Organizational Fit in Contemporary Work Environments

Introduction

Employability is described as "the ability to obtain and maintain satisfactory employment." According to Hinchliffe and Jolly (2011), employers in all sectors want graduates with more than just a degree; they want graduates with a diverse set of abilities, attributes, and experience, referred to as employability skills. Based on description by Guilbert et al. (2016), employability goes beyond securing a job through meeting the conditions and requirement for a particular description but rather fitting to the norms, practices, and behaviour required at a given working environment. Ideally, in encompasses more than skills and knowledge require in doing and completing tasks at workplace to involving the set of required personal attributes. According to Nilsson and Ellström (2012), more employers have developed and guided by organisation identify and practices, which there quire all of it employees to adhere and observe at workplace. However, to some, upholding a certain established ethos and norms in integral.

Organisation culture and employability

Organisation culture defined as collection of values, practices, and expectation guiding all employees of a particular organisation. For instance, in a healthcare industry, employees of any organisation or business entity within the industry have to show thinking, being critical, engage with patients compassionately, and engaging with other team members at all time. Fundamentally, personal traits encompassing attitudes, values, and way of life informs integration and work with other team members (Riebe et al., 2010). In an organisation that puts emphasis on the teamwork and pooling ideas together in team before making a decision, an individual ability to work with others and contribute to the teams objectives and task determines whether s/he would be considered as a team play and worth retaining (Helyer, and Lee, 2014; Osmani et al., 2015). In most case, an individual many have considerable skills and knowledge required in performing a require task that require teamwork but a person being not a team play and rather other members perceive, s/he would bring more harm than good into the team, would ultimately lead to being left out altogether.

In workplace, career development requires balancing self-knowledge, individual goals, decision-making, and fusing with the larger organisation goals and mission. Organisation mission determines the roadmap in which a given organisation perceives itself in future, and hence informing its performance plan. According to Stewart et al. (2016) and Ho (2015), key element organisations management look for in searching for an individual to employ is whether attributes of such a person fits and to what extend the objectives and interest of the two, employer and employee would fuse for the benefit of the organisation. Sundaray (2011) and Anitha (2014), core mission of an organisation is advancing its respective interest such as increasing bottom line or enhancing consumer satisfaction. In order to achieving this, it requires individuals who share similar objectives and have skill and traits that fit meeting satisfactorily those goals. An individual to be employed in customer relations, s/he should be able to communication effectively, engage at a personal level with the customers, being able to persuade and take control of communication, while making sure all the consumers’ concern are captures, addressed, and assured. Some of these skills can be learned to some extent at schools but important aspects come with experiences.

Career development and employability

However, notable aspect of career development during placement is that one has to consider aspects of tasks, activities, and team members who would inform chances of improving one success factors in improving career development and growth. However, some attributes are beyond one’s control. Management and team-members play an importantly role in mapping out development roadmap (Lee, Y. and Lee, Y., 2018). Building from the argument by Beausaert et al. (2015), an employee can have little control of growth aspects but ultimately integration of the personal goals and those of the organisation as well as how one relates with other team members, supervisors, and management plays an integral role in growth. However, it is important to note that given are not subject to ‘pick and choose’ such that at the workplace, one cannot choose the team-members to work with, tasks to tackle, consumers to interact with, the supervisors, or areas to work but mostly out of one control. However, for growth, one needs to get out of one’s comfort zone and adopt to the requirement and different environment (Lent, 2013). Ideally, change in workplace does not just mean introducing new technologies but also rather include working with new people from different backgrounds –holding divergent views, beliefs, perspective, and practices (Bellou, 2010). Being able to work in such environment to attain a common goal requires more than learned skills of solving the problem but being able to bring such a diverse team for a common goal.

From the placement, key aspect observed is that organisation has code of practices that all employees are required to follow strictly. Developing skills and knowledge required for a job might be easy, but moulding one’s personality to fit that required by a particular employee can be quite a challenge. Currently, with increased access to education, knowledge acquisition and training towards certain jobs based on the set requirement has shoot considerably. As a result, job market is relatively saturated with skilful and knowledge workforce (Lazarus, 2020). However, from what was observed in the workplace, employers are shifting away from the employing and retaining individuals based on their respective skills and knowledge gained in the university and training schools to focusing on individuals’ personality, values, and behaviour. This shift is driven by foster teamwork and organisation ideals and goals.

During the placement, core emphasis was team building that include having understanding of the beliefs, values, goals, and ambitions held by other team members then building from individual uniqueness towards common goal. In advancing this values, it was prudent to take in and understand diversity in the workplace not just on perspectives and beliefs but different people have their way of doing things and ambitions towards where they want to be in the few years (Maxwell et al., 2010; Adekola, 2011). However, the management insistence in understanding one’s goes, the goals of other team members, and important those of a team then bring together those diverse views towards attaining common organisation goal. Ideally, according the observations made, attainment of career development and self-actualisation takes more than having skills and knowledge outlined for a given job description. Example given was that one could be a brilliant engineer but failure to bring in and take into account the views and opinion of others in project management process would ultimately derail and failure at either implementation or long run. Designing a framework include a project can be easily be done by one with skills but successful implementation of the demand more than theoretical and scientific formulas but engaging and bring into people from different sectors and backgrounds in terms of education knowledge and skills, but also perspective, values, and skills. One striking motto advanced was that it takes a village to have a successful projects, meaning people of different backgrounds coming together are fundamental in developing and advancing the stipulated goals.

Although a conflict of personal development towards self-actualisation in workplace. Going by the illustration be Lent and Brown (2013), in theoretical workplace, the management understand and provide the employees with adequate and conducive environment to growth and advance their respective careers towards meeting personal ambitions and goals. However, in most workplace and organisations, this is not the case. Growth opportunities are usual limited and subject to several factors ranging to systemic frameworks and culture of promoting and rewarding certain group of people and values (Burnette et al., 2020). From the observation made during placement, one could deduce the frustration from some employees who perceived their works were not recognised and appreciated coupled with discrimination down the organisation structure. At some point, employees held that their input and outcome did not match the remuneration and appreciation including recognition for their performance, which in turn led to discouragement and not putting all their effects and commitment to the work. Building from this, employability is arguably require resilience in addition to patience. Hökka et al. (2017) argue that employees need to prepare for period of disappointment and discouragement for felling their input and effort not good enough to be recognised and appreciated. Although most organisations pride itself as equal and just workplace, it is importantly to note that discrimination and unfairness still exist in workplace (Dipboye, and Colella, 2013). Being employable, is arguably, requires not just the skills and experience but resilience and preparedness for years of disappointed. According to Beausaert (2011), personal development is learning to be tough from disappointment faced, not being appreciated, and rewarded for the input and effort. Building from the argument posted by Schoberova (2015), towards personal development in first understanding oneself, the environment, and team members then working to address weakness at personal level, team, and organisation while strengthening strengths. In a workplace, one should understand his/her motivating factors as well as those of their team members as well as behaviour that then used in advancing towards the goals and objectives of the team and organisation. The big question is always what motives one, is it meeting basic psychological needs? Or something bigger such as attaining self-actualisation.

Going by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that argues that people tend to seek employment to first meet their basic needs (food, water, settler, and healthcare), then safety that include job security, wealth, property, and resource (Oved, 2017). This is followed by attaining sense of belonging (friendships, connectedness, and family), the fourth stage in the hierarchy is respect, status, recognition, and appreciation, lastly, is attaining self-actualisation. Building from this, employees tends to adjust to employment environment based on their personal need and stage in life. For a person straight from college with less experience but only skills and training attaining education their academic education, employment can be anchored on meeting psychological needs, and personal security with sense of belonging, status, recognition, and self-actualisation being a long-term goals (Jonas, 2016; Stewart et al., 2018). For most important, however, after meeting these psychological needs, they will have to contended with decision of seeking employment that meets and offers career development as well as that values their respective input and outcomes. Similarly, for some organisations, particularly those with a brand to protect or have a huge consequence to incur in case of a mistake will tend to prioritise on the person values, reputation, behaviour, and background and not just employing an individual to do a job but rather developing a relation with such a person.

From observation, in an organisation that reliability and compliance to organisation standing policies such as integrity and honest employability goes into personality traits and moral principles is core and emphasised at all stages. Divergence from this results in being by-passed for promotion, recognition, inclusion, or retention. According to Coetzee (2017), key element for employability in a given scenario is understanding the values an organisation upholds and see as most important then moulding to ensuring adherence to such. However, most organisation offer learning and training opportunities aimed to instilling the knowledge, skills, culture, and values perceived fundamental to its business and organisation operations (Small et al., 2018). Through this, one can learn then apply the gained insight to reflect what is require of them at workplace.

Motivating factors informs one’s degree of fitting to a given job in such that it complements the skills and abilities gaining in the classroom and experiences. During the placement, the employers were interest on knowing and to what extend do the factors pushing an individual to seek employment.

Employability and Personal development

Universities must increase their students' awareness, confidence, and knowledge about communicating effectively, improve interpersonal abilities, work together, and bring the theory learned in the classroom into the practical world, and move from the university to the professional world smoothly. Bridgstock (2019) mentions that the fields of career and employability include management of resources, communication, and skills, teamwork and problem solving, acquisition and retention. During this module, I managed to recognize my current skills as well as improving them. Skill improvements have given me the chance to shape my, strengths, weaknesses, progress, and achievements. That will enable me not only to get a job in my profession but also to make me work effectively. Through the module, I came to learn that Time management is a very important factor in developing my career. One of my most important academic and employability skills is time management. This ability helps me to easily prioritize tasks, which involves planning workloads and being on time to places like work or university. I have a skill in time management for university workloads, as I can organize and train myself to reach coursework deadlines on time. This has helped me grow and become more independent to further enhance my skills because being out of my comfort zone enables me to explore new depths, so I can move beyond my boundaries and take on new changes and challenges in the future. In addition, this skill helped me positively during my placement as it boosted my chances to get the only chance that I thought I might lose.

However, acknowledging that graduates in the field of healthcare need something more than a degree; they need graduates who have a wide range of skills, properties, and information, which regularly are called employability aptitudes (Taylor, 2016; Majid et al., 2019). My course already helps me to develop a wide range of skills, from reporting to presentation. The University also offers many extra-curricular programs to further enhance your skills. One thing that was not thought in the modules was how to improve and develop your experience for higher chances of employment. This is because this is one of the negative factors in which I had most challenges with. I was asked if I had some knowledge of the job, in which I did but not to the extent that they required from me. To build on my experience, I ought to have volunteered, participate in some very important activities & societies, and work part-time, as I learned that experience is one of the main parameters employers need to ensure you are on vacancies.

Conclusion

The concept of employability encompasses the ideals that beyond mastering the skills and knowledge for a particular job requirement, for instance administering medicine, but incorporate good communication, leadership, being dependable, following instructions, being team player, and innovating but importantly adaptable to the organisation and industry needs. With business entities emphasising on developing a unique defined identity that inform the required set of behaviour, practices, and norms all employees need to follow and observe, means employees have to mould their skills and traits to fit a given working environment. Ideally, without other motivating factors, one could argue that for an individual seeking to meet basic needs would not be motivated enough to go beyond the job description at work place once the s/he attain those needs. One ought to think on ways of improving chances towards employment by developing more than just skills and knowledge required in job description but harness motivating factors, developing values, and personality traits such as competence and team player.

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