Using Job Demand-Control Theory To Solve Business Problems At Gallifrey Inc.

Overview of Literature

Solve a business problem using a theoretical framework informed by empirical academic studies.

An organisation is not only a place to work; it is a good source of networking and building new contacts as well (Jacobs et al. 2018). The management of a company is always concerned about meeting objectives. Especially for companies with lower amount of staffs, it is important to ensure that all the employees must work together on order to deliver better and more structured results (Naseem, 2018). The management then focuses on implementing more ways to make this plan work and generate more interaction and collaboration among the workers (Hayes, 2018). The CEO of Gallifrey Inc. also thought the same and implemented Open Plan Office to make sure the interaction among the employees increase and results into more effectiveness in meeting organisational objectives. But it seemed like it did not go down well with most of the employees. In this report, the situation will be assessed further and treated with suitable recommendations to solve the current issues.

Gallifrey Inc. is renowned, multi-award winning, full service creative agency comprising of 19 staff members. The company is 10 years old and the studio headquarter is located in Brisbane. They particularly serve clients from Melbourne and Sydney. The services they provide are brand identity, digital services, graphic design, media services like brand strategy and digital identity through to all printed and digital media requirements. The creative works produced by Gallifrey Inc. is something which connects the clients to the key stakeholders. Gallifrey Inc. is able to work with clients on one basic component for branding and or business requirements or to develop an entire marketing plan and implement the strategy across all platforms. The company is yielding good revenue and CEO is focused on increasing the productivity through effective collaboration among different departments. Hence, Open Plan Office concept is adopted by the CEO as a part of change management and the layout of the offices is changed entirely. Here, separate offices are all merged into a single large one with all the departments working together. While some employees are enjoying the new environment, the new change did not go down well with most of the employees as they are citing issues like privacy, noise and distraction.

To evaluate the business problems further Job Demand-Control Theory (JDC) by Karasek can be considered. This theory deals with the dissatisfaction in workplace generating from job stress (Yang et al. 2018). Job stress can result in occupational health deterioration. Work environment factors like time pressures, reaction time required, interruption rate, conflicting demands, proportion of work performed under pressure, pace of work, degree of concentration required, amount of work, and the slow-down of work caused by the need to wait for others (Madsen et al. 2018). This model represents a function of the demand level of a person’s job and the amount of control that individual is having over own responsibilities (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017). The important aspects of this model are mentioned hereby-

• Decision latitude refers to the control of employees over their jobs and the execution process of the same.
• Decision authority refers to decision-making ability of the employees regarding their own job and their ability to influence the work team and other general company policies.
• Skill discretion refers to the degree to which different tasks, low levels of repetitiveness, occasions for creativity and opportunities to develop special abilities through learning new things are involved to the job (Abbas and Raja, 2018).

Methods and Results

In accordance to this theory, four kinds of jobs can be created: passive, active, low strain and high strain (Hashim et al. 2017).

P – High strain (Low Latitude, High Strain)

A – Passive (Low Latitude, Low Strain)

E – Active (High Latitude, High Strain)

I – Low strain (High Latitude, Low Strain)

Every company has two most important attributes which are demand and control. Both should be in right proportion according to the capabilities and skills of the employees (Cooper, 2018). The Job Demand-Control Theory suggests that the employees who experience low demand and high amount of control are the ones having least job stress. Whereas, the employees who experience high demand and low amount of control are the ones having the most job stress (Wood et al. 2018). The current changes made at the office premises of Gallifrey Inc. had a negative impact on most of the employees as they are considering it as a factor which can make them less productive at workplace. As no personal offices are there, employees are left with working in cubes in a single large room. Here, the employees who are not happy with the change are the most stressed ones as they cannot control this situation also they work in reputed posts like project managers and barristers, thus they deal with immense work pressure. The demand being high and control over actions being low, most of the people are not happy with the changed work scenario. However, design team seems happy enough as their entire work revolves around creativity and more interaction will result into more interesting events, giving them plenty of ideas. Also, the admin staffs are happy, especially the newly recruited ones, as they will be getting more opportunities to get to know other co-workers and also learn from old employees. As for the unhappy employees, the work environment does not fit their requirements (as per as person-environment fit model), resulting into work stress.

The research objective is finding the issues which are creating negativity in office environment and to assess whether these issues are related to the newly implemented changes in the office premises. The research involved a number of questions which are-

• How much satisfied the employees of Gallifrey Inc. are with their current job?
• If not, what are the potential causes?
• Are these reasons related to the new change implemented?
• Is the change management of Open Plan Office effective to increase productivity?
• If not, what are the potential reasons?

Qualitative Analysis can be described as securities analysis where subjective judgement is used based on unquantifiable information like industry cycles, management expertise, labour relations, strength of research and development. Qualitative Analysis deals with intangible, inexact concerns belonging to the experiential and social domain (Du et al. 2018). This approach basically covers matters like management trustworthiness, customer satisfaction, positive brand association, cultural shifts and competitive advantage which cannot be acquired through numerical outputs generated by machines (Gaber and Gaber, 2018). Here, an interview procedure is generated among five chosen employees of different ages, gender and departments to obtain deeper understanding regarding the subject matter, in the given context of the increasing imbalance in the Gallifrey Inc. office resulting from change management practice adopted by the CEO of the company.

With the help of the interview session conducted on 5 employees of Gallifrey Inc. who are a 35 year old male designer, a 22 year old female admin assistant, a 34 year old female designer, a 52 year old male IP barrister and a 42 year old male project manager, some relevant and impactful information has been extracted which is helpful in finding suitable solution to the rising dissatisfaction among few workers. At first, a number of participants were selected for the interview belonging to various departments and age groups. Then a date was fixed to conduct the semi-structured interview based on the convenience of all the participants, in a way that their work would not be hampered. The interview type was onsite which lasted for 20 minutes each and was conducted in the same day, as a group discussion would not be able to extract the most relevant and honest opinions of the employees. Accuracy and relevance of the information is much required to evaluate the problem and construct suitable solution for the same (Schnall et al. 2018). The findings from this interview session is given below-

As it can be said that the number of happy employees are less and the change management practice of Open Plan Office is not effective to fulfil the purpose of increased productivity, at least as of now. The employees have cited their reasons; the primary reason seems like the distraction being caused by the noise. The source of the noise is generally loud conversations among design team members, phone calls made by admin staffs, discussion over irrelevant topics like TV serials and others like loud keyboard typing sound, laughing sounds vice versa.

From the above research it can be assessed that the latest change in work environment at Gallifrey Inc. did not go down well with most of the employees. Some employees are hiding their dissatisfaction, some are vocal about it and some chose to quit the job and join another company. The generation of more interaction among the employees and increasing productivity was the key motive of the CEO, but seems like most of the employees were happy in their own private spaces. Although the design team is happy as their work is creative and interaction makes it flourish. Thus, the situation should be handled tactfully before more employees leave the organisation and workplace conflicts starts to take place (Mark and Smith, 2018). But it is known, problems must have solutions as well (Holman et al. 2018). In the data extracted from the interview, it is found that employees are having their own kind of solutions for these problems. The suggested solutions are-

1. Holding up signs when the ambience become too much noisy and starts hampering one’s concentration.
2. Implementing office etiquette through certain well-defined rules about being polite at workplace.
3. Shifting admin staff to another section so that other employees are not affected by their continuous phone calls.
4. Enabling work from home facility for those who wants it.
5. Last but not the least, bringing back the old office environment and give back the previously allotted offices for particular departments or persons.

After thorough assessment and evaluation of the given situation in Gallifrey Inc. it can be said that going back to the old office infrastructure is the best way to combat this problem. As the company was making incredible progress under the previous infrastructure, with high level of employee satisfaction, the CEO should re-think about the new change in office. As couple of months are already passed, it cannot be said that everyone will be accustomed to the new change in some time. Time could not abolish the issues the employees are facing after the implementation of Open Office Plan. Thus, this new change management approach should be removed from Gallifrey Inc. to bring back the old happy days of the employees. Employees are pillars of an organisation and the organisation should ensure proper working environment for them (Bharathi and Rajan, 2018). Troublesome changes should be immediately revised to make sure employee satisfaction is at peak. Employee satisfaction is directly related to customer satisfaction, hence, the employees should get back the office ambience which they loved working in. For interactions, company can arrange weekend get-together for the employees to relax and get to know their co-workers well.

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