Work Design To Improve Employee Efficiency

By: Piyush Dewan (MBA Core-Div A I Trimester)

An organization is a function of its employees. For any organization to function smoothly and

efficiently, the most essential thing is that its employees should be happy, content, and willing to

work hard for its cause and its betterment. And employees are happy when they are provided

with an environment conducive to work, in ways of a healthy and vibrant workplace, and in

terms of the skills and training they are imparted so that they can work efficiently and

effectively.

Apart from its manpower resources, any organization to thrive needs to have the correct material

resources. These resources include the daily needed items like stationery that might seem

inconsequential but are of utmost importance. Also, just having the resources in place is not

sufficient. Their proper maintenance and protection is equally important.

An organization should always strive for improving its way of doing things. That is, it should

always look for more efficient processes that might reduce the input cost and provide better

output results. For this very purpose, an organization should have a Research and Development

cell so that it can keep an eye on any new technology that has entered the market that can help

upgrade its scale of production efficiency.

Management by objectives looks at up-scaling organizational performance by aligning goals and

objectives throughout the organizational structure. This management practice also takes into

consideration the personal goals of employees and how they meet up with the organizational

goals.
Looking at all the above things, I present the following work system design to improve the

efficiency of an organization.

1. Before making any change, any organization should carefully assess its present situation.

It should do an SWOT analysis to identify its challenges and threats and to reflect on the

things it is doing right as well as the things it is doing wrong. Measuring and improving

performance can be done through

a) Compare current organizational efficiency with the most efficient organizations in the

market (perhaps the market leaders).

b) Identify areas which are not up to the mark. And work towards improving these areas.

c) Identify the areas that are doing well and look at ways so that these do even better.

2. After the assessment of the present business efficiency, the next step in improving

organizational efficiency is to optimize business processes.

A way for doing this can be by greater automation of the business process and by

working on the feedback of the employees in this regard. This reduces operational and

maintenance cost and speeds up the time to market new services. The time gained by

decreased lead time can be used to take up new orders, thereby improving system

productivity.

3. Look after the existing assets. As mentioned before, just having a resource in place is not

enough, its timely and periodic maintenance is equally important to derive maximum out

of the resource. Assets also include human resource. The employees of any organization
 are its assets. Hence looking after the employees is as important as looking after the

computers in the set-up, if not more. The way to do that is to take individual feedback

from each employee at every level, in the form of surveys or questionnaires and

implementing the feedback if found suitable. This will make the employees feel more

involved in the organizational process and will increase their motivation levels.

Apart from this, the employees need to be trained regularly for updating their skill sets.

Incentives should be given to employees who are willing to take up courses that might

help them at work.

4. Assess the way the organization is interacting with the customers. Customers are the link

between and organization and its success. They are the most important part of any

business operation. Ensuring customer satisfaction is a task that any organization should

strive for. For this it should ensure that the people who deal directly with the customers

are trained properly and have a good knowledge base. Timely delivery of orders and

good after sales service is also important and the maintenance department should be one

of the most active ones in an organization.

5. Review the Marketing policies and work at upgrading them if found wanting. Without

proper marketing, an organization cannot sell what it makes. Bad marketing can damage

the sales of even high quality products. Hence the marketing division should be one of

the most pro-active ones in the organization. They should aim at creating maximum

awareness levels in minimum cost. Any good marketing strategy should involve

appropriate market research, research about competition and self, and spot on product

positioning based on the mentioned research.

 6. Look for diversification if there is a scope for it. There is no better way to increase the

efficiency of a business than by cost effective diversification- either product

diversification or market diversification.

Improvements in efficiency are not that easy to materialize. Managers may find employees

resistant to changes such as introducing new technology or new working practices. This is

because employees fear that changes will lead to redundancies or extra pressure on them to

perform. It can also take a long time for any new strategies to suffuse through the work culture of

an organization that has been developed over the years.

Change is always tough to imbibe. But managers should not revert back to the original culture if

the changes are not showing instantaneous results. They should give the changes time to pervade

the working habits of the organization and if ultimately they are still falling short of estimated

standards, the managers should review them.

References

1. Drucker, Peter F., "The Practice of Management", 1954.

2. Handy Understanding Organizations (Penguin Business)

3. http://tutor2u.net/business/gcse/production_efficiency_improvements.htm