A STUDY ON EFFECTIVENESS OF ORGANISATION CLIMATE IN COMPANY (HR PROJECTS)

Description:

Organisations in the 21st century are facing more challenges than ever before. These challenges are not unique to any specific organisation or industry, but affect all organisations, regardless of their structure or size. Organisational climate in particular is constantly challenged by changes impacting organisations today (Nair, 2006). To survive and outdo their competitors, organisations are constantly seeking to improve their performance. Authors such as Brown and Leigh (1996) think that organisational climate is becoming more important than ever before because organisations need to ensure that those individuals who add value to the bottom line will want to stay in the organisation and will want to continue pouring their effort into their work to the benefit of the organisation.

According to Watkin and Hubbard (2003), high-performing organisations have climates with particular measurable characteristics, which has shown how organisational climate can directly account for up to 30% of the variance in key business performance measures. This is supported by research that examined the relationship between the way in which employees describe their work environments and the relative performance success of these environments (Wiley & Brooks, 2000). Watkin and Hubbard (2003, p. 380) contend that climate does make a difference to organisations’ performance because ‘it indicates how energising the work environment is for employees’. There is, however, clearly more to an organisation’s performance than an ‘energised employee’ or the presence of certain organisational and leadership characteristics: ‘productivity … also depends on the morale which governs discretionary effort – the willingness to go the extra mile’.

Researchers have been interested in understanding how employees’ perceptions of the work environment influence their level of job satisfaction since Mayo’s (1933) studies at Western Electric. These studies found that environmental factors influence worker productivity and morale. Bisconti and Solomon (cited in Peek, 2003) report that an organisational climate that allows a high degree of autonomy and nurtures relationships among peers, supervisors and subordinates results in more satisfied workers.