Question

Modern Human Relations at the workplace- Human resource management

Communities of practice (COPs) refers to groups of employees who work together, learn from each other, and develop a common understanding of how to get work accomplished.⁷³COPs can involve face-to-face or electronic interaction. The idea of COPs suggests that learning occurs on the job as a result of social interaction. Every company has naturally occurring COPs that arise as a result of relationships that employees develop to accomplish work, and as a result of the design of the work environment. Leading Real Estate Companies of the World (LeadingRE) provides “CEO Exchange Groups,” groups of principal and managing brokers of real estate companies who do not compete with each other.⁷⁴ They meet face-to-face or on conference calls several times each year to discuss challenges and opportunities they are facing and share best practices.

COPs also take the form of social networks, discussion boards, list servers, or other forms of computer-mediated communication in which employees communicate electronically. In doing so, each employee’s knowledge can be accessed in a relatively quick manner. It is as if employees are having a conversation with a group of experts. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals has 11 COPs that focus on maintaining shop floor excellence.⁷⁵ The COPs make it easy for employees to share best practices, learn from one another, and improve business processes. The maintenance function used its COP to deliver more than 600 hours of training on new technology and maintenance processes. This has resulted in more reliable equipment and higher productivity, such as increasing equipment use in one manufacturing plant from 72 to 92 percent.

COPs are most effective for learning and improving work performance when managers and employees believe they contribute to the core operating processes of the company, page 189such as engineering or quality.⁷⁶ Despite the benefits of improved communication, a drawback to these communities is that participation is often voluntary, so some employees may not share their knowledge unless the organizational culture supports participation. That is, employees may be reluctant to participate without an incentive or may be fearful that if they share their knowledge with others, they will give away their personal advantage in salary and promotion decisions.⁷⁷ Another potential drawback is information overload. Employees may receive so much information that they fail to process it, which may cause them to withdraw from the COP.

Question:

1- What would be the obstacles in creating communities of practice? How would you overcome these challenges?

Answer 1

Answer: There are following four types of obstacles that may come while creating the communities of practices. These are

1. The people may not voluntarily participate in such communities so it is not easy to ensure the participation of people in such communities.
2. The people may not be ready to share their knowledge with others and hence may not participate in such communities
3. Formation of such groups require commitment from the management and this may not be present in all companies
4. The companies require resources and efforts for creating such groups
5. Such groups may fail because of lack of Information management. The people may withdraw from such groups as they may face information overload.

In order to deal and overcome with such issues, the management in the companies should develop a commitment for the formation of COP’s. They need to mobilize resources and motivate the employees to participate in COP’s. The companies need to create supporting infrastructures like technical support and encouragement for promoting COP’s.    The information management needs to be done and the managers should facilitate the operations of COP’s by acting as moderators.