Managerial positions and the roles of managers

¶ … Managerial Position

Managers and Their Roles: An Essay

Management is an art of coordinating the main activities of any organization, enterprise, company (Merriam-Webster). It is considered as one of the most demanding vocations of the existing era. In the olden times, there was not much competition since the population was very less and there were abundant resources. Hence, people used to work honestly and hard. The main reason behind their honesty and efforts was that in that time period, there were not many options and if one got fired from their place of employment, chances of getting another job real were next to nothing and a responsible individual wouldn't do anything like that to risk his or her livelihood and the survival of one's family. So the supervisors or managers didn't work hard to plan and streamline the workforce. Times have changed and the competition has grown increasingly stronger; today, every single worker is a resource and skilled workers are considered even more valuable since more options are available and organizations want them to hang on to their jobs and hence, be used to achieve operational excellence and efficiency. Here the role of a manager comes in and hence, a need is created. Following paragraphs will highlight the experiences and duties of Mr. Michele Marin, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Arena Group (Arena Group EN).

Mr. Marin is currently holding his position as the CFO; he is a top-level executive manager who shoulders the burden of supervising the commercial activities of the entire firm. This comprises of basics like signing checks to analyzing the future and past cash flows as well as financial strategy formulation (Investopedia -- Chief Financial Officer). He considers it to be more demanding than the jobs of recruiters or other executive officers. He speaks from experience as he has also held positions in the recruitment division. Mr. Marin carries an assortment of responsibilities on his shoulders -- motivating the workforce, bridging the gap between the different departments and leading his organization into the unknown. His considered recruitment as key to any type of organization; he claimed that that if a manager hired an employee that quit in a short span of time, the company would be operating at a great loss because when he resigns, the whole process of recruitment has to be started again and the time and money utilized in training that employee is a huge cost to the organization; this is technically referred to as employee turnover (Dictionary.com). So these things do have a high cost and if common sense dictates that if the expenses of an organization keep on rising, then the managers are held responsible and are accountable to the stakeholders and investors. In order to avoid these pitfalls, managers have to be extremely vigilant during hiring. He further added that managers normally make these mistakes and they are acceptable but usually in the bottom rungs of the corporate hierarchy since there is a lesser cost associated with them.

The other challenging task he mentioned was to motivate and supervise the workers working directly under him. Mr. Marin mentioned that he is accountable for the monthly performance and if something is wrong then he is held liable for that the work his subordinates carry out. He also stated that one can never completely understand what is going on in someone else's mind and so a manager finds it very difficult to motivate them to work honestly and effectively each and every time. As mentioned earlier, Mr. Marin is spearheading the company and all its resources and considers the financial part as an essential process to any organization with the room for error being very little. He claims that sometimes he is personally pushed to solve the issues of his employees in order to make help them operate at maximum efficiency. Mr. Marin understands the fact that these don't exactly lie under his responsibilities but this is beneficial or the company as a whole and certain sacrifices have to be made.

Capital budgeting is something that tells how a company will use its resources and how much it will borrow from external sources (Investopedia -- Capital Budgeting). This function is performed by Mr. Marin; he claims that one wrong decision of can run the company financially into the ground and put the jobs of hundreds of employees in peril.

He believes that the boss-employee relationship is as important as it is sensitive since no one can operate a business without a team of good employees. He classified workers into the average and excellent category; average work is provided by a simple and honest employee who feels content without any drive or ambition. Outstanding work is provided by someone in with a deep association with the company and a person who is willing to indulge in self-sacrifice.

To bring this aspect out of his employees, Mr. Marin creates an environment of competition within the office and encourages healthy, trust building activities. He announces a bonus for the least absent worker and he also gives recommendations to top management for those employees who he thinks are working extra hard.