Team Development At Fisher And Paykel: How Teams Without Teamwork Threaten People Management

Teams without Teamwork Threatens people management

Discuss about the Team development at Fisher and Paykel.

Transforming a business has proved to be a difficult and tormenting task without introducing a problem. In most cases, the self-created issues revolve around underperformance of team. This issue can be avoided when the team that is established has a good leadership that can motivate the team members. Since teams have determined the success of many organizations, it requires the maximization of member’s potential. Many employers have emphasized the significance of working together and often seek services from people with the ability to embrace teamwork (Costa 2003, p. 617). Without a doubt, the business environment has become competitive and companies must maximize their resources if they have to sustain their operations. This brings into the fore, the aspect of teamwork that increases competiveness. The study conducted by Zakaria, Amelinckx and Wilemon (2004, p. 21) revealed that organizations use teamwork to improve quality, productivity, motivation, and utilize new technologies. Given the significance of teamwork, this article tries to discuss how teams without teamwork pose a problem for the people management.

Effective teamwork is beneficial to an organization that embraces broader collaboration, improved communication, and a greater sense of accountability. Managers must foster productive teamwork to make their work easy thus achieve organizational success. Van den Broek, Callaghan and Thompson (2004, p. 197) discuss how the organisation of call centre work into teams does not necessarily mean there will be teamwork. This situation threatens the people management culture and the manager must identify and fix it before it gets out of hands. In any labour process theory, the management must have a control over the workforce thus maximize their productivity. Unfortunately, the controls are never absolute, especially in the modern competitive business environment. Sometimes the managers have given the employees relatively high control in determining their engagement levels (Townsend 2007, p. 622).

The employees work in different conditions but the aspects of teamwork seem to remain the same. In fact, in Australia, many organizations appear to be the subsidiary departments. The responsibility of managers remains obvious regarding control and decision-making. Townsend holds that “teams have a positive impact on organizations” (2007, p. 625). This is only possible in an environment where employees are empowered so that they can make strategic planning decisions in their teams (Mallon and Kearney 2001, p. 97). For teams to perform, they require some degree of independence and control. This involves delegating the powers to the team members based on the expanded competencies (Marks and Richards 2012, p. 232). Therefore, the team leader must focus on the attitudes and behaviours that can make the teams effective.

Key Issues in Maximizing the Benefits of Team and Teamwork

Understanding the sociotechnical team structures seems simple and a common practice in the society. However, many companies have completely failed as they lose their focus during the establishment of teams. The findings of Ryan (2012, p. 266), shows that teams can emerge in various forms, times, or places. This means that the employees must be ready for different responsibilities depending on the circumstance. Yolk (2002, p. 5) argues that organizations can have teams without teamwork, especially when there is no issue for the teams to handle. In the case of the CallCentral highlighted by Townsend (2013, p. 114), every staff has call targets that he or she must meet. Unlike in other organization, the customer service representatives must determine their working pace because of the set targets. For instance, the representative has the pressure to monitor calls thus calling for the extra efforts. Yolk (2002, p. 4), the team leader would analyse the workload based in the historical organizational data. The teams in CallCentral can never determine their work volume and the timing of their performance. In most cases, these people have limited interactions with team members because of the nature of this task. The managerial approach and the work structure in the CallCentral are distinct and can only be compared to the lean production teams in the manufacturing industry (Townsend 2007, p. 626).

The management approach used in this industry is determined by the information systems. Based on the findings of Van den Broek, Barnes and Townsend (2008, p. 257), there is a need for workers union to protect the interests, skills, and workload of call centre staff. However, the concern relating to workload can never be assessed and evaluated. The trade unions can only work on the wages, safety issues, and disciplinary disputes because the workload determination formula is unique. The teams in CallCentral lack control on various governance issues as the technology and management shape the decisions. The challenges the CellCentral workers experience is how to control their decisions (Mulholland 2002, p. 293). The aspects of bringing in the management and leaving everything to the technology to shape the issues are unfortunate. The situation is even complicated further because the physical space determines the team members. Most of these team members had distinct functional workstations thus making the teams to work without teamwork as explained by Procter and Mueller (2000, p. 34).

Hierarchy and bureaucracy affect the management of teams. For instance, the management controls the CallCentral staffs without considering the underlining issues. The manageable supervisory directions or coaching can improve the productivity and competitiveness of workers (Tarragona and Luca 2002, p. 24). In this case study, there is a low level of intra-team interactions because the functionality of every team depends on the allocated space. Since the management or supervisors use technology to monitor the productivity of the workers, the team members find it difficult to engage in objections or resistance. The coercive control, therefore, affects their daily activities (Marks and Richards 2012, p. 231). The panoptic surveillance is the tool the team managers use to monitor team members. This implies that any aspects of team autonomy are lacking thus affecting the performance of workers. They always work in fear because they know their manager is monitoring their work.

The team structure and organization in CallCenter ensures there is a control and management of employees. This is achieved by establishing cultural or normative control over their actions as team leaders remain the agents of managers. Such working environment is intimidating thus scares many employees. By far and wide, the management has the responsibility to motivate and promote commitment even in a tedious environment (Callaghan and Thompson 2002, p. 233). Intimidating workers or staff into admitting the managers’ advances will make work difficult. The employees, for instance, can object any effort to use them as objects. As such, transforming the management inputs into actual outcome can be difficult and impossible. For example, workers can resort to mocking or “use humour to undermine the pressures they felt from managerial authorities, customer pressures and technology” (Townsend 2007, p. 630). Therefore, the company can only maximize the productivity of workers by empowering than controlling them. These issues render people management difficult.

Coercive elements promoted in a team could interfere with organizational performance. Although developing team structure is critical in maximize team productivity, introducing any element of coercion interferes with their performance (Yukl 7). For instance, the introduction of peer surveillance to monitor and control their actions is unfortunate. This traditional management method requires replacement. The CallCentral is an individualized environment that makes teamwork culture difficult to implement. For example, the team members rarely understand how they can influence the performance and work of their colleagues. Therefore, in an individualized environment, it is critical for an employee to maximize their productivity based on the ability.

The management has created unconstructive competition by rewarding performance bonuses after reaching the performance indicators. Although offering incentives such performance bonuses is essential in motivating workers, it creates an individualized society where nobody likes teamwork (Van den Broek et al. 2004, p. 210). The team leaders must review their management styles to ensure they are in tandem with the circumstances at hand. It beat logic to find that the team leader’s subjective measures are used to award the performance bonuses. This is a one-sided approach to performance appraisal because the inputs of workers should form the basis for assessment. Poor communication could be another issue in this situation (Thompson and McHugh 2002). In an environment where poor communication culture and system thrives, fostering teamwork is difficult. The managers should thus understand the significance of communication to avoid inhibiting team development and organizational success.

Ego is an issue that can affect the performance of workers and teams. In the CallCentral, some members are obsessed with performance bonuses that can never support other team members. They value their general benefits thus making it difficult to establish an effective unit. Such team members with egos interfere with group dynamics as they disrupt the teammates’ work. Therefore, by working on the egos, the team members can check and work on the delegated duties.  The aspects of unclear goals are evident in the CallCentral work. In most cases, employers or managers create achievable goals within the firm. In fact, these goals should be directed towards a certain project. The management should present these goals properly and clearly to make them achievable. Consequently, the staff members are just focusing on distorted job duties. Without proper management, involvement would make the performance of teams difficult. Managers should create teams based on the qualification and experience of staff members (Van den Broek et al. 2004, p. 210). However, when the management fails to join hands with the team members to executive the duties, such a leader threatens the teamwork atmosphere.

Conclusion

Based on the findings in this article, it is evident that teams define how projects, tasks, and activities are managed and organized in the modern society. Many global organizations have invested in different teams to achieve their competitive advantages. The incorporation of high-performing teams has made it possible for firms to make business strategies relevant to the market situation. However, a problem would emerge when there is no cohesiveness among the team members. Without cohesion, team performance would fall because of the unnecessary tension and stress among workers. It is thus prudent for the team leader to handle conflicts that can damage the team performance.

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