MGMT5904 Managing Organisational Change

Introduction

Participation of employees in the workplace is considered to a vital element which helps in organisational success. According to scholars, participation in the workplace generally means the involvement of the employees in the decision-making of the management and being fully engaged with the work (Saha and Kumar 2017). While working on the project on the issues faced by the group was related to workplace participation as most of the team members were working virtually due to the pandemic situation. As a group, everyone thought of various work-related issues however, narrowed down to the issue of workplace participation as this is problem had a huge impact on the way the group was functioning and working during the assignment. Thus, this paper will focus on the issues due to the lack of workplace participation that was having an impact while working for the assignment and the methods in which these issues were mitigated to come up with the assignment.

Discussion

There were many reasons which had led to the lack of workplace participation within the group which are the following:

Employee dissatisfaction

Research suggests that lack of job dissatisfaction is one of the primary reasons that can lead to the lack of workplace participation (Ott-Holland, Shepherd and Ryan 2019). It has been seen that there are various reasons of job dissatisfaction which leads to the employees losing their motivation like unfavourable working condition and the lack of recognition.

According to scholars, recognition is considered to be an intrinsic motivation factor in the workplace and not being recognized makes employees demotivated and dissatisfied (De Guissmé and Licata 2017). While working, the group identified that the working conditions were unfavourable in the initial stages as working remotely together had become a challenge. The lack of recognition for the efforts during this time is another issue which had a great impact that led to the demotivation of the team members.

Lack of effective leadership 

Leadership is considered to be one of the most important elements in the workplace. It has been seen that leadership has a huge role to play in motivating employees in the workplace through various initiatives by helping them grow, recognize their work, provide a safe working environment, foster effective communication and positive relationships in the workplace. According to scholars, lack of effective leadership often disrupts the workplace and fails to manage the employees and creates a negative environment where employees become highly dissatisfied, lead to employee turnover and lack of engagement (Wu, Li and Fang 2017). Inefficient in terms of leadership was one of the reasons which initially had caused a disruption among the team members while working in the group which made people participate less in the process and provide very little inputs and solutions which had created an issue.

Cross-cultural barriers

Diversity in the group was one of the issues which had led to the lack of participation among the team or group members initially. Communication barriers as per research is one of the most common cross-cultural barriers in the workplace as the difference in languages leads to lack of communication in the workplace (Knight et al 2017). This lead to a negative relationship within the team and lack of cohesiveness which makes made many of the members refraining from contributing to the group assignment in the first stages.

Stereotyping is another common issue in terms of cross-cultural barriers. When people belong from different culture, automatically a preconceived notion works which is detrimental especially while working in the organisation. This did create some conflict among the team members and led to the lack of participation.

Virtual teams

The outbreak of the pandemic has also led to the organisations in encouraging people to work in virtual teams and adopt the work from home model which has been having a negative impact when it comes to workplace participation. According to scholars, the increase in virtual teams often creates issues due to factors like technological glitches which create communication barriers and often lead to lack of workplace participation and involvement (Marlow, Lacerenza and Salas 2017). This is one of the issues which the team members along with me faced as there were communication barriers because of internet issues which led to many of the team members not being able to join the team meetings or communicate ideas. Many of the schedule of the team members did not match which had led to a huge issue and increased the lack of workplace participation.

Another aspect that the virtual teams have led to is the fact that people have stopped communicating like they did before when working in a workplace. Virtual teams have been deteriorated the workplace relationships in the workplace and have made work monotonous and strenuous which has led to the lack of workplace participation (Serrat 2017). The grim situation which everyone is passing by has also led to this issue and changed the way one communicated with another. Most of the team members were reserved and were worried about the situation which made them concentrate less of the assignment that had a huge impact on the way the team members were working during the group project.

Effects of lack of workplace participation 

It has been seen that lack of workplace participation often has detrimental impacts on an organisation. According to scholars, lack of workplace participation means that the people are highly demotivated which has a negative impact on their quality of performance and productivity (Akkerman, Kef and Meininger 2018). The lack of participation in the group had led many group members to be clueless about the progress of the assignment and what are the areas of discussion which had become an issue. Research suggests that lack of engagement and participation in the workplace often makes the employees feel that they are not valued in the organisation and their suggestions do not matter to the organisation that makes them refrain from communicating any vital information or consequence which they feel might have an impact on the organisation (Govender and Bussin 2020). This also leads to issues like lack of cohesiveness within the groups which was faced during the assignment which hindered the team activity. It is important that the everyone in the group participates in order to provide their ideas and inputs which helps in their creativity which would make the assignment of a higher quality.

Techniques used to mitigate the issue

Initially, the was a problem within the group which had led to the negative impact on the assignment. However, patience, effective communication and informal meetings had helped in creating positive relationship within the team and ensured that there is an increase in workplace participation. Effective communication helped in preparing schedules for the meeting, being transparent within the group and many more. Patience helped the group members initially to adjust to the time, be patient during the first few days and informal meetings helped in establishing a positive relationship as everyone played games and took some time out to get to know each other which had increased the comfort level that eventually led to engagement of the employees and increase the level of participation.

Recommendation 

Organisations to focus on participation of employees in the workplace as it helps in boosting the organisation culture and ensures success. It is important that the groups nominate effective and efficient leaders so that they can successfully manage the group members and ensure that they are satisfied which will increase employee participation in the workplace. It is important for the leader to ensure that the teams are cohesive, helps in fostering effective communication, manage diverse teams and help in establishing positive relationship in the workplace which helps in increasing workplace participation.

The leaders need to focus on involving the group members in the decision-making process, be transparent in terms of information about the assignment, ensure that they build trust among the team members which will help in mitigating this issue. The group and the leader of the group also need to ensure certain aspects like provide recognition to the team members and give them the credit for their participation and contribution to the assignment which will help in satisfying their needs and make sure that they out discretionary efforts into the assignment.

Conclusion 

Participation in the workplace is extremely important and is said to be one of the elements which help in organisational success or in this context group success. It can be seen that there are various causes that lead to the lack of participation in the workplace which are almost inter-connected which has the potential of hindering the performance of the group and can lead to a poor work culture. It is important that group takes necessary steps and focus on hiring effective leaders who through their skills can manage the employees in an effective manner and foster positive changes the group dynamics culture which will increase workplace participation and help in contributing to the success of the group.

References

Akkerman, A., Kef, S. and Meininger, H.P., 2018. Job satisfaction of people with intellectual disabilities: The role of basic psychological need fulfillment and workplace participation. Disability and rehabilitation, 40(10), pp.1192-1199.

De Guissmé, L. and Licata, L., 2017. Competition over collective victimhood recognition: When perceived lack of recognition for past victimization is associated with negative attitudes towards another victimized group. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47(2), pp.148-166.

Govender, M. and Bussin, M.H., 2020. Performance management and employee engagement: A South African perspective. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 18(1), pp.1-19.

Knight, C., Patterson, M., Dawson, J. and Brown, J., 2017. Building and sustaining work engagement–a participatory action intervention to increase work engagement in nursing staff. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 26(5), pp.634-649.

Marlow, S.L., Lacerenza, C.N. and Salas, E., 2017. Communication in virtual teams: A conceptual framework and research agenda. Human Resource Management Review, 27(4), pp.575-589.

Ott-Holland, C.J., Shepherd, W.J. and Ryan, A.M., 2019. Examining wellness programs over time: Predicting participation and workplace outcomes. Journal of occupational health psychology, 24(1), p.163.

Saha, S. and Kumar, S.P., 2017. Influence of participation in decision making on job satisfaction, group learning, and group commitment: Empirical study of public sector undertakings in India. Asian Academy of Management Journal, 22(1), p.79.

Serrat, O., 2017. Working in teams. In Knowledge Solutions (pp. 599-604). Springer, Singapore.

Wu, C., Li, N. and Fang, D., 2017. Leadership improvement and its impact on workplace safety in construction projects: A conceptual model and action research. International journal of project management, 35(8), pp.1495-1511.

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