Online Custom «Working in a Professional Environment» Essay Sample

Introduction

Organisational context includes ways in which an organisation is structured. It includes the various ways in which an organisation operates and the operative knowledge that managers have on their employees. Working in a professional environment involves a lot of adjustments in order to meet the demanding roles set in an organisation. It involves understanding of the organisational context that will form a basis to the outline of both the exterior and interior aspects of the organisation (Cooper & Clarke 2003). Furthermore, one has to adapt to the organisation’s internal environment such as culture and organisational social set up. It also entails adapting to the external environment of the organisation such as the political and economic conditions.

Therefore, an effective and successive professional environment depends on several factors. It will involve the motivation guidelines set up by the management to keep the workers motivated and going on. It also depends on an employee’s capability of meeting the set standards (Cooper & Clarke 2003). At times, it involves having a comprehensive mechanism to manage stress at the work place. Finally, to accomplish a successive environment in the field of operation, one needs to possess the ability to manage or move the changes both in life and in the organisation.

Managing Personal Stress

Stress at an organisational context is the response that employees may face at the work place due to pressures and demands that are not matched with their abilities or knowledge. Eventually, this challenges the employee’s ability to cope with such situations. Stress at work place also arises in a wide range of work environments. Further, it is worsened when an employee feels that there is a little colleague or supervisors support. Pressure at organisational context is inevitable because of the demands of the modern work environment. Pressure alleged as tolerable by an individual may keep employees attentive, able to work, learn and motivated. This depends on the available personnel and resource characteristics. When that pressure becomes excessive or unmanageable it leads to stress. Consequently, stress can lead to poor health of the employee and inferior business performance.

Managing stress at an organisational context can be helpful to both the individual and the organisation. To an employee, effective management of stress will help to boost the overall health. Moreover, it can help in improving the employee moods, promote longevity, boost the immune function in the body and make employees more productive. Failure to manage stress has been established to be one of the primary causes of cardiovascular diseases. Prolonged stress will have negative effects on the health of an employee because it is a psychological process that involves the brain. When an employee becomes stressed, the brain undergoes a series of physical and chemical changes that affect functions of the body. During stressful periods, chemicals such as neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine are released. These chemicals cause psychological effects such as rapid heart rate, weakened immune system and higher blood pressure. When these psychological processes occur over long a period of time solemn difficulties develop. Such problems may include stroke, heart disease and stomach ulcers.

Managing stress at an organisational context can also help avoid some physical effects of stress on an employee. Research has indicated that chronic stress contributes to the illnesses such as heart attack and cancer. Although stress can be unnoticed for a long period since the nervous system of an employee is always trying to cope with it internally. One of the most observable physical effects of stress is the tensing of muscles which lead to the chronic headaches and other musculoskeletal conditions. Managing stress will also help avoid digestion disorders.

Poor digestion causes nausea, constipation, heartburn and vomiting. All of these activities contribute to what is commonly known as time wasters in an organisation. Moreover, the employee is always absent from the work place trying to get medical attention. Thus, this will lead to poor business performance. Finally, effective management of stress will help employees live a happy and comfortable life and enhance ones physical looks.

Level of Stress Management Integration

As a result of the realisation of the harmful physical and psychological effects of stress, the organisation has developed comprehensive mechanisms in order to help employees cope with stress. The organisation has adapted strategic measure to boost employee’s performance by means of adapting integrated organisational strategies to reduce and identify causes of stress among them (Powell & George-Warren 2005). These strategies have provided a model to the general and departmental managers that illustrate and propose ways in which they can help reduce the employee’s stressors at the work place.

The organisation has conducted stress management techniques that have continuously helped employees live a healthier life. Furthermore, a department whose role is to train employees on stress management strategies has been set up (Powell & George-Warren 2005). This department has taught all the staff that the most efficient technique to manage stress is mediation. This technique encourages an employee to relax his or her mind and examine inner self with a sense of compassion and honesty as opposed to criticism and judgment.

Motivation

At an organisational context, motivation is a psychological process that helps employees work towards desired objectives or goals. Motivation at the work place is essential since it keeps employees on the move by encouraging them to do their best (Whiteley 2002). In an organisational context, motivation can be a driving force in order to compel and reinforce actions towards various organisational objectives. Motivation aims at optimising the wellbeing of employees, his or her physical pain. It intends to maximise employees’ pleasure at the work place. However, it cannot be achieved by force or compulsion. It should be an innate or inner drive (Whiteley 2002).

Importance of Motivation

In the modern society, motivation has become progressively significant in organisations of all magnitudes that want to attain their organisational goals on a competitive marketplace. Top performers of an organisation who are consistently motivated provide high quality work; such employees maintain high output and overcome challenges and obstacles. Motivation in an organisational context can help progress employee’s performance, shrink the likelihoods of low employee self-esteem, encourage cooperation and instil an optimistic attitude through puzzling times (Kinicki & Kreitner 2009). Staff with a high level of inspiration characteristically work harder and can overcome shared workplace tests with ease. This helps the company realise or reach its objectives and improve operations overall.

Motivation plays an essential role in achieving both individual and organisational goals and objectives. In the current world, it is no matter what roles or jobs people perform, most of them still need to be self-motivated or motivated, regardless whether it is organisational or personal goals. Motivation plays a vital role in the accomplishment of any set aims (Kinicki & Kreitner 2009). Therefore, within an organisational context, it is important to help all employees feel more confident at their work and encourage their performance. This will consequently help the employees work harder in an organisation in order to ensure the set goals and objectives are realistic. When employees are not adequately motivated, their performance and productivity goes down.

Motivation leads to improved productivity at the organisation. It is for a reason that motivated workforce will always work harder, show better results, products or services in a limited time frame. On the other hand, unmotivated employee will waste a lot of time doing things that motivate them at the office (Kinicki & Kreitner 2009). Thus, they waste time surfing the internet and using instant messaging. It takes longer for an unmotivated employee to accomplish the assigned tasks. Motivation also helps employees deliver higher quality of services. When staff is motivated they invest more time, effort and brain power into presenting the best services or products. Such employees will take pride on their work, meaning they will give the organisation a better name out on the market simply by producing a superior product. On the other hand, unmotivated employees will put in minimum efforts. This leads to poor service delivery and low-quality products (Kinicki & Kreitner 2009).

Motivation is also important since it leads to better employee retention rates. At an organisational context, motivated employee retention rate is higher. An organisation will invest in its employees by capacity building and training. Thus, losing such employee is a significant loss to the organization. Therefore, motivating such employee will increase their retention.

Level of Motivation Integration

At an organisational context, motivating all employees can be challenging. It is for a reason that to satisfy all the needs of an employee is difficult. However, with a well-planned mechanism, motivation at an organisational context can be achieved effectively. In my working professional environment, the organisation has put forward strategies to motivate employees included, create a sense of ownership among the employees (Painter-Morland & Bos 2011). The organisation has tried to create a sense of entrepreneurship among its employees; moreover, make the employees feel that they own every aspect of the organisation and any failure is a total failure of the organisation.

Motivation at an organisational level also involves supplying the employees with all essential assets since that they can successfully carry out their parts and achieve the organisations’ set goals and objectives. In addition, the organisation has emphasised that employees are human, and they can make mistakes (Painter-Morland & Bos 2011). However, careless mistakes are not tolerated, an employee need to feel obliged when they make a mistake; this makes them strive to do what is right next time. This mechanism has been employed by many organisations across the globe.

Ethics

Ethics is moral values that direct a person’s, organisation or a group’s behaviour. At an organisational context, ethics involves the moral correctness of a specified conduct. Many organisations tend to disregard the topic of ethics (Croome 2000). There can be several reasons supporting the resolutions that business organisations or individual perform in life. In many cases, monetary gains influence or make organisations make unethical things at the work place in everyday life. In the modern working environment that is being characterised by the competitive market shares, ethics is becoming more valuable. It is for a reason that ethics can be identified as one of the elements of business development. In an organisational context, ethics can be an important tool that can be used in order to measure the validity and acceptability of norms or practices. Therefore, ethics can be a descriptive discipline in an organisation (Croome 2000).

Ethics is crucial not only in the society or at an individual level, but also beneficial at organisational context. It is a vital element on which many organisations are founded. An organisation that lacks ethical principles in its operation is bound to fail later or sooner. Ethics guides organisation operations (Croome 2000). In an organisation, human resource, accounting information, sales and marketing should be connected to all levels of administration.

At an organisational level, ethics does not make sense by just having it written in books without being implemented or serving the purpose. Furthermore, ethics should be used by an organisation to ensure fairness, beneficial and clean society. In order to achieve this success, organisations should ensure they abide to ethics established both externally and internally. In doing so, ethics will ensure that there is a satisfaction of basic human needs since it forms the ground for it. An organisation can choose to remain honest and fair with its employees. It can be achieved by honouring all agreements reached between the employee and the organisational management (Croome 2000).

Another advantage of ethics is that it brings or creates credibility. An organisation that is based on ethics or known to be led by it and observation of moral values remains credible to all its customers. Also, ethics can be an essential tool that can unite leadership and people or employees. An organisation that is founded on values is revered by its employees. Ethics will help bring staffs and the decision makers on a common ground (Ford & Dudzinski 2008). Besides, ethics at an organisational context can help improve the decision making process.

A successful historical background of an organisation can be termed to be great if the made decisions are effective and have contributed to the welfare of all in the society. Finally, ethics can help in securing the society .Often; ethics succeeds laws in safeguarding the society. Ethics is trying to generate a sense of wrong and right in the organisation and frequently when laws fail, ethics can stop organisations from harming or hurting the environment or the society (Ford & Dudzinski 2008).

Level of Ethics Integration

Ethics is one of the key pillars in which the organisation was established. The organisation has made successive attempts in order to incorporate ethical principle in its operation. As an effort to ensure that all employees remain conversant with the organisation’s ethics, a framework has been put in place (Evans 2005). First is by ensuring that all recruitment to various posts in the organisation is done in an ethical manner. This has helped ensure that hired personnel meet the ethical requirements demanded by the organisation. Another attempt to guarantee that ethics is integrated in the organisation is ensuring that all employees’ orientation materials contain ethics information. It outlines what the organisation expects from all employees and ensures that the organisation remains focused on discharging its services and products in an ethical manner (Evans 2005).

The organisation has also devoted a substantial amount of resources such as money and time in integrating ethics into the organisation. The organisation has also put forward a program that aims at teaching and constantly reminding all employees about the importance of ethics. Through the program, employees and supervisors are stimulated to identify supplementary on-going training about ethics and pay more attention to employee’s annual performance and progressive plans. Focusing on employee training and ethical development has helped integrate ethics in the organisation (Evans 2005).

Theories

Maslow Theory on Motivation

According to Maslow’s theory, basic human needs must be satisfied before any other. Maslow used a hierarchy of needs to explain human motivation. People will always strive to satisfy these basic needs. Therefore, when employees feel that their most basic needs at work are being met, they will work effectively. Employees need to feel that the management is taking into consideration things like love, psychological needs, boosting their self-esteem and confidence levels. According to Maslow, when people reach the self-actualization stage they are comfortable in the organization. Ensuring employees have access to everything will make them more productive at work. 

Utilitarianism Theory on Ethics

In reference to Utilitarianism theory, the proper course of action is the one that provides supreme value. Utilitarianism as supported by Jeremy Bentham and Stuart mills seeks to achieve maximum pleasure. In this theory, the worth of an act is determined solely by its subsequent consequence. Therefore, in an attempt to gain maximum pleasure in an organizational context, organizations should always consider doing what is right.  When guided by this theory, organizations will not only depend on the established laws, but also by moral obligations.

Cognitive Theory of On Management of Personal Stress

According to this theory, stress is a response that occurs whenever there is something missing in the body, for instance a homeostatic imbalance. Stress occurs when there is a contradiction among what ought to be and what is-between the value a variable should have been, and the real value of the same variable. The stress reaction, therefore, is an essential and necessary physiological response. Anxiety provokes precise actions to handle the condition. Alarm level is influenced by anticipation of the consequence of stimuli and the definite reactions presented for surviving. Response offers proper descriptions of managing stress, helplessness, and hopelessness. This theory explains that for effective management of stress, correct response by the body must be initiated. The body must try to adjust to the new environment or conditions.