Ineffective communication between direct manager, employee and low promotion satisfaction at melcosa vietnam ltd

Executive summary This thesis aims to identify the root cause of ineffective communication between direct manager and employee which lead to low employee’s promotion satisfaction at Melc

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2019

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SUPERVISOR: Ph.D Trần Hà Minh Quân

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2019

APPENDIX SUPERVISOR’S REPORT ON THE FINAL THESIS SUBMITTED

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER of BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Final thesis title: INEFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN DIRECT

MANAGER, EMPLOYEE AND LOW PROMOTION SATISFACTION AT

MELCOSA VIETNAM LTD.,

Student name: LAM PHUONG THUY

Supervisor name: PH.D TRAN HA MINH QUAN

1 General comments:

„ Remarks on the student’s attitude:

„ Remarks on the assignment’s academic quality:

2 Overall assessment:

„ Meet requirement for submitting

„ Not meet requirement for submitting

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements……… 1

Executive summary……… 2

CHAPTER 1 1.1 Company overview……….3

1.2 Necessary of conducting survey “Employee Job Satisfaction at Melcosa office”……….……….3

1.3 Detail of conducting survey………….……… 4

SURVEY: Employee Job satisfaction at Melcosa Vietnam Ltd;……… 4

Research question……….4

Purpose of research……… 4

Literature review to choose the suitable survey to conduct “Employee Job Satisfaction at Melcosa office”………4

Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) from Spector, P.E (1994)……… 4

Questionnaire……… 6

Pilot study………6

Sample……….6

Analysis and finding………7

1.4 Problem finding process………7

1.5 Symptom……….8

CHAPTER 2: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 2.1 Initial Identification of problem………12

Figure 1: Initial cause-effect map……… 15

2.2 Problem identification……….15

2.2.1 The first potential problem: Flat organization………16

2.2.2 The second potential problem: Personal favouritism from manager………… 17

2.2.3 The third potential problem: Ineffective communication between direct manager and employee……… 18

Figure 2: Updated cause-effect map……… 21

2.3 Problem Definition……… 21

2.3.1 Communication definition……… 21

2.3.2 Measure of communication……….22

2.4 Justify the existence of Ineffective communication between direct manager and employee……… 23

2.5 Justify the importance of Ineffective communication between direct manager and employee ……….25

2.6 Potential causes………27

2.6.1 Lack of communication competency from manager……… 28

2.6.2 Lack of well comprehension from middle manager about HR policies or promotion opportunities………28

2.6.3 There is missing 2 way discussing between direct managers and employees about promotion opportunities ……….29

2.6.4 There was no organizational or HRM strategy ……….30

2.6.5 Bad quality of information channels within office ………30

2.7 Validation main cause and solution proposal ……….31

Figure 3: Final cause-effect map ……….32

CHAPTER 3: DESIGN SOLUTION FOR SOLVING PROBLEM Figure 4: Solution map ………33

3.1 The first alternative solution: Every direct manager is asked to build their own strategy to improve situation with their own team ……… 33

3.1.1 Benefits……….34

3.1.2 Cost……… 34

3.2 The second alternative solution: Build up "My dialog" system and organize workshop for all direct managers, employees ……… 34

3.2.1 Definition of “My dialog” ……… 35

3.2.2 Importance of Dialog ……… 35

3.2.3 Different roles in performance review for different positions……….36

3.2.4 My dialog steps……… 37

3.2.5 Organize work shop……… 40

3.2.6 Benefits……….40

3.2.7 Cost……… 41

3.3 Solution comparison……… 41

CHAPTER 4: ACTION PLAN 4.1 Action plan……… 43

4.2 Effectiveness measurement after taking action plan……… 46

Conclusion……… 47

CHAPTER 5: SUPPORTING INFORMATION Literature review to choose the the suitable survey to conduct “Employee Job Satisfaction at Melcosa office” ……….48

Analysis and Finding……….51

Appendix 1: Questionnaire in English and Vietnamese……… 56

Appendix 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10: In-depth interview transcript………60

References……… 81

Acknowledgements

I would like to say thank you to my Supervisor-Ph.D Tran Ha Minh Quan for his detail guidance so that I can finish my thesis sucessfully He is patient to give me detail explanation for what to do and the requirements that helps me to start the right way from beginning I can not finish my master thesis without Mr Quan’s support I have learned a lot how to recognize problem and solve the problem I also would like to thank you all lecturers for every subject with a lot of valuable new knowledge

In addition, I acknowledge and thank Ms Tram- Merchandising manager, Mrs merchandiser, Ms Thu-Shipping clerk and especially Mrs Bich Thuy-HR admin for great support and spend time with me to discover further information until I can finish this Master thesis with reasonable solution Moreover, I highly appreciate to all of my Melcosa

Tran-colleagues that they are a part contribution for my survey result

Lastly, I would like to extend my appreciation to most important people of my life-

my husband and my mother who stand by me all the time to help me overcome all difficult

issues in order to I can finish this Master thesis on time

Executive summary

This thesis aims to identify the root cause of ineffective communication between direct manager and employee which lead to low employee’s promotion satisfaction at Melcosa It is necessary to take this into account because there are many consequences

of low promotion satisfaction such as: low job satisfaction and customer satisfaction; low level of performance, responsibility, loyalty, and commitment of employees;

increase quit intention, expensive to replace qualified and long term employees, bad effect to organization's reputation- employer of choice,…

By using in-depth interview with related person and literature reviews,

ineffective communication between direct manager and employee is defined as the

central problem which is actually existed at Melcosa and the consequences of this

problem is also analyzed It is necessary to solve the problem because there are a lot of significant benefits for improving the effectiveness of communication between direct manager and employee such as: high employee performance and satisfaction; reduce confusing and inconsistent understanding at employees, reduce disputes; increase

office's effectiveness; build trust, and increase commitment; effectiveness of work

place's environment; more interaction, relationship building and collaboration,…

Theories play an important role in finding all potential causes of ineffective

communication at Melcosa But then further in-depth interview support to eliminate

some potential causes and clarify the main cause which should be paid attention in

priority As a result, “There is missing 2 ways discussing between direct managers and employees about promotion opportunities” is the main cause Two alternative solutions

have been suggested and after clarifying the comparison of solutions about cost and

benefits, “Build up "My dialog" system and organize workshop for all direct

managers, employees ” is the better solution and a following implement action should

be approved as soon as possible to solve the problem and improve employee’s

promotion satisfaction at Melcosa

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE THESIS

1.1 Company overview

Melcosa Vietnam Ltd (Hermes-Otto International Vietnam) is a Representative Office for textile, shoes and home products ex Vietnam for customers mainly in Europe Below chart is organization’s structure, author is a merchandiser at Garment

employees who are under 30 years old with less than 3 years working period at Melcosa,

decided to leave while there is no restructure at office, and Melcosa had to replace all 6 those positions

Author would like to raise the question mark, not to answer why some people left but to answer whether current employees are satisfied with their job? It is extremely

necessary to take it into account because more and more young employees have been

recruited for 3 years Will that be a big potential problem in the near future? After some conversation with HR admin to check if they are alert of this and because our office

does not have any internal report about employee job satisfaction And HR admin also

would like to investigate about it, author decided to conduct survey “Employee Job

Satisfaction at Melcosa Vietnam Ltd.,”

1.3 Detail of conducting survey

SURVEY: Employee Job satisfaction at Melcosa Vietnam Ltd.,

Research question

What is level of employee job satisfaction at Melcosa Vietnam office in general and in every different aspect?

What is the current job satisfaction with demographic variable such as age,

gender, job position, working period?

Purpose of research

The purpose of this quantity survey is to evaluate the level of employees job

satisfaction at Melcosa Vietnam in general and in every facet like: Nature of work, Pay, Benefits, Co-worker, Supervision, Contingent rewards, Operating procedures,

Promotion, Communication

Literature review to choose the suitable survey to conduct “Employee Job Satisfaction

at Melcosa office”

Details of this part is at Chapter 5: Supporting information

Job satisfaction survey (JSS) from Spector, P.E (1994)

The JSS is copyright from Spector (1) (2), this survey is suitable with human

service, it has total 36 sentences include positive and negative direction Spector used

Likert 6 scales from 1 Disagree very much to 6 Agree very much JSS is divided to 9 aspects: Pay, Promotion, Supervision, Fringe Benefits, Contingent Rewards

(performance based rewards), Operating Procedures (required rules and procedures), Co-workers, Nature of Work, and Communication

Every aspect is with 4 sentences A half amount of sentences with negative

direction such as: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 29, 31, 32, 34, 36 The scored of these sentences should be marked in reverse before calculate the total score

Total score of job satisfaction is sum of all 36 sentences, and score of every

aspect is sum of 4 sentences at that aspect

Even the tool has been developed for more than 20 years but until now, many researchers still use this tool to support for their research related to job satisfaction For example, (3) still use JSS to be a suitable tool for his/her research to demonstrate the relative between Emotional intelligence, leadership style, and job satisfaction in

contrasting workplace environments While this JSS is also has weakness like the

English question is not easy to understand That is why author try to translate to

Vietnamese in really Vietnamese words to secure full meaning

In research of (35), they has to adopt that JSS is still very useful until now but only need to adjust if necessary for every situation and organization, before using this measure, author has already interviewed with employee to confirm the relative

Moreover, the instruction to analyze this measurement is clear and author can base on that to calculate result to analyze correctly

Finally, author had to conduct in-depth interview with colleague to confirm the relative between JSS tool and current thinking of employees about job satisfaction, if using this tool now is still suitable and up to date

Questionnaire

Author divided into 3 parts:

 Part 1 is introduction about the survey and made respondent feel comfortable when answer the survey by informing to them all info is keeping secret and only serve for research purpose

 Part 2 is main questions with 36 items applied Likert scales 6 points which 1 is Disagree very much to 6 is Agree very much

 Part 3 is demographic questions like: gender, age, job position, working period, working period in this current position, rank the aspects of job satisfaction from 1

is the most important aspect to 9 is the least important aspect

Pilot study

Author prepared original survey in English for foreigner colleagues and

Vietnamese one for Vietnamese employees The most important thing is that author

needs to translate all the sentences to become real Vietnamese sentences in order to

secure full meaning from English version

After asking some friend to read and check if sentences are smooth Then author has to do some test with colleagues at office to make sure they read through all the items and ask them if something is not clear and need to be explained or adjusted Finally, no big modifications were made to the actual process of sampling However, minor

changes were made to the participant information sheet to increase clarity

Sample

Author sent hard copy of survey to all employees of office about 60 employees, except General Manager on 17-Aug-2018 With foreigner colleagues, author sent to

them English version, and Vietnamese version for all other Vietnamese employees

After 3 days, author collected back all the surveys and after checking, 47

responses are qualified

Data and analysis

As data is not very complicated, then author decided to input data and analyze the figure by normal Excel tool Following is detail report with total score of job

satisfaction and job satisfaction base on every aspect In addition, it is also showed some relation with other variables such as: age, gender, working position, working period

Total score of job satisfaction is 3.618 with minimum score is 3.14 and maximum score is 4.28

Total score of job satisfaction

N Minimum Maximum Mean

Score of job satisfaction by aspects as below chart: with the highest score belongs

to Pay with 4.24, next is Supervision 4.18, third place is Operating Conditions 3.98 and

Nature of work is 3.97 In general, many aspects get good result while Promotion

Satisfaction has the worse performance, is only 1.97, about Contingent rewards

Satisfaction is only 2.79 compared with others

Score of job satisfaction by 9 aspects

Further analysis is at Chapter 5: Supporting information

1.4 Problem finding process

To finding central problem at Melcosa Vietnam office, author conducted below steps:

 Referring the primary report from survey “Employee job satisfaction at Melcosa Vietnam Ltd.,” made by author

 Referring internal data from HR: turnover rate in year 2018

 Conducting in-depth interview with Merchandising Manager, Merchandiser,

Shipping Clerk and HR admin to understand full information about symptom and explore potential problems

 Referring literatures to prove and update the cause-consequence relation between potential problems,variables and symptom Meanwhile, double check the actual situation at Melcosa to understand correctly what happened

 Conducting in-depth interview again to validate the existence of central problem

 Referring literatures to understand the consequences of the central problem (the importance of solving it) and continue using in-depth interview to validate the actual importance of solving it

Total score of job satisfaction

Mean score of job satisfaction is 3.618, is not that very high score, but as this is the first time job satisfaction is conducted at Melcosa office, these figure could not be explained as good or bad Author has to go through the result by every aspect for further investigation

Source: author’s survey result

Score of job satisfaction by 9 aspects

Operating conditions satisfaction 47 2.75 5.50 3.989

change year by year because of limited data Author has just compared the average score

of every aspect from this result and found out that Promotion satisfaction score is 1.973 (6 point Likert scale) which is the lowest one compared to others In addition,

Contingent rewards satisfaction score, 2.793 is not so bad but under medium score

While employees voted Promotion satisfaction and Contingent rewards

satisfaction is at same 6th place of the most important aspects with them (1st: Nature of work, 2nd: Pay, 3rd: Benefits, 4th: Co-workers, 5th: Supervision, 6th: Contingent

rewards and Promotion), but if promotion satisfaction score can be improved, it is also good for general job satisfaction of employees (more detail at supporting information part)

Moreover, contingent rewards satisfaction score is at 2nd lowest level after

Promotion satisfaction Author has conducted in-depth interview with manager-Ms

Tram to confirm that Promotion satisfaction is the symptom that need to explore further and it is necessary for office to find out the solution for low promotion satisfaction Low contingent rewards symptom can be eliminated

Therefore, Symptom “Low promotion satisfaction at employees” is defined

From Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) of Spector (1) (2) (3), Promotion satisfaction is

measured by 4 following sentences (1sentence is in negative meaning, when input data

to analyze, author has already converted the correct score to describe about satisfaction level)

Promotion satisfaction facet

There is really

too little

chance for promotion on

my job

Those who do well on the job stand a fair chance of being promoted

People get ahead as fast here as they

do in other places

I am satisfied with my chances for promotion

Promotion satisfaction

Source: author’s survey result

It is found that long term employees in service industry have less promotion

satisfaction with their job (4) It is similar situation when Melcosa has nearly 50% long term employees, and the survey result also showed that the promotion satisfaction score

is lowest one compared with other aspects

Consequences of Low promotion satisfaction at employees

Author reviewed literatures to have an overview about consequences of low promotion satisfaction to prove that this symptom is necessary to analyze

 There is significant correlation between promotion and job satisfaction (5) Low job satisfaction effects to quit intention lead to high turnover rate And HR has to invest more money for recruitment, also pressure to HR that they has to replace employee as quick as possible to avoid emotional instability at office(6)

 Low level of performance, responsibility, loyalty, and commitment, high

turnover rate, absenteeism (7) (8)

 Low job satisfaction is one of the cause of low customer satisfaction (9) (Melcosa

is a representative office where we do services and make buyer satisfy about our services, it is the most important that employees are happy can make customer happy and always grow the business in win win condition)

 Effect to productivity, creativity at work and organizational success Once

employees feel that they are appreciated, they are willing to extend more efforts (7)

 When baby boomers retire, there will be seriously lack of knowledge and skills

of managerial level It is not only very costly to replace but mainly due to the intellectual capital aspect(6)

 It is found that employees satisfy with their job and their organization, they often speak well about company, it is good for organization’s reputation (9)

CHAPTER 2: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

From Employee Job Satisfaction survey result and some internal data at HR

department, “Low Promotion Satisfaction” is defined as Symptom In order to identify the central problem which leads to low promotion satisfaction, author did not only

conduct in-depth interview with related person at office but also referred the literature reviews to analyze the whole picture of the problems

2.1 Initial Identification of Problem

In-depth interview is used to find out the potential causes lead to “Low promotion satisfaction at employees” Author conducted in-depth interview with 4 persons at Melcosa as following:

 Merchandising Manager: Ms Phan Thi Ngoc Tram, 15 years working at Melcosa She has been in manager position for 13 years and built up successful business and expand team to 7 staffs right now She has committed to work for office until she retired in 10 more years because she is one of the baby boomers at office

from the beginning

 Merchandiser: Mrs Duong Bao Tran, 4 years working at Melcosa She is a staff

of Mrs Tram’s team and take care 1 buyer directly from beginning until now

(buyer is Witt group in Germany, we are on behalf of buyer to handle all vendors

in Vietnam, export successfully garment to Germany)

 Shipping clerk: Ms Dang Anh Thu, 6 years working at Melcosa She is a staff of Shipping team and works directly with Buyer’s Supply Chain Department

 HR admin: Mrs Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, 18 years working at Melcosa She is one

of the baby boomers as General Manager’s assistant position until now and

implement all H-OI new policies or changes to Melcosa office She worked with

HR Hong Kong (Hong Kong is head office of Melcosa, and all the policies,

changes were issued from HongKong and Melcosa has to follow strictly)

After in-depth interview with 4 persons at Melcosa, there are 3 potential

problems that lead to Symptom “Low Promotion Satisfaction”: Flat organization of

Melcosa office, Personal Favouritism from Manager and Ineffective communication between direct manager and employee

Mrs Bich Thuy-HR admin said that one of the reason for low promotion

satisfaction is flat organization, it means office is with horizontal structure and less level

of management, in addition office has a stable managerial position from beginning until now with almost all managers are baby boomers with long term commitment Therefore, internal promotion to managerial position at Melcosa is very limited Moreover, in

conversation with Ms Tram-Merchandising Manager and Mrs Tran-Merchandiser, they are both adopted this issue and they understand the situation Even in case of expand business for old customer or new customer, Melcosa refers to recruit more employees for current manager, they expand in horizontal, not vertical structure

According to Mrs Bao Tran- merchandiser, favoritism from manager is

suggested as cause of low promotion satisfaction, she said that favoritism happened in

“less fair recognition opportunities” like unfair evaluation and rewards because it only base on direct manager feeling, observation and decision themselves and unfair in

recognition opportunities from manager Because of this issue, employees will not be happy On the other hand, Mrs Tram adopted that one of her staff is her brother’s wife, family relation also happened at work, and somehow it is also difficult for her to make punishment for unexpected case This relationship maybe an issue for other team

members when they thought that favouritism is already there and increase their doubt about the fair within team Besides that, currently Mrs Tran feel that the new comer at her team receive new challenging and new responsibility at work while she also wishes

to do and has chance to show up herself, Mrs Tran said “I think the main reason is

about unfair in recognition opportunities from manager, favoritism Somehow I feel that

I deserve to get more promotion opportunities than my colleague, and I should get more challenging work instead of them”

From conversation with Ms Tram, she is unpleasant to confirm that her team members seem not perceive that she already offered a lot of promotion opportunities for her team members such as: salary raise, promote for business trip to Europe, opportunity

to work independently and let them make decision Once she is convinced that her team member has enough competence and qualified for more difficult job, she is willing to offer challenging work and new task to motivate them, and allow them to support one of her task to increase their competency

Meanwhile, Ms Tran is also her team member, she said that with her work, she has to go for business trip twice a year to handle well the job, no one else can support her and she feel very less promotion opportunities, she got salary raise very difficult and she feel that she is not appreciated in team and office while she confirm that she is over

qualification with current job She said that “Sometimes I feel that I am overqualified

with current job, I would like to do more to see maximum competency but it seems my manger did not recognize that, it makes me feel less challenging at work Also somehow

it is not fair in evaluation and reward You know, when you work much and talk less, it also get opposite result when people feel that you are not so nice with them”

On the other hand, there is “mismatch perception about promotion opportunities

at employees and managers” This variable is proved after analyzing comment from Ms Anh Thu-shipping clerk and information from Mrs Bich Thuy about what manager did for Ms Thu From Ms Thu side, she pointed out that she gets no promotion for 2 years and not satisfied about that, no raise and no new responsibility at work She thinks that there is very less chance for promotion at office and does not know about the standard to get promotion opportunities, it seems her manager is not clear as well After checking with Mrs Bich Thuy-HR admin, she has mentioned that recently Ms Thu has a trip to Germany together with her manager to contribute the network and meet customers, this

is also the breakthrough for her career after 6 years working here Moreover, Ms Thu has an priority to go home earlier to arrange for her individual course after work So there is some misunderstanding and communication from manager is not really effective that makes employees did not satisfy with what managers did for them

Both Mrs Tran and Ms Thu also said that they received no clear career path from their managers From that they do not know what is manager’s expectation and how they can grow up at Melcosa office This leads to low promotion satisfaction and the

cause is that employees does not have official communication with their managers to discuss further this important matter

From above depth information found, “Ineffective communication between

direct manager and employee” could be another cause of low promotion satisfaction at employees

Figure 1: Initial cause-effect map

2.2 Problem identification

Potential problems, variables and symptom have been clarified at Initial

cause-effect map In order to prove the actual correlation of variables and update some new variables, author has reviewed many theories After that, author has to define the central problem by using in-depth interview again combine with literature review to eliminate some potential problems Then, Central Problem in term of Existence and Importance is validated

2.2.1 The first potential problem: Flat organization

Flat organization is understood is less managerial layer in organization, it is in horizontal management structure (10)

According to Mrs Bich Thuy, she informed that Melcosa has existed with this

structure for 25 years, and all 20 other H-OI offices in the world with similar flat

organization like this It is adopted that there are a lot of benefits from this structure

such as: more team work, less bureaucracy, better communication, force employee to have better performance, push for individual responsibility (10)

In addition, Mrs Bich Thuy mentioned that with flat organization structure,

employees have chance to make decision themselves and take responsible for their

decision So the fewer managerial layers, a greater number of employees enjoy success

in their career She mentioned“I mean you can see that our office has less opportunity to

promote internal employee Every team has manager who is baby boomer from

beginning until now and structure of organization is stable from the past until now

Even business expansion, manager can recruit more employee to in charge or sharing work in case of overload In my point of view, maybe because there is really no place to move forward, because this is structure of our office already If there is no big change in the future, every thing will run smoothly as before But then employee can work

independence in comfortable environment, flexible hour working time, …and they can

be themselves at work”

It is said that managerial promotion opportunity is one of the factors has a

significant effect to promotion satisfaction and job satisfaction (11) (12) But as in-depth interview with Mrs Bich Thuy, she trusts top management were not afraid of it, she said

“in fact, nearly 50 % of our employee are more than 36 years old and work here more than 7 years I think they are ok with our structure, policies and other benefits Maybe your result shows that they are not satisfied with promotion but they have less choice to other companies For these employees, we do not worry much Just 3 years recently, we have recruited more and more young employees under 30 years old, perhaps we should pay attention on this group”

Melcosa’s other benefits and salary is at good level to employees Survey result also showed quite high satisfaction at Pay and Benefits aspects,…

Pay is at 2nd place of importance of job satisfaction, and Pay has occupied the highest score in 9 aspects: 4.2 It means almost employees are satisfied with their

current pay and they understand that Melcosa could not offer them managerial position

On the other hand, to change the organization structure is not that easy that Melcosa Vietnam can implement, because it is global organization Therefore, Potential problem

“Flat organization” should be eliminated

2.2.2 The second potential problem: Personal favouritism from manager

It is stated that favouritism means managerial people intend to treat one better than others or given unfair advantage to employees From that, they evaluate some

favour employees base on their perception or feeling, not from official performance

evaluation Favouritism makes employee feel that they are not treated fairly to others

lead to low satisfaction (13)

This term “favouritism” has been mentioned by Ms Tram and Mrs Tran, from their perspective, they suggested this maybe a cause lead to low promotion satisfaction, because employee feel unfair in recognition opportunities, and they also get less chance

to handle challenging and new responsibility (14)

After some more in-depth interview with Mrs Tram to explore what is happening related to favouritism, she said that she often base on her experience to observe and

evaluate employees herself for daily working She is not sure if this action can be

called” favouritism” but she is result oriented manager, she drive the team successfully for 15 years therefore she think that she is a fair manager Besides, she feels that there are some employees who are easy to talk and she often asked them for support in

unforeseeable case In contrast, Ms Tran said that somehow she is not treating fairly as others while she did a great job and only did the same task for 4 years but other new comers do have a chance with many new tasks

But author has an evidence to prove that favouritism is not important cause at

Melcosa because from the survey result, Supervision Satisfaction aspect is measured by

4 following sentences, one of them is “My supervisor is unfair to me” Author has

already converted the score to satisfaction, and with score 4.574 is the greatest score within this aspect, it means employee are satisfied with supervisor, especially seems

very less favouritism from managers

Therefore, second potential problem: Personal Favouritism from Manager is also not important cause lead to low promotion satisfaction and should be eliminated as well

Supervision Satisfaction aspect

My supervisor

is quite competent in doing his/her job

My supervisor

is unfair to

me

My supervisor shows too little interest in the feelings of subordinates

I like my supervisor

Supervision Satisfaction aspect

“Ineffective communication between direct manager and employee” is not

nominated directly by interviewee- Ms Tram, Ms Tran and Ms Anh Thu But from Mrs Tram’s point of view she has listed out all promotion opportunities which she tried to offer to her employees as mentioned above but employees seem not recognize that or

they recognize incorrectly, that is why they are not satisfied with current promotion

opportunities

From managerial side, Ms Tram is confident that they did a good job and

understand well how to make employee satisfy in promotion aspect while from

employee’s side, Ms Anh Thu, she complained about communication of her manager

which are not clear and persuasive to her And she did not recognize any promotion

opportunities for 2 years while she has been doing for more work and been in business trip for to Germany, free to leave office earlier for personal purpose

Moreover, Ms Thu received new task or new responsibility via email forwarded from her manager, and very less explanation for the need and the importance role with the new tasks Once she asked for further detail, then her manager try to answer as quick

as possible because she is very busy It is demonstrated that open talk between manager and employees also help to increase employee’s satisfaction (15)

Ms Tram also said that “well, I see that there is less communication frequency

between managers and staffs, from my side, we are so busy with daily work and solve a lot of issues every day, I do not have time to talk directly with my staffs, normally I use email to assign the work, email is the main tool in communication at work I see other managers did the same like me But I have to adopt that this ineffective communication effect to relationship with employees, the trust and increase the gap between manager’s perception and employee’s perception, we are thinking and doing in 2 different ways and of course, the business goals can be reached better if we can solve this”

It is indicated that employee’s perception about fairness also the consequences of the ineffective communication from the manager (16) This is similar situation which

Ms Tran has already mentioned

Therefore, author has studied for this mismatch problem between managerial side

and employees side and problem can be called as “Ineffective communication between

direct manager and employee” Mrs Tram has pointed out that main cause maybe

employee did not recognize that they are in promotion already And information from

Ms Anh Thu, HR admin and author’s primary data from survey result, it showed that they are not satisfied with promotion opportunities but then asking for quit intention, they do not have that intention Almost employees still have long term commitment with office, they decide to stay, not intend to leave because of other aspects: Pay, Benefit, Work, Supervisor is good

Ineffective communication between direct manager and employee lead to no

clear career growth path is clarified to employees Mrs Tran said “I would refer to have

a clearer career growth path when I commited for a long time with Melcosa”

Employee did not understand well the job requirement and in case like Ms Tran, she thought that she is over qualification with her current job, that leads to low satisfaction Moreover, incorrect perception of promotion opportunities also consequences from lack

of information or ineffective communication, and make employees feel that they get less challenging and less new task at work (16) All of these existing variables effect

negatively to promotion satisfaction

Once this central problem has been solved, communication between direct

manager and employee can be improved, employee will have more open talk with

managers to share their expectation, aspiration All information was informed to all

employees in the right way and suitable for every individual, employee can perceive correctly promotion opportunities at office It will improve their satisfaction, limited confusing communication and understanding, increase office’s effectiveness, build up the trust and increase commitment of employee, transparency and reduce favouritism treating

Mrs Bich Thuy has pointed out her idea regarding to central problem “all offices with

horizontal organization, therefore we have less chance to offer managerial promotion

So ineffective communication between managers and employees could be a central

problem because at Melcosa office, even I am HR admin but manager will be the person who communicate with employee regularly and solve all the problem related to work and promotion Their communication is very important, and manager can help to

improve employee satisfaction But I have to adopt that every manager has their own way about leader ship and communication I usually see that they evaluate the

performance very short, without discussing together to understand deeply the problem I

am not sure if employee has chance to talk with their manager about their thinking and expectation”

In conclusion, the first and second potential problems: Flat organization and

Personal Favouritism from manager has been eliminated after author validated

information from interview data and literature review Ineffective communication

between manager and employee is a Central Problem that lead to Low Promotion

Satisfaction which need to be solved

The cause-effect map can be updated as below

Figure 2: Updated cause-effect map

2.3 Problem Definition

Ineffective communication between manager and employee is a Central problem It

is necessary to have comprehensive understanding about this problem by understanding the definition and the measurement of it to double check if communication is

ineffective

2.3.1 Communication definition

Communication is a process which information is transmitted and it is operative management process (17) Communication is a tool to make sure that managers can

create, maintain and manage meaning of decisions to employees Effective

communication will help to avoid mismatch between intended and implemented (18)

It is stated that if communication is ineffective, it leads to confusing and

misunderstanding (19) Therefore, manager should deliver communication to every

individual employee in suitable method, then make employees feel satisfied With

continual change, effective communication plays a huge role for effective process in every organization (20)

clear communication content (22)

 Instead of communication is just the tool for manager to find out the problem and solution, (23) suggested that managers should concentrate on individual

development and the strengths of each to build strong relationships, task

orientation and increase employee’s satisfaction

 Communication frequency is amount or the duration of contact via

communication channels that will be mentioned as following And frequency of communication will effect to employee’s perception and climate of trust in

organization (18)

 Messages’ repetition lead to increase accuratecy of the information and

verification of the content lead to reduce the bias in the message (24) found that managerial communication frequency contributed to employes’s level of

satisfaction And that effective managerial communication practices had many influences on employees including job satisfaction

 Communication channels: there are many communication channels such as: via email, face to face, phone, writing documents and other technological tools

which can be used in organization (25) pointed out that the most effective

channel is face to face interaction because of 2 way dialogue and emotional

engagement and effect best to employees’s satisfaction

 In contrast, managers see that email communication is easy to use, more efficient and less time consuming (26) This communication channel can be called as 1 way communication It is explained that email communication normally with very short and less words lead to limited communication and make employees feel stressful, lead to negative feedback (27)

 Effective communication should be launched by suitable channels (28)

2.4 Justify the existence of “Ineffective communication between direct manager and employee”

Author had to come back for further in-depth interview with HR admin-Ms Bich Thuy and Merchandising Manager- Ms Tram to confirm if this problem is actually exist

at Melcosa

From above measurement, Ms Bich Thuy has pointed out that direct managers are viewed as communicator at Melcosa, they are the person who transmitted all HR

practices, changes or new information to their employees and absolutely their

communication has significant effect to employee’s perception And communication from every manager is different, it depends on their management style She recognized that annual appraisal is usually done without discussing directly between managers and employees, somehow they discussed and agreed themselves very quick via short talk and no meeting to confirm for evaluation Moreover, almost managers are baby-

boomers who have great experience at work but still limit in communication

effectiveness

Mrs Bich Thuy said that, office organized the workshop with attention of HR Chief from HongKong office and all managers once a year, and every manager with differences in personal experiences and idiosyncratic preferences perceive information

in different way, this lead to employees for every team has different perception of a

change or new information (29) (30)

According to ms Tram, she already mentioned that employee maybe did not

recognize what she did for them,( 29) has also explained that employee’s perception were frequently in contrast to managers’ perceptions of their practices with employees

Ms Tram mentioned the reason maybe her communication skills or her competency is not so good that make employee feel unsatisfied or she has limited well comprehension about HR practices or promotion opportunities from work shop, then maybe she could not bring the idea from top manager to all employees In addition, she seldom explain to team members for her decision, she just ask her team member for the confirmation, then proceed immediately without explanation for the need, the benefits and the reasonable

of her decision to employees

Moreover, it seems promotion opportunities has been implemented for a long time, then now employees feel that it is normal, they are not happy anymore because their requirement is becoming higher Promotion opportunities should be faired to

everyone to push for their efforts and they deserve to get officially compliment while it

is seldom happen at office

Less communication frequency between manager and employees, therefore

information flow is not completed and inaccurated That makes employees feel unfair and not well informed about what happen with their colleagues or with themselves (29) MsTram said that her employees are growing up with more experience, they can work independently and would like to separate from management lead to less interaction with manager and the situation passed day by day Moreover, every employee at Melcosa can log in themselves at H-OI website to see what happened in H-OI global offices instead

of asking manager as before

In addition, Tram has advised that she normally used email is the main tool to communication with her team members, just in case she need to clarify something or need explanation from employees, then discuss face to face She knows that discuss

directly is better than email because she can explain better and make sure that

employees understand correctly, but if to increase this communication tool, she has no time And every employee are busy in their daily own work as well

Tram believed that she can drive better communication process with support from

HR and upgrade her communication skills because direct managers at Melcosa usually play an important role to react with employees, issues and perceptions of employees while HR admin were left outside the process Mrs Bich Thuy is just HR admin and

General Manager assistant, her responsibility is taking care about operation at office, official benefits for employees Besides, Tram pointed out that many policies were not consistently applied or interpreted and not well communicated This inconsistency leads

to unfairness and lack of trust

Tram adopted that every managers at office have their own background to

approach different HR base and will bring different information to their team

Therefore, conflicting and confusing happened between employees when

communication between manager and employee is poor Finally, Tram confirmed that ineffective communication between direct manager and employee is the major problem

at Melcosa that lead to low promotion satisfaction at employees

2.5 Justify the importance of “Ineffective managerial communication to employees”

It is proved that “Ineffective communication between direct manager and

employee” is the major problem at Melcosa that lead to low promotion satisfaction at employees It is also reported that managers are still not communicating effectively with their employees, just 10% of managers are effective in communication (31) Supervisors and direct managers should understand the importance of communication effectively to employees because they can influence, build up relationship with employees In

addition, effective communication can reduce the gap between manager’s perception and employee’s perception for what managers did that lead to increase employee’s

satisfaction and commitment with office, especially for young employees in order to increase success of organization

Effective communication is as a required function of leadership Moreover,

effective communication to employees, manager can connect employees to the

organization’s vision and goals and connect employees to each others, improve the

working environment where employees feel they are respected and work in trusting

environment and treat fairly with each other (25)

Middle manager is always important in front line when inform and implement

HR practices and changes from top management to all employees, therefore effective communication can help manager transfer information in suitable way and make sure the information will be understood consistently In contrast, if communicate between manager and employee is ineffective, author would like to analyze the impact in 2

aspects: employees and organization

Employees

 Middle managers are usually is a official connection line between organization,

HR practices and employees, they are the key channels in the two-way

communications and make sure information was moved forward in sufficient way Therefore, if manager can not communicate effectively to employees,

confusing and wrong understanding will happen, lead to lack of trust and low commitment from employees (29)

 Fail in increase employee’s work skills, not improve employees morales or

commitment Negatively to employees’ sense of membership and job satisfaction (29)

 Lack of transparency and perceived unfair distribution of promotion lead to low satisfaction, effect negatively to employee performance and retention (29)

 Little interaction, relationship building, collaboration makes experienced

employees intend to separate from manager more regularly (20)

 Lack of two way communication, listening lead to lack of trust to manager,

organization and the lack of effectiveness of the workplace’s environment

 Quit intention and Turnover rate, if employees are not satisfied with their

promotion opportunities, their job, then young talented employees will leaves office within five years And when long term employees retired or high potential employees decided to leaves, it is very expensive to replace because almost

knowledge and skills will go with them (32) It is about 73% of baby boomers in

managerial position at Melcosa will retire in 10 more years and will widen the gap between talent availability and supply

Supervisor/Manager (merchandising, QA&QC,

accounting, shipping, HR,…)

From 35 years old to 45 years old 3 27%

to employees, it leads to disputes which reduced organization's effectiveness

 Productivity and organizational success (20)

 Lack of interaction listening, speaking effect to workforce productivity,

satisfaction which impacts to the organization negatively (20)

 Reputation of organization- employer of choice: Employee perceived limited information will effect reputation of organization in the recruiting market with untrustworthy information, lead to less potential candidate And words of mouth become ineffective method to introduce high potential employee successfully to organization

2.6 Potential causes

To avoid missing any potential causes lead to central problem: ineffective

communication between direct manager and employee, author had to review theories 5 potential causes have been investigated such as:

 Lack of communication competency from middle manager

 Lack of well comprehension from middle manager about HR policies or

promotion opportunities

 There is missing 2 way discussing between direct managers and employees about

promotion opportunities

 There was no organizational or HRM strategy

 Bad quality of information channels within office

2.6.1 Lack of communication competency from manager

According to (29), if organization has the best HR practices but if direct manager does not have enough communication competency, they can not move forward

information to their employees effectively Moreover, it is questioned that does manager has enough knowledge and ability to communication and transfer the correct idea,

perception from HR department to employees (21) (33)?

Mrs Bich Thuy said that this cause can effect to ineffective communication but she mentioned that “ I see every manager has their own management and drive business growing year by year very successfully, I think their communication competency is not that important right now” And Ms Tram explained that this cause is not important

cause, but maybe the difficulty for her and other managers is lack of well

comprehensive HR policies and promotion opportunities that they can not move forward correct information to motivate their employees

2.6.2 Lack of well comprehension from direct manager about HR policies or promotion opportunities

Ms Tram said that normally she received new changes or new policies via email from HR admin and she seldom study well on it, normally she forward email

immediately to her team member and they can study themselves This actual situation is not that good enough and Tram adopted that almost middle managers at office has

limited comprehensive about HR policies and promotion opportunities Therefore, it is also difficult to explain to team members for better understanding, while office only has

1 HR admin and HR department is at Hong Kong head office and work shop with Chief

HR is organized a half day, once a year Tram wishes she get more often HR training

and workshop about the changes in organization, HR practices, promotion opportunities Then information will be understood and applied consistently (29)

Moreover, Tram mentioned that she was confused because a lot of information available and many update policies and changes for promotion opportunities and

somehow it is not clear enough for her understanding via email announcement or just very short work shop once a year as mentioned above

As organization structure at office, she understand well that she plays an

important role in communication and take care many responsibilities of HR department like recruit, inspire, develop, motivate employees, evaluate performance, create

requirement, build close relationship, build loyalty for employees in order to they are happy to work for a long term to reach business goals, but she needs support from HR since she has limited ability to do all responsibilities in professional way without

understanding well the HR practices, opportunities and the benefits from that

2.6.3 There is missing 2 ways discussing between direct managers and employees about promotion opportunities

After in-depth interview with employees: Ms Thu, Mrs Tran In fact, they do not have a chance to talk about their career expectation, and their development in the future

at office Because, normally, manager evaluate and set up same target as previous year

Mrs Tran has said that “I have been working here for more than 4 years and my

managers have not asked me for my career aspiration here even one time, I really does not have chance to mention or talk about this Even I tried to talk one time and got the increasing salary after that, but then manager are not curious in discussing my further career aspiration”

Ms Thu understand well that there is no upper level to move but she also would

like to grow her career at office somehow and need chance to discuss with her direct manager about the possibility to grow up

Mrs Tram-merchandising manager said that she only can support in increasing salary and create independent environment for her employees to work, there is no

needed further discussion about other promotion opportunities because she understand

that Melcosa office can not offer She is manager and said that if her staff are not

satisfied with that, she has no choice and really can not offer more She already tried her best to protect her employee’s benefits at office

From HR point of view, Mrs Bich Thuy saw that both direct managers and

employees seems not spend time for open talking to understand better the aspiration from employees and possibility support from direct managers, then employees will

satisfy with their career development and know how to get support from direct

managers

2.6.4 There was no organizational or HRM strategy

(18) has mentioned “no organization or HRM strategy” can be a cause of

ineffective managerial communication to employees because of without clear strategy or instruction, it is not that easy to comprehend and implement correctly from beginning From in-depth interview with Ms Tram, it is recognized that office has HRM

strategy it is established from HR head office and every change, it was announced via email or intranet to every offices in the world And Chief HR will travel to offices once

a year for workshop to managers and general employees

Therefore, this cause “There was no organization or HRM strategy” can be

eliminated

2.6.5 Bad quality of information channels within office

It is found that “perceptions of satisfaction in information may be related to the technology used to transmit the information” (21)

After in-depth interview with Ms Tram, she said that at the moment, information flow can be distorted by inappropriate channels because almost managerial position

intend to communicate via email and intranet that information flows was not fully

explained to all employees This is also can be a cause of ineffective managerial

communication to employees

She suggests to using both formal and informal channels to build relationship and network across organization (33) nominated the similar suggestion in order to

information can be communicated in 2 way dialogue more regularly and receive

feedback as soon as possible

2.7 Validation main cause and solution proposal

After analyzing all in-depth interview information from Ms Tram, Mrs Tran, Ms

Thu, Mrs Bich Thuy, author was convinced to confirm “There is missing 2 way

discussing between direct managers and employees about promotion

opportunities” is the main cause lead to ineffective communication between direct

manager and employee that lead to low promotion satisfaction at employees This main cause can be proved as following:

 This main cause is actually happen at Melcosa office

 This main cause is top urgent matter which need to solve immediately to improve the situation, because direct manager is the person who communicate directly with employees for all aspects from work until HR practices It is necessary to realize this cause, take an improved action to avoid all consequences as

mentioned above

 This main cause can be started to solve as soon as possible without spend a lot of time and budget

 It demonstrates the importance of informing, engaging and empowering

managers in order to they can take responsibility as a part of HR team as quick as possible to improve the situation

 According to MsTram, she pointed out that it is very importance of providing workshop more regularly and training, support from HR department so that

manager can be confident to develop their management skills, knowledge in

consistently translating strategy into practices effectively

Figure 3: Final cause-effect map

CHAPTER 3: DESIGN SOLUTION FOR SOLVING PROBLEM

From all previous analysis, main cause “There is missing 2 ways discussing

between direct managers and employees about promotion opportunities” lead to Central problem: Ineffective communication between direct manager and employee that lead to Symptom: Low promotion satisfaction at employees Alternative solutions will be

designed to solve problem at this chapter Author has designed solution base on in-depth interview with Ms Tram, Mrs Tran, theories and personal experience

Figure 4: Solution map

3.1 The first alternative solution: Every direct manager is asked to build their own strategy to improve situation with their own team

Direct manager is the person who understands their team best and has their own way to handle team from the past until now Manager understand the personality and know the situation of every team member, therefore different solution will be followed with every individual team members After in depth interview with merchandising

manager-Ms Tram, she said that maybe she will organize an internal meeting with all

members at her team, then discuss together for the actual situation, then she would like

to collect advice, solution from her team members, what she can do to make her

employees happy about promotion opportunity at work

3.1.1 Benefits

 Both direct managers and employees are free to find the way to solve the

problem together in the suitable way to save time

 Different solution for different individuals which manager is the person to

understand best

 Be proactive in solving the problem

3.1.2 Cost: total cost of this solution is 1,000 USD

 Depend on every team (contingency cost: maybe for lunch break if necessary):

100 USD/team, 7 teams with total 700 USD and 1 big team of QA: 300 USD (Source: Suggestion comes from Manager-Ms Tram)

3.2 The second alternative solution: Build up “My dialog” system and organize workshop for all direct managers, employees

Mrs Bich Thuy- HR admin pointed out that the open discussing between direct managers and employees are very necessary to solve this problem and increase

employees promotion satisfaction at Melcosa

She has been working for Melcosa for 18 years, it is enough time for her to

observe and had to adopt that there is very less official discussing between managers and employees, they ignore the important process to evaluate and build up the right plan

to develop their employees Besides, office also can not find out and track the potential employees for further investment

Let employees raise their voice to show their interest, their expectation,

aspiration, then can find the suitable plan to grow up together with direct managers

Open talking also support employees to look back themselves carefully before asking for any promotion and they need to prepare themselves to qualify for the things they