This week's conversation will be about challenging styles of employment,
as well as issues that workers and managers face.
Companies, large and small, do not need nor can utilize employees in the same manner as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.
Agile, Flexible Organizational Structure and Workforce: Businesses must be able to grow or expand as needed, as well as make changes and shrink when needed. Because the organization is not static, its workforce cannot be either. The number of employees needed, and the worker skill set required by the company changes as the company productline, economic climate, and target markets change. With businesses needing to be flexible, so must the worker and employment positions.
Recent changes in the structure of employer organizations, the nature of work and jobs, and the terms of the evolving employment contract add up to a radically tranformed American workplace. As the hierarchical, bureaucratic, and monolithic manufacturing corporation has given way to dynamic new forms of business organizations, traditional notions of jobs and careers have disappeared. What has emerged is a complex new set of relationships between
employers and employees. In general, if yesterday's working conditions were characterized by stability, predictability, and security, to day's world of work
is about variety, choice and change... (O'Toole and Lawler, 2006, p. 78).
The flexible workplace has given rise to the contingent employee, a worker who is hired on a temporary, part-time, or contract basis. This is in contrast to regular or full-time, full-year employment (O'Toole and Lawler, 2006, p.75).
There are also leased employees, i.e., individual workers or an organization's entire workforce provided by a human resource company.
Hybrid Organization:Business enterprises are distributed nationally and/or globally with the workforce networked via electronic information systems, mobile devises, and collaborative platforms.
Employees,
- As individuals and teams, work in both face-to-face and virtual environments, and must be able to fluidly move in and out of both environments.
- Must have the ability to self-manage themsleves as well as work collaborative, be able to work autonomously as well as follow directives, work with ambiguity as well as clear goals and mandates.
- Must be able to problem-solve and make decisions and act decisively.
- Must take leadership roles, take accountability, and be responsible.
- Must be comfortable with technology and able to use it innovatively to access and analyze information, communicate, generate knowledge, and work as a team.
- Be comfortable in a multicultural and inter-cultural workplace, i.e., understand and be confortable with a. Different cultural understandings of work, authority, protocal, time, leadership, acountability, respect, appreciation and reward systems, compensaton, work ethic, ethical codes, and humor, and b. Must be open-minded, patient, and accepting of difference.
What challenges and issues do you think that these forms of employment pose to managers and employors?
How does the worker have to refashion or reconceptualize his/her way of understanding work, seeking employment, and establishing a career?
Chuck Piazza
10 comments:
Having confronted this issue several times in the last five years, I can confirm that many traditional managers find it difficult to accept off-site employees or the challenges involved with managing a remote workforce. I suspect that because I've worked in manufacturing firms for the last five years, the management style has been more traditional in this respect. In these organizations there still is a need for people to be in the plant performing the work. As an intellectual worker in these environments, it has been a challenge at times to assert to more traditional managers that cost savings can be realized by embracing remote operators.
The cultural bias behind this hesitation, I believe, is that managers have not appropriately updated their management style. The performance review process in many cases is still not quantitative enough to measure results versus goals.
It is my assumption that as organizations adapt to more contemporary business models, employees will have to become more adept at effectively managing their own value to their organization, and producing results in a more independent manner. Employees will need to embrace the idea of themselves as contract employees, even when integral parts of organizations. From the reading we've been doing, the newest management models suggest a more strategic and quantitative approach to managing employees, it behooves us as employees to ensure our value in such organizations.
Having confronted this issue several times in the last five years, I can confirm that many traditional managers find it difficult to accept off-site employees or the challenges involved with managing a remote workforce. I suspect that because I've worked in manufacturing firms for the last five years, the management style has been more traditional in this respect. In these organizations there still is a need for people to be in the plant performing the work. As an intellectual worker in these environments, it has been a challenge at times to assert to more traditional managers that cost savings can be realized by embracing remote operators.
The cultural bias behind this hesitation, I believe, is that managers have not appropriately updated their management style. The performance review process in many cases is still not quantitative enough to measure results versus goals.
It is my assumption that as organizations adapt to more contemporary business models, employees will have to become more adept at effectively managing their own value to their organization, and producing results in a more independent manner. Employees will need to embrace the idea of themselves as contract employees, even when integral parts of organizations. From the reading we've been doing, the newest management models suggest a more strategic and quantitative approach to managing employees, it behooves us as employees to ensure our value in such organizations.
The challenges that I see for the managers of contingent employees is that there is a lot of training that goes on as people come and go. There is also dealing with the change in employee social dynamics as the staff changes often. Also, some people are not comfortable working by themselves and need a lot of hand holding which can be difficult in a hybrid situation.
People who want to work in a hybrid manner have to get used to using technology and develop patience for when said technology develops glitches. People need to be able to work on their own and not have to be watched by Big Brother in order to complete tasks. One has to be able to deal with change well and to be willing to learn new skills. One should be flexible as each company has their own ways of doing things To seek employment a contingent worker should be comfortable going on job interviews as they will be doing this a lot.
One of the challenges, managers/employers will face is that of finding alternative ways to keep up company moral and build relationships. Just as some companies are not yet ready to be flexible, many workers are not eager to shift to such a dynamic organizational structure in which they can easily be removed. How do managers motivate employees who seek stability to buy into the concept of flexibility? Managers may have to fight resentment from current long-term employees who perceive the contingent worker as the enemy planning a take-over. How do managers build relationships between the long-term employee and the contingent worker?
On the other side, employees will have to shift their frame of mind in terms of career longevity. Before you went to college to pick a career. Many now are working in careers nowhere near their concentration of study. Workers will have to learn to be comfortable with and find value in the idea that changing careers 3-5 times is acceptable in today's social and work environment.
Depending on the circumstances, I think these forms of employment pose a threat more for the employee rather than the employer.
The one who benefits the most is the employer because it reduces costs. But at the same time, this type of employment is a threat to the institution because the employees under this type of hiring do not care about the business. They know they are temporary workers and I do not think high productivity is expected from them. Also the problem of training is a big issue for managers since this type of worker is not too eager to spend time learning for a company in which they will be working for a short period of time.
And from the worker’s point of view, they need to start thinking of themselves more as tools. Businesses are requiring more movable workforce, like machinery, and organizations bring extra units of labor only when needed, and get rid of them when the work is done. The most negative part of this type of hiring is the lack of engagement generated by this process of employment. Two big ideas collide about how to manage a better workforce. One is to create an engaged workforce to increase productivity. The other one is to avoid engagement and use the labor force as management pleases. Until now, the second idea is winning all over the world. So, workers should think about their careers as going on the highway and changing lanes constantly to avoid crashes, or in this case to be unemployed.
I think the challenge for employers of contingent workers will be properly and effectively define for these workers what is needed of them, provide the appropriate information and establish parameters for them to work. It will require more work initially by employers to provide this.
A worker considering becoming a contingent worker they will have to establish their own perimeters, define their skill set and promote themselves repeatedly to prospective employers. Being a contingent worker has many benefits that would be helpful to workers in our current hectic world. These include the ability to work for who you want, the ability to choose your projects, and setting your own hours and find work when you need it.
It will require employees to think about work differently. It will require workers to think of themselves as assets to continually promote to prospective employers. It will require workers to keep themselves updated on all the current trends and skills.
I think the challenge for employers of contingent workers will be properly and effectively define for these workers what is needed of them, provide the appropriate information and establish parameters for them to work. It will require more work initially by employers to provide this.
A worker considering becoming a contingent worker they will have to establish their own perimeters, define their skill set and promote themselves repeatedly to prospective employers. Being a contingent worker has many benefits that would be helpful to workers in our current hectic world. These include the ability to work for who you want, the ability to choose your projects, and setting your own hours and find work when you need it.
It will require employees to think about work differently. It will require workers to think of themselves as assets to continually promote to prospective employers. It will require workers to keep themselves updated on all the current trends and skills.
The new standards that workers and employers are facing bring up many new issues in the workplace. How can workers strive to meet the changing needs of employers? Is it better to learn a specialization, or to be as flexible and versatile as possible? What does versatility mean exactly and how can workers also maintain a sense of consistency in their positions?
While the need of employees has changed, has respect for workers and a work-life balance changed? Until employers can recognize the need for workers to be leaders in their own lives and to support that to the best of their abilities, many workplace issues will remain the same, such as quality of performance, engagement with workers and job satisfaction.
Obviously it is to keep an open mind. Work is taking on different forms faster than the forms are being recognized. I also find in speaking with those unemployed like family and friends I notice that they are not thinking outside of the box when it comes to possible employment. They have high expectations and require many specific needs to be met that may never be met. One conversational participant had a literal laundry list of variables that needed to align in order for them to apply or consider the employment. I chuckled inwardly... they will be waiting along time and oh by the way how is it having the Universe revolve and arrange variables to specifically meet their needs? Americans expect and believe they are entitled to their wants being met. As an anonymous person once said somewhere humble yourself or stand to be humiliated as humiliation is just one of an infinitude of ways the Universe extends tough love to a whining child.
For those willing to accept change put as many irons in the fire as one can and spend the most time stoking those that glow the brightest. Prepare yourself by learning and training get out of dead end jobs that do not honor your time or stifle your ability to grow and develop talent.
Do something you have never done before??
Change and change again!
Competition is king. The companies that manage this hybrid organization the best will be the most successful. It is not all about cost savings. The overhead, training, and turnover of outsourced workers cut into the savings created by the lower wage.
The sooner employees realize this is not their daddy's company and embrace the hybrid nature, the easier it will be for them to adapt. Getting over the initial resistance is the hardest. Management should try to do a lot of training in the area of culture and the logistics of working with others remotely and with different time zones. People should look at this as a new exciting opportunity rather than something lost. Change is hard so this is easier said than done.
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