Collaborative Essay Enhances Teamwork.

Why Collaboration is Necessary?

Discuss about the Collaborative Style of Working for Teamwork.

With the change of time, the style of business has changed a lot and with change of business style or operation, the structure of organizations have also changed a lot. Previously the companies used to trade in one region or country but now due the globalization they have started working in the developed and developing nations. The managers are changing their styles in order to match the expectation of the employees in the workplace as well as for satisfying the growing demand of the customers. This is the reason why the structure of the companies is changing day by day so that they can fit with the appropriate business process.

One of the major factors that support the production of the firm is its employees. their ideas, hard work and support helps the company to gain competitive strategy through various types of innovation. According to the demand of the business as well as the leadership style, the companies follow different structures. Some encourage their employees to work individually and some prefer teamwork. The article ‘Collaborative overload’ by Cross, Rebele and Grant, has detailed the issues and solution to the problem of teamwork of an organization. In order to understand the actual idea and opportunities of teamwork method the definition has to be discussed. In some industries like manufacturing, automobile and IT, teamwork is very important as these industries need constant innovation from various aspects. Through this method the managers of the companies motivate the employees to share their own ideas and resources with others so that they aim maintain the flow of knowledge from top to down or horizontally.

Collaboration is the key part of teamwork and in the cross cultural scenario, the diversity is fast increasing hence collaboration has become mandatory to run the business successfully. In increasing production from the employees’ ends the management have started to motivate the employees for enhancing engagement among themselves and guide others in accomplishing the most difficult tasks. The employees of the organization are trained before they are employed in the core business but in some cases the employees need to learn from their colleagues as it is not always possible to call a meeting or train them for accomplishing a nominal task. These employees then take help from the employees who possess higher resources and knowledge but “in most cases, 20% to 35% of value-added collaborations come from only 3% to 5% of employees” (Cross, Rebele and Grant 2016). 

Problems Associated with Personal Resources

This is one of the major aspect to be discussed on. Collaboration among the employees in this current business situation is one of the most pressing necessity yet challenges for the higher authorities of the organizations. This is due to the fact the companies now a days are becoming cross-cultural hence diversity of knowledge and ideas are also growing. In order to get the best of the employees, the managers are encouraging the employees to work collaboratively so that the individual strength are accumulated. In this situation the teams and top talents will stand the costs of high demand for little supply. Collaboration among the teams or the employees is demands of the organization as the managers need to provide needed resources. This will also help the manger to manage the teamwork effectively which will definitely reduce the knowledge gap among the employees and other issues emerging in the organization. According to the authors the need of collaboration is fast increasing which may need for hiring collaboration officers in the near future.

According to this article, there are three types of resources which mainly help the employees to work collaboratively in the organizations. These three are informational, personal and social. These three resources have different facets in which thy work efficiently these resources are the chief elements while creates difference among the experienced and the nonexperience employees. The most precious employees of the organizations possess these resources and constantly increase them in order to create value. The difference in resources determine the efficiency of the employees. All of these resources are nor equally effective. The informational resources are mainly the acquired knowledge as well as skills which can be easily recorded as well as passed on, the social resources capture the awareness, position and the capabilities to access the resources. These two types can be shared among the colleagues as they do not affect the supply but the personal resources which the individual employees develop, need effort and time (Cross, Rebele and Grant 2016). Moreover, these resources are not easy to replenish. According to the authors of this article the social and informational resources can be shared without hampering the supply because when the collaborators share their knowledge with others, they keep some the themselves which cannot be done for the personal resources. In addition to this, personal resources are the most unique for which the employees seek help from the collaborates instead of consulting with libraries or other sources these employees seek guidance from the collaborators hence waste time and effort.  

Effects of Bottlenecked Organizational Structure

The study has disclosed the fact that those employees who possess high amount of resources and willing to share them with others, are the most disengaged groups in an organization. Their engagement or statement with their organization become low in compared to those whom they are helping by sharing knowledge. The authors have explored the reason of such behavior and stated that as these employees are very experienced, their production gets disturbed by others seeking for help (Cross, Rebele and Grant 2016). This is the reason, why these top collaborators of the company feel overtaxed and gradually become the bottleneck of the organization. Everyone remain depended on them ad no work can advance without their individual interventions. Unfortunately, the effort of these collaborators which they employ to make others understand or help to complete a complicated task, remain unnoticed. Their talents and diversity remain hidden behind others’ achievements. Moreover, for collaboration, these top collaborators do not get any appreciation or reward hence they feel disengaged with their companies.  

In addition to this, the study has revealed that the top collaborators of the companies remain disconnected with the personal career satisfaction scores. They are the best sources for information in the organization therefore remain in high demand always. This is the reason why they cannot concentrate on their personal tasks. On the contrary their resources help the companies is diverse ways that make them feel over stressed with no reward. Therefore, these issues ultimate result in high turnover of the most prized employees of the organization (Cross, Rebele and Grant 2016). Due to lack of recognition from the workplace and employees feel frustrated and cannot complete their personal targets easily. Hence they decide to leave the organization and get opportunity to other companies due to their high amount of resources. The top collaborators while leaving their organizations, take more resources and networks with them hence hamper the production of the companies.

First of all, the employee turnover is a major adversity for the companies. The managers try to retain their employees at any cost but when these top collaborators leave the organizations, this put pressure on the management and their efficiency. Secondly, when the employees leave they affect the resources of the companies as they take valuable data and access to the networks with them. This is the reason why the managers need to take initiatives so that they can maintain the balance of knowledge in one hand and retain more experienced employees in their organization. The authors of this article have analyzed the methods that the mangers can follow to attain this goal.

Redistribution: A Possible Solution

First the managers need to understand the gap between the demand and supply of the resources among the employees. through various technologies like electronic communication tracking and 360-degree feedback as well as the CRM programs, the companies can measure the type, origin and volume or request so that they gain knowledge about the expectations of the employees of the reasons to do a job. They can measure, the information about the time spent in the meetings to get knowledge from the resources and time spent in the solo work. These ideas aim to identify the employees at risk due to collaborative overload. This will effectively help the manager to provide resources where needed thus redistribute the tasks by giving different tasks to the people according to their expertise areas.

Secondly, the chief reason of high turnover rate in the organizations is dissatisfaction about the reward and recognition process among the employees. Therefore, the managers must encourage the top collaborators in such a way that they can directly say no to the resources seekers (Cross, Rebele and Grant 2016). They can use team collaboration software which help the employees to build strong barriers around their incoming information flow. The managers need to find out or build perfect replacements for these top collaborators so that when these employees leave the organization, the flow of work remain maintained.

Thirdly, reduction of pressure to help others can have positive effect on the productivity of these collaborators. the managers can show methods of filtration and prioritization of the requests so that these people can concentrate on their own tasks. The people thus gain opportunity of the value added activities and through this they will find their work stimulation rather than monotonous.

By making social and information resources more available to the employees of the organizations the managers will be able to reduce pressure of the collaborators. There may be a designation where these people will be helping the employees through their resources rather than doing the same tasks. They will act as buffers between the demand or request and supply of knowledge. They will be responding the request immediately when needed thus increase productivity and reduce frustration of not having recognition from the higher authorities.

The article has also discussed the issues of collaboration where the women are seen to be the top collaborators in the organizations. They help their colleagues more than the male employees do in the organization. Hence they feel more stressed than others and achieve less. Therefore, it can be said that this article Collaborative overload has discussed the issues of institutional bottleneck and employee turnover in the modern organizations. It has also discussed the ways to be followed by the managers in marinating the smooth flow of work.

References:

Cross, R., Rebele, R. and Grant, A., 2016. Collaborative overload. Harvard Business Review, 94(1), p.16.