You are an HR manager working for a large IT solutions firm in the UK. Your organisation has been experiencing a high degree of labour turnover across the organisation. This prompted you to devise and distribute an employee survey. The findings of this survey revealed low morale across the various departments and in particular a poor perception of leadership within the business. Discuss the changing nature of leadership and the policies and practices that you could design and implement to ensure good leadership in the future.
Northouse (2004) has defined the concept of leadership stating that a person forms an aim and attracts people to willingly work for that aim. he further explains that the quality of leader is not possessed by every individual and thus is rarely available to limited people who have the ability to influence a large number of people and make them his followers who would be working together with the leader towards a goal and engage into tasks and activities given by the leader and be fully committed towards it.
According to Gupta (2009), the concept of management is to integrate various resources and also coordinate them with each other in the best possible way to ensure that the end objective is duly accomplished. Thus, the short term and long term objectives decided by the organization and then followed by the management so as to meet them timely. The managers in the organization would form the conducive environment for its employees and give clear responsibilities and instructions to all the employees so that the objectives are accomplished. he managers performs the function of planning the way the tasks would be met which is followed by staffing people for the task and directing them towards the task along with observing the way the tasks are being executed and controlling wherever necessary. The leader and the manager both work in a very different manner with different focus and skills. Leaders are possessing transformational styles and approaches in meeting their objectives while most of the managers are using transactional style and approaches into their work and in meeting their objectives.
Therefore, it can be said that while the leader would aim at persuading and gaining the commitment of the employee for a task and an objective, a manager would focus on offering a salary in order to get certain work from the employee. The leaders may change the present course of work systems and build new systems in order to make it more significant and also make in more easy and approachable to meet the goals while the managers would be focusing on maintaining and managing the current systems. he leaders would form their own vision for the company and accordingly build their own objectives and work towards it while the managers would be willing to take orders from the top management and according enact as per their position. The leader would inspire other employees of the organization to follow his visions and the goals set by him while the managers would follow the rules and the guidelines and pass them on to the employees.
The leader may be working on short term goals or long term goals while a leader would always work on long term goals only. The manager may get into small details and daily follow ups with the employees while the leader would like to see the scenario in total and may not get into small details. The focus of the leader is to empower the decisions to ensure that the objectives are met while the focus of the managers would be on monitor the employees daily and also control all parts objectives.
The leader styles and nature have been evolving and changing since the last 20 years where the leadership styles have evolved from using bureaucratic leadership style, autocratic leadership to using the leadership style like participative leadership style and transformational leadership style. The reason for this change and evolution in the leadership style is mainly due to changing business culture in the market where the level of competition has increased and increased in substitutes and complementary goods available to the consumers. hus, to meet the level of intense competition and the consumer expectations, the top management and the leaders of the organization have realized that the higher commitment and engagement of the employees would help them to meet the objectives and thus the role of employees have increased along with giving more roles, recognition and power to the employees while shifting the style of leadership to participative and transformational leadership style. ost of the leaders in the companies form their competitive advantage by having skilled and talented employees all over the organization who are offering high level of commitment to the goals of the organization and thus to retain their commitment and their interest into the goals of the organization, the leaders use transformational leadership style and reduce the job attrition rate and outperform with their activities and in their tasks.
According to models built of Bass et al (1998) on leadership, all the models focus on leadership styles such as transformational, charismatic and visionary leaders stating these characteristics to be of vital importance. The author also stresses that a leader may also use transactional leadership style in case of necessity but in most of the times, the leader would remain to be inspirational to retain high level of support from the employees and being able to continuously motivate them and gain high level of performance.
Various leaders currently factor situational leadership style due to dynamic roles and situations which keep changing and thus require different requirements at different times. Thus, leaders feel that the best way to conduct their job is to practice different style whichever suits the best to the situation. thus a leader may use transactional leadership style, autocratic leadership style, laissez faire leadership style, participative leadership style, transformational leadership style etc. while practicing the style of autocratic leadership style, the leader would make all the decisions by himself, build strict uidelines which is to be followed by all the employees, having centralized power and authority etc. the leader using bureaucratic leadership style would have strict guidelines for everything while and would want all the activities to go as per the guidelines and may be lacking in flexibility and creativity in operations. A leader practicing charismatic style of leadership or transformational leadership style would be constantly offering inspiration and enthusiasm to its employees and gain high level of commitment from the employees towards the jobs and roles of the organization.
A leader using participative style of leadership would be continuously engaging employees to discuss and participate in decision making in taking actions for long term and short term while using their suggestions to form the policies and in building the strategies of the future. A leader who would be using laissez faire style of leadership would not be actively participating in the daily operations of the organization but would always be there for guidance to its employees and its management.
The level of flexibility offered to the employees is very high while the authority would be decentralized. the theory of transactional leadership has been proposed by Burns (1978) where he explains the concept in which the leader would offer any valuable object i. e. money, gold, etc to an employee in exchange for the work done by the employee for the organization. The concepts of transactional leadership include contingent reward, management by exception; laissez faire etc. hile using the concept of contingent reward, the employee would be rewarded by the leader every time he puts more effort in his tasks and job responsibilities. While using the concept of management by exception, the employees’ would be monitored by the leader, they would be given the code of conduct for doing their job and any deviations from it may result in the leader taking stern action towards the employee.
While using the concept of laissez faire, the job of the leader is to let the employees make all the decisions and manage their responsibilities on their own hile just observing them and interfering in the operations when required. while using the style of transformational leadership, the focus of the leader would remain on motivating the employees and increasing their commitment to the highest level towards the organization as well as their job responsibilities to ensure that the form competitive advantage for the organization and its objectives. Thus, the main task of the leader here would be to ensure that each employee is able to put in his best efforts throughout.
This would be done by the leader using his charisma while having an esteemed long term vision for the organization on which he entrust his employees to work. Such a leader would have effective communications with his employees while having intellectual stimulation along with having rationality in decisions and problem solving ability. The leader would aim at building a person repo with all his employees and give his advise at various junctions to each employee to enhance his output and his skills at work.
Therefore, it has been observed that the concept of transformational leadership is better in the current business environment than the concept of transactional leadership as it helps to gain higher level of commitment from the employees and also promote creativity, innovation and conducive working environment throughout the organization. The transformational style of leadership helps to high satisfaction amongst the employees while reducing the rate of attrition in the organization.
Thus, employees are able to provide better output for the organization which leads to higher accomplishment for the employee and is also beneficial for the organization. One of the famous transformational leaders is Narayana Murthy who has been able to make Infosys a leader IT firm due to his leadership style and abilities where he has been constantly engaging with the employees and motivating them and gaining their commitment. Another transformational leader is Rahul Bhatia, CEO of Indio airline who has built high goals along with gaining high commitment and constantly engaging in different orms of communication with all levels of the employees to get valuable feedback for decision making and setting goals, thereby making indigo airline, the only domestic airline in India to make profits.
Therefore, the above examples show that good leaders help to form a competitive advantage in the long run while forming a long term vision for their organization and building a roadmap to meet the pre decided goals while directing the employees towards the goals. good leader would also been inspiring employees and motivating them from time to time to ensure that they are able to put in their best efforts while also giving them monetary and non monetary incentives in the form on rewards and recognition and more authority. Further, a quality of the good leader is to ensure that his employees are able to grasp and learn new things continuously which not only help the employees to expand their capabilities and job portfolio but also benefit the organization to develop competitive advantage.
The HR manager plays a very crucial role while maintaining the role of a good leader in the organization. Thus, the policies designed by the HR manager needs to over boost the morale of the people working in the organization which would keep the attrition rate low while being able to reap best work from them. The policies should also be such that it helps the organization to build competency in the long run which would foster growth of the organization. hus, it is not only important for HR manager to offer reasonable salaries to the employees but also be able to understand the arising needs and expectations of different employees and fulfil them in the form of offering them with growth options in their career, recognition, incentives, creativity etc. the HR manager must offer activities which enhance innovation and creativity and enhance the skills of the employees. The HR manager must offer different training programs off campus and on campus which would further enhance the capabilities of its employees.
The appraisal method using in the organization by the HR manager must have 350 degree appraisal so that un biased feedbacks are received thereby increasing the level of satisfaction of the employees and increasing their commitment for the organization which would depict a good leadership being used in the organization. Therefore, the assignment shows the important role in depicting good leadership played by the human resource manager in the organization and its different levels and maintaining high level of satisfaction amongst its employ force and keeping them highly motivated towards the organization’s goal.
To build a positive environment within the organization, it is important for the leader to use transformation style of leadership to situational style of leadership. thus, in the above case, where the employees working for the IT firm are facing low morale and the organization has high turnover rate then the HR manager must make the changes mentioned above which would motivate the employees, boost their morale and enhance the working environment.
