Consulting for a struggling firm Essay

Introduction All organizations in the modern society are faced with challenges in economic management. As a psychologist working for a consultation firm, I meet a CEO in dire need of help on future sustainability of works on stress management, diversity and motivation. Therefore, this paper seeks to analyze how the various challenges in the workplace can be mitigated so as to increase efficiency. Stress management Stress refers to a situation in which one feels pressure and cannot cope with it successfully, and results in varied physical, mental and emotional reactions. Stress management thus refers to techniques and therapies often with the aim of controlling a person’s levels of stress. In an organizational context the manager is charged with the responsibility for ensuring that each employee can work without pressure. Stress is common in very many workplaces, employees and the managers both experience stress. In workplaces, stress is often caused by lack of communication, career and job ambiguity, financial stress, personal stress, interruptions and strictness by the managers and poor working conditions. Stress management is important in a firm, in this case a firm that is struggling and needs to pull through. Work stress in this case is an important issue because it has financial impacts on the business, it is also important on legal obligations and organizational effectiveness. Practice of stress management in companies helps in the efficiency of the organization as the employees are able to know their roles thus doing tasks efficiently and thus making the organization effective, the employee’s working conditions are improved also,   as stress management helps to identify some of the problems that the employees suffer. Stress management boosts the morale of the workers as they are able to work with ease; it also ensures that equal opportunities in terms of promotion and training are given out fairly (Ivanko, 2013). In a situation that employees have been laid off, and some are remaining in the organization, those remaining are affected, and they develop stress. The type of situation can be achieved by applying ways of managing stress. One way would be to encourage the remaining employees to adopt a positive attitude and mindset towards their stress. Another way would be to emphasize on acceptance that some things cannot change; once something has happened we should accept and move on. Creation of time for recreation would also help to alleviate stress among employees; alterations of situations can also be an excellent remedy in doing away of stress. After layoffs the firm can rebuild by assessing and looking at the weaknesses and failures and try to address them, the organizational structure should also be changed, the employee’s working conditions and problems should also be addressed. A market research should be done to ensure that the requirements of the clients are identified, and more sensitization in terms of advertising should be done to get more clients and popularize the firm. Motivation Motivation in a firm often refers to an act of providing a reason to act in a particular manner. It can also refer to internal and external factors that stimulate and give desire to perform a task or job continually. Motivation is relevant to solving most problems in firms, it borrows a lot from   Ã‚  psychology, knowledge of work psychology is critical to the use of motivation. Motivation of workers is essential in building relationships with coworkers, improvement of production, time management among others things. The motivation of employees contributes to growth and development of the organization. In a situation whereby some workers have been laid off motivation can be used to enable the remaining workers to work harder and lift the body. Some of the ways of motivating employees include: increasing salaries of workers, creating   safe and friendly environment for the workers, recognizing and rewarding those employee’s that perform, developing good relations with workers, use of food as incentives, holidays to performing employee, introducing overtime in which the employees are paid for working for extra hours (Ivanko, 2013). This kind of measures can be taken in instances where there has been a laid off of workers as this helps the remaining workers to heal and ensure that the organization becomes more fruitful and able to cope with market dynamics. Diversity Diversity can take many forms; it includes differences in race, ethnic identity, gender, education, socio-economic levels and sexual orientation. The amount of diversity in organizations is often increasing; thus the need to manage diversity is essential. The number of aging workers is growing and there are more people from diverse backgrounds. In most organizations today, there are an increasing number of joint ventures, mergers and strategic alliances uniting people from different organizations and cultures. Handling diversity is an important obligation of leaders in contemporary times. A leader has to find the balance between promoting diversity and building a strong organizational culture. Managing diversity is important as it ensures creativity and innovation among the workers, it also helps in forming and maintaining better interpersonal relationship between workers, managing of diversity performance of the people for the value of all shareholders, it also helps in recruiting and retaining of employees (Bogda L. , 1998). Organizations have very many people of different backgrounds, in a case where the group has decided to lay off some workers; it’s of importance that the leader manages diversity for the remaining workers. Diversity can be accomplished by the following: by explaining the benefits of diversity to the organization, encouraging and other people who seek to promote tolerance of diversity, discouraging use of stereotypes to describe other members of the group, promoting respect for individual differences. Leaders can organize training programs that seek a better understanding of diversity problems and cultural differences and how to respond to them in the workstation. Conclusively, there is often a moment that an organization struggles and adverse measures are taken to laying off of employees. The body can bounce back by using motivation, stress management and managing diversity this would help in healing and development of a successful organization. References    Bogda, L. (1998). Diversity and Organizational Change. Retrieved December 12, 2014, from bogda.com: http://www.bogda.com/articles/DiversityandOrgChange.pdf Ivanko, S. (2013, September). Organizational Behaviour. Retrieved December 12, 2014, from uni-lj.si: http://www.fu.uni-lj.si/fileadmin/usr-files/Mednarodna_pisarna/ORGANIZATIONAL-BEHAVIOR-2013.pdf