Introduction

Appropriate people management attributes can be beneficial for an organisation to ensure distinctive workplace flexibility and thereby obtain a decent competitive advantage. With regards to this concern, the present assignment will pay attention to critically highlight different consequences related to the management of people within Management Solutions based in Belfast. The company operates as a small software organisation and provides supports in both online and offline DMS (document management system). However, the prospects of behavioural management areas of motivation will be highlighted in this case by recognising the existing motivation and behavioural management attributes within the organisation. The consequences of teamwork and performance management will also be highlighted here. Apart from that, valuable concerns related to the consequences of resourcing, rewards and development and others will also be evaluated that will signify the organisational position with people management. Adequate theoretical understanding will also be emphasised in this case along with providing a set of valuable recommendations for further improvement of the organisational people management approach.

Part 1 Behavioural management areas of motivation

Motivation

Management Solutions is a small software company that employs 12 employees for the purpose of software development. Each employee had to deal with their specific assigned client. The clients of the company expect a service of 24×7 if the clients had any problem with the software. The scenario of the company was such that, if any employee were not able to manage or provide a solution to the clients, they immediately contacted the relevant developers who could have helped them with appropriate solutions (case study). However, this can be said that this facility of standing up for help for other employees at the problem was not something, which was set by the company. The system was developed among the employees themselves for helping each other in need. Furthermore, the manager was very assistive in nature and used to look after the employees. These activities used to be very motivating for the employees as the environment around the office was very cooperative and helpful. However, on the contrary to the positive parts, after the company was sold to Workflow, the situation changed drastically. The employees were burdened by several more clients and had to work beyond the normal working hours, which was a point of demotivation without appropriate pay (case study). Furthermore, the existing manager of Workflow, whom the employees had to report to, was not able to provide with appropriate coordination as was provided by the former manager. Moreover, the employees of the new company were not much cooperative at the time of need, they only used to work for the hours allotted and did not bother much about the problems faced by other employees.

The motivation of the employees can get affected due to several reasons. Primarily, salary can stand alone as the most important and crucial part of employees’ motivation (Rožman et al. 2017). It was seen that the employees of the management solutions were not being paid on the same scale as the employees of the Workflow. Along with that, the employees were paid extra for the premium calls for client assistance, which was also significantly higher for the employees of the Workflow than that of the Management Solutions. These activities highly tampered with the motivation of the employees which event resulted in coming up with decisions of shifting companies.

Behavioural management

Management Solutions used to be a very small company with a very cooperative and friendly environment. The culture of the company was rich that facilitated employees to work without any issue rather with much ease. Thus, the behaviour of colleagues and higher management requires being supportive in order to escalate a healthy culture and to retain talented and experienced employees (Muduli et al. 2020). Employees are the most essential parts of any organisation. Therefore, the higher officials or the management needs to exercise such practices in the office so that the culture gets amplified and the environment remains healthy in order to accelerate the efficiency of the company. Before the company was sold to Workflow, the environment of the office was very fruitful. Every individual in the office used to help each other beyond their assigned work and used to work in balance. However, with the event of the company being sold to another company, both the behaviour of the higher officials such as administrators and human resources along with the behaviour of the other employees were perceived to be somewhat stringent.

On the other hand, the manager easily used to get irritated if being questioned regarding any issue by the employees, furthermore, the communication among the employees and the manager was also done through emails and other such platforms. The nature of the manager impacts extensively on the mental support of the employees (Junker et al. 2021). It was further noticed that the manager of the Workflow was very quiet in nature which restricted the employees in coming up with conversations and any sort of discussions. The only things, which the management of the company focuses on was the agenda in acquiring or gathering information. The communication system between them used to be drastic as the manager used to communicate only through emails and that too for criticizing or pointing out areas for improvement or for allocating new clients to the employees. The issues of the employees were completely ignored which created a situation of distress in the company (case study). This situation was not normal or usual for the employees of Management Solutions, and furthermore, no assistance was received from other employees. The previous company contributed the most to the behaviour management, which was not at its best in the new one.

Teamwork

Decent teamwork has been maintained within the organisation that can be noticed within there are workload management concerns. With regards to manage 24/7 customer support, a flexible teamwork attribute was developed by potential employees of the organisation by maintaining extended collaboration between each other. However, the consideration of unofficial work-a-round feature can also be noticed within the organisational software developers (case study). This innovative practice highlights the employees’ intention of managing the workload efficiently by helping each other respectively. For evidence, it is noticed that in case of not being able to manage adequate solutions for potential clients, relevant developers were asked for advice in order to manage urgent needs. The software developers of Management Solutions eventually pay significant attention to this concern despite not recognising it within their formal contract with the organisation. Driskell et al. (2018) stated that teamwork and collaboration can help to achieve distinctive competitive advantage. This practice has been adopted by the software developers with an intention to help one another out that even reflects distinctive teamwork management within the organisation’s employees.

This extended teamwork management attributes from Management Solutions software developers has been supportive to conceptualize 24/7 customer support for their potential clients in order to facilitate the workload.

Performance management

The prime product offering of Management Solutions reflects Database Management System Development. In this concern, the developers were asked to mitigate clients’ expectation of providing 24/7 customer support. In order to ensure employee motivation in this case, the developers received £4500 for each call payment in addition to their remuneration (as per case study). Potential software developers of Management Solutions work under the organisational owner who eventually acted as the team manager along with the responsible person to whom the employees used to report. As an integral part of the acquisition of Management Solutions by Workflow, the team manager had to leave.

With this changed condition and the consideration of the existing Workflow manager, the software developers initiated to fulfil clients’ demands despite experiencing unfriendly behaviour from the managerial perspective. Oc (2018) stated that effective leadership can help to increase performance level of an organisation’s workforce. The topmost reason behind this statement reflected increasing criticism from the manager’s end on the potential software developers of Management Solutions. However, this aspect also included valuable areas for improvement that might act in a supportive manner to enlarge the efficiency of potential organisational employees.

Part 2 Resourcing, relations, reward, and development

Resourcing

Consideration of proper resources can be supportive for ensuring operational flexibility within an organisation. In order to highlight the features of the sourcing within Management Solutions, the theoretical perception of the resource-based view can be undertaken. This theory is recognised as a managerial framework that looks forward to determine strategic resources of an organisation that can exploit the achievement of sustainable competitive advantage (Cruz and Haugan, 2019). A couple of asset types can be deflected according to this theory including the consequences of tangible and intangible assets. The tangible assets highlight quantifiable physical resources including products and machinery, capital and infrastructure, equipment, and others. The intangible assets include brand recognition of the organisation, intellectual property rights, trademarks, copyright, and others.

From the perspective of Management Solutions, potential tangible assets reflect different software required to support and secure both online and offline document management system for a variety of clients (case study). Along with this, skilled human resources have been the most significant tangible asset of Management Solutions that has been supporting them to conceptualise workforce flexibility and collaboration. Decent financial capital is utilised by the organisation’s management for adequately paying their software developers.

On the other hand, the intangible assets of Management Solutions highlight the organisational competence of efficiently mitigating client requirements and demands concerning the maintenance of document management systems. Along with the consideration of collaborative and supportive workload management, Management Solutions has been looking to develop their brand goodwill (Podhorska et al. 2021). It can adequately benefit the organisation with a future competitive advantage by differentiating their products and offerings from potential market competitors and rivals. Serving as an innovative Database Management System Development organisation, the company has eventually insured to secure their software copyrights and trademarks. These intangible assets have been highlighting a long-term vision of the organisation concerning the achievement of increasing consumer attraction.

HR Relations

As per the case study, it has been understood that Management Solutions was operating as a software company that helped customers and clients by supporting them with online and offline document management systems. Before, the owners sold the entire organisation to Workflow; the organisation was holding a quite enhanced relation in the organisation as well as with the clients as well. Every developer is keen to associate with every task and ensures that everyone was supported when there was a requirement. As mentioned by Herman et al. (2021), maintaining relations within the organisation and with the customers are the major traits of a good company as it implies that they are being responsible with their roles and trying to provide their best as they can. However, it can be stated that the managers or the owner of the organisation do not communicate with their developers about the company being sold out. It was the most surprising thing, which happened to the developers, as they did not perceive a single thought about this possible incident.

Generally, an organisation is the equal responsibility of the employees as well as the managers. As demonstrated by Madaio et al. (2020), it is important to communicate with every single change and detail, which maintains transparency across the organisation along with maintaining a productive and enthusiastic environment. A good working relationship across the organisation makes the team knit a close relationship along with making the tasks and work more fun (Hajjar et al. 2020). The stronger the relationship will be the more the organisation will lead towards success (Hajjar et al. 2020). This statement can be interlinked with the scenario of the case study as right after the acquisition by Workflow, the environment of Management Solutions has suddenly changed for the developers. This has happened due to a large number of employees of the organisation has taken over the Management Solutions document management system. The developers were not able to connect with the members, as the software manager was not that friendly as well as the manager does not have any knowledge about Management Solutions.

Reward policy

As suggested by Laplane and Mazzucato (2020), rewards play the most active role in an organisation as it allows the business to be more creative and productive. Adding to this, it enhances the commitment of the employees along with stimulating the performance and job efforts and facilitating satisfaction as well. As per the case study, Management Solutions was providing all the developers with £4,500 in addition to their salary if any client is having any sort of problem and the developers are being available for dealing with the issues. Rewards are meant to be provided for the employees, who perform their best along with serving more than their potential (Kong et al. 2021).

However, the situation had completely transformed after Workflow took over the seat of the owner. The developer has become aware that the software engineers were working similarly but they were being paid £12,000 besides their yearly salaries whereas the developers were getting £10,000. In this relation, the developers’ morale was gradually deteriorating as they were giving their best but were not able to be recognised by the higher officials. The level of dissatisfaction has been rising among the developers, which has forced them to look for a job elsewhere. This suggests that rewards and recognition is the most valuable way to retain staffs. Along with this, there is a need to integrate equality within the organisation, which will eventually reduce stress and burnout (Ali and Anwar, 2021).

Development of HR

Human resource management is the most effective way to maintain the workforce efficiently by making them focus on the goals and objectives of the company. HRM is development orientated with major concerns being employee improvement, growth, and performance (Salas‐Vallina et al. 2021). In the context of the case study, Workflow was not being responsible for the behaviour of management, as the developers of the Management Solutions were not feeling comfortable along with facing several issues like unfair treatment after the acquisition took place. This statement can be linked with a scenario of a case study where the developers acknowledge that they are not being paid equally to the software engineers besides doing the same amount of work. Adding to this, when they raise queries, the manager asserted that there is a higher cost of living and competition of labour in South England as compared to Northern Ireland. Adding to this, they were hesitating to raise the issue to HR, which creates a communication gap between both departments. Communication is the key to a successful and efficient company and it is the responsibility of HR to make the employees comfortable around them, which will help in preventing future misunderstandings and issues effortlessly (Heikkinen et al. 2021).

Part 3 Theoretical Underpinning and recommendations

Based on the discussions above, it can be identified that Workflow’s HR are not the most effective of departments due to which the company has faced several issues throughout their period of operation. As a result, theoretical underpinnings linked with human resource management can be utilised to evaluate the Workflow’s human resource management operations to highlight the key issues as well as the way through which they could have been dealt with effectively.

Kurt Lewin’s Change model

It has been noticed that the Workflow had to go through the change due to which issues arise in the regular operations of the organisation. As a result, it can be identified that the change management process through which Management Solutions had to undergo was not implemented properly. The organisational change that occurred in Management Solutions was not optimised due to which differences between both these companies and their employees remained after the acquisition process (Roşca, 2020). As a result, Lewin’s change management model can be taken into consideration that has been divided into three stages that helps in incorporating and implementing change management in an organisation effectively.

Unfreeze

This is the first stage of the change management model where organisations need to identify the reason for the change as well as establish why a particular change is necessary for the company (van der Kolk et al. 2019). In this regard, it can be stated that before the acquisition process, Management Solutions and the owner should have informed the employees regarding the change that would be occurring in the company based on which employees could have prepared themselves. Furthermore, it was also the responsibility of the owner to identify if the employees of your organisation were satisfied with the new change (Pawar and Charak, 2017). Adding to that, at this stage of the change management model also helps in understanding the doubts and concerns of the employees working in the organisation to ensure that the change management can be established properly (Burnes, 2020). Considering the case of Management Solutions, this process was also not undertaken and therefore a hasty change in management has been noticed which has been one of the major issues regarding the organisational change in the company.

Change

This is the second stage of the change management model where the change is communicated to the employees and is finally established with full force. This is one of the most important stages as the employees get the first impression of how the organisational change is going to affect their work as well as position in the organisation (Hussain et al. 2018). In the case of Management Solutions, it was identified that the new software development manager after acquisition was not quite friendly and there were communication issues. Based on this model this second stage is important the fact that it helps in planning the scenes as well as the execution of the change management process. During this stage, employees are guided by the management to get accustomed to the change and help them learn the new concepts and ways of working in the change organisation (Burnes, 2020). However, such aspects were missing in the case of Management Solutions due to which issues linked with communication as well as management were identified.

Freeze

This is the third and final stage of the change management process where the changes are finally executed and implemented in the organisation (Galli, 2018). However, in the case of Management Solutions, it has been seen that the final process of implementing and executing the change was also done quite hastily. Due to which communication barriers that were identified in the first stages of change management remained constant. Moreover, the management of Workflow was also not quite involved in engaging the employees of Management Solutions due to which the change management process could not be effectively initiated within the new organisation.

Herzberg Two-factor theory

Herzberg two-factor theory determines the various motivation factors that exist within an organisation that helps to achieve employee satisfaction as well as their performance.

In this regard, it is essential for organisations to ensure that the motivators are being employed by the organisation so that the satisfaction level is of the employees remain high (Kotni and Karumuri, 2018). However, in the case of Management Solutions, it was seen that the factors leading to job satisfaction were not satisfactory after the acquisition by Workflow. The policies and rules of the newly acquired firm did not motivate the employees as well as it was also seen that there was a consistent gap in salary between the employees of Workflow and Management Solutions even in the same designation (Alfayad and Arif, 2017). Furthermore, personal growth and recognition was also a factor due to which employees of Management Solutions would not be effectively utilised by the newly formed organisation (Alshmemri et al. 2017). Apart from that, there was also communication gap between the software development manager and the employee working for Management Solutions. Moreover, it can also be stated and that their employees who have previously worked for Management Solutions were not given the right form of recognition they deserved after the acquisition of Management Solutions by Workflow.

Recommendations

Considering the present state of the organisation there are a number of recommendations that can be suggested for the improvement of both these organisations, which would allow them to operate in an effective manner

• It is essential for the organisation to achieve a better line of communication between employees of both the organisations to achieve the success of all the projects they undertake
• It would be essential for the Workflow to ensure that they identify if all the employees working in the organisation are satisfied
• It is necessary for the organisation to focus more upon teamwork so that employees from both the organisations and that are now working together can effectively operate and achieve the objectives and goals of the company in a collaborative manner
• It is also essential to focus on aspects that can help the employees working for the company which can continuously provide employee motivation

Conclusion

The overall assignment has highlighted deliberate concerns regarding behavioural management attributes along with resourcing and reward management consultants for Management Solutions. Enlarged motivation can be seen within the organisational workforce that can be supported by notifying the collaborative nature of their software developers. It also highlights flexible teamwork within the organisational workforce that has been affording workplace flexibility as an integral part of managing clients’ requirements. The provision of additional payments is also noticed within the organisation for efficiently managing employee performance. With the combination of both tangible and intangible resources, Management Solutions has been looking forward to deploying extended brand recognition. Despite experiencing the consequences of change management, Management Solutions has been supportive to successfully adopt a changed working vision. However, the consequences of unfair treatment, communication gap and others can be noticed as a result of change management adoption within Management Solutions.

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