Exploring Data To Address Business Challenges & Developing OD Program Objectives

Imagine that you are in a team of OD consultants working with a furniture manufacturing business. The business is experiencing difficult trading conditions and has invested heavily in new furniture designs and manufacturing processes. Sales are 15% lower than in previous years and the number of complaints is rising. The volume of furniture that has to be reworked or scrapped is unacceptably high. What data would you look at to explore this situation further?

Identify an organisation with which you are familiar. It would be useful if this was one that one that is currently in the public eye and which appears to be having problems (e.g. a well-known manufacturer, service provider, etc.).  Your task is to draft one or more objectives for an OD program for this organisation and to propose a key strategy for achieving the objective/s .

You should identify what you think should be communicated, to whom, by whom, when and using what method/s. The outcome should be a brief overview plan showing your thinking .

Exploring Data for a Furniture Manufacturing Business

Prior to conducting the assessment read this document in its entirety with the individual or group of learners and seek feedback on the understanding of the assessment requirements and outcomes.

Contextualise the activities, observations/demonstrations and other submitted evidenceto ensure it reflects the individual learner or group. Check this against the mapping, to ensure it is still valid. This assessment has been contextualised to better reflect the required learner information and outcome of assessment.

Ensure that the learner is allocated the appropriate time and resources required for the tasks, including that the workplace (or simulated environment for learners that are not working) is suitable for the parameters of any required task, to ensure the learners will have an appropriate opportunity to satisfactorily demonstrate their required skills and knowledge to result in a Satisfactory (S) result for the assessment tool and Competent (CO) in the Unit of Competency (UOC) overall.
Advise the learner prior to conducting a practical observation assessment of;

what will occur throughout the assessment process
when the assessment will occur
The level of competency expected
How many times they must be assessed and demonstrate a satisfactory result as per the unit training pack requirements

When appropriate, confirm arrangements for athird party to observe the learner in the workplace, with the learner and the third party, including, that the third party understands the requirements and instructions regarding the Third PartyObservations/Demonstrations. The third party must be someone in a position to make a valid comment on performance of the learner, e.g. Line Manger

Use the checklists and answer guides to assist you with marking, but never show or share them with the learner or the third party. Gather supporting documents, where available and appropriate, as evidence to help you make a judgement of the learner’s competency.

The learner needs to be deemed satisfactory for all of the criteria in the unit to gain competency. When the assessment is complete, advise the learner of the outcome and record your comments in the relevant section. You must determine whether they are CO or Not Competent (NC) and provide appropriate and meaningful feedback.

If you are resulting the learner NC, ensure you outline why you have made this decision, and provide advice on how the learner can improve skills/knowledge prior to their next attempt.

Where learners are unable to complete the tasks in the methods specified due to situations beyond your/their control, you will need to make reasonable adjustments, without compromising the assessment tool(s).

Developing OD Program Objectives for a Struggling Organization

1.You must answer all questions/tasks in all sections below.  
2.Read each question carefully and ensure you provide all the required information.
3.Submit the completed assessment on the specific date, time and location as advised by your trainer/assessor.
4.This is an individual assessment task (or group subject to approval by the trainer/assessor).
5.Assessment answers must be typed using Microsoft Word (font size: 11, font: Calibri) or handwritten as per the trainer/assessor instructions.
6.You are NOT allowed to copy straight from any internet-based or written materials available. You must write your answers in your own words.
7.You are required to provide proper and appropriate referencing (if applicable).
8.You are NOT allowed to copy or attempt to copy the work of another student or permit another student to copy or attempt to copy your work.
9.Penalties shall apply for copying, plagiarism and any improper use of materials or ignoring instructions given by the trainer/assessor. Penalties may include failure of the unit and/or other penalties as per the college’s academic misconduct policy.
10.It is your responsibility to attend to your classes and seek assistance from the trainer/assessor to ensure you continuously succeed in good course progress and academic standing. Remember all trainer/assessors are here to help so ask them if you feel you need it.

Organisational development is a process which is done through successive and sustained strategy making involving also the staffs. These are done to attain a sustained business practice which is necessary to stay afloat in the market competition or else some the competitor company will take the undue advantage. Strategic plans are necessary for organizational development because it provides a directional movement with the required resources. Additionally, strategic plans are also needed to be analyzed in order to analyze its effectiveness with the current situations and the circumstances. This means different strategic plans will be needed to tackle up the different tasks (Anderson, 2016).

Organizational culture and the readiness are much more required during the organizational development process. The development may also mean bringing in some significant changes. A change cannot be successfully implemented in organizational practices until and unless it gets the adequate supports from its employees. There are many responsible groups who play important roles while during the organizational development phase (Burke & Noumair, 2015). One of such groups is the management that constructs effective and feasible strategies to help the implementation done on the system and bring about the necessary changes. Additionally, employees do have significant roles in facilitating the organizational development. This is for the reason it is important that the organization has relevant cultures at the workplace that understand the importance of development process (Burke & Noumair, 2015).  

Imagine that you are in a team of OD consultants working with a furniture manufacturing business. The business is experiencing difficult trading conditions and has invested heavily in new furniture designs and manufacturing processes. Sales are 15% lower than in previous years and the number of complaints is rising. The volume of furniture that has to be reworked or scrapped is unacceptably high. What data would you look at to explore this situation further?

Collecting data is one of the vital activities of the organizational development process. Data needs to be related with the area of organization that is experiencing the challenges. Following information should be noted; however, they might vary depending on the related tasks (Waddell et al., 2016):

?Sales/revenue figures
?Actual expenditure vs. budgets
?Profitability
?Waste stats
?Quality data
?Productivity/production data
?Complaints
?Health & Safety records
?Customer data etc.

Some considerations will also be required to be fulfilled like the type of data which is needed to be collected. Type of methods and the resources will also be required to be analyzed in order to get accurate data set. 

 
During analysis following will be necessary (Waddell et al., 2016):

?Differences and similarities between departments/products/different years and service delivery
?Trends that suggest a specific pattern of improvement, stability or decline or even a mixed process

Identify an organisation with which you are familiar. It would be useful if this was one that one that is currently in the public eye and which appears to be having problems (e.g. a well-known manufacturer, service provider, etc.).  Your task is to draft one or more objectives for an OD program for this organisation and to propose a key strategy for achieving the objective/s (less than 100 words).

The chosen organization is Fonterra which is facing few difficulties. Follow is the few objectives and its relevant strategies (Kuipers et al., 2014):

?To brig flexibility to the workplace, so that, personnel can work under any supervision or at any department The objective can be fulfilled by training each employee on range of skills, so that, they gets acquainted with the different set of skills. Appointing training coordinator and establishing identified experts will also be the strategies.

?To attain more consistent and much effective people-management across the entire business The objective can be fulfilled by implementing a new process for performance management, managing development training program, and ensuring that mangers are giving gamely feedbacks to employees. 

Building on your answer to Task/Activity 5, the task now is to consider which change management techniques might be effective in achieving the objectives. You should briefly outline which techniques you might use and why you have made this choice (less than 100 words).

Change management techniques can be defined as those tools or strategies which can successfully help to bring the required change. Following change management techniques could be implemented to fulfill the set objectives (Hayes, 2014):

Organizational redesign- This will be implemented to sectors that have proved to be dysfunctional. Such sectors will be needed to design in order to make it productive which will also produce several benefits like excellent customer service, reduced operating costs and increased profitability.

Job design- This means redesigning the existing jobs to make it look attractive to applicants. This will result in tasks being added or removed and enriching or enlarging a job role.

Sensitivity training- This will be done to make employees aware of their roles and responsibilities and on top of all, they will be made to realize the benefits of understanding each other’s values.

Building on your answers to Activities 1E and 1F, your task now is to plan the communication strategy to enable affected groups and individuals to gain the knowledge they need to accept and engage with the OD program.

You should identify what you think should be communicated, to whom, by whom, when and using what method/s. The outcome should be a brief overview plan showing your thinking (less than 100 words).

The communication will be regarding the purpose of the plan which should be made clear to the target members. The communication will be delivered by the person who will take the command and will deliver it to the target audience. The time of communication is also important, so that, target audience are attainable at the time of communication being delivered to them. The method of communication is another important activity that helps to deliver the communication appropriately to the target audience. The method of communication will be as follows (Jabri, 2017):

?Email
?Phone calls/Video-conferencing
?Presentations and briefings
?One-to-one meetings
?Notice boards (either traditional or electronic formats)

Imagine that you are implementing an organisation development program in which one of your objectives is to develop the skills in a team so that every individual is trained to carry out every function/task which is carried out by the team (known as ‘multi-skilling’). What key steps might you take to achieve your objective?
-Work out what each team members skill stet is a the workout what training will be required to …..

In the organizational development program, one of the key objectives is to train employees on certain required skills. The required training can be facilitated in numerous ways like as the follows (Smither, Houston & McIntire, 2016):

?Computer-based training
?Informal coaching
?One-on-one sessions
?Mentoring

Computer-based training will be given with the help of necessary and relevant documents available in different formats like PDFs, docs and the presentations. Informal coaching is one of the kinds of one-on-one session where the coach picks up the one employee and tries to understand its level of skills & the required development. Mentor takes a different strategy where it prepares a learning agenda. Moreover, mentee will be required to agree the terms and conditions of the learning agenda.

Building on your answers to Activities 5, 6 and 7, develop an outline plan for a group session at which you wish the group to articulate the problems and propose solutions in relation to the matter which you felt an OD program would resolve. You should set out the following (less than 100 words):

?Purpose of the session
?Format and duration of the session, including how you intend to allow everyone to make an input
?Any activities that participants would be required to complete prior to attending
?How you intend to capture the feedback from the session.
    
-Propose session:  how to transition from furniture market to boutique furniture
-Meeting would be in a boardroom to the format

There are four ways through which conflicts can be managed during the group session. Those four ways are as follows (Jabri, 2017):

?This will be needed to establish a ground rule that everyone should get equal opportunities to speak on.
?If anyone interrupts and ignores the rule, it is necessary to ask the interrupter to be quiet for a moment and let the person compete its point.
?If someone disagrees with the points presented from others, they will be required to deliver the reasons behind this.
?All the contributions should be recorded.
?Conflicts can be better at times which is why it is necessary to identify whether the conflict is for good reason.

Identify one intervention that may form part of an organisation development plan. Briefly describe:

?The purpose of the intervention-

A wide variety of interventions can be used or implemented to implement the organizational development plan.

?Factors you would need to consider when planning using this intervention-

A few actions will be required before implementing the interventions. Following actions will be helpful in that regards (Smither, Houston & McIntire, 2016):
?Action research
?Career planning
?Brainstorming
?Quality circles

Has the activity been answered and performed fully, as required to assess the competency of the learner?

Has sufficient evidence and information been provided by the learner for the activity?

Prior to conducting the assessment read this document in its entirety with the individual or group of learners and seek feedback on the understanding of the assessment requirements and outcomes.

Contextualise the activities, observations/demonstrations and other submitted evidence to ensure it reflects the individual learner or group. Check this against the mapping, to ensure it is still valid. This assessment has been contextualised to better reflect the required learner information and outcome of assessment.

Ensure that the learner is allocated the appropriate time and resources required for the tasks, including that the workplace (or simulated environment for learners that are not working) is suitable for the parameters of any required task, to ensure the learners will have an appropriate opportunity to satisfactorily demonstrate their required skills and knowledge to result in a Satisfactory (S) result for the assessment tool and Competent (CO) in the Unit of Competency (UOC) overall.

Advise the learner prior to conducting a practical observation assessment of;

?what will occur throughout the assessment process
?when the assessment will occur
?the level of competency expected
?how many times they must be assessed and demonstrate a satisfactory result as per the unit training pack requirements

When appropriate, confirm arrangements for a third party to observe the learner in the workplace, with the learner and the third party, including, that the third party understands the requirements and instructions regarding the Third Party Observations/Demonstrations. The third party must be someone in a position to make a valid comment on performance of the learner, e.g. Line Manger

Use the checklists and answer guides to assist you with marking, but never show or share them with the learner or the third party. Gather supporting documents, where available and appropriate, as evidence to help you make a judgement of the learner’s competency.

The learner needs to be deemed satisfactory for all of the criteria in the unit to gain competency. When the assessment is complete, advise the learner of the outcome and record your comments in the relevant section. You must determine whether they are CO or Not Competent (NC) and provide appropriate and meaningful feedback.

If you are resulting the learner NC, ensure you outline why you have made this decision, and provide advice on how the learner can improve skills/knowledge prior to their next attempt.

Where learners are unable to complete the tasks in the methods specified due to situations beyond your/their control, you will need to make reasonable adjustments, without compromising the assessment tool(s).

11.You must answer all questions/tasks in all sections below.  
12.Read each question carefully and ensure you provide all the required information.
13.Submit the completed assessment on the specific date, time and location as advised by your trainer/assessor.
14.This is an individual assessment task (or group subject to approval by the trainer/assessor).
15.Assessment answers must be typed using Microsoft Word (font size: 11, font: Calibri) or handwritten as per the trainer/assessor instructions.
16.You are NOT allowed to copy straight from any internet-based or written materials available. You must write your answers in your own words.
17.You are required to provide proper and appropriate referencing (if applicable).
18.You are NOT allowed to copy or attempt to copy the work of another student or permit another student to copy or attempt to copy your work.
19.Penalties shall apply for copying, plagiarism and any improper use of materials or ignoring instructions given by the trainer/assessor. Penalties may include failurem of the unit and/or other penalties as per the college’s academic misconduct policy.
20.It is your responsibility to attend to your classes and seek assistance from the trainer/assessor to ensure you continuously succeed in good course progress and academic standing. Remember all trainer/assessors are here to help so ask them if you feel you need it.

Reference List

Anderson, D. L. (2016). Organization development: The process of leading organizational change. Sage Publications.

Burke, W. W., & Noumair, D. A. (2015). Organization development: A process of learning and changing. FT Press.

Chodorow-Reich, G., & Karabarbounis, L. (2016). The cyclicality of the opportunity cost of employment. Journal of Political Economy, 124(6), 1563-1618.

Dignath, D., Kiesel, A., & Eder, A. B. (2015). Flexible conflict management: conflict avoidance and conflict adjustment in reactive cognitive control. Journal of experimental psychology: learning, memory, and cognition, 41(4), 975.

Fayol, H. (2016). General and industrial management. Ravenio Books.

Hayes, J. (2014). The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave Macmillan.

Jabri, M. (2017). Managing organizational change: Process, social construction and dialogue. Palgrave.

Korsager, M., & Slotta, J. D. (2015). International Peer Collaboration to Learn about Global Climate Changes. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 10(5), 717-736.

Kuipers, B. S., Higgs, M., Kickert, W., Tummers, L., Grandia, J., & Van der Voet, J. (2014). The management of change in public organizations: A literature review. Public administration, 92(1), 1-20.

Lee, K. Y., Bassellier, G., & Faraj, S. (2014, January). The role of shared team passion, shared norms of ICT use, and expertise on knowledge team creativity. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 210-220). IEEE.

Smither, R., Houston, J., & McIntire, S. (2016). Organization development: Strategies for changing environments. Routledge.

Uppal, N. (2016). A study of culture in a non-profit organisation in India: organisational development and change. Journal for Global Business Advancement, 9(3), 215-230.

Waddell, D., Creed, A., Cummings, T., & Worley, C. (2016). Organisational change: Development and transformation. Cengage AU.