Towards proper internal growth

Organisational Development (OD) seeks to improve the internal behaviour pattern, which is essential to perform a managerial role effectively. For a successful implementation, people in the organisation should pursue openness and trust, and engage in collaborative efforts. Let me take you to an organisation that recently made a conscious effort for OD intervention. The issues were related to their management practices.

1. Managers never met as a group.
2. They had overlapping responsibilities.
3. There were no clear career plans.
4. Decision making was highly centralised.
5. A big communication gap between the management and employees just exacerbated matters.

A consultant suggested conducting a training programme on team building. But the management was not keen to impart only training. It believed that the employees must have the mind-set to work as a team. While developing the team skills, we need to focus on two major aspects in managing - leadership and reward management. Both concepts are to be developed at the same time.

One essential output of team building is the sharing of leadership function by the manager with others. Besides, it is important that managers should learn to cope with a totality of people under their direction and not merely on a one-to-one basis.

More than policies and procedures, It is important to enhance group work skills for the staff. First of all, the top management should understand and ready to implement the HR intervention programmes that promote a cultural change.

It is evident that in some major companies in the Gulf, managers show reluctance to integrate new systems in the business process. Since most of them were hired for a limited period of contract, they tend to be busy on routine matters pertaining to them.

They lack long-term commitment. The organisation faces difficulty of visualising the external pressures and suffers. It's true that some employers do not follow a consistent approach in motivation. Good reward practice is the major influencing factor in motivation and preserves employee morale.

So the compensation in the company should be fair and equitable. It should maintain internal as well as external equity. One managing director had a practice of rewarding managers variably. Despite the fact that staffs were paid basic plus bonus, they were also granted cash envelopes in a very arbitrary manner.

The official gave this money only to project leaders. The criteria was supposedly based on the results of a performance appraisal scheme. But workers lost faith in the process and considered it routine work to satisfy the company's ISO paper document! The reporting executives promptly arrived with good appraisal ratings.

Lengthy appraisal forms were routinely filled and employees were rated with attributes. What this led to was the creation of an unhealthy competition among the managers; because of the differential pay rating, managers concentrated on their own departments. They lacked an overall vision for the whole group.

Instead of competing with rivals in the market, they fought among themselves. They set their department goals as their sole overriding priority. Later, the managing director realised that it was not standard practice to pay different rewards for the same group of staff who perform similar functions.

So, rewards need to be carefully designed to let employees understand why they are being given these. It should not create competition among the staff. How does one introduce OD intervention in an organisation? It is entirely based on your business applicability and feasibility.

The OD could be activated in the following mechanisms - role analysis, performance and potential appraisal, performance feedback and counselling, career planning and development.

Pon Mohaideen Pitchai is a Dubai human resources consultant.