Factors influencing group effectiveness
The importance of managing an effective team has increased between corporations because it enables them to achieve their targets. An effective team embraces the cultural diversity between team members and it takes groups conflicts as a positive option to increase the quality of the team (Klotz & Neubaum 2016). Dominos has creates a loyal fan base due to its efficient services and quality food which have been achieved due to effectiveness of its employees. The corporation has announced that it is hiring more employees to increase the number of stores in Australia and New Zealand and it is also increasing the salary packages for employees.
The case study highlighted that the organisation wanted to hire employees through its centralised recruitment website which can be used by both franchisees and corporate stores. The company wanted to use its positive market reputation to hire employees for its new stores. This report will evaluate key factors that influence group effectiveness to create a list of selection criteria for team members of Dominos. Three selection methods which can be used by Dominos will be discussed in the report along with different leadership styles which ensure cultural appropriate by embracing diversity among employees. How group conflicts influence the performance of employees and the corporation will be evaluated in the report and recommendations will be made for Dominos to address these issues.
Answer no. 1 Factors influencing group effectiveness
An effective team works together to achieve common organisational goals. The team members continuously strive for achieving these targets, and they achieve them by working collaboratively. Following are various key elements which can assist a team in becoming more efficient and effectiveness which is important for the corporation.
Trust
All the team members must have trust in each other, and they must believe on other members. A team without trust could not work properly because, in many situations, the team members have to rely on each other for support which is not possible if the members did not trust each other (De Jong, Dirks & Gillespie 2016).
Cohesive
An effective team is cohesive, and all its members perform their operations with collaboration. The team members have a comfortable relationship with each other based on which they are able to work collaboratively.
Division of work
An effective team properly divide work between its members after evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. The division of work should not put pressure on a single member; an appropriate balance should be maintained between the works so that every member can work as per their strengths.
List of team-member selection criteria
Disputes
It is common for team members to have dispute due to difference in opinions, however, an effective team avoids escalation of these disputes and resolve them before they hinder the relationship of team members (Dakin et al. 2015). The disputes between team members should be resolved within reasonable time, and they should not affect the relationship between team members.
List of team-member selection criteria
Following are various characteristics which should be identified by Dominos while hiring new employees.
- Truthfulness
- Positive behaviour
- Ability to handle pressure at work
- Strong work ethics
- Self-motivated
- Dependable
Dominoids must have these traits to ensure that they are able to build a team which is highly effective. These factors will ensure that the new employees are able to trust each other, and they are able to work cohesively. They must have the ability to handle the dispute without taking it personally.
Answer no. 2
Selection method for team members
Centralised recruitment website
Dominos has introduced a centralised recruitment website which can be used by the company along with its franchisees and corporate stores. This website can be accessed by job candidates who wanted to join Dominos. This website can be accessed by job applicants who want to join the company. Moreover, the franchisees and the corporate stores can also recommend the website to those who wanted to join the organisation. Due to its positive market reputation, the corporation will be able to attract qualified candidates for its jobs which will enable them to build an effective team (Melanthiou, Pavlou & Constantinou 2015).
Interviews
The corporation can also rely on traditional methods and decide to interview candidates who walk in the corporation for the job. Firstly, the corporation should specific criteria for the candidates who can apply for the interview before setting up the interviews. By conducting one-on-one interview, the human resource managers will be able to identify whether the job candidate is suitable for the job and whether he/she will assist the company in building an effective team.
Social media campaign
Dominos can rely on its positive online image to attract new candidate for its job. The corporation has a large number of online fans who wanted to work for the company. The corporation can advertise on websites such as Facebook and Twitter to engage with a large number of people (Gates & Podder 2015). The corporation can also accept their job applications directly from the social media sites which will enable them to evaluate the applications of candidates before inviting them for the interview to avoid wasting time. This is a relatively cheaper option as well for recruitment of candidates.
Selection method for team members
Answer no. 3
Leadership styles which embrace diversity
There are various leadership styles which can be adopted by the leaders of Dominos to ensure cultural appropriateness while managing a culturally diverse workforce which enables them to achieve organisational effectiveness.
- Servant: This leadership approach is different than compared to traditional methods of managing employees. As per this approach, the leaders primarily focus on the needs of employees before other stakeholders requirements (Spears & Lawrence 2016). They take business decisions to serve them based on which they also embrace the difference between their cultures. Leaders that adopt this leadership approach are more likely to implement policies to cater to the cultural needs of employees which embrace workplace diversity and build a strong relationship between the members and employees.
- Strategic leadership: These leaders focus on building strategic policies to address the issues relating to the employees, and they are good at handling a wide audience (Covin & Slevin 2017). In order to promote diversity, these leaders implementing strategic policies to evaluate the issues faced by employees from different cultures and implement policies to embrace diversity by eliminating discrimination from the workplace.
- Transformational: These leaders have a particular vision for the organisation, and they inspire other members. These leaders set an example of how to treat employees who are from different cultural backgrounds to ensure that they are not left out, or they did not feel like outsiders (Tepper et al. 2018). These leaders transform as per the changes in different cultures to avoid offending employees and building a strong bond with them.
- Authentic: This is a popular leadership approach which is selected by leaders across the globe when they wanted to embrace diversity policies. These leaders are authentic, and they focus on providing appropriate values to employees so that they can build strong relationships with them (Leroy et al. 2015). This leadership system can assist Dominos in managing its culturally diverse workforce.
Answer no. 4
Impact of group conflicts
Group conflicts are key factors which negatively affect the performance of individual and teams which resulted in reducing the profitability of the entire corporation. The nature of group conflicts is negative, and it is a major factor in workplace stress. Following are different ways in which groups conflicts resulted in increasing workplace stress and adversely affecting the performance of individuals, teams and the organisation.
Decrease in productivity
Workplace conflicts did not only affect the members who are involved in those conflicts, instead, it creates a hostile working environment for everyone. It becomes difficult for employees to perform with high productivity, and they are more likely to focus on conflicts rather than achieving their targets. Employees who belong to similar group form a cult against other members due to which the performance of each member hinders (Hauser et al. 2017). It decreases the performance of an entire team even if a conflict arises between two or more team members.
Mental pressure
The conflicts which arise between employees due to difference in diversity issues resulted in creating mental pressure on employees. They feel like they are psychologically trapped, and they did not have any other options. They feel tremendous pressure on a psychological level which adversely affects their performance, and it could lead to suicidal tendencies among employees, overweight, increase use of alcohol and others.
Violence
Many times, disputes raised based on cultural factors escalates due to the lack of mediation which resulted in violence between employees. Many times employees use violence to resolve their issues which makes the workplace an unsafe place where no one wanted to work (Hsiao, Auld & Ma 2015). It results in breaking a team as well because no one wanted to work with employees who use violence.
Employee turnover
The productivity of the organisation suffers due to conflicts between employees; however, employee turnover is another factor which resulted in increasing challenges for corporations due to cultural disputes. The attrition rate of employee increases which lead to high employee turnover which is negative for both the organisation and its teams.
Answer no. 5
Recommendations
In order to address diversity relating issues and embracing cultural differences, Dominos can comply with the following suggestions.
Leadership styles for cultural diversity
Communication strategy
One of the key issues of group conflicts in organisation based on cultural factors is lack of communication channels between the employees and the management. The employees have the option to disclose their issues to the management, and they should listen to their challenges as well (Trittin & Schoeneborn 2017). Employees must have encouraged by the management to disclose the issues which they faced in the company. It will assist the management to implement policies for addressing the issues faced by employees to avoid them in the future and build strong relationship between workers.
Implementing diversity policies
Dominos deal with a diverse workforce; therefore, it should implement diversity policies in the corporation to handle issues of difference between cultures of employees. These diversity policies should provide guidelines for how employees should act in the workplace to embrace workplace. Appropriate provisions for punishing those employees who violate these policies should be included in the diversity policies as well.
Training sessions
The corporation should increase information regarding different cultures in the workplace by conducting training sessions on diversity management. In these sessions, the employees and the managers should be taught how to become more culturally appropriate to ensure that the employees did not face challenges due to difference in their cultural backgrounds.
Culture awareness
The leaders of Dominos should raise awareness regarding difference between the cultural backgrounds of employees in the workplace. This strategy will assist the employees and managers to avoid stereotyping, and they will learn about factors about the cultural factors of employees. It will enable them to avoid conflicts by mistakenly offending employees due to their cultural differences.
Conclusion
Conclusively, in order to successfully expand its operations in Australia and New Zealand; Dominos should focus on effectively managing its teams. The company should carefully hire employees to ensure that they have the abilities and knowledge to work with high productivity which will assist the company in increasing its productivity. The corporation can choose different selection methods such as centralised recruitment system, interviews and social media campaign. Different leadership approaches can be adopted by Dominos to manage diversity such as servant, strategic leadership, transformational and authentic.
Conflicts which arise due to cultural factors result in decreasing the productivity of employees which leads to decrease in productivity, mental pressure, increased employee turnover and violence. To address these issues, the corporation can implement diversity policies, raise cultural awareness, implement communication strategy and establish training sessions for employees. These suggestions will result in assisting Dominos in effectively managing its diverse workforce while increasing their productivity.
Reference List
Covin, JG & Slevin, DP, 2017, ‘The entrepreneurial imperatives of strategic leadership’, Strategic entrepreneurship: Creating a new mindset, pp. 307-327.
Dakin, H, Devlin, N, Feng, Y, Rice, N, O’Neill, P & Parkin, D, 2015, ‘The influence of cost?effectiveness and other factors on nice decisions’, Health economics, vol. 24, no. 10, pp. 1256-1271.
De Jong, BA, Dirks, KT & Gillespie, N, 2016, ‘Trust and team performance: A meta-analysis of main effects, moderators, and covariates’, Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 101, no. 8, p. 1134.
Gates, S & Podder, S, 2015, ‘Social media, recruitment, allegiance and the Islamic State’, Perspectives on Terrorism, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 107-116.
Hauser, W, Petzke, F, Kopp, I & Nothacker, M, 2017, ‘Impact of conflicts of interest on guideline recommendations: Empirical study within the second update of the German interdisciplinary S3 guidelines on fibromyalgia syndrome’, Schmerz (Berlin, Germany), vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 308-318.
Hsiao, A, Auld, C & Ma, E, 2015, ‘Perceived organizational diversity and employee behavior’, International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 48, pp. 102-112.
Klotz, AC & Neubaum, DO, 2016, ‘Article Commentary: Research on the Dark Side of Personality Traits in Entrepreneurship: Observations from an Organizational Behavior Perspective’, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 7-17.
Leroy, H, Anseel, F, Gardner, WL & Sels, L, 2015, ‘Authentic leadership, authentic followership, basic need satisfaction, and work role performance: A cross-level study’, Journal of Management, vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 1677-1697.
Melanthiou, Y, Pavlou, F & Constantinou, E, 2015, ‘The use of social network sites as an e-recruitment tool’, Journal of Transnational Management, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 31-49.
Spears, LC & Lawrence, M, 2016, Practicing servant-leadership: Succeeding through trust, bravery, and forgiveness, John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey.
Tepper, BJ, Dimotakis, N, Lambert, LS, Koopman, J, Matta, FK, Man Park, H & Goo, W, 2018, ‘Examining Follower Responses to Transformational Leadership from a Dynamic, Person–Environment Fit Perspective’, Academy of Management Journal, vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 1343-1368.
Trittin, H & Schoeneborn, D, 2017, ‘Diversity as polyphony: Reconceptualizing diversity management from a communication-centered perspective’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 144, no. 2, pp. 305-322.