Labor Welfare Management - Essay Example

RUNNING HEAD: Labor Welfare Student Name Student Number Unit Title/Number Labor Welfare Due Date Unit Coordinator Introduction Every organization’s management is a causal factor within because task structure and initiation of psychological infrastructure alongside their maintenance within the organization fall under its jurisdiction. Some managers may use inappropriate strategies and subsequently become unsuccessful in achieving organizational effectiveness and efficiency. In their pursuit for effectiveness and efficiency in production, some managers may appear poor compared to others. However, the claims that management’s pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness have been at the expense of labor’s welfare are not valid (Caldari, 2007). This is because labor welfare is one of the methods applied by organizational management to attain efficiency and effectiveness in production and goal achievement. Employee motivation, incentives, compensation, allowances, promotion, and health and safety play an important role in improving the morale of employees and thus commitment to organizational goals and objectives. Additionally, organizational management understands the importance of labor welfare in improving efficiency and effectiveness makes it a paramount part of strategic planning. Therefore, management avoids certain activities that may lead to demotivation of employees in their pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness and hence embark on activities that improve employee satisfaction and thus quality work delivered (Caldari, 2007). Labor welfare includes a range of activities such as spouse employment, schools, social relationships, equal promotion opportunities, and favorable working conditions among others. Over time, organizations realized that a better labor welfare improves employee relationship and makes them feel part of the organizational success. This paper seeks to argue that the claims that management’s pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness have been at the expense of labor’s welfare are not valid. Employee Motivation Organizational management has the responsibility of getting things done as expected but achieves this role through people. However, to attain the maximum results, managers should develop strategies to motivate the people working in the organization (Bowey, 2005). Motivation theory and practice are complex subjects touching on various disciplines in and out of an organization set up. Despite the huge volume of research, basic and applied, motivation as a subject used in pursuit of effectiveness and efficiency lacks a clearly understanding among management and hence poorly applied. Therefore, for managers to practice motivation fully, they need to understand the nature of human in itself. It is possible to argue that the human nature can be very simple yet very complex. This calls for organizational management to apply various methods of motivation to ensure improvement of employee morale and welfare. Among the widely applied strategies of motivation, include employee involvement where employees are included in various aspects that affect their work and career. Issues like development of any new remuneration system should attract the involvement and consent of employees to avoid future conflicts. This will allow the employees feel some sense of ownership while at the same time being committed to success. Another important approach of ensuring labor motivation is the elimination of de-motivators (Bowey, 2005). Organizational management should be keen to identify and remove any difficulties perceived to frustrate labor from achieving high levels of performance. Additionally, organizational management value equity in remuneration, promotion, and treatment of its employees. There is also the important point of the relevance of reward as a means of improving employee motivation. Employees should have a complete trust that they will earn the proposed rewards for good performance (Caldari, 2007). Rewarding the best performers always encourage the entire labor to put in more efforts in their activities. Finally, there is the moral value of an altruistic approach of treating labor as human beings and according them the due respect they deserve. From the above perspective, motivating labor improves an organization’s efficiency and effectiveness through a committed labor determined to achieve success and the organization’s predetermined goals and objectives. Labor committed to improve its excellence always results in quality work and service delivery (Waddell, et al., 2011). Therefore, in pursuit of organizational effectiveness and efficiency by the management through motivation, it is invalid to argue that the labor’s welfare is jeopardized or rather compromised since it could otherwise not be willing to strive for excellence. Business Ethics In most cases, workplace ethics and codes of conduct include ethics and healthy management styles. The requirement of workplace ethics encompasses the need to act ethically personally and professionally as well. This implies that management and labor have to act ethically at the personal level and maintain ethical standards of professionalism (Romar, 2004). Management and labor appreciate that ethical behavior in the workplace is important in providing the basic guidelines for good judgment, being mindful of any kind of situation, and providing a basis for relationship with other individuals while at the same time providing a basis of achieving organizational effectiveness and efficiency (Phipps, 2011). Acting ethically will also avoid organizations from entering a legal liability in its operations. With a strong reference to a personal code of ethics in the workplace, organizational management appreciate that compassion, responsibility, integrity, perseverance, and cooperation are the main components of a successful management ethics. Workplace life is all about teamwork and cooperation to ensure effective and efficient realization of objectives and goals. People working together towards a common goal need clear communication strategies and effective ethical behavior to ensure successful understanding and acceptance of one another irrespective of different backgrounds (Schwartz, 2007). Therefore, management should understand that ethics in workplace play an important role in bringing employees together to avoid workplace conflicts and maximize productivity, hence effective goal realization. Running an effective meeting in the workplace, for instance, requires ethical behaviors that include positive feelings, positive attitude, organized thought-process, and a sense of self-accomplishment. When carrying out daily management activities, organizational managers need to make decisions that have moral implications. This is very vital since any decision made will have an impact on the organization, employees, stakeholders, and shareholders. According to Sikula et al (2001), managers understand that their ethical obligation in managing the labor plays an important in meeting the organization’s expectations as well as setting a good model that is appropriate behavior for others within the organization. Therefore, when pursuing organizational effectiveness and efficiency through application of business ethics, employees get the opportunity for fair treatment and hence better welfare. This is because ethical behavior calls for non-oppressive management of labor (Romar, 2004). Employee Counseling Employee counseling is the latest trend applied by organizational management in their pursuit for efficiency and effectiveness in running the operations of the organization while at the same time maintaining labor welfare (Waddell, et al., 2011). In the world of ever increasing complexity in workplaces coupled with work stress and burnout, there is the tendency of decrease in the level of employee efficiency and performance. This saw employee counseling as the latest management tool to increase effectiveness and quality of work and service delivered by employees (Fry, 2003). In the current fast-paced and dynamic business environment, there is virtually no any organization that is free of stress neither is its labor stress-free. The main sources of stress are issues related to workplace. Such issues may include deadline management, lack of time to fulfill family commitments, and other personal problems. Such issues may lead to employee burnout, stress, depression, and demoralization. Over time, organizations realized the need and importance of having a stress-free yet motivated and capable labor to deliver the organization’s expectations in an effective and efficient manner. Therefore, most organizations resorted to integrating employee counseling services and making it a critical part of their culture. By definition, employee counseling is a view to provide support and help employees in facing and sailing through difficult times that may affect their ability to deliver the expected resulted of their workplaces (Fry, 2003). After a successful counseling program, employees are dealt with ease and appreciate the fact the organizational management shares their feelings ad cares for their wellbeing. From then henceforth, performance of an employee improves and thus offering the organization with efficiency and effectiveness since stressed labor is more likely to blunder and produce poor quality services. Management Role In their pursuit for efficiency and effectiveness, organizational management are judged with specific roles that specifically aims at improving the overall efficiency and operations of the organization. Such roles are those that comprise planning, development, decision-making, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, budgeting, and training (Bowey, 2005). As mentioned earlier, attaining efficiency and effectiveness in most organizations is the first priority of the management to attain profit maximization, effective management of labor, and effective goal realization. This implies that organizational management should control the roles mentioned above in a professional manner in order to improve their efficiency and effectiveness while at the same time upholding high standards of labor welfare. Essentially, the role of managers is to guide the organizations toward goal accomplishment. All organizations exist for certain purposes or goals, and managers are responsible for combining and using organizational resources to ensure that their organizations achieve their purposes. The role of the Management is to move an organization towards its purposes or goals by assigning activities that organization members perform (Waddell, et al, 2011). If Management ensures that all the activities are designed effectively, the production of each individual worker will contribute to the attainment of the organizational goals. Management strives to encourage individual activity that will lead to reaching organizational goals and to discourage individual activity that will hinder the accomplishment of the organization objectives. There is no idea more important than managing the fulfillment of the organizational goals and objectives. The meaning of the Management is given by its goals and objectives. Therefore, in discharging their activities, organizational managers play a pivotal role in acting within their limits to safeguard labor welfare. In essence, organizational management has the greatest the responsibility of developing and communicating policies and objectives for the organization to staff, stakeholders, team leaders, shareholders, and anyone else like to face the impact of such policies (Faleye, et al. 2006). The management is also concerned with the establishment of formal and informal organizational structures that include delegating authority and sharing responsibilities, setting priorities and reviewing terms and conditions, maintaining effective communication, selecting, motivating, and appraising staff, and being accountable to staff, the larger enterprise, and the general community (Ngai, 2009). In performing such tasks in an ethical manner, the organizational management finds itself motivating labor and thus the improvement of their welfare and thus effective organizational planning. Conclusion This paper has argued that the claims that management’s pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness have been at the expense of labour’s welfare are not valid. The paper argued out the point through analysis of a number of ways with which organizational management apply in their pursuit for effectiveness and efficiency in their organizations. Among the various methods employed by organizational management in pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness include employee motivation, employee counseling, and the overall management roles. In their bid to attain effectiveness and efficiency in their organizations, the paper argues that the management alone cannot achieve its objectives without using other people. The paper also asserts the importance of having motivated and qualified labor to deliver quality services. It is for this reason that organizational management plan and come up with the best strategies to motivate its workforce. Secondly, the paper explored the importance of employee counseling in the pursuit of effectiveness and efficiency. The paper found out that in a dynamic and complex business world, every organization faces stress yet their employees too face stressful situations. A stressed labor will definitely be inefficient and ineffective and thus initiating counseling programs will help me things better. Thirdly, business ethics is a major tool employed by the organizational management in promoting efficiency and effectiveness. When the management embraces business ethics, they set an environment where relationships among individuals promote success. Finally, the role of the organizational management plays an important role in ensuring efficiency and effectiveness of an organization. The management’s important roles of sharing responsibilities, setting priorities and reviewing terms and conditions, maintaining effective communication, selecting, motivating, and appraising staff, and being accountable to staff, the larger enterprise, and the general community are vital in determining the course of an organization and thus safeguarding labor welfare. Reference List Bowey, A 2005, ‘Motivation: the art of putting theory into practice’, European Business Forum, issue 20, Winter, pp 17-20. Caldari, K 2007, ‘Alfred Marshall’s critical analysis of scientific management’, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, vol. 14, no. 1, p. 55-78. Faleye, O., Mehrotra, V and Morck, R 2006, “When Labor Has a Voice in Corporate Governance,” Journal of Finance and Quantitative Analysis, vol. 41, no. 3, p. 489-510. Fry, L 2003, “Toward a theory of spiritual leadership”, The Leadership Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 6, p. 693-727. Ngai, P 2005, “Global Production, Company Codes of Conduct, and Labor Conditions in China: A Case Study of Two Factories,” The China Journal, vol. 54, p. 101-113. Phipps, STA 2011, ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary: In a male-dominated field, women contributed by bringing a touch of spirituality to early management theory and practice’, Journal of Management History, vol. 17, no. 3, p 270-281. Romar, E 2004, “Managerial harmony: the Confucian ethics of Peter F. Drucker”, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 51, no. 2, p. 199-210. Schwartz, M 2007, ‘The “business ethics” of management theory’, Journal of Management History, vol. 13, no. 1, p. 43-54. Sikula Sr, A, Olmosk, K, Kim, C & Cupps, S 2001, ‘A “New” Theory of Management’, Ethics & Behaviour, vol. 11, no. 1, p. 3-21. Waddell, D., Jones, G &George, J 2011, Contemporary Management, 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Limited, Sydney. Read More