Analysis On Ambler Business Service

Analysis on Ambler Business Service

Introduction:

Ambler Business Services is encountering problems which involve both Industrial and Organizational aspects. In this paper, the issues will be stated, the forms of intervention will be chosen, a plan of implementation will be laid out and the expected outcome as a result of the interventions selected will be discussed.

Issues:

Ambler is facing many issues related to its increased rate of growth. The issues at Ambler are turnover; new hires dissatisfied with their jobs, tenured employees lacking motivation, inappropriate styles of leadership, and employee concern about their current and future status in the company.

Ambler has been in business for about 20 years. Ambler began as a 'Family/Small business'. However, with its success, the company has hired considerably more people, particularly in the last five years. No longer a small family business, Ambler has become more of a corporate type of business. This change in the business has created a different atmosphere.

The experience of 'change' affects only the tenured employees, since they are the group of current employees that are used to things as they were in the old days. The tenured employees are getting the feeling that the "the company has changed too much and is no longer the same great place to work it was 5 years ago". Tenured employees are encountering motivation problems. They are discouraged by the changes and they feel insecure in their jobs.

On the other hand, "New hires complain that the company is not making the best use of their skills". The changes at Ambler do not affect this newer group of employees in the same manner as tenured employees are affected. However, the newer employees are not feeling the best about their jobs, either. This may relate to poor feedback from management, a lack of clear employee understanding of the importance of their job, a lack of knowledge of how the quality of their work helps or harms employees in other departments, and even fuzzy management input on what their job requirements actually are.

As indicated in the statement, "Recently, problems have started to arise. Turnover is increasing and employee morale is down", the company is struggling with systemic problems that are affecting everyone.

Leadership at Ambler needs to be considered the issue, as leadership style is affecting both the morale of lower level employees and also how the company functions overall. As the number of employees has increased over the years, the previous easy going and less task-focused type of leadership has become no longer beneficial to the company. With the increased staffing, management needs to apply more discipline and focus to their own tasks, and require the same with tasks they assign to lower level staff. Management also needs to listen better to the employees and try to understand what they are feeling, and why. In this manner management will gain further insight in what is going on throughout the company.

At Ambler there are concerns about the company's growth, development, and how it can stay competitive. People are worried, and they are scared of what the future of the company might be, if things remain as they are now. Ambler is in need of change. Suggestions for changes will be discussed in the next section.

Interventions:

In order to improve the company, staff morale needs to be improved. At Ambler, management, tenured employees, and new hires need to sort things out. Management has to change its way of relating to staff.

The leadership style that management should adopt now, with the increased size of staff and a mixed group of new and old employees, needs first of all to be one of sufficient participation with the employees to understand what is going through everyone's mind. By listening carefully to staff, and in response clarifying what is going on with the company and why and how, management can remove fear of the unknown from the employee equation. That is certainly one root of the current employee unease. At the same time, management needs to find ways to give employees healthier motivation. This approach should solve part of the problem that the staff is having. However, that is not all that needs to be done:

- Management has to adjust. They need to adjust first by pulling themselves together. The old method for leadership is no longer working, as this is no longer a small family business. A more complex organizational flow chart has likely been developed. Even so, management needs to go out of their way to try to interface more with newly unsettled staff. Management has to listen to what the needs are, as perceived by both new hires and tenured employees.

- New hires - The increasing workload has to be divided and partly reassigned to them, to make them feel that are worth what they are paid for, but without unnecessarily pulling the rug out from under tenured employees in the process.

- Tenured employees - Help them adjust to the changes. The changes may bring about a difference in their duties, but change can be good. Tenured employees have to adapt to the new scenario, and to their roles within it. The company has to pay careful attention