Analysis of Sunflower Company: Improving Employee Morale and Productivity

ANALYSIS OF SUNFLOWER COMPANY
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ANALYSIS OF SUNFLOWER COMPANY
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Introduction
The purpose of this case report is to give suggestions to the CEO of Sunflower Food Company
on how to set a team-based culture which can improve morale and motivation of employees and
ultimately drive productivity. Sunflower is a medium sized manufacturing factory which
produces a wide range of bakery related items which are sold in large supermarkets all over the
country. Currently, the company employees approximately 95 employees whereby 65 of them
are full-time employees and the rest are hired on contract. There are also eight employees
working for the company who are promoted from the frontline although most of them lack
leadership qualities. For the last few months, it has been observed that employee productivity has
been going down and this has raised a lot of concern from the management of the company.
After carefully monitoring the organizations internal and external environment, it was
determined that the internal culture, low staff morale and motivation were the causes of the low
productivity. Typically, there are various factors which affect business operations and they are
categorized into internal and external factors (Manley 2008, p.193).
Internal factors are things that exist within an organization and they disrupt the operations of a
business directly. Some of these internal factors include and not limited to, organization culture,
finances, employee motivation, and morale. On the other hand, external factors are those that
exist outside an organization and in most cases, they are uncontrollable. They include
competitors, suppliers, political practices, and technology. However, for the purpose of this case
of Sunflower Company, this report will focus on internal factors. After evaluating three key
issues affecting this company, that is internal culture, motivation, and motivations,
recommendations are made on how the company can motivate employees by providing good
leadership and team-based culture. It was recommended that adopting a team-based culture for

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the organization will be a potential strategy for motivation and employee morale. Some of the
concepts used to analyze the case are, Lewin’s Force Field Analysis Model, change of culture,
change in leadership style, CEO as a change agent, motivational theories, and team-based
culture.
Current situation of the Company
Structure
Sunflower is a company that has 95 employees and sometimes, it becomes challenging to divide
labor of a task into subdivision to facilitate coordination and specialization to achieve an overall
task. According to Burnes and Bargal (2017), managing people is an enjoyable and hard task at
the same time. To achieve common goals, mainly requires the leaders to manage relationships
through communication and coordination strategies. At Sunflower, the level of communication
between the employees, supervisors, and the top management is poor. Lack of communication is
one of the factors that have contributed to low morale among the employees because they do not
get a platform to share their experiences and their needs. Typically, the process of organizing a
company involves designing structures and designing processes. Some of the commonly used
structural designs used in organizations include, hierarchy, departments, decision making, and
information systems. On the other hand, design processes are, communication, strategies,
selection & training, and objectives (Giapponi 2015, p.236). It was observed that the key
coordinating mechanisms commonly used in organizations are;
Informal communication

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Informal communication is the ability share information on mutual tasks. It includes adapting to
any person who must perform a task and controlling how a task is performed to allow for
flexibility. Some of the commonly used subtypes of informal communication are direct
communication, temporary teams, integrator and liaison roles.it was observed that this
mechanism can be introduced at Sunflower so that employees can get to communicate with their
supervisors freely without fear (Ashforth2009, p. 34).
Formal hierarchy
The formal hierarchy which is also known as direct supervision is the process of allocating legal
power to people who can use it to allocate resources and assign duties to workers. The essence of
adopting this strategy at Sunflower is that employees will know who their bosses are and they
will know who to communicate and report to (Kivlighan & Miles 2007, p. 217).
Standardization
To standardize is to schedule tasks such that there are routine patterns of an output for the
purpose of reducing formal and informal communication while performing a given task. This
will ensure collaboration among the employees of Sunflower Company.
Chain of command
Chain of command which corresponds to direct supervision is the coordination of duties from the
top organization levels to the lowest level within a hierarchical business structure. Normally,
instructions come from the highest level of management and passed down to the subordinate
staff using formal communication. This kind of chain is authoritative and commanding and those
who are assigned a specific task are expected to do as is expected of them (Van & Schalle 2008,