Management and Organization

1.
In terms of human resource management, Volvo's new production mode includes the following management elements.
Orientation: Volvo has come up with a new manufacturing system in which teams of five to 12 people assemble cars, with a group of employees responsible for each individual's unique tasks. This allows each employee's work to fit them, rather than the same employee doing highly repetitive tasks repeatedly. Doing so can effectively improve work efficiency and reduce staff turnover (Amin & Akbar, 2013).
Training: Volvo makes it possible for both old and new employees who want to learn new skills to take government-funded courses during the working day and gain valuable professional qualifications. Providing free learning opportunities for employees can not only make employees feel the benefits of the Company but also improve their professional ability (Naqvi & Khan, 2013). At the same time, it also enhances the work efficiency of employees. Okumu, Kiflemariam, and Mang’unyi (2018) conducted a study on the effects of employee training on employee performance, and according to their findings, knowledge transfer has a significant relationship with employee performance. Therefore, training employees significantly improves their performance.
Performance management: Volvo divides its employees into teams of five to 12 people, responsible for assembling the entire car and dividing tasks within them. This allows employees to adjust the content of their work as they wish to be paid in line with their expectations. Volvo has set a financial incentive for each car the team produces each day, and everyone in the team will receive an equal financial incentive. This helps create a positive competitive environment among employees and prevent vicious competition within the Company with transparent compensation. For example, Apple Inc. does not like large teams. Instead, the Company prefers smaller teams to ensure that everyone becomes accountable for their actions (Podolny & Hansen, 2020). And an equal financial reward for each member of the group would align the group with the goal of efficiently producing a given number of cars.
Compensation and benefits: Employees will receive FIKA benefits and can meet daily to have coffee and discuss ideas with colleagues. Every Friday the Company holds a big FIKA party where everyone prepares food. And Volvo will offer older workers the chance to work in specialized senior units. Workers who want to learn new skills can also take free courses during the working day. Such benefits enhance employee satisfaction and job commitment (Darma & Supriyanto, 2017).
Career development: Since each team member will be responsible for vehicle production, more skills will be developed to adapt to smaller, self-managed team tasks. For older employees, who may not be able to learn new skills effectively to adapt to the Company's restructuring, Volvo will provide them with specialized positions rather than letting them leave.
Followings are positive sides.
Improve the efficiency of employees: Team cooperation and FIKA culture can enhance the relationship between employees, improve the tacit understanding among employees, and avoid vicious competition. The team responsible for vehicle production can enable employees to do what they are good at, so as to improve their work enthusiasm. In addition to the task of producing cars, the rest of the team time is used to discuss the production experience of the day and plan the production of the next day. This allows them to learn lessons from their daily work effectively and correct some inefficient patterns of division of labor. According to Lauren McAdams, a career advisor and hiring manager at ResumeCompanion.com, instilling a sense of teamwork among the employees helps create excellent intra-team relations. All these have improved the work efficiency of employees.
Reduce staff turnover: In the past, the assembly of the vehicle was inspected, but now each team is solely responsible for the assembly of the vehicle and no inspection is done. This makes employees feel valued and trusted, and gives them a sense of belonging. And the vehicle assembly improves the richness of the work and can choose the work they are good at according to their characteristics so that the work is more attractive to them.
Reduce workforce loss: Improving employee efficiency, reducing absenteeism, and reorganizing the production line from a single repetition to a team of vehicle assembly, will attract employees' motivation and give them a greater sense of accomplishment. Will improve the quality of cars. Thus, increasing sales revenue. Then enhance the reputation of Volvo enterprise.
Reduce employee stress: Flexible working allows employees to have more flexible working hours and adjust their psychological state more effectively (Atkinson & Hall, 2011).
Reduce cut-throat competition: The salaries of all team members are the same, and the team will strive for the same goal (Gartenberg & Wulf, 2020).
Followings are negative sides.
Downsizing: As employees become more efficient, Volvo may not need the original number of employees and may face layoffs.
Sexual harassment: There can be sexual harassment among employees due to working group relationships and regular FIKA gatherings. In particular, supervisors and team employees are paid differently, and supervisors are linked to employees' performance, which may lead to sexual harassment.
2.
From my perspective, Volvo’s system still works with the threat of the COVID-19. I will use designing motivating jobs theory to explain.
With the job characteristics model, designing a conceptual framework for motivating work can create meaningful work experiences that meet the growth needs of employees. According to the designing motivating jobs theory, the first characteristic is skill variety. Volvo has changed its work structure by splitting employees into small teams to assemble cars. It also allows employees to master a wide variety of skills because vehicle assembly is no longer a highly repetitive and inflexible task. A perfect example of a Company that greatly utilizes skill variety is Amazon Company. The Company engages in intense month-long training before hiring their employees. The training program is fully facilitated by the Company to acquire employees with a wide variety of skills. The significance of their pre-hire training programs is to develop employees’ ability to work as owners from the first day at work.
The second characteristic is task identity. Volvo employees can choose their own work according to their uniqueness, and then a team to complete the assembly work, which reflects the integrity of Volvo's new system. The high integrity of the work can stimulate the internal motivation of the employees, because the whole vehicle assembly work can make the whole team more unified goal, so that the employees have a greater sense of mission and responsibility. And employees can feel inner satisfaction and sense of achiev...