Below are a number of scenarios that you either have, or will, deal with in the

Question

Below are a number of scenarios that you either have, or will, deal with in the workplace and relationships with your fellow workers. Tell us how you would address each. Think “outside the box” and remember this week the focus is Human Resource Management and teams! PLEASE DO NOT PLAGIARIZE!

Managing Innovation: Your ideas never seem to get anywhere because of bureaucracy and an aversion to risk. How can you persuade other people that new ideas are not always dangerous and can actually be of use to your organization?

Conflict in the workplace: Two of your team-mates are constantly provoking each other and complaining about the others work and behavior. You need to resolve this before it flares up and starts to impact on other staff in the office. What can you do?

Using jargon in the workplace: You have been told that you use too much jargon at work. Isn’t jargon a way of showing you understand your job? Now what?

Managing performance: You have a member of your staff who is starting to miss their targets. What can you do to improve their performance? And oh-by-the-way, this staff member is a good friend. Careful here, because everyone else is watching to see what you do!

Explanation / Answer

Managing Innovation:

Every organisation has a set way of doing things that it has been doing right from its inception. There are people who resists change. Reasons for avoiding changes or trying new ideas can be different for different organisations. Most common reason is the fear of uncertainty. People are not sure whether the new ideas will work or not. Like people, organisations also have comfort zones where there are less risks, streamlined processes, and certainty in market demands. In a bureaucratic environment, it becomes all the more difficult to bring changes and push fresh ideas. This is because of vertical organisational structure, the flow of ideas is constrained from bottom to top of the hierarchy. Employees who have less authority, often cannot convince the top management to implement their ideas.

In any organisation, if you have to convince people to take risks and implement new systems, it is important for you to tell them the possible outcomes of every action and the probability associated with those outcomes. In one of my previous organisations, it seemed difficult for me to communicate and convince to the top management to try out and extend to a new product category. Being a bank, it was unimaginable for them to extend to products relating to mobile wallets, payment systems, etc. The management believed that it involved risk and customers might get confused because of multiple offerings of the bank. I gave them the example of how successful innovations and new technologies have changed the lives of people. There are new companies that are now market leaders today, these companies didn’t even existed a decade or two decades back. For example, Uber, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. All these companies have such a huge impact on our day to day lives and it is meaningful for companies to be innovative in their approach of doing things. In this way, I was able to communicate and implement my ideas and later they turned out to be highly beneficial for the organisation.

Conflict in the workplace:

In workplace conflicts, its important for people to get involved in the conflicts, ofcourse in a positive manner and resolve them as soon as possible before it starts affecting the other staff in the office, thereby, bringing negative energy in the workplace environment. Although, there are people who do not want to get associated with any kind of conflicts which is also fair enough, but avoiding tough situations and avoiding facing them may have even more serious and long term implications for the organisation. Below discussed are few methods that should be utilised to resolve conflict in the workplace.

- Listening to both of the team mates and trying to understand the points of concern for both of them. The process may involve having one-to-one communication with each of them. By understanding their issues with the system or with each other, the conflict can be resolved.

- Involving other stakeholders of the team/project/organisation that have direct work relation with the two team mates.

- Working on the solution to resolve the issues identified that are acting as obstacles in the day-to-day functioning of the team.

- Engaging the whole team in numerous team building activities that have a positive impact on the team synergy .

- Creating a healthy workplace environment and promoting open communication where the opinions and ideas of all the team members are listened and valued.

Using jargon in the workplace:

It is very natural and common for employees of every organisation, every industry to use jargons, important key words related to their field and area of work. Although, some colleagues and managers may appreciate the use of such words on a day-to-day basis by their peers and sub-ordinates. There are organisations that does not encourage the usage of language that is difficult to understand by majority of the team members and thus, results in ineffective communication. There are employees who might say that the usage of jargons is unintentional and it simply shows that they understand their job, their industry and their domain of work better and thus, are able to use these high-level words more conveniently.

If in my organisation, I was told that I use too many jargons and I should refrain from using them in routine communication, I would have taken it in a positive manner and would have respectfully appreciated and acknowledged it. That’s because, not everyone in the organisation have the same level of skill set, knowledge and communication skills to comprehend and understand jargons. This may act as a hinderance to effective communication in the organisation. The less skilled people would hesitate in opening up and sharing their ideas due to their inability to use jargons and keywords thus, affecting the growth of the organisation.

Managing performance:

“Empathy” plays an important role in the organisations. All the colleagues, staff members, seniors and juniors should be empathetic to each other. Empathy means to feel and relate with one another’s experience and emotions. Every team has good performing, average performing and poor performing people and for a team to succeed, it requires the leader to be empathetic towards his all types of people that is, good, average and poor.

As a team member, I would have been empathetic to my friend if he is not performing well and missing his targets. In order to improve his performance, it is important for me to understand what are the obstacles that he is facing. Is their any particular problem area because of which his performance is getting affected and he is not able to produce the desired results? After identifying the pain points, it is necessary to help him resolve those issues. Once his problems will be resolved, he will be automatically able to perform at his earlier efficiency. Therefore, it is valuable for employees to have empathy towards their co-workers.

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