Factors influencing employee productivity
Discuss about the Enterprise Computing and Business Systems.
Today, there are many enterprises who restricts their productivity enrichment of their employees to the acquisition of skills and knowledge. Nevertheless, nearly 86% of the productivity and output problems resists inside the work environment of any business organizations. The workforce along with the work environment has an adverse effect on the total productivity and performance of the workers who work in an organization. The category of work environment where an employee’s work defines and concludes the way in which any organization prospers and gains success. The main objective of this report is to analyze the actual impact and effects of work environment on the productivity of workers in an organization (Lunenburg, 2011). There are many investigation conducted that stated that there are large number of factors that work both internally as well as externally in the work environment which affects the productivity of the employees. Employment policies also plays a major role in the labor productivity. It is because of the imperative for local governments at the federal and state levels in order to explore several ways of enhancing and developing infrastructural facilities and amenities so that proper work environment will be conducted which will automatically increase the productivity of the employees in a more effective and efficient manner (Baicker, Cutler and Song, 2010).
In addition to this, job along with the organizationally related factors and the policies related to environment must be taken into consideration by each employees who are responsible for it so that possible reviews can be done to improve the favorable productivity of the employees. Several test like T-test can be conducted in order to analyze such results based on the hypothesis. Favorable work environment helps an employee to work more and produce more. Improvement in the existing work environment and unsound working environment may decrease the productivity of any employee in an organization (Jiménez-Jiménez and Sanz-Valle, 2011).
Getting what various factors helps in stimulating and developing productivity is a preliminary to enhancing the performance of the employees in any organization. Over several years, many investigators have found that productivity is highly affected by some influencers and workers and employees are usually aware of the similar influencers. Identifying the particular productivity in any workplace can create opportunities for substantial productivity gains in any organizations. Since the last 2000s, the investigators at the workplace productivity has found inn consistent indicators (Rummler and Brache, 2012).
According to Koretz (1995), he quoted majorly four different key productivity factors that aims at creating low productivity among employee in an organization. These four factors includes:
- Insufficient regulation
- Employee participation in decision-making
- Heavy burden of work and its pressure
- Insufficient opportunities for rewards and motivation
Later in the year 2000, it was found by Leonard that fewer organizational administration, a higher sense of determination, effective communication, clear mission and goals, and able to view the results that are necessary for the productivity. Early investigators and researchers found that very few numbers of factors has a severe impact on the overall productivity of the employees in an organization (Wang and Wang, 2012).
According to Fleishman (1973), he identified majorly two crucial extents of the leadership behavior i.e. initiating structure and consideration. Here, initiating structure refers to the degree to which any leader manages and defines any segments or any relationships which aims at establishing communication channels and reduces gaps and also identifies many methods and ideas for the job accomplishment. Consideration refers to the extent of mutual understanding and trust, respect, warmth that take place between leaders and other employees in an organization. Fleishman concluded that consideration can also be defined as “the tolerance of the leader for two-way communications with the followers”. The contributions made by these investigators has led to related insights by many current and well known writers and authors. The role of the leaders in any organization or any workplace productivity was later emphasized in the year 1980s (Cancelliere, Cassidy, Ammendolia and Côté, 2011).
In a book named “In search of Excellence”, Peters and Waterman in the year 1982 focused on the role and impact of leadership in helping and providing assistance to the organization in order to gain success and achieve its desired goals and objectives. The author stated that, “what we found was that associated with almost every excellent company was a strong leader (or two) who seemed to have had a lot to do with making the company excellent in the first place”. So, in order to receive higher performance from the employees, they must be closely and highly involved in several aspects of the business activities and its operations. Every employees must be involved in any of the activities that will help in generating their interest in the organization as well as in the work. It was again found that centralized control in any organization usually causes disappointments and suboptimal enactment of the employees. So, an organization should basically follow the mantra of “organize small to win big” (Ilgen and Pulakos, 1999).
In the year 2002, Longnecker and Leffakis stated that there is one overriding factor that has led to enhancement in the overall productivity of the employees in a modern work environment. Both the author found that white-collar productivity enhancement needs great and effective leadership and managerial skills on a multiplicity of heads. Thus, it was concluded that leadership is one of the most crucial factor that effects the productivity of the employees in an organization or any work place. The society of the Human Resource Management stated that poor or unsound management is one of the principle cause of low productivity (Leblebici, 2012). An HR Focus study quoted that cited “streamlining procedures and improving communications” as a major to productivity enhancement. Inefficient scheduling of work and business structure by management is often followed by poor management leadership in representing and primary changes. These are the two major hindrances for low productivity majorly found in US companies. From the constant quality enhancement movement, it was found that there a link between quality improvement and productivity improvement. However, the improvement in the quality is linked directly to the increment in the overall productivity of the employees in any type of organization (García-Morales et al., 2012).
The concept of total quality management has resulted in the direct impact on the overall productivity improvement as well. There are many key elements that focuses on improving the productivity that includes institute training and development programs along with retraining activities, institute leadership activities, downfall barriers and obstacles that take place between employees and other staff areas, and drive our fear factors. It also happen that some of the employees working in an organization are scared because of which they fail to perform better. It signifies lack of confidence and fear to be wrong and punished. Robbing employees out of a chance in order to contribute to the company may also take place (Cherian and Jacob, 2013).
In the year 1991, Ryan and Oestreich, they stated that fear empowers productivity noting that employees might start to show some of the traits that include scarce of additional efforts, hiding mistakes and mishappenings, missing deadlines and budgets, poor skills to solve any major problem, lack of creativity, motivation factors and risk taking capacity (Chandrasekhar, 2011). Employees and workers’ productivity is highly rooted with the context of the mass production. So, the problems related to the productivity are majorly examined in this scope only. Service businesses are acknowledged as the fastest growing element of the economy in the entire world. Productivity of the employees defines whether the overall activity of the organization is effective or not (Katzenbach and Smith, 2015). It also aims at measuring the effectiveness of the organization. Although, the words productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness are interchanged and used combinly and some researchers also use those words in place of one another (Appelbaum, 2013). Nevertheless, it can be highly stated that these terms are totally different but dependent on each other. Productivity needs efficiency and effectiveness. Any specific activity may not be productive if it is only efficient but bot effective or effective but not efficient. So, these three are equally important for any organizations. Those organization which aims at delivering services should widen their examination of efficiency from the conventional organization oriented view, which include productivity of employee to a dual organization i.e. customer view. The wider concept will support to reduce the conflicts and problems between enhancing quality of services and improving productivity of the employees. Consumers are generally involved in activities that aims at providing few amount of input in the form of time, physical efforts and mental efforts as well. Employee productivity denotes the total amount of goods and services which an employee generates in an allotted time (Anitha, 2014).
Thus, it can be summarized that the performance of the employees totally depends on the workplace environment. It is the responsibility of an employee to use scarce resources to give the maximum output. In addition to this, poor supervision is the crucial factor for the low productivity and happy employees are considered to be productive employees.
References
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