Managing People at Work
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Executive summary
The technologies are the cause of mass unemployment in various sectors of industry. The technologies have saved the time as well as effort of humans to do a task and it has shown a way to do the task without hazards.
In the process of technology implementation, it is important to identify the threats that could be faced by the organization and how these threats could be mitigated using numerous strategies.
It had been seen that various organization that had implemented technology within their business processes had invested their complete time and cost in the process of technology implementation.
Technologies have been a vital part of human life as they help the business organization in various ways. The technologies used in business organizations are helpful for easy access of data transfer as well as the flow of information within the organization.
However, it has been evident that the uses of technologies also have a bad effect on employment. The technologies are the cause of mass unemployment in various sectors of industry (Caraway, 2018). The technologies have saved the time as well as effort of humans to do a task and it has shown a way to do the task without hazards.
A contemporary management issue
The manager of an organization faces some issues to manage the employees and the productivity of the organization. The problems that are faced by the management of the organization Walmart, one of those is implementing new technologies into the organization (Pasquier & Wood, 2018).
Though the implementation of technology would increase the rate of productivity but it also reduces the rate of employment. Walmart has faced such problems. The number of employees of the organization has been reduced because of implementation of technologies in the organization.
The rate of unemployment increases: The implementation of the technologies has decreased the number of the employees in the organization and the rate of unemployment has increased.
Increased expenses to implement technology: The organization has faced the financial issue for implementation of new technologies. The implementation and management of the issues are more costly rather than the wages of the employees.
The technological error: The newly implemented technologies have issues the technical error ad that cost much for the profitability of the organization. The maintenance of the technologies required a large expenses and it has been evident that expenses are much more than the wages of the employees (Wells & Ellsworth, 2016).
Therefore, the expenses have also increased and on the other hand, the unemployment rate has also increased.
Data security: The data security is another issue that has been faced by the management of Walmart to implement the technologies. The issues faced by Walmart have put the management of the organization is a challenge.
The issues due to implementation of the new technologies are challenges that have been resolved by the management of Walmart. The problems of the unemployment of Walmart put an impact on the business of the organization. The expenses have been increased for the implementation of the technologies (Aliyu & Tom, 2018).
The maintenance of the technologies has also increased the burden of the expenses of Walmart. The cost-effective method of implementation of the technologies should be done by the management for sustainable development.
Due to the implementation of robots and other latest technologies in the stores of Walmart increased the chances of the technological error in the store and that has affected the business of the organization.
The accountancy and other functions that have been done by the machines and technologies have faced serious issues due to lack of maintenance (Tieman & Darun, 2019). The security of the information of the customers has also put in danger for the implemented technologies.
The data security has been badly affected. It leakage of personal data of the customer of Walmart would put the impact on the image of the organization (Hargaden & Papakostas, 2019). The vulnerability of the fake data generation would be considered as the vital issue as the challenges of implementation of technologies.
The theoretical framework is considered as the collection of the concepts that are interrelated to solve problems. The theoretical framework would guide to determine the measurable things and the statistical relationship for the improvement of the situation.
The elements of the theoretical framework are interrelated with each other to find out the solution of the problems faced by Walmart due to the implementation of the technologies (Ngah, 2019).
To solve the problems of the implementation of technologies would be solved by a theoretical framework that would provide a way to make the solution. The problems of the technologies have been identified first then it has been examined with the past experience.
After identifying the problems, the proper strategies have been taken to solve the problems. The internet security and the other measurements have been taken by the management of Walmart.
Wal-Mart had already faced a huge number of issues due to the incorporation of technology within the organization, the main issue had been faced include the increased rate of employee turnover (Rodrigue, 2017).
This issue had resulted in Wal-Mart recruiting the employees who are more knowledgeable regarding the technologies that had been incorporated within the organization. this trained set of employees are recruited in the form of replacement of the previous employees who had minimum or no knowledge regarding the usage of technology or how the technology could help the organization in improving their business processes (Chichoni & Webb, 2018).
The organization had undertaken the decision of replacing the employees because they aimed in incorporation of technologies within the organization along with the employees who had detailed knowledge on how the technology could be used for obtaining maximum results (Hargaden & Papakostas, 2019).
This is because at that point Wal-Mart did not have enough time to train the old employees on the usage of technologies and further they did not want the investment of cost to be made in the process of training the employees.
In the process of replacing the employees or eliminating the employees it had been noticed that the new employees hardly had any experience regarding how the organization functions and besides that, they were not as efficient as the older employees (Laudon & Traver, 2016).
This had reduced the efficiency of the organization along with the growth of its business. Apart from this, it had been noticed that by the usage of technology in most the business operations, the maintenance of the technological changes had summed up to a greater amount than to the wages that were provided to the employees.
This had finally resulted in incurring more amount of cost than the amount invested in previous business processes whereas the organization had aimed to reduce the costs incurred (Tan & Yan, 2018).
In most of the case, customers were seen complaining about the robots scanning incorrect prices of products and generating a bill of the greater amount than the actual amount of products that had been purchased by the organization.
Contextualizing the discussion with real-life examples
Some of the ways by which the implementation of technologies had affected the business of the organization are mentioned below.
- Information security: With the usage of technology for various business processes, Wal-Mart had noticed the fact that the delivery of data security had been reduced (Hargaden & Papakostas, 2019). There had been an incident when the personal data related to the employees and customers were leaked and the data was hacked by an unauthorized user (Peterson, 2017). This had resulted in chaos within the organization. The organization lost a huge amount of its customers and the employees felt unsecured regarding the safety of their data hence most of them walked out form their positions. In this issue, it had been found that due to a certain technical issue, the data were leaked and the hackers had taken advantage of that opportunity (Saraswathy, 2019). After that incident, the security issues persisted within the organization and a separate team had been elected for the purpose of ensuring the data related to the customers as well as employees.
- Risk management: In the process of technology implementation, it is important to identify the threats that could be faced by the organization and how these threats could be mitigated using numerous strategies. It had been seen that various organization that had implemented technology within their business processes had invested their complete time and cost in the process of technology implementation (Hargaden & Papakostas, 2019). In this process, the conducting of risk analysis had been missed out. This resulted in the organizations facing various issues which could not be mitigated due to the lack of knowledge on the mitigation strategies.
Recommendations on how to deal with the challenges
Various recommendations that could be used by Wal-Mart in order to improve the business conditions and successfully implement technology within the organization along with keeping up the employment rate are as follows
Training: The organization could reduce the rate of replacement of employees, instead the organization can train the employees on the utilization of technologies and how they could make use of the technology such that maximum output is gained.
In order to do this, expert professionals should be recruited in order to provide training to the employees (Eljazzar & Amr, 2018). This would require a certain amount of investment because the training of the employees would be carried out by certain replicas of the technologies that have been implemented (Hargaden & Papakostas, 2019).
This is important because the practical knowledge on handling and coping up with certain technologies is much more important than the theoretical knowledge on the aims and objectives of the technologies.
These recommendations could further be related to the social theory, which includes the fact that no employees were affected negatively due to the usage of technology (Cheung & Wong, 2018). It further includes that the employees are always provided greater priority compared to the technology.
Recruiting efficient employees: Apart from training the elder employees, the organization could further change its recruitment process. They could recruit the candidate who already has knowledge of the processing of the technologies and how they could be utilized for extracting maximum benefits (Hargaden & Papakostas, 2019).
Apart from this the training candidates who do not have any knowledge on the technologies could also be recruited because they would not require any additional training on how the organization operates.
The relativity of structuration theory: The implementation of technology could be done but the organization can prevent the implementation of technology in issues where human resources would prove to be more efficient (Hargaden & Papakostas, 2019).
This aspect could be related to the structuration theory because in this case the technology implication could be carried out in order to examine how people tend to interact with technology in their practices.
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the incorporation of technology has the ability of providing numerous benefits to an organization. These benefits could be used by the organization in order to improve their business processes and hence gain an improved level of customer base along with delivering a sufficient level of customer satisfaction.
Besides this, the incorporation of technology could further help in improving the efficiency of the entire organization along with the improvement brought about in the performance of employees. Besides the pros that are provided to the organization, there are certain cons that impose serious threats on the business process of the organization.
This further results in affecting the organizational image. This report discusses regarding the main challenges faced by Wal-Mart due to the implementation of the technology within its business. Some of the issues include reduced security of data, increased employee turnover rate and some more
Reflection
My task was to find the challenges that have been faced by the organization Walmart for implementation of new technologies. I have done the work with my team. The team members got the responsibility to collect the data of the organization and the challenges they faced for the task. In this step of the task, I have faced some challenges during the job.
The team members do not have a similarity in their opinion. My team members did not accept the opinion of others and it created a large issue for the teamwork. Another challenge was the team members were a little interested to do the job. They thought that the job was too tiresome to complete. Then I took an idea to make them enthusiast to do the task.
We met one day at the institution campus and together started to find the information about the organization and the related problems. The information available on the internet was not enough and we had to depend on some books and journals.
The small amount of information was the barrier to do our task. The books and journals were also not enough to find the information about the challenges and the problems of the organization.
For successful teamwork I have to develop myself as well as the team members. We started to show respect to one another and start to show value for the skills and experiences to one another.
The respect to each other would keep a lot of value to complete the team work successfully. I have learned to respect the diversity of the team and to take the opinion of every member with respect.
The tolerance has also increased in my behavior. I have learned from the study how to keep the number of the employees along with the implementation of the technologies. I have also learned it is important to keep the employees and to train them for the sustainable development of the organization. In my view, it is important to acknowledge the feelings and concerns and the ideas of the other team members.
I have learnt a lot from my co-workers during the project. I have also learnt that how to keep the data protected for the safety of the customers. I have learned to prepare the theoretical framework to complete the task successfully. The project has taught me to learn that both implementations of the technologies as well as the man power are important for an organization.
The challenges that had been faced by me during the processing of this research were addressed using certain strategies. Some of the strategies include reduced interests of the participants were included in the project, reduced efficiency of teamwork, lack of communication and some more.
These challenges were addressed by seeking help from our supervisors who were responsible for guiding us in this project. Whenever our team faced a certain issue, were used to approach the supervisor and he helped us with mentioning some ways by which we could perform effectively and hence complete the project without any delay.
One more way by which we had resolved issues include maintaining a proper communication channel among the team members. This had been done by communication with each other using various means such as face to face meetings, emails and phone calls.
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