights into the distinct phases involved in development of healthy workplace which can be interlinked to the scope of employee empowerment (Nair, Kumar & Ramalu, 2015). Therefore my response to the reading and lecture studies provides a comprehensive impression of the individual stages and characteristics of healthy workplaces alongside a promising review of the distinct stages involved in creation of a healthy workplace through implementing organization-level solutions, intervention methods, communication and efforts for developing awareness (Vanderstraeten, 2014).
The particular implications for organizational wellness in terms of employee empowerment, employee recognition, culture and communication have been identified as the major themes related to organizational wellness in this reflective journal. I have also reflected on the lecture material and readings relevant to creation of a respectful workplace and the implementation of respect as a professional resource involved with Job Demands-Resources Model.
The concerns of social identity have been found to be major determinants of psychological safety of individuals at workplace (Nel, 2016). The implications of respect in the workplace could further be identified from the applications of JD-R model which suggested the exhaustion of physical and mental resources on the basis of higher job demands. The requirements of co-workers and supervisors to work in coordination for providing sources for demands and resources could also be noted as one of the highlights that validates the influence of contextual environment on the improvement of employee morale. Respectful workplaces are profoundly noted for depicting individual highlights such as psychological safety, promotion of employee learning and contributing to organizational capacity.
The readings also depicted profound references to the characteristics of disrespectful workplaces which accounted for a critical insight into the possibilities for defining organizational standards to encounter the occurrence of disrespectful incidents leading to loss of psychological safety which is a formidable resource for an enterprise (Nicholson, 2017). The concerns of infringement of a professional’s respect at the workplace could be apprehended from the distinct categories of distributive justice, interactional justice and procedural justice. I would like to communicate that the establishment of distinct categories of punishment related to justice for misbehaviour in an organizational context could be contradicted by employees on the grounds of bias.
On the other hand, I realize I never made the assumptions that values could be integral for the resolution of conflicts related to respect and misbehaviour. The distinct types of values which are found in context of organizational management refer to shared values, personal values, cultural values and organizational values. I was also able to observe the classification of values according to Rokeach Value Survey which include terminal and instrumental values.
Furthermore, other theorists such as Kriger and Hanson provided implications towards the classification into necessary underlying values and supporting activities. However, the lack of correlation of other models of motivation could be classified as a formidable critical insight derived from my inferences (Sikhwai, 2015). For example, the application of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in context of the different categories of values could be observed as a major gap of literature.
Conclusion:
The report illustrated a reflective journal on the topic of organizational wellness with a critical review of teaching material from four different lectures and suggested readings in the individual weeks.
References
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