IMPORTANCE OF TEAM WORK IN ORGANIZATIONS

'

Teamwork simply defined as a state of unity achieved within a group of people working for a specific economic benefit (Amin, 2011). Teamwork in an organization basically used to define the coordination and corporation between members. "A team is a small number of people with complementary sills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable'. In addition to that, regular communication, coordination, distinctive roles, and shared norms are also important features.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL WORK AND TEAMWORK

Siddique (2015) stated the difference between individual and teamwork as follows,

INDIVIDUAL WORK	TEAM WORK
Work on tasks	Shared responsibility
Work on revised tasks	Better problem solving
Research / developing	Stronger relationships
Networking	Agree on goals / milestones
	Communicate / process monitoring

According to Reddy (2020), there are several factors which help to make team a success. Some of them are,

• Clear understanding of team mission.
• Commitment towards goals
• Predefined roles and responsibilities
• Proper decision making process
• Productive group working process

ADVANTAGES OF TEAMWORK

• 
  Creativity and learning
• Idea generation
• Sharing the workload
• Brings various personality types
• Boost productivity
• Strong work ethics and team spirit

CONCLUSION-

The present day organization assign role to the individuals in a way that they inter related and interdependent upon each other. These interactions of people in small groups bring forth an important question of team work. Team members who participate in successful, effective teams may actually get more in the long run (Sharma, 2012). When done well, teams can bring a lot of good things to an organization. When done poorly, they can sap motivation out of an organization faster than almost anything else. Ineffective teams are a bad sign for the future of an organization.

REFERENCES-

Amin . B (2011) .Importance of teamwork in business.

Reddy. C (2020). Advantages and disadvantages of working in a team.

Sharma. R (2012). Effective and Efficient team work: Making things happen more than anything in working organization

Siddique, S. (2015) Team Building Presentation. Available at,

https://www.slideshare.net/SUSiddiqui/team-building-presentation-49109142

Top 11 benefits of  teamwork in workplace. Available at,

https://blog.proofhub.com/top-11-benefits-of-teamwork-in-workplace-24a55b8ab46e

MANAGING EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCES

Performance management is used as an indicator to support decisions related to strategic planning, succession planning, training and career development, compensation and benefits, promotion, transfers or even termination of employment. This ensures the employees are received with a specific performance target and monitor whether it is being achieved as expected. Performance management is the process of creating a work environment or setting in which people are enabled to perform to the best of their abilities (Heathfeild, 2020).

• Factors which helps for a better performance management-

1.  Clear job descriptions. 
2.  Recruit potential employees and select the best among the market.
3. Hold multiple additional meetings, as needed, to get to know your candidates' strengths, weaknesses, and abilities to contribute what you need. Use potential employee testing and assignments where they make sense for the position that you are filling.
4. Select candidates using a comprehensive selection process.
5.  Provide effective new employee orientation and integrate new employee into the organization and its culture.
6. Provide ongoing education and training when needed. “It is about individual attention that caters to an employee’s needs, allowing them to significantly improve their skills and aptitudes and consequently increase their performance” (Clapon, 2014).
7. Provide on-going feedback.
8. Differentiating compensation is required so that “employee pay is meaningfully different across levels of performance and results confirm that this practice links closely with outperformance” (Chowdhury et al., 2018).
9. Design effective compensation and recognition systems that reward people for their ongoing contributions.
10. Provide promotional / career development opportunities including transfers and lateral moves.

Many companies are nowadays changing techniques of performance management for the better. Such change was done by General Electric by converting their once a year review process into a motivating way to guide employees. “GE managers and employees still meet once a year, but it is now a meeting with true purpose and employees future goals: to help with regular feedback the innovation giant is launching its own in-house performance app to help facilitate everyday regular feedback” (Heller, 2017).

References-

Chowdhury, et al., (2018). Harnessing the power of performance management. [online] McKinsey & Company. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/harnessing-the-power-of-performance-management [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019].

Clapon, P. (2014). 10 Must-dos to manage day-to-day employee performance. [online] Hppy. Available at: https://gethppy.com/employee-engagement/10-must-dos-manage-day-day-employee-performance [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019].

Heller, M. (2017). 6 Effective Performance Review Examples from the Best Companies | Blog. [online] iRevü. Available at: https://irevu.me/blog/6-effective-performance-review-examples-best-companies/ [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019].

Susan, H. (2020) .Performance Management . Available at:

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/performance-management-1918226#components-of-a-performance-management-system

BALANCING OF WORK AND LIFE SPECIALLY IN FEMALE EMPLOYEES

Work-life balance concept started in 19^th century with the workers’ Union campaign against the long working hours. In earlier 20^th century , workers demanded for various liabilities such as maximum working hours. Later, in 1980, organizations started to promote more family friendly working policies in order to attract employees. Though these working comforts were implemented focusing on women workers initially, companies offered those family friendly work advantages to male workers as well. Those family friendly work policies had telecommuting & flexible scheduling.

During the initial stage of work-life balance concept it contained protect family life in competitive workplace & career focused society. But at present work-life balance concept has broad indicators such as health & safety at work, equality, labor market flexibility & international competitiveness. (Syed, 2015). 

According to the UK labor market statics 43% of the female workers are employed in part time jobs where as only 13% male workers are engaged in part time jobs. (ONS, 2012) By looking at the fact we can define that the female workers are more concern about work-life balance.

Thomas (2013) suggested that the biggest problem is work-life balance is time pressure. Time pressure is the difficulty faced by the employee to manage both official work & home work. Thomas named the said issue as Work-family conflict. Most of the time women employees are getting affected by the work-family conflict. Women employees would get frustrated when they failed to manage their time. Hence most of the women choose to do a part time or a seasonal job to have more work flexibility.

Due to competition and increasing cost of living, most of women also engage in different type of jobs. Some of them continues their duty for more than 8 to 10 hours. These type of jobs are very stressful and used to add an additional pressure on employee. To reduce the pressure , most of companies in Sri Lanka including government and private sector give alternative options specially for female employees to balance their work - life. Some of them are ,

•         Paid maternity leave for 84 days. If a government female employee, she can apply for no pay leave after paid 84 days.
•         Fe eding hours for women who has children below 12 months.
•         Medical reimbursements for parents/ children / spouse
•         Compulsory 7 days annual leave .

These helps female employees to carry out a balanced work- life since majority of household work are done be female.

References

ONS (Office for National Statistics) 2012. Gender Working Patterns.

Felstead, A., Jewson, N., Phizacklea, A. and Walters, S. 2002. Opportunities to work at home in the context of work–life balance, Human Resource Management Journal, 12: 54–76.

Syed, J. (2015).Work-life balance. Managing Diversity and Inclusion: An International Perspective, pp.291-314. London: Sage.

Thomas, K.C. 2013. Work–Life Balance: A Sociological Study of Women Professionals in Kerala. Kerala: Mahatma Gandhi University.

DIVERSITY OF WORKFORCE

 

Workforce diversity can be identified as the similarities and differences between employees in terms of physical capabilities and disabilities, race, religion, age, social backgrounds, gender, and sexual orientation (Saxenaa, 2014). And also, no two humans are alike and people are different not only in above psychological characteristics but also in their perspectives and prejudices and in current scenario, employing diversified workforce is necessary for every organization but to manage such diversified workforce has become a big challenge.

Workforce diversity is a major concern for most of the businesses today since organizations need to understand and go through the workforce diversity effectively because of globalization requires more attention and interaction among people from diverse cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds.

As per the Esen (2005 ), under the umbrella of diversity practices, currently organizations are employing approaches of understanding and relationship-building which encourage the voice of all employees to be heard and involved with achieving a competitive advantage by learning the perspectives of diverse employee groups are adding value and creativity to organizations’ strategic direction.

According to Devoe (1999), many challenges can be identified in managing diverse work population since it is more than simply acknowledging differences in people. It involves in recognizing the value of differences, combating discrimination and upholding the inclusiveness resulting managers to be challenged with losses in personnel and work throughout due to prejudice and discrimination, also complaints and legal actions against the company.

Negative attitudes and behaviors also can be hurdles to organizational diversity because they can damage working relationships and hurt morale and work productivity (Esty et al. 1995).

Organizations always need to have a look for the ways to becoming comprehensive while holding diversity because it has the potential to yield the greater competitive advantages as well as the work productivity (SHRM 1995). Stephen Butler, chairperson of the Business-Higher Education Forum, strongly trust that diversity is an invaluable competitive asset (Robinson, 2002) and Black Enterprise(2001) highlighted that managing diversity in the current global context is a key factor of effective people management in a workplace.

Hatton national Bank PLC is one of the largest bank networks in the country currently having employees more than 4500. According to their integrated report 2019, there are 1923 female employees and 2623 male employees. Employees are a blend of all religions; Sinhala, Hindu, Muslims and Christians / Catholics. Recruiting age starts from 18 years and retirement ends at 55. The blend of age ensure that the company has experienced and young energetic staff combination to challenge the competitive market. Educational qualifications as well as other qualifications such as sports are required . Most of the employees are from different social backgrounds who could work as a team to reach bank's common goal. Almost all employees can speak more than two languages fluently and it enables to build a strong relationship with customers as well as among employees. These factors shows that Hatton National Bank PLC has a strong workforce diversity in the organization.

References

Black Enterprise. 2001. “Managing a multicultural workforce.” Black Enterprise Magazine (July).

Devoe, D. 1999.Managing a changing workforce: Achieving outstanding service with today’s employees. Davie, FL: Workplace Trends Publishing

Esen, E., 2005. 2005 Workplace Diversity Practices , s.l.: Society for Human Resource Management.

Hatton National Bank, Integrated report ,2019 available at, https://www.hnb.net/2019

Onday, O., 2016. Global Workforce Diversity Management and the Challenge of managing diversity. Global Journal of Human Resource Management , Volume Volume 4.

Saxenaa, A., 2014. Workforce Diversity: A Key to Improve Productivity Ankita. Institute of Management Studies Annual Research Conference .