Contrast roles and norms, specify four reasons why norms are enforced in organizations, and list at least four things managers can do to build trust.
So I will not be moving to Las Vegas or Shepherdsville, Kentucky anytime soon but some people really love working at Zappos knows what it feels like to be a part of a very unique and crazy team. I watched the Zappos Family Home Video, there are some definite norms the workers that participated in the video had in common; like having fun, some dance and sing or decorate their workspace with colorful pictures and some people had streamers hanging off the ceiling (Zappos, 2011). A norm is an attitude, opinion, feeling or action shared by two or more people that guide their behavior (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009 pg. 229). To fit in at Zappos one really has to like being around people because if you would prefer to work someplace that is quiet or conservative this may not be the best place, but if you were willing to be open-minded then I am sure you would become a convert sooner or later.
In the video it was a typical call center environment like I have been in before and although the craziest things we did had to do with food, mostly eating hot warm pie before 10:00 am in-between calls or scooping out ice-cream to celebrate someone’s birthday. Some of the other norms for my call center were working on projects during down time when the phones were slow people would knit, design jewelry or make scarf’s to sell at work, other people did puzzles and some just sat around and gossiped. This was a really fun place to work because we could provide information about Passports and still have fun with our projects because we could not leave our desks we needed something to do while waiting for the next call. We had to account for our time and when we left for lunch or break we would have to let our manager know if we took longer than we were allotted, they had a system called Workforce Management and we had to follow the schedule as much as possible.
Roles are set of behaviors that were expected of each of us at the call center, being polite, giving correct information, and using security standards because we could only speak to someone else if that person gave us permission. We had our phone calls monitored and we had one-on-ones with our managers at least once a month to go over our calls if something really stuck out in the call the managers would let a person know right away if they made a mistake. They funniest thing I heard one of my co-workers say was, “So you cannot afford to pay your child support, but you want to take your girlfriend on a vacation?” We all had a good laugh over it and she did not even realize how it came out, we had very strict rules about child support, we really could not say much but I would always send an email to the agency if someone seemed like they were sincere.
We had to follow the rules because we had a contract with Department of State and if people were really messing up we found about it in our team meetings. Our managers had to enforce the rules in order to meet the needs of Department of State because rules changed often and we needed to express those changes to our customers. We had three different sets of groups that listened to our calls so we really had to be perfect some people got walked out if they did not follow the rules.
The four reasons why norms are enforced are:
Help the group or organizations survive, we needed to be in good standing with Department of State.
Behavioral expectations, we all knew what to do so we could keep our jobs.
Help individuals avoid embarrassing situations, some customers had to call back more than once to get a problem resolved, some of the notes the last person left made me think what are they telling this customers?
Organizational values were important, most people got along with each other and we became a family of sorts and we helped each other through times and enjoyed the good ones. One of the values the company had to enforce was each person who was hired had to go through a strict security clearance, it was important for everyone to get their clearance it was a requirement to work there. If you had bad credit or anything in your history you may need to talk with someone who worked for Department of State, several people who did not pass got walked out after being there for training or a month or two later.
Four things managers can do to build trust are communicate to the staff news, policy changes or anything that is a training issue because if somebody did something incorrect then the action can be corrected. Support the team, we had team meetings at least once a month, we had food and talked about things that were important to us and we had some boisterous people on my team so it was always interesting to see what topics they brought up. Respect, is huge because we want to be liked and thought highly of because people in general want to do a good job and get thanks and praise especially in a big call center. Predictability, knowing that when I came into work what I would be doing felt good, I had an assigned desk next to people I liked, I knew who I could chat with in down time with emails it was just routine and it felt good to work there.
Zappos home video on the link below.
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