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Addressing Challenges of Groups and Teams University of Phoenix LDR 531 Training can provide unique opportunities for organizations to prevent fraud and improve ethical practices among employees. Training can help to educate, raise awareness, and increase short and long-term company profits. WorldCom was a classic example of failed corporate governance, accounting abuses, and plain greed that could have been prevented through appropriate management and employee training.
This paper will provide an example of a training plan that could have helped prevent the demise of WorldCom. Developing a Training Plan To increase the effectiveness of employees toward the achievement of business goals, it is essential to put a training plan in place that will enhance communication, group collaboration, and conflict management. A well designed training plan would display the same basic training module but with more organizational specificity on the topic to be addressed. The training plan is therefore designed to maintain the following fundamental principles. ) Training Goal: The desire to achieve results in effective communication, collaboration, and conflict management from employees to include an understanding of the expectation of ethical behavior. A training manager shall be responsible for designing a curriculum that would address the challenges and benefits of these components within a reasonable time frame. b) Learning Objective: At the end of the training the expectation will be, employees will understand and exhibit skills in effective communication, the need for collaboration in maintaining understanding with one another and xhibit skills in conflict management and resolution. c) Learning Methods: Employees will be expected to complete three sessions, each of which will deal with effective communication, group collaboration and conflict management to include appropriate action with regard to fraudulent and unethical behavior. The support of visual aids and other available learning tools will be used to facilitate these trainings. d) Documentation: The organization will initiate and maintain records of attendance, participation, and graduation as evidence of training.
Employee personnel files will also have references of training. e) Evaluation: Employees shall be evaluated at the end of training to determine the individual take away from the program. The implementation of a training plan like this would address the challenges and benefits derivable from effective communication, collaboration, and conflict management. How the plan will work in the organization A training plan within WorldCom would have helped leaders, managers, and supervisors better understand effective communication.
The cause of the failure at WorldCom was because of the lack of communication, primarily from the company’s leaders. There should have been training for all levels of employees. The training plan would have set better professional standards, for all employees to follow as basic guidelines. This would have prevented the accounting fraud and the unethical practices that caused the company to crumble. Training offers a way for the employees to develop skills by, improving their productivity, quality of work, and the loyalty they have to the organization.
Training will improve and build employee morale and job performance. WorldCom was formed around groupthink; according to Webster’s new world college dictionary (2009), “Groupthink is the tendency of members of a committee or profession, to conform to those opinions or feelings prevailing in their group. ” “Victims of groupthink pressured, either directly or indirectly, to agree with the group and not express opinions that would differ with group consensus;” which was a cause of the fraudulent activities at WorldCom (Scharff, 2005).
A well designed training plan could have helped the company avoid pressure from the leaders. Applications of the Training Plan Employees will have to abide by the rules so that everyone has adequate knowledge and skills needed to perform effectively within an organization. Employees within the organization are responsible for holding one another accountable for their actions. This training plan would be successful because every unique challenge has been addressed. Teamwork would allow employees to apply measures of the training to the organization, by considering all aspects, not just the delivery.
This training plan provides strategies and implementations relative to an organizations developmental process. Applying the training plan strategies should have been WorldCom’s number one priority. Likewise, organizations must apply the strategies to ensure that the training plans will be sufficient enough for others to apply to their teams (Emprend, Inc, 2010). The application should be reflective of positive teamwork, thorough training plan knowledge, correct grammar use, and organizational skills.
WorldCom could have succeeded with the use of this training plan because it would have better equip employees to run their business. Unique Challenges Business organizations face many different challenges. The following are some of the challenges faced by today’s company’s: competition, decreased profits, raising employee performance, enhancing leadership, increasing customer base, allocating resources, delivering better service, increasing efficiency, increasing shareholder value, reducing costs, and customer satisfaction (Sharma, 2009).
WorldCom had 65 acquisitions in a six year period. It can be very challenging for management to bring together many different organizations and have them function as one smooth running business. A good training program would provide detailed instructions to the employees of the businesses acquired. The training would include the rules, regulations, goals, and the mission of WorldCom. Information will be provided to all employees regarding the companies would function as one unified company.
Detailed employee handbooks would be given to each employee, and the training program would discuss key points from the employee handbook. Within the WorldCom organization there was a culture of invulnerability. This invulnerability way of thinking made employees fail to respond to clear warnings of danger (Scharff, 2005). An employee training program should include fraud and ethics training and an explanation of what constitutes fraud and actions that should be taken when fraud is suspected.
Developed training programs can make or break the potential success or failure of an organization. Training employees and managers on company mission, expectations, and state and federal law to include: legal and ethical standards, is key. Managers and employees need to have a set expectation and guidelines to follow. It is the responsibility of the organization to provide training and ensure that employees understand and use the training provided through follow-up with direct leadership. Great paper, overall. The paper contained all the requirements of the assignment.
There were instances of incomplete paragraphs toward the end of the paper. The breakdown of the training was very comprehensive and interesting to read. Good job, Team A. Reference Carter McNamara, Authenticity Consulting, Complete Guideline to Design your Training Plan, 2008. Emprend,Inc. 2010 Project Connections. Retrieved from www. projectconnections. com/templates/detail/project_training_plan. html? clid=CK0uvfmzJ8CFQUeDQodpzvVHA Groupthink. (2009). In Webster’s new world college dictionary. Retrieved from http://www. yourdictionary. com/groupthink Scharff, M. 2005). Understanding WorldCom’s accounting fraud: did groupthink play a role?. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, (), 16. Retrieved from http://www. allbusiness. com/accounting-reporting/fraud/417988-1. html Scharff, M. (2005). Understanding WorldCom’s Accounting Fraud. Entrepreneur. Retrieved on January 28, 2010 from:http://entrepreneur. com/tradejournals/article/print/132353947. html Sharma, M. (2009). Your Organization’s Biggest Challenges. Retrieved on January 28, 2010 from: http://www. slideshare. net/ManojSharma/your-organizations-biggest-challenges