Employees’ philosophies and ethical standards affect the decisions they make in the workplace, the pace at which they acquire new competencies, and the extent to which they enjoy their work. Therefore, it is critical to cultivating the atmosphere in which staff members feel fulfilled and are eager to build commitment and loyalty toward their organizations. Values affect people’s attitudes and how they approach work-related issues. The effects that personal values produce on one’s ability to deliver the required results and maintain the performance of the needed quality are not necessarily positive. Quite the contrary, in some cases, personal beliefs and attitudes may hinder one’s development of the necessary skills. Thus, a manager must assist employees in accepting the corporate values to shape their attitudes and develop the ability to learn while being satisfied with the changes they experience. For this reason, the effects of personal values on workplace behaviors, learning, and job satisfaction have to be scrutinized.
Concrete Experience and Reflective Observation
My experience at Bridgestone Aiken plant (BAP) has proven that values and attitudes directly impact how staff members’ workplace behavior, learning process, and job satisfaction rates change. For instance, in the Mixing Department, employees have been displaying a rise in corporate loyalty rates after being provided with the opportunity to acquire new competencies and gain new skills by enrolling in online courses. Once the staff members realized that BAP was ready to invest in their professional growth, the relationships between the company and its employees improved, and the staff’s willingness to contribute to the firm’s economic growth increased exponentially.
In addition, the team members of the Mixing Department have been showing a propensity toward learning. After having been encouraged to develop several important skills to improve the quality of the produced tires and reduce the cases of errors, the Mixing Department team has shown the willingness to learn. Therefore, the experience in question proves that once a company shows that it values its staff and is ready to invest in their development, employees are more eager to learn. The lack of support, in turn, invalidates the staff’s desire to grow professionally and inhibits their progress as professionals. Similarly, based on the current behaviors of staff members at BAP, there is a direct correlation between the promotion of employee-oriented values within the corporate setting and the levels of job satisfaction among the target population.
Theories and Principles/Abstract Conceptualization
To explore the connection between the values that employees uphold and their behavior and their attitudes toward their job, and their propensity to learn, one may need to bring up the TFT again. The TFT framework provides insight into the nature of employees’ behavior, connecting it to the values they hold and the extent of job satisfaction they experience. Allowing one to classify the factors that affect employees’ satisfaction rates, the theory suggests that one can shape employees’ willingness to evolve professionally and increase the efficacy of their workplace performance by acknowledging the validity of staff members’ values and attitudes.
Testing and Application/Active Experimentation
The integration of the TFT principles into the BAP setting has proven that there is a direct link between the values that employees uphold and the extent of their performance and job satisfaction. The situation at BAP indicates that by shaping the workplace setting and adjusting it to meet the values that employees view as intrinsic to their identity, a manager will be able to increase performance rates significantly. The observed phenomenon coincides with the conclusions made by Matsuki and Nakamura (2019) in their recent study:
Companies can match human resources to workplace needs by recognizing employees’ work. It is also necessary to convey companies’ philosophies to the employees. If they can work in a workplace that offers a good fit for their values, many nonregular employees will not leave. This is more powerful than support from extrinsic factors. (p. 9)
However, the specified outcome questions whether the adoption of the selected strategies may have a detrimental effect on the promotion of the relevant workplace values. Furthermore, in case the principles that are critical for maintaining employee satisfaction rates high are in conflict with the corporate philosophy, a manager will face a difficult dilemma. Therefore, it is desirable to maintain the balance between the corporate standards and values and the personal philosophy of staff members, facilitating change in case the two are incompatible.
The significance of fostering the required values and philosophies in employees rises once a manager considers the significance of learning as a crucial constituent of workplace performance. Unless staff members learn from their experiences in the BAP setting, the progress of the company may be halted. The principle of continuous improvement, which aligns with the philosophies of Kaizen and Six Sigma adopted at BAP, has to be supported with the concept of lifelong learning; otherwise, the integration of incremental innovations in the corporate environment will become impossible (Kaliannan & Adjovu, 2015). Thus, as a manager, one will have to explore opportunities for professional learning by shaping the organizational values toward an employee-oriented philosophy and using talent management to encourage professional growth. One will build the platform for improvements in the Mixing Department at BAP. Simultaneously, the job satisfaction rates are expected to grow within the specified team due to the professional fulfillment and the wide range of opportunities for professional self-actualization.
References
Kaliannan, M., & Adjovu, S. N. (2015). Effective employee engagement and organizational success: A case study. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 172, 161-168.
Matsuki, T., & Nakamura, J. (2019). Effect of employees’ values on employee satisfaction in Japanese retail and service industries. Advances in Human-Computer Interaction, 1(1), pp. 1-9.