Human Resources Management
... is capable of motivating workers and creating positive work outcomes. The most critical problems that may happen during the restructuring transition period concern the way work is organized and managed: workers do not experience high internal work motivation, high growth satisfaction, high general job satisfaction, and high work effectiveness caused by uncertainty and mistrust. Recommendations are made to solve these problems and to enhance the job motivation. • The ultimate success of the restructuring requires intense team-building efforts, improved communication, the establishment of trusting relationships, and some drastic personnel changes. • Upper management must learn how to support the decisions and delegate authority to the SMWT, while modelling the concept themselves. • Managers need to judge carefully before appointing jobs for appropriate workers to handle - if it is too complex for those who do not possess the correct skill level, then expensive mistakes could be made. • Job enrichment techniques should be applied when changing the design and experience of work to enhance employee satisfaction needs and to improve motivation and performance. Based on Hertzberg’s two factor theory (1996). • The essential challenge for the team is to balance empowerment with accountability. • Formal and informal incentive schemes should be executed. • Workers should be praised when they have successfully completed a tougher task. • Workers respond better as managers have shown trust in their ability to handle the increasing complexity of the work. • The plans need to be reviewed and revised regularly in order to meet the target. Having applied these measures into the job design, the resulting flat team structure will be a stronger, more creative, and much more productive entity, as long as each member accepts responsibility for being a significant part of the team. The SMWT in Saturn Corp will be a cohesive team. Workers will work well together, trust each other, value their differences, mentor one another, and respect each other, as well as enjoy working, laughing, and having fun together. 3. Conclusions To transform an existing plant into a SMWT, can be very expensive and impractical and can lead to lack of participation, cooperation and interest among managers and workers, causing the potential for friction and elimination of jobs in the company. 3.1 Empowerment: Empowerment has a vital function as motivation in the JCM, simultaneously it will induce problems in the organisation as well. 3.1.1 Some team members will find new meaning and a feeling of making a difference in their job duties, while others may lose this feeling. Employees in middle management and high-seniority employees may feel a loss of power and an inability to advance. It is logical that most of the resistance to empowerment comes from the middle management (Keighley, 1993: 7) 3.1.2 Overriding the work team's decisions will decrease their ability to make a difference and destroy morale built through the SMWT. 3.2 Resistance to Change: 3.2.1 Previous managers concern about losing "prerogatives" and about the relative value of employee time spent on projects versus time spent producing the product. 3.2.2 The feeling of uncertainty of the new job or being laid-off by the company. 3.2.3 Staff specialists who face competition in planning and analysis – a threat to the near - monopoly they have enjoyed under the hierarchical control system. 3.2.4 They may be afraid of "group-think" that would not allow some of the more positive aspects of the work team to come to the forefront. 3.3 Potential for Conflict: 3.3.1 Problem solving can be difficult because the ability to diagnose and solve one’s own personnel problem is crucial. 3.3.2 It is much more difficult for a peer to correct a peer than it is for a boss to lay down the law. 3.3.3 If a team member does not complete one task, there will be a missing link in the team, which can lead to a collapse of the team. 3.3.4 The new system will take time before functioning at its peak potential. Implementation will not be easy and results will not come quickly. This feeling may lead to a decision to cancel or revert to the old structure before a fair chance is given to the members. 3.3.5 At the beginning, the team may be unsure of what is expected and could become distrustful of relying on other team members' skills. 3.3.6 Teams tend to take on easy problems they can solve leading to early successes. They become reluctant to change what they believe is the ‘perfect’ system they have already worked out. 3.4 Failure of Reward Systems: 3.4.1 Team members may be uncertain about this method of pay and thus reduce their interest in it. 3.4.2 Individual and team bonuses might cause competition either within or between work teams. 3.4.3 If the team is dependent on its slowest member for its overall performance, the team could put extreme pressure on that person which could disrupt the overall team's performance. (Cotton, 1993). 3.4.4 After about 10 years, many team members will have learned all the skill know-how within the company while earning maxim...