Handy's Shamrock Organization
Advantages and Limitations
- The core workers must be well paid and remunerated.
- They are likely to also enjoy some degree of job security, be well motivated and highly productive.
- The insourced workers will suffer from a lack of job security thereby negatively affecting their levels of morale.
- However, they present flexibility for an organization and are easier to 'hire and fire'.
Insourced Workers (The Third leaf)
- This group of workers are what Handy called the contingent workforce, consisting of temporary workers who are employed as and when they are required.
- They tend to be paid by the hour or day for short periods of employment, so this helps to reduce labor costs for the firm.
- The group of workers forms the flexible workforce for an organization and constitutes a greater proportion of the workforce for large companies.
Core Staff (The first leaf)
Outsourced Workers (The Second leaf)
- This group consists of individuals that are not employed by the organization but are paid to complete particular and specialized tasks, such as advertising and computing.
- Freelance workers, subcontractors, agencies and the self-employed are examples of outsourced workers.
- They are hired by an organization for their skills and paid by results.
- This consists of full-time professional workers who handle the daily operations of the business.
- The group is a core of qualified professional technicians and managers.
- They are crucial to the organization's operations, survival, and growth.
- They are rewarded with high salaries and associated benefits.
- Charles Handy believes that people are the most important resource within any organization.
- Handy recommended that business ought to place greater emphasis on meeting the needs of workers.
- Handy also emphasized the dynamic nature of change within organizations and the external business environment.
- He came up with the concept of the shamrock organization.
- The model gets its name from a shamrock plant (a three-leafed clover)
- Handy argued that within a shamrock organization there should be three groups of core staff.