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Background
Looking back at my experience working as a server at (each w lahum) I would have to say that while the job was not easy, it was good enough in terms of the salary that we were given as well as the hours that we were supposed to work. However, there is one person there that I do not remember with fond memories and that is (Insert Name of Coworker Here). He always arrived late for work (one hour late every single day), left early so that he would not have to help with cleaning the restaurant, had a generally disagreeable attitude when it came to getting along with the other servers, and lack any enthusiasm or initiative in doing his job.
One day I could have sworn that he came to work drunk since he was not thinking properly, kept on crashing into things, and had the nerve to just sit down and take a nap during the busiest hour of the day since he did not feel well . Our manager was far too kind for his good when it came to dealing with (Insert Name of Coworker Here). He did not penalize him for his lateness, he allowed him to act disrespectfully to his fellow servers and other employees and even let him act in an atrocious way to our customers. I once saw (Insert Name of Coworker Here) shove a tray at a customer with some of the contents of their drinking spilling on the tray without even offering a single apology.
For me, such behavior is unacceptable given that in my years working in the hospitality industry, all employees in the restaurant, no matter if you are the manager or janitor are expected to treat customers with respect. I could honestly swear that his sheer indifference towards people drove customers to our rival, Al Hallab, across the street. He even had the nerve to have a 2-hour lunchtime every Friday and explained his one-hour lateness by telling the manager that he would make it up later in the day by staying 1 extra hour. He never did and he is usually the first one of us to leave.
Explanation
When looking at the behavior of (Insert Name of Coworker Here) it can be deduced the problem may be due to a lack of motivation on his part to work.
Based on various studies, it was determined that employee motivation played an important role in talent management practices due to its correlation in creating employees that are more motivated to work, more interested in their job, and, as a result, stayed longer with their respective companies.
Motivation is a crucial aspect of talent management since no matter how well a company develops its employees through a plethora of training programs and seminars if said employees find little willingness to apply what they were taught productively and enthusiastically then the training itself would have been useless venture (Levin, Hansen, and Laverie, 379-393). This is evident in the case of (Insert Name of Coworker Here) where he lacked the desire to be working at the restaurant as a server let alone try to be good at his job.
Employees that lack sufficient motivation with their current position have been shown as being more likely to leave for greener pastures as compared to employees that have been sufficiently motivated by their company (this was seen 5 months later when he left the company).
Recommendations
As indicated by Levin, Hansen, and Laverie (2012) four characteristics are in demand within the most enterprise, namely: high market responsiveness, fast developments, low cost, and finally high levels of creativity, innovation, and efficiency (Levin, Hansen, and Laverie, 379-393). What must be understood though is that such characteristics are dependent upon the type of employees that are the backbone of the company wherein through the utilization of a variety of management practices a seamless integration of vertical and horizontal means of collaboration need to be implemented to create a stable organizational structure for proper operations and product development.
This is where the concept of talent management enters the picture. Talent management can be described as the process by which a company develops an employees skills throughout their time within the company to take on a variety of job roles as well as to manage their progress up the corporate ladder through a variety of leadership roles
(Levin, Hansen, and Laverie, 379-393). In the case of (Insert Name of Coworker Here), upper management within the company could implement a variety of talent management practices to fix his behavior to a certain extent. For example, since (Insert Name of Coworker Here) is always late for work the company could implement an employee bonus program that rewards hard workers and those who fulfill certain standards of attendance.
By doing this, this would encourage (Insert Name of Coworker Here) to start coming to work on time for a change instead of always coming in an hour after the normal start of business operations. On the other hand, another potential avenue of approach that the company could use to fix the attitude of (Insert Name of Coworker Here) is mentoring. Mentoring in the case of enhancing employee performance involves guiding an employee via either a team leader or an adjunct employee that is willing to take them under their wing so speak to help adjust to the various aspects of the job, teach them how to do it well and guide them as they advance.
The advantage of this particular method is that it eliminates the dissatisfaction employees have with a job by enabling them to see the bigger picture and have them develop a development plan from which they can ascertain what they want out of their current job. It must be noted though that while this method is effective it hinges on the fact that the mentor will have time to address and guide the concerns of the person that he/she is mentoring.
While during my time at ( each w lahum) I tried to mentor (Insert Name of Coworker Here) as much as I could despite being in the same employee level, it simply did not work due to the number of customers that I had to attend to at the same time. In instances where there is sporadic mentorship what often occurs is that employees fall back into old habits and job dissatisfaction occurs as a direct result. (Insert Name of Coworker Here), despite my best efforts, showed a lot of job dissatisfaction as evidenced by his constant complaints about how hard the job was.
What I understood from this experience is that mentorship is not as effective as a process/program instilled by a company that creates the necessary self-motivated interest within an employee and as such should not be considered 100% effective. To this day I suspect (Insert Name of Coworker Here) continues to complain without really doing anything to make the job better.
Is (Insert Name of Coworker Here) a problem that cannot be fixed?
When it comes to (INSERT CO-WORKER NAME HERE), the main problems that I see are that he lacks initiative, is incredibly lazy, does not attempt to be pleasant to customers, and constantly arrives to work late. Despite all attempts by myself and the manager at the restaurant, nothing seems to work and in the end, his performance got worse the more we tried to help him. It is based on this that I believe that he is a problem that cannot be fixed given the numerous attitude problems he has and his lack of dedication to do a good job.
How can the Company Avoid Such Problems in the Future?
The current generation of employees is called Generation Y who has the distinction of bringing their tech-savvy skills to the workplace, are natural born networkers, and are achievement-oriented as well. It is based on this that for the company to avoid hiring workers like (Insert Name of Coworker Here) and to start getting the employees they need, it is important to create benefits and perks that would attract good members of Generation Y to the company.
Studies such as those by Clark (2007) reveal that one of the qualities that increase the interest of individuals from Gen Y for particular types of jobs is the inherent flexibilities found within a given position. The concept of flexibility can range from the scheduling and time-off policies that are in place within the company to how a job allows its employees to be creative with what they do instead of following rigid corporate policies (Clark, 2007). What you have to understand is that compared to previous generations, Gen Y places a higher level of importance on the concept of the work-life balance wherein each aspect complements the other.
By presenting potential employees with the opportunity to personally adjust their schedules within a reasonable level as well as allow them an appropriate level of freedom in taking time off due to various obligations involving their personal life, this results in a greater level of employee retention as compared to setting a rigid corporate policy. Going back to the correlation between creativity and flexibility, it must be noted that individuals from Gen Y are far more technologically sophisticated as compared to their counterparts from previous generations.
Not only that, they have been taught to be more independent when it comes to accomplishing certain tasks and solving problems. As such, it is recommended that to attract Gen Y employees it would be necessary to create an internal business culture that fosters creative thinking. By implementing such benefits at ( eash w lahum), the company will be able to avoid hiring people like (Insert Name of Coworker Here) since they would have a wider array of potential employees to choose from.
Works Cited
Levin, Michael A., Jared M. Hansen and Debra A. Laverie. Toward Understanding New Sales Employees Participation in Marketing-Related Technology: Motivation, Voluntariness, and Past Performance. Journal Of Personal Selling & ales Management 32.3 (2012): 379-393. Print.
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