Service adhesives Ltd currently employs up to 20% of their workforce on short-term contracts. What effect will this have on the proposed team-based working structure?
The 20% of the workforce mainly comes from non-English speaking nations for instance Poland. Further, they form a big percentage for the personnel at lower levels. This means that it is not easy for them to communicate with the permanent employees effectively and work as a team. Further, It is clear that they were not following the procedures well, and also they could not understand the written procedures due to their poor knowledge of written English.
The proposed team-based structure could face a lot of challenges because for a team to function well, there must be a common understanding which seems to lack between the permanent and temporary employees. This means that the proposed team-based structure could face some resistance from the permanent employees. The temporary employees are not certain of their job security and this could further mean that they could look for another permanent job elsewhere. This could delay the efficiency of the proposed-team-based structure because it is facilitated by cohesiveness which could lack in such a situation.
In considering a transition from a traditional organizational work structure to a team-based work structure, what sort of barriers are service adhesives Ltd likely to encounter?
Service Adhesives Ltd could experience several barriers in order to move from a traditional work structure to a team-based structure in the organization. First, this could call for training which reflects an additional cost to the company. Further, the company has been adopting a traditional culture which means that it could be hard to introduce the new system to the organization easily. Additionally, the traditional system was hierarchical where the commands came from the top.
The new system allows all the employees to contribute and hence the top management may not appreciate the system that makes them equal to their juniors. There is also another barrier that results from a lack of cohesiveness by the employees that delays the implementation of the new system. The employees need to work as a team to make the implementation of the new system simple.
Could a team-based work organization be the answer to the organization’s difficulties? Why do think that previous initiatives at Super Supply had failed?
A team-based work organization could be the answer to the organizational difficulties. This is because the company had implemented other management skills such as TQM, Lean, and Six sigma but there was no change. The team based-approach gives all the employees a chance to contribute at an individual level and therefore motivates them. This also gives them some sense of belonging and therefore they feel like to be part of the organization.
Further, the team-based approach also facilitates communication all over the organization which is very key to organizational success. Previous initiatives at super supply could have failed because they still used the old traditional structure which was bureaucratic in nature and advocated for the status quo. Further, they could have implemented the new change inappropriately, therefore, making it to be ineffective. Additionally, employees could have refused to cooperate well towards implementing the change.
Employee empowerment is a key element of team-based working; what difficulties could service adhesives face in implementing empowerment?
Service adhesives could face some challenges while implementing empowerment to the proposed team-based employees. First, the employees could have failed to identify the boundary of their decision-making to that of top management, and this could bring conflict and could make them unwilling to contribute. Additionally, employee empowerment could create room for excuses because the employees could be in a position to implement what they found right hence creating room for excuses in case of eventualities.
Further, empowerment could result in resistance especially from those who possess low skills. This is because empowering employees could translate to unanticipated job loss especially to those who possessed very low skills.