Understanding Relationships Among Employees In An Organization

Co-Workers Relationship

There are many working relationships which exist within an organisation and these relationships can play a significant role in dictating the overall effectiveness of the business. Regardless of the nature of the relationship, there are a number of key factors which can determine whether these relationships are healthy, productive ones or whether they will have a detrimental effect on the business. Good relationships are built on a culture of cooperation where each individual is working toward the achievement of shared aims and objectives.

In an organisation there are many positions for the employees like board of directors, general managers, and team members. The working of the employees may be as a team or individual. Maintaining a good environment in the organisation is needed for achieving individual as well as organisational goals.

The main purpose of this report is to discuss about the relation among the employees in an organisation with examples. The relationship among the co-workers, team members, work friends and the relation between managers and others employees are discussed in all aspects.

Co-workers relationships are neither professional nor personal, but circumstantial. They are associated through the business, but beyond working for the same company, they have very little interaction (Bergene and Egeland 2016). The impact co-workers may have on each other is profound. In fact, this influence may be even greater than the influence of supervisors. Co-workers can impact or influence others in both positive and negative ways, as they may provide support for or be antagonistic towards each other. Co-workers support can influence role perceptions, work attitudes and individual effectiveness.  

Co-workers can often be an important source of information for employees seeking advice, instruction or help when they are unsure of what to do. Co-workers can often provide information to support or discourage certain activities (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). This can be particularly useful for reducing uncertainty about one’s expected role within the organisation. Additionally, co-workers support can reduce both role conflict and role overload. They can also influence employee’s opinions and attitudes. Co-workers support is often associated with high job satisfaction, job involvement and a deeper commitment to one’s organisation. This increase in positive work attitudes can be achieved when co-workers provide task-based assistance, information, or emotional support. Co-workers support has been found to reduce counterproductive workplace behaviours and employee withdrawal and increase organisational citizenship behaviours. Ultimately, co-worker support can increase individual performance by providing critical information about the organisation and task process (Chmiel, Fraccaroli and Sverke 2017).

For example the members of a team or employees working in same office or rooms are co-workers. Even in a working board of directors the members are co-workers as they have the same organisational goal to fulfil. In an office the managers work as co-workers also.  

Team members are employees who work on the same team having professional relationship. They work usually together on a daily basis on the same team or department. A team should have good communication environment. This ensures that essential information is passed on to all concerned. It also means that problems or particular difficulties that may affect the way team members work with each other are resolved more easily (Koivisto and Rice 2016). Team members should respect each other’s job and the role everyone plays in the organisation. Trusting each other is important to build up the confidence among the team members. The understanding about each other’s job and role in a team is important also to solve the difficulties. Team members should have fun while maintaining standards. Happy staff will work better and this feeling will be passed on to customers, making a better atmosphere for everyone (Marchington et al. 2016).

Team-Member Relationship

The primary role of a team is to combine resources, competencies, skills and bandwidth to achieve organisational objectives. The underlying assumption of a well-functioning team is one of synergy, which is to say that the output of a team will be greater than the sum of each individual’s contribution without team architecture in place (Martinez et al. 2017). As a result, teams are usually highly focused groups of employees, with the role of achieving specific tasks to support organizational success. At the beginning of a team set up, a transitional process is carried out. Once the team has set strategic goals, they can begin progressing towards the completion of those goals operationally. The final team process is one of interpersonal efficiency, or refining the team dynamic for efficiency and success (Rokhman 2014).

For example in an organisation there are many teams like IT support team, transformational engineering team, core engineering team, accounting team, quality assurance team, maintenance team working for achieving different goals. Teams work differently to get the organisational goal together.

The relation among work friends is personal. Work friends are people who interact socially at work. They sit together in meeting, go to lunch together, talk to them at work events and happy hours, and possibly even see them outside of the work every now and then. Friendship has been defined as a voluntary interdependence between persons over time that is intended to facilitate social-emotional goals of the participants, and may involve varying types and degrees of companionship, intimacy, affection and mutual assistance. Friendship that develops in the workplace is called blended friendship. Blended friendship can have a positive impact on an employee’s productivity.

Workplace friendships lead to more cohesive work groups, more satisfied and committed employees, greater productivity, greater goal attainment, increased positive feelings about the organisation, can make both good and bad job better, and are a factor in preventing employee turnover and employee desire to leave the company (Watson 2017). However, although workplace friendships tend to have a positive impact on the employee’s overall production and attitude towards the job, they can also lead to competition, envy, gossip, and distraction from work-related activities because there is a more tightly webbed emotional, and occasionally physical, connection that goes beyond a typical co-worker relationship.

Work friends can be formed irrespective of the posts of the employees in an organisation. The managers and a common employee can be work friends as they communicate in an office.

The relationship between manager and employees is professional. The manager is the one assigning the work, helping to succeed and impacting the work team members do. Employees who have the job title of manager have diverse responsibilities for people and functions.

The job description of a manager varies from organisation to organisation depending on the responsibilities that are assigned to the job function (Scott and Davis 2015). In some organisation, the title, manager, is only assigned to employees who have other employees reporting to them as seen on an organisation chart. In other organisations, the title of manager is also assigned to employees who manage a functional area. The relation between team members and the manager is vital because they often play an important role in determining the rating, salary and work plan. They are also a large factor in any workplace satisfaction (Strom, Sears and Kelly 2014).

For example, a person has the job title of manager. That person has no reporting staff but is responsible for expanding to international markets.   

Conclusion

In this report the relation among the employees is discussed in details. There are many posts of employees in an organisation who work for the same organisational goal. They have also their individual goals to fulfil. To achieve both organisational and personal goals together good working environment is needed. This environment depends upon the relation among the employees. A well co-ordinated relationship among the employees of an organisation can motivate them and can lead them to get individual as well as organisational goals. Good communication, proper management and helpful mentality of the employees make good working relation.

References:

Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S., 2015. Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge.

Bergene, A.C. & Egeland, C., 2016. Interventionism as a union strategy? The strategies of the Norwegian Nurses Organisation in relation to temporary agency work. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 22(4), pp.521–534.

Chmiel, N., Fraccaroli, F. and Sverke, M. eds., 2017. An Introduction to Work and Organizational Psychology: An International Perspective. John Wiley & Sons.

Koivisto, S. & Rice, R.E., 2016. Leader prototypicality moderates the relation between access to flexible work options and employee feelings of respect and leader endorsement. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp.1–22.

Marchington, M., Wilkinson, A., Donnelly, R. and Kynighou, A., 2016. Human resource management at work. Kogan Page Publishers.

Martinez, L. et al., 2017. The importance of being “me”: The relation between authentic identity expression and transgender employees’ work-related attitudes and experiences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(2), pp.215–226.

Rokhman, W., 2014. Organizational Justice as a Mediator for Transformational Leadership and Work Outcomes. Jurnal Siasat Bisnis, 15(2).

Scott, W.R. and Davis, G.F., 2015. Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural and open systems perspectives. Routledge.

Strom, D.L., Sears, K.L. and Kelly, K.M., 2014. Work engagement: The roles of organizational justice and leadership style in predicting engagement among employees. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 21(1), pp.71-82.

Watson, T., 2017. Sociology, work and organisation. Taylor & Francis.