Front line employees are regarded as individuals who have a direct interaction with public or organization customers (Baum, 2006). These individuals may include call center staff, help desk staff, service-desk staff, or customer service staff. These employees are constantly associated with limited motivation, excessive workloads, little or no career growth, and minimal performance rewards. Supervisors link front line employees with the management team of an organization. As such, there is a necessity for supervisors and front line employees to collaborate in their job roles in order to attain organization success, as well as attain an effective working environment.
Supervisors interact with employees directly. As such, supervisors have a role to play in the process of enhancing attainment of order within the workplace. This is because supervisors constantly act as a link between organization hierarchy and employees. On the same note, supervisors need to understand the experiences of employees while in the work environment. This enhances attainment of solid relationships with employees and eases the supervision work. Moreover, front line employees are motivated to ensure that the interest of customers and the organization are kept at 100 percent. Therefore, effective and efficient supervision in an organization leads to attainment of success of such an organization.
Unpleasant working environment is easily attained in cases where there is a disconnection between supervisors and employees (Baum, 2006). This occurs since the supervisors have a limitation in comprehending challenges, which employees undergo while in the work place. Further, employees lack the desired motivation of encouraging them to improve on their individual level performance in order to attain organization excellence. On the same note, the communication pattern between supervisors and employees is always broken, which makes it difficult to share knowledge and information on the organization. This creates a poor working environment where parties rarely interact and there is no mutual trust among individuals. This depicts that the organization culture is also negatively impacted by such a situation. Consequently, employees’ needs are poorly addressed, and employees are never motivated to work. As such, the organization is not able to attain success in terms of improving on its performance output.
According to Stiffler (2007), front line employees experience job stress as a result of poor management style, ineffective interpersonal relationships, poor design of tasks, and conflicting job roles. This illustrates that supervisors have to ensure that they interact with employees in order to create an effective social environment, which aids in stress management among these employees. Further, supervisors have to ensure that employees are assigned tasks, which they have personal abilities and capabilities to complete them effectively. This should also focus on the elimination of the possibility of overloading these employees with job responsibilities. Moreover, supervisors have to engage these employees in the decision-making process in order to ensure that these employees feel valued. In addition, engagement of the employees in the decision-making process makes them develop a perspective that they have to implement the decisions. This leads to attainment of success in the organization.
Human beings have a psychological development, which recognizes authority or power as a negative element. This depicts that the inability of supervisors to collaborate with front line employees results in the creation of a gap between such employees and supervisors. As such, supervisors have a limitation in managing employee conflict, as well as personal problems, which may emerge in the work place. This results in attainment of negative results in the overall performance of an organization.
This kind of perception is also developed among supervisors whereby most of them think that they have a role of delegating and controlling activities, which take place in an organization. As such, supervisors tend to command and boss everybody who is junior to them, and regard such employees as people who have no power in the organization. The result of this kind of supervision is the development of a power distance between supervisors and employees. The gap created intensifies to such levels that there is minimal communication, knowledge sharing and transfer, and interaction between employees and supervisors. This indicates that the possibility of development of a conflict among employees and supervisors is very high, in the organization.
However, the negative mindset among supervisors in their performance of job roles may be changed by having an effective and successful supervisors meeting, which main agenda is the exercise of power in the organization. This meeting should focus on training supervisors on the importance of respecting employees and performing their duties effectively in order to attain success in the organization.
Supervisors and employees also have a role to play in creating an effective organization culture, which enhances attainment of a productive working environment. In this, both parties have to develop interest on the need of having mutual trust in performance of their job roles in organizations. Moreover, both parties have to engage constantly in the organization functions in order to ensure that they develop fruitful relationships, which enhances effective interaction. Such relationships will aid in motivating employees to perform well in their job roles with an aim of attaining success in the organization. However, the management team of the organization needs to focus on altering the established hierarchy of communication in order to ensure that communication channels are open and effective. This will result in attainment of a successful knowledge sharing and information transfer, which will contribute towards the improvement of the organization performance.
Further, supervisors need to ensure that front line employees feel valued in the organization. This may involve an expression of simple words “Thank You” (Beardwell, & Claydon, 2007). Such expression makes employees feel valued and take customer and organization as the main interest of working. Nevertheless, employees also need to show their supervisors that they value them. This acts as the beginning of creating relationships and effective interactions between employees and supervisors.
Finally, it is essential for supervisors to empower employees in the organization. This is because empowered employees have the ability to boost their independent motivation, which encourages them to perform their tasks effectively. This also makes employee have a strong desire of improving their production in the organization. The empowering process of employees may involve granting employees’ authority, enabling employees to make decisions on their own, authorizing employees to acquire resources, and recognizing the status of employees among others. This aids in enhancing creativity among employees and relieving stress.
In conclusion, front line employees are a vital asset in an organization, which demands effective utilization in order to attain organization mission, goals, and objectives. This is because these employees deal with key stakeholders (customers) of the organization. As such, supervisors have to work with these employees in order to create an effective working environment, which aids the employees to improve their performance and motivating them in their production.
References
Baum, T. (2006). Human Resource Management for Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure: an
International Perspective. ISBN: 1844801969. Cengage Learning EMEA.
Beardwell, J. & Claydon, T. (2007). Human Resource Management: a contemporary
approach (5th Ed). London: Prentice Hall.
Stiffler, K. (2007). Direct Support Staff Perceptions of Frontline Supervisor’s Skills:
Correlation with Organizational Commitment and Intent to Leave. ISBN:
0549178201. ProQuest.
