Why You Might Not Be Getting Bigger Projects at Your Workplace
Companies are now assigning employees only short tasks with tight deadlines. This shift helps organizations simplify operations and gain better control. While beneficial for immediate adaptation, it limits employee involvement in strategic decisio...
An employee accustomed to long-term assignments is now assigned only short tasks with short deadlines. At first, this change can be attributed to something temporary, but later on, it becomes more and more apparent. Research conducted for the European Management Journal reveals that companies typically tend to decrease the scope of tasks performed by their employees when experiencing some degree of restructuring.
Limiting task scope to short-term deliverables helps the organization simplify its processes and increase control over its output. While such actions help companies adapt to new conditions quickly, they also influence the way work is allocated among employees. Thus, employees are no longer involved in strategic decision-making processes, but only in implementation tasks.
Why do organizations limit role horizon?
In terms of structure, short-term assignments assist firms in handling risk. It is evident from research that firms facing resource scarcity or other pressures tend to focus on assignments that offer instant gratification. According to research accessible on PMC, an increase in bureaucratic tendencies and information intricacies tends to nudge managers towards simplifying task assignment. Short-term assignments are relatively easy to monitor, assess, and adapt than assignments that take time and effort. Nevertheless, this strategy may hint at more substantial changes within the organization. By limiting the horizon of role assignment for employees, their reliance can be mitigated. Though beneficial for organizational efficiency, such actions hinder employee growth and motivation.
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What does this mean for growth and motivation?
The effects of this transition reach far beyond the work process itself. According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, workers who are given challenging and lengthy assignments early in their careers grow significantly more than those who are only given short-term jobs. It should also be noted that task diversity is positively correlated with greater employee satisfaction, according to other research conducted by psychologists in the field of organizational psychology. An employee may come to feel out of touch with the bigger picture of his or her workplace when work is done on a short-term basis. It keeps things running smoothly in the short term, but it closes off potential avenues of progress in the long term.
