People Management: Advice and Solutions for Sam's Team Challenges

This report addresses the people management challenges faced by a newly appointed manager named Sam, who is struggling with team involvement, attentiveness, and engagement. The analysis identifies issues stemming from poor communication, lack of motivation, and a disconnect between team members and organizational goals. The report offers comprehensive advice for Sam, including presenting a clear roadmap for success, recognizing productive efforts, instituting two-way communication, generating a sense of determination and purpose, adopting a bottom-up approach, and implementing a flexible employee learning plan. These recommendations are supported by various human resource management theories, such as behavioral management theory, McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The report emphasizes the importance of aligning individual and organizational objectives, fostering open communication, and creating an environment that values employee contributions and growth. By implementing these strategies, Sam can improve team performance, increase employee engagement, and build a more cohesive and productive work environment.

Running head: PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Response to the question: Advice for Sam with supporting theories
The problems or issues identified in the case study reflects the poor people
management in the organization by the newly formed manager Sam. The issues stimulated
from the poor management are lack of involvement, lack of attentiveness and lack of
engagement in the team. The team also lacks a proper sense of responsibility and
accountability towards the organization and the associated tasks. The case represented that
the team, which Sam was addressing reflected avoidance and discomfort in the action of
responding for a new challenging task. The team also reflected lack of motivation for
contributing effectively and efficiently for a challenging project. The team lacked
cohesiveness for the purpose of collaborating the skills and competencies for a challenge or
significant project. These problems reflects the gap of communication between Sam
(manager) and the team. The concerns or problems can be addressed by following ways:
 Presenting Road Map of success: The understanding regarding a clearly structured
future plan can be a significant contributor in the process of developing team
involvement. The clear-defined path can shape the effectiveness and productivity of
the individual team members of the organization. Road Maps can act as a base for
generating new skills and competencies in response of the challenges and growth
opportunities. The career growth and developmental plans can be easily understood
and understood by the help of a structured Road Map for the employees. Sam could
incorporate a regular team discussion session regarding career goals with the team
members (both existing and new). The discussion plan of Sam can include the
strategies and training sessions for helping the members with their short-term and
long-term objectives in alignment with the organizational objective. The Road map
will help in developing retention rate of the team members. Sam will be able to direct
their focus on the outcome of the project and will effectively generate employee
engagement (Mone & London, 2018). This step can help Sam in making the team

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members feel valued in the presence of a clear outcome of their skills and contribution
by participating in the project. The Road Map can be presented as a guide and a
forecasted process for the team members by Sam in response of the concern.
 Recognizing productive efforts: One of the ways of representing required support for
the team members can be showcasing the developmental opportunities. However,
Sam can extend the representation of support by appreciating the effective efforts and
performance of the team members from past records and/or in present tasks. The
value and significant contribution of the employees can be supported by cheering for
every innovative or significant contribution of individual team members. Sam can
build an effective relationship of a leader while aligning the goals of the organization
for his role as a manager. Appreciation and recognition can be minor gestures like
gathering the members together for announcing the success, personally congratulating
the members, sending appreciation messages and offering fancy lunch. Researches
have reflected that every two out of the three employees’ concern in the organization
is stimulated through the unrecognized efforts (Shields et al., 2015). Incorporation of
recognition can effectively, Sam can easily address the concerns regarding member
attentiveness for a new challenge. Another advantage of this strategy can be its low-
cost nature. Sam can easily implement regular recognition activities by focusing on
the non-monetary gestures. This strategy is generally included in the concept of
leadership, however, the incorporation of activities for encouraging employee
accomplishments cannot be limited to the leadership role and can be executed by
Sam. Sam can combine recognition strategy with the employee feedback process, as
productive feedback from fellow team members can help boosting the employee
engagement process (Lee & Hanna, 2015). Productive and effective investment of the
team members in each other’s success can majorly motivate the employee
participation aspect.

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 Instituting two-way communication: Sam should focus on establishing two-way
communication for addressing the main cause of the concerns. In the case study, the
main cause or origin of the concerns of the team members is the ineffectiveness of
addressing problems directly. Another possible reason behind the concerns can be the
practice of one-way communication (Ruck, Welch & Menara, 2017). The case depicts
the one-way communication of the manager, Sam where he communicated about the
new project without conducting a discussion regarding team schedule, skill
requirements and motivating factors. Sam needs to ensure an effective two-way
communication for promoting the employee engagement practices (Eldor & Vigoda-
Gadot, 2017). The state of being unvalued stimulated from the ignorance towards
listening to the point of view of the employees, their concerns and/or requirements.
This strategy is beyond the concept of ‘open door policy’. Voicing concerns or
requirements with the assurance of being heard can be incorporated by Sam in the
process of employee motivation.
 Generating sense of determination and purpose: Sam should invest his time and
efforts in developing plans for bridging the gap between employee objectives and the
objectives of the organization. The alignment will construct the purpose for individual
team members. Sam can stimulate the sense of purpose by thinking beyond the
conversion of profits, the purpose needs to include the individual opportunities of
experiencing growth for the team members and participants. Moreover, Sam needs to
ensure the understanding regarding the values and objective of the organization so
that they can align their individual values (Gupta, 2015). The incompatibility of the
team members’ values with that of the organizations’ can lead to the inconsistency of
employee engagement. Sam should practice his responsibility of communicating the
mission and values statements explicitly and clearly to the team members before
asking for participation for the new project. Sam can effectively enhance the

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attentiveness, engagement and motivation of the team members by linking their
efforts with the company’s value.
 Adopting the bottom up approach rather than top down: The construction of
productiveness, efficiency and participation can be built by Sam with the basic theory
of building a house. The top down approach is reflected in the practice of Sam as he
communicated about the project schedule and asked for participation rather than
having a discussion about the current schedule of the team members (Naeem et al.,
2017). Bottom up approach will allow Sam to generate new innovative ideas for the
initiation and effectiveness of the project. Bottom up approach will help in stimulating
the sense of value and satisfaction. Bottom up approach can include conducting an
internal survey for understanding the opinion and ideas on the new project. This
approach will generate mutual trust and understanding (McManus & Mosca, 2015).
This approach encourages the concept of participation and significant contribution.
Sam also needs to conduct regular team meeting with the team members for building
healthy relationship and synchronization (Kumar & Pansari, 2015).
 Flexible employee learning plan: Learning different forms of learning preferences and
styles can address the concern of gap between employee satisfaction and
organizational expectations. The platform, process and source should be considered
by Sam before implementing flexible learning plan. The platform choice can be both
offline and online (Osborne & Hammoud, 2017). Online training module and
feedback portal can help in understanding the requirements and concerns of the team
members for future projects.
 Effective learning programmes: Sam can create a co-creating environment for
encouraging the employees in participating in the project with the flexibility of
innovation. Structuring challenges and fun productive games for the employees in
different groups can address the resistance of change or deviating from comfort zones.

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The above mentioned advices align with various human resource management
theories like, behavioral management theory, McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y and
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The behavioral management theory includes various
dimensions of work. The behavioral management theory reflects the significance of the
human behavior in the workplace like conflict, group dynamics, conflict management,
productivity and motivation. Constructing the road map and the recognition plan will include
the understanding of the motivational and influential factors for a group performance. The
understanding regarding the constituents of the behavioral theory of management will shape
the idea regarding the motivational plan. McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y depicts the two
concepts of employee perception. In the theory X, employees are assumed to be dissatisfied,
tries to ignore accountability and responsibility, in the requirement for a specific direction
(Noe et al., 2017). The employees in the category of theory X reflects the need for
supervision (Bass, 2015). Theory Y employees represents high satisfaction, involvement and
attentiveness. The advice of building effective and flexible learning plans is based on this
theory as it will categorize the employees in regards with the theory X and theory, which will
present an overview of the flexibility need and effective process for executing a learning
program (Bass, 2015). The advice of two-way communication and constructing a sense of
purpose is based on the Maslow’s Hierarchical needs, where the needs and priorities are
divided into five sections, depicting various forms of priorities amongst the team members
(Lee & Hanna, 2015). The understanding and categorization of needs will highlight the way
for goal alignment between the team members and the management.

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References:
Bass, B. M. (2015). Theory X and Y. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, 1-1.
Eldor, L., & Vigoda-Gadot, E. (2017). The nature of employee engagement: Rethinking the
employee–organization relationship. The International Journal of Human Resource
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Gupta, M. (2015). A study on employees perception towards employee engagement. Globsyn
Management Journal, 9(1/2), 45-51.
Kumar, V., & Pansari, A. (2015). Measuring the benefits of employee engagement. MIT
Sloan Management Review, 56(4), 67.
Lee, J. M., & Hanna, S. D. (2015). Savings goals and saving behavior from a perspective of
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Naeem, M., Ashraf, R., Ali, N., Ahmad, M., & Habib, M. A. (2017, July). Bottom up
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Osborne, S., & Hammoud, M. S. (2017). Effective employee engagement in the workplace.
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Ruck, K., Welch, M., & Menara, B. (2017). Employee voice: An antecedent to organisational
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