Treetop Forest Products Ltd free essay sample

Treetop Forest Products Ltd is a sawmill operation in Oregon, USA, that is owned by major forest products company but operates independently of headquarters. It was built thirty years ago and was completely updated with new machinery five years ago. Treetop has one general manager, sixteen supervisors and support staff, and 180 unionised employees. The mill is divided into six operating departments: boom, sawmill, planer, packaging, shipping and maintenance. And packaging department is separate from the rest of Treetop operations. The short term problem: packaging department’s poor productivity. The long term problem: packaging department’s quality and company’s cohesiveness. Question 1: Based on your knowledge of team dynamics, explain why the packaging department is less productive than are other teams at Treetop. Answer: Team Dynamics are the unseen forces that operate in a team between different people or groups. Team Dynamics can strongly influence how a team reacts, behaves or performs, and the effects of team dynamics are often very complex. Suppose in a small team of six people working in one office there are two people who have a particularly strong friendship. This friendship is a natural force that may have an influence on the rest of the team, and can be manifest in various ways, either positively or negatively. Other factors can also play an influence. For example, if a wall of cupboards were to be placed across the middle of the office, this would also form a natural force that influences the communication flow and may separate the group into two further sub-groups. Sometimes, an absence of a natural force can also be a team dynamic. For example, if the leader or manager is permanently removed from the office, the group may be drawn into a change of behaviour. Team cohesiveness:  · degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members.  ·calculative – members believe the team will fulfill goals and needs.  ·Emotional – team is part of person’s social identity. The relationship between cohesiveness and performance:  ·When team norms support company goals and team cohesiveness is high, it will lead to high task performance.  ·When team norms support company goals and team cohesiveness is low, it will lead to moderately high task performance.  ·When team norms oppose company goals and team cohesiveness is high, it will lead to low task performance. When team norms oppose company goals and team cohesiveness is low, it will lead to moderately low task performance. If a company’s norms are counterproductive and the company has high cohesiveness, the employees work harder, the worse result they will get, that means lower task performance. In this case, the packaging departm ent of Treetop doesn’t has a supervisor, and the planer supervisor is responsible for the packaging department on the morning shift, and the sawmill supervisor is responsible for the packaging department on the afternoon shift. But the packaging operation is housed in a separate building from the other departments, so supervisors seldom visit the packaging department. So the first factor is that packaging department’s employees make some norms by themselves, such as they extend lunch by ten minutes and coffee breaks by five minutes, and typically leave work a few minutes before the end of the shift, their goals are oppose to the company’s benefit. The second factor is that packaging department’s team cohesiveness is high. All employees in this department are lazy and not willing to work hard. Question 2: How should Treetop change the non-productive norms that exist in the packaging group? Answer: Solutions and Consequences: 1. To counteract the social loafing the company should: Increase feelings of indispensability. Doing this within the group would motivate the employees. Increase performance feedback, so that employees will know how to improve themselves as well as knowing what they did well. Reward group performance. Pros:  ·Highly motivated in what they are doing   They would feel belonging to the company since they would know what the company’s goals are. 2. To have a more structured environment, Treetop should hire and train a new supervisor only for the packaging department. Pros:  ·Ã‚  This solution will decrease inventory costs and increase the production and quality of the finished products.  ·Ã‚  Effective communication between the other departments to balance the productivi ty levels Cons:  ·Ã‚  The salary and training of this new employee will increase the company’s costs. 3. To reduce the overtime costs, limits should be put on the amount of overtime hours an employee is allowed to use, along with a deadline for a specific amount of products. Pros:  ·Ã‚  This would decrease the overtime salary costs  ·Ã‚  This would increase productivity due to the fixed goals.  ·Ã‚  This would decrease the extended break and lunch times. Cons:  ·Ã‚  Because these goals are imposed, the employees may be reluctant to achieve them. To avoid this situation, the goals could be discussed therefore increasing the probability of their achievement. Question 3: What structural and other changes would you recommend that may improve this situation in the long term? Answer: 1. Group evaluations could be necessary to measure the group’s performance and to see if the actions taken are resolving the problems. Let the packaging department form some groups, then do some competition in these groups. Which group’s product is the best and the productivity is highest, the group will be awarded by some bonus. So the employees are willing to make high quality product and improve their productivity. . Communication should be improved between the departments to stop the unbalanced productivity. This would resolve part of the inventory costs problems. Upper management should also put someone in charge of the packaging team. In one hand, the upper management can know what these employees want and need, in the other hand, the upper management can change these non-productive norms little by little, instead of changing suddenly. 3. If necessary, Treetop can reorganize its packaging department. Fire all the employees who are following the non-productive norms, and hire new employees to let them know the right norm of the packaging department. Conclusion: Team cohesiveness is very important, but only the team norms support company goals and high team cohesiveness can lead high task performance. It’s better to hire a supervisor for each department to supervise the employees. Even though the expense will be high, but the company will earn it back in long term. Do group evaluations or department evaluations, so each department and group will work hard.