The role that Senior Executives play in an organisation.
...chnology briefing, COMPANY X’s Chief Information Officer and his Chief Technologists follow these roles and challenges by both formally and informally spending time to the wider group on current issues and experiences. They support several initiatives relating to development and learning, workplace relationships and dealing with change and transition. 4 Workplace Scenarios 4.1 Development and Learning ‘Development is considered the foundation level of a team’s activity because it refers to the maturity and level of development of the team’ (Robbins et al., 1994: 403). Shelton (2003) believes organizations that actively manage their talent pipeline will have an easy time identifying candidates and easily be able to list employees which would be suitable for a specific role. Identifying employees whom the company cannot risk losing ensures that Senior Executives approach these valuable people to learn whether their strategies are having the desired results. Senior Executives at COMPANY X recognize the ever increasing levels of challenging times of today’s business environment. With this, they are encouraging staff to maintain their employability and satisfaction with work and by taking charge of their career. An initiative, Opportunities@COMPANY X, is designed to help enhance current and future career opportunities, and to support staff and their Line Managers in the career development process. A range of supporting tools and resources for planning and working towards career goals has been developed to assist with this. COMPANY X Executives encourage and foster continuous learning and self development in all employees by supporting training and tertiary studies. According to Deakin (2001) in relation to the development and learning of an organization, the key infrastructure required by individuals includes time, management support, financial support, information and ready contact with colleagues. It is important that Senior Executives are able to effectively deliver and manage this infrastructure and do so at COMPANY X in several ways including: • eTrain – an online training source opened to COMPANY X employees to complete both compliance and general educational training; • Internal and external instructor lead training; • Mentoring; • Corporate agreement with Deakin University for discounted studies; • Career Management Days including University representatives; • Business Unit budgets allocated for employee training purposes; and • Study leave support for employees attending exams or completing assignments. These provide the capacity and willingness required by an organization to make learning occur. COMPANY X Executives enforce the need for their managers to hold six monthly performance review and career discussions. Employees are assessed by their managers, peers and customers in 360 degree feedbacks identifying strengths, weaknesses and development needs. These results then feed back to Executives to assist in managing both satisfaction and development requirements of the teams. COMPANY X Executives have developed and encourage employees to manage their careers by: • Take responsibility for their own career development; • Ensuring that Line Managers and staff have open and honest performance and career discussions; • Checking Career development plans are documented jointly by staff and their managers; • Conveying that effective career development is as much about improving current job satisfaction as seeking new opportunities and promotion; • Keeping staff up-to-date with technical skills and non-technical capabilities, e.g. teamwork, good interpersonal communication skills, customer service, leadership; and • Promoting the fact that successful career development is seldom defined by role advancement alone. Not only have these guidelines been developed by the Executives, but they are also enforced. Recent correspondence was issued to Managers ensuring that all employees were given the chance to develop their careers. 4.2 Workplace Relationships A critical element for effective management is ability to manage relationships. As more organisational activity is undertaken in a corporate, rather than individual way, the establishment and management of teams is a key factor. This is said to involve: • A common purpose; • A disciplined approach; • Acknowledgement of individual contribution as well as team achievement; and • Valuing the diversity that exists within a team. It is important that Executives are able to manage the soft and hard issues related to relationships. Soft issues are ensuring the equity in relationships between Business Units, focusing on the long term relationship showing leadership in the creation and building of organisational vision. The hard issues are in the negotiation of contracts of participation in the network, carefully to ensure that they can meet the work they undertake. Changes in the workplace have now found Executives concerning themselves with the development and maintenance of relationships, rather than merely telling others what to do. According to Deakin (2002) there is now more emphasis on: • Skills of participation; • Self-awareness; • Providing leadership in groups; • Cultural sensitivity; and • Negotiation and the achievement of consensus. Robbins et al. (1994) see that poor Interpersonal relationships between team members are often at the center of many team problems. Lack of trust, conflict between specific team members, dislike of the leader’s style and other factors contribute to problems in this area. No matter how much is done to correct the procedures, processes, resources, team roles or goals, some teams cannot function because of feuds among team members. 4.3 Change and Transition ‘The most successful companies at least in terms of returns on information technology investments are those in which Senior Executives play an active role in information technology management decisions’ (Ross & Weill, 2002) While information technology specialists are the right people to make many decisions about information technology, Ross & Weill (2002) suggest that Senior Executives need to be involved decisions around change and transition. Change and Transition need to be carefully managed and the role of an effective Senior Executive involves both recognizing the destructive and creative potential of this. The destructive potential is realized with the redundancies facing employees as company restructuring occurs. Organisational change at COMPANY X is carefully managed and communicated to staff using strategically placed Intranet announcements. A recent example of this was the restructure of Technology Managers. It was clearly communicated by Senior Executives that there was a pre-defined, three-phase approach to the changes. The way in which change is communicated through o...