Strategies To Foster Employee Involvement In Organizations: Benefits Of Mentoring And Coaching Essay.

Why Employee Involvement is Important

You are the new supervisor at a large furniture store, Comfort Furniture. When the store opened 10 years ago, its procedures and policies were at the forefront of progression. However there has been little investment into improvement since then. Employees rarely shown initiative, there are numerous complaints by customers regarding the low customer service and productivity is 40% less then when the store first opened.
You have recently watched a documentary about implementing continuous improvement, and became inspired.
You gain approval from senior management, to implement new systems to improve your workplace.
1. Brainstorm and provide 3 specific activities or processes you could implement to encourage your
employees to commit to continuous improvement.
2. Discuss 2 effective strategies for communicating a continuous improvement strategy to employees.
Ensure you include the benefits and drawbacks of each strategy.
3. You decide the best way to communicate with your employees is through coaching and mentoring.
Discuss why coaching and mentoring is a useful strategy for implementing the organisation's continuous
improvement processes.
4. You want to utilise the organisation's systems and technology to monitor and review your continuous
improvement implementation. Research 3 technological applications that might be useful.
5. Identify 4 rudimentary aspects of customer service that you believe are essential to provide the best
customer service possible to customers.
6. Identify and discuss 3 drawbacks of failing to ensure team members who were involved in the
adjustments are informed of the outcome of their endeavors.
7. Research and discuss a method for using performance data to identify further opportunities for
improvement. Explain why it is important to maintain accurate records of the initiatives you have
implemented for continuous improvement.

To gain competence for this unit, you must correctly answer all of the following questions. Written responses may be recorded in additional pages and attached or entered in a word processing document.
1. Why is it necessary to implement systems to ensure that individuals and teams are actively encouraged and supported to participate in decision-making processes, assume responsibility and exercise initiative?
2. Discuss ways of communicating with employees when change processes are introduced to an
organisation.
3. Why is it so important to properly communicate change or improvement to stakeholders and to obtain feedback from them
4. Explain how frontline managers can support and facilitate effective coaching and mentoring for
employees.
5. How might an organisation's systems and technology be used to effectively monitor and review progress and to identify ways in which planning and operations could be improved? How might these
improvements impact on customer service?
6. How can you formulate and communicate recommendations for adjustments to those who have a role in their development and implementation and why is it necessary to do this?
7. How does keeping accurate performance records and reports contribute to the development of future continuous improvement plans?
8. Identify what the following techniques mean:
a. Benchmarking
b. Best practice
c. Change management
d. continuous improvement systems and processes
e. quality systems

You are required to work in pairs for the purpose of this assessment and complete the following:
1. Identify the steps that you will take to roll out both systems. You can conduct research to find out
additional information about any CRM program and POS system of your choice.

2.Describe the methods you will use to mentor and coach team members so that they can start using the new systems.
You should take turns playing the role of the team leader and this should be conducted in front of the assessor.

Unfortunately, one of your team members is very much opposed to the changes. This employee is in a position to influence the other employees. As a result, there is a fair amount of confusion and resistance from the whole team. This has delayed the learning process as team members keep commenting on the negative aspects of both systems. Because of this, customer wait time at the counter has increased and complaints have risen as team members have not yet familiarised themselves with the POS system.
Team members are also unhappy with the CRM system as they feel it is not user friendly and takes a long time to upload data. Management however feels that it is because staff is unfamiliar with the system that this is happening and that time and practice will solve these problems.
Answer the following questions:
1. How will you introduce and manage the improvements so that your staff will support them? What tactics would you use to gain the support of the dissenting employee and how will this affect the chang processes?
2. How will you know if the service to your customers has been improved?

Write a paragraph in response to the following questions:
1. What external forces for change do, or are likely to, impact on work organisations?
2. What internal forces for change impact on an organisation’s operations?
3. Do changes always equate with improvements? Why/Why not?
4. What should you do if the changes you implement, as part of your continuous improvement system, are causing more disruption than benefit to work processes?

Task 1

1.Employee commitment tocontinuous improvement will be achieved by: first, there must be absolute commitment of the executive to continuous improvement, second, appropriate training as per the method of preference as indicated by the employees and third,continuous communication to the employees the implication of continuous improvement, expectations on their part, how they will benefit and the manner in which the executive and management will demonstrate their support for the initiative.

2. The two most effective methods of communicating strategy are coaching and mentoring. Mentoring provides impartial advice and encouragement, lends a helping hand in problem solving, encourages employees and mentors to reflect on practice and widens an organization’s way of working (Durham University, 2017).However, its drawbacks are, it consumes a lot of time to ensure information is adequately passed to the whole organization. Further, if the pair is mismatched it might consume a lot of time for the mentor to fulfill their mandate(Joseph, 2017). Also, sometimes mentors feel overburdened.

3. Coaching is a useful strategy in communication of strategy in that it allows for association of the strategy with individual goals, it provide for sessions to hone skills through practice, it is easy to establish the natural propensities of employees thus filling talent voids in the institution and allows for molding the communication style and content to befit the employees.Mentoring is useful as it adds value to the institution through retention of important player and talent development, and eases collaborative networking.  Again it is easier to incorporate mentoring to the organization’s value proposition. Last,certain learning goals in theperformance review process can only be achieved through mentoring (Zachary, 2011).

4. Important aspects of customer service in provision of best customer service include: flexibility in meeting individual customer needs, repair or exchange of defective parts on purchased goods(Stadtler, 2015).Moreover, understanding, identification and anticipation of customer needs is important and making them feel important ad appreciated. Additionally, provision of unrivalled service will go a long way rendering the best customer service (Amini, 2013).

5. Certain drawbacks are attributed to failure toinform employees involved in adjustments of their performance. One, it is bound to derail performance as it is one of the critical aspects of performance. Two, a lack of feedback comes across as devaluing to the employees implying that their input is not valued.Three, feedback is an indicator of growth to employeesand is telling of the areas that need improvement.

Six Steps to Implement Systems that Foster Employee Involvement

6. 360- Degree feedback is one of the methods used to measure performance data then used to identify further opportunities for improvement. It takes into consideration feedbacks, opinions and assessment of the performance of employees derived from their colleagues. In evaluating the data through this method, similarities and trends are ascertained that aid in identification of areas that require improvements (Fergusson, 2017). Maintenance of accurate records of implemented initiatives is important as: it refines strategies coming in handy in spotting patterns and the subsequent suggestion of improvements, it makes it easier to draft reports indicating the progress that has been made in the institution, documentation of efforts, successes and ongoing challenges allows for provision of information to all stakeholders in the institution, and accurate records are a form of justification in the event additional support is needed (Musah& Ibrahim, 2014).

Task 2

1.It is necessary to implement systems that foster employee involvement for a myriad of reasons. It increases productivity since there is active participation of employees in different aspects of the company. It improves morale of the company in general. It also reduces employee turnover since the employee see their input as valuable in the current institution. Last, the above mentioned fosters teamwork in different areas of the institution.

2. Change elicits different reactions from employees and as such proper communication is required prior and during to its introduction.Face- to-face communication thus giving employees an opportunity to weigh in on various aspects of the change. 56% of employees prefer this method according to a survey conducted by K HR solutions. Further, meetings can used in communication is it has important elements that guarantee success in communication.Emails have also gained popularity as they are flexible, convenient and low cost. A lot of employees can be reached in a relatively short time.

3. Stakeholders form a very important part of the existence of an organization and in the event of any changes or improvement it is important to communicate to them and obtain their feedback. This is necessary because: it helps organizations build positive relationships with people, stakeholders have influence over the success of the organizations, helps build relationships that will run a long while with key groups affiliated to the organization, proper communication builds dialogue hence presenting the organization with an opportunity to collect stakeholder views (Richards, 2017). Their feedback is important as it provides the institution with information to fine-tune its changes, it is a demonstration that the organization respects and values their views, stakeholders have a sense of ownership of the organization thus any information they provide and can offer critical views that would goalong way in improving the business.  

How to Deal with Employee Resistance to Organizational Change

4. Encouraging employees to commit to action and development of growth and change that would have lasting effect, evaluation of the process of coaching and mentorship to ensure that there is success and the employee is achieving their goal, facilitation of ways to explore needs,motivations, desires, skills and though processes of coaching and mentorship. Ensuring that employees and the coaching and mentorship processes develop the skills taught to them and do not become too dependent on the relationship brought forth by mentorship and coaching. Encourage employees of continuous improvement of their competencies.

5. An organization’s system and technology can monitor and review progress bydocumenting individual performance in support of compensation and career planning decisions, measuring process toensure that an implementation does not affect other parts of the organization negatively, measuring outcome and balancing measure.

6. Formulation and Communication of adjustment recommendationscan be done by: use of a variety of a variety of methods, anticipation of sources of resistance, explanation of how it will affect different areas of the organization, early communication of the recommendations and observing honesty and clarity.

7. Accurate record keeping provides a reference point for decision-making and determination of what complete implementation of the plan might cost, provides a means to justify future requests towards implementation of the continuous improvement plan, its provide a measure of business performance against the projected figures in the futuristic continuous improvement plan, it increases the chances of a successful implementation of the new plan by acting as a bench mark, allows for quick identification of the areas of the implementation that might be problematic.

8. Benchmarking-refers to the measuring of the quality of various aspects of an organization such as policy, product, program and strategy comparing them to the preset measurement standards, or the organization’s peers.

Best practice- refers to a method that has general acceptance as being superior to the available techniques under the premise that it produces better results or its basically the way things are done.

Change management- it is a general term for the ways individuals, teams and organizations are prepared and supported in the process of organizational change to ensure that the parties involved smoothly adopt the change.

Continuous improvement systemsand processes-this is a collective term for the methods or set of guidelines for opportunity identification and streamlining of work processes to avoid wastages.

Quality systems- refers to a set policies, processes and procedures required for planning and execution in the core business area for an organization.

Internal and External Forces Shaping Organizational Change

1.First, addressing some of the detractors that might seem opposed to the rollout. Second, clearly communicate how the roll out relates to the organization’s vision, mission and goals. Three, establishing clear and measurable goals and expectations. Four, establishing a pilot team comprising mainly of members that will be directly affected by the changes and a detractor. Five, creation of a deployment plan that would entail assigning the pilot team a pilot project to demonstrate its success. Last, ensuring that the management is supportive and on-board with the changes (Behrens, 2017).

2. Methods of mentoring and coaching include: setting of goals to give the employees something to work towards, provision of feedback to the candidates regarding their performance and celebrating and rewarding little progress (Zieger, 2017).

1.Support from the staff will be realized by one, laying out the vision two, personalizing tasks in the proposed change, following up the process of implementation, laying out the instructions in a language understandable by the employees and being aggressive in addressing resistance. Dissenting employees will be dealt with by showing concern, providing justification or explanation of the implementation and taking action to deal with the situation.

2. customer service improvement can be established by conducting customer satisfaction surveys, establishing the level of customer retention, determining the rate at which current customer are referring your company to others, ascertain the conversion rate of the customer service team, keeping the average resolution time at the minimum by the customer service team and the rate of complaint escalation.

(1)The external forces- factors that influence the organization from the outside that impact organizations include consumers, competition, economical factors,  technological advancements, political and social environment.

(2) The internal forces- factors under the influence of the organization- for change entail: the leadership style, the stipulated mission of the organization and the culture of the organization.

(3) Changes do not normally equate with improvements because there are always challenges along these way such as employee resistance to the change.Further, the projections on paper are very different from the real implementation of certain changes that will result in the changes surpassing the expectations or not meeting the necessary standards.

(4)In the event that changes are causing more disruption than benefit, the change should be reevaluated to establish the aspects that are causing disruption, employee training should be analyzed to determine if something was overlooked and employee attitude towards the change should be evaluated.

References:

Durham University (2017). Coaching and Mentoring : What are the benefits of mentoring? - Durham University. [online] Dur.ac.uk. Available at: https://www.dur.ac.uk/hr/mentoring/mentoringguidelines/mentoringbenefits/ [Accessed 6 Jun. 2017].

Joseph, C. (2017). Advantages & Disadvantages of Mentoring. [online] Smallbusiness.chron.com. Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-mentoring-10888.html [Accessed 6 Jun. 2017].

Zachary, L.J., 2011. Creating a mentoring culture: The organization's guide. John Wiley & Sons.

Stadtler, H., 2015. Supply chain management: An overview. In Supply chain management and advanced planning (pp. 3-28). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Amini, S. (2013). Five Essential Elements for Great Customer Service. [online] CRM Magazine. Available at: https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Web-Exclusives/Viewpoints/Five-Essential-Elements-for-Great-Customer-Service-90458.aspx [Accessed 6 Jun. 2017].

Fergusson, S. (2017). How to Measure and Evaluate Employee Performance Data. [online] Thehartford.com. Available at: https://www.thehartford.com/business-playbook/in-depth/measuring-evaluating-employee-performance-data [Accessed 6 Jun. 2017].

Musah, A. and Ibrahim, M., 2014. Record Keeping and the Bottom Line: Exploring the Relationship between Record Keeping and Business Performance among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Tamale Metropolis of Ghana. Research Journal of Finance and Accounting, 5(2), pp.2222-1697.

Anderson, C. (2017). The Advantages of Employee Involvement in Decision Making. Smallbusiness.chron.com. Retrieved 6 June 2017, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-employee-involvement-decision-making-18264.html

Richards, L. (2017). What Are the Benefits of Stakeholder Communication?. Smallbusiness.chron.com. Retrieved 6 June 2017, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/benefits-stakeholder-communication-38875.html

Behrens, T. (2017). 6 Steps to a Smooth New Tool Roll-out -. Polarion Software Blog. Retrieved 6 June 2017, from https://blog.polarion.com/6-steps-to-a-smooth-new-tool-roll-out

Zieger, S. (2017). Strategies and Techniques for Mentoring and Coaching. Smallbusiness.chron.com. Retrieved 6 June 2017, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/strategies-techniques-mentoring-coaching-23317.html

Stillwagon, A. (2017). 14 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Measure Customer Service. Small Business Trends. Retrieved 6 June 2017, from https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/03/how-to-measure-customer-service.html