Elektra Products free essay sample

How might top management have done a better job changing Electra-Quik into a new kind of organization? What might they do now to get the empowerment process back on track? Elektra Products, Inc. is facing problems such turn down of market share, weak internal communication among departments, low morale, and employees were seeking other jobs. Therefore, the organization has to create a solution which can solve or reduce the problems. Decline of the market share was one of the external problems faced by them which implies that their profit and revenue has been falling as well. To improve upon this they could do research and development about what the customers are demanding and if they would be willing to buy their products. In addition, they should buy new machinery in order to encourage new product innovation. This way they will be able to compete with the foreign and domestic competitors. There are many internal problems as well. We will write a custom essay sample on Elektra Products or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page One of the major problems of the company is that the morale of the employees is low and the labour turnover is high. This is due to the lack of vision and mission statements. These statements help employees unify each other to achieve a common goal. Another internal problem was the leadership style used. The management should not only focus on the training of top managers. Due to the extremely precarious case of the organisation, the management need to take an interest with the middle managers as well as the first-line managers (Boone and Kurtz, 2011). They would need to conduct training sessions for all these levels to revive the past glory of the company and increase the morale of everyone in the company, whatever position the employees may be in. To get the empowerment back on track, the top managers have to motivate the employees with empowering interpretations to bring new future and hope for the organization. They have to minimize the problems of the organisation with these following techniques. Firstly, the top management should call a meeting with the organisation employees, arrange various training, discussion that would enable change of the employees attitude positively, improve their communication and motivation, and create sense of partnership of the organization. As stated by the multimillionaire Gary Vaynerchuks 2012) â€Å"The only way to succeed is to be completely transparent . By doing so, then only the employees are able to understand the ideas of the top management. In addition, since the employees of the company might be still unaware of Martin because he is new, he can talk to them personally to improve internal relations which will gain their trust and increase confidence. Secondly, conducting a market su rvey will help with innovation. The survey helps the organization to know about its competitors, for example, having knowledge about the competitor’s price strategy, product design, brand name and customer’s feedback. Lastly, the organization has to develop committee with the goal departments. The committee has to give a lot of attention for the departments like sales and marketing, production, manufacturing, and human resource management (HRM) as there is a more visible gap among these departments. Therefore, to accomplish the empowerment processes, the top management and Martin Griffin should try their best to change the attitudes of employees like Simon and many others that have a negative outlook of the empowerment by bestowing training. Question 2. Can you think of ways Barbara could have avoided the problems her team faced in the meeting with department heads? There are different ways that Barbara could have done to avoid the problems her team faced in the meeting with department heads. Barbara could have used different tactics to keep away from the issues which occurred in the meeting. Firstly, internal communication between different departments of the company should be clearer; managers from every department should discuss among each other in order to avoid arguments and be more time-efficient. Secondly, Barbara and her team should have been more considerate and critically analysed the issues of the other departments’ as well while giving the presentation. For example, since financial department is worried about the â€Å"unethical customers and salesperson’’, they could’ve mentioned about improving product quality since they are in the manufacturing team and offering after sales services to avoid customers to return products back (Roger,2010). Other than that, Barbara and her team should implement the sense of trust within each other. Trust is the key ingredient in having an organization to expand in quality. For example, Simon needed to place trust into the decision of empowerment that has been given from Martin Griffin. By trusting, his idea and performing it with passion then only the company can see the effect of the idea of empowerment. Whether the effect is positive or not, we can narrow down the problem since the staff is already working with passion. According to Steve covey’s (2006), there are 13 behaviours that establish trust. The most important behaviour out of 13 is ‘straight talk’. This point elaborate on how a person should say what they mean when they are having difficulty to adapt to a situation. Question 3 If you were Barbara Russell, what would you do now? Why? If I’m Barbara Russell, I will choose to push slowly for reform and work for gradual support from the other teams. Communication is the key to link each other in the organization. Barbara should have open discussion with the department leaders to figure out the difficulty and solutions to her team’s plan. Amy Barrett (2008) said that, â€Å"Your workforces skills change over time and so does your business. Getting the right people into the right jobs is key to your companys growth. Nevertheless, effective communication between employer-employee and even employee-employee led to minimize misunderstanding, respectful, and create friendly environment in the office. In fact, the company can host social committee to organize events to unite their employees or games in a team. In that way, employees have chances to know each other and sharing information. Company goals should be clearly communicated and displayed in some way throughout the workplace. Barbara could propose SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Responsible person and the Time specific) as guideline for goal setting of both management level and employees. Meanwhile, everyone would have their own goals and these should align with company goals at same, and the organization growth will be on the same horizontal. The management level played the major role to keep their staffs in the correct direction, measure, and support each other to achieve goals. In addition, she could modify the mission and vision statements of the company to give a clear goal to the employees. Along of above point, SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis which Ricky and Ronald (2006) both state that â€Å"involves assessing organizational strengths and weaknesses and environmental opportunities and threats† can be applied to assist on employee’s self-assessment. Employees could evaluate their abilities to task assignment and hence, they can be promoted to assign additional task. In between, they could take in some self-improvement programs such as education or training to enhance their skills and knowledge. For example, the salesperson will take in more responsibility on the product refund and protection of information privacy. They must always be prepared to make decision clearly and protect the interest of company.