Over the last several years, I have had
many experiences being in RSO’s as well as working in organizations as an
intern. Every organization I have worked in is different in its own respect, whether
it be the organizational structure, the size as well as the companies’ cultures
and sub-cultures.
During the last summer, I interned as an
automated tester at an IT company that provides tech consulting and business
process services. When I joined the automated testing team, the team had a
major backlog on their assignments and therefore my manager was busy with
meetings and overlooking his subordinates, who were also busy with their own
work. Therefore, for the first week, I did not get much work assigned to me and
was often given vague assignments such as learning to use a software through
online tutorials. During my second week, when I would go to my manager and
mentor to check if there were any assignments that I could work on, they would be
unable to assign me tasks since they were not aware of which tasks were already
being worked on by other members of the team. This seemed to indicate that perhaps
my manager was not communicating sufficiently and efficiently enough with his
subordinates on tasks they were working on and deadlines for those tasks.
However, due to the workload, during my
third week, many people were hired as temporary employees (for 3 to 6 months)
and joined our team. As a result, they had to go through practical training for
a week (they had already done on-site training for 1 week prior to joining). Since
the other members part of my team had a lot of work on their hands, they were
not able to communicate with the new employees effectively. This not only led
to confusion about what they need to do to complete their training, but also
made it difficult for the new employees to become familiar with their fellow
team members and vice-versa. After this, there was still a lack of
communication since the new employees were not being given tasks and would
often be sitting idle since they would only be assigned small tasks for the
entire day, and therefore would only work for around 1 to 2 hours despite being
paid for the full day.
This is an example of a transaction cost to
our team as a whole. Since there were several new employees joining our team,
it was initially difficult to get used to the change. The change also meant
that when both groups (new employees and employees who were there prior)
struggled to work together since there was a lack of familiarity about what task
should be assigned to who – based on their skill set and personalities. Another
transaction cost of this situation is also to the business, since employees
were being paid despite the organization not getting any return from them.
However, since this is a huge company with annual revenues in the billions,
this is a fairly insignificant cost, although on the larger scale it shows that
there may be inefficiency and lack of communication in other parts of the
organization. Also, after the first week of the new employees joining, despite
the initial transaction cost, our team begun working more efficiently and
became significantly more productive.
A transaction cost for me was when I was not able
to communicate often with other members of my team because they were busy, and
I did not have work assigned to me during my first two weeks. Regardless of the
work me and my fellow interns were doing, this was barely a transaction cost to
the organization since I was doing an unpaid internship, but it was nonetheless
a transaction cost.
Hello. It was interesting to learn about your work experience during the last summer! When we discussed about the transaction cost in the class, I believe that the transaction cost is incurred when the transaction didn't go well and try to make it more successful. You claimed that there were some transaction costs when more of new employees had joined your team. However, the outcome of that action didn't make the situation better which means it shouldn't be considered as transaction cost. Also, you mentioned that due to the lack of communication, the productivity of your team was poor in the beginning. I agree with you that communication is one of the most important factors in working environment to increase the productivity and efficiency. How did it become better later? Did you get to know co-workers better later? Were there any transaction costs to do so? Would you apply for full time employee upon your graduation in the company that you interned in the summer? What would be the reasons for that?
ReplyDeleteCommunication and coordination are indeed transaction costs. In the example you gave, it sounded as if those costs were not being incurred, so instead there were new staff and interns who either were idle or didn't fit in well with the rest of the organization.
ReplyDeleteIn your post I would like for you to have framed this a bit different, from the perspective of your manager's boss. From that perspective was the manager not doing a good job? Or was the workload so much that he actually was doing the best he could under the circumstances?
I also would have liked you to better explain what an automated tester does. Part of the reason for that is to give me a better picture of what the company does. But another part is to address the earlier issue. Would a more detailed tasking of the work you and the other new hires should be doing take a lot of time or not? I'm not in a position to answer that question. Maybe you can.
In your example it seems like your department needed the massive reorganization, as the original workers could not keep on top of all the work they were doing.Perhaps you could talk about how work was going after the few week period of uncertainty, to see if the costs of training were worth it for those temporary employees.
ReplyDeleteFinally, it could be interesting analyzing the cost of your underutilization to the company. As an unpaid intern they might not care about your time usage as much as another employee, but you still have the same output capability as the paid ones since you both had the same training time.