Essay: Enhancing Employee Performance In A Multinational Consultancy Firm.

Though challenging, group assignments are designed to reflect the reality of the workplace. In this instance, people coming together to contribute knowledge, experience and skills to produce a desired outcome.

This assessment encourages students to develop their knowledge in relation to the key topics of attracting, developing and retaining employees, teamwork, performance management, team development and change management.

Your group is from a well-regarded consultancy firm and has been engaged by your client, ComSyst Technologies (CST) to provide advice on addressing a variety of challenges.

CST is a multi-national communications software and systems developer serving the defence and emergency services industries. CST has offices in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Philippines, India and South Korea.

CST has recently lost three major tenders to competitors and their market share has declined substantially in the last two years. This has been attributed to some significant people related issues including poor employee performance, low employee engagement, a decline in staff retention and resignations of some key specialists. Technological advancements elsewhere have highlighted a gap in CST’s technical skills and capabilities.

Your brief from the client is to prepare a report with recommendations to achieve the following objectives over the next two years:

1. Ensure CST is well positioned for the future by attracting and retaining the best talent possible

2. Create a team based high performance culture

3. Build employee capability and performance

To address these objectives your consulting team will need to draw on content from modules two, three and four. Some consideration may need to be given to other module content if deemed relevant. It is also expected that groups conduct research beyond the resources provided on the subject site For each of the objectives mentioned above, you must include at least one real world example / case study from the literature of how other organisations have successfully achieved the same or similar.

Build employee capability and performance

The study will discuss the importance of employee capability and performance in a consultancy firm. The firm is facing several critical challenges in its business operation. According to the case scenario, ComSyst Technologies (CST) is a multinational consultancy firm that develops communication system and software for emergency and defence services industries. The firm has faced challenges due to their competitors and reduction in market share level. In order to overcome these problems, the company needs to develop its employee performance and capability, respectively. Hence the paper will evaluate the need for employee performance and capability in the organization. 

As per the case scenario, CST is a multinational consultancy firm which faces problem in the market due to their reducing rate of market share and a high number of competitors in both national and international markets. It is seen that the company operates its business in New Zealand, Australia, India, Philippines, The United States and South Korea. In order to operate its business fruitfully and to reduce its challenges, the firm needs to increase its employee capability and performance in the organization. The methods that are useful in improving employee performance and capability are as follows:

• Communication through clear expectation- For building the employee performance in the CSR organization, the management of the firm should make sure that the employees are clear about their duties and responsibilities towards the firm. Effective means of frequent communication helps to explain the objectives of the work to the employees properly (Alt, Díez-de-Castro & Lloréns-Montes, 2015). Besides this, clear communication helps the managers to articulate the barriers that are present among the employees. Employee performance in this consultancy firm can be improved if both the manager and workers understand their role in the business and give their full effort in work. Presence of open communication between employee and manager not only encourage the whole team, but it also improves the workers progress in the task. Proper communication helps the employees to navigate their objective correctly, and this eventually influences them to improve their performance and capability of working (Hafeez & Akbar, 2015).
• Creation of a positive work environment- In order to improve employee capability and performance, the firm needs to create a positive work environment for the workers. If the work environment is improved, then it enables the employees to work comfortably in the workplace (Mahoney & Kor, 2015). They also give more focus on work, and in turn, it helps them to improve their capability of working in the consultancy firm. For improving the performance of an employee, the management of CST Company needs to provide a physical space for the workers so that they can concentrate and collaborate with other employees and complete their task within time. Presence of a positive work environment can encourage the employees and boost team morale, which overall increases their capability and performance in the business (Huang, Lee, Chiu & Yen, 2015). The case scenario reveals that CSR has faced challenges due to the employees having lack of technical capabilities and skills and hence, it is essential for them to improve their workplace condition positively.
• Provide training for utilization of correct technology- It is analyzed that the absence of technical capabilities and skills of employees are the significant aspect that creates challenges to the CST firm. In order to improve the technical skills and knowledge of the employees, including their performance and capability, the management needs to arrange appropriate training for these people. If proper training is provided to the employees, then they can understand the proper way of using correct technology that is suitable for the business. Training is an ongoing procedure that helps the employees to develop their knowledge and skills regarding the technical process (Huang, Lee, Chiu & Yen, 2015). Thus practical training is necessary for building capability and performance of the employees and in the execution of the business procedures that can overall reduce the challenges of the CST Company within the operating markets. Moreover, they can implement accurate technology that can drive their engagement and performance in the workplace and can help in reducings the challenges of the company.                                                         

In this section, some recommendations are provided that can help in improving the employee performance and capability of CST firm. The recommendation is provided to reduce their business challenges in the concerned market segments. The recommendations are as follows:

• One of the recommendations is that the management team and manager of CST should acknowledge employee morale by encouraging and motivating them for their small piece of work (Hanaysha & Tahir, 2016). This strategy of praising the employees helps in influencing the staffs to improve their performance and capability level in the organization automatically.
• Another recommendation is that the CST firm has to improve its business culture effectively. It is a multinational consultancy company so diverse workforce belonging to different culture are present. In order to reduce the cultural differences among employees, the managers should take the responsibility to communicate appropriately with diverse groups of people (Bal & De Lange, 2015). Hence this procedure will further help the employees to improve their capability and performance.         

Conclusion 

The paper summarizes that for reducing the challenges of the CST firm; they must build their employee capability and performance by adopting various strategies. The managers need to communicate appropriately with the employees regarding their duties and responsibilities in the organization. Proper means of communication helps the managers to quickly demonstrate the task to their employees that eventually it improves their overall performance. Besides this, a positive work environment and proper training should be provided to the employees so that they can improve further.

References 

Alt, E., Díez-de-Castro, E. P., & Lloréns-Montes, F. J. (2015). Linking employee stakeholders to environmental performance: The role of proactive environmental strategies and shared vision. Journal of Business Ethics, 128(1), 167-181.

Bal, P. M., & De Lange, A. H. (2015). From flexibility human resource management to employee engagement and perceived job performance across the lifespan: A multisample study. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 88(1), 126-154.

Hafeez, U., & Akbar, W. (2015). Impact of training on employees performance (Evidence from pharmaceutical companies in Karachi, Pakistan). Business Management and Strategy, 6(1), 49-64.

Hanaysha, J., & Tahir, P. R. (2016). Examining the effects of employee empowerment, teamwork, and employee training on job satisfaction. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 219, 272-282.

Huang, S. Y., Lee, C. H., Chiu, A. A., & Yen, D. C. (2015). How business process reengineering affects information technology investment and employee performance under different performance measurement. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(5), 1133-1144.

Mahoney, J. T., & Kor, Y. Y. (2015). Advancing the human capital perspective on value creation by joining capabilities and governance approaches. Academy of Management Perspectives, 29(3), 296-308.