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The Role of Problem Solving Skills in the Workplace
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Added on 2019-09-19
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With the emergence of competition, strategic planning, building larger markets, team working etc., a need for new problem solving and related strategies has emerged. The company employs over 11,000 employees and works with private and public sector clients in defence, aviation, education, central government, rail, local government, strategic highway and helps these sectors to deliver services in an efficient and effective manner.
The Role of Problem Solving Skills in the Workplace
Added on 2019-09-19
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IntroductionFor decades, various reports have been beneficial in validating the need for problem solving in the workplace. The problem solving have been defined as a critical thinking skills for the employees as per the SCANS Report “What Work Requires of Schools”. Managers, engineers and physicians are hired, rewarded and retained for their problem solving skills in the workplace.Especially in the case of engineering workplace where the employees are presented with a challenge of integrating their workplace real-world problems and issues with their curriculum studies. The engineers must stay abreast with the upcoming and new challenges along with their changing roles in the workplace. The understanding of problem solving in workplace along with educational and instructional strategies for utilizing problems is required. With the emergence of competitive market in the industry and various businesses, the necessity of creative problem-solving models has emerged with a requirement for creative processes in the workplace (Van Gundy, 1987; Rickards, 1990). Various firms and businesses are experiencing intense pressure for enhancing their products and systems so as to remain in the marketplace along with the competition. With the emergence of competition, strategic planning, building larger markets, team working etc., a need for new problem solving and related strategies has emerged. Another reason for adoption of problem-solving methods especially for complex problems is to discover efficient methods for solving the issues and problems. There are only limited number of tested manners for approaching the issues so as to reach the estimated outcome and employees and workplace must deal creatively with the problems by using various proposed problem-solving models. Various structured, formal and highly efficient approaches are used for ensuring that the employees serving in the organization are equipped with an
aptitude towards problem-solving and implementation in an optimal manner while maintaining the ethical aspect of the organization. Description- AMEY PlcAmey Plc was found in 1921 and is considered to be the leading public services providers, supporting and managing vital public services and infrastructure across the United Kingdom. The company employs over 11,000 employees and works with private and public sector clients in defence, aviation, education, central government, rail, local government, strategic highway and helps these sectors to deliver services in an efficient and effective manner. Amey works withlocal authorities and aims to deliver highway infrastructure services to their clients which includes the Highways Agency, local authorities, Transport Scotland and Transport for London. Whole country is kept in track by Amey through whole-life asset and custom engineering management of the underground and over ground rail networks. Also a plethora of facilities management services to the private sector, agencies, government departments and estate and non-departmental bodies.DiscussionsTheme A- Approaches to problem solving Activity 1a: Identifying complex problemsThe value of a structurally controlled and efficient problem-solving is beneficial in organization for promoting discipline and increasing the success percentage for the organization. The complexproblems can easily be characterized when a single team or expert does not have the expertise and knowledge regarding its solution. The individuals have limited access to the information andrequire different area of expertise (Andreas Fischer, Samuel Greiff, and Joachim Funke). The various problems being faced by most of the organizations are listed below along with their characteristics:
1.Surviving in a changing economy and marketplace: This issue leads to continuous change in organization with repeated changing of tasks and missions so as to exist in the competitive environment. The information takes time to be shared widely and for formulating the decisional alternatives. On deciding upon the change, implementation is seen to proceed at high speed.2.Emerging demands of the customers: With globalisation at its peak, the high demands of customers are emerging. Therefore, the companies are in a pressure of designing new services and products. There is a need to analyse the international cultures and markets along with better gathering and analysis of the information. 3.Change in organizational culture: With the change in organizational structure or culture the internal and external environment are impacted as it influences the effort level, working hours, uniform, religious observance, and discipline acceptance. The problem is seen to be at its highest level when the organization is located to other countryas it changes the concept of on group loyalty, employment security, intergroup competition, emphasis on seniority, and group decision making. The listed problems are complex in nature and can easily be characterised from the simple problems due to existence of multiple perspective from the employees and stakeholders, multipleactors for analysing the situation, accompanied by important intangibles and key uncertainties and also include people with conflicting interests as opposed to simple problems which do not require technical or expert support (Rosenhead and Mingers, 2001).
Activity 1b: Identifying complex problems in organization1.Implementation of new technology for increasing potential efficiency: The organization shifted to the paperless technology due to issues of various inefficiencies in the paper-based approaches like duplicative site visits, reporting inaccuracies, inflexibility in the allocation of the job etc. Therefore, Amey deployed a mobile working system for automating job allocation, standardising the process, safety checks, pre-work assessments and reporting to the government based highway contracts which led to confusion among the employees. Even in a simple technical issues, a familiarity with the technical difficulties was seen to yield dividends. 2.Lack of staff morale in a large organisation: Amey has, in past, conducted variousengagement initiatives for their employees which included self-nomination talent process,efforts towards retaining their people which led to reduction in loss of productivity hours,low training costs. However, the company has been facing these issues lately and agreesto the scope of improvement in employee engagement.3.Lack of communication among management: Communication has been posing an intense threat to Amey as more than 13,000 employees do not have any access to Amey email address or internet limiting the communication process of the company. This mightlead to ignoring of a large number of employees while decision-making process and discouragement amongst employee.These problems are highly complex as they require multiple frame of reference and an abstract reasoning. These are recurrent in nature and are well-structures with their resolutions being subjected to the stable rules (McWhinney).
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