Introduction
In the competitive environment of the XXI century globalized business field, the problem of lacking workforce might seem a very far-fetched issue; however, weirdly enough, workplace shortages have become a commonly observed phenomenon over the past few decades.
Fighting Workplace Shortages: Strategies
Needless to say, a number of strategies preventing the given phenomenon from taking over the business world have been tested, yet none seems to have had any tangible effect on the issue. As reports say, among the most common measures, the following strategies have been spotted:
- Raising the retirement age (Australian government);
- Workplace mentoring (Jones, 2012).
Workplace mentoring
Being the most promising strategy of all three mentioned above, workplace mentoring can be defined as establishing the specific models of behavior for the employees to follow in order to remain competent, growing both professionally and personally, and deal with the lack of enthusiasm or creativity (French, 2011, 136).
With the help of mentoring, employers will be able to bring the rates of workplace shortages down and manage to keep their more integrated, more invested in their work, and more enthusiastic about the future prospects.
Benefits of workplace mentoring
According to what the recent researches say, the key asset of the specified approach is that it makes the employees perfect their skills without setting very competitive environment (Gallagher & Metcaff, 2012).
Instead of stressing the fact of rivalry in a specified business field, employers offer their subordinates an example of organizational behavior that they would like to see, which works surprisingly well.
Disadvantages of workplace mentoring
It is important to mention, though, that workplace mentoring also presupposes dealing with a number of complexities and overcoming numerous obstacles for both employees and employers.
Disadvantages for employers and acceptable solutions
The latter are most likely to face the following negative aftereffects of the provided strategy:
- Employees’ unwillingness to change.
Motivation has always been an issue for any company, and the Australian entrepreneurships are no exception. Thus, it will be necessary to introduce a motivation enhancing strategy together with the chosen change design (Griffin & O’Leary-Kelly, 2004).
- Inability to establish a proper model of organizational behavior.
By conducting an analysis of the roles of an employee and a company leader as interpreted in the present-day literature, one will be able to come up with a working model for organizational behavior (Aamodt, 2012).
Disadvantages for employees and acceptable solutions
Meanwhile, employees will most likely have the following complexities to deal with when getting accustomed to the new demands:
- Increase in competition.
No matter how the HRM team, the managers and the company leader might strive to promote togetherness among the employees, the latter will still compare their skills among each other, which will eventually lead to competition.
It is important to note that competition is not necessarily a negative phenomenon; when it is not accelerating, it can be used to fuel the employees’ enthusiasm.
However, once rivalry gets out of hand, promoting knowledge sharing and other principles of a friendly tam becomes impossible (Dalkir, 2005).
- Stress from both coping with work and trying to meet the new demands.
Conclusion
The necessity to follow the new rules and adapt to a new environment will necessarily create a stressful atmosphere, which is bound to bring the performance levels down for a while.
Therefore, the company leader will have to set his/her priorities straight and figure out if the company is ready for having the working process slowed down temporarily.
That being said, it is clear that mentoring alone will hardly be of any effect. It is only with the efforts of the company’s leader that the reasons for further growth will appear.
Reference List
Aamodt, M. G. (2012). Industrial/organizational psychology: An applied approach. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Dalkir, K. (2005). Knowledge management in theory and practice. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Butterworth–Heinemann.
French, R. (2011). Organizational behavior. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Gallagher, B. J., & Metcaff, F. (2012). Being Buddha at work: 108 ancient truths on change, stress, money and success. San Francisco, CA: Berrett–Coehler Publishers.
Griffin, R. W. & O’Leary-Kelly, A. (2004). The dark side of organizational behavior. New York, NY: Jossey-Bass.
Jones, A. (2012). Workplace mentoring: Reference guide. Victoria, AU: Shea.