Abstract
Company background
One of the key mission statements of FedEx International is provision of a mutual understanding and rewarding relationship among employees and potential clients. They guarantee safety measures through proper installation of the firm’s operations and this is equally a vital aspect of ensuring employees motivation.
The other mission of the company entails conducting all the corporate activities to the highest professional and ethical standards, by ensuring all the services or good are of the best quality. This calls for open participation especially among the employees. For this reason, another motivational technique entails employees’ participation in decision-making procedures (FedEx, 2010, p.1).
The decentralized form of decision-making strategies involves the employees, thus ensuring even participation and contributions based on the department or working environment. Employees are motivated to ensuring they meet the standards they have set for themselves. This means that the employees are empowered to share a sense of urgency to serving customers.
FedEx Inc is able to combine various motivational techniques by assuring innovations and embracing technological dynamics as important elements and long-term strategies for providing customers with new services, products and advice. According to the company’s prospectors (2010, p.1), they have a unique style of collaborating with other executive firms such as Rabin, Pittigalio or Todd&McGrath as a measure to engage in innovative leadership styles and increase the value of growth for the customers.
They have the chief information officers in charge of setting the new technological applications, advancing the data networks and centres to ensure regular teal-time transmissions and support for transportation of intensive information across the globe. The executives are equally involved in overseeing the company’s global activities and compliance with the set local and international standards or regulations especially in those countries where its branches operates.
The company has various motivational strategies to serve as an attraction for new employees such as empowering them through involvement in creativity, structuring the business deals or regulations such as the company culture and safety standards (Lycette, B., Herniman 2008, p.26).
They equally involve them in various recognition courses. Selection and training of employees entails creation of building blocks, assigning the guidance and promoting diversification. They benefit from health care facilities and allowances beside the paid time-offs. The employees’ motivation comes by through an engagement in various managerial roles such as quality-structured program assistants.
FedEx Inc has goals and objectives that meet employees’ expectations through having a positive culture that ensures respect and satisfaction. The job designs offered provides a sense of value, gives a challenges and recognition for achievements.
Workers motivation is achievable through engagement in stress free environments and thus are at will to change behaviours, and find a working versus life balance to ensure deliverance of services. Finally, the company has unique style of leadership that motivates employees through the free relationships, communication and involvement especially by the top-level managers. The hired employees have to be in position of commitment to serving the customers.
From these examples of employees motivation strategies implemented by the company, the best entails employee empowerment. A positive culture comes by when people interact to exchange ideas and create rapport during the recognition and incentive programs to improve the company culture and ensure business success. The improved culture and behaviours of employees ensure the company’s cultural role of putting people first. The aspect of nurturing employees’ satisfaction for customer satisfaction is unique and outrageous.
Like FedEx, most companies have policies in place to change the differences of opinions but some of the disputes lack proper redress to satisfaction such as the salaries or retirement benefits, cultural diversity and conflict resolutions.
FedEx requires a mechanism that addressed the employees demands such as procedures to forward grievances. Labour disputes need strong ethical policies or strategies to address them just like the motivational goals. The recommendations to address deficiencies entail ensuring procedures for management of conflicts.
The considerable amount of pressure to raise performance and productivity and current economic trends indicates need for greater strains. Most firms today end-up reorganizing personnel into working groups or teams for a common goal. Teamwork assists in reducing cost, improving quality, and increasing productivity and satisfaction but equally cause conflicts within the workforce.
Today the issue of employee performance has a strong basis upon company policies and procedures as opposed leadership qualities. The nature of these rules or regulations helps in establishing the significance of a task and the importance of ensuring good results. People are naturally opposed to rules because in most cases they hinder their freedom and causes strenuous situations during performance. Although an integral to effective part of performance, team leadership may be the root course of conflicts in a company.
As Dodds (2008, p. 1) arguments, the most important element of protecting the business environment is ability to resolve internal conflicts through the leadership role because disagreements hugely affects team performance. Leaders have the role of facilitating the behavioural change that assists in moulding individual trails into teams to achieve the set goals. In relation to the writing of Dodds (2008, p.1), it is necessary to have necessary mechanisms, information and strategies of handling conflicts in the workforce.
Insinuations for Capacity planning and control
The design of a company is the formal procedure or decision guidelines to integrate employees, resources, information, technology and to choose appropriate actions. It is a process of trying to relate closely to the structure of the company in relation to achievable goals.
Through this design process, the company aims at improving the probability of gaining cooperative efforts of employees to achieve goals. It is very important for any company to focus business goals on the availability of knowledge and customer’s needs. Business settings are very different in terms of culture and economy. A business that is in its early development phases need to be systematic and specific over its dealings since it is crucial for it to work in accordance with the global trends but confined to some local setting.
In conflicts management, capacity planning and control is an essential aspect. It entails the research techniques for addressing the issue of scheduling business applications, planning the allocation of resources, controlling performance and, having the problem solving techniques in place (Vollmann, 2005, p. 127).
The planning and controlling approaches include optimization techniques for diminishing or maximizing business elements, to meet the objectives within the operating environment. Employees are encouraged to work as a team to meet certain goals. For instance, a big problem is broken down to ease complexity and thus speeding up computation. Decomposing a problem allow efficiency in and ability to handle the uncertainties adequately.
Secondly, dynamic approach allows the management to make decisions sequentially in a multi-stage pattern. A conflict related problem is recursively mirrored to solutions to come up with the most effective conclusion. Teamwork involves decomposition of a complex problem into various sub-problems for individuals to handle and the solutions create a sequentially dependent framework indicating the whole problem as one, broken into various parts to enhance unity among employees.
Sensitivity analysis
The other approach to problem solving entails sensitivity analysis. The management has to analyze hypothetically, logically or substantially, the factors that can cause conflicts within the workforce. The definition of this approach is a procedure of examining impacts over changes and their effects as outputs. (Dodds, 2008, p.1) Management has to evaluate reasonable limits for change and the impact on individuals. This approach determines their viability or validity of an action, thus encouraging team performance.
Probability and risk analysis
The approach represents a major departure from the main deterministic view. The analysis has a subjective basis on judgements of correlations along with uncertainties to gauge impacts of conflicts within the company. Compared to deterministic or fixed-point approaches, the approach offers additional information of chances to determine and range employees’ sensitivity thus avoiding the probability of conflicts.
Measures of managing conflicts
Management entails techniques to enhance primary functionality of optimisation or delineation of the personal differences within the workforce. Managers need to base their judgement over decisions systems’ dynamics, analysis of scenarios, sensitivity and the probability of a conflict.
The main aim is to analyse uncertainties in the workforce such as failure to develop comprehensive understanding on demands. The effective employees conflicts management is dependent on the disaggregate nature of the demands, thus the reason for some adjustments to accommodate detailed planning.
Creating and managing a performance management culture
The main and frequently utilized measure of encouraging a performance culture in a firm entails methodologies to encourage employees question and seek guidance through departmental groups, human resource representatives or management. Employees should participate in decision-making and policy implementation procedures especially on matters concerning their performance requirements. This helps in avoiding conflicts during performance.
Leadership styles and discipline are the key defining elements for creation and management of a performing culture. Company’s culture is the systematic procedures regarding performance of duties and the procedures. It is the guide of the employees’ thoughts, actions and feelings. Lack of proper management on this aspects or performance culture among employees’ means they become perplexed or stymie by some bureaucratic processes and eventually conflict.
The company culture has its basis on discipline, which promotes the decision-making and direct accountability over performance. With such discipline, there are clear expectations and commitments.
There has to be management proactive measures to block abstractions of performance such as rewards, thus the employees are truly engaged in their duties. Today emphasis on discipline has overthrown ancient style of “command and control” to enhance recognition of clear boundaries over the lines of duty, flexibility over performance and therefore foster required partnership.
Challenges of the suggested disciplined and conflict-free culture
- Openness and reliance: – Existence of a trustworthy environment promotes acceptance, honesty, free interaction, group work, sharing of ideas and comments. This means that the firm has to derive talents that are more valuable and promote peace and success.
- Differences in management: – A good working environment addresses conflicts and exposes the unfulfilled commitments. This is a call for provision of alternatives and encouragement of sharing real opinions.
- Focus and simplicity: – Good policies and procedures are clear and precise. The company has to provide or define the employees’ requirements and expectations that are result driven. They have to emphasize on work results that support mutually understanding, interdependence and, positive results.
- Employees’ strengths: – The management should know and depend on the effectiveness and talents of the staff, thus the need to implement methods of peacefully eliciting them. This means that the employees focus more on learning and building on their strengths through interactions. Agility, confidence, speed and simplicity of the employee have to blend well with the vision and mission of a company.
Resolving diversification related conflicts at the workplace
Implementation of cultural diversity at the workplace should be subsequent to strategically planning. It ought to apply from the top executives, who should show commitment and importance of diversity. Having the employees understand the importances of diversity from the word go reduces any possibilities of conflicts.
In relation to Booyens writing (2008, p.24), a company need to have programs for performing prior training to employees on how to deal with counterparts from different cultural setting. Arguably, it is impossible for employees to grasp various complex cultural nuances at once, therefore the need for them to be careful on issues regarding stereotyping, language differences, time differences and individual versus collective mindset, as a measure of avoiding or resolving diversity related conflicts.
Fostering cultural diversity at the workplace
In line with Pride et al (2009, p.37), discovery of strengths or benefits of an action occur well prior to proper planning. These calls for the management to be responsive over recognizing, respecting and capitalizing on various aspects of the society mainly regarding ethnicity, race and gender.
Conclusion
According to Miller (2008, p.1), a good system capitalizes on the employees strengths while minimizing on the weaknesses. The differences between employees’ entail proper management, to strengthen understanding and enhancing stronger bonds through teamwork as a measure to capture global clientele. An entrepreneur should know that diversity is something more than moral obligation. It is a business opportunity.
Evidently, companies that practice ethical values are incomparable to businesses that just want to make a profit (Crystal, 2010, p.1). According to Crystal, (2010, p. 1), “Implementing Business Ethics in a company’s work environment could have benefits that include improved job satisfaction, a higher degree of company commitment and reduction of employee turnover.”
The benefit in practicing business ethics in the workplace can lead to employee satisfaction, flexible work schedules and more responsibilities. Improved job satisfaction is one benefit to boost the employees’ morale to complete tasks correctly and in a timely manner.
References
Booyens, S.W. (2008). Introduction to Health Service Management. Juta and Company Ltd. South Africa.
Crystal, D. (2010). Managing Business Ethics. Retrieved from https://www.allbusiness.com/
Dodds, B. (2008, March 31) Pandemic Planning and Business Continuity.
FedEx (2010). FedEx Guide to Services – Our Services – Services at a Glance, Retrieved from https://www.fedex.com/en-us/service-guide.html
Lycette, B. &, Herniman, J., (Sep 2008). New Goal – Setting Theory, Industrial Management, Volume 50, Issue 5, p. 25-30.
Miller, C. (2008, May 30). Cultural Diversity is an Opportunity.
Pride, W.M., Hughes, J.M. & Kappor, J.R. (2009). Business. Cengage Learning Publishers.
Vollmann, Thomas. E., Berry, William L. &, Whybark, Clay. D. (2005) Manufacturing Planning and control systems for supply chain management. McGraw-Hill Publisher/Irwin series.