Facilitate Continuous Improvement Essay

estimate Activity 11. You work for an ecesis that does not actively survive its employees to participate in decision-making out incrementes, and to assume obligation and exercise initiative as appropriate. What would you say to convince the formations management that they should actively encourage employees to assume responsibility and initiative? Write a duplicate of what you would say.Although not encouraged, novelly I decided to let our ICT Support Specialist head up the cuckold out of our vernal Antivirus solution. I presented him with the inter give and advised that he will be managing it and will direct to source the resources required and excessively the do. The solo in earnation I provided was a dead shadoweral of 4 weeks to complete the chore/rolloutFirstly the feedback I got from the Support Specialist was incredibly positive. He was excited to run his own project and make his own decisions on how to complete it. It brought out a different side to an emplo yee whom nightimes finds it spartan to stay motivated. The project is in its final stages now and has ran real smoothly and is well ahead of memorial.I retrieve encouraging employees to make their own decisions does boost initiative and this is iodine example of how extra responsibility and the opportunity for a non-management employee to work autonomously brings in very positive results.This is something I would like to encourage to my department more often as I believe I push aside get excellent outcomes on upcoming projects.2. Do you consider chemical group decision-making to be a valuable tool that will assistance in encouraging employees to participate in decision-making processes, and to assume responsibility and exercise initiative? Explain.I strongly believe some(prenominal) decision making process privileges that one washstand grant to employees can be very beneficial as advanced in a higher place in the example. This awards trust in employees, and I believe giving employees extra responsibilities can cast off a very positive effect. In a group decision making environment, this as well promotes team up work. Having a department making decisions together is a heavy(p) musical mode to encourage this.Assessment Activity 21. Your administration has neuterd the route it accepts payments from guests/clients to make the process easier for clients/customers. What would you do to check that the organisations around-the-clock repairment processes atomic sum up 18 communicated to all stakeholders?I believe this is something the whole organisation should be alive(predicate) of, this way any client facing employees can better explain this to customers/clients in the exit questions or queries are raised.Stakeholders would include clients/customers so I believe a communication in the form of a letter/ netmail should be sent out to all the client base explaining how the new payment process works and how it will benefit them. The more or less important part is to promote it as a positive substitute for the client/customers.Assessment Activity 31. Define sustainability and outline why organisations should develop workplace sustainability policies. Sustainability in a business sense is the management the r severally the organisation has in its environment. The impact can c everywhere field of forces that not only include the environment but also the rung, client base and even the finances of the organisation.Developing Sustainability policies is very important in a build of ways. It can be promoted by the organisation that they follow this policy in order to achieve a low-toneder carbon footprint, however at the same time this could be preservation the organisation money. For example, the organisation decides to implement double sided belief, now this is reduction paper usage which is fantastic to the environment, however it is also reducing the amount of paper the organisation is purchasing, therefor red ucing expenditure.2. Research environmental management issues for the workplace and state why these issues should be taken into consideration when planning and managing an organisations operations. The main issue as with most organisations is their impact to the environment and their footprint. This can effect a number of areas within the organisation, including reputation to their clients/customers, widely distributed publics views/opinions, employees and even the companies finances. In an office environment such(prenominal) as Status Industries. The main concerns are apply of paper and printing crops, lighting usage and power consumption. These can all be resumeressed. See fit board on next page how Status Industries has engaged these issues with policies.Environmental IssueImpactResolution responseOver Usage of Paper in printingEnvironment, woo of Paper, Paper WastageDouble Sided Printing hale on all Xerox devices within organisationDramatic reduction in paper usage. Cost of paper saved.Colour Printing Usage in officeHigh usage of colour toners where not carryed, cost impact as colour prints more expensive than black and w accomplishe. Force default mordant and White printing. Requiring staff to deliver to select colour printing if they require it. All Staff email sent explaining cost of colour printing over black and white Black and White printing increased. Less colour toner usage. Cost savings.LightingLighting currently on 24 hours a sidereal day. pricy power bills and waste of electrical energy Timers installed on lights to discombobulate off at 8pm every night and to be off over weekend periods Dramatic cost saving and less usage of power. Cost saving on replacing globes.Electricity WastingComputers and monitors switched on 24/7, wasted electricity usage, expensive electricity bills Email sent out by management detailing a new policy to switch off PCs at night when finished. Exclusions from this are staff whom like Reduction in power. Rep utation from general public boosted as windows are on main road and public can see Monitors are left on at night time.Assessment Activity 6You break been asked to develop strategies to ensure that frames and processes are apply to monitor operational progress and to identify ways in which planning and operations could be improved. In particular, your organisation wants you to determine whether processes currently carried out by employees are as efficient as possible. How would you go some doing this? Firstly you could perform an audit of the current processes. tolerates aspect at a new employee process and how this is setup from at an IT viewpoint.The current process belowNow there have been several flaws in this process. Mainly the communication breakdown with mankind Resource and IT which has resulted in accounts not been created in time. There are ways to alter the current process and instil new procedures to ensure the process is more successful. The proposed changes are below A time commit of at least 10 days for Human Resource to allow for the completion of ITs account creation and asset allocation (PC/Laptop, Mobile Phone) Accountability to one staff member in Human Resources to communicate with an IT staff member regarding any change to the process and vice versa. A written and ISO approved document on the procedure. This is from the beginning stages with HR to the finishing touches on the IT stages. This is to be given to all staff members in some(prenominal) departments and signed by each staff member. So it is on record as being silent by each employee in case further execution/education/disciplinary discussion is required.Assessment Activity 7You have determined that adjustments should be made in your work team. Changes accept to be made to the way customer complaints are recorded and dealt with. How would you go about communicating the need for change to strategies to relevant stakeholders? Relevant stakeholders internally are first a nd foremost the executive team, they are the ones that make the organisational impact decisions. Changing the way customer complaints are dealt with is something they will need to provide input for. Once they have approved the said solution this should be communicated in several forms to the customer base. This can be make by posting letters, emails and on the main page of a website. In the planning stages communicating one-third different alternative solutions to Executive wariness would be a erect first step. Explaining and selling the reasons why this should be changed.The main goal in mind for making a change that effects customers, is to ensure it is a better solution A good example of this is a large organisation such as Telstra. They have a reputation for having less than satisfactory customer service via phone. Customers have complained about being transferred multiple times and not getting a solution. Telstra has made large steps to improve customer service and have int roduced a Chat service. This is ideal for people who have a desk art and dont have the time to be on a phone. You speak to one deterrent example and can explain information a lot easier. This is a very positive step that opposite organisations in the industry have followed. Selling the vision to relevant stakeholders, explaining how it will benefit the customer base. retentiveness please customers not only retains a base, it can increase reputation and perhaps even allow for expansion of customer base.Assessment Activity 92. Give examples of aids/tools that can be apply to document the data from a checklist Several graphs and tables can aid the recording of this data and also to brood on the data collected. Such Graphs that could be used in this instance are Pie Graph to show the amount of a real defect on a certain shift to compare where most of the errors are occurring Line Graph to show where the peak period of errors occurHistograms to show similar to the aboveExample of a Pie Graph for the above table3. Why do graphs and charts provide a good representation of data? Graphs and charts provide a graphical view of the overall picture. As shown above in the Table of Data and also the Pie Graph. Straight away by smell at the Pie Graph you can see the trend. When analysing data Graphs are the best way to do this instead of tables. It can be a quick reference guide compared to sifting through a large amount of numbers. On the open of trends. Line Graphs can show this better than most methods in some cases where using a line graph is applicable. For example. To see how some(prenominal) defects over a 24 hour period took place in a factory environment. Here you can see where defects dipped and were at a minimum and also peaked and showed a maximum. From this data you can easily see where pain points are in a situation and then provide a possible resolution.Assessment Tool 21. How can an organisations free burning feeler processes be communicated to all stakeholders and how can individuals and teams be encouraged and supported to embrace it? Communicating change in any organisation is important. Stakeholders in certain situations depending on the scale of change could include some every employee. Best practice is to have a seminar or training session to highlight the need for certain changes or consecutive improvement.For example if the organisation wants to be ISO ac trusted in a certain area, then it becomes vital for all employees to looseness a part. Explaining the positives the improvement will entail will sure enough sell the vision.2. Having made a decision about what to do to improve an organisations processes, what should you do to plan for the execution of that change? A Project Plan is always a good imbibe. This can outline the schedule and resources required, identify the tasks and objectives associated. Communication again is very important with any change, to ensure all of the organisation (if applicable) is aw are of the change. The chance on thing to remember is, people dont like change if they havent been advised.3. Explain the difference between Feedback and feed forward control. Feed-Forward Control is a measure that regulates inputs. This can be resources such as human resource, financial and material. This is a proactive measure to allow management to foil issues instead of having to resolve them later. This is known to be a time consuming exercise,4. What processes might be used to ensure that team members are informed of outcomes of continuous improvement efforts? Why is this necessary and how will this tot toward further improvements?Reports can be sent to team members on a set time frame (monthly, quarterly) this could include data and graphs/tables. Graphs are a grand way to visually see trends and also to think whether there has been improvement ina certain area. It also determines where there are possible issues. It allows the team to strategize where and how they can im prove.5. What is continuous improvement?Continuous improvement is an infinite process to improve a service, product or process. Depending on the type of industry the organisation is in will determine what areas of will use this type of method. lets look at an IT department, who has an inbuilt database every employee uses for the day to day tasks. A prototype has been created of this software, and it is in production. thus far there will always be room for improvement for any software, so constant updating is done on the software, the applications team within the IT Department work each day on add-ons or improvements. What started out as version 1.00 has now turned into 2.34 in the post of 3 years.6. What can you do to support improvements now and in the future? Improvement in an organisation comes with ideas from the team. This can be suggestions raised in meetings, feedback and communication. The only way to improve processes, products or services is to communicate with departme nts and key members of staff.Having evidence in front of employees such as graphs is a great way to visually demonstrate where improvement is needed in certain areas. Concentrating on weak points in the organisation is the key to improvement.Assessment Tool 3 ProjectContinuous improvement is common in most organisations in some degree. This is an exercise that can cover a number of areas. Usually the three areas are as followsProcessProductsServiceProcess in the context of continuous improvement can look at ways to improve the said process. Lets look at the example of a decisive process in a majority of organisations. A login is required for every employee who starts with the caller-out. This is for them to login to their desktop and perform dayto day functions. The process is as follows.The problem is with this process is communication is relied upon. There is no official area where data can be obtained. IT need to wait for HR to provide information, then HR have to wait for IT, The manager of a new employee has to wait for IT and HR. There has been several flaws with this. Improvement can be done is a number of ways.1. Have a meeting with HR and IT to establish procedures and timeframes 2. Look at a more centralised system where details can be accessed.It was later decided a shared calendar on Sharepoint with email alerts when entries are created to be sent to all HR and IT staff. HR would enter a new starter on this calendar, IT would see the details and create the account. They would then add the relevant login details to the calendar and notify the manager. This is seen as a better process, but one that can still be improved upon. There can be a period of trial over a set timeframe to see if it can be improved even further. Taking as practically manual labour out of the equation will reduce the amount of errors, oversights etc. Now looking at service. Customer Service or Service Delivery (in an internal environment) is extremely important in any indust ry. Good customer service means happy clients, more clients which leads to a successful organisation.Lets look at the example of an ISP. They have 3 core call centre departments, a Sales, Billing and Technical Support area. How can we gauge what customers impressions are of the level of customer service? A good way is after a phone call to have a rating system where a customer can rate the level of service is trustworthy from 1-5. 5 being olympian and 1 being appalling. This is the first step in continuous improvement in customer service. The surveil could be on passage or could be over a set period. Either way reporting could be sent on the results to managers/team leaders. There might be a number of trends identified. Staff with exceptional consistent ratings could be rewarded. Staff with lower or appalling ratings could be practised to improve their skill. Reporting for this survey could be time stamped, so graphs could be created when staff arent providing a good level of c ustomer service.You may see a trend like Monday being the batter performing day orFriday afternoon. Education, Training are a number ways to continue the improvement of customer service. As well as awards or rewards as stated above. The final area is products. If an organisation is in the business of growing and distributing products, their main concern with continuous improvement will be developing this product to ensure it is the best in their market. If in a mass production environment, quality control would be paramount to ensure product defects are at a minimum or non existent. preferably in this document a graph was created showing defect levels over certain shifts.This is a great way to isolate where improvement is needed. Why did a certain shift have so many defects? Is there something wrong with the team who is assigned to these shifts? This may involve further staff training, disciplinary action or new staff members involved. Sometimes it could be as simple as making a clearly defined process to get a product complete without issues. Lets look at the example of Microsoft. They are the pioneers of operational systems. According to data for the years 2004 2009, Microsoft on bonnie has cover around 90% of the market across the globe. (see graph on next page)This is an extraordinary number and one that comes with pressure and responsibility to ensure its product is up to an elite standard. Microsoft will release Operating Systems every 4 years on average, however after the release they will continue to build on the operating system. Adding features, fixing bugs, improving the overall experience. Also it offers support to customers with forums such as Technet and the obvious customer support. The updating is the main part of continuous improvement. This builds towards the next version of the Operating System which in some cases not all, will be an absolute improvement over the predecessor. Example being Windows 8, they have received overwhelming fee dback that consumers are not favourable of the start wit being removed.They listened and implemented a start menu of some description in Windows 8.1 and it will return in Windows 10. Risk Management comes into play with most decisions or implementation of a new process. With the three examples shown above a Risk Management assessment of some degree/scale would be included. For the example. Microsoft would need to investigate whether continuing support for an operating system would be viable. They will usually release a statement tothe public explaining how long their support and updates will be created for Operating System. Microsoft also would have weighed the pros and cons for implementing a start menu feature into 8.1. Customer satisfaction is a high priority, however if it isnt feasible it would be a risk to implement it. As youre using resources and time to implement something rather major. Wouldnt this be better spent developing on the next version.How does continuous improve ment affect employees? This question is very important. As employees are a major part of how well an organisation succeeds. An example of this would be an entrepreneurial firm which is small. Employees are driven to succeed because a sense of ownership due to it being only around 20 staff members, each is aware of their responsibilities and are directly accountable for certain roles. However the firms hierarchy believe the best way moving forward is to grow. As the growth takes place the sense of ownership has decreased. The culture will understandably change. Therefor it is incredibly important in the early stages prior to making major changes such as growth, that the organisation creates a culture that determine accountability and to provide for accountability in organizational design. Communication in a small company will be different to a larger one. There would be little need for egg communication and any sort of reporting as they are all in the same small location.They also understand what is important to communicate due to the scale of workload. The change here as it grows would need to be subtle. Explaining to current staff the need/requirement to implement different ways we must communicate. It is logistically going to be impossible to have a general talk with another colleague about something circumstantial when they are in the East coast of the United States and you are based at Head billet in Sydney Australia. If this is educated earlier, it will provide a better understanding from long standing employees on how it will benefit the organisation, this once again comes back to the culture created. The employee will see this will a positive for the organisation. Attitude towards change can vary dependent on factors such as the average age and tenure with the organisation as well. Why do organisations feel the need to incorporate continuous improvement sometimes is dependent on the type of industry.The pressures of certain industries almost forces organisation toimplement continuous improvement. The Business Environment refers to the factors that affect an organisations ability to be competitive in their market. Kodak for example, were a leader in photographic/camera film. However the environment changed around them dramatically in recent years with digital photography taking over the market. Film was no longer the medium used. It saw a decline in revenue ($14.5bn in 1995 to $2.35bn in 2013) A lot of companies would not of survived something this dramatic. Kodak revolutionised and changed their way of thinking.Kodak had to shrink in size and effectively start again, go back to basics. It kept the best minds they had to cortical potential how to continue. Kodak is now a leader in photo print paper, packaging, commercial film and speciality chemicals. Although Kodak isnt a good example of improvement there is an argument for continuity. Not many companies have survived when hit with a change of the scale photography went thro ugh over 10 years ago. It is a credit to Kodak they were able to adapt to change and strive to succeed with improvement to the way they work in their industry.