MGMT6009 Managing People and Teams Proof Reading Service

MGMT6009 Managing People and Teams Proof Reading Service

Introduction

Mining Co is a company which operates in a range of isolated locations with may fly-in and fly-out staff on a rotating two-week roster basis. Currently, the company is thinking of implementing performance management strategy to create motivation in their employees and to boost their morale. They are facing an issue of staffing and are looking out for recommendations for retaining their existing employees. In this project, the researcher aims at providing the company with the impact of performance management strategy and the ways of motivating its employees. The researcher also aims at providing recommendations to the company about how to curb the ensuing hysteria going on around the staff not willing to continue their service with Mining Co. They will also have to form a crisis management company to overcome the problem of talent gap.

Case Study 1:

According to Bititci, Carrie and McDevitt, 1997, performance management has been defined as a “process by which the company manages its performance in line with its corporate and functional strategies and objectives.” (Bititci, Carrie & McDevitt, 1997)

According to Briscoe and Claus, “Performance Management is usually described as the system through which organizations set work goals, determine performance standards, assign and evaluate work, provide performance feedback, determine training and development needs and distribute rewards.” (Claus & Briscoe, 2009)

According to Bates and Holton, “Performance management can be defined as a strategic and integrated approach to delivering sustained success to organizations by improving the performance of the people who works in them and by developing the capabilities of terms and contributors.”(Holton et al.2000)

Performance management is implemented by an organization to ensure that the employees as well as the organisation as a whole start performing more efficiently. This is because, if the employees work efficiently and effectively, their performance will benefit the organization as a whole (Dooren, Bouckaert & Halligan, 2015). The fruits of labour of an employee are borne by both the employee and the organization as a whole. If performance management is implemented in a business organisation, then the employees of that firm become motivated and work more proficiently, which further augments their performance; whereas, performance indicator is defined as a measure of proxy when the performance output cannot be measured directly. The indicators do not convey the whole picture, but relevant information about the performance assessment is provided by them. Simplicity in administrative procedures is provided if the process of performance management is designed properly. Due to this, the employees and managers are able to uphold mutual respect for each other, their daily communication gets improved and this ensures that any type of development issue gets communicated instantly. Creation of performance standards by the company will help the employees to know what is expected from them. This will ensure that they are able to work accordingly and match up with the performance requirement that their manager expects from them. A feedback process is also very helpful, as if something is going wrong, then it gets conveyed to the manager, who can stop it instantly, preventing any type of loss to the organisation.

Daily feedback will also help them in their personal development and growth as an employee (De Waal, 2013). It is helpful in motivating them to work better, which enables them in achieving personal as well as organisational goals. Implementation of performance standards would also help the managers in evaluating the performance of the employees and setting appropriate benchmarks. Performance management implementation will help the employees in knowing about the efficiency of their performances on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. These performance feedbacks will help the employees to understand where they are going wrong and the areas where improvement is required. Employees want to work in an environment where they can have a growth in their work and learn new thing at the same time. The training aspect of Performance management helps them in achieving a learning graph with upward growth. By providing training to the employees, the managers can encourage them to work professionally and properly.

Performance management also involves paying the employees as per their performance standards (Irshad & Afridi, 2012). Therefore, the employees would always work at their full efficiency level to get a higher pay and be eligible to all the incentives. This is also a method used by organisations to encourage their employees towards achievement of goals. Mining Co is currently facing the problem of staffing. It has many fly-in, fly-out staffs who are working on a rotating two-week roster basis; but the company is not being able to manage this system of employee job rotation. The mismanagement of employee job rotation is hampering its smooth functioning.

In such a scenario, Mining Co should implement effective performance management in their company to retain its employees and motivate them to work efficiently. Certain recommendations can be suggested to the Board of Directors of the company, so that they can take the necessary decisions and steps required for implementing the initiated plan. This will help the organisation in moving forward. For the purpose of motivating their employees they need to implement performance standards. The performance expected from an employee for a certain job is known as performance standards. It acts as a guide for the employees in helping them to understand the standard of work expected from them. The company can add incentives along with performance standards as this will motivate the employees and make them enthusiastic about earning those incentives. This will automatically result in better performance as it is directly linked to receiving incentives. Incentives are the easiest way, which makes the employees work harder and keeps everyone in the organisation satisfied.

By implementing performance management strategy, the company will benefit greatly as they will be able to retain their employees as well as get improved productivity by means of this process. As a result of that, the performance of the organization will also improve. With the help of the performance management strategy, Mining Co will also overcome the barriers of communication that it is having with the employees. Both the employees and the company will be able to communicate better with each other about their expectation levels, grievances, solutions and ideas. This will help the employees as well as Mining Co to understand each other better and solve the issues that arise. Proper communication ensures that there is no misrepresentation of a message, order or request. The employees and the firm will be able to put across their ideas more clearly. Performance management will help the company in identifying the level of performance of each employee individually so that they can decide their salary on the basis of that package. This will provide the firm with cost benefit. Performance management strategy will help Mining Co to align the thoughts of the organization and the employees together so that they can reach a common ground of understanding. The employees need to perform their duties in a proper manner so that an organization can earn profits. It is the responsibility of the organization to keep the morale of its employees high so that they can benefit from that.

Case Study 2:

Mining Co operates on isolated sites and some of their sites are areas, which are currently experiencing political and economical disturbances or are under the threat of terrorism. These factors are making the employees of Mining Co insecure and unsafe. Mining Co should provide their employees with a sense of security so that they can work without any anxiety. Mining Co can do so by providing their employees with accommodation facilities, which have proper security arrangements. In areas like Greece, where the country is experiencing economic turbulence, the employees are looking for job security. Mining Co needs to understand the needs of the employees so that they can work on them accordingly. A sense of job security among the employees will instil a sense of motivation in them, which will in turn increase their job performance. Mining job in itself has many dangers and a company should make sure that they take necessary steps to ensure the safety of their staff on the mining site.

Mining Co. operates with many fly-in, fly-out staff on a rotating two-week roster basis. The company should give their employees an option to choose their preferred location sometimes. This will provide all the employees a fair chance to work on all the locations from where Mining Co operates. The company can even hire the local people of a specific geographical location from where it is operating. This will help the company in reducing the cost also. Generally, when a company sends its employees to some other onsite workplace they bear the expenses of their employee’s accommodation and travelling. If Mining Co hires local people then they will save on these costs and get the desired results from those people. With proper training, the local people will also be able to work effectively.

Employees are mostly interested in their compensation package apart from job environment and job security. Therefore, Mining Co should compensate their employees well so that the employees do not leave the company and go. They will also have to offer some extra benefits and rewards to keep their morale high. Promotion can also be a way of improving the employee morale. They can also provide family accommodation to their employees so that the family of the employees can visit them sometimes.

Growth opportunities are something that every employee looks for in his job. The employees want to learn and grow in their workplace to brighten their future prospects. Therefore, Mining Co needs to ensure that they provide their employees ample growth and development opportunities. They can organize and conduct training sessions for their employees where they can teach them different aspects of the job and give them an overview of the entire mining industry.

Mining Co has to develop and prepare a proper workforce plan so that the allocation of work is done correctly. Workforce planning is the process where a firm matches its objectives with the objectives of his employees to achieve the organizational goals. Workforce planning ensures that the work allocated to the employee is suitable for him and he performs it with his full efficiency. Mining Co needs to form a proper department to handle the grievances of the employees. They need to organize proper work schedules for the employees and fix their hours of work.

Under such circumstances, the organisation has to strategise in a completely new way to make changes in their business operations and employee management. For this, the organisation first has to understand the necessity and cost of hiring foreign employees. In addition to this, the organisation has to analyse the cost in total to determine the employment and training costs. Training cost is crucial for the organisation since the employees do not have any prior experiences in the machineries that are operated by the organisation. Post analysis, the organisation has to tally the cost and make changes accordingly. The most preferred option would be to hire the locals since they are accustomed to the environment and working conditions. However, the foreign nationals face threats due to political conflicts between two nations. This cannot be identified easily, however, the risks are not borne by the organisation and hence many employees have recently started to oppose to working in international soil. Therefore, the option left with the organisation is to recruit local employees and provide them the required training because it would save them cost on salaries. Foreign employees charge more salary than the local and hence the organisation gets the option to utilise the funds and provide them the required training and decide on a fixed perk.

Machineries and organisational technologies require constant updates and therefore the company has to ensure that they are able to provide the employees with latest technologies where manpower is required. It is essential for the company to understand that organisation must look after the safety and security of the employees and must provide the employees with safety gears and equipment. Nevertheless, recruiting the employees is crucial because the organisation has to achieve a certain percentage to achieve their daily business objective.  Since terrorism is considerably higher in these countries, therefore the problematic situation that arises in the country in accordance to the organisation’s employee is equally dangerous. Therefore the companies have to work from time to time to ensure foreign employee safety. Due to political conflict, such activities are often occurring in these countries that disturb the environment and increase a sense of fear. Besides this, the embassies are not able to provide appropriate services to the nationals which create havoc in the workplace. Through, meetings and management decisions, the organisation are suppose to look after the employee needs and provide them the required safety from time to time.

Management has to ensure transparent communications with the employees to understand their issues and provide the required solutions. Since many employees in the organisation are from international lands, the organisation has to keep embassies informed about their movements within the country. These processes would help the employees to be safe, but on the other would affect the production and performance level of the organisation. Therefore it is essential for the company to understand the importance of local employees. Providing them the required training would save the company huge cost as well. Their primary focus should be local employees and updated technologies. Combing these two elements will result in diminishing the threats and improving the performance and productivity.

Case Study 3:

Mining Co is facing the crisis relating to the employees. The employees are not willing to continue their services in the respective locations where they have been assigned.  Mining Co operates in areas which are experiencing political and economical turbulence. Some of its sites are also in areas where terrorism is persistent and the lives of foreign nationals are under threat. In such situations, the employees are feeling unsafe and do not want to work in such mining sites. Mining Co is facing the issue of an emerging talent gap because of this and needs to prepare a crisis management team. This team will consist of members who will be well aware of all the aspects and work that are performed on a mining site. The crisis management team will be a replacement for the workforce on the mining site if ever there is a shortage in the number of workers.

The company needs to choose the crisis management team in such a manner so that the team members have the capabilities to be a replacement for the existing workers of the mining site. The mining industry has mainly four departments – Environment and Safety Department, Facilities Engineering Department, Resources Development Department and Functional Materials Department. The crisis management team should be well aware of all the four departments. The selection criteria should be that the team has knowledge about the departments. The team should consist of mining technicians, environmental technicians, engineering technicians, mechanical engineer, environmental engineer and mechanical engineer. The team should even comprise of the manager of training, human resource manager and general manager. Each team member should be selected on the basis of their understanding and familiarity with the area of work concerning them. The familiarity with one’s work helps the efficiency of work to increase and also smooth functioning of activities.

The crisis management team should have a hierarchy to manage the issue of talent gap. Hierarchy of power ensures that each person knows the work expected of him and the amount of power he can exercise on people. The team should firstly have a team leader who will be responsible for handling the emergency situations.  Next a safety departmental representativeshould be a part of that team for co-ordinating and communicating with the safety regulatory agencies. A public relations officeris also needed to convey messages to the public and media. An engineering department representativeis to be a part of the crisis management team so that he can handle the engineering and mapping services of the mining site. A plant site communication person will be responsible for handling the communication between the surface location site and underground mining or any other mining site. The team should also have an offsite communication personwho has full knowledge about the geographical terrain of the mining site. A supply person is needed who will procure and distribute the necessary supplies required in a mining site. Lastly, legal staffs are needed who will take care of any legal issues on the mining site.

All the staff of the crisis management team will be under a general manager who will be supervising all the areas of the crisis management team. The manager will be responsible for taking decisions and planning the course of action during the time of an emergency. The role of crisis management team is to handle the situations of emergency. If a mining site of Mining Co faces talent gap then the crisis management will have to replace the employees leaving or hire new employees so that the flow of work is not affected. Each employee of the crisis management team should be serious about their own work so that the problems do not escalate and hamper the work. The employees should not take things lightly and always be aware of the situations going on around them. The crisis management team should always rely on accurate information and try and obtain the information themselves. They should first understand why the talent gap is arising. Then they should try to solve the problem by trying to convince the employees to carry on with their work and not leave their respective jobs. If the crisis of talent, management still persists then they should try and replace the existing employees so that the work flow is not affected. Crisis management team manager will have to supervise the entire situation and get the expected work done from its employees.

Conclusion

In this project, the researcher has attempted to provide Mining Co with the impacts that the company will have by implementing performance management strategy. Recommendations have been provided to the Board of Directors to implement performance standards in their organization so that the organization can motivate its employees and retain them back in the firm. A recommendation plan has also been prepared for curbing the problem of existing employees leaving the firm. The employees face problem with their job location as they do not feel safe due to either economical conditions or due to the presence of terrorism in that geographical area. The company needs to understand the problems of its employees in depth and then prepare an action plan to retain them in the organization. A crisis management team has also been set up for handling situations of emergency arising due to talent gap. The crisis management team will look after all the matters in a situation where there is a lack of employee turnover.

Bibliography

Books:

De Waal, A. (2013). Strategic Performance Management: A managerial and behavioral approach. Palgrave Macmillan.
Rausch, P., Sheta, A. F., & Ayesh, A. (Eds.). (2013). Business intelligence and performance management: theory, systems and industrial applications. Springer Science & Business Media.
Van Dooren, W., Bouckaert, G., & Halligan, J. (2015). Performance management in the public sector. Routledge.

Journals:
Bititci, U. S., Carrie, A. S., & McDevitt, L. (1997). Integrated performance measurement systems: a development guide. International journal of operations & production management, 17(5), 522-534.
Buller, P. F., & McEvoy, G. M. (2012). Strategy, human resource management and performance: Sharpening line of sight. Human resource management review, 22(1), 43-56.
Claus, L., & Briscoe, D. (2009). Employee performance management across borders: a review of relevant academic literature. International Journal of Management Reviews, 11(2), 175-196.
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Haines III, V. Y., & St-Onge, S. (2012). Performance management effectiveness: practices or context?. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(6), 1158-1175.
Holton III, E. F., Bates, R. A., & Ruona, W. E. (2000). Development of a generalized learning transfer system inventory. Human resource development quarterly, 11(4), 333.
Hussain, T., & Rehman, S. S. (2013). Do Human Resource Management Practices Inspire Employees’ Retention. Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, 6(19), 3625-3633.
Irshad, M., & Afridi, F. (2012). Factors Affecting Employees Retention: Evidence from Literature. Abasyn Journal of Social Sciences, 4(2), 307-339.
McIntosh, S., Adams, B., Nagappan, M., & Hassan, A. E. (2014, September). Mining co-change information to understand when build changes are necessary. In Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), 2014 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 241-250). IEEE.
Taticchi, P., Balachandran, K., & Tonelli, F. (2012). Performance measurement and management systems: state of the art, guidelines for design and challenges. Measuring Business Excellence, 16(2), 41-54.
Vukši?, V. B., Bach, M. P., & Popovi?, A. (2013). Supporting performance management with business process management and business intelligence: A case analysis of integration and orchestration. International journal of information management, 33(4), 613-619.
Waller, M. J., Lei, Z., & Pratten, R. (2014). Focusing on teams in crisis management education: An integration and simulation-based approach. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 13(2), 208-221.