What is team efficiency and role efficacy? How these can be enhanced? Discuss how grievances can be identified and redressed? Explain how trade unions and employer association strengthens the status of employer employee relations.
IGNOU SERVICESeptember 01, 2021
Team efficiency: A team consists of individuals. However, collection of individuals in a place may be only a crowd. When the individuals come together for certain tasks, then we have formation of a group. The main function of a group is to exchange task related information and discuss task related issues. The accountability in the group remains of the individual. Each individual brings his/her competencies as well as the relevant information related to the task. Thus the group can be defined as a collection of individuals working in face-to-face relationship to share information and resources for a task to be achieved. The team is qualitatively different from the group in several ways. The team functions almost like an individual. In other words, the team is accountable for results; collective responsibility is taken. There is mutuality and complementary of the members of the team. The most important characteristics of a team is that it creates synergy, i.e., the performance of the team is more than the collective performance of the individual members. A team can be defined as a group of individuals working in face-to-face relationship for a common goal, having collective accountability for the outcome of its effort.
Role efficacy: The performance of a person working in an organisation depends on his own potential effectiveness as a person, his technical competence, his managerial experience, etc., as well as the way the role which the performs in the organisation is designed. It is the integration of the two (the person and the role) that ensures the person’s effectiveness in the organisation. Unless the person has the requisite knowledge, technical competence, and the skills required for the role, he cannot be effective. But equally important is how the role which he occupies in the organisation is designed. If the role does not allow him to use his competence, and if he constantly feels frustrated in the role, his effectiveness is likely to be low. The integration of the person and the role comes about when the role is able to fulfil the needs of the individual, and when the individual is able to contribute to the evolution of the role. The more we move from role taking (responding to the expectations by various other persons) to role making (taking initiative in designing the role more creatively in a way that the various expectations from others as well as of the role occupant are integrated), the more the role is likely to be effective.
Guidelines on Enhancing:
• The leader should convey a clear message to the team members regarding the company’s expectations. He or she must ensure that the team members understand what the team has been created for and continuously underline these objectives via internal communications.
• Team members must acknowledge their comprehension of and participation in the achievement of the company’s objectives. They must know how the team is supposed to help the company to achieve its targets.
• The team leader must establish how many of his team members are actually interested in participating in teamwork, and how many tend to be ‘lone wolves’ who do not operate well in a team setting.
Also read :“Under RCM methodology, the problem is not failure at all, it is the consequences of failure”. Discuss.
• The team leader must ensure that all performing team members perceive their service as valuable to the organization. He or she must find out what it takes to keep the team motivated, and establish workable means of fulfilling reasonable expectations.
• The team leader must ensure that the team members are sufficiently knowledgeable, skilled and capable to face the issues for which the team has been created.
• The team leader must ensure that the team has appropriate resources, initiatives and support required to attain its goals. The organization must, in turn, empower the team with sufficient authority to accomplish its charter. However, team members must also understand their limitations clearly.
• Sometimes, team members may do or say things that seem out of synch with the team’s overall mission and goals. This can result in resentment, confusion and lack of communication. If this happens, the team leader must establish how these words or actions were meant to add to the team’s ability to fulfill its set objectives. If the reasons are not immediately apparent, he or she should ask for clarifications to avoid clashes.
• Team leaders must also have patience. Not all teams perform at 100% efficiency once they have been presented with their targets and objectives. Also, some individual team members may not move as fast as others, even though they do not lack capability or motivation. The team leader must take on the role of a mentor and ensure that such members have sufficient breathing space, nevertheless keeping them focussed on the deadline.
• The team leader must plan team meetings meticulously. Meetings consume time and money as well as physical and mental energy. The team leader must optimize returns on that investment via clear objectives and meeting plans – and by copying all concerned on the agenda of the meeting in advance.
Grievances can be identified and redressed
Also read :Many organizations have standing conflicts amongst maintenance and production/operations employees. Describe the nature of these conflicts. What are the main causes?
Grievances, if they are not identified and redressed, may affect adversely the workers, managers and the organisation. The effects are:
1) On production include:
• Low quality of production.
• Low quality of production and productivity.
• Increase in the wastage of material, spoilage/leakage of machinery.
• Increase in the cost of production per unit.
2) On the employees:
• Increases the rate of absenteeism and turnover.
Also read :Explain what is meant by cost absorption and cost apportionment? Illustrate each with two examples from maintenance department. Discuss the methods of cost absorption and state which method do you consider to be the best and why?
• Reduces the level of commitment, sincerity and punctuality.
• Increases the incidence of accidents.
• Reduces the level of employee morale.
3) On the managers:
• Strains the superior-subordinate relations.
• Increases the degree of supervision, control and follow up.
• Increases in discipline cases.
• Increase in unrest and thereby machinery to maintain industrial peace.
Also read :Briefly describe the competencies required for a change agent and discuss the diverse roles of a change agent.
Beach also refers to several reasons why there should be a formal procedure to handle grievances:
• All employee complaints and grievances are in actual practice not settled satisfactorily by the first level supervisor, due to lack of necessary human relations skills or authority to act.
• It serves as a medium of upward communication, whereby the management becomes aware of employee frustrations, problems and expectations.
• It operates like a pressure release valve on a steam boiler, providing the employees with an outlet to send out their frustrations, discontents and grips.
• It also reduces the likelihood of arbitrary action by supervision, since the supervisors know that the employees are able to protest such behaviour and make their protests heard by higher manager.
• The very fact that employees have a right to be heard and actually heard helps to improve morale.
Trade unions and employer association strengthens
During the pre-independence era industry, trade and employer associations were divided on the basis of Swadeshi vs. Foreign, large vs. small, and to an extend on regional basis. After independence the indigenous private industrialists bean to train their guns against public sector which had witnessed a rapid growth (at least until 1990s when privatisation is becoming the “in-thing”). The small and medium sectors have formed their own associations. There is also a plethora of sectoral associations. With the proliferation of EOs the need for their unification began to find expression. After several initiatives and meetings, it was in 1956 that a super structure called the Council of Indian Employers (CIE), was formed to bring the AlOE and EFI, the two national level EOs together under one umbrella.
