Obstacles Conifer Corporation Faces, Their Symptoms, and Causes

The Conifer Company
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Introduction
Conifer company limited has been in existence for three decades. The company has been performing quite well over these three decades. The company has over 10000 employees, including those at the top management levels. Notably, six departments help run the business of the company. These include the marketing, export, import, sales, business expansion, finance, accounting, and packaging departments. However, there are great obstacles being faced by the packaging department. Profitability is a key measure of performance in any organization (Lim, & Rokhim, 2021). It is crucially important that the company management understand the features contributing to its low profitability (Alabdullah et al., 2021). This paper discusses some of these obstacles the company faces, the symptoms showcasing that there is something wrong, the causes of these symptoms and the possible remedies that can be instituted to resolve the issue.
Symptoms Indicating That Something is Going Wrong
A decrease in profitability is the most noticeable symptom that indicates something is wrong. The company has been struggling with its profit margins for two consecutive decades and has seen a complete decline. A decline in profitability shows that there needs to be done better by the company. Equally, there have been significant customer complaints, leading to a decrease in customer loyalty and an overall decline in the company’s competitiveness in the industry it serves.
Causes of the Symptoms
Lack of adequate employee motivation is the primary cause of the problems the company is facing. Lowly motivated employees need more time to be ready to work for the company; when they do, they do so with much laxity. Motivation is an important element in productivity. It is something that any organization needs to uphold if it aims at achieving certain important goals. Employees will always work better and harder if they know that there is something for them at the end of it, apart from their normal salaries. A company that has lowly motivated employees will equally suffer from low creativity from the employees. Consequently, low morale causes low productivity and low profitability in the long run.
Secondly, the lack of proper monitoring is another cause of declines in profitability (Shin & Hur, 2020). From the case study, it is clear that the employees were left to operate independently with no supervision. Supervision is an integral element in employee productivity, since there are some members of staff who will have to be keenly monitored for them to execute their duties well. Sadly, every other department had sufficient managers except for the packaging department. This, therefore, meant that processes were not monitored, leading to delays and low productivity and profit levels. Equally, social loafing in the workplace contributes to the department's poor performance. Social loafing leads to decreased motivation, low productivity, and extended periods of work time in an attem...