Wilko retail Ltd. is a British chain store which sells some affordable home and lifestyle products. The value retailer offers two options for customers that they are able to choose to buy goods online or going to the high-street. Lately, Wilko said it has begun consulting with 3,900 staffs working as stock supervisors, till supervisors and assistant managers which might result in a number of “redundancies”. (Neate, 2017) Recently, more and more business prefers flatter organizational structure applied in the company for cutting costs and increasing efficiency. It is a movement of getting rid of some unnecessary supervision roles among its stores which can also be defined as delayering. Delayering is a reduction of one or more layers of hierarchy from the organizational structure. Frequently, most of the companies prefer to remove middle-ranking managers because the executives rarely see the advantages of middle manager role. Additionally, they strongly believe that Middle Managers prevent the progress of the company. Therefore, delayering is a superexcellent opportunity to save the day. (Anthony, 2017) These process of change are used to achieve a concept of “simpler” for shop structure. This new type of organizational structure is becoming popular in management theory because of quicker decision making, motivating thoughts of innovation and a high participation style of management. (Kettley, 1995) It is important to determine what will happen to staffs, managers and the organizational structure if the company implements delayering because this decision-making is actually a matter of life and death that people who work in Wilko. This essay will investigate and analyze the advantages and drawbacks that delayering will have on Wilko’s shop floor employees, managers, and the organizational structure.
To begin with, there has both strengths and weaknesses for shop-floor employees which is the result from delayering. Communication is considered as one of the most important aspects of any organization. (Chitra, 2017) It is necessary to create a more favorable environment for workers so that they can contribute to the company further. According to the hierarchical organizational structure, it has many layers and branches which demonstrates one-way communication distinctly in the chain of command. On the contrary, the flat structure has achieved two-way communication because it shortens the path of through stripping out certain layers. Since the structure has fewer layers, communication is often faster and efficient. Hence, delayering makes the shop-floor employees have more opportunities to communicate with not only the managers but also the leader of Wilko. For a better understanding of the task, the manager always gives some instructions and feedbacks after looking at employees’ performance. It is beneficial for employees to enhance the working skills and quality which leads to the higher contribution to the organization. In addition, removing layers can result in cooperation. Loss of department will cause that the workforce is organized more and the employees may share ideas in public. (Dana, 2017) As each employee has certain skills and functions, while they combine notions together, there will have various solutions available to choose. Meanwhile, it may provide convenience. That is the reason why team-work is important in organizations. Then, decentralization can be shown through reducing some levels of roles. It means more power and opportunities are given to the employees to fulfill their potential. Less dominance and supervision will ease the pressure on the work but give a higher sense of responsibility which may help to motivate them. For example, if the employees think that they can influence the company, they will work harder since they care about the interest of themselves. Consequently, the employees will feel they are part of the company and do whatever they can to seek interests for companies. The plenty of empowerment can build up employees’ ability to tackle troubles and reduce the workload of managers. If the shop-floor employees have sufficient authority to make decisions by themselves without asking managers for help, it will save lots of time during working. Flatter organizational structure distinctly benefit some companies like Wilko. However, there are a number of challenges that flat structure has to overcome. As it mentioned before, employees gain more power to carry out their duties which is helpful but also present some negative effects on execution. It is hard for them to take the consequences if they commit huge errors. This situation may cause some pressure on employees which influences the work efficiency and customer services accordingly. Reduction of layers will bring on cross-functional business processes which present team members come from different departments and have different skill sets to achieve goals together. Cross-functional also refer to individuals who take more roles at the same time. (Margaret) For instance, the shop-floor employees in Wilko may not only in charge of checking out but also be responsible for emergencies such as changing small money and helping customers find out products. It will cause inefficient work because of over workload. Thus, it may damage the satisfaction of customers since low services. Due to long time waiting for help or check out, customers will lose confidence in this company and does not want to trust again. In addition, although giving authority can motivate the staff for participating in decision-making and share opinions, sometimes they get discouraged if the proposal is rejected by managers. Furthermore, with a higher proportion of front-line staffs to managers, some managers may ignore the performance level of individuals which will cause the resignation of those employees with high skilled. This will result in loss of talent in the organization. Beyond that, there is limited managerial position so that it has fewer opportunities for shop-floor employees to promote. (David 2017) In conclusion, removing the layers not only benefit the shop-floor employees but also has some negative effects which need them to surmount.
Delayering can also bring on some positive and negative effects to managers in the organization. As the reduction of layers in organizational structure, messages are easily to pass through fewer layers of hierarchy. Thus, it improves communication within the organization. (Maria) Once the two-way communication has achieved, it offers managers convenience to give employees the feedbacks and correct their mistakes faster. If the manager only receives their reports and does not render any feedbacks, the employees may lose the drive and passion to work for them. It is important because a successful corporation are democratic, it not only allows the employees completing and reporting work to their supervisors but also give them opportunity to express own opinions or suggestions. In case of employee engagement in two-way communication process, the managers will react faster to complaints or issues of the employee. (Chitra, 2017) The highly work efficiency of management layer brings some positive effects among the staffs due to they believe that they have been valued in the organization. (Chitra, 2017) In order to gain more support from the employees, the managers need to tackle matters in a proper and faster way. (Chitra, 2017) Besides, two-way communication can also become a bridge between managers and staffs. Managers can possess close relationship with the staffs through two-way communication. When people exchange and share ideas to each other, it will narrow the distance between two of them which means good relationship is built. High tacit understanding will increase work efficiency and lessen fatigue while implementing.