Influence of Informal Groups on Productivity: A Case Study on Philadelphia Pharmaceuticals Company

In the contemporary context of human resource management, workplace performance is seen to have a greater impact on the productivity and sustainability of employees. Accordingly, one of the areas that have been noted to affect the workplace performance is inter-professional collaboration among the workers within companies. While much attention is given to the formal groups that affect the very context of productivity among the workers, little is known on the influence of the informal groups on workplace performance. This descriptive case study unveils some of the critical impact that engagement of workers in informal groups on their productivity. Instinctively, the analysis investigates 48 workers from Philadelphia Pharmaceuticals and uses both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect the data. The results shows that out of the 48 participants investigated, 54.17% of them agrees that the informal groups enhances communication among the members while 27% noted that they find it easy to express their grievances in the informal setting. The results also confirmed that informal groups have no rules (52.08%) hence high sense of autonomy is expected in an informal setting. Lastly, approximately 61.42% of the participants agreed to the fact that informal groups have a positive effect on the productivity of the members of staff with keen attention creating a high level of motivation among them. Those who did not support this fact noted that joining these informal groups could lead to strikes that might impede the proper functionality of the organizational structure hence would reduce productivity. It is recommended from this analysis that companies should encourage the workers' involvement in informal groups.