Eye Gallery Optical

Main Body

Intro

On Nov 5th, we conducted an interview with the manager of Eye Gallery Optical. The store was established in 2001 and has now become one of the best stores with a focus on this field. As the owner of the store Diana mentioned, they are aiming to become one of the top sellers in Canada. Currently the store has four full time employees and two part time employees.

This report will consist of three parts which are three OB areas: motivation, groups and teams, individual and differences. Within each area existing problems and recommendations will also be discussed.

Motivation

As the definition goes, “motivation is defined as the desire to achieve a goal or a certain performance level, leading to goal-directed behavior” (Organizational Behavior, Talya Bauer & Berrin Erdogan). The overall atmosphere of the company is not very sale-pushed, so therefore the staff has a relatively easy working environment. Given the less intense style, staff has more freedom when they are doing sales. As the main indicator of motivation, salary is generally accepted by staff, which is worth their efforts and time. Manager sometimes will participate in the front line sales as well to encourage the staff when the inventory is packed with old styles that are harder to sell. When it comes to this situation, commission will be applied to those who are able to sell more that other peers can’t. According to Perception & Motivation in Organizational Behavior, “Motivating employees to complete their work correctly and on time is one of the major tasks of management. Changing an employee's perception of his place within a company is sometimes an effective way of improving organizational behavior constructively” (Steve Brachman, n.a.).

As organizational theory states, employees need to be motivated to actualize their potential and there are several ways of enabling them and empowering them to do so. These include the role of reward systems in motivating employees according to their needs for external motivation and by providing them opportunities that appeal to their internal motivation needs. Judging from the feedback of the interview, however, staff doesn’t have any commission like a regular sales role, which largely reduces the incentive and the nature of the job. In the sales field, commission is usually closely related with goals or targets. As the store manager stated, she doesn’t usually push sales thus no specific targets are set on a weekly basis.

Measures need to be taken since there is still room for the sales records to improve. As long as the business is involved in sales, commission needs to be set up to stimulate the morality of the team. It would be unfair if commission is not applied to the salary system. Those who have higher sales deserves to get paid better due to the extra efforts. Apart from that, weekly goals need to be set up as well so that the whole team will have a clear target in mind and work harder. Manager can generate a weekly recap showing all the staff’s sales record to create a more competitive yet friendly working environment.

Groups and Teams

By definition, “A work team has members who work interdependently on a specific, common goal to produce an end result for their business. A work group is two or more individuals who are interdependent in their accomplishments and may or may not work in the same department” (The Difference Between Groups and Teams: Definiton & Contrasts, n.a.). The store falls more on the team style where everyone shares the same goal and works on their own. In terms of management, this is the part where leadership kicks in and might improve the overall performance of the whole team. “In some instances, this may be too challenging for some managers or team leaders. In a positive situation, the leadership role and decision-making will adapt and accommodate. Decisions will be made differently. They will be based on their impact on the dynamics of the web of relationships between group members” (Leadership Development Coaching, n.a.).

As the manager told us, when she is managing the store, she doesn’t usually carry out a fixed pattern of management. But in order to improve the whole team’s performance, she needs to develop her own style and set up standards that staff can abide by. Moreover, manager can arrange meetings with the team individually on a more frequent base. Currently meetings are not scheduled regularly only from time to time when the manager is free.

For the sake of the ultimate goal which is to become one of the best sellers in Canada, the manager first needs to develop her unique style. Judging from the daily status, democratic style would be the best fit for the manager. According to Wall Street Journal, “this style draws on people’s knowledge and skills, and creates a group commitment to the resulting goals. It works best when the direction the organization should take is unclear, and the leader needs to tap the collective wisdom of the group” (Leadership Styles, 2013). On the other hand, more frequent meetings with different individuals serve to know how the team is doing and reemphasize the overall target, which helps to bond between manager and staff, and also improves the whole team’s sales.