Research Paper on Factors Affecting Employees' Productivity

Introduction

Manufacturing plants entail processing of particular products into another. A beverage manufacturing company involves the manufacture of several drinks and usually using carbon dioxide to preserve the beverages. My company produces soft drinks and other energy drinks. The organization involves several workers to get the final product that goes to the market. According to Shields et al., (2015), every employee in the organization has a role that they individually and collectively play to ensure that the final product is of high quality and can meet the market expectations. Inter-collaboration between staffs in the company is one of the primary tools to provide high-quality production of the beverages. The inter-collaboration from the senior management employees to the lowest level employee can only be achieved through effective communication and cohesiveness. The top management team also has a critical role to play to enhance the cohesiveness throughout the cony employees. Resources as well enhance all the activities in the company to run smoothly and at the end get the best out of the manufacturing process. For optimum productivity in a given group of workers, it is paramount to work together as a team. Teamwork enhances cohesiveness as well as a sense of belonging to a group thus motivating each other in working towards a common target. This paper focusses on research in a beverage manufacturing company. This paper further focusses on the problems found out in the study and giving recommendations on what should be done to enable optimum operations in the company.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Communication Problems Among Group Members

As aforementioned, communication is a critical factor towards achieving a common goal in any given organization. With ineffective and in any given organization it is difficult to assess situations and solve issues that emerge in the systems of operation. All employees in a company including managers and other stakeholders are required to have excellent communication skills that will enable social interaction and interpersonal relationship of the highest order. Without proper communication between employees from the top management team, as well as the other employees of lower positions in the company, facilitates perception and knowledge sharing, problem-solving, decision making and resolving of conflicts within the organization (Neves & Eisenberger 2012). In the beverage manufacturing plant, communication was among the top finding in the research conducted, thus addressing communication problems can significantly help in optimizing the operations and thus maximize the productivity in the company.

According to Neves and Eisenberger (2012), poor communication, for instance, may bring confusions among the employees. For example, when several team leaders are passing different messages to other low-level employees, confusion may arise, and as a result, different things may be performed in different ways. It is essential to have a standard communication medium through which employees get informed of the developments in the organization to enhance uniformity. Besides, communication problems can instill stress in the workplace. In turn, stress is known to cause discomfort and low productivity as well as a low concentration in doing something. Communication problems can result in high stress in the workplace. Poor communication makes one feel that everything on the to-do list appears so urgent thus making one to tense, hurry and sometimes overwork towards finishing the tasks. If communication is enhanced, a feeling of stability as well as predictability and confidence as well. Unhealthy communication in the workplace is counterproductive to the efficiency of workers towards achieving a common goal and optimum productivity of the workers. Fear in workers as well is brought by the tension that something is urgent and thus lowers the productivity of the workers in turn.

Poor communication causes unmet expectations in the workplace. Teams may miss deadlines, and also employees may fail to understand their roles in the organization due to poor communication. Apparently, appointments may also be missed if communication is done in a wrong way. When employees fail to understand what their priorities should be, they may often choose the wrong tasks and prioritize them thus disappointing the top management team (Rajhans, 2012). Also, it is remarkable that without a well-communicated schedule as well as priorities of an organization, it is impossible for workers to know what to prioritize and how to complete tasks efficiently.

The relationship among team members as well as organization employees can easily be broken down through poor communication skills. For example, a boss or colleague in work emails another person an accusatory email; it is likely to cause anger, fear, hurt, as well as frustration. It is healthier for the workplace relationship if communication is practiced with topnotch skills throughout the employees of the company. After such a conversation, it is likely that when the victim of accusation passes near his/her boss' office, he/she may hide rather than trying to get a friendly solution towards the existing problem. Apparently, one may also feel uncertain to look for an amicable solution (Rajhans, 2012). All these feelings and emotions in workers can slow down the productivity of workers in the organization.

Additionally, communication can be in the form of notices, warning signs and alerts. When warnings are not placed in the right positions in the company, it is possible that accidents can occur due to negligence. Apparently, when accidents occur it is likely that the victims will be absent in work and thus decrease the workforce that is needed for optimum production. Communication for alarms and notice for indicating danger zones should be put in places that can easily be seen (Anitha, 2014). Also, the writings should be in bright colors as well as clear and concise language that is understandable by all.

Nonverbal communication is important as verbal communication. However, it is notable that many people emphasize verbal communication more than on nonverbal communication. Body language and unspoken cues are what entails nonverbal communication. These signals reveal a lot about someone and their thoughts and their intent when communicating. For example, when coworkers and other senior employees in the work team slouch during meetings as well as rolling eyes, it might indicate boredom (Anitha, 2014). This kind of nonverbal cues may intensely demoralize other who had morale in doing work at maximum effort, thus lower productivity in others.

Recommendations and Suggestions

It is always paramount for the top positioned workers to act as examples when implementing policies or trying to instill a new culture into an organization. In the beverage manufacturing company, it is critical to note that the research findings established that there was communication problem throughout the entire organization (Anitha, 2014). Thus it is paramount for the leaders as well as the management team to start acting on their gaps to foster the implementation of recommendations given.

Good leaders always lead by example, and therefore for the beverage manufacturing plant, the leaders have to correct their tradition of communication inefficiently to other workers. It does not mean that if one is in a top management team, they should communicate to others as they wish, and instead, they should be kind and respectful to all.

Secondly, seminars can be of great help in educating the company's workers to understand the scope of healthy communication. Through workshops, employees will learn all that entails communication in an organization and thus, they can work on the gaps that were in place to improve the communication.

Also, the organization may opt to look for efficient and friendly communication medium in case of any message that they feel can hurt an employee. Through a friendly medium of communication, the employees moral may be retained and thus keeping the productivity of the individual at optimum.

As aforementioned, the company had problems with communicating warnings and alerts to employees. The organization can decide on a new approach for passing warning messages to the employees working in the company to avoid accidents due to negligence.

Lack of Cohesiveness in Groups With Diverse Members

The beverage manufacturing plants put effort into encouraging the staff to work cohesively with other employees at the manufacturing plant. The management feels great when they do an audit and realize that all the workers and non-staff work cohesively and efficient toward their primary goal. When there is cohesion at the manufacturing plant, it means there would be reduced occurrences of conflicts between the employees of the organization (Srikanth et al., 2016). Also, if the employees realize that there is no cohesion among them, there will be difficulties during work time. Since most will not be able to work comfortably with other employees due to lack of cohesion; and this is a bad sign for the manufacturing plant mains goals and achievements (Srikanth et al., 2016). During the research, it was discovered that at the manufacturing plant the employees lack cohesiveness in groups with diverse members and therefore causing the organization to have adverse effects on its profits and also reputation from the competitive plants.

In the plant, all workers despite their ranks are supposed to work efficiently and cohesively for them to achieve the primary goal of the organization. However, it was discovered some of the workers are proud to associate themselves with other staff and often decide to work alone, especially the staff with hire ranks downgrade the junior staff and therefore, confusing all the staff. At the plant cohesiveness of all the workers is paramount because it enables all the workers to have the unique channel of communication and also enable them to divide work accordingly so as the final product will be of better quality. The workers who depict the character to downgrade other junior staff will take pride in their achievements rather than the accomplishments of the whole organization. They will avoid to associate with others in groups during work time and prefer to work alone, and they forget that working in groups motivates all the employees to work hard and produce better products. Furthermore, the social support that is received during group work is essential for the workers to feel that they are appreciated by their colleagues (Mello, & Delise, 2015).

Also, the beverage manufacturing plant has set rules and norms that must be followed by the employees as guidelines at the workplace to ensure every employee is at par with the management. However, some of the employees do not want to follow the directions and rules set by the administration and therefore, they decide to break the rules and amend their own rules that are contradicting with the management set rules of the manufacturing plant. By doing this, the employees who do such have cause server damages on the level of motivation and cohesiveness among the staff of the organization, and it has led to poor performance between the employees which cause the manufacturing plant to make losses (Srikanth, 2016).

All the employees need to trust and count on others to do what they say they will do. Also, it is vital for all the employees of the manufacturing plant to believe in the set rules and procedures. To build a cohesive team when all the members are spread out it is challenging. It is discovered that there is less teamwork in the organization. Different groups of different departments can meet no more than once in a year, and this has increased the lack of cohesion between the staff of the...