Exploring Uber's Essay: Supportive Communication, Motivation, Empowerment, Conflict Management, And Team Effectiveness.

Select any organisation of your choice and explain the following skills using relevant theory:

1) Supportive Communication;

2) Motivation;

3) Empowerment;

4) Conflict Management;

5) Team Effectiveness.
 

Supportive Communication

The making of a successful company depends on a number of factors. These factors work together in order to give any company their foothold in the market. The following report is going to focus on certain determining factors of the company of Uber, which have helped in taking Uber to the position that it is today. Uber is one of the biggest ridesharing companies operating in an international level. It has spread its business all over the world in a span of almost six years. The main factors that have helped the company are the management strategy and system and the marketing system that it follow. The managers also keep an eye on the demands of the drivers and are quick to resolve any issue that arises. Uber has been successful in satisfying their customers, i.e. the riders by continually updating and adding new features to their application as well as their services. The report has analysed the main factors that have helped the company (Uber.com 2017).

Supportive communication refers to a style of communication that has a particular set of techniques and goals (Ntoumanis et al. 2017). The main aim of supportive communication is to resolve a situation of conflict and also strengthen the communication between the communicating individuals. The quality of supportive communication plays a major role in the growth and popularity of any given company as it is via the supportive communication that the customers often get to know about the company and the services it provides (Brodie and MacGeorge 2015). Uber, being a leading company in the online cab booking market has devised its supportive communication strategies quite lucratively. The management team of Uber is well aware of the fact that there will inevitably be times when both the drivers and the customers will need to get in contact with each other, for issues like, knowing the location of the cab, forgetting a purse in the cab or even problems about the application itself. The goal of the company is to make the aroused issues get resolved as soon as possible (Carroll and Buchholtz 2014). 

When the company had started six years earlier, the only means of communication between the management team and the customers were via email. It had worked alright when the company was small but as the business of the company started to spread, mailing did not remain the only feasible option. In order to make the situation better and help their customers to get better support Uber has invested millions of dollars in their call centers who are available anytime of the day for all kinds of assistance (Chen 2018). The company has set up a chain of support centers all over the world at places like Chicago, Manila, Krakow, Hyderabad, Limerick and Phoenix. The company has also set up an easy to handle in-app answering service. Passengers can get any kind of support they want just by tapping the ‘help’ button that the application offers. Uber has also introduced a feature that allows the riders to chat with the drivers without giving away their numbers (Jones and Bodie 2014). This has also helped the company to get better on their supportive communication services.

Motivation

The term motivation happens to be an important term when it comes to the working desire of the employees. Motivation is the factor that decides the level of desire to work that an employee would possess. Motivated employees portray better performance and help the company in its way of growth (Frey 2015). Uber, being one of the top most companies in the online cab riding business keeps its employees well motivated to extract their best work out of them. They follow a number of strategies and techniques to keep the employees motivated and eager to work. The main strategy that the company follows to keep the drivers drive more kilometers is including regular incentive policies in the pay scale of the drivers. Moreover, the company has recently introduced new features in the application of Uber (Rehman and Karodia 2014). The new updates of the introduced feature motivate the drivers and offer them incentives to pick up the passengers. The new feature also enables the drivers to view the live location of the passengers. This feature has proved to be beneficial for both the drivers and the riders. The new feature has also helped the drivers to get their ways of making more money as it helps them to locate where they can get more passengers.

Another factor that helps the employees of the company to do more work is the flexible working hours that the management team of Uber allows. This allows the employees to choose the time they want to drive. There are a number of people, who after doing a full time job choose to drive an Uber at night because it helps them in additional earning (Kuhl 2013). Uber also encourages its employees in their own projects and make the employees feel welcomed in the working atmosphere. The company, being global helps in the intermingling of drivers from different parts of the globe that help them to get more motivated to do more work which ends up in benefiting the company. 

Empowerment in the field of business management mainly refers to the empowerment of employees. Empowering the employees means to give them certain amount of responsibility and autonomy in terms of making decisions on the matters regarding the company as well as their own works. This proves to be beneficial for both the company and the employees. Having a certain amount of autonomy gives the employees a sense of authority as well as responsibility, which makes them work harder towards the evolvement of the company (Chamberlin, Newton and LePine 2015). Uber, being one of the market giants in the ridesharing business has used the strategy of empowerment in the right manner that has helped them to enhance their business than their peers. Uber has used the empowerment strategy in a way that makes both the riders and the drivers feel empowered (Weiss 2014). They have given the liberty of choosing the drivers to the riders and on the other hand, they have given the freedom of cancelling a ride if the driver finds the location inconvenient to reach or finds the rider rude. This facility gives both the riders and drivers a sense of authority over their rides. They have also empowered their drivers by giving them the liberty to drive according to their choice. A number of drivers choose to drive at night shifts only as that serves their needs. The company allows them to choose their shift timings and this empowers them to a great extent (Huber et al. 2017).

Empowerment

Moreover, Uber has made a strategic alliance with Tata Motors that enables the drivers to buy the cars of their choice and drive it. The company does not impose their pre-owned cars on the drivers and this also serves as an example of empowerment. Uber has also successfully, to some extent empowered women, as they find it safer to travel by Uber, because the application allows them to view the details of the driver beforehand and also they can share their ride details and locations with the people they trust. In addition, using the application saves them from the trouble of manually hiring a cab (Kerzner 2013). In this way, Uber has successfully implemented empowerment in both the riders’ and the drivers’ font.

The term conflict management, in terms of business organizations means the skills of handling conflicting situations that may rise in the process of running a company. It refers to the skill of dissolving conflicts in sensible, fair and efficient ways. It is important for any organization to have skilled conflict managers, as it is only natural that a workplace will have a number of conflicting situations (Benner 2016). Uber, being doing a long-term business in the ridesharing field, understands the importance of maintaining a proper conflict managing team as it helps the company to resolve issues and grow their business. The conflict management team of Uber happens to follow a number of strategies to resolve the issues that arise in the front of their employees. The company encourages and values the opinions that the employees put forth. They give their employees the chances to speak up their side in case of a conflict (Bradley et al. 2013). The management team also asks the employees to put forward their ideas of solutions to the situation of conflict. The company also knows when they should let their employees take the decisions while resolving a conflict. This helps the employees to get more involved with the company as they feel themselves more valued and important. The management team of the company happens to be very active on resolving the issues as soon as it is brought to their notice. They do not delay anytime in investigating the issue and bringing forward a solution while keeping in mind the standpoint of both the parties engaged in the conflict (Chang 2016). In a number of cases, Uber has faced situations where the riders and the drivers got engaged in conflicts. For situations like this, Uber has included a ‘help’ button in their application that enables both the drivers and the riders to get in touch with the management team of the company, so that they can offer an amicable solution, as soon as possible (Scott and Wildman 2015). This helps the company to get on well with both their customers and employees and ensure them a good business. 

Conflict Management

The success of an organization often depends on the teamwork that is being put in that organization. Team effectiveness happens to be a very important aspect when it comes to the positive growth of a company. A successful company, in most of the cases happens to have a well-organised team that consists of skilled people who are experts in their respective fields (Goetsch and Davis 2014). As a highly successful company in the ridesharing market, Uber has teams who are highly effective in taking the company to the place that it has reached today. The strategy that Uber follows for achieving the team effectiveness is creating a number of teams, consisting of people specialised in different fields. The created groups have been designed for every person concerned with the business of the company (Wang, Waldman and Zhang 2014). Uber has groups to deal with drivers, riders and also with the people who are concerned with the operating system of the company. The designs of the teams help in the growth of the business of the company. The specialised teams take care of all the aspects of the business of Uber i.e. there are teams to handle the internal tools, products and the marketing strategies (Goetsch and Davis 2014). The company also keeps a sharp eye on having the members of each team well communicated with each other and in accordance with the work of the rest of the team members. This helps in fast completion of any project that the company takes up. Effective teams always work better than efficient individuals can do (Pangil and Moi Chan 2014). The main strategy of Uber is creating separate groups with focused and efficient people and keeping them focused to their work. There are different effective teams working on different projects taken up by the company in different cities (Jeston and Nelis 2014). The marketing of Uber, which has been a vital factor in the growth of the company and spreading it among more people, has been done by the team that is in charge of the company’s marketing and networking. In this way, the technical team has helped the application of Uber to get better and serve the users in a better and easier way. 

Conclusion:

The report can thus be concluded by saying that Uber has been successful in understanding the market needs and has shaped itself accordingly. The company has efficient teams who work on different sectors and manage the company. Being such a large operating system, a number of issues arise but the management team is quick to resolve them. The company managers give value to the opinions of the employees and believe in empowering them by taking notice of their opinions in certain troubled situations. They also make the employees feel free to give away their views on the way the company is being managed and worked on. Moreover, the company has also been successful in motivating the employees to work more and earn more. This has proved to be beneficial for both the company and the employees. Uber has also ensured that their riders get the best experience while taking a ride with an Uber cab. This has helped them to create a loyal customer base and expand their business. 

Team Effectiveness

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