Outsourcing is a concept that has become a reality for most huge companies in the world. This is because it allows the company to focus on the core business instead of bombarding workers with duties that will reduce their efficiency and productivity at work. This, in turn, ensures that the company is able to remain competitive and relevant within the industry it is doing business in. The ‘Magic Button’, at the Pfizer company is one that has helped increase the efficiency and motivation amongst the employee of the company. The ‘Magic Button’, also known as the Office of the Future has been put in place within the departments of this pharmaceutical company to help in increasing the productivity of the worker within the various levels of the company. This has helped the company in concentrating on the tasks that require more keenness and accountability to ensure that the employees do not waste time on jobs that would just drain their productivity and consume time that would have been used doing another crucial activity. The fact that jobs within any department get boring and monotonous is enough reason for the invention of the ‘Magic Button’. This helps the employees outsource another person in a specific company to do their assignments and tasks for them.
Pfizer Company, through their outsourcing model Pfizer Works, has allowed their employees to be more productive and this has saved them from the brink of making losses that may be attributed to overworking their employees. After conducting an analysis on why the workers at the company were not as productive as they were expected to be, the company’s director of organizational effectiveness discovered some loopholes in the work structure. Such loopholes include employees being engaged in work that they lacked interest in for the better part of their days. This, in turn, caused, the employees to lack fulfilment in their job and this leads to low productivity. The company, therefore, allowed its employees to outsource services from an Indian Firm to reduce their work load and maximize the amount of work that they do within a day. Pfizer Works also allows the company to put in more hours in useful work at lower level and high levels of the management. The workers at the high-level management were also able engage in innovative tasks that pushed the organization ahead.
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Good organizational structures and designs are important since they help improve communication within the organization. They are important since they are critical in inspiring productivity and innovation. Work specialization is an element of organizational designs that enables employees to focus on what they do best instead of involving themselves in activities that consume valuable time they could have used doing other things at their workplace. Departmentalization, is also an element of the design that has helped the organization identify the departments which need more outsourcing than others. This helps the management in identifying the areas which require more man power from within the company and that is how energy can be channeled in that direction to improve productivity. For an organizational structure to be effective, authority and responsibility are paramount. This ensures that the employees are able to own up for their actions and ask for help where necessary and it saves up on time and creates time to engage in activities that are relevant to the organization’s work. The span of control within the organization is also an important aspect in the organizational design that any company should have. However, Pfizer Company has not been able to master this aspect. This is because, before the research, it was only thought that it is only the subordinate staff who were prone to feeling the monotony of work thus causing them to become ineffective. After the research, it was proven that even the top level managing directors had an issue with their presentations and were instead good at innovations and strategy. When it comes to the centralization and the decentralization of the organization’s activities, the decision lies with the management. Pfizer, as a company, through the Magic Button have decentralized their activities by allowing some of their departmental work to be done through outsourcing. This, however, is not a healthy practice since company secrets, such as those kept in PowerPoint presentation in form of strategy may fall in the hands of the wrong people. The Magic Button, to some extent, reduces the confidentiality of information within the organization.
The ‘Magic Button’ arrangement being used by the Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company can work in other organizations. This is because the current global trends in business are now directed towards outsourcing. This is because companies are focusing on doing the tasks that they consider urgent and important for the company as opposed to the past where they would dwell on focusing on activities that were important but not productive. If other organizations can adapt the structure of the ‘Magic Button’ and embrace outsourcing, their level of innovation, as well as the competitiveness would increase thus increasing their output as well as revenue. Adapting this kind of structure will ensure that the company does not focus on duties does it does not wish to perform. This will reduce the chances of work being done in a substandard manner. Outsourcing, however, can create a sense of insecurity among employees in a department since they may feel that those contracted to do their work are putting in better work than they are. This may affect the organizational culture in a negative way since some workers may feel that their jobs are at a risk due to the introduction of outsourcing.
On account of the above points, it would suffice to conclude that the ‘Magic Button’ has played a crucial role in the organizational culture and design of Pfizer. This is because it has helped their workers become more focused on what they are good at and have an interest in as opposed to forcing themselves to keep handling monotonous work. When adopted in other organizations, it can save organizations time and the effort used to do some tedious jobs can be invented in ways that can boost the productivity of the organization.
References
Allameh, S., Ansari, R., & Rezaei, A. (2018). Effect of organisational culture and organisational learning on organisational innovation: an empirical investigation. International Journal Of Productivity And Quality Management , 23 (3), 307. doi: 10.1504/ijpqm.2018.10010594
Mitchell, I., & James, P. (2017). Outsourcing transitions and the employment relationship implications. Human Resource Management Journal , 27 (4), 614-629. doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12146
pfizerWorks: New Outsourcing Model to Improve Employee Productivity. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.thecasecentre.org/educators/products/view&&id=91502
