Strategic and Tactical Changes Affecting the Workplace

We have been experiencing significant changes in the workplace after 9/11, most of the changes affecting the workforce and the workplace in the local and global marketplace.

Let’s consider the changes to the workplace first in order to understand the repercussions to the workforce and their commitment to their employers:

Changes in the Workplace:
• Security: the high level of security is evident, unpredictable and unreliable due to the fact that most companies trust their entire security to external forces; meaning that security personnel are outsiders rather than insiders, responding to external news and events rather than internal security issues, trust their instincts rather reliable working practices and policies and limit their involvement to checking who is moving in and out of the building.

• Safety: the high level of risk is interrelated to a weak security plan, meaning that when there are sudden changes into the security alert grading system this affect everything and everyone. For instance, if there are rumors that something may happen here in New York, the entire city is in alert creating a great deal of stress, anxiety, tension and fear, not to mention disrupting normal business practices and the trust between employees and management who are naturally uncomfortable with the overall security and safety plans.

•Privacy: in response to the security and safety concerns now the entire workforce is obviously concerned regarding their rights to privacy. It seems that everybody is watching for everybody, the mutually beneficial trust between employees if fragile and everyone is feeling vulnerable, violated and under surveillance at all times.

• Goals: every organization needs a clear, consistent and effective set of goals to integrate its strategic and tactical plans with its human resources in order to serve a common set of purpose. However, organizational and employee integration are always out of the big picture, business communication is not practice internally and externally with overall effectiveness, research and development is always focusing on new technologies and the organizational culture is unmanageable, resulting all these into ineffective business practices, poor morale, high turnover and unpredictable direction for the business.

• Business Processes: the chief objective here is to synchronize strategic planning with tactical interventions, therefore we design careful business units, functions, processes, procedures, policies and standards of performance to be run obviously by a competent workforce. The problem is that changing technologies and best practices in the marketplace usually create a high level of uncertainty to your human resources. They either keep up with erratic changes in strategic and tactical planning or let technology change their work environment without accountability.

• Corporate Culture: the mission and vision of an organization can not always ensure trust, commitment, loyalty and accountability from the part of the workforce. In other words a well written mission and vision statement can’t engage employees unconditionally to the success of the organization. Constant changes to the culture as a result of mergers and acquisitions, fusions, reorganization efforts, joint ventures, partnerships, etc are a constant treat and challenge to the survival of a progressive workplace, where cooperation, collaboration, trust, respect, diversity management and organizational and employee development can integrate effortlessly with new business processes and emerging technologies. There is not one culture anymore, there are many cultures working together and the challenges can bring significant benefits to any organization. The key is systematic integration in the workplace and capitalization on the workforce.