Introduction
Every manager in an organization needs to master the techniques of making decisions about his workforce to meet the needs of both the staff and the company. Many a times, the decisions made are skewed to satisfy company objectives at the cost of an employee’s desires. Quite often, work arrangement policies can significantly deter the personal welfare of the employee even when they do not directly add value to the company’s status.
The involvement of the government and regulatory bodies in ensuring that the individual interests of staff members are met has been crucial in resolving this problem. Constructive policies have been passed to facilitate a better platform with which employees can approach their employers to seek improved working conditions on substantial grounds. This paper will hence analyse how organizations are being made to modify their decision making processes to serve their employees using the best methods available.
Decision-making process that organisations will need to follow to evaluate requests for flexible working arrangements
The decision making process that will be used by leaders in their organizations concerning flexible working arrangement will take into consideration a variety of factors. There are both internal factors and external factors that contribute to the process. Within the external perspective, a set of legal conditions has already been provided by the National Employment Standards.
Some of the conditions, such as the requirement for 12 months employment in the organization by an employee and having an infant or disabled child to take care of, are clearly distinguishable. These conditions are incontestable and are hence easy to get beyond in the decision making process. Other conditions may need a more severe form of objective assessment to incorporate into the decision.
The classical approach may to some extent be applied in handling flexible arrangement requests. There is already the need to make a decision upon receiving a request from an employee for a change in their work plan. To add, the decision making process needs to be quick enough given the 21 days that have been made. It should allow objective analysis of the situation that filters out the irrelevant (Davidson et al, 2009).
In order to serve this end, there should be minimal potential for conflict in the decision making process amongst those who may be involved. If a conflict emerges whereby the superior authority chooses to isolate certain cases with which to apply different decision making tactics, the process may be compromised and it may result in a loss of confidence from employees.
The decision to accept a change in working terms will imply a change in the business structure which may affect the firm financially. One alternative may be to reduce working hours for the employee minimally so as not to demand the creation of a new shift.
For this reason, the level of productivity that can be reached with such an arrangement needs to be maintained at a constant. A better way to handle this can be to provide an arrangement where the employee may partially work at home and at the office. This would be better suited for desk stationed workers who do not particularly engage in laborious activities.
Before any specific decisions can be made to individual cases, strategic policies and systems need be formulated. For instance, a work home arrangement will demand a reliable network structure that can facilitate communication between employees at home and those at the office. This will especially work for skilled workers who perform most of the duty on computer systems and with other people. Systems that limit the number of staff that can apply for these requests are also necessary.
For instance, a report by the Australian government on flexible work arrangements for the restaurant and catering industry offered suggestions of outlining work schedule flexibility policies to employee during recruitment interviews (2006). Such systems will make it easier for individual decisions to be made. Choosing the right decisions will eventually rely on the assimilation of these policies and system requirements into the organization in the long run.
Biases and errors in the decision making process
Despite the straightforward and self supporting mechanism outlined in the decision making process above, situations where biases and errors arise in granting and requesting flexible work arrangements are still likely.
Psychologists have identified four major causes of these errors and biases namely; the use of prior hypothesis, sample based representativeness, a domineering mindset and decision escalation (Waddell, Devine & George, 2007). It is important to recognize how each of these sources of error affects the process.
The prior hypothesis bias results from committing a strong value to certain beliefs or assumptions that have guided decision making in other cases. In other words, the manager chooses to reject a request if it fails to agree with the ideal scenario for a successful request – a scenario which is generated from personal or organizational management principles.
Errors may also arise from representative assumptions on how requests should be handled. When a manager uses a representative sample of past requests he will categorize each new request under some specific cluster which will be responded to in one way.
He thus ignores the possibility of new circumstances that may override the premises that past decisions were made on. This kind of bias is the source of a larger percentage of erroneous decisions and many a times comes about through an irrational subconscious response by time pressed managers.
In the course of finding creative alternatives to work plans, the employer and employee need to co-operate in order to arrive at a common solution. It is important that both parties obtain equal opportunity to state their positions in the matter so as to arrive at a suitable compromise that meets both their interests.
The tendency of employers taking up a mindset of superior control will deter this process. What we will have is an autocratic management situation where the employees needs are heavily overlooked (Hamilton, 2007).
A decision can escalate in error if guided by the outcomes of previous erroneous decisions. A good example of this is when an employee uses a previous bias in approving a request proposal for his fellow employee to gain ratification for his own request. This can result in a crisis if the manager is unable to settle the matter to the contentment of the employee in question.
If the crisis is improperly addressed, a trend will become visible to other employees and this will become a source of further escalation of the crisis. Any erroneous decision needs to be attended to immediately so as to avoid such possibilities.
An advisable method of handling misguided approval of flexible work arrangement requests is to communicate a statement to all employees that acknowledges the error and outlines rectifications to the process for future situations. Communication is a highly effective took in restoring the trust of employees after a crisis has emerged (Daft, 2012).This statement can hence act as a reference point in handling similar situations later on.
Huczynski and Buchanan (2008) propose additional sources of bias such as liking bias, where requests are made in favour of personnel that the decision maker has a liking for and reciprocation which coerces decision makers to approve requests in return for past favours that were granted to them.
As the law has clearly stipulated a heavy fine chargeable to employers who do not adequately respond to these requests a great deal of care and attention will always need to be put before a decision is made. The tendency for decision making biases to arise is quite high when programmed decision making is used.
This is because many managers will seek to avoid entangling themselves in the delicate details that may force them to make revisions on their final word. It is much easier if the liability of a decision is laid on the chief policy makers who drew up the program under which requests for flexible work arrangements are handled.
The use of non programmed decision making hence presents a vital advantage to the employees in this regard. It however does not guarantee that this structure will always result in fair and well informed decisions since the clause do not enforce employees’ rights to seek an appeal upon formal rejection of their requests on solid business grounds (Hor & Keats, 2009).
Using non programmed decision creates room for conflict amongst both decision makers and subordinates in the organization. The relationships between decision makers and their workers may get damaged if a request is denied. This will definitely affect the staff’s morale and lead to a strained working environment.
On the other hand if a request becomes approved only to appease employees, then the repercussions are dire for the employer if it contributes to overall productivity. Strong managerial skills will need to be applied for the success of this model of decision making. In most organization’s managers in top levels of the organization are better suited in making these kinds of decisions (Sharma, n.d.).
Group decision making
Group decision making involves using the input of the various people in an organizational team. When the level of complexity is high, this method of decision making process may offer significant benefits. For instance, if flexible arrangements are sought by a mid level manager, the implications may affect both subordinates and peers.
Since an organization functions through the coordinated operation of various departments, there will be a huge need to fill in the decision making responsibilities that such a manger holds in relevance to other departments. A group made decision will thus involve all departmental managers in order to fully assess how their units will be affected if the change in working arrangement is passed.
One of the advantages of using this method as opposed to having the top most authority make an independent decision is that more creative alternatives can be presented. With more perspectives on the table, the best alternative that is feasible can be singled out and used. The members of the group also have a chance to critique each alternative presented more incisively since each person may be able to see the shortcoming of an option that others cannot (Lunenberg, 2010).
Each presented alternative can as well be improved upon by a group. The possibilities of receiving as effective a solution from an individual is far less likely because of the tendency for decision makers to settle at the first agreeable answer to the problem. The disadvantage with group decision making is that it can take much more time than is available.
If members fail to attend frequent meetings within this time frame, the discussions may prove to be inconclusive and thus prompting a single decision maker to have the final say. Different professional backgrounds may raise different perspectives which may make members of the group conflict of different standpoints towards an issue.
For instance, human resource personnel may have sufficient amounts of unanimous complaints from workers who feel they deserve to have flexible work arrangements. On the other hand, the finance executive may only see the financial angle to it and argue that the costs cannot be included within the company budget. This can possibly lead to groupthink in order to bring a final resolution based on the merging of compromised views (Bartol et al, 2007).
Conclusion
When dealing with flexible arrangement request from workers, it is normally necessary to first consider each case primarily as a unstructured problem which will necessitate the use of non programmed decision making. If possible, programmed decision can be used for cases with less complexity.
Group decision making might fail to deliver when applied hand in hand with non programmed decision making due to the intricacies of dealing with a larger pool of information. Given the pressing time interval that is provided in the NES flexible working policies, such decisions should be quick but thorough. The pitfalls of decision making processes must therefore also be identified and understood in order to be avoided.
Reference List
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Hor J & Keats L. 2009. Fair Work Faqs, CCH Australia Limited, Australia.
Commonwealth of Australia 2010, Serving up Flexibility: Creating Flexible Workplaces in the Restaurant and Catering Industry. Web.
Huczynski A & Buchanan D. 2008, Organizational Behavior. Prentice Hall, London.
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