Kuang Lunyu
Student ID: 53178713
MGT 6209: High Performance Collaboration
Professor: Dr. Kuo Frank Yu
Addressing employees’ complaint & suggestion and persuasion
Due to the rapid development of technology and economy, collaborative practices for organizations to address employees’ complaint and suggestion is changing as well. On the other hand, complaint & suggestion means persuasion as well, because that kind of behaviors are actions of persuading other party to accept what they are suggesting or complaining.
Collaborative Practices for organizations to address employees’ complaint and suggestion is different from in the past, nowadays, and future.
In the past
Employees were not willing to give any suggestion or had less complaint, because employees hesitated, had no incentive, and were afraid of giving suggestion. Companies didn’t care much about the suggestion or complaint. Because they assumed managers were the best talents in the company and employees followed what the managers said was more than enough.
1.Employees hesitated to give suggestion or complaint, due to the Chinese culture. Normally, there was one person, who was the manager, to talk in the meeting and other subordinates listened and wrote down what needed to be done. If the manager was asking for any suggestion, the result would be silent and then the meeting was over. Even though the meeting’s context was so obvious bad and unfair, no body was willing to express their suggestion. Subordinates assumed they were not qualified to speak out and their boss was the best in the company. To keep them in the safety site, The one thing they should do was followed.
2. Employees had no incentive to give suggestion or complaint. First, company didn’t consider employees’ suggestion was helpful. There was not only no reward from the company by giving suggestion, but also the company assumed you were not willing to follow their order and made something outstanding. As Larry Moyer said, “why should I give you my best ideas when I am going to get nothing our of it?” Second, the company assumed that suggestion was belonging to manager’s job, instead of stakeholders in the company. That was why company would like to pay high salary to the managers and gave most of the power to them to make decision.
3.Employees were afraid of giving suggestion or complaint. Under Chinese culture, giving suggestion or feedback to the manager in front of public, subordinates would be considered rude and losing the manager’s face. In other word, the subordinates were challenging the managers. It was risky for subordinates to lose the job, due to the job security was so low in China and subordinates could be fired without reason.
In sum, people were not willing to talk about suggestion and complaint, due to the Chinese culture and consciousness of hierarchy.
Nowadays
Communication between company and employees becomes informal and indirect, due to the technology
change. Meanwhile, companies also care more about the employees’ voice and close the gap to satisfy the employees’ need.
As the Chinese culture, people wouldn’t like to give suggestion by face-to-face. Due to the technology changed, people can use Internet to give suggestion in order to avoid face-to-face communication. Moreover, people also can give suggestion or complaint without showing their real name, so that they can protect themselves to avoid press from the company and voice out the dissatisfy. For example, employees wrote they’re unsatisfied in the blog and the issue widely spread out to their friends and friends’ friends. By the same time, people might give comments on the issue and sometimes, that becomes a big issue. For example, Vanke’s Chairman WanShi created a blog and said that we were no need to denote the money to victims, who got suffer from the earthquake in ShiChuan. After posted the blog, that blog became a big issue.
Companies also care more about employees’ suggestion and complaint, due to the company reputation. People used to get the news after a few months or change the fact to report the issue. As the technology improvement, people can get the news within a second. If there is any thing unsatisfied, employees could summit the issue and widely spread in the Internet. As a result, the company’s reputation will be harmed. For example, Foxconn’s employee used suicide to express their unsatisfied and the world knew the issue immediately. Within a day, people considered Foxconn was a very bad factory.
Nowadays, employees are still afraid of giving direct suggestion and complaint by face-to-face, but they would like to speak out in anonymous. Accordingly, Companies change from avoiding to absorbing suggestions and complaint to considering.
Future
Company will concern more about employees’ job satisfaction. Communication and feedback between employees and company will be more equal and direct.
As job market is also free market, people would like to work in a company, which they assume it is the best company. Money is not the only thing employees concern about, but the whole package including job satisfaction. Due to the technology and globalization, people can easily find another job in other company. Employees have more and more bargain power to convince the company to accept their suggestion or complaint. For example, in Zappos Company, Tony Hsieh said delivering happiness to their employees is their company’s mission. The more they satisfy, the more they can contribute their energy to the job. We can look at the list of the best company to work. It shows that the best companies, which employees would like to work for, also are the best company.
How do employees benefit from complaints & suggestions?
Shift factors change the way of complaints & suggestion. Those factors are rapid communication, high-educated employees, and globalization.
1.Rapid communication
In the past the communication platform between organization and employees was restricted to face-to-face verbal communication or wrote a letter. Face-to-face communication could easily have a conflict based on the Chinese culture when the employees giving suggestion or having a complaint to the company. Because having complaint means that managers didn’t do a good job. Nowadays, sharing through Internet becomes much shorter and avoids direct conflict for complaining or giving suggestions. Because of that, not only the complaining and suggestion process became easier and shorter, but also the actions and response for organization also became faster. Furthermore, in the past employees tend to not complain and silent by avoiding complicit, but due to the rapidness of Internet convenience, we can complain via Apps such as WeChat. This method helps silent employees to voice out, and organization can get more information from various channels.
2. High educated employees
Employees used to have less education and worked for low technique jobs, so employees only did their job and followed what the managers said was more than enough. Like theory X, company considered employees are lazy, so if there are any suggestion or complaint, company would considered employees were finding excuse to do less job. Consequently, the company would reject the suggestion or not accept the complaint. However, due to the competitive environment and technology improvement, high-educated workers were needed and those workers also needed high perspective from the job as well. Those workers normally graduated from college and have a global view to evaluate the job. As a result, they need not only for job satisfaction, but also job recognition. Giving suggestion and having a complaint is normal in nowadays workshop.
3. Globalization
Globalization is happening in the world. There are more and more foreign companies open their factories or companies in China. On the other hand, there are more and more Chinese companies open factories or companies oversea. Frequent communication and interaction can close the gap of differentiation and employees will share their satisfaction and dissatisfaction between different companies. As the globalization, employees have more choice to select their jobs and work for what they assume are the best companies. Consequently, companies need to compete each other by considering suggestion and satisfying complaint.
We can find out that generation X is quite different with generation Y. the reasons of the differentiation are y the rapid communication of technology improvement, high educated becoming normal, and globalization. Those reasons lead to the companies or organizations changed from ignoring the complaint or suggestion to absorbing.
Connection between suggestions & complaints and persuasion shows that persuasion changes the way of suggestion & complaints leads to different outcome.
There are three persuasion clusters: Ethos, Logos, and Paths.
Ethos -- think credibility. We tend to believe people whom we respect. Based on the education change from few people used to study in the university to dominate graduated from university. More and more people have a global and open mind to accept different ideas. So that they change the perspective from Chinese traditional way of only listening and following the manager said to open mind of 360-degree feedback and comparison with global companies. For example, my father, who is belonging to generation X, was a worker that what the manager or boss said was right and the way to do business was following. Because they believe the boss is their second parent and giving them money for food. Consequently, there are many ethical issues happen, such as cutting cost by adding unhealthy material in the food to make it look nice or taste it good. They might ignore the outcome of leading the consumers to get a health problem. However, as the perspective changed by educated people, more and more people aware what they do instead of just following. If they see something wrong or unethical, they will speak out for suggestion or complaint. When workers seeing a company adding unhealthy material in the food product, they probably go to public the issue in the Internet or through other App. For example, there was a mouse in the barker shop in Hong Kong. When people found it, they took a video and public the issue in the Facebook. Within a day, the news widely spread and many people care the case. As the intensive and believe different, people will have a different action and lead to different outcome.
People are unique so they encode and decode messages differently. Different people are from different educated background and different family culture, so they have different kinds of assumptions to judge the same issue. That leads to people have selective messages and enhance their assumption. Regarding for the same issue, what manager level workers look at the issue is quit different with normal workers’ assumption. For example, employees would like to increase the wage and the shareholders would like to cut the cost by paying less. When the company wants to create some rules to enforce the employees do better, employees’ assumption is that the company wants to save the cost by creating excuse of making more rules. One more example of the view of diploma, some people think studying in school is very useful, because it is the way to prove we have the ability to do well. Some people think diploma is useless, because they saw many graduated students couldn’t find a job. That kind of encodes and decodes lead to different outcomes.
Words have different connotations for different groups. Just giving a very simple example, digit number 4 means die in South China, but it means nothing in other place. It is similar to the job situation. If the chairman said he would like to increase the production capacity, it has different meaning to different group. It means the boss will increase the sale’s target to sale man. It also means there will be more work to the human resource department to recruit more workers. It means there will be more capital support to the finance department. It is the same thing, but it means different to different department.
Pathos -- relies on your emotions, the motives, feelings, attitudes, and knowledge of the audience. Sometimes, we might do something without reason. For example, you might give a penny to a beggar. Why? Because you feel they are a pity and that feeling enforces you to do that without thinking more whether it is a fake to real beggar. We also can find such situation in the workshop. Two people have conflict. When we saw them, the first judgment was depending on the emotion and we normally agree with the weak part. As the more understanding of the issue, the emotion part will have less influence and the reasonable part will become strong. For example, we can see news that some workers complain the company not giving wage in the public by crying. It is easy to catch the people attention. What the advantage of technology is helping employees to show emotions through Internet instead of face-to-face communication.
We are more likely to be influenced by people we know and like. There is an old story that one guy lost a key and considered a neighbor stoke it. After that, no matter what the neighbor did, he considered what the neighbor did was provable that he was the theft. But when he found the key in somewhere by his mistake, he considered what the neighbor did was not like a theft. The story told us that when we have consumption with some people, it is easy to be persuaded by our perspective of that person. Just like, we can accept the idea easily by our friend instead of a stranger.
Logos -- that's the root of the word "logic." This is the most honest and shows the logical reasons to persuade people. You simply state the fact and reason why the person you're talking to should agree with you. That's why statistics are used so prevalently. If you were told, "On average, adults who smoke cigarettes die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers," and you believed you wanted to live a long, healthy life, logic would dictate that you stop.
Logos are “content of the argument, reasons, data”. As the increasing of communication by technology improvement from face-to-face communication to using Apps, more and more information can be shared within short time. It is easy for employees to aware what their benefits are and comparison will push them to get more. Consequently, more and more suggestion or complaint can be happened and the incentive is getting more benefits from companies. If the companies couldn’t fulfill their needs, employees would probably leave the company. That is why some of the places are lack of labor, such as low technique labor work in Guangdong, because there are low salaries paid and terrible workshop. On the other hand, some of the places people are jumping in, such as Benjing, because there are minimum salaries paid are pretend and working condition is quite well. As a result, the only way to get more is enlarge the pin (Thompson), and get improvement, due to everyone wants more. Consequently, companies and organizations get improvement.
In conclusion, what the employees or customers’ suggestion or complaint is persuading the company or organization to become better. Otherwise, they will ignore and left. As David said, “Persuasion promoted understanding; Understanding breeds acceptance; acceptance leads to action”(Garvin, P9). Due to the technology and employees education level increasing, there are many methods for employees or customers to speak out, such as taking photo and posting it in the Facebook or Youtube. Those kinds of issues are challenging the company or organization how to be better without destroying the reputation. Companies used to cover the issue, but it is difficult to do so by technology changing. According to Robert said, “no leader can succeed without mastering the art of persuasion”. The way to be successful is listening to all the stakeholders’ suggestion and increasing the pie of enlarging the profit.
References
Bryce, Xz64, Lisa Brooks, Mark Sorensen and 66 others. How to persuade People. Web site: http://www.wikihow.com/Persuade-People.
Cialdini, Robert B. Harness the Science of Persuasion. Harvard Business Review.
Conger, Jay A. the necessary art of persuasion. Harvard Business Review.
Garvin, D,; Roberto, M.(2009). Change through persuasion. Harvard Business Review.
Hansen, M,; Nohria, N.; Tierney, T. (1999). What’s your strategy for managing knowledge?. Harvard Business Review.
Thompson, L.(2009). Win-win negotiation: Expanding the Pie. The mind and heart of the negotiator, Pearson Prentice Hall.
Williams, Gary A.; Miller Robert B. Change the way you persuade. Harvard Business Review.
