Question

You are employed at a large, global, high-tech company that has offices worldwide in places such as Tokyo, London, Bombay, Toronto, Mexico City, Chicago, and Seattle, to name a few. Although sales have been reasonable these past few months even with the global economic crises, an internal crisis exists related to employee morale being at an all-time low. There are many different beliefs about what is right and what is wrong across the board, especially when it comes to the cultural and communication differences and the technological equipment challenges. There are also concerns regarding the selfishness of the employees, where the employees do not enjoy working as a team.

Your supervisor has tasked you, as the as the VP of the Service Department, to prepare a research paper that will communicate information and solutions as well as provide a foundation of knowledge so that you can work with your peers and employees to solve these problems. At a minimum, your research paper must include the following:

• What steps can management take to make the teams cohesive? Evaluate the steps that are necessary in this scenario to create high-performing teams.
• Evaluate the importance of the internal environmental factors that include the cultural, language, political, and technological differences that will affect the team-building process.
• What can be done to overcome the communication barriers between locations? What are the best practices that should be implemented going forward?

Answer 1

In this case the major problem is communication and cultural differences. Employees want to work that’s why the sale is at reasonable level but first thing we should do is to motivate employees and boost their morale so that they can work with their whole heart.

Management should take following steps to make teams cohesive-

1. Tell the team about the organization’s goal and motivate them to work only for that goal not for individual goals.
2. Give proper feedback as and when required.
3. Provide them new growth opportunities.
4. Delegate the authority in team members, so that they work as a responsible employee and make other’s do with same responsibility.
5. Easy communication between superiors and subordinates within the organization, so that they can talk whenever they want.
6. Appreciate work in front of everyone but scold for the wrong work in alone.
7. Boost the employee’s morale.
8. Try to set an example.

If the management follows these steps it will result into high performance of team.

As we all know that internal environment factors are very important in building effective team. Some internal factors are culture, language, political, technological, and demographic, these factors differences can create a major conflict between the employees of an organization. Every country or state have different cultures and as an employer or team leader you have understand that diversified groups are great but they have some differences and we have to tackle them effectively. Employer should make one internal culture and every country office follows the same work culture and makes every employee technology advanced and allows them to make informal groups and arrange sometimes informal meetings with the team members.

To overcome the communication barriers between locations a manager can do following things-

1. Arrange 1 informal meeting or party once in a month for all the locations.
2. Arrange small trips for all the locations at one place once a year.
3. Held group video call meetings with every locations team members.
4. Language can be barrier but try to communicate in a one language which everyone can understand.
5. Make one work culture environment for every location.

If the company follows these steps they can go forward without looking back and gain competitive advantage.