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A Review of Preferred Work
Culture Contributing to Employee Satisfaction in Today’s Organizations
The term “culture” by and large denotes the ideas, customs, and art of a
particular society. While referring to work culture or organization
culture one would particularly mean the customs, patterns, arts and
beliefs followed in various organizations. Edgar Schein, one of the most
prominent theorists of organizational culture, gave the following
definition: The culture of a group can now be defined as a pattern of
shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems
of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well
enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members
as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those
problems.
Employee satisfaction on the other hand is a measure
of how happy workers are with their job and working environment.
Keeping morale high among workers can be of tremendous benefit to
any company as quite rightly pointed out Jack Welch in his statement
“Employee satisfaction gets you productivity,
quality, pride, and creativity”. In
today’s world of globalization organizations stress immensely to
follow a culture which encourages open channels of communication,
a flat hierarchy, informal environment, teamwork, and respect to
new ideas and thoughts.
The following aspects can broadly define the likely preferred work
culture in today’s organizations which contribute to a satisfied
workforce:
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1. Work Timings: Flexible
work timings have gained immense popularity amongst today’s organizations.
Organizations have started giving their employees
the leverage of entering the office premises at anytime of their
convenience and completing their designated tasks, though a
minimum hours have to be spent in the workplace. |
2. Work From Home: Another
concept which is gaining importance, more amongst female workers, is the
concept of “work from home”. Organizations are largely investing in
equipments with the aid of which employees will have the benefit to stay
at home and at the same time stay connected to the office network.
3. Business Attire:
As opposed to formal business attire for day to day work, organizations
have now remodeled their policy on daily dress code to the widely
preferred business casuals which also includes denim on one day of work. A
few organizations also have a policy of Friday dressing where only casuals
can be worn by their employees.
4. Flat
Hierarchy: The preferred
organization structure is a flat organization structure with few levels of
hierarchy which enables fast decision making and easy accessibility to top
management. People who stay closer to customers know better the market
needs and can respond faster to rapidly changing customer requirements and
such changes can be easily highlighted and brought to the notice of the
top management in a flat hierarchy. Another emerging trend in today’s
organization are meetings with supervisors supervisor which helps in
smooth interaction within different levels of management which is very
effective within a flat hierarchy.
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5.
Decentralization: This is the
process of dispersing decision-making governance to the employee at the
lowest level of the hierarchy and giving them the right to exercise a few
decisions all by themselves which acts as a great time saving and cost
cutting mechanism.
6.
Employee Empowerment:
Organizations are largely investing in employee empowerment. The
increasing use of Employee Self service Systems which allow employees to
maintain their own personal data is the biggest example. This also helps
to reduce unnecessary paper work and also aims at data accuracy.
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7. Innovation: As George S
Patton says "Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and
let them surprise you with their results." The increasing demand of
today’s workforce is acknowledgment and implementation of their ideas and
thus organizations have now started investing in employee innovation where
young and fresh ideas are being recognized as best practices.
8. Rewards & Recognition:
With the increase in stress levels, with long working hours how does an
organization aim to create contributing and motivated employees, how do
organizations maintain the high employee morale and the quality of life
are some of the key concerns of today’s organizations and one of the many
answers to these question is an effective reward and recognition system.
Apart from the performance appraisal system organizations today are
investing a lot in reward and recognition programs where employees are
rewarded as Star employees and key achievers, long Service awards are
announced for employees who work with the organization for a long tenure,
Employee referral programs motivates an employee to bring their friends to
work with them.
9. Employee Recreation:
Employee recreation programs have been shown to reduce absenteeism,
increase performance and productivity, reduce stress levels, and increase
job satisfaction. The new term coined to define employee recreation is
associate engagement. A few examples of employee recreational activities
are office outings, invitation to employees family to come and visit
employees workplace, annual sports event, team outings, decoration of
employee workspace , organizing music clubs, dance clubs, drama clubs,
arranging training for special areas of interest of the employees.
10. Employee Benefits:
Benefits are forms of value, other than payment, that are provided to the
employee in return for their contribution to the organization. Employee
benefits typically refers to retirement plans, health life insurance, life
insurance, disability insurance, vacation, employee stock ownership plans,
membership to clubs, special offers and discounts on premium products and
outlets, sponsorship for education of employees children, attractive
schemes from financial institutions on purchase of assets, subsidized food
in canteen
To sum up culture is the acquired knowledge people use to interpret
experience and generate behavior and in today’s world organizations are
going through a constant change in order to maintain the best possible
culture which sets an example and pave the way for enhanced employee
satisfaction.
Contributed By: Stuti
Banerjee, human resource professional with 6 yrs of experience
currently engaged with HR consulting on ERP platform.
17.stuti@gmail.com
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