Triangle model

In the following blog post I would like to write about the triangle model. This describes when two principals don’t see eye to eye on what counts on good performance by the agent. 

I could recognize this situation at my work in an insurance company. At the one hand, we had the manager. He was located in a different building and my team leader only had meetings with him every month because he was very busy. On the other side of the triangle model was the works council. All of these mentioned parties have different interests, and sometimes this can result in problems. These three parties try to meet as much as they can and discussed the topics of the company. 

For the manager, it is most important that the returns are high and that the company is constantly growing. Moreover, for the manager it is necessary that the company works on every contract very fast, thus employees have a deadline to finish a contract of a client within three working days. Otherwise it has a negative impact on the company. 

On the other hand, our team leader has a salary depending on the team’s success. When their team’s results are good, our team leader gets a bonus. This was one of the most important parts for her because it influences her salary. Moreover, she wanted to present good results to the manager and wanted to have a good team. 

The third part is the work council. Their focus is that the employees are treated well and that the rules of the working law are implemented in the department. They check, for example, if the employees take a 10 minute break every hour. This is one of the defined goals in the insurance contract because people are working the whole day on the computer, and this was necessary so that they keep healthy eyes. Moreover, they were responsible for the employees working conditions like, for example, that in the office, the right lighting is used and the heating and the air conditioner works well. Moreover, it is possible to visit the work council every time to talk with them in private about problems at work. Afterwards, they mention the current topics in the next meeting with the manager.

In this company, the biggest problem was that a lot of employees gave notice because they were not satisfied with the working conditions. They felt very stressed and they had the feeling that the team leader didn’t see their effort. But the manager just cared about the returns and the results were not as good as before. The team leader gave the pressure she got from the manager to the employees. She didn’t really know how to handle the situation and the worker’s council complained about the working conditions in the company.

I think there are a lot of ways to resolve this situation. One option is, as they do it already, to sit on a table and discuss the situation for a long time to get a good result for everybody. But it can also happen that it is not possible to get satisfactory outcome for all parties and for example the manager cuts the budget and the other parties have difficulties to realize their projects. 

In conclusion, I think that in a good working environment, there needs to be a lot of communication between these parties that all are satisfied. I think it is not always possible because of the budget or in some companies the worker’s council is that small that they don’t have a lot of influence in the meetings. In the company where I worked, luckily, they had a big influence and achieved very good results for the employees. I think the company needs not only monthly meetings but also daily communication that the employees have a good working environment and all parties are satisfied. 

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanNovember 22, 2019

    Sounds like the U of I a little bit. Each units sees what it is directly responsible for and doesn't necessarily care about the consequences elsewhere in the organization. So, one question for you.

    Were there other teams parallel to your and structured similarly, so also with a team leader who interacted (once in a while) with the manager and other times with the works council? The reason for asking this question is if there were such other teams, then they might be compared for performance. Were some teams quicker at completing the contract? Were some teams better at giving employees breaks? Were the some teams that did well on a variety of measures and other teams less well?

    If there was a lot of turnover at the company, as you said, then you might want to talk about how long it takes for new people to get up to speed and then if more experience people, not yet burned out, are more productive than the new people are. If so, it might be seen that the manager is focused on the near term while the works council is more interested in retaining experienced employees, a long term goal. That tension can put a lot of tension on the team leader. So this is a good example of the triangle problem.

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  2. Julia Kaltenböck Econ 490 Fall 2019December 10, 2019

    Yes, we had a similar department which was structured the same. My team leader had also the meetings together with their team leader.

    In our team the motivation was not that high and our team leader has to explain why we were not as good as the other team. I think it was because of the high turnover.

    No all teams had to do a 10 minute break every hour and the worker and the worker council checked if the employees are doing the breaks.

    The other team had more contact with costumers because of their work but it general we did something completely different so it is difficult to compare.

    I think it takes a lot of time for the new employees at the same level and it takes also a lot of time for the old employees because they have to introduce the new employees to the work topics.

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