Introduction
Working in one of the industries that fall in the category of health sector is all that I wanted and demanded since childhood, however, my passionate and interests were not directed to specific institution or organization as I went through the primary course of education.
Despise lack of specificity in these earlier years of career-building, I did not wave from looking forward to the establishing of the future professional foundation in the field of health service provision, as it was evidently affirmed by the exceptional performance in mathematics and science subjects. Therefore, it was not a surprise in my life to find graduating with a higher diploma in engineering pharmacy, which resulted after a compacted 17 years of study.
Having set high goals in my career and professional development, I felt that graduating from the higher learning institution acted as a mark of one the major achievements in life, while it still meant a lot in the transition of my life.
As a matter of fact, I didn’t want to procrastinate in getting myself within the job systems, and being driven by enthusiasm and ambition to practice all that I had gained from academic work, I relentlessly made applications to all those potential companies which I believed could offer or were having an opportunity for a pharmaceutical engineer, beside considering their ability to offering a good working environment to the entire company’s labor force.
After trying severally in sending applications to a number of such organizations of interest, some corresponded by sending regrets, other kept dumb-mute without replying, while a few called for an interview in which I would fail some, while others we disagreed in terms of package remuneration and other benefits.
Though the whole hassle for a job was not ease, fraught of confounding situations as expressed above, this circumstance was a short-lived one, as XYZ pharmaceutical company soon accepted me by we agreeing to the terms and conditions for each other, thus entering into the first contract.
Overview of the job environment
The accomplishment of the job deal gave a new feel to both us. Being the first one, it meant a lot in my side, especially in gaining enormous experience while making the organizations operations to run smoothly through the services that I promised to offer. In signing the contract with the XYZ pharmaceutical company, I agreed to delivery my services in a number of ways.
First and foremost, as a person endowed with the knowledge and a little bit of experience in offering engineering services for a range of pharmaceutical machines and equipments, it was my obligation to ensure that all pharmaceutical packaging machines of the organization were in proper working conditions. This appeared to be the major responsibility that was given to me by the organization, which I did wholeheartedly.
Here, I worked closely and concentrated more in dispensing my engineering services by servicing the packaging machines. Though being new in the field, I did find or encounter much difficulty in delivering in this particular task. I think and believe that this was because I had wide knowledge in the field of work and some clues or hints gained through experimental work that I did in the course of schooling.
In addition, also I felt attracted to working in this place as it demanded little movements from one place to another. However, the little movements weren’t an advantage because I did not like walking, but understand that long resting is a thing which I have hated in my life, for it encourages laziness and brings a lot of problems to humans, especially those non-infectious diseases such as obesity and edema.
On the contrary way of thinking, I held less movement as an added advantage in the workplace for somebody new in job tasks, more so in a high and sensitive position concerned with assurance and control of quality of the company’s products. While understanding the related effects and consequences of producing products of poor quality for the organizations, I took the cutting down of movements within the organization and working from a single place as a way that led to sparing of some extra time for my personal-work related activities.
In order to ensure that there was maintenance and enhancement of quality products within the manufacturing and production of goods in the organizations, I at first utilized the extra time diligently and serious working on those areas which I knew posed considerable difficulties in understanding them during the course of study.
Moreover, this spared time was also of significance importance as it also gave me the chance to familiarize myself with many things involved in a real workplace environment, including tenets and regulations that applied to the company’s employees at different circumstances.
Within a very short working period after signing my employment contract with the company, it was evident that I had gained adequate knowledge and experience to service and work on any machine particularly any of the packaging type of machine. Thus, there was a more gain of interest in deliberating on my tasks of machine repairing, which triggered the need of moving from being so much specialized on one working point station to a more general one.
So, I sometimes moved around the organization’s departments looking if there were any of the familiar machines that had broken down to service it. For that matter, a part from serving as chief machine repairer for the major packaging machine of the organization, I also went on attending to several other small machines and equipments which were being used within the organization to accomplish various other packaging tasks.
Truly, it was not to my surprise that every time I tried to get a tour within the various departments dealing with such related machine, I found several of them had broken down depicting that the way the company might have been suffering and incurring a lot of losses due to the issue of machine failure.
Revelation of Problems
The service that I offered to the XYZ pharmaceutical company appeared to be in higher demand than the company’s managerial team and I could have perceived before.
The decision to move around in search for the broken packaging equipments and miniature machines led to the realization that the broken machines to be serviced were more than what the chief company machine supervisor, whom was one of my interviewers had understood or revealed.
Though I was busy in most of the time working hard to cope with the tight time working conditions of the company, there were also some hours for break, lunch and some leisure, which were created officially for renewal of energy in our body.
As most of the workers did not get out of their working stations during breaks and lunch hour periods, I planned spending part of these hours for a social purpose. Despite the fear of being a new employee in the company, I pretended that I was looking for those broken down packaging machine, and this worked to the best of attaining the hidden intentions.
It sometimes appeared to me that I was bothering a few of the workers when I stepped in their stations or offices, especially those who were work overloaded, and wanted to recover or catch up with time certainly for deadlines that were nigh.
However, I used the gained communication skills to get over the barrier of making friendships; thus, we found it necessary to share a little bit of our past even if it meant a mere simple and short introduction which included just our names and the kind of job or position each of us was doing for the organization.
The decision to pay visits to the many offices and work stations had a double to triple fruitfulness. That is, when I shared with most of the colleagues of the kind of job and professional area of my specialization, almost eight-five percent of them showed interest and requested for my assistance.
There were those who wanted me to service and repair simple equipments, while others needed me to work on certain machines which looked to be complex machines to them such photocopiers, printers and to some extend computer categories, depending on the office they held. I tried all that I can to repair those with simple problems according to my knowledge and experience, while avoiding to disappoint my new colleagues and allies by giving assured appointments for the complicated problems.
The overall results showed that the organization had suffered a lot in several ways other than just having their machine broken down. While many of the corporation’s machines were non-functioning or having problems that were generally not reported, it depicted that there was an overall problem of communication barriers among individuals and departments whose works were core to the contributions of the company’s production and efficiencies.
The matter became evident when I volunteered to work and assist the company on having a routinely weekly repair for the installed machines. It was a tiresome task resulting from immeasurable movements, that is, moving from office to office within a department and more so from one department to another.
This not only counted towards wastage of one’s energy, but it also led to a lot of time wastage on collecting the repair information requests from the different notice boxes which were not strategically located in the various departments. Furthermore, the manual system of receiving the documents took me long time to draft and enter the data to my storage records for future reference, scheduling and any other need that might arise in the course of the business operation.
Due to the use of manual data and information systems within the organization, much of the work remained undone leading to the company lagging behind in most of their operations.
With this kind of system being in place, the supply, accounting and the store departments were greatly affected as they could not keep complete, compiled information without having received the data and information in time. Seeing the vaguely system and hardship that the organization was going through, I did not hesitate in proposing of new communication methodology.
The sense was overt to every member of the organization and within four months of my employment in the organization, plans instilled through a collaborative approach of departmental staffs and junior employees were underway towards the introduction of new project on information technology, primarily aimed at off setting the problem of data and information transfers in their communications.
The inclusions of all parties in the proposing and introducing the programs were of paramount significance in assuring that not body had to be affected by the employment of the new technology. According to me, this establish trust and confidence among member parties, while at the same time showing concern and care for each others’ future and welfare, thus, paving the way for speedy implementation of the project.
Team building
On critical assess of the organizations, it appeared that they were several issues that needed to be resolved within the organization. Following group and employee’s discussions among themselves and negotiations with the managerial team, it was discovered that most of the employees required knowing more than just a simple single issue their area of operations.
For instance, it was suggested that machine operators should get to know a bit of simple repair methods, while secretaries were to gain to some extend the knowledge and experience on managerial professions so as to make the company operate efficiently and perform excellently.
For the purpose of accomplishing this goal, the involved parties negotiated for the best way to learn the new skills, however with limited time available for the management team to offer its employees as a way of motivating them, the parties finally decided to create sacrificial extra time for them to learn and get acquainted with the new skills.
In departmental groups, each of them established their leaders and through closely working relationship with volunteer senior managerial team formed by person whom had already acquired the knowledge and skills needed in the specific groups, they kicked off on a serious training sessions that would transform the organization in a number of ways.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be stated that problems are always there in organizations, and sometime this exist even without being noticed by the seniors and company executives. This situation was not quite different for the XYZ pharmaceutical company, which believed that the only problem they had was only concerned with repairing of packaging machines.
However, the establishment and building of a team are critical to solving many problems existing in organization, including even those hidden problems that derail the delivery of services and/or productions of products. As I reflect on my case, I become convinced and confident that anybody holding any position in an organization can bring a lot of transformational changes directly and indirectly through establishment/building of a team, as long as the party possesses the necessary skills and knowledge needed.