Introduction
Solent Solutions Limited deals in computer software and security systems. It was started in the year 2000 and its founder is Tony Adabayo. The company is located in Ocean Village, Southampton and has its offices in Dublin, Glasgow and also in Lagos. The company was started by Adabayo with his five other colleagues whom in the past had worked for the same corporation. The financial results of Solent Solutions Ltd are impressive and for the past 5 years, the company has maintained a 30% annual increase in its turnover and has increased its workers from 6 to 150 and has also won awards for quality and enterprise excellence.
The founding members of this company were friends and also colleagues and for that reason they have a sense of identification and a strong bond of loyalty. The espoused philosophy of Solent Solutions Ltd is that their customers come first but also the management is very careful so that the employees enjoy doing their work. In the year 2005, one of the founding team of the company’s employees Yvonne Gillespie was promoted to carry out the role of Director of Organisational Development and her task was to develop the of “working hard and playing hard” . A budget of £500K was allocated to her which was 2% of the company’s turnover to make sure that the climate in Solent Solutions was enjoyable lively but also performance oriented and cohesive. The emphasis is mostly is on mutual respect and trust among all the employees of the company. For the reasons that even the most junior employees can freely socialize with the most senior one is a demonstration of how Solent Solutions Ltd approaches hierarchy.
The Bellevue Hotel is located in the middle of a large provincial city. It is a large hotel that is privately owned. Though it was one of the major hotels in the city, it is currently struggling to maintain its profit margins more so due to the competition that has come in with the new three hotels that are managed by famous national and international chains. Things have particularly become so difficult for the hotel since its economic downturn in the year 2008 . .
Organisational design and structure
Organisational structures are rarely designed from out of nothing. They in most cases start small and then later on successfully grow and because organizational structures grow, they need to structure themselves. For the reasons that organizations do not move from a single-person operation to a thousand-person operation in a single day, there needs to be some evolvement and this is also the case for the organization structure . For the design of the organizational structure, it is important to analyse the processes of production of each output. All the activities that take place in the production and delivery of the outputs have to be identified. Also a description of the activities possible links and lead times should be described. .
The organizational structure is supposed to facilitate the processes in an organization and should also improve the progress of those processes though it is not advisable to breakdown the process needlessly because of the structure of organization. The structure of organization should also provide a coordination mechanism especially where process has been divided into more than one unit. The organizational structure at Solent Solutions Ltd is structured in different ways. The structure is usually based on grouping and splitting of tasks. .
The organizational structure also influences the motivation of workers because if the workers feel that work is becoming monotonous or they are carrying out so many tasks that are below their level, in may result to dissatisfaction of the workers at their job. The organizational structure at Solent Solutions Ltd ensures that the level and nature of activities do match as close as possible to the capacities of its employees. In addition, the span of control of managers has been reduced so that the workers are able to communicate easily.
The Bellevue Hotel maintains the service of a three-star standard and its competition with other hotels is based on costs. The hotel keeps its prices considerably lower compared to the prices at the other newer hotels but the quality of accommodation and food have continued to go down every time. The hotel has a bar, 150 bedrooms, a carvery-style restaurant and a single function room that hosts business meetings and private dinners. The hotel has no porters, no facilities for large-scale banqueting and also no room service .
The Bellevue Hotel has one or two staff members that work on part-time basis, 95% of the workers are employed on full-time and permanent contracts and only a few night workers, administrators and senior managers have been employed on part time basis. Some problems of the hotel are also as a result of its organization which is quite hierarchical.
The hotel has four distinct functions of the hotel which include housekeeping, food service, general management and maintenance and each of this has a head of department who then directly reports to Julian Smith who is the owner of the Hotel. The organization has no sales or marketing function. There is little cross-functional communication or working and every function carries its operations in silos and these results to poor quality service to its customers and some bad press has seen its way to the local newspaper .
Teams and team working
Solent Solutions Ltd has been a beneficiary of team working in terms of ensuring that there is coordination, mutual trust and respect among the workers. A big challenge for many companies these days is to ensure quick delivery and flexibility of the new quality services and products so as to respond to the greater and the changing demands from the clients. Solent Solutions ensures that standardization characterize its work organization. Work is usually divided in different segments from support to preparation roles where workers coordinate so as to increase productivity. Team working at the company ensures that there all people have an influence on the business and also impact on the methods, processes, technology, tools and the physical environment that helps in enhancing their work.
Team work also implements an organizational approach that is holistic which means utilizing job rotations, flat hierarchical structures, involvement of the lower-level workers in decision making, multi-tasking and also having teams that are self-responsible. Solent Solutions Ltd has a high performance workplace and it invests a lot in the human resources and also supports both their innovation and technical skills and even their social skills. This helps the company in promoting a good interpersonal relationship at the workplace.
If this is put in mind while, team working results to positive impacts which include high quality of output, high operating efficiency and innovative capacity, improved mutual relationships at the place of work and a general higher productivity. Team working is a crucial instrument of the new forms for the work organization and is basically a measure that displays different features in both the context of national enterprises and also in the context of individual enterprises.
Currently, organizations are increasingly becoming unstable and dynamic and for this reason, most organizations have increased their reliance on teams and those organizations that have not embraced this change have continued to be left behind and an example of this organization is the Bellevue Hotel. It has failed to understand that it has to improve its team work inorder to enhance its service to the customers. Generally there is a consensus in research that a team comprises of two or more people who perform interdependent tasks, have specific roles and also share a common vision.
For these teams to work effectively, the members of the teams must have specific skills, knowledge and attitudes such as being able to know their own tasks and responsibilities as well as those of their teammates, skills of monitoring other teammate’s performance and also having a disposition that is positive towards teamwork. At the Bellevue Hotel, the financial struggles are exacerbated by the high cases of employees’ absenteeism which goes to ups of 40% in all the functions in the hotel. The managers maintain the control of their functions and the rest of the employees have no say in any of the decisions made in the organization and these results to little involvement of the staff even when the staff has good ideas of how the hotel could improve its services.
The staffs have also been demotivated due to the bad publicity of the hotel. Organizations whose team members have a commitment that is shared to knowledge and skills have been seen to out shine those teams that do not have the same attributes. When members of a team work together on basis that is more permanent, their competencies continue to be refined and also some more competencies arise. The hotel has a problem of rapid turnover of its staff and more so the souse-chefs and the chefs and this destroys the basis of teamwork as the teams cannot last for a long time.
Approach to leadership and management
Management and leadership are two words that are mostly used interchangeably or seen as mutually exclusive activities. Leadership is a word that has a Greek root and means ‘path’ and thus a leader can be said to be a path finder and is tasked with taking people forward following a chosen route. Management is a word that has a Saxon root and means ‘hand’ and this refers to the planning tasks of navigating the route and also steering and ensuring that the course is maintained.
The managers at Solent Solutions Ltd view themselves as the regulators and conservators of the order that exists and with which they identify and their identity in the company is the function of the relationships they have in the company. They use the democratic leadership style where by the leaders shares their abilities of decision making with the members of group through promotion of member’s interest and also practice equality. Solent Solutions Ltd also integrates the Lassiez-faire style of leadership in its management and this allows the workers to have total freedom in making decisions that concern completing their work. The organization also allows a high degree of self-rule and autonomy to its employees but at the same time it offers support and guidance when requested.
The roles of the managers are clearly set out and this is very helpful to the company as the leaders and the manager do not conflict on the undertaking of their duties. The leaders of Solent Solutions Ltd work in but they are not members of the management. The sense of their identity is not dependent on the membership of the work roles in a specific group. The roles carried by the leaders in the company include:
Aligning the workers- the leaders communicate the direction which they want to be followed by words and even examples.
Coping with the changes- they set the direction which develops a vision for the future and those strategies that are required for the achievement of that vision
Adoption of an active and personal attitude towards goals
Inspiring and motivating.
Julian Smith who is the owner of the Bellevue Hotel runs and manages the hotel in a manner that can be termed as ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’. He uses the autocratic style of leadership where he keeps close, strict control over the employees by maintaining regulation of procedures and policies that are given to the employees. To keep his main emphasis, he has only created a professional relationship that is distinct. He believes in direct supervision so as to maintain an environment that is successful. Due to his fear of his workers being unproductive, he maintains a close supervision and he sees this as necessary in all the functions of the hotel .
Julian Smith sets the goals of the hotel individually, he engages the employees in a one-way which is downward communication and he ensures to controls the discussions of his workers. Although he is disguised in paternalism, Julian Smith does not listen to the members of staff and more so those that are on the lower end of the hotel’s hierarchy and as such they are no able to view their opinions. Members of the staff are also frightened of airing their views because they don’t want to be blamed for the problems in the customer services that could occur. Apart from the hotel’s senior management staff, Julian Smith occasionally ventures out of the office and he has very little communication with the hotel’s staff or customers.
Organisational culture
Organisational culture can be described as the collective behavior of people who form part of an organization. It is formed by the visions, norms, values, symbols, systems and the working language of an organization and it includes habits and beliefs. Organizational culture can be said to be a pattern of collective assumptions and behaviors that are adapted by the members of an organization as a way of thinking, perceiving and even feeling. It affects the manner in which groups and individuals interact with clients, stakeholders and with each other. Organizational culture is circumscribed and defined by group parameters and also by the normative criteria which provides a basis upon which power, status, respect, friendship, punishment and authority are allocated. It is organizational culture that determines what a particular group of employees pay attention to and the response they give to tasks.
The Solent Solutions company has a team that deals with the organization culture of its employees and it helps to mould cultures in particular situations so as to attain the company’s goals. Firstly, the team identifies fully the possible attributes of the new targeted culture and the existing one where values, myths, rituals, symbols and the assumptions which underpin the particular culture are checked into. Solent Solutions Ltd ensures that its staff responds to stimuli due to their alignment with organizational values which is very helpful in the creation of strong culture. The strong cultures help the company to run like a well-oiled machine, moving along with execution that is outstanding and also with slight tweaking of the procedures that are in existence.
At the Bellevue Hotel, the employees have developed a culture of working so long as they get their pay as nothing else motivates them to work apart from the salaries. This culture has led to laziness at the work place, poor customer service and poor relationship of workers with their seniors as they have to be supervised in order to work. Generally, bad cultures at the work place come from human nature, poor management and clueless or bad management behavior. Cultures at the work place are built in combination with the organization’s members, quality of interaction with one another and with the outsiders, results of the efforts made by the organization and also the psychological factors which are set up by the top management and in all the levels of management below it .
As seen at the Bellevue Hotel, bad management behavior affects the working culture in a negative way. It is very important for an organization’s management to understand the fundamental of the human nature. It should also understand the psychological effects of poor management behavior. One of the factors affecting the Bellevue Hotel is the difficulty to keep the perspective of its workers in a sustained group. This finally has resulted to the loss of personal vision by the employees and this is due to the bad experiences they go through at the hotel and this comes from the conflicts with other workers and more so with the managers.
When workers are injured or abused psychologically by their bosses, they always remember the pain they went through and it is very difficult to restore the proper perspective of work. Every worker wants to have a good feeling of themselves and they also want to have a feeling that they are included in making positive differences for the organizations.
Conclusion
The organizational structure of a company describes the tasks, functions divisions, departments and the individual employees. It also indicates the relationship that exists between the employees and also describes the how many employees each unit, division and departments should have. Organizational structure divides individuals, departments and divisions on the basis of functions tasks and authorities. It is also responsible of coordination of the units by lines of command and communication. The organization structure ensures that its different units do work in conjunction and for that reason it is able to function as a whole. If this is not the case, most organizations end up failing .
Work performance by teams is in most cases higher than that of individual performance especially when the work needs a wider scope of knowledge, opinion and judgement. Advantages of teamwork are productivity growth in the areas that need creative solution of tasks, high degrees of operational and adaptability management. Teamwork creates an atmosphere that facilitates information exchange, knowledge and knowledge sharing. Team working in organizations has led to greater job autonomy, higher job satisfaction and greater responsibility of the employees .
Leaders nowadays have realized that they have to give up some part of control so as to achieve their goals and for this reason they tend not to act as bosses but as coaches. Leaders have the ability to excite their employees in the organizations and they work hard so as to lead by example. Leaders are also very resistant to stress and this enables them to remain focused even when they are faced with tasks of making difficult decisions.
References
Abiodun, R.-A. (2010). Leadership Behavior and Employee Perception of the Organization. Impact on Employee's Loyalty, Engagement and Organizational Performance .
Alexander Osterwalder, Y. C. (2010). Generation of business partnerships. London: John Wiley & Sons.
Belbin, R. M. (2010). Why they succeed or fail. Management Teams , 193.
Cochran(MBA), C. (2003). Customer Satisfaction: Tools, Techniques And Formulas. Paton Professional.
Daft, R. L. (2007). Organization Theory and Design. NewYork: Cengage Learning.
Don R. Hansen, M. M. (2007). Employee management. Cengage Learning.
Edwards, J. M. (2011, November 16). Importance of team working. Retrieved from Team work: http://derekstockley.com.au/newsletters-06/067-teamwork-importance.html
Gordon, G. (1991). Industry Determinants of Organizational Culture. Academy of Management Review , 396-415.
Hardingham, A. (1998). Working in Teams. Management Shapers , 23-30.
Isamu, B. (2008, October 9). Aligning Organisational structure and goals. Retrieved from Organization and economic structure: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_95.htm
Jackson, J. A. (1995, August 7). Organisational Culture. Retrieved from Business and Culture: http://www.oup.co.uk/pdf/bt/fincham/Chapter15.pdf
John Lawler, A. B. (2009, March 13). Situational Approach to leadership. Retrieved from Organisational leadership: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Situational-Approaches-to-Leadership.topicArticleId-8944,articleId-8914.html
Karen Twyford, T. W. (2008). Integrated Team Working. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Ltd, S. S. (2010, Feb 2). Solent Solution- Your Business, Our focus. Retrieved from Solent Solutions: http://www.solentsolutions.co.uk/
Martin, C. N. (1993, April 18). Understanding Organizations. Retrieved from Health Knowledge: http://www.healthknowledge/organisation-management/
Mathew, S. (2011). A Principled Approach for Leaders. Universe.
Milton, E. (2006, July 2). Importance of a good organisational structure. Retrieved from Organisational structure: http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/mcn/pdf_files/part5_5.pdf
Moore, D. R. (2002). Desingning Effective Organisational Structures. John Wiley & Sons.
Muntari., E. (2002, September 14). Tips for team working. Retrieved from Team working: http://www.humanresources.about.com/od/involvementteams/a/twelve_tip_team.htm
Pepitone, J. S. (1998, July 6). Multivating the management. Retrieved from Multivation: http://www.healthyageing.eu/content/multivation-management-consultancy-voor-innovaties-de-samenleving
R., G. M. (2008, January 27). Theoretical and Practical Approaches. Retrieved from Intelligent Leadership: http://www.managementcentre.co.uk/data/files/pages/intelligent_leadership.pdf
S., Y. K. (2000, May 15). Issues in Understanding and Changing Culture. Retrieved from Management of organisation culture: http://www.usq.edu.au/extrafil.pdf
Schneider, B. &. (2001). Managing Climates and Cultures. Massachusetts: Lexington Books.
Stefanie Rinderle-Ma, S. S. (2009). Business Process Management. Springer.
Triplett, J. (2007, Feb 3). Considering organisational structure and design. Retrieved from Organisational performance: http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/mcn/pdf_files/part5_5.pdf
Widdicombe, C. (2001). A Practical Guide to Teamworking. Meetings That Work , 100-107.
