Global Supply Chain Development – Workshop 11 (Buy-in & Commitment)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Global Supply Chain Development is provided by Mr. Buck BS Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 12 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
Mr Buck is a Certified Learning Provider (CLP) at Appleton Greene and he has experience in management, production and globalization. He has achieved a Bachelor of Applied Science IET/MET in Concentration in Operations Management. He has industry experience within the following sectors: Biotechnology; Manufacturing; Aerospace; Logistics and Technology. He has had commercial experience within the following countries: China; United Kingdom; Ireland and United States of America, or more specifically within the following cities: Shanghai; London; Cork; Minneapolis MN and Chicago IL. His personal achievements include: founded a corporation in 1991 and sold it in 2018 for $400m; entrepreneur of the year Ernst & Young 1998; entrepreneur of the year Ernst & Young 2004; built global manufacturing infrastructure and lead acquisition of 16 companies. His service skills incorporate: strategic planning; leadership development; supply chain; executive mentoring and merger & acquisition.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
Implementing a supply chain strategy is a major cross-functional effort and therefore requires the buy-in and support of almost every function in an organization. A solid business case for the change is often not sufficient to gain buy-in, but it is absolutely a necessary condition. The process of getting buy-in at all levels of the organization needs to begin on the first day of strategy development. As mentioned earlier, we strongly suggest that the supply team forms a cross-functional strategy team, including resources form sales, IT and finance, when starting to identify and prioritize new supply chain capabilities. We also suggest providing periodic updates to the senior leadership team and key stakeholders during the strategy development process, emphasizing the significant impact and benefits the supply chain can have in terms of financial performance of an organization and shareholder value. This activity needs to be part of a more comprehensive communication and change management plan that supports the strategy development and deployment process from “cradle to grave”.
Objectives
01. Supply Chain Obstacles: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Bottom-Up Accountability; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Standardized Goal-Setting; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Online Learning and Development; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Benefits of Engagement; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Improving Workforce Engagement: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Strategic Customer Behavior: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Measuring Engagement: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. The High-Performance Model: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Committing to the Work: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
01. Supply Chain Obstacles: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Bottom-Up Accountability: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Standardized Goal-Setting: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Online Learning and Development: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Benefits of Engagement: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Improving Workforce Engagement: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Strategic Customer Behavior: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Measuring Engagement: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
11. The High-Performance Model: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
12. Committing to the Work: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
Tasks
01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Supply Chain Obstacles.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Efficient Cross-Department Communication.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Bottom-Up Accountability.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Standardized Goal-Setting.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Online Learning and Development.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Benefits of Engagement.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Improving Workforce Engagement.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Strategic Customer Behavior.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Measuring Engagement.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Gaining Managerial Commitment.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze The High-Performance Model.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Committing to the Work.
Introduction
Employee Engagement and Commitment
Employees that are enthusiastic about their jobs and dedicated to their employers provide significant competitive advantages, such as increased productivity and fewer employee turnover. As a result, it’s no surprise that businesses of all sizes and types have made significant investments in policies and procedures that encourage employee engagement and dedication. Indeed, business expert and former General Electric CEO Jack Welch recently ranked employee engagement first among the three best indicators of a company’s health, with customer satisfaction and free cash flow ranking in second and third, respectively.
Caterpillar is reaping the benefits of its efforts.
Caterpillar, a manufacturer of construction equipment, has had significant outcomes from its employee engagement and commitment efforts, including:
• Reduced attrition, absenteeism, and overtime saved $8.8 million per year (European plant)
• In less than four months, output increased by 70%. (Asia Pacific plant)
• a drop in the break-even threshold in units/day of nearly 50%, and a drop in grievances of 80% (unionized plant)
• a profit increase of $2 million and a 34% increase in highly satisfied customers (start-up plant)
But, exactly, what are employee engagement and commitment? This workshop looks at how today’s employers and corporate consultants define these concepts, as well as suggestions for improving employee engagement. Despite the fact that different organizations define participation in different ways, there are certain similar features that emerge. Employee satisfaction with their work and pride in their employer, the extent to which people like and believe in what they do for a living, and the notion that their employer values what they bring to the table are among the themes explored. The higher an employee’s level of involvement, the more likely he or she is to “go the extra mile” and perform admirably on the job.
Employees that are engaged are also more inclined to commit to staying with their current company. For example, software company Intuit2 discovered that highly engaged employees are 1.3 times more likely than less involved employees to be high performers. They are also five times less likely to depart the company on their own volition.
Clearly, employee involvement and commitment can lead to positive business outcomes for a company. This workshop contains principles for understanding and evaluating employee engagement, as well as creating and implementing effective engagement initiatives, to help you realize the rewards of an engaged, committed staff at your company. Human resource activities such as recruitment, training, performance management, and workforce surveys, as you shall see, may be effective levers for increasing employee engagement.
Employee Engagement: Key Ingredients
“Employee Engagement Defined” illustrates various organizations and consultancies’ engagement definitions. Employee involvement is clearly defined differently in different firms. Many executives are perplexed as to how such a nebulous term can be quantified. Researchers have developed measurement methodologies for a number of components under this umbrella term. The degree to which employees are fully immersed in their work, as well as the level of their devotion to the employer and role, are among these ingredients. Fortunately, there is a lot of research on these aspects of participation, including work from individual and group psychology. Some of these studies are highlighted in the sections that follow.
Engaged employees:
• Stay – They have a strong desire to be a member of the organization, and they remain loyal to it.
• Say – They promote the company by suggesting potential employees and customers, are friendly to co-workers, and offer constructive criticism.
• Strive – They put forth extra effort and engage in habits that help the company succeed.
Occupying the Job
To study the degrees to which people “occupy” employment positions, psychologist William Kahn drew on studies of labor roles and organizational socialization. To symbolize two endpoints of a continuum, he coined the words “personal engagement” and “personal disengagement.” Individuals fully occupy themselves— physically, intellectually, and emotionally—in their professional function at the “personal engagement” end. They uncouple themselves and withdraw from the job during the “personal disengagement” stage. How do people get emotionally invested in their work? Why are they more involved in some things than others? Based on their research into the psychology of commitment, academics have proposed answers to these concerns.
10 Common Themes: How Companies Measure Engagement
Employers commonly use company-wide attitude or opinion polls to gauge employee engagement. A review of the criteria included in such instruments finds ten similar engagement themes:
• Employer takes pride in his work.
• Employer satisfaction is high.
• Job fulfilment.
• Possibility of excelling at difficult tasks.
• Positive feedback and acknowledgement for one’s contributions.
• Personal assistance from one’s boss.
• Go above and beyond the call of duty.
• Understanding the relationship between one’s employment and the mission of the company.
• Possibilities for future advancement with one’s employer.
• Willingness to stay with one’s current employer
Because of linkage research, which links survey responses to bottom-line financial outcomes, this broad range of concepts has been dubbed “employee engagement.”
The Relationship Between Employer Behavior and Employee Engagement
How does a motivated staff produce tangible business results for a company? Employer practices such as job and task design, recruitment, selection, training, compensation, performance management, and career development are all part of the process. Employee engagement and job performance are both affected by such tactics. Subsequently, performance and engagement combine to achieve business outcomes. These connections are depicted in Figure 1.
Your company’s human resource processes must be improved in order to engage employees and reap the benefits of that engagement. However, like with any investment, you must assess the potential return—that is, you must commit resources to the HR practices that you believe will provide “the biggest bang” for your investment “buck.” You must consider how much participation and commitment your organization requires, as well as the cost. We’ll look at how employer practices affect employee engagement and commitment, as well as how to control these “levers” to influence engagement, commitment, or both, in the sections below.
Figure 2 depicts a simplified work performance model to illustrate how employer policies affect job performance and engagement.
A person has traits such as knowledge, skills, abilities, temperament, attitudes, and personality, as seen in Figure 2. He or she employs these characteristics to carry out work behaviors in accordance with organizational processes, utilizing tools, equipment, and/or technology. Workplace habits, in turn, provide the goods and services that make a company successful. Work behaviors are divided into three categories: those required to complete duties and tasks outlined in a job description (prescribed behaviors), “extra” behaviors that an employee contributes for the good of the company (voluntary behaviors), and behaviors that an employer prohibits (proscribed behaviors, including unexcused absenteeism, stealing and other counterproductive or illegal actions). Of course, job performance is influenced by organizational factors such as leadership, physical setting, and social setting.
Employers understandably want to encourage employees to engage in regulated and voluntary activities while avoiding those that are prohibited. Organizations utilize a variety of HR approaches to achieve these goals, which have a direct impact on the person, process, and context components of job performance. Employees’ levels of engagement and commitment are determined by their reactions to these techniques. Following that, we take a closer look at a few of these practices.
Designing Jobs and Tasks
The nature of work and employment has developed through a succession of stages during the last 250 years. Craftspeople and workers were initially employed on farms and in workshops. Then came cottage industries, where suppliers put together items and products for enterprises that sold them. People later worked for businesses in more established employment agreements. And today’s workplace is defined by flat, agile firms that outsource worldwide production of goods and services.
Similarly, the nature of work and task design has changed over time. Many American corporations, for example, embraced the “scientific management” approach to work design with the introduction of mass manufacturing in the early twentieth century. Companies simplified duties so that they could be completed by highly specialized, narrowly trained people thanks to scientific management. Although this system increased efficiency, it came at a price: Workers were dissatisfied with their work, were frequently absent, and quit employers in pursuit of more meaningful employment because they were uncomfortable with repetitive, machine-paced tasks that provided little personal control or autonomy. Fitting employment to efficient production methods, in other words, alienated employees and weakened their dedication.
Workers’ unfavorable reactions to job design in early twentieth-century America prompted organizational scientists to dig further into the human side of work. Several ideas of job satisfaction and motivation relating to job design had arisen by the 1950s, including the positive impacts of job expansion (expanding the scope of job responsibilities) and job enrichment (providing more complex and challenging tasks).
The impact of job design on worker motivation and productivity grew in popularity after the release of the job characteristics model in the early 1970s. This concept provided five “core” or motivational job characteristics: skill variety, task identity, task significance (all of which contribute to a sense of work meaning), autonomy, and feedback on performance. Internal motivation, personal accountability for performance, and job satisfaction—in other words, engagement—are all promoted by jobs that share these traits. Because management scientists have come to accept the job characteristics model, there have been very few studies of work design and motivation published in recent years.
Researchers began focusing at the social elements of work, such as interdependence of job duties, feedback from others, and opportunities to obtain guidance and help from co-workers, as employers increased the breadth of employee tasks in flatter organizations with less management oversight. Social qualities have a major influence on both employee engagement and commitment, according to work-design research.
Furthermore, academics have just lately begun to look into the relationship between job enrichment and proactive work behaviors—those self-initiated “additional” contributions mentioned in many engagement definitions. Managers who give enriched work (jobs with a high level of significance, variety, autonomy, and co-worker trust) drive employee engagement and passion, according to the findings.
Employees are more likely to define their work roles widely as a result of their involvement and excitement. Workers are more willing to take on issues that are outside of their immediate responsibilities when job functions are defined broadly. These challenges motivate people to think outside the box and solve problems before they become a problem. As a result, job enrichment encourages participation in both required and voluntary work activities.
Although preliminary, these studies provide useful insight into how your company might design work to encourage employee engagement and dedication. The important takeaways from this study are shown in Figure 3.
Recruiting
The messaging your company sends out when it’s looking for new employees might have an impact on future employee engagement and commitment. If your company has created jobs that are expressly designed to engage employees, make sure that your recruiting advertising highlight the positions’ appealing aspects, such as challenging work assignments, a highly skilled team atmosphere, or less monitoring. These characteristics are more likely to motivate applicants who notice and respond to these adverts.
Consider how you can find the top applicants from within your company. When you recruit current employees for attractive tasks, you increase their engagement and commitment (by maximizing the person-job match) (by providing growth and advancement opportunities to employees in return for their loyalty). When you hire from the outside when good internal candidates are available, you may unintentionally send the message to present employees that your organization does not value their loyalty. Existing employees may then begin to doubt their own dedication to your company.
You, on the other hand, hire external applicants for both the position and your company. Recruiting messaging for these applicants should emphasize appealing job aspects, corporate ideals, and commitment reciprocity. That is, in exchange for your hard work and dedication, your firm provides competitive salary and benefits, flexible work hours, and possibilities for development and advancement.
Also keep in mind that prospective employees have various obligations, and you’ll have to compete with those commitments in order to attract applicants to your company. When a new commitment is compatible with other duties, most people find it easier to make it. If you offer flexible work hours, family health benefits, and on-site day care, you can increase your chances of hiring a highly qualified single parent candidate.
Employee Selection
After your recruiting efforts have yielded a pool of qualified job prospects, you choose from among them to fill open positions. When you choose the appropriate people for the right tasks, your new workers will work more efficiently and have fewer performance issues. What’s the end result? Increased job satisfaction and engagement.
Identify those individuals who are best-suited to the job and your organization’s culture to improve engagement through employee selection. Use applicant assessment procedures that are clearly relevant to the position in issue, such as asking candidates what they know about the role and requesting work samples. These procedures will be seen more favorably by most candidates than exams with less obvious relevance, such as personality and integrity assessments. Successful candidates feel good about having “passed the exam,” and they perceive your firm as cautious and capable because they were chosen. A favorable first impression of an employer promotes the development of long-term commitment.
Training and Development
Additional levers for increasing involvement and commitment include training and development. Orientation is usually the first step in training for new employees. Orientation provides a number of valuable chances, such as clarifying salaries, work schedules, and corporate policies. Most importantly, it allows you to foster employee engagement by demonstrating how the new hire’s role relates to the organization’s mission. You explain how your organization is organized, introduce the new employee to his or her co-workers, give them a tour of the area where they will be working, and discuss safety standards and other procedural topics during orientation. In other words, you promote person-organization fit, which is critical for producing productive and loyal personnel.
You assist new and existing employees in gaining the information and skills they require to execute their jobs through training. Employees who improve their abilities through training are more likely to be totally engaged in their work since mastering new tasks gives them joy. Employees’ worth to your organization as well as their own employability in the job market are both enhanced through training. Furthermore, most organizations pay competent personnel higher remuneration to compensate for their higher value and to reduce turnover.
Consider proving to executives the links between training investments, employee engagement, and demonstrable business returns if your organization is hesitant to invest in training. Investigate how you can use digital technology and the Internet to get the most out of your training investments. Companies may now leverage technology to deliver self-paced and tailored training to employees in far-flung places, rather than having to train everyone in the same area at the same time. This type of training not only saves money on travel for your organization, but it also helps employees manage their other duties, such as family obligations. As a result, their dedication to your organization grows.
Compensation
Compensation, like the HR practices mentioned above, has a significant impact on employee engagement and commitment. Some elements of remuneration foster loyalty to employers, while others stimulate job engagement. It is possible to stimulate one while ignoring the other, although it is normally preferable to encourage both. For example, a company with a high performance incentive system but no retirement plan will likely see exceptional engagement from its employees; nevertheless, they may eventually switch to a company with an excellent retirement plan.
Meanwhile, a firm with good retirement benefits but a typical seniority-based pay grade structure may have dedicated employees; nevertheless, as they wait for retirement, these individuals may give mediocre performance. As a result, strategic consideration of employee involvement and commitment is required when establishing compensation programs.
Compensation may contain both financial (salary and benefits) and non-financial (perks) elements, such as on-site day care, employee assistance programs, subsidized cafeterias, travel discounts, company picnics, and so on. The most successful pay plans help your company achieve its strategic goals. If your company’s strategy is based on innovation, for example, your remuneration system should encourage and reward taking risks. A well-designed compensation plan gives your company an edge over the competition. How? It assists you in attracting the greatest job candidates, motivating them to perform at their best, and retaining them over time.
Pay-for-performance, often known as incentive pay, can have a direct impact on employee productivity (and consequently engagement) as well as dedication to your company (as workers learn to trust that they will be rewarded for good performance). Individual achievement is rewarded through incentive compensation such as piecework, annual bonuses, merit raises, and sales commissions. Profit sharing, gain-sharing, and employee stock ownership programs can also be used to link incentive pay to team or work group performance as well as organization-wide results. Most employees are motivated by financial incentives, and if the incentives your firm gives make it worthwhile to do so, they will put in more effort to produce more.
Of course, with incentive plans, you must first define and measure performance before deciding which components of success will be linked to pay. Because incentive-plan schemes can be time-consuming to administer, many businesses choose to reward performance that is easy to measure. However, this strategy may have unintended—and undesirable—repercussions. If you pay individuals based on how many units of a product they build every hour, for example, you can encourage quantity over quality: employees assemble the units as quickly as they can in order to obtain the incentive pay, regardless of whether they make mistakes.
The issue with incentive schemes is rewarding the most critical accomplishments for your company, even if those results are difficult to define. You should also encourage staff to “go the additional mile” rather than merely accomplishing the bare minimum in order to receive a reward. To that aim, you might wish to mix monetary incentives with recognition-based prizes to encourage the complete spectrum of performance that your company requires to remain competitive.
Consider competency-based (or skill-based) remuneration, which has been increasingly popular in recent years. Employees are rewarded not just for mastering job-relevant information and skills, but also for leveraging those abilities to achieve results that your company values through competency-based pay. Employees’ pride in their new mastery can boost engagement with this form of remuneration. It can also increase commitment because employees will see that the organization is eager to assist them in improving their employability.
As part of their remuneration package, many employers also provide retirement plans. Although these plans are typically available to all full-time employees, the specific plans available may vary depending on the job, the year started, the number of years employed, the highest pay reached, and other factors. As we’ve seen, well-designed and safe retirement programs can motivate employees to stay with your company for the long haul.
Consider the sensitivity of employees to equity while establishing financial forms of remuneration. Will they consider their pay to be fair in comparison to their contributions? Is the compensation comparable to that of co-workers who do the same or similar jobs? Is it reasonable in comparison to what other occupations in the company pay? Is it reasonable in comparison to what other employers pay for the same work? Employees may get disengaged and reconsider their commitment to your company if they perceive injustice. They may ask for a raise, look for work elsewhere, or give up on delivering excellent outcomes. And none of these results are beneficial to your company.
Performance Management
Employee engagement and dedication can also be improved with the correct performance management strategies. Begin by connecting job objectives to organizational goals while creating your performance management system. What are the priorities of your company, and how will each person contribute to achieving them? What outcomes does your company expect employees to achieve? How can you assist managers in communicating performance standards and goals to their direct subordinates within your organization?
Encourage managers to involve their staff in goal-setting. This method ensures that employees are aware of the objectives. It also encourages people to accept difficult goals by making them feel more invested in goals they helped establish. Consider how you and other managers will recognize and reward accomplishments that go above and beyond. When a piece of equipment breaks down, for example, Joe looks for different ways to keep production going rather than simply shutting it down and waiting for the maintenance crew to replace it. When a new assignment is presented to a less experienced co-worker, Sally offers polite mentoring rather than standing by and waiting for the inevitable blunders to occur.
Processes for performance management run on a continual basis. As a result, they present companies with some of the best ongoing opportunities to build employee engagement and dedication. Managers can, for example, use regular performance conversations and feedback sessions to identify which components of the job each employee enjoys the most and which activities are the most difficult. Managers can also define “going above and beyond the call of duty” and come up with suggestions for honoring such achievements during these discussions.
During performance appraisal meetings, an employee’s aims and career goals might be carefully considered. A supervisor can examine ways to improve the compatibility between an employee’s dedication to your organization and the employee’s other life obligations without prying into the employee’s personal life. By doing so, the company personalizes its relationship with each employee and offers support while also showing gratitude for their contributions—all of which are important drivers of engagement and loyalty.
Consider how to treat your organization’s most experienced employees to increase employee engagement and commitment through your performance management initiatives. In many situations, these individuals are more knowledgeable about the complexities of their jobs than their supervisors or managers. They may be passionately dedicated to high-level goals as a result of their extended association with your business. They put their knowledge to work in ways that newer personnel simply can’t. However, many of them, particularly those from the “Baby Boomer” age, may be preparing to retire soon.
Effective performance management systems, of course, also detect employees who aren’t performing up to par. Failure to address bad performance can erode other employees’ engagement and commitment as their workloads grow and they come to believe that the organization is willing to accept poor performance. If feedback, coaching, and remedial training are ineffective, the manager may need to shift the employee to a different position within the company where he or she can make a more valuable contribution, or let the employee go if there isn’t a good fit elsewhere.
A Closer Look at Workforce Surveys
Many companies utilize workforce surveys to determine the level of employee engagement and the links between engagement and key business outcomes. The results of such surveys can reveal which engagement initiatives are paying off and which are not, as well as how you might adjust your engagement-related HR policies and investment decisions.
Employee surveys today are usually shorter, more specifically targeted, and administered more frequently than older tools. Respondents frequently complete surveys online rather than using paper and pencil. Employee attitudes are now directly linked to business objectives in survey questions or phrases, such as “I can perceive a clear link between my work and Dell’s aims.”
Consulting firms have undertaken a lot of employee engagement research so far. This research validating engagement models have yet to be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals due to their proprietary status. The majority of this research is shielded from detailed review by outsiders. Despite this, various studies on linking have been published. According to these studies, aggregated employee opinions have a high relationship with important company results.
Given the significant expense and effort connected with firms’ initiatives to promote employee engagement, it is critical to understand the cause-and-effect interactions involved. Conducting research particularly tailored to answer these crucial issues in your own business is one technique to discover the causal direction.
A summary model (Figure 6) created by Jack Wiley, cofounder of Gantz Wiley Research (now part of Kenexa), demonstrates how employer leadership techniques, employee results of those practices, customer results of leadership and work practices, and business performance are all interconnected. The model is cyclical, demonstrating how corporate performance affects leadership approaches over time. Furthermore, this model identifies specific variables within each category that may influence employee engagement.
Aside from knowing how employee engagement affects business performance, polling employee opinions and attitudes can improve engagement and commitment in and of itself. Asking employees for their ideas and then taking positive action based on the results of the survey, for example, sends a message to them that the company values them and values their input. This improves participation. Employee surveys help establish a two-way employer-employee interaction, bolstering loyalty to your company.
Designing Engagement Initiatives: Guidelines to Consider
Job design, recruitment, employee selection, training and development, compensation, and performance management are just a few of the HR practices that can help your firm boost engagement and commitment. Keep the following criteria in mind when you contemplate adopting or altering these practices.
Make Sound Investments
Consider how your company now employs human resources in a strategic way. Which of these should receive more attention in order to promote engagement or commitment? Employees that are involved in their work or those who feel a strong sense of devotion to the organization are more vital to your company. Is one more significant than the other? How much is your company ready to spend on HR practices that promote engagement, commitment, or a combination of the two?
In some circumstances, depending on your firm’s objectives, you may wish to adopt specific HR practices to create work engagement but not commitment to your organization. In other cases, your goal may be to increase employee engagement and commitment over a short period of time. In others, maximal engagement and long-term commitment may be the goal. If your HR strategy relies on growing the use of contingent workers to minimize costs and generate more flexible workforce, for example, you’ll want to improve not only their engagement but also their short-term commitment. examples.
Make Persuasive Business Cases to Increase Engagement and Commitment
You may need to use your persuading skills to get the cash you need to invest in engagement and commitment projects. Increasing your chances of success by developing a convincing business case for these projects. How might you present your supervisor or members of the executive team with a business case for such investments? Demonstrate how these efforts have paid off for your company or others by demonstrating measurable business outcomes.
Think about the Unintended Consequences
Consider the potential unintended consequences of altered rules while assessing options for restructuring HR procedures to enhance engagement and commitment. Let’s say you wish to incorporate flextime into your company’s overall work practices. If employee demographics vary by business unit (age, gender, etc.), the new flextime policy may result in higher levels of involvement and commitment in units populated mostly by single parents with small children than in units with varied demographics.
Keep in mind that each employee is unique. Each person may place a different value on the organization’s work environment and benefits. When making changes to company policies or perks, think about how they will affect employees in various life situations—married, single, older, with children at home, childless, and so on. Then double-check that the adjustment is beneficial to the majority of your employees. If you anticipate that some employees may be unhappy with the change, be prepared to address this openly and honestly. Consider implementing numerous adjustments at once that benefit different groups if possible. No one will feel left out this way.
Decisions about Investments should be Based on Solid Data
It’s critical to make data-driven judgments on engagement and commitment programs. Within a company, linkage research produces personalized guidance that identifies certain HR practices that are most likely to achieve the best results. Short lists of the highest-impact engagement levers and actionable survey items that distinguish top-performing units in your firm from less successful units are possible outcomes of this research.
Make sure to monitor employee engagement at least once a year to make sound investment decisions. Select a survey consulting firm to customize a standard engagement survey for your company by linking survey items to the company’s success metrics that support its business strategy. Profitability, productivity, efficiency, quality, safety, employee attendance, staff retention, customer happiness, and customer loyalty are examples of performance measurements that might vary based on the function of each business unit in supporting the overall corporate strategy.
Conclusion
Employees who are engaged can assist your company in achieving its objective, executing its strategy, and generating critical business results. Different HR strategies, such as job design, recruitment, selection, training, compensation, and performance management, have been emphasized in this research as approaches to improve employee engagement. However, these examples demonstrate that employee involvement is more complicated than it appears at first glance. Organizations define and assess employee engagement in a number of ways, implying that there is no single “correct” or “optimal” approach to describe or promote employee engagement.
The decision to spend in improving employee engagement or commitment (or both) is based on the organization’s goals and workforce composition. As a result, when determining which HR practices will receive scarce investment dollars, it’s critical to evaluate your own organization’s perspective on engagement, as well as its strategy and workforce mix. The studies, principles, and examples presented in this report, as well as the annotated bibliography, can assist you in weighing your alternatives and developing an investment strategy that is tailored to your organization’s specific needs.
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Supply Chain Obstacles
Supply chains are driving revenue growth and delivering new consumer experiences in ways we haven’t seen before for most businesses today. However, many are overlooking the most critical aspect of creating really intelligent supply networks. It is the people. Growth necessitates the hiring of more people—unavoidable—and its talent markets throughout the world are tight. Without raising manpower to unacceptable levels, technology can help firms achieve the growth they desire. Automating tactical, transactional tasks by connecting people and machines frees up time for the new work required in an intelligent supply network. While most supply chain executives are aware of this, only 38% believe their present employees will be advancing in the new skills required to succeed.
So, how can supply chain management ensure that their entire staff, from new hires to seasoned veterans, has what it takes to succeed in the future supply chain? The following are the most significant barriers to supply chain engagement:
• A lack of leadership
• A profit-driven culture
• Limited advancement opportunities
• Labor shortages
People and processes, as well as plant and equipment, are the fundamental hurdles to manufacturing productivity, as they are in any firm. Firms must work harder than ever to guarantee that everyone is working as productively as possible to produce commercial value, especially with skills and labor in high demand. Importantly, employees with in-demand abilities should focus on the task at hand rather than on paperwork.
Engagement is a constant difficulty in a sector where many employees are on low pay grades and/or temporary contracts. When employees simply deliver the bare minimum and staff turnover is rampant, productivity suffers. Smaller businesses may lack a specific HR department charged with employee engagement, but they must still guarantee that every employee feels appreciated. It’s easy to reject employee engagement as “too flowery” or “better suited to offices than factories,” but can you afford to ignore it when faced with skills shortages? You, like any other firm, must attract and retain talented people while also decreasing the economic burden of unskilled workforce churn.
While studies have shown that engaged employees are considerably more productive than their non-involved counterparts, employee engagement is disturbingly low in many businesses; according to a global Gallup study, 87 percent of employees are either not engaged or actively disengaged at work. For decades, the “secret” of employee engagement has been known: provide employees with the resources and authority to use their skills to improve their daily work, and they will rise to the occasion. As a result, respect for people is a founding principle that has been reinforced by hundreds of businesses.
Chapter 2: Efficient Cross-Department Communication
Employees may feel disengaged or lack a sense of meaning and purpose in their work, depending on the magnitude of your supply chain management operations. Cross-departmental communication, on the other hand, can help your employees comprehend the wider picture behind effective warehouse management.
Individual employees can also benefit from feedback and coaching from managers, HR personnel, and independent consultants, who can help them create personal objectives or overcome stress and other work-related issues. Employee involvement will effectively rise to the occasion by introducing a communication mechanism to your supply chain management, allowing for much improved efficiency, less friction, and cooperation across all aspects of your firm.
It’s crucial to emphasize that this is always going to be a work in progress. Soft skills and communications are always developing and adapting to the current needs, therefore this alignment will never be “done.”
The more the company’s whole attention is on the value it provides, the better everyone will work together to achieve that goal. More important than how each department functions are letting go of egos and thinking about the company’s improvement. It’s important not to be offended when you hear something negative; it’s not about you. If your coworkers are unwilling to let go of their egos, you must lead the way!
Chapter 3: Bottom-Up Accountability
Employees today want their effort to be appreciated and meaningful at the end of the day more than anything else. As a result, incorporating reward and recognition systems into your business model can lead to increased employee happiness and engagement in the long run.
Recognizing your employees’ efforts is strongly advised, whether it’s through “employee of the month” blog entries, minor awards for performing teams and departments, or verbal acknowledgement by management. Employee quotes, testimonials, and other work-related snippets can also be shaped into social media and web-related material using systems like Evernote, Be Graded, WriteScout, and Readable to boost their sense of belonging and accountability.
Chapter 4: Standardized Goal-Setting
Supply chain management can sometimes feel disjointed, with no clear understanding of what each shipment or order represents in the big picture. As a result, offering defined KPIs and goals for employees to measure over time would most likely help them objectively understand and relate to day-to-day activity.
Employee engagement can be increased through specific goal-setting approaches such as SMART goals or goal-tracking tools such as Trello. Following the definition of supply chain management goals, the KPIs should be given to various department managers for approval and implementation in their respective sectors. This can be linked to a reward and recognition system, allowing for healthy competition and staff involvement in your supply chain management.
Chapter 5: Online Learning and Development
Employee engagement is aided by learning and development (L&D). In fact, according to a study conducted by Udemy, 80% of employees believe that learning and development opportunities will help them feel more engaged at work.
You’ll not only establish a more skilled, confident workforce by offering your employees access to courses and tools that help them refine their abilities and expand their knowledge, but you’ll also demonstrate to them that you care about and are prepared to invest in their personal growth. All of this contributes to a productive, engaged, and happy workforce.
Learning and growth are equally crucial to the success of your company. You may solve skill shortages, increase your employees’ talents, and develop your organization for the future by providing effective learning resources to your staff, whether it’s online training, workshops, or authorized courses.
Here are some compelling reasons why your company should invest in learning and development.
Improve retention
People enjoy the opportunity to advance their talents in today’s competitive employment market. As a result, if employees have the opportunity to grow as individuals and advance their careers, they are significantly more likely to remain loyal to their employer. According to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workplace Learning & Growth Report, 94 percent of employees said they would stay at a firm longer if it invested in their professional development.
Giving your employees access to courses and tools that will help them grow their knowledge and sharpen their abilities will improve your company’s employee value proposition. However, in order to truly influence your employees’ career choices and enhance your company’s employee retention, the learning opportunities you provide must be targeted to their individual needs. You’ll be assisting your employees’ professional development and career advancement in this way.
Drive motivation
By investing in learning and development, your company is demonstrating to your employees that you appreciate them as individuals and are concerned about their personal development. Knowing this, as well as having the opportunity to learn new skills and grow their abilities through their work, will naturally raise employee motivation. They’ll be more involved in their professions and prepared to put in more effort to assist not only their own careers but also your company.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a great place to start. The pyramid below depicts the five primary requirements that drive human behavior. Learning and development are part of the ‘Self-Actualisation’ category and are at the very top of the pyramid since they relate to personal progress, fulfillment, and realizing our full potential.
Boost employee wellbeing and confidence
People often relate their self-worth to their performance, successes, and position at work in today’s “always on” world, when productivity and advancement are held in such high regard. As a result, a lack of variety or advancement at work can have a negative impact on people’s self-esteem and overall well-being. L&D is thus the ideal antidote, as it satisfies our natural drive to learn and allows employees the freedom to broaden their horizons and grow as professionals.
E-Learning Boosts Supply Chain Management Expertise
Because of the fast-paced nature of business, we must all invest in our teams while acquiring new skills and taking on new responsibilities. The supply management industry is becoming more strategic, necessitating the development of new skills by professionals who are already working full-time.
Successful businesses understand the need of investing in training and development, and they actively seek out and reward people who have a desire to learn new things. As a result, businesses and professionals who place a premium on lifelong learning and development are well positioned for success.
Chapter 6: Benefits of Engagement
Now that we’ve gotten a better concept of how employees might be more involved in supply chain management to boost their productivity and efficiency, let’s look at the long-term advantages. Employees who are happy with their positions and how top management treats them are more inclined to extend their contracts, advocate for the company, and seek out new opportunities on the job.
“While it is true that revenue growth and client satisfaction are high on the list of business priorities, both of those goals will constantly be out of reach if your staff are dissatisfied with their positions, management, and organization,” Melissa Sykes, Head of HR at Studyker, said. Take the effort to establish employee engagement mechanisms, recognize top performers, and offer your employees a purpose to come to work other than the obvious “you work, I pay” mantra.
Once such a system is in place and your staff feel engaged and purposeful in supply chain management, your organization will begin to exhibit numerous key characteristics, including:
• Higher employee loyalty, trust, and productivity
• Improved staff health and morale
• Increased supply chain profitability and shipment turnover
• Better industry positioning and brand recognition
Parts of a Whole (Conclusion)
A business is made up of various divisions that rely on one another to keep the organization afloat on the market. As a result, in supply chain management, paying more attention to your staff will allow the company to thrive within. Aside from the obvious boost in productivity, this will also improve your company’s market reputation and make it more appealing to potential employees. Meet your team halfway and start a meaningful conversation; you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
Chapter 7: Improving Workforce Engagement
Employee engagement, defined by Deloitte as “an employee’s job satisfaction, loyalty, and inclination to expend discretionary effort toward organizational goals,” has become a primary focus for companies looking to align individual performance with overall business outcomes.
Employees are the lifeblood of any organization, even in highly mechanized areas. Many supply chain optimization methods emphasize new technologies and workflows, but any good strategy must also take into account the workforce.
Employee engagement is one of the most crucial elements to consider. No supply chain can reach its full potential without a motivated workforce.
Why is Employee Engagement Important?
Employee engagement, or the degree to which individuals are engaged, interested, and enthusiastic about their work, is difficult to measure but crucial to success. Highly engaged teams are 21 percent more profitable, with 59 percent less turnover, and 41 percent fewer absences, according to studies.
Despite these advantages, many businesses fail to engage their workers. In January 2021, only 39% of American workers said they were engaged at work. While that number has risen over time, it still implies that the majority of employees are dissatisfied with their jobs.
Employee engagement is not only warranted; it is critical in a country where firms lose $300 billion in productivity each year owing to disengaged workers. According to Deloitte, firms with highly engaged employees had 2.3 times more revenue growth over the course of three years than those with ordinary engagement. Despite this, only 4% of executives say they are “very good” at involving different generations in the workplace.
Establishing Critical Links
Employee engagement is especially important in the supply chain. Every step in the process from raw materials to final items is represented by a link in the chain. If even one of these critical linkages fails, the ramifications can be felt throughout the whole supply chain.
“Supply chains resemble actual metal chain: Each step in the product’s creation and distribution is a link that plays a critical role in turning an idea into a tangible, deliverable product,” writes EE Times’ Hailey Lynne McKeefry in Engage Employees in Supply Chain. “However, when a link weakens, the entire chain loses strength or breaks altogether.”
McKeefry believes that executives at all levels of the company must take steps to address these difficulties and cultivate a more productive supply chain. Action, on the other hand, does not imply harsh reprimanding of inattentive staff or providing them larger salary in the hopes that they will work harder.
“It means taking the time to understand what is causing disengagement in the first place, and then working to fix those underlying issues,” she writes. “While it takes some work on the front end, increasing employee engagement creates a stronger, more efficient supply chain in the long run.”
If your supply chain is in need of a boost in engagement, follow these best practices to get things back on track:
• invest in employees’ careers
• listen to employee feedback
• create volunteer opportunities
• host social events
• recognize commendable performance
• pay attention to worker health
• remove inefficiencies and complexity
• lead by example
Employees that are engaged are more productive. With engaged staff, supply networks become significantly more efficient. If logistics organizations can implement one or more of these eight tactics, they will be able to better engage their workers. They can then optimize their human potential, reducing the industry’s workforce concerns.
Chapter 8: Strategic Customer Behavior
Building an Emotional Connection
With all of the automated customer engagement technologies available – online order entry systems, mobile applications, chat bots, and clever search engines – it’s tempting to conceive of a customer contact as a low-touch procedure designed to increase productivity and serve customer needs as quickly as possible. However, those astounding advances simply emphasize the importance of the human connection between a living consumer and a breathing employee. People have an insatiable desire to connect. Customers must see a firm as responsive and staffed by individuals who follow through on their commitments in order to form an emotional bond with the brand. Employees seek meaningful work and must understand how their job affects others in order to feel fulfilled.
We often focus solely on the customer’s satisfaction with a transaction. Customer-employee relationships, on the other hand, are by their very nature interpersonal. Each gives the other verbal and nonverbal cues to convey their sentiments and desires as well as provide information. We obtain a much deeper sense of it as an interpersonal experience rather than just a simple economic transaction by widening our thoughts and looking at how enjoyable the conversation was for both parties.
Integration of customer experience research systems with employee engagement systems has this kind of capacity. In terms of customer and staff engagement, this is the new frontier. Integrating those various systems shows those magical moments when a customer becomes a brand ambassador and employees feel truly valued and appreciated. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.
• The brand is aware of the customer experience in real time – whether positive or negative – and can react quickly.
• Employees have access to client feedback, which provides them with a clear picture of their worth and tangible evidence of appreciation.
• Managers can use individual magical moments to demonstrate exceptional service to the entire team.
Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report found that “when organizations successfully engage their customers and their employees, they experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes.”
Driving Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is just as important as consumer engagement for overall business success, as proved. Because of their position at the organization – usually in the contact center or in customer services – some employees are more profoundly and directly connected to customers. However, in many businesses, this represents only a small portion of the total consumer base. The majority of staff can be kept away from clients, yet the company still needs to know what they want.
The truth is that the closer all staff groups are to the consumer, the more enthusiastic and engaged they will be. The majority of employees desire to be more involved in customer interaction and feedback. Employees will eagerly listen to and respond to consumer feedback when given the opportunity.
Chapter 9: Measuring Engagement
Measuring employee engagement is far more than just a vanity metric. It can become a significant component of your company’s success if done effectively.
When you measure employee engagement in a systematic way, you give employees a voice, you can spot bad patterns early on, and you can boost team productivity and corporate performance.
Should Your Team Be Measuring Employee Engagement?
We can use employee engagement as a barometer for a lot of things that happen in your company. It can show you when things are functioning smoothly while also assisting you in anticipating any potential issues before they arise.
In fact, studies suggest that motivated employees are up to 22% more productive, resulting in higher profits for their companies. According to a Gallup survey, organizations with highly engaged employees generated roughly 147 percent more earnings per share than companies with low motivation.
What are the benefits of measuring employee engagement?
• Giving employees a voice
• understanding patterns
• detecting problems early and taking corrective action
• Keeping employee turnover to a minimum
• Increasing the efficiency of a company
Employee engagement is a key performance indicator (KPI) that displays how your employees think and feel about your organization. You risk a reduction in morale, a loss of team loyalty, and even spontaneous resignations if you don’t track employee engagement.
Because the primary figure is directly tied to the company’s success, monitoring employee engagement has strategic value. HR departments must keep a close eye on this critical figure since they should work as partners to management – after all, they “control” the most significant business resource, the employees.
Measuring Employee Engagement: A Framework
To do so, we examine a variety of indicators along the Candidate and Employee Journey. The crux, though, is in the measurement itself. Microsoft, for example, is increasingly depending on the analysis of indirect data sources, such as the volume of e-mail traffic in teams as an indication of dedication and work happiness. This reporting aids in the comprehension and visualization of data.
Chapter 10: Gaining Managerial Commitment
Managing by Commitments
What distinguishes an excellent manager from the rest? It varies depending on who you ask. Many believe the key to success is exceptional strategic insight—the ability to determine where and how a company should compete. Others emphasize discipline, believing that the superior manager’s ability to implement plans is what distinguishes them. Others believe that a successful manager is first and foremost inspirational, capable of uniting an organization and inspiring employees to achieve greatness.
Of course, all of these points of view are valid. However, while they provide insight into how executives’ personal attributes differ, they provide little insight into the underlying practice of management—the acts that great managers take to weave strategy, execution, and leadership together. The popular answers divert our attention away from how executives manage by emphasizing on who they are.
Commitments have a number of advantages within a company. They assist employees prioritize and coordinate their actions by providing a distinct feeling of concentration. They’re also energizing. They can, in particular, instill excitement and vitality in employees during difficult times, motivating them to continue in the face of adversity.
Poor management is one of the main causes of low production, according to a growing body of evidence. ‘Our managers are, on average, less proficient than many competitors,’ according to the UK government’s recent Industrial Strategy, and it has been suggested that strengthening basic managerial skills is critical if we are to solve the ‘productivity issue.’ Line managers, on the other hand, are facing increasingly complicated challenges. The current emphasis on more robust approaches to performance management, in particular, increases the likelihood that managers will be forced to have “tough talks” with their employees and will be in conflict with them.
Despite the fact that line managers play a critical role in creating employee experiences, there is mounting evidence that they lack the abilities required to effectively manage people and recognize, handle, and resolve complex personnel issues. As a result, training programs aimed at improving their ability to deal with conflict could be one method to ensure increased employee engagement and productivity.
Chapter 11: The High-Performance Model
Although high-performance organizations have been defined in a variety of ways, there is a common emphasis on engaged and empowered employees as well as high-quality goods and services. The OECD, for example, defines them as organizations that are moving toward a flatter and less hierarchical structure, where people work in teams with greater autonomy and trust, and where communication and trust are valued.
The following are the components of high performance working as defined by the CIPD:
• A vision based on boosting customer value by distinguishing an organization’s products or services and working toward tailoring its offering to specific consumers’ needs.
• decentralised, devolved decision-making by people closest to the client, to constantly renew and improve the offer to customers.
• leadership from the top and throughout the organization to create momentum; People skills development at all levels, with a focus on self-management, teamwork, and project-based activities.
• develop trust, passion, and dedication to the organization’s direction by supporting systems and culture that include performance operations and people management processes that are aligned with organizational objectives.
• equitable treatment of people who leave the organization, as well as participation with the needs of the community beyond the organization—a vital component of trust and commitment-based relationships, both inside and outside the organization.
While there is some debate over what defines a “perfect system” and how it should be defined, the research consistently shows that improved organizational performance and overall employee engagement result from a mix of practices.
Knowledge the skills-performance link requires an understanding of the importance of employee attitudes to business performance. Employee motivation is a significant intervening variable in achieving improved performance, according to a corpus of studies on engagement (e.g., Barber et al 1999).
Chapter 12: Committing to the Work
The Importance of Emotions Today
Businesses can and do rely on big data and algorithms to make choices, allowing them to increase operational efficiency and improve customer experience in real time. Humans, on the other hand, do not have that option for the majority of our decisions. People want to assume they make reasonable judgments, but research reveals that most decisions are impacted primarily by emotions and then rationalized later as people defend their choices to themselves and others.
That is especially true when it comes to one of the most critical decisions your employees make every day, even if they aren’t aware of it: whether or not to put up their best effort at work. Employee engagement isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Though Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises paradigm shifts in companies’ ability to customize an employee experience, and progress in machines’ ability to detect human emotions is being made, the ability to tailor engagement strategies in meaningful ways to the experience of each individual worker using these advancements is still a long way off for the vast majority of companies.
While data may absolutely assist a business in improving the overall employee experience, aggregated data is practically useless when it comes to motivating individual employees. Instead, effective firms continue to emphasize the human aspect, assigning primary responsibility for employee engagement to the individual’s manager.
The Influence of Positive Feelings Positive emotions in the workplace have been shown to promote creativity, increase attention and intuition, improve problem-solving, memory, and efficiency in extremely complicated decision-making, and enhance cooperation, according to extensive study. Employees’ emotions might be just as essential as the skills and information they bring to their jobs when it comes to their performance. Furthermore, happy emotions appear to aid in the successful implementation of organizational transformation.
Given that many businesses today operate in quickly changing settings, the capacity to implement organizational change effectively is critical. Employee resistance is one of the most common roadblocks, according to researchers, and new research suggests that pleasant emotions can help to reduce the negative reactions that commonly accompany change initiatives, resulting in more favorable outcomes.
Curriculum
Global Supply Chain – Workshop 1 – Buy-in & Commitment
- Supply Chain Obstacles
- Efficient Cross-Department Communication
- Bottom-Up Accountability
- Standardized Goal-Setting
- Online Learning and Development
- Benefits of Engagement
- Improving Workforce Engagement
- Strategic Customer Behaviour
- Measuring Engagement
- Gaining Managerial Commitment
- The High-Performance Model
- Committing to the Work
Distance Learning
Introduction
Welcome to Appleton Greene and thank you for enrolling on the Global Supply Chain Development corporate training program. You will be learning through our unique facilitation via distance-learning method, which will enable you to practically implement everything that you learn academically. The methods and materials used in your program have been designed and developed to ensure that you derive the maximum benefits and enjoyment possible. We hope that you find the program challenging and fun to do. However, if you have never been a distance-learner before, you may be experiencing some trepidation at the task before you. So we will get you started by giving you some basic information and guidance on how you can make the best use of the modules, how you should manage the materials and what you should be doing as you work through them. This guide is designed to point you in the right direction and help you to become an effective distance-learner. Take a few hours or so to study this guide and your guide to tutorial support for students, while making notes, before you start to study in earnest.
Study environment
You will need to locate a quiet and private place to study, preferably a room where you can easily be isolated from external disturbances or distractions. Make sure the room is well-lit and incorporates a relaxed, pleasant feel. If you can spoil yourself within your study environment, you will have much more of a chance to ensure that you are always in the right frame of mind when you do devote time to study. For example, a nice fire, the ability to play soft soothing background music, soft but effective lighting, perhaps a nice view if possible and a good size desk with a comfortable chair. Make sure that your family know when you are studying and understand your study rules. Your study environment is very important. The ideal situation, if at all possible, is to have a separate study, which can be devoted to you. If this is not possible then you will need to pay a lot more attention to developing and managing your study schedule, because it will affect other people as well as yourself. The better your study environment, the more productive you will be.
Study tools & rules
Try and make sure that your study tools are sufficient and in good working order. You will need to have access to a computer, scanner and printer, with access to the internet. You will need a very comfortable chair, which supports your lower back, and you will need a good filing system. It can be very frustrating if you are spending valuable study time trying to fix study tools that are unreliable, or unsuitable for the task. Make sure that your study tools are up to date. You will also need to consider some study rules. Some of these rules will apply to you and will be intended to help you to be more disciplined about when and how you study. This distance-learning guide will help you and after you have read it you can put some thought into what your study rules should be. You will also need to negotiate some study rules for your family, friends or anyone who lives with you. They too will need to be disciplined in order to ensure that they can support you while you study. It is important to ensure that your family and friends are an integral part of your study team. Having their support and encouragement can prove to be a crucial contribution to your successful completion of the program. Involve them in as much as you can.
Successful distance-learning
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes or workshops, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. But unlike traditional internal training courses, it is the student’s responsibility, with a distance-learning program, to ensure that they manage their own study contribution. This requires strong self-discipline and self-motivation skills and there must be a clear will to succeed. Those students who are used to managing themselves, are good at managing others and who enjoy working in isolation, are more likely to be good distance-learners. It is also important to be aware of the main reasons why you are studying and of the main objectives that you are hoping to achieve as a result. You will need to remind yourself of these objectives at times when you need to motivate yourself. Never lose sight of your long-term goals and your short-term objectives. There is nobody available here to pamper you, or to look after you, or to spoon-feed you with information, so you will need to find ways to encourage and appreciate yourself while you are studying. Make sure that you chart your study progress, so that you can be sure of your achievements and re-evaluate your goals and objectives regularly.
Self-assessment
Appleton Greene training programs are in all cases post-graduate programs. Consequently, you should already have obtained a business-related degree and be an experienced learner. You should therefore already be aware of your study strengths and weaknesses. For example, which time of the day are you at your most productive? Are you a lark or an owl? What study methods do you respond to the most? Are you a consistent learner? How do you discipline yourself? How do you ensure that you enjoy yourself while studying? It is important to understand yourself as a learner and so some self-assessment early on will be necessary if you are to apply yourself correctly. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself as a student. List your internal strengths and weaknesses as a student and your external opportunities and threats. This will help you later on when you are creating a study plan. You can then incorporate features within your study plan that can ensure that you are playing to your strengths, while compensating for your weaknesses. You can also ensure that you make the most of your opportunities, while avoiding the potential threats to your success.
Accepting responsibility as a student
Training programs invariably require a significant investment, both in terms of what they cost and in the time that you need to contribute to study and the responsibility for successful completion of training programs rests entirely with the student. This is never more apparent than when a student is learning via distance-learning. Accepting responsibility as a student is an important step towards ensuring that you can successfully complete your training program. It is easy to instantly blame other people or factors when things go wrong. But the fact of the matter is that if a failure is your failure, then you have the power to do something about it, it is entirely in your own hands. If it is always someone else’s failure, then you are powerless to do anything about it. All students study in entirely different ways, this is because we are all individuals and what is right for one student, is not necessarily right for another. In order to succeed, you will have to accept personal responsibility for finding a way to plan, implement and manage a personal study plan that works for you. If you do not succeed, you only have yourself to blame.
Planning
By far the most critical contribution to stress, is the feeling of not being in control. In the absence of planning we tend to be reactive and can stumble from pillar to post in the hope that things will turn out fine in the end. Invariably they don’t! In order to be in control, we need to have firm ideas about how and when we want to do things. We also need to consider as many possible eventualities as we can, so that we are prepared for them when they happen. Prescriptive Change, is far easier to manage and control, than Emergent Change. The same is true with distance-learning. It is much easier and much more enjoyable, if you feel that you are in control and that things are going to plan. Even when things do go wrong, you are prepared for them and can act accordingly without any unnecessary stress. It is important therefore that you do take time to plan your studies properly.
Management
Once you have developed a clear study plan, it is of equal importance to ensure that you manage the implementation of it. Most of us usually enjoy planning, but it is usually during implementation when things go wrong. Targets are not met and we do not understand why. Sometimes we do not even know if targets are being met. It is not enough for us to conclude that the study plan just failed. If it is failing, you will need to understand what you can do about it. Similarly if your study plan is succeeding, it is still important to understand why, so that you can improve upon your success. You therefore need to have guidelines for self-assessment so that you can be consistent with performance improvement throughout the program. If you manage things correctly, then your performance should constantly improve throughout the program.
Study objectives & tasks
The first place to start is developing your program objectives. These should feature your reasons for undertaking the training program in order of priority. Keep them succinct and to the point in order to avoid confusion. Do not just write the first things that come into your head because they are likely to be too similar to each other. Make a list of possible departmental headings, such as: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing and Production. Then brainstorm for ideas by listing as many things that you want to achieve under each heading and later re-arrange these things in order of priority. Finally, select the top item from each department heading and choose these as your program objectives. Try and restrict yourself to five because it will enable you to focus clearly. It is likely that the other things that you listed will be achieved if each of the top objectives are achieved. If this does not prove to be the case, then simply work through the process again.
Study forecast
As a guide, the Appleton Greene Global Supply Chain Development corporate training program should take 12-18 months to complete, depending upon your availability and current commitments. The reason why there is such a variance in time estimates is because every student is an individual, with differing productivity levels and different commitments. These differentiations are then exaggerated by the fact that this is a distance-learning program, which incorporates the practical integration of academic theory as an as a part of the training program. Consequently all of the project studies are real, which means that important decisions and compromises need to be made. You will want to get things right and will need to be patient with your expectations in order to ensure that they are. We would always recommend that you are prudent with your own task and time forecasts, but you still need to develop them and have a clear indication of what are realistic expectations in your case. With reference to your time planning: consider the time that you can realistically dedicate towards study with the program every week; calculate how long it should take you to complete the program, using the guidelines featured here; then break the program down into logical modules and allocate a suitable proportion of time to each of them, these will be your milestones; you can create a time plan by using a spreadsheet on your computer, or a personal organizer such as MS Outlook, you could also use a financial forecasting software; break your time forecasts down into manageable chunks of time, the more specific you can be, the more productive and accurate your time management will be; finally, use formulas where possible to do your time calculations for you, because this will help later on when your forecasts need to change in line with actual performance. With reference to your task planning: refer to your list of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to achieve your program objectives; with reference to your time plan, calculate when each task should be implemented; remember that you are not estimating when your objectives will be achieved, but when you will need to focus upon implementing the corresponding tasks; you also need to ensure that each task is implemented in conjunction with the associated training modules which are relevant; then break each single task down into a list of specific to do’s, say approximately ten to do’s for each task and enter these into your study plan; once again you could use MS Outlook to incorporate both your time and task planning and this could constitute your study plan; you could also use a project management software like MS Project. You should now have a clear and realistic forecast detailing when you can expect to be able to do something about undertaking the tasks to achieve your program objectives.
Performance management
It is one thing to develop your study forecast, it is quite another to monitor your progress. Ultimately it is less important whether you achieve your original study forecast and more important that you update it so that it constantly remains realistic in line with your performance. As you begin to work through the program, you will begin to have more of an idea about your own personal performance and productivity levels as a distance-learner. Once you have completed your first study module, you should re-evaluate your study forecast for both time and tasks, so that they reflect your actual performance level achieved. In order to achieve this you must first time yourself while training by using an alarm clock. Set the alarm for hourly intervals and make a note of how far you have come within that time. You can then make a note of your actual performance on your study plan and then compare your performance against your forecast. Then consider the reasons that have contributed towards your performance level, whether they are positive or negative and make a considered adjustment to your future forecasts as a result. Given time, you should start achieving your forecasts regularly.
With reference to time management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual time taken in your study plan; consider your successes with time-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; consider your failures with time-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to time planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your time expectations. You need to be consistent with your time management, otherwise you will never complete your studies. This will either be because you are not contributing enough time to your studies, or you will become less efficient with the time that you do allocate to your studies. Remember, if you are not in control of your studies, they can just become yet another cause of stress for you.
With reference to your task management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual tasks that you have undertaken in your study plan; consider your successes with task-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case; take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; consider your failures with task-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to task planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your task expectations. You need to be consistent with your task management, otherwise you will never know whether you are achieving your program objectives or not.
Keeping in touch
You will have access to qualified and experienced professors and tutors who are responsible for providing tutorial support for your particular training program. So don’t be shy about letting them know how you are getting on. We keep electronic records of all tutorial support emails so that professors and tutors can review previous correspondence before considering an individual response. It also means that there is a record of all communications between you and your professors and tutors and this helps to avoid any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. If you have a problem relating to the program, share it with them via email. It is likely that they have come across the same problem before and are usually able to make helpful suggestions and steer you in the right direction. To learn more about when and how to use tutorial support, please refer to the Tutorial Support section of this student information guide. This will help you to ensure that you are making the most of tutorial support that is available to you and will ultimately contribute towards your success and enjoyment with your training program.
Work colleagues and family
You should certainly discuss your program study progress with your colleagues, friends and your family. Appleton Greene training programs are very practical. They require you to seek information from other people, to plan, develop and implement processes with other people and to achieve feedback from other people in relation to viability and productivity. You will therefore have plenty of opportunities to test your ideas and enlist the views of others. People tend to be sympathetic towards distance-learners, so don’t bottle it all up in yourself. Get out there and share it! It is also likely that your family and colleagues are going to benefit from your labors with the program, so they are likely to be much more interested in being involved than you might think. Be bold about delegating work to those who might benefit themselves. This is a great way to achieve understanding and commitment from people who you may later rely upon for process implementation. Share your experiences with your friends and family.
Making it relevant
The key to successful learning is to make it relevant to your own individual circumstances. At all times you should be trying to make bridges between the content of the program and your own situation. Whether you achieve this through quiet reflection or through interactive discussion with your colleagues, client partners or your family, remember that it is the most important and rewarding aspect of translating your studies into real self-improvement. You should be clear about how you want the program to benefit you. This involves setting clear study objectives in relation to the content of the course in terms of understanding, concepts, completing research or reviewing activities and relating the content of the modules to your own situation. Your objectives may understandably change as you work through the program, in which case you should enter the revised objectives on your study plan so that you have a permanent reminder of what you are trying to achieve, when and why.
Distance-learning check-list
Prepare your study environment, your study tools and rules.
Undertake detailed self-assessment in terms of your ability as a learner.
Create a format for your study plan.
Consider your study objectives and tasks.
Create a study forecast.
Assess your study performance.
Re-evaluate your study forecast.
Be consistent when managing your study plan.
Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
Make sure you keep in touch with those around you.
Tutorial Support
Programs
Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.
Support available
You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as much as possible. In all cases tutorial support is provided online because we can then keep a record of all communications to ensure that tutorial support remains consistent. You would also be forwarding your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment. You will receive individual feedback on all of the work that you undertake on a one-to-one basis, together with specific recommendations for anything that may need to be changed in order to achieve a pass with merit or a pass with distinction and you then have as many opportunities as you may need to re-submit project studies until they meet with the required standard. Consequently the only reason that you should really fail (CLP) is if you do not do the work. It makes no difference to us whether a student takes 12 months or 18 months to complete the program, what matters is that in all cases the same quality standard will have been achieved.
Support Process
Please forward all of your future emails to the designated (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit email address that has been provided and please do not duplicate or copy your emails to other AGC email accounts as this will just cause unnecessary administration. Please note that emails are always answered as quickly as possible but you will need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general tutorial support emails during busy periods, because emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. You will also need to allow a period of up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Please therefore kindly allow for this within your time planning. All communications are managed online via email because it enables tutorial service support managers to review other communications which have been received before responding and it ensures that there is a copy of all communications retained on file for future reference. All communications will be stored within your personal (CLP) study file here at Appleton Greene throughout your designated study period. If you need any assistance or clarification at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us by forwarding an email and remember that we are here to help. If you have any questions, please list and number your questions succinctly and you can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each and every query.
Time Management
It takes approximately 1 Year to complete the Global Supply Chain Development corporate training program, incorporating 12 x 6-hour monthly workshops. Each student will also need to contribute approximately 4 hours per week over 1 Year of their personal time. Students can study from home or work at their own pace and are responsible for managing their own study plan. There are no formal examinations and students are evaluated and assessed based upon their project study submissions, together with the quality of their internal analysis and supporting documents. They can contribute more time towards study when they have the time to do so and can contribute less time when they are busy. All students tend to be in full time employment while studying and the Global Supply Chain Development program is purposely designed to accommodate this, so there is plenty of flexibility in terms of time management. It makes no difference to us at Appleton Greene, whether individuals take 12-18 months to complete this program. What matters is that in all cases the same standard of quality will have been achieved with the standard and bespoke programs that have been developed.
Distance Learning Guide
The distance learning guide should be your first port of call when starting your training program. It will help you when you are planning how and when to study, how to create the right environment and how to establish the right frame of mind. If you can lay the foundations properly during the planning stage, then it will contribute to your enjoyment and productivity while training later. The guide helps to change your lifestyle in order to accommodate time for study and to cultivate good study habits. It helps you to chart your progress so that you can measure your performance and achieve your goals. It explains the tools that you will need for study and how to make them work. It also explains how to translate academic theory into practical reality. Spend some time now working through your distance learning guide and make sure that you have firm foundations in place so that you can make the most of your distance learning program. There is no requirement for you to attend training workshops or classes at Appleton Greene offices. The entire program is undertaken online, program course manuals and project studies are administered via the Appleton Greene web site and via email, so you are able to study at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office as long as you have a computer and access to the internet.
How To Study
The how to study guide provides students with a clear understanding of the Appleton Greene facilitation via distance learning training methods and enables students to obtain a clear overview of the training program content. It enables students to understand the step-by-step training methods used by Appleton Greene and how course manuals are integrated with project studies. It explains the research and development that is required and the need to provide evidence and references to support your statements. It also enables students to understand precisely what will be required of them in order to achieve a pass with merit and a pass with distinction for individual project studies and provides useful guidance on how to be innovative and creative when developing your Unique Program Proposition (UPP).
Tutorial Support
Tutorial support for the Appleton Greene Global Supply Chain Development corporate training program is provided online either through the Appleton Greene Client Support Portal (CSP), or via email. All tutorial support requests are facilitated by a designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). They are responsible for deciding which professor or tutor is the most appropriate option relating to the support required and then the tutorial support request is forwarded onto them. Once the professor or tutor has completed the tutorial support request and answered any questions that have been asked, this communication is then returned to the student via email by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). This enables all tutorial support, between students, professors and tutors, to be facilitated by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM) efficiently and securely through the email account. You will therefore need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general support queries and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because all tutorial support requests are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Consequently you need to put some thought into the management of your tutorial support procedure in order to ensure that your study plan is feasible and to obtain the maximum possible benefit from tutorial support during your period of study. Please retain copies of your tutorial support emails for future reference. Please ensure that ALL of your tutorial support emails are set out using the format as suggested within your guide to tutorial support. Your tutorial support emails need to be referenced clearly to the specific part of the course manual or project study which you are working on at any given time. You also need to list and number any questions that you would like to ask, up to a maximum of five questions within each tutorial support email. Remember the more specific you can be with your questions the more specific your answers will be too and this will help you to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or duplication. The guide to tutorial support is intended to help you to understand how and when to use support in order to ensure that you get the most out of your training program. Appleton Greene training programs are designed to enable you to do things for yourself. They provide you with a structure or a framework and we use tutorial support to facilitate students while they practically implement what they learn. In other words, we are enabling students to do things for themselves. The benefits of distance learning via facilitation are considerable and are much more sustainable in the long-term than traditional short-term knowledge sharing programs. Consequently you should learn how and when to use tutorial support so that you can maximize the benefits from your learning experience with Appleton Greene. This guide describes the purpose of each training function and how to use them and how to use tutorial support in relation to each aspect of the training program. It also provides useful tips and guidance with regard to best practice.
Tutorial Support Tips
Students are often unsure about how and when to use tutorial support with Appleton Greene. This Tip List will help you to understand more about how to achieve the most from using tutorial support. Refer to it regularly to ensure that you are continuing to use the service properly. Tutorial support is critical to the success of your training experience, but it is important to understand when and how to use it in order to maximize the benefit that you receive. It is no coincidence that those students who succeed are those that learn how to be positive, proactive and productive when using tutorial support.
Be positive and friendly with your tutorial support emails
Remember that if you forward an email to the tutorial support unit, you are dealing with real people. “Do unto others as you would expect others to do unto you”. If you are positive, complimentary and generally friendly in your emails, you will generate a similar response in return. This will be more enjoyable, productive and rewarding for you in the long-term.
Think about the impression that you want to create
Every time that you communicate, you create an impression, which can be either positive or negative, so put some thought into the impression that you want to create. Remember that copies of all tutorial support emails are stored electronically and tutors will always refer to prior correspondence before responding to any current emails. Over a period of time, a general opinion will be arrived at in relation to your character, attitude and ability. Try to manage your own frustrations, mood swings and temperament professionally, without involving the tutorial support team. Demonstrating frustration or a lack of patience is a weakness and will be interpreted as such. The good thing about communicating in writing, is that you will have the time to consider your content carefully, you can review it and proof-read it before sending your email to Appleton Greene and this should help you to communicate more professionally, consistently and to avoid any unnecessary knee-jerk reactions to individual situations as and when they may arise. Please also remember that the CLP Tutorial Support Unit will not just be responsible for evaluating and assessing the quality of your work, they will also be responsible for providing recommendations to other learning providers and to client contacts within the Appleton Greene global client network, so do be in control of your own emotions and try to create a good impression.
Remember that quality is preferred to quantity
Please remember that when you send an email to the tutorial support team, you are not using Twitter or Text Messaging. Try not to forward an email every time that you have a thought. This will not prove to be productive either for you or for the tutorial support team. Take time to prepare your communications properly, as if you were writing a professional letter to a business colleague and make a list of queries that you are likely to have and then incorporate them within one email, say once every month, so that the tutorial support team can understand more about context, application and your methodology for study. Get yourself into a consistent routine with your tutorial support requests and use the tutorial support template provided with ALL of your emails. The (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit will not spoon-feed you with information. They need to be able to evaluate and assess your tutorial support requests carefully and professionally.
Be specific about your questions in order to receive specific answers
Try not to write essays by thinking as you are writing tutorial support emails. The tutorial support unit can be unclear about what in fact you are asking, or what you are looking to achieve. Be specific about asking questions that you want answers to. Number your questions. You will then receive specific answers to each and every question. This is the main purpose of tutorial support via email.
Keep a record of your tutorial support emails
It is important that you keep a record of all tutorial support emails that are forwarded to you. You can then refer to them when necessary and it avoids any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Individual training workshops or telephone support
Please be advised that Appleton Greene does not provide separate or individual tutorial support meetings, workshops, or provide telephone support for individual students. Appleton Greene is an equal opportunities learning and service provider and we are therefore understandably bound to treat all students equally. We cannot therefore broker special financial or study arrangements with individual students regardless of the circumstances. All tutorial support is provided online and this enables Appleton Greene to keep a record of all communications between students, professors and tutors on file for future reference, in accordance with our quality management procedure and your terms and conditions of enrolment. All tutorial support is provided online via email because it enables us to have time to consider support content carefully, it ensures that you receive a considered and detailed response to your queries. You can number questions that you would like to ask, which relate to things that you do not understand or where clarification may be required. You can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each individual query. You will also then have a record of these communications and of all tutorial support, which has been provided to you. This makes tutorial support administration more productive by avoiding any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Tutorial Support Email Format
You should use this tutorial support format if you need to request clarification or assistance while studying with your training program. Please note that ALL of your tutorial support request emails should use the same format. You should therefore set up a standard email template, which you can then use as and when you need to. Emails that are forwarded to Appleton Greene, which do not use the following format, may be rejected and returned to you by the (CLP) Program Administration Manager. A detailed response will then be forwarded to you via email usually within 20 business days of receipt for general support queries and 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Your tutorial support request, together with the corresponding TSU reply, will then be saved and stored within your electronic TSU file at Appleton Greene for future reference.
Subject line of your email
Please insert: Appleton Greene (CLP) Tutorial Support Request: (Your Full Name) (Date), within the subject line of your email.
Main body of your email
Please insert:
1. Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) Tutorial Support Request
2. Your Full Name
3. Date of TS request
4. Preferred email address
5. Backup email address
6. Course manual page name or number (reference)
7. Project study page name or number (reference)
Subject of enquiry
Please insert a maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Briefly outline the subject matter of your inquiry, or what your questions relate to.
Question 1
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 3
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 4
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 5
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Please note that a maximum of 5 questions is permitted with each individual tutorial support request email.
Procedure
* List the questions that you want to ask first, then re-arrange them in order of priority. Make sure that you reference them, where necessary, to the course manuals or project studies.
* Make sure that you are specific about your questions and number them. Try to plan the content within your emails to make sure that it is relevant.
* Make sure that your tutorial support emails are set out correctly, using the Tutorial Support Email Format provided here.
* Save a copy of your email and incorporate the date sent after the subject title. Keep your tutorial support emails within the same file and in date order for easy reference.
* Allow up to 20 business days for a response to general tutorial support emails and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because detailed individual responses will be made in all cases and tutorial support emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received.
* Emails can and do get lost. So if you have not received a reply within the appropriate time, forward another copy or a reminder to the tutorial support unit to be sure that it has been received but do not forward reminders unless the appropriate time has elapsed.
* When you receive a reply, save it immediately featuring the date of receipt after the subject heading for easy reference. In most cases the tutorial support unit replies to your questions individually, so you will have a record of the questions that you asked as well as the answers offered. With project studies however, separate emails are usually forwarded by the tutorial support unit, so do keep a record of your own original emails as well.
* Remember to be positive and friendly in your emails. You are dealing with real people who will respond to the same things that you respond to.
* Try not to repeat questions that have already been asked in previous emails. If this happens the tutorial support unit will probably just refer you to the appropriate answers that have already been provided within previous emails.
* If you lose your tutorial support email records you can write to Appleton Greene to receive a copy of your tutorial support file, but a separate administration charge may be levied for this service.
How To Study
Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can help you to plan a task list for getting started so that you can be clear about your direction and your priorities in relation to your training program. It is also a good way to introduce yourself to the tutorial support team.
Planning your study environment
Your study conditions are of great importance and will have a direct effect on how much you enjoy your training program. Consider how much space you will have, whether it is comfortable and private and whether you are likely to be disturbed. The study tools and facilities at your disposal are also important to the success of your distance-learning experience. Your tutorial support unit can help with useful tips and guidance, regardless of your starting position. It is important to get this right before you start working on your training program.
Planning your program objectives
It is important that you have a clear list of study objectives, in order of priority, before you start working on your training program. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance here to ensure that your study objectives have been afforded due consideration and priority.
Planning how and when to study
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. This approach is designed to let you study efficiently away from the traditional classroom environment. It is important however, that you plan how and when to study, so that you are making the most of your natural attributes, strengths and opportunities. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance and useful tips to ensure that you are playing to your strengths.
Planning your study tasks
You should have a clear understanding of the study tasks that you should be undertaking and the priority associated with each task. These tasks should also be integrated with your program objectives. The distance learning guide and the guide to tutorial support for students should help you here, but if you need any clarification or assistance, please contact your tutorial support unit.
Planning your time
You will need to allocate specific times during your calendar when you intend to study if you are to have a realistic chance of completing your program on time. You are responsible for planning and managing your own study time, so it is important that you are successful with this. Your tutorial support unit can help you with this if your time plan is not working.
Keeping in touch
Consistency is the key here. If you communicate too frequently in short bursts, or too infrequently with no pattern, then your management ability with your studies will be questioned, both by you and by your tutorial support unit. It is obvious when a student is in control and when one is not and this will depend how able you are at sticking with your study plan. Inconsistency invariably leads to in-completion.
Charting your progress
Your tutorial support team can help you to chart your own study progress. Refer to your distance learning guide for further details.
Making it work
To succeed, all that you will need to do is apply yourself to undertaking your training program and interpreting it correctly. Success or failure lies in your hands and your hands alone, so be sure that you have a strategy for making it work. Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can guide you through the process of program planning, development and implementation.
Reading methods
Interpretation is often unique to the individual but it can be improved and even quantified by implementing consistent interpretation methods. Interpretation can be affected by outside interference such as family members, TV, or the Internet, or simply by other thoughts which are demanding priority in our minds. One thing that can improve our productivity is using recognized reading methods. This helps us to focus and to be more structured when reading information for reasons of importance, rather than relaxation.
Speed reading
When reading through course manuals for the first time, subconsciously set your reading speed to be just fast enough that you cannot dwell on individual words or tables. With practice, you should be able to read an A4 sheet of paper in one minute. You will not achieve much in the way of a detailed understanding, but your brain will retain a useful overview. This overview will be important later on and will enable you to keep individual issues in perspective with a more generic picture because speed reading appeals to the memory part of the brain. Do not worry about what you do or do not remember at this stage.
Content reading
Once you have speed read everything, you can then start work in earnest. You now need to read a particular section of your course manual thoroughly, by making detailed notes while you read. This process is called Content Reading and it will help to consolidate your understanding and interpretation of the information that has been provided.
Making structured notes on the course manuals
When you are content reading, you should be making detailed notes, which are both structured and informative. Make these notes in a MS Word document on your computer, because you can then amend and update these as and when you deem it to be necessary. List your notes under three headings: 1. Interpretation – 2. Questions – 3. Tasks. The purpose of the 1st section is to clarify your interpretation by writing it down. The purpose of the 2nd section is to list any questions that the issue raises for you. The purpose of the 3rd section is to list any tasks that you should undertake as a result. Anyone who has graduated with a business-related degree should already be familiar with this process.
Organizing structured notes separately
You should then transfer your notes to a separate study notebook, preferably one that enables easy referencing, such as a MS Word Document, a MS Excel Spreadsheet, a MS Access Database, or a personal organizer on your cell phone. Transferring your notes allows you to have the opportunity of cross-checking and verifying them, which assists considerably with understanding and interpretation. You will also find that the better you are at doing this, the more chance you will have of ensuring that you achieve your study objectives.
Question your understanding
Do challenge your understanding. Explain things to yourself in your own words by writing things down.
Clarifying your understanding
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your understanding.
Question your interpretation
Do challenge your interpretation. Qualify your interpretation by writing it down.
Clarifying your interpretation
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your interpretation.
Qualification Requirements
The student will need to successfully complete the project study and all of the exercises relating to the Global Supply Chain Development corporate training program, achieving a pass with merit or distinction in each case, in order to qualify as an Accredited Global Supply Chain Development Specialist (AGSCDS). All monthly workshops need to be tried and tested within your company. These project studies can be completed in your own time and at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office. There are no formal examinations, assessment is based upon the successful completion of the project studies. They are called project studies because, unlike case studies, these projects are not theoretical, they incorporate real program processes that need to be properly researched and developed. The project studies assist us in measuring your understanding and interpretation of the training program and enable us to assess qualification merits. All of the project studies are based entirely upon the content within the training program and they enable you to integrate what you have learnt into your corporate training practice.
Global Supply Chain Development – Grading Contribution
Project Study – Grading Contribution
Customer Service – 10%
E-business – 05%
Finance – 10%
Globalization – 10%
Human Resources – 10%
Information Technology – 10%
Legal – 05%
Management – 10%
Marketing – 10%
Production – 10%
Education – 05%
Logistics – 05%
TOTAL GRADING – 100%
Qualification grades
A mark of 90% = Pass with Distinction.
A mark of 75% = Pass with Merit.
A mark of less than 75% = Fail.
If you fail to achieve a mark of 75% with a project study, you will receive detailed feedback from the Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and/or Accredited Consultant, together with a list of tasks which you will need to complete, in order to ensure that your project study meets with the minimum quality standard that is required by Appleton Greene. You can then re-submit your project study for further evaluation and assessment. Indeed you can re-submit as many drafts of your project studies as you need to, until such a time as they eventually meet with the required standard by Appleton Greene, so you need not worry about this, it is all part of the learning process.
When marking project studies, Appleton Greene is looking for sufficient evidence of the following:
Pass with merit
A satisfactory level of program understanding
A satisfactory level of program interpretation
A satisfactory level of project study content presentation
A satisfactory level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
A satisfactory level of the practical integration of academic theory
Pass with distinction
An exceptional level of program understanding
An exceptional level of program interpretation
An exceptional level of project study content presentation
An exceptional level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
An exceptional level of the practical integration of academic theory
Preliminary Analysis
Gallup Business Journal
How Employee Engagement Drives Growth: Engaged companies outperform their competition,
A Gallup study shows by Susan Sorenson, 2013.
“It’s great when companies try to improve employee engagement and even better when they measure it. Measurement is the first step companies must take before they can implement meaningful actions to improve engagement. But if they don’t measure the right things in the right way, those actions won’t matter — and they won’t have a measurable impact on business outcomes or the bottom line.
“Measurement is one thing, what you measure is another,” says Jim Harter, Ph.D., Gallup’s chief scientist of employee engagement and wellbeing. “You can measure a lot of things that have nothing to do with performance and that don’t help a company implement a system that allows managers to create change.”
Gallup’s Q employee engagement assessment is designed to uncover the things that really matter to employee engagement and business performance. It’s backed by rigorous science linking it to nine integral performance outcomes. And Gallup researchers continually study findings from research on the Q to learn more about employee engagement and its impact on organizational and team performance.
Predicting key performance outcomes Every two to four years, Gallup completes meta-analysis research — a statistical technique that pools multiple studies — on the Q . By conducting this research regularly over time and increasing the number of work units analyzed, Gallup stays on the cutting edge of how well employee engagement predicts key performance outcomes.
In 2012, Gallup conducted its eighth meta-analysis on the Q using 263 research studies across 192 organizations in 49 industries and 34 countries. Within each study, Gallup researchers statistically calculated the work-unit-level relationship between employee engagement and performance outcomes that the organization supplied. Researchers studied 49,928 work units, including nearly 1.4 million employees. This eighth iteration of the meta-analysis further confirmed the well-established connection between employee engagement and nine performance outcomes:
• customer ratings
• profitability
• productivity
• turnover (for high-turnover and low-turnover organizations)
• safety incidents
• shrinkage (theft)
• absenteeism
• patient safety incidents
• quality (defects)
Given the timing of the eighth iteration of this study, it also confirmed that employee engagement continues to be an important predictor of company performance even in a tough economy. “When you ask people about their intentions during a recession, it’s pretty clear that disengaged workers are just waiting around to see what happens,” says Harter. “Engaged workers, though, have bought into what the organization is about and are trying to make a difference. This is why they’re usually the most productive workers.”
To continue reading this research paper, please visit:
Leadership & Organization Development Journal for Emerald Insight
Xu, J. and Cooper Thomas, H. (2011), How can leaders achieve high employee engagement?, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 399-416.
“Introduction
Employee engagement concerns the degree to which individuals make full use of their cognitive, emotional, and physical resources to perform role‐related work (Kahn, 1990; May et al., 2004). This fits with other recent psychological approaches that draw on positive psychology (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), and focus on making best use of individual strengths (Hatcher and Rogers, 2009; Luthans, 2002). Thus, employees who are engaged in their work have an energetic, enjoyable, and effective connection with their work (Kahn, 1990; Macey and Schneider, 2008). In addition to humanistic reasons for pursuing engagement, there are commercial incentives also. Higher levels of employee engagement are associated with increased return on assets, higher earning per employee, higher performance, greater sales growth, and lower absenteeism (Banks, 2006; Harter et al., 2002; JRA, 2007; Salanova et al., 2005; Towers Perrin, 2003). Further, greater engagement is associated with decreased costs, including reduced turnover, lower cost of goods sold, and fewer quality errors (Banks, 2006; Harter et al., 2002; JRA, 2007; Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004; Towers Perrin, 2003). Moreover, a recent study shows that engagement is a conduit for the effects of broader individual and workplace factors on job performance (Rich et al., in press).
Previous research has typically adopted one of two approaches to understanding antecedents of engagement. One approach is Kahn’s (1990, 1992) psychological conditions of engagement, where the employee needs to have sufficiently meaningful work, have the personal resources available to do that work, and feel psychologically safe in investing themselves in that work in order to become engaged in their work (May et al., 2004; Rich et al., in press). A second approach is the job demands‐resources model, in which the availability of constructive job resources leads to engagement (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Bakker et al., 2007; Mauno et al., 2007; Xanthopoulou et al., 2007). These resources can include organizational factors such as job security, interpersonal elements such as supervisor support, and also role and task features such as role conflict, and autonomy.
Although there is a growing body of literature investigating engagement, scholars have noted that academic research lags behind practitioner developments (Macey and Schneider, 2008; Robinson et al., 2004). This is particularly notable with respect to the role of leadership in employee engagement. While there has been initial research on the relationship of leadership dimensions with engagement, this literature is limited in that measures of engagement have not been provided for scrutiny (Alban‐Metcalfe and Alimo‐Metcalfe, 2008; Papalexandris and Galanaki, 2009), or have assessed antecedents of engagement rather than engagement itself (Atwater and Brett, 2006). Aside from these, researchers have confirmed both indirect relations (Kahn, 1990; May et al., 2004; Rich et al., in press) and moderating effects of leadership on engagement (Bakker et al., 2007). Yet there remains a lack of research looking at the direct effects of leadership, using a clear measure of engagement. Such a relationship looks likely given the wealth of evidence that good leadership is positively related to follower attitude and behavior concepts that overlap with engagement. Past research has shown that transformational leadership is positively associated with follower commitment (Lee, 2005), job satisfaction (Judge and Piccolo, 2004) and work motivation (Judge and Piccolo, 2004), and leader‐member exchange is positively associated with organizational citizenship behaviors (Ilies et al., 2007). Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct relationship between leader behaviors and follower engagement.”
To continue reading this research paper, please visit:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437731111134661/full/html
Commitment in Supply Chain Management: Commitment as a component of supply chain management,
by UKEssays (November 2018):
“Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh (1987) describe the term “commitment” as “an implied or clear assurance of the continued relationship among trade partners.” Commitment is an important component for successful durable relations that are a constituent of the implementation of Supply Chain Management (Gundlach, Achrol, and Mentzer 1995).
Morgan and Hunt (1994) defined commitment as “the partner in an exchange is believing that the current relationship with other partner has so much importance that it deserves the optimum level of efforts to sustain it; that is, the party who has made the commitment believes in the enduring relationship for committed party believes the relationship endures for the foreseeable future.” and commitment plays and essential role in relational exchanges among the firm and the partners.
TOP MANAGEMENT COMMITMENT:
Top management commitment is when there is direct contribution by the people acquiring top rank positions in some definite and significantly vital aspect of an organization (BusinessDictionary, 2010).
In the study of Morgan and Hunt (1994), they said that commitment by the top level management executives can provide results that will promote effectiveness, efficiency and increased level of productivity.
Without senior management commitment up to the CEO of the organization, the vision needed for the success of supply chain cannot emerge. Only the top levels of the management can dedicate resources and realign the rewards and measures that are needed to make Supply Chain Management an organization-wide priority. When there is lack of support from top management, it almost guarantees that the integrative efforts are ineffective and superficial.(Ogden, Fawcett, Magnanand Cooper, 2006)
A. Keramati, and M. A. Azadeh (2007), Top management commitment happen to veracity when the acceptance of the responsibility for a successful business plan implementation comes from a manager of company or division. The manager should show his involvement and interest and should add special talent and expertise that enabled him to become a president. The term “top manager” is usually referred as chief executive. All the activities including communication of company’s quality value, buttressing quality messages congregating with the work force as well as the customers providing formal and informal recognition, to receive training and training others all come under the umbrella of top management commitment. Top level management develop and facilitates the achievement of company’s mission and vision, create and develop values that are required for long-term success and apply these by means of appropriate actions and behaviors, and show their personal involvement in ensuring a developed and implemented organization’s management system.
Krause and Ellram (1997), in their research of “Success Factors in Supplier Development” stated various factors that are related to the top management commitment. These included supplier development actions such as site visits, supplier recognition, and direct investments in supplier’s firm. Hacker and Couturier (1999) gave a conceptual model about trust that sets for three elements: capability, commitment, and consistency. When there will be lacking top management commitment, then the resources may proscribe capability, there will not be any firm intention to cooperate. Certainly the supplier or the supply manager can’t be counted on to the consistently performed. So, this will result in no trust. Zsidisin and Ellram (2001) in their research argued that top management of the firm determines the measures of the supply chain success. In order to receive support and be successful, the measures of Supply Chain performance must support the performance measures of the organization.
Mentzer, Witt, Keebler, Min, Nix, Smith and Zacharia (2001) in their study stated that top management commitment and support plays an important part in determining the standards of an organization, its direction and orientation. Day and Lord in 1998 stated in their research that the top level management executives have a generous impact on the performance of any organization. Lambert, Douglas, James and Lisa (1998) proposed that support, headship and commitment from the top management are crucial predecessor to the implementation of Supply Chain Management. Within the same framework, Loforte (1991) argues that when there is lack of support from the top level management, it is then considered as a barrier or hurdle to the Supply Chain Management.
Kimball and Stanley (2004) stated in their research that without top management commitment, the successful relationships can also become unsuccessful in the upcoming period. There are various reasons for this, but many of them are very clear and evident. Successful supply chain relationships straddle between the organizational boundaries and it functions.
One of the ways in which the relationship management ability can be built is by providing widespread training and edification the existing decision making bodies. Top management has to be familiar with this skill as it is a necessary condition for successful implementation of the supply chain. (Blackwell and Blackwell, 1999)
To achieve desired collaborative breakthroughs, the key is to establish a strong managerial commitment to Supply Chain Management (Akkermans 1999; Lummus, 1998). Commitment should come from all the levels of the organization and also from the key channel “partners.” Marien (2000) in her research stated that top level management must endorse Supply Chain Management initiatives and provide necessary resources. The dedication of resources and realigning the incentives for developing true cross-functional capabilities can only be done by the top levels of the management. At the same time, the managers at lower level and workers across variety of functions who should implement the initiative must enter into the Supply Chain Management program or it cannot be succeeded (Blackwell and Blackwell, 1999; LaLonde, 2000; Bowersox and Closs, 2002; Tyndall, 1998).”
To continue reading this research paper, please visit:
Alfalla-Luque, R., Marin-Garcia, J.A. and Medina-Lopez, C. (2015). An analysis of the direct and mediated effects of employee commitment and supply chain integration on organisational performance.
International Journal of Production Economics, 162, pp.242–257.
1. Introduction
Supply chain management (SCM) has strategic relevance because increased competitive pressures have pushed many firms to turn their supply chains into competitive weapons to enhance performance (Fine, 1998). Effective SCM is a source of potentially sustainable competitive advantage for organisations and supply chain integration (SCI) plays a crucial role in this (Van der Vaart and Van Donk, 2008). However, despite the potential benefits of SCI, the effective integration of value-added activities along the supply chain (SC) and the competitive influence of SCI have been questioned. Thus, more empirical research is needed in this topic (Leuschner et al., 2013).
Despite the fact that numerous studies have addressed SCI, it can be seen that it is not a well-defined concept (Fabbe-Costes and Jahre, 2008). SCI does not have a single, accepted definition or operationalisation (Pagell, 2004). SCI should consider the strategic, tactical and operational levels. SCI could be defined as the degree to which SC members achieve collaborative inter- and intra-organisational management on the strategic, tactical and operational levels of activities (and their corresponding physical and information flows) that, starting with raw materials suppliers, add value to the product to satisfy the needs of the final customer at the lowest cost and the greatest speed (Alfalla-Luque et al., 2013b).
SCI needs both intra and inter-company integration across the entire SC in order to work as a single entity (Alfalla-Luque and Medina-Lopez, 2009). In consequence, SCI research should take into account internal integration (INTI) and external integration (EI) with supplier (SI) and customer (CI), as well as the external integration orientation (EIO).
However, previous research has not always taken the different dimensions of SCI into account (Fabbe-Costes and Jahre, 2008). Droge et al. (2004) suggest that the joint use of EI and INTI has a synergistic effect on firm performance. Other studies show that one of the reasons that prevents a high level of EI being achieved is a low level of INTI (Gimenez and Ventura, 2005). Moreover, INTI seems to be the starting point for broader integration across the SC. However, there is over emphasis on customer integration (CI) and supplier integration (SI) alone, excluding the important central link of INTI (Flynn et al., 2010). As stated by Zhao et al. (2011), despite increasing research interest in SCI, we still have a very limited understanding of what influences SCI and what the relationships between INTI and EI are. This paper seeks to provide empirical evidence on this relationship.
The prior literature is not unanimous in stating that the relationship between SCI and performance is positive. Some papers conclude that a higher level of SCI positively influences performance (Li et al., 2009), but others have not been able to demonstrate this relationship (Swink et al., 2007). So, additional research is necessary to test the relationship between SCI (separated out into its various dimensions) and performance. This relationship could be affected by the existence of variables that act as antecedents. Some studies have found that SCI has a mediating effect on performance (Vanichchinchai, 2012), but a limited number of studies have been conducted in this respect. As a result, determining the antecedents and performance consequences of SCI is a key focus of recent SCM research (Droge et al., 2012).
The apparent inconsistency in the findings and doubt about the relationship between SCI and performance suggest a missing variable. Taking into account the literature, our interest lies in including employee commitment (EC) as an antecedent in this relationship. Previous research has analysed the effect as an antecedent of workforce practices on performance for some operations management (OM) practices, e.g. TQM, JIT and TPM (Cua et al., 2001) but little research has been done on the effect of workforce practices in SCI, or even in SCM in general (Fisher et al., 2010). However, Fawcett et al. (2008) state that human nature is the primary barrier to successful SC collaboration both internally and with external SC partners.
This paper therefore focuses on the relationships among the different dimensions of SCI themselves, and on the relationship between EC and the SCI dimensions to explain several performance measures. It analyses EC as an antecedent of the effect of SCI on performance. For this we use a multiple-informant international sample originating from the third round of the High Performance Manufacturing (HPM) project. Fig. 1 shows the research framework.”
To continue reading this research paper, please visit:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527314002217
Success Stories: Case Studies in Supply Chain Engagement
EPA Center for Corporate Climate Leadership, 2018
“Success Stories: Case Studies in Supply Chain Engagement
Leading companies employ varied methods to engage with their supply chains depending upon sector and company-specific goals. The EPA Center for Corporate Climate Leadership has interviewed leaders in supply chain engagement across a range of industries and developed the following case studies that highlight the leaders’ achievements and successful approaches. These companies have developed and deployed innovative strategies to engage their supply chains, reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, understand their shifting supply chain risks, and take advantage of market opportunities. The Center will continue posting case studies to this page as they are finalized.
Clif Bar & Company
Clif Bar & Company (Clif Bar), an organic food and drink company with 33% of the health and lifestyle bar revenue in the United States in 2016, has been tracking greenhouse gas emissions since 2002 and is driven by five bottom lines: sustaining the business, the brands, employees, communities, and the planet. Clif Bar has developed an innovative supply chain engagement approach: the company hires independent energy experts to provide consulting to suppliers at Clif Bar’s expense. The experts help suppliers assess how much electricity they use on Clif Bar’s behalf and develop methods for installing on-site renewable energy or purchasing green power to supply this electricity. Clif Bar’s drive to treat energy as an ingredient and to follow the standards they require of suppliers will be instructive to companies looking to new approaches for supply chain engagement.
IBM
Founded in 1911 and one of the largest global tech companies, IBM has been a pioneer in corporate responsibility for over four decades. IBM helped found the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition, now called the Responsible Business Alliance, to extend the commitments of individual companies to environmental and social responsibility leadership across the electronics industry’s suppliers by establishing an industry-wide Code of Conduct. Further, in 2010, IBM expanded its supply chain environmental management program to require all suppliers with whom IBM has a direct relationship to establish a management system that addresses their social and environmental responsibilities and to cascade these requirements to their suppliers. IBM believes that sound social and environmental management can help suppliers maintain a competitive edge. IBM wants to help suppliers appreciate that meeting its requirements can contribute to more efficient and sustainable operations and aid in decreasing operational costs and improving margins.
Ford Motor Company
As an auto manufacturer with approximately 11,000 suppliers in over 60 countries, Ford’s supply chain largely influences its environmental and social impacts and values. In 2003, Ford became the first automaker to develop a code of conduct, which outlines policies for employees, contractors, and suppliers on topics such as health and safety, anti-corruption and anti-trust, workplace ethics, asset and data safety, and product quality, and environmental issues. Ford’s environmental supply chain engagement strategy focuses on suppliers with the highest impact on the environment. To create an environment for shared learning, Ford encourages suppliers to communicate openly with Ford and to identify vulnerabilities so that both parties can work to mitigate risks. Though supplier participation in Ford’s initiatives remains voluntary, Ford strongly encourages and culturally fosters participation, and acknowledges the efforts of suppliers pursuing excellence in environmental stewardship.
To continue reading this research paper, please visit:
https://www.epa.gov/climateleadership/success-stories-case-studies-supply-chain-engagement
Course Manuals 1-12
Course Manual 1: Supply Chain Obstacles
It’s not easy to manage a global supply chain. Businesses that want to take advantage of the benefits of global supply chains must overcome a number of obstacles, many of which are difficult. So, what difficulties does your company have in terms of employee engagement, and how can you address them effectively?
The Main Obstacles of Employee Engagement in Supply Chain Productivity
Employee engagement is a topic that supply chain leaders should discuss. It isn’t simply for employees who are sitting at their desks. In today’s global supply chains, it’s also about the individuals that make or break your business: the deskless and frontline workers.
For one thing, supply chain employees constitute the backbone of every company, and as such, they can have a significant impact on productivity and workplace safety. Assuring that your employees have access to safety protocols and other critical information ensures that they have all they need to run a successful and safe floor.
Before we look at strategies to mitigate employee engagement, it’s important to understand why it’s a problem for supply chain managers. After all, supply chain management employees, like those in any other area or industry, want to feel appreciated and accomplished.
Apart from financial and social security, failing to deliver these things to your staff will always result in low morale, productivity, and retention. As a result, some of the most significant barriers in increasing supply chain productivity include, but are not limited to:
• Lack of inspiring leadership – While each employee is responsible for his or her professional engagement, the management team is also responsible for the employees’ overall job happiness.
• A focus on profits, not the people – It’s true that generating cash is a major concern for businesses if they want to stay afloat in the market; yet, short-term profits mean very little if staff aren’t happy and functioning at their best.
• Poor advancement pipeline – It’s understandable that not every employee is suited for progress and promotion. Failure to promote high-performing staff to more responsible and rewarding positions, on the other hand, will soon sour the mood in your supply chain management and lead to a decline in productivity.
• Labour Shortages
1. Lack of Inspiring Leadership
Leadership is the only factor that defines the quality of the workplace environment. People appreciate working for a good leader and are willing to go above and beyond. Poor management, on the other hand, ruins working relationships, resulting in low morale, poor work ethics, and excessive turnover. Managers require relationship-building training and must be held accountable for poor workplace performance and high turnover.
Lu Siqi is a Supply Chain Manager at SK Chemical in Shanghai. The human side of supply chain management, she claims, is always the biggest hurdle to supply chain engagement. The systems are in place, and the tasks are quite normal and uncomplicated, but communication, management, and being on the same page are the concerns that have the greatest impact on operational efficiency.
All the processes and procedures in place to compensate for human error (which still happens!) will be mostly unnecessary, save for critical checklists, if leadership is on point and every subordinate knows the mission and acts proactively.
The supply chain’s contribution to revenue growth should not be overlooked. According to Deloitte’s research, organisations with high-performing supply chains have revenue growth that is significantly higher than the industry average. Supply chain management contributes to success by lowering total costs, regulating inventory levels, and meeting demand efficiently.
Companies need strong and talented supply chain staff at all levels to drive these changes and establish their supply chain strategies as they migrate from brick-and-mortar selling to a real omnichannel buying experience.
2. A Focus on Profits, Not the People
Millennials have surpassed Gen Xers as the largest demographic group in the workforce, with their numbers in the labour beginning to drop. While true generational disparities may be exaggerated, millennials appear to have a higher rate of voluntary turnover as they seek employment that engage them more or leave for a better work-life balance.
Employees in the United States value the flexibility to manage their work-life balance the most, followed by acknowledgment for their contributions, according to MMC’s Global Talent Trends 2019 report. Employees’ capacity to collaborate remotely and appreciation for the particular skills they bring to the workplace are two examples of how this might be accomplished. Employees also value the chance to participate in short-term projects and other work experiences that help them learn more on the job. By properly regulating information flow, it is also crucial to decrease the volume of distracting digital noise, such as superfluous emails, electronic conversations, and internal social media.
3. Poor Advancement Pipeline
While it’s great that the economy is booming and unemployment is at a 50-year low, the disadvantage is that businesses are having trouble filling open positions. This is bad news for supply chain executives who are dealing with enormous hurdles as they transition from paper to digital supply networks. To make matters worse, many millennials do not consider supply chain management to be a cool job, and many firms are guilty of undervaluing supply chain professionals.
The following is a quote from Debbie Lentz, President of Global Supply Chain of RS Components and the Electrocomponents Group:
“In today’s business and economic landscape, supply chain management has more opportunity and advantage than ever before — but that’s not to say it doesn’t come with challenges…”
Those working in supply chain management are responsible for projecting possible issues, dangers, and setbacks in order to uncover possibilities to overcome difficulties moving forward, from a talent scarcity to expanding environmental compliance standards.
Talent recruiting — and retention — issues were evident in 2018 and extended into 2019. We’re seeing issues with gender gaps in the industry — only 10% of senior supply chain management positions are filled by women, and women account for only 37% of the entire supply chain — as well as a skills gap; education and businesses aren’t providing the training and qualifications needed to keep up with the changes in our economy and workforce. Simply expressed, if this shortage persists, supply chain management performance will deteriorate.
So, how should firms go about overcoming the skills gap and shortage of competent personnel that we’re witnessing more and more in supply chain management? It all comes down to two things: increasing awareness and getting in front of new groups of individuals in order to attract fresh talent, and then delivering high-quality training to keep them. The quality of products and output will inevitably improve if you take a people-first approach. It’s also important to keep in mind that current and future skill sets differ significantly from those of those who have worked for a long time and will soon retire; simply replacing these workers will not solve the talent or skills shortage —and this is where having the best possible training is critical.
4. Labour Shortages
Everything these days can be linked back to a horribly out-of-whack supply chain, from seemingly random shortages of commodities in the grocery store to small-print cautions that your online orders may face shipment delays.
When one point in the supply chain is disrupted or delayed, the repercussions are felt all the way down the line, as we’ve all learned over the last 18 months. More than 70 container ships were unable to unload products at ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach towards the end of 2021 owing to a labour shortage.
Experts say it won’t be easy or quick to fix the supply chain’s problems. A shortage of workers is at the root of practically every interruption throughout this internationally integrated network.
Labor shortages in all parts of the supply chain are affecting businesses of all sizes. It also has an impact on economic growth. According to a poll of local chamber of commerce executives conducted by the United States Chamber of Commerce, 90 percent of these leaders believe that labour shortages are hindering economic growth in their communities.
FedEx lowered its financial outlook in September 2021, citing labour shortages as a reason for higher expenses in the most recent quarter, as well as supply chain issues that slowed shipment demand. FedEx said it spent an extra $450 million in the quarter ended Aug. 31 to cover costs such as increased overtime, higher compensation to recruit more workers, and higher transportation costs.
In Summary
For success, advanced supply chain expertise are required. Businesses must cooperate with HR and other decision-makers to determine the true causes of workplace turnover and take actions to modify the workplace climate while considering the needs of employees. Building a strong brand identity aids in attracting top supply chain employees, while constructively resolving workplace concerns aids in reducing avoidable attrition. Internal training fosters loyalty and gives aspiring employees hope for a future with the company. These actions, when taken together, considerably alleviate the supply chain talent deficit and help the company reach its objectives.
Course Manual 2: Efficient Cross-Department Communication
When you’re in charge of a company, communication breakdowns can cause serious efficiency and production issues. While smaller teams may be able to swiftly address the challenges of communication inefficiencies, as the company expands and advances, this problem becomes more difficult to overcome.
The importance of Cross- Department Communication
“There’s no I in team.” A simple phrase that has been used to highlight the significance of collaboration in many facets of life for many years. This assertion is also valid in the Global Supply Chain, both within and outside of the business function. For a team to achieve efficiency and cost savings, all members of the organisation must work together. This communication, however, should not be limited to a single functional team. Leaders must maintain continual communication with team members from finance, operations, accounting, legal, and other departments in order for a company to achieve maximum efficiency and cost savings. Let’s imagine your marketing department wants to launch a promotion on a specific item next month. This will result in a 10% boost in sales. Buyers must increase order quantities for the BOM in order to meet peaking demand.
Tactics to Increase Visibility
1. Meetings with individuals at all levels on a regular basis. It’s especially crucial for senior decision makers to have a clear line of sight to other functional initiatives, but it can also be beneficial to pass that visibility down to lower-level staff. Although each employee’s day-to-day operations may not have a significant cross-functional influence, it is critical for all employees to comprehend the business’s interconnectedness.
2. Disseminate real-time performance data. Taking things a step further than a meeting, creating dashboards or KPIs that are shared cross-functionally might be beneficial. Individuals will be able to make more educated decisions or raise red flags in areas of concern using this information.
3. Alignment of performance incentives and key performance indicators (KPIs). It will be much easier to achieve functional connectedness if you can assure that everyone in your business is working toward the same goals. Take, for example, Procurement and Finance. To keep costs at an efficient level, take the effort to define quarterly category spend budgets that match up in both departments.
Benefits to Increased Visibility
1. Disaster prevention. The advantages of cross-functional communication don’t always manifest themselves in quantitative results. Avoiding errors can often have just as much of an impact as enhancing performance.
2. Long-term cost reductions. Cross-functional teams can reduce costs in a variety of ways, including reducing rework, long-term planning, administrative consolidation, and increased customer satisfaction.
3. Different points of view. Even though SMEs are experts in their field, they can always benefit from outside input. A procurement expert may be so focused on a core set of purchasing goals that they overlook the harmful impact these goals may have on other parts of the company.
So keep in mind that “there’s no I in team.” It’s easy to overlook the little things in life, and the same is true for the Global Supply Chain. The next time you’re faced with a major choice, consider how it might affect the entire organization.
Ensuring the Departments are in Sync
Cross-departmental communication is critical to a company’s ability to successfully respond to problems. The company risks losing clients and appearing unprofessional if it does not have effective communication channels. So, how can a business ensure that all of its departments are in sync? Seven members of the Young Entrepreneur Council offer some advice on how to guarantee that your company’s departments are communicating effectively.
1. Overcommunicate and Take Ownership
We want the team to stand up on a regular basis to address issues that arise in their area. We ensure that they have faith in their capacity to make the appropriate judgments. Eventually, from each team level, we raise solutions and debates to the department head level, and then to the leadership team. Information is consolidated and announced during our weekly all-company meetings, then distributed to individual teams. – Fourlane’s Marjorie Adams
2. Consolidate Issues into A Single Meeting
The best method to ensure that departments are communicating regularly, in my opinion, is to combine all of the topics into a single meeting, which can be held monthly, quarterly, or as needed in your firm. I understand that meetings have a poor rep for being unnecessarily bureaucratic and time-consuming. However, when used effectively and with a defined aim in mind, they may be quite effective in reducing email clutter and improving communication. This prevents people from emailing each other at random and developing a cottage industry of ad hoc “best practise” standards or solutions to situations that should instead be discussed and resolved by the entire group. Everyone writes down their talking points, which are then compiled on the meeting agenda so that participants can arrive with solutions in hand. – Maria Thimothy, OneIMS
3. Have Formal and Informal Conversations
Having frequent official and informal interactions between departments, as well as documenting the outcomes of these meetings, can aid in the prevention of miscommunication. By strengthening departmental ties through both official and casual interactions, you’ll be able to open up lines of communication because the two departments will feel comfortable speaking with one another. Because neither party will hesitate to call out for questions, suggestions, or answers, comfort is critical to success.- Diana Goodwin, MarketBox
4. Leverage the Right Technology
All departments, especially those that must be in regular communication, have a major obligation to communicate and synchronise. We use Microsoft Teams and have a channel where cross-functional departments may communicate in real time. This streamlines communication and enables for quick responses, which is important to clients. We’ve also used our customer relationship management application for all documents, and we’re able to maintain our conversations transparent by include other internal users. Finally, we have biweekly meetings with all of those departments to address the most pressing concerns, highlights, and areas of concentration. Everyone is aware of one another’s objectives. This has made a huge difference.- Nicole Smartt Serres, Star Staffing
5. Communicate Regularly and In Different Ways
Before we start the day and in the middle of the shift, we get a call. I don’t want specific details to be lost in the shuffle. In our group, communication is crucial. For backup or verification, we always talk, ping, and call each other with notes on Slack and Asana. Finally, to minimise misunderstandings, we record voice messages for some chats. – Daisy Jing, Banish
6. Implement the EOS Process
We follow the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) process, which entails a weekly leadership meeting with each department head to discuss concerns, devise solutions, and determine which messages should be disseminated throughout the organisation. This is a small piece of the puzzle. The other component is building trust between departments by assisting them in understanding each other’s roles and priorities so that they can have empathy when addressing concerns, and then making it a requirement that individuals try to resolve issues with one another before approaching their direct support.- Kelsey Raymond, Influence & Co.
7. Hire the Right Managers
People who leave their egos at the door when they arrive to work are better able to collaborate with others and develop a shared vision that everyone on the team can believe in. It’s just as crucial to “sell” your internal teams on the advantages of working together as it is to “sell” new customers or clients on joining your organisation. It’s difficult to impress others if you don’t have the correct mentality within. This does not imply that your squad should be “babied.” Sometimes the “iron fist, silk glove” strategy is the most effective.- Terry Tateossian, Socialfix Media
A case study: Cross-departmental communication as a Product
Transifex is an online translation management solution for content and user interfaces in software applications. The company was created in 2009 and is a pioneer in the field of software localization. The organization stated they developed several early “diseases” linked to internal cross-team communication as a result of being busy for many years, such as working in silos, and lack of communication leading to assumptions and shortage of information on team outputs.
It was a challenging task to break the established habit of silos. They knew from previous experience that this transformation should begin at the departmental level rather than at the C-Suite level. To begin, they scheduled weekly design meetings with members of the product and technical teams. With time, this meeting resulted in customer-facing application results. They also worked with each team to establish a better meeting structure so that they could get the most out of each sync-up meeting.
Weekly sync-up, an emerging pattern
They worked as a product team to apply weekly sync-up meetings with other departments and noticed several behavioural trends during these sync-up meetings:
• The meetings helped participants form strong bonds.
• The meetings inspired lively debates
• Venting sessions that employees needed to steam off from non-team-related topics.
•A better understanding of each department’s and individual’s work, as well as the impending obstacles.
•Deeper alignment and a shared plan of action increase the impact of departmental OKRs. We not only align our OKR goals, but we also break down our cross-departmental work into manageable parts.
•Now that the daily jobs and communication issues had been resolved, they could discuss more strategic issues.
•They improved customer relations as a result of stronger cross-team alignment.
Embracing cross-departmental communication
The most important aspect of weekly sync-ups is to stick to the schedule and make it a habit. Even if you don’t think you have anything to contribute or that it will be a waste of time, keep going. Allow others the opportunity to interact and communicate.
Communication and synchronisation aren’t merely to-do items on your to-do list, cross-team interaction is always changing. Soft skills are at the heart of all encounters, therefore there is always work to be done, dropped balls to pick up, and new difficulties to face. By knowing the present status you can take corrective action if you have sync-up meetings as a habit. Teams can tackle more complicated, cross-departmental challenges if awareness and trust are built up.
Course Manual 3: Bottom-Up Accountability
Gone are the days when the CEO was the exclusive source of information. There’s no shortage of value in today’s workforce, which is made up of varied, motivated, and highly intelligent individuals. Wise CEOs understand that if you don’t tap into the collective wisdom of your entire staff, you’re missing out on fantastic ideas and input. Enter the bottom-up method, a management style that prioritises employees.
This manual will cover the following topics:
• What is a bottom-up management approach?
• Why do organizations employ it?
• What are the benefits and disadvantages?
• Should you switch?
• A Bottom -up case study: Spotify
• If a bottom-up approach is suited for your organization
What is a Bottom-Up Management Approach?
A bottom-up approach is a way of making corporate decisions that starts from the bottom of the hierarchy, rather than at the top. In practise, this means that the CEO or department head will not be making all of the choices (this is referred to as a top-down approach).
A bottom-up strategy focuses on the requirements of your customers and gathers feedback from the employees closest to them, who are often the lowest in a traditional management hierarchy.
One-size-fits-all solutions frequently improve turnover in some job categories or geographies while wreaking havoc in others. Companies can uncover the personalised solutions needed to address the specific causes of poor retention and engagement in a given division by turning the traditional strategy on its head and working from the bottom up.
But, isn’t it true that adopting tailored solutions inside certain divisions is more difficult and expensive than implementing scaled solutions? You may believe so, but if you return to your problem and conduct a root cause analysis, you’ll likely find the Pareto principle at work. That is, you’d observe that 20% of the divisions/root causes are responsible for around 80% of the negative consequences of poor retention and engagement.
Why Do Organizations Use a Bottom-Up Management Approach?
The benefits of top-down management are numerous. Everyone understands who makes the decisions, and if everything is in order, staff will be able to fulfil their tasks without having to make major decisions.
A top-down strategy, on the other hand, has flaws. Top-down management overlooks lower-level employees’ skills, talents, and experiences, which can lead to poor decision-making. Furthermore, if the boss does not have a good understanding of what the project entails but still has the last say, the project may fail.
Most firms think top down when it comes to identifying and implementing remedies to poor employee retention and/or engagement. They assess the findings of their employee engagement survey and then choose the set of options that were stated or indicated the most frequently. Then they take that set of solutions and roll them out across the entire organisation, waiting for results. Those improvements, however, may not always materialise.
For a variety of reasons, the top-down strategy is frequently ineffective. To begin with, what causes poor retention and engagement differs for new vs. tenured employees, people in various functions or job types, and employees in various geographies.
It’s crucial to remember that just because a corporation wishes to take a bottom-up approach doesn’t mean the hierarchy has to go. In fact, in the vast majority of cases, the hierarchy remains the same. What changes is the decision-making approach. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy have more say in decision-making, whilst those at the top can rely on their employees for advice, knowledge, and decision-making.
There are several reasons why your organisation should consider employing a bottom-up approach, and in turn promote employee engagement. Let’s look at some of those factors in more detail below.
What Are the Benefits of a Bottom-Up Management Approach?
1. Increased Collaboration
According to a Queen’s University research, 39 percent of employees believe their workplace lacks teamwork. Because everyone is involved in the decision-making process and has influence into how things are done, a bottom-up approach improves employee collaboration.
Employees will feel empowered to offer fresh ideas with their bosses because communication will be two-way. Adapting to a bottom-up strategy can be a simple process with a wide selection of collaborative tools available to make it easier.
What is the end result? More people are personally invested in and dedicated to the initiatives they are working on.
2. Improved Employee Motivation
According to statistics, 89 percent of firms believe their employees leave for better pay, yet only 12 percent of people earn more at their next job.
A bottom-up approach advocates giving your team more responsibilities and opportunity to contribute, which helps your team stay engaged and figure out the best method to work on their tasks.
3. Better Alignment
You’ll never be on the same page with your boss if you’re constantly receiving new assignments from them, but they never discuss them with you.
Your boss’s expectations will never be met because they never reviewed the project with you to ensure you fully understood it or had an opportunity to provide helpful comments. In fact, only 14% of employees believe they are on the same page as the company’s strategy.
A bottom-up approach may be able to help. Employees will feel more closely associated with the corporate direction and their bosses’ expectations as projects or ideas are determined cooperatively.This gives them the confidence to go on and execute, knowing that their work will benefit their team and company.
4. Faster Innovation
One person’s ideas rarely lead to innovation. Instead, it occurs as a result of conversing, sharing ideas, and acting on those ideas.
Internal changes and innovation can happen faster than ever before when employees are empowered to make decisions as a result of a bottom-up strategy.
Employees will feel involved in the innovation process and actively contribute to enhancing products, services, and procedures rather than waiting for top-level management to come up with new ideas.
5. Increased Trust Between Higher and Lower-Level Employees
Upper management must recognise that their staff have unique information and should be permitted to use it in a bottom-up strategy. Employees’ levels of trust will rise when they learn their managers value and trust their decision-making abilities. Employees will be more trusting of their leaders once they discover they are just like them- David DeSteno
With trust in place, ideas can be exchanged swiftly across high management and lower-level staff, and honest feedback can be given without fear of being judged.
6. Leverage Cross-Company Knowledge
Another significant advantage of a bottom-up method in a corporation is that it eliminates the reliance on a single individual as the sole source of knowledge. If that person takes a day off, there will be no one to address your inquiries. With a bottom-up strategy, everyone in the organisation becomes a valuable source of information in their areas of expertise.
Disadvantages of a Bottom-Up Management Approach
As you might anticipate, there are some disadvantages to the bottom-up approach to business management.
Lengthier Decision-Making Process
Decisions take longer with a bottom-up strategy. Top-level executives, such as the CEO, will not make a decision before informing their team. Instead, there are more individuals engaged, which means the process will take longer.
It’s likely that your bottom-up method isn’t truly bottom-up if there aren’t any changes in decision-making speed.
Should You Switch to a Bottom-Up Approach?
A bottom-up method may not be appropriate for all businesses. Someone always has the final say to ensure that projects are in line with the company’s goals. This is something your team should be aware of.
If you have a time-sensitive project, a top-down strategy may help you finish it on time and without problems. A bottom-up strategy would result in projects taking longer to complete because more people would be able to contribute.
Bottom-up techniques are becoming increasingly prevalent as more organisations adopt a flat organisational structure. Rather than waiting for someone from the upper management team to recommend it, individuals and teams can swiftly make modifications and suggest new projects that they believe are in keeping with corporate goals.
If you’re worried about your staff gaining new expertise as a result of a bottom-up strategy, try managing certain projects top-down and others bottom-up to see which works best.
A Bottom-Up Case Study: How Spotify Balances Employee Autonomy and Accountability
Spotify, a Swedish startup, is an excellent illustration of how to balance autonomy and accountability. Spotify is a ten-year-old music, video, and podcast streaming service with 30 million paying subscribers and revenue of around $3 billion. Its over 2,000 personnel are divided into squads, which are self-organizing, cross-functional and agile teams. Spotify has done a good job of keeping an agile mindset and values while still being accountable. It allows for creativity while maintaining the benefits of repeatability, and it achieves alignment without being overly controlling. Its principles are applicable to a wide variety of businesses, not simply digitally enabled service providers. Here’s how.
The primary organisational unit of Spotify is a self-contained team of no more than eight employees. Each squad is in charge of a certain part of the product, which it owns from start to finish. Squads are in charge of deciding what to produce, how to build it, and who to collaborate with to make the product compatible. They are grouped into tribes. Tribes are made up of many squads connected by a chapter, which is a horizontal grouping that aids in the support of certain competencies like quality assurance, agile coaching, and web development. The major function of the chapter is to enable learning and competency development among the squads.
Spotify modified their performance management system to separate compensation discussion and performance evaluations from coaching and feedback in order to ensure that the feedback process is effective for both individuals and teams. Previously, peer input was factored into salary reviews, which “incentivized workers to gather as many favourable reviews as possible rather than getting feedback around their biggest areas of potential improvement,” according to Spotify. Colleagues now use an internal platform to ask anyone — including managers, peers, and direct reports — to submit comments on results and suggestions for improvement. Employees are free to seek feedback as often as they want. Spotify employee Jonas Aman stated, “The result is a process that everyone needs to own and drive themselves — it is about development and personal growth.”
Obviously, not all of Spotify’s choices will be suitable for every business; but, that isn’t the goal. Rather, the point is that a company’s operational model, ways of working, and culture must all explicitly address tensions between individual accountability and corporate goals. The heart of creating an engaging and inspiring working environment is systematically aligning all elements of your operating model and working environment to create autonomy without sacrificing accountability, to get innovation where it matters most without sacrificing the benefits of scalability and repeatability, and to get alignment without excessive control.
Putting it all together
Deviating from the norm entails gaining a thorough grasp of your challenges and their core causes in order to develop solutions that will generate outcomes where and when they are needed. To actually move the needle, start with the problem, inquire about what matters, validate results, identify solutions using a bottoms-up approach, and include shared accountability.
Conclusion
A bottom-up style to management may be right for you if you want to boost employee motivation, find new ideas, and increase your company’s rate of innovation. It turns the standard management approach on its head without removing managers from the equation.
You may mix it with a top-down hierarchy if you make sure that employees are free to express their thoughts and ideas with the team without fear of repercussions.
Course Manual 4: Standardized Goal-Setting
With rising investor and consumer pressure, corporate sustainability has progressed beyond measurement and reporting to more ambitious goal-setting. In 2019, for example, 90 percent of corporations in the S&P 500® index produced an annual sustainability report, compared to slightly under 20% in 2011.
These sustainability objectives are frequently focused on a company’s internal operations. Given that suppliers are responsible for the bulk of risk in areas like GHG emissions, human rights violations, and corporate governance deficiencies, it’s vital that firms make ESG goals explicit in their supply chain. It is suggested that firms take the following steps to define ESG targets for their supply chains:
1. Define Your Scope
SASB’s materiality matrix is another great place to start for firms attempting to prioritise or identify their overarching aims. Designed primarily for investors, the tool also provides organisations with an overview of financially important ESG criteria in their industry.
Source: sasb.org
2. Define Success
When high-performing firms apply ESG initiatives, they employ quantitative, metrics-based targets to determine if they’ve attained their objectives. These objectives can be divided into two categories:
• Absolute goals, which only consider KPIs—for example, lowering GHG emissions by 30% by 2025
• Relative goals, which compares a KPI to a unit of output—for example, by 2025, Scope 1 GHG emissions per unit of corporate sales will be reduced by 25%.
Having trouble making a decision? Both methods will assist your firm advance from scoping to the next step: strategy, as long as you remain realistic about your organization’s skills, set targets with clear, acceptable timeframes, and convey the expectations to your suppliers.
3. Specify Your Strategy
Which steps will you take to put your newly minted ESG objectives into action? Whether you deal directly with your suppliers or not, you won’t be able to complete them on your own.
Mapping, auditing, and collaborating with direct suppliers has also been much easier thanks to recent technological advancements. Companies can utilise Smart Assessments to assess supplier inputs instantaneously, auto-calculate equations, and gain more in-depth supply chain insights for convenient supplier tracking.
4. Secure Buy-In
Finally, firms must communicate the scope, KPIs, and tactics of their ESG activities to the stakeholders who will make or break their initiatives. Three aspects of the supply chain have a disproportionately large impact on business success:
• Procurement— do your objectives seem doable for divisions to achieve?
• Leadership— do your objectives mirror the organization’s strategic priorities? Are executives sufficiently aligned to support ESG?
• Suppliers— Will your suppliers actively participate and contribute to your objectives? What steps will you take to improve supplier buy-in?
Why Collaborative Goal Setting Drives Employee Engagement
Goals are more than just a way to quantitatively assess employee performance. The combination of a set deadline and a well defined deliverable goal is intended to aid employees in working in a structured and efficient manner. Goal setting that is effective increases employee engagement, improves performance, and benefits the organisation as a whole.
Many businesses, however, are overlooking the most crucial aspect of goal-setting: working collaboratively to match personal goals with company and team priorities and ambitions.
Collaborative goal setting, according to research, drives employee engagement. Regrettably, it also reveals that only 13% of employees strongly agree that their managers assist them in setting clear performance targets. What’s the end result? Employee engagement and motivation are poor.
By contrast, 72 percent of employees who have their managers assist them in setting goals are fully engaged, and these percentages rise by 2.5 times when managers hold employees accountable for their performance goals. This is because employees can understand how their work contributes to corporate objectives and team missions when goals are created collaboratively. Employees desire clear direction that goes beyond their own work and into the bigger vision of the company.
Clear collaborative goals not only serve to drive employee engagement, but they also aid to boost productivity and profitability. According to a Gallup study, businesses that were in the top 25% for employee engagement were also 21% more profitable and 17% more productive. But, with 60% of employees unsure of their company’s mission, vision, and values, is it time to re-evaluate goal-setting procedures?
What Are Collaborative Goals?
Collaborative goal setting, according to Vanderbilt University, is the process of deciding and setting goals together. Collaborative goals are decided upon through discussing, observing, listening, prioritising, and evaluating targets and objectives together, as opposed to the traditional model in which a manager sets the direction of an employee’s work. It’s an open procedure that makes employees feel like they’re being listened to and included in the company’s larger projects.
Although employee engagement is a complex combination of factors, enforcing collaborative goal setting and transparency is a positive step.
Strate¬gies for Creating Collaborative Goals
Collaboratively goal-setting, for some managers, can be difficult. The boundary between hands-on management practises and micromanagement is thin. Working collaboratively necessitates managers allowing employees to take ownership of their goals while also taking on a more supportive, advisory role.
Here are our top strategies and principles for navigating collaborative goal planning for managers.
1. Involve Employees from Start to Finish
Goals are meant to help employees grow, so it’s only logical to include them in the entire process. Obtaining employee buy-in helps you to assist them in developing short- and long-term objectives, increasing the possibility that they will be met. Managers should work together to create SMART goals (specific, measurable, actionable, results oriented and time bound). This encourages commitment and gives people a sense of ownership in attaining their objectives. Encourage staff to set stretch objectives to assist them improve their performance and serve as a motivation for long-term growth.
2. Link personal goals to companywide objectives
Personal objectives are only meaningful if they are linked to larger organisational objectives. Employee goals are related to broader business priorities, according to 91 percent of companies with effective performance management systems. These businesses recognise that collaboration fosters a culture of accountability and trust.
Every employee, at every level, should be able to articulate how their actions contribute to the overall company strategy. The company strategy must be translated into clear organisational goals written in a language that employees can comprehend for this to function.
Your performance management practises must guarantee that these organisational goals are communicated and accessible to employees as they define their personal objectives. However, avoid goal cascading downwards. This is a time-consuming administrative exercise that rarely works in practise.
3. Keep communication ongoing
Goals must be clearly articulated and revisited on a regular basis. Annual performance reviews that are out of date rely on year-end check-ins to guarantee that employees are up-to-date and educated about company strategies and missteps. In most businesses, however, these objectives and focus points evolve and transform throughout time. As a result, more than 40% of workers believe the guidance they receive is too ambiguous. Continuous and regular communication is essential for collaborative goals to be meaningful.
Companies can employ a variety of active and passive techniques to communicate and establish goals, according to the Harvard Business Review. Management briefings, company-wide meetings, and performance assessments are among the active measures. Corporate social media messaging, intranet communication, and recruitment activities are all examples of passive measures for communication.
Make communication a priority above all else. Set up regular one-on-one check-ins throughout the year to keep communication channels open and flowing in both directions. Check-ins ensure that objectives and goals are consistently reinforced and articulated, making it easier to determine whether everyone is on the same page.
4. Undertake surveys
Employee surveys are a wonderful way to see if they’re on board with the company’s strategy and how their job affects the company. Surveys can be conducted every quarter, bi-annually, or annually, and can be structured to meet the organization’s specific needs.
The annual survey from the North American banking chain, which provides a useful guideline, is highlighted in the Harvard Business Review. The following are examples of possible questions:
• In three words, how would you describe the company’s strategy?
• What contribution does your role make to the company’s larger initiatives?
• What are your own achievements?
• What are the potential dangers that could prevent you from achieving your objectives? How will you overcome these challenges?
Factors to Consider
Regardless of where your company sits on the most important engagement drivers, progress is always attainable and “the right thing to do” for employees. When it comes to motivating engagement through a goal, keep the following aspects in mind:
• You’ll rarely see huge jumps in engagement scores, according to statistics.
• What teams and levels can control/improve varies.
• During the ideation process, engagement targets inhibit innovation.
• Incentive programmes can stifle honest employee feedback.
Be pre¬pared for goals and direc¬tions to change
Goals don’t have to be your employees’ worst nightmare. Setting goals, when done correctly, can boost commitment and help explain an employee’s job – the single most important driver of organisational health.
Business moves at a breakneck pace. Priorities might fluctuate dramatically and priorities can change overnight. Goals that haven’t changed in a long time become obsolete. The dynamic and ever-evolving character of business should be reflected in goals. Real-time feedback software, along with a flexible attitude, makes changing goals simple and efficient. At any time during the year, new objectives can be added and updated to reflect the inevitable changes that occur.
Course Manual 5: Online Learning and Development
Boosting Employee Engagement Through eLearning
Start with your employees if you want your business to succeed. Employees with a high level of engagement are 21 percent more profitable than those with a low level of engagement, according to statistics. Several employee engagement trends present major prospects for business expansion. With this in mind, consider using e-learning to increase employee engagement. Let’s take a closer look at the specifics.
How to increase employee engagement through eLearning
It’s no secret that retaining employees for a longer period of time saves money on turnover. Furthermore, educating your staff plays an important role in extending the lifecycle of your employees and enhancing their retention. As a result, e-learning is a must-have for any company.
According to Forbes study, the e-learning market was expected to reach $325 billion in 2025 even before the COVID-19 breakthrough. Technology today has even more potential. You may train and improve your workforce remotely using online learning management systems (LMS). Let’s take a look at how e-learning solutions might help your firm increase employee engagement.
“It seems to be a growing trend that employees are looking to be challenged with more amplified projects at work and rewarded with greater job responsibility,” says David Kovacovich, an engagement strategist in San Francisco. One of David’s clients, a Silicon Valley technology company with over 10,000 people, introduced SCARF, a performance management method that allowed employees and managers to rank their career development preferences based on status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.
Managers were able to better understand their employees’ specific needs by using the SCARF technique, and they were able to set them on a path for development as a result. Employees who valued status wanted to be a part of high-profile projects, while those who valued certainty sought weekly reports on their own and the company’s development. This organisation discovered that shifting performance management from “one-size-fits-all” to “individually structured” at the employee level resulted in an easy-to-plan and follow career development route for managers. Promotions surged, and unpaid time off was drastically decreased.
Full Beaker, Inc., a software company based in Bellevue, Washington, offers each employee $1,500 per year to help them advance professionally. “Employees can use the funding to buy books, online courses, professional conferences, coding boot camps, and other things that will help them be better at what they do for the firm,” says Shavkat Karimov, the company’s director of SEO. Cisco Systems GmbH, a computer networking subsidiary situated in Hallbergmoos, Germany, supports its “3G values” of “grow the business, grow your team, and grow yourself” by providing employees with three E’s: education, experience, and exposure.
1) Make technology the enabler, not the starting point
You can plan your learning technology strategy with specific cultural and behavioural goals in mind. Because employees value ‘meaningful’ work, make sure your learning technologies and design are meaningful, and that you have long-term goals in mind. Without first conducting research with your target audience, implementing badges, gamification, discussion forums, or the launch of a completely new portal may disengage them.
You’ll probably need numerous channels, but before you start adding new ones, see what’s already being used; you might be able to ride on some waves.
2) Create rewarding online training activities
It’s a well-known truth that having fun while learning makes people far more ready to learn and do it quickly. According to a recent survey, 80% of learners said that incorporating game-like characteristics into processes would significantly increase their productivity.
Gamification in the learning process is an e-learning trend that may be utilised as a motivator tool to increase employee engagement. It will not only assist you in increasing worker completion rates, but it will also improve employee participation and engagement. It’s a good idea to select an LMS system that allows you to reward users with points, badges, or other relevant benefits for completing tasks or stages. You can also provide more tangible rewards, such as certificates or modest prizes, to keep your employees motivated and engaged. They can only get these prizes if they achieve their objectives or demonstrate their skills.
3) Encourage collaboration and teamwork
According to studies, 88 percent of millennial workers prefer a collaborative work environment over one that is competitive. Give students the opportunity to do so. Furthermore, many LMS packages include features that allow businesses to integrate social learning and crowdsourcing. Employees can communicate with one another, debate material, share resources, and so on. You may foster collaboration and teamwork in this way to bring employees together and form a great team.
4) Be social
We’ve heard that greater collaboration, involvement, consultation, and support are needed to engage staff. This shouts out for social learning platforms to L&D professionals, who should strive to support informal learning whenever possible. But don’t imagine that creating a forum is the end of your job. It takes time for everyone to warm up and start conversing, just like any other social event. It’s possible that you’ll need to lead the road and encourage online groups and discussions. Consider launching a campaign to promote and drive visitors to the virtual hangout spot, with a few key advocates demonstrating how it’s done.
Alternatively, you may discover that discourse is already taking place, using a tool that the masses have selected. If that’s the case, don’t mess with what’s working! Make sure your learning resources include the option to share, like, and comment on content as part of social learning.
5) Provide interactive online training
There are many different formats of materials you can provide your staff with right now. The training is more interesting and effective when it includes podcasts, videos, webcasts, animations, infographics, and other interactive resources.
Here are some statistics that demonstrate the importance of making learning enjoyable and interactive:
• 65% of people are visual learners.
• People process the visual content 60,000 times faster than plain text.
• People retain 80% of what they see and only 20% of what they read, 10% of what they hear.
Online training may be made more interesting and efficient by combining text and graphics. As a result, it’s vital to make sure that the LMS platform you choose has interactive features. It not only helps you increase employee adoption and engagement, but it also helps them retain knowledge.
6) Integrate real-life work situations into training programs
First and foremost, ensure that the online training is relevant to the employee’s job function. Otherwise, the course will be incomprehensible, and the worker will either fail to complete it or forget what he or she has learned. Furthermore, workers should benefit from the training so that they may display new knowledge and abilities in everyday duties. Furthermore, it is critical to incorporate real-world work circumstances into your training sessions. They not only contribute to the course’s worth, but they also allow workers to broaden their horizons. Learners can then apply their new information and/or abilities in real-life or near-real-life settings.
7) Ask for response and give feedback
The evaluation stage of the training process is crucial. With this in mind, you can determine what was good and worked, what has to be improved, and what didn’t work, among other things. Giving your students a voice increases their engagement and sense of worth. You can request a response not only at the completion of the course, but also at the end of each training module, or at any other time. It’s also critical to provide intelligible and helpful feedback to students via online examinations and reflections. Employees discover their strengths and weaknesses through evaluation, reflection, and feedback, allowing them to get the most out of the training.
8) Make it part of your company culture
The greatest method to persuade your employees to respond to online training is to include it into your company culture. Only by prioritising learning can you inspire your employees to grow and share their knowledge and experience. Furthermore, it is a means of forming strong and productive teams, enhancing employee professional competency, and increasing employee engagement through ongoing training. All of this contributes to your company’s evolution and increased competitiveness.
E-LEARNING REVOLUTION
With these advantages, it’s no surprise that e-learning is changing corporate training as an educational option. According to eLearningindustry.com, an online community of experts active in the e-learning industry, more than 75% of organisations in the United States offer online corporate training to their employees.
Employees may take their courses whenever they want, make their own schedules to learn at their own pace, and retain more material in less time using e-learning. According to a Brandon Hall Group study, it takes employees 40 percent to 60 percent less time than learning the same information in a classroom.
Other research shows that e-learning has other advantages that combine to make it one of the world’s fastest growing industries:
• When compared to face-to-face training, e-learning boosts retention rates because students have greater control over the learning process, including the ability to revisit the training as needed.
• Offering corporate training through e-learning has resulted in a rise in competitive advantage and revenue for companies since it produces a more engaged workforce.
• Businesses save millions of dollars on travel, hotel, and meals, as well as equipment and instructors, by maximising their employees’ time.
Corporate organisations can benefit from e-learning since it allows them to make training available to a large number of employees with limited time for continuing education in the workplace. It also ensures that employees receive consistent training regardless of their location or if they work in jobs that demand a lot of travel.
In spring 2016, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) launched “eISM,” an unique online learning curriculum. It provides a variety of learning options to fit different learning styles or requirements, such as 15-minute or shorter learning modules, three- to five-week courses, and individual modules for self-paced learning.
E-learning improves employee efficiency and effectiveness while also allowing businesses to adapt to change more quickly, allowing both to maintain a competitive advantage in today’s fast-paced world. While it can benefit a variety of businesses, supply management experts in particular can now use it as another tool to stay competitive.
Bottom line
Employee engagement is critical to the success of your company. Staff training, on the other hand, is an integral aspect of the engagement process. As a result, e-Learning is critical to your company’s success. You can only improve skills, facilitate career growth, and connect with employees, engaging and retaining them, by deploying the right solution and delivering the proper training. We’ve covered some of the ways your organisation may use the LMS platform to better understand and encourage your workforce, engage your employees, and become more successful in this article. In this case, eLearning is the ideal option for increasing employee engagement. Why?
• Employees can learn in the privacy of their own homes, cafes, offices, and other locations
• They can access training materials at any time and from any location.
• Employees have so many options (podcasts, learning games, simulations, and so on) that they won’t even realise they’re in a training session.
Because engaged employees are more profitable, proactive, and knowledgeable, online training is a crucial and desirable investment.
Course Manual 6: Benefits of Engagement
Why Supply Chain Employee Engagement Matters
Let’s look at why supply chain employee engagement is pivotal before we move on to the benefits of active communication with your employees. Supply chain management is an industry with a flat vertical curve when it comes to warehouse and storage management employees. The HR structure typically isn’t built with vertical advancement and career development in mind (apart from mandatory hard skill development).
However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t pay closer attention to your employees, their feedback, opinions, suggestions and personal goals. Tyler Jonas, Head of HR at Top Essay Writing spoke recently: “All employees have equal rights for engagement. You don’t have to offer elaborate rewards, position advancements or paycheck bumps to make your employees happy. Sometimes all it takes is to open a line of communication and discuss what can be done to make the work environment more enjoyable for everyone.”
The following are some of the most prevalent complaints and bottlenecks that impede supply chain personnel’ performance:
• Managerial staff’s lack of hands-on leadership and coordination
• A strong emphasis on supply chain ROI rather than employee well-being
• Inadequate health coverage and handling of sick days
• Systems for employee advancement that aren’t well-defined
CEOs spend a lot of time pursuing profitability improvement. Business process optimization, supply chain management, investment in AI-driven service models are just a few strategies companies take in the effort to improve profit margins.
However, a rich opportunity to generate double-digit increases in profits is frequently overlooked when companies chart strategies for increasing their net gains. What are they overlooking? Engaging their own employees more fully.
Employee engagement can be an incredible value creator that can dramatically improve all aspects of the business. Whether you operate as a small local supply chain or work with international partners and investors, engaging your employees on a more personal level can drastically improve your bottom line going forward. According to Forbes, highly engaged teams exhibit 21% greater profitability, with a 41% reduction in absences and 59% less turnover, improving not only the company’s supply chain productivity but also its employee retention and brand advocacy.
Organizations with engaged employees show improved employee retention, decreases in absenteeism, better work quality, and increased productivity. The net effect of improved employee engagement? Double-digit increases in sales and profitability and, as Engagement Multiplier’s founder and CEO, Stefan Wissenbach, puts it, “An engaged organization is easier to run.”
Given the nature of supply chain management and its essential role in the continued productivity of any given industry, employee engagement can effectively boost morale, productivity and long-term revenue generated by your business. That being said, let’s take a look at some of the ways in which employee engagement can be implemented, as well as the benefits of doing so in your own company.
Direct business impacts – more revenue and profit
As your workforce becomes highly engaged and satisfied, results will start to show up in the bottom line. According to a study by Gallup, having a highly engaged workforce leads to 20% higher sales, and 21% higher profitability.
Along the same lines, as reported in a 2017 Employee Engagement Benchmark study, The Temkin Group found that better-performing companies have highly engaged employees. According to their research, 82% of employees at companies with strong financial results are “highly” or “moderately” engaged, as opposed to only 68% at under-performing companies.
Salesforce found employees who feel that their voice is heard within their organization are 4.6x more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work. You guessed it – this means increased productivity!
The high cost of disengagement
So, if engaged employees improve revenue and profit, how much are disengaged employees costing you? The numbers can be staggering. When Gallup collected data on this, they found disengaged employees have a 37% higher rate of absenteeism, 18% lower productivity, and 15% lower profitability.
Engaged employees are invested in their job and care about the success of their team. It makes sense, then, that they would show up to work. Engaged employees are firmly committed to their organization’s mission, and they’re going to arrive every day with the intention make sure it gets done. In fact, highly engaged workplaces saw 41% lower absenteeism.
Taking the occasional day off can be a sign that employees are engaged. They feel secure in their role, and they’re confident one missed day won’t affect the work to be accomplished. However, you should be concerned about engagement levels when patterns of absenteeism begin to develop.
To dive a little deeper into the costly impact of disengagement, on average, Gallup found disengaged employees cost organizations $3,400 for every $10,000 they make. So, if an average employee salary is $50,000, for every disengaged employee, the organization loses $17,000.
In total, Gallup also estimates the cost of disengaged employees in the United States is between $450 to $550 billion. Imagine what this amount of money could be spent on, marketing initiatives, additional sales team members, innovating products…it’s no shock that higher engagement leads to a healthier bottom line.
The even higher cost of employee turnover
Reducing employee turnover is one of the most significant material benefits an engaged organization realizes. With the cost of replacing an employee pegged at one-third of their salary, increases in turnover can be incredibly costly. Reducing turnover can deliver tens of thousands in savings to smaller enterprises, and six- and seven-figure impact to larger companies.
As younger generations enter the workforce, the definition of employee loyalty is changing. What once was defined as long-term dedication to a company’s goals, now looks more like a tit-for-tat interaction. And that’s not the only scary news: 46% of employees would accept another job offer if the opportunity arose.
Just because an employee isn’t looking for a new job doesn’t mean they won’t leave you if something better comes along. But, when employees are engaged, they stick around. Employees don’t leave when they care about the success of the organization, and they are appropriately challenged by their work.
However, increasing employee engagement is one of the surest ways to improve employee retention and knockdown turnover rates. According to a recent meta-analysis by Gallup, companies with high levels of employee engagement enjoy employer turnover rates that are more than 40% lower than those of companies with disengaged teams.
Improve employee wellness
Individual wellness is an increasingly important aspect of the employee experience, going hand in hand with an individual’s engagement. Two of the benefits an organization realizes when they achieve high levels of engagement are increased employee satisfaction and well-being.
Engaged employees are:
• Less likely to be obese
• Less likely to suffer from chronic disease
• More likely to eat healthier
• More likely to exercise
Why? Engaged workplaces tend to show more respect for employees’ needs, encouraging employees to appropriately care for their health. Think policies like flexible schedules, fresh fruits and veggies in the break room, and company-sponsored road races. Healthy employees provide numerous benefits for an organization, most notably, a better bottom line.
A study by Gallup bears this out, finding that 62% of engaged employees felt their work positively affected their health. The opposite is also true for disengaged employees: the survey found for self-assessed disengaged employees, 54% said their work-life has a negative effect on their health, likely contributing to the higher absenteeism so common when people become disengaged.
Lowered Margin for Errors
In general, shipping problems and supply chain blunders are something you want to avoid as much as possible in your business. While mistakes are unavoidable even in the most well-run businesses, the frequency with which they occur speaks volumes about how you treat your staff. Employees who are dissatisfied with their management are more prone to commit mistakes by accident simply because they lack the motivation to do so.
If you keep making these mistakes, it will cost your firm a lot of money in terms of reputation, resources, time, and B2B partners. By establishing a communication line with your supply chain staff early on, you may drastically reduce the margin for error. Employees will pay significantly more attention to their work and go to great lengths to avoid making mistakes just because their management team cares more about them.
Because engaged employees are more connected to their workplaces, they’re more aware of their surroundings. Research has shown that 70% fewer safety incidents occur in highly engaged workplaces. Instead of worrying about whether there’s room for advancement or whether their boss likes them, engaged employees can focus on the task at hand.
Healthy Co-worker Competition
Finally, one of the most significant advantages of involving your supply chain staff is improved internal communication. Employees who are just satisfied with their work environment are more likely to form internal camaraderie and healthy rivalry among their peers.
Because of the regular vertical communication, this will considerably boost your employees’ morale and ensure that they are happier with their jobs. Remember that, while your B2B networking may be effective, the efficacy and dedication of your supply chain staff are still critical. Facilitating a healthy co-worker competition and emancipating your employees through it will result in a slew of supply chain pipeline benefits.
In Conclusion
It’s good practice to work in tandem with your HR department and to put a permanent employee engagement solution in place for the sake of standardization. Once you have standardized your employee engagement systems, you will quickly notice a change for the better in staff dynamics and general performance on the floor. In doing so, you will be able to retain talent, boost employee satisfaction and allow for positive word of mouth to spread in regards to your supply chain management and its employee engagement mechanisms.
Course Manual 7: Improving Workforce Engagement
Strong employee engagement has been proven time and time again to be critical to any organization’s performance, particularly in the supply chain discipline.
According to the State of the American Workplace survey, better employee involvement led to improved productivity, stronger sales, and higher profitability.
Other advantages of high employee engagement include:
• Increased skill retention
• Increased feelings of happiness (decreased healthcare costs)
• Employee retention is higher.
• The company’s bottom line has improved.
• Internal communication was improved as a result of a positive work environment.
• Enhanced inventiveness
• A better work ethic
• Plus, a lot more!
Many roles in the supply chain discipline need extra effort and long hours, especially if you’re trying to fulfil a deadline, handle a shipment, or keep on track with a production schedule, for example. Employees who appreciate their work environment are more likely to stay for longer periods of time and have fewer complaints or concerns.
What are some things you can do to improve supply chain employee engagement in your company?
Encourage Employees to Look Forward to Going to Work
Employee engagement will suffer if your team doesn’t look forward to coming in every day. While you won’t be able to bring beanbag chairs into a warehouse or production facility, you may create a welcoming environment where employees feel at ease.
For some companies, this may entail rewarding the most productive staff, while for others, it may entail playing March Madness in the cafeteria.
The importance of employee health is another important employee engagement technique. Employees will be more engaged with their work if they believe their employer is concerned about their well-being. This should include measures to reduce injury in supply chain activities, but sponsored workout programmes or fitness goals are also good ideas.
SCM Talent Group, as supply chain head-hunters, speaks with supply chain experts and executives who are happy in their employment and with their employers on a regular basis. They rarely consider changing jobs since their companies are committed to treating each person with respect and giving many opportunities for learning, development, and progress.
Sure, it takes a lot of effort and dedication, but focusing on keeping your staff enthusiastic to come to work will help you keep them and reduce employee turnover.
What Does It Mean to Be Successful?
Whether it’s your SVP of Supply Chain or a Sourcing Analyst, it’s critical that everyone in your firm understands what success looks like and understands their worth and purpose. Employees at all levels want to know that the work they do is important to the company.
Establish what success looks like in each specific function, as well as the organization’s general objectives. An excellent manager understands that goals and expectations must be reassessed as priorities, roles, and circumstances change, which is typical in the supply chain area.
Reinforcing the idea that each employee’s contribution is valuable and contributes to the company’s success can keep your staff engaged and focused on the proper goals and achievements.
Give Both Positive and Negative Feedback
If your employees aren’t aware of their performance, they may believe that the company doesn’t care about them or what they’re doing. Positive reinforcement for a job well done can go a long way.
Alternatively, if you detect a disengaged employee who isn’t reaching performance goals, strike up a friendly dialogue with them to find out what’s bothering them. This can assist in determining the best solutions for assisting the person in reaching their full potential, as well as bringing to light any organisational concerns that can be addressed.
Make an Investment in Your Employees
If an employee does not believe there is room for personal and professional development, they are unlikely to stay for long. Encourage employee development by providing continual training, paying for supply chain certifications, reimbursing tuition fees, allocating them to special projects, and placing them in stretch assignments.
Employee engagement can also be boosted by providing opportunities for advancement. An excellent example would be a company looking to hire a procurement analyst. If the organisation looking to fill this position provides options for this procurement analyst to advance to procurement manager or procurement director in the future, they will have a better chance of long-term success and a higher return on investment.
Nobody wants to be stuck in a job where there are few prospects for progress or where promotions are rarely made from within.
Get Involved with Giving Back
Employees want to have a sense of belonging to the firm they work for, and if you get involved in numerous philanthropic causes, you may find that your employees are more engaged. Become engaged with a local non-profit and arrange for a group of employees to volunteer.
Volunteerism boosts the sense of purpose for 74% of employees and workers, according to a 2017 survey. Management should search for ways to collaborate with local charities or arrange volunteer efforts. It’s also critical to encourage engagement, partially to increase worker involvement and partly to demonstrate excitement for the project. Organizing projects like this at least once a year can make employees feel like they’re a part of something bigger, which can boost morale.
Another approach is to establish a matching gift programme, in which businesses match employee donations dollar for dollar. Employees are more willing to give back if they believe their company values it and can equal it.
Conduct Employee Engagement Surveys on a Regular Basis
Conducting anonymous surveys is an excellent approach to get input from your staff. Employees will be able to speak with their supervisors about what is going well and what needs to be improved as a result of this.
As a manager, you must carefully assess staff survey responses and concentrate on making the necessary changes to move the needle ahead. This demonstrates to your staff that you are prepared to listen to their problems and act on them. As a result, employees will feel more valued, which can lead to more respect, better collaboration, enhanced productivity, and higher employee retention rates.
Businesses must respond to employee feedback rather than simply soliciting it. There’s probably an underlying issue that needs to be addressed if common themes arise between workers’ proposals or complaints. All feedback should be taken seriously by management, who should first thank staff for it before looking into it further. Companies should indicate any significant changes that result from this feedback.
Featured Performance Bonuses (also known as Spot Bonuses)
In some cases, simply praising another employee for a job well done is enough to drive workers. Offering tangible prizes for achieving specific performance targets may be even more beneficial, as it gives staff something to strive for. These incentives could include cash bonuses, additional paid time off, gift cards, or anything else that employees desire.
Offering monetary awards after completing an assigned objective or job activity is a wonderful short-term and cost-effective approach to get individuals to engage more with their work. This can be accomplished by organising a competition or creating a minimum target that must be met in order to qualify for the reward.
Awarding a distribution centre staff for achieving a given metric or target, such as catching up on a backlog of orders during the busy holiday season, is a wonderful example of this in supply chain.
Create a Sense of Belonging
Employees will be more suited to succeed if they feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves. You may increase employee engagement by creating an environment where they desire to work together and feel valued by their peers.
Employees who are more involved with one another are more likely to succeed in their existing jobs or take on new ones that support corporate goals. Creating cross-departmental projects can result in information sharing between groups who don’t normally engage.
This could boost your company’s supply chain productivity by allowing diverse departments to collaborate. You might also think about holding team-building activities outside of normal working hours as a means to strengthen relationships among your employees. Listen to your staff to see what kinds of activities and events they would enjoy the most. Organizing a variety of social activities throughout the year can appeal to a wide range of employees, ensuring that no one feels left out. Finding people-pleasing recipes to bring can be useful in nearly all contexts, so look for them.
Increasing employee engagement doesn’t have to be difficult. Focusing on any of these measures can boost productivity and keep your employees happy and satisfied at work.
Provide Opportunities for Mentorship to Assist in the Development of the Next Generation of Leaders
Helping employees build leadership abilities that they can utilise throughout their careers is one of the finest ways to get people interested about their jobs. If your budget is limited, consider mentoring junior team members so that they can learn from more experienced employees who have been with your organisation for a while.
You might be surprised at how quickly these young individuals pick up on things and become skilled in no time. When it comes to increasing productivity within your company, having an employee-friendly culture where everyone’s voice is heard goes a long way. Even if there isn’t money left over or enough room in the budget for new hires, providing opportunities like this one will help alleviate any existing problems quickly.
Invest in Productivity-Enhancing Technology Such as RFID Tags or Barcode Scanners
One of the most crucial things you should do is invest in technology that may help you boost supply chain productivity. Employees will be able to manage inventory more effectively if RFID tags or barcode scanners are used across your warehouses and stores, resulting in less wasted time looking for items.
Using automatic identification technology (AIT) such as radio frequency identification (RFID), for example, allows employees at all levels of your company to make better decisions about how products are sourced, distributed, and moved across your facility.
It aids in everything from receiving goods on time through automated tracking capabilities to processing orders faster by scanning incoming shipments as soon as they arrive, all the way down to providing retail staff with the information they require while working directly with customers to ensure that there is no delay between ordering and receiving.
Investing in automated solutions such as warehouse management systems (WMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) is another essential way to boost productivity (ERP). These technologies can assist staff in managing workflows and identifying inefficiencies in their operations, making it easier for them to pinpoint areas for improvement.
Conclusion
By following the procedures indicated above, you will be able to dramatically boost the efficiency of your supply chain organisation. However, keep in mind that no two businesses are alike, so instead of mimicking what everyone else does, figure out what works best for you!
Course Manual 8: Strategic Customer Behavior
Customer behaviour relates to a person’s purchasing behaviours, including social trends, frequency patterns, and other elements that influence their purchasing decisions. Businesses examine customer behaviour in order to better understand their target market and develop more appealing products and services. But what does this have to do with employee engagement?
Every day, in an ideal world, actively engaged employees deliver on your brand promise. They pay attention to clients, empathise with them, fix concerns swiftly, go above and beyond to make them feel special, and do so all while smiling. Delighted clients return time and time again to experience the unique feeling that only your brand can provide.
Customers who enjoy doing business with you become brand ambassadors, informing their friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances about it. Your doors are flooded with new consumers. Sales are soaring. The value of stocks is increasing. Competitors fall apart. And all of your finest and brightest candidates are eager to contribute their skills and become a part of your thriving and expanding company.
Unfortunately, none of us lives in an ideal world.
Consider the following numbers from the actual world:
• A bad customer experience causes 43% of customers to break up with a brand.
• 71% of employees are dissatisfied with their jobs.
• Employee attitude is directly responsible for 77% of customer defections.
• Poor customer service has caused 78 percent of customers to abandon a transaction.
• 91% of customers have said they will never do business with the offending company again.
• Getting a new customer costs 6-7 times as much as keeping an existing one.
These figures, which were compiled from a variety of independent sources including Gallup, the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, Lee Resources, and the Maritz 2015 Employee Market Study, show how high the stakes are every time an employee and a customer interact. This is a pivotal juncture in the narrative. The point when a firm either shines brilliantly and lives up to its brand promise or falters, leaving the customer with a mediocre experience or, worse, an unpleasant, furious memory that drives them straight to a competitor.
Employee engagement is one of four customer experience key competencies identified by the Temkin Group; in other words, if your staff aren’t engaged at work and in your company, the customer experience will suffer.
Employee engagement is a metric that gauges how much employees care about their organisation and its consumers. It assesses their feelings regarding the company’s success and their role in day-to-day operations. Employee engagement is closely monitored by businesses since it has a significant impact on customer satisfaction.
Because of its link to customer satisfaction, employee engagement is a crucial measure to track. Your personnel will deliver greater service to clients if they are happy. Your staff will be more committed to your customers’ demands if they are more involved with your company.
The Customer Benefits of Employee Engagement
1. Stronger Corporate Alignment
Employees who are more involved with their jobs are more likely to contribute to the company’s success. Employees who are more engaged with their work, for example, are five times more likely to submit an idea that will benefit the company, according to a study by The Temkin Groups.
Engaged employees are three times more inclined to work later if something needs to be done, even if they aren’t bringing new ideas. Your team will be able to meet deadlines and achieve long-term success with such dedication to a goal.
2. Exceptional Customer Service
Customer satisfaction might rise as a result of staff involvement, as previously stated. Because engaged employees are more invested in the product and business, they provide more enjoyable experiences for customers.
According to a survey by The Temkin Group, organisations with engaged staff had a much better customer experience than those without. Employees at these organisations are happier and more eager to go above and beyond for customers.
3. Improved Customer Relations
A consistently pleasant customer experience fosters rapport with your consumer base over time. Customers come to believe that your company and its personnel are committed to their immediate and long-term success. Customers will begin to share their positive experiences with potential leads, resulting in customer advocacy.
You can encourage these referrals by requesting testimonials from satisfied clients. These examples demonstrate how fantastic your service is to potential customers. After all, consumers are more likely to believe client testimonials than marketing for your company.
4. Improved Internal Cooperation
Employee involvement improves consumer encounters as well as internal interactions. It is much easier for teams to collaborate across departments when everyone is working toward the same goal. There are fewer data silos, and activities are accomplished without the frustration of red tape.
If marketing and sales need to collaborate on a campaign, for example, it’s easier to do so if everyone respects each other’s objectives. If salespeople realise how the marketing team’s problem affects their department’s long-term success, they will be more eager to engage with marketing. When employees are invested in your company, teams begin to collaborate rather than compete.
Four of the most effective employee engagement strategies also have a positive impact on the customer experience
The symbiotic relationship between engagement and satisfaction, between businesses and customers, is supported by vast volumes of data. Work engagement is linked to performance and customer loyalty, according to a 2005 study (Salanova, Agut, & Peiró, 2005). According to survey data from 2009, the level of employee engagement (or disengagement) in government organisations is determined by how well the organisation 1. ensures that senior leaders set the strategic direction, 2. focuses employees at all levels on the customer, and 3. clearly communicates goals to all employees and links individual goals to corporate goals.” (Public Manager Trahant)
The four organizations showcasing their strategies are:
• United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
• Quicken Loans
• Mayo Clinic
• DTE Energy
Within the previous decade, all of these companies have grown significantly in terms of reputation, workplace climate, and revenue. Employees are credited with each company’s success. They each have their own approach to the dilemma of being a great employer, but one thing they all have in common is that they’ve all discovered a way to connect employee enjoyment with value creation. That is, leadership has found what truly motivates its most valuable human resources and has tied that driving force to customer experience, or productivity in the absence of a customer experience.
1. United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) places a high priority on personalization in terms of how its employees work for the company. Employees at the USPTO are highly involved in remote work, which helps them achieve work-life balance while also enhancing efficiency and production.
Employees can also choose how they want to progress in their careers. Employees can select an accelerated track, choosing between leadership or specialised positions to attain their professional goals. Employees can work anywhere they wish and be challenged by their work because the USPTO differentiates on career and work environment. Maintaining that challenge keeps people productive and learning, which are two important aspects of the company’s success.
2. Quicken Loans
Employee value is prioritised at Quicken Loans based on two characteristics: organisational agility and social stability. By eliminating outmoded, ineffective business policies and practises, the former has assisted the company in keeping its employees satisfied. Organizational agility in terms of staff productivity is also a major value generator for their customers. An agile workplace, on the other hand, might become unpredictable and inefficient if it lacks a stable component. Quicken Loans’ working atmosphere was stabilised through a strong employee referral programme. The majority of new hires are friends and family of current employees, which binds staff together and provides a stable work culture to offset organisational agility.
3. Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic understands its employees so well that it has reduced motivation and inspiration to just three words: “Life-changing career.” What makes these words so great is the dual meaning of life-changing, which may be applied to employees or to the nature of their profession in saving the lives of their patients. Following the discovery of this core reason, the organisation continues to manage and promote the brand, while simultaneously working on a structural level to guarantee that it continues to provide some of the greatest healthcare services in the world and builds a reputation for excellence. All three company stakeholders — management, doctors, and employees — are responsible for maintaining a work environment worthy of these three terms.
4. DTE Energy
DTE almost completely by chance discovered a basic recipe for employee engagement. CEO developed a basic but convincing contract with staff in reaction to the financial crisis of 2008. Leadership would ensure that no one was laid off, but staff would be expected to provide exceptional service and value. Employees were afraid of being laid off like so many others in their union, so the contract had less to do with internal branding and more to do with time. The company’s promise inspired new levels of efficiency and customer service, allowing it to survive and even prosper during the recession.
Even though the crisis is now safely behind us, this transaction has served as the cornerstone for DTE’s trust and reciprocating value ever since.
What do the Most Successful Employee Engagement Strategies Accomplish?
Employee engagement isn’t about check boxes or best practises, as these organisations demonstrate; it’s about creating a point of connection between employees and leadership, and establishing a meaningful contract that highlights both parties’ responsibilities. Engagement increases dramatically when one party is deeply motivated by what the other promises. Leaders are more engaged with employees; employees are more engaged with leadership; and, as a result, customers are more engaged with the company.
This isn’t a miracle; it’s the inevitable outcome of combining strategic direction with a true understanding of what employees value.
Course Manual 9: Measuring Engagement
To boost employee engagement, you must first understand what your company does effectively and where it might improve. Knowing how to measure employee engagement is a good place to start when it comes to developing an engagement plan. Some things are simple to quantify because they are concrete, distinct concepts, such as the time it takes you to commute to work or the number of red lights you can pass without being late. Employee involvement, on the other hand, is more challenging. It isn’t set in stone and is influenced by a variety of circumstances.
Every business is distinct. As a result, it’s no surprise that how you engage staff will change. Measuring employee engagement can help you figure out how to engage people in the most effective way for your company.
Why is it important to track employee engagement?
Let’s take a look at how we define engagement before we get into measuring it: Employee engagement refers to the mental and emotional bond that employees have with their workplaces.
According to research, companies with highly engaged staff are 17 percent more productive and 21 percent more profitable. In the end, engaged employees are more productive and remain longer. However, you can’t engage employees unless you know what’s motivating (or discouraging) them in the first place. Measuring employee engagement gives you insight into what your employees like about your company and where you can improve.
Here are some of the most important advantages of assessing employee engagement:
• To discover strengths, flaws, and “hidden realities.” Measuring engagement on a regular basis allows you to address issues before they become problems. You may also utilise engagement data to highlight what’s working effectively and link weaker teams or departments with more successful ones.
• To establish a foundation of trust. Requesting feedback from employees demonstrates that you value their input and how they feel at work. Demonstrate that you’re there to listen and that you want to provide the finest possible experience.
• To ensure that everyone is aware of what is going on. Once you have the data, share it with everyone in your organisation, including executives, managers, and front-line workers. Everyone has the opportunity to contribute to a better culture as a result of this.
• To be aware of current events. Learn about what’s going on in your company by location, team, over time, or in comparison to industry benchmarks. Keep an eye on how and where the company is (or isn’t) heading.
Developing a Measurement Strategy
Many companies can develop survey questions, run a survey, and receive high survey response rates. What happens when the survey is completed, though? Organizations frequently feel trapped or unsure of their next steps. If this sounds familiar, it’s likely that your survey was created without a defined measurement plan in mind.
Start at the end when creating an engagement survey. Decide what kind of influence you want the survey to make and work backwards from there.
Consider the following questions:
• Who will be responsible for following up on the results of the survey?
• Who will be motivated to act as a result of the survey results?
• What exactly does that activity entail?
When creating your employee engagement survey, keep these questions in mind and always include management.
Employee Engagement: The 5 Most Important HR KPIs
1. Voluntary Attrition
A moderate shift in the team is typical, and it might even spark new energy. However, a high number of resignations is a red flag. Examine the number of employees who have left the company on their own to get a sense of the company’s attitude and motivation throughout the organisation.
2. Early Attrition
Employees who leave soon after starting work are indicating that the job did not match their expectations or that they did not feel at ease in the team. Your mission is to motivate and commit new personnel to their work through inspiring them. You must make adjustments if the early attrition rate is too high.
3. Rates of Absenteeism
Absenteeism follows a similar pattern. Demotivation or a lack of involvement may be the reason of a sudden increase in absenteeism in some teams or departments. You should keep an eye on this one with a suitable reporting tool.
4. Productivity
Our employees have different goals: Those who contribute to cross-departmental and cross-company goals, as well as those who serve personal career growth. A potential strategy would be to have direct managers review all progress milestones in frequent feedback meetings, and have employees evaluated twice a year. You can calculate productivity inside the organisation based on the results.
You can also devote time to actively reviewing indicators that demonstrate your team’s success and efficacy. It’s critical to figure out how to execute operational tasks more efficiently, particularly in HR, Office IT, and Recruiting departments of the global supply chain.
5. Engagement Index
Random questions or curiosities have no place in an engagement survey. It’s a well-designed measurement system with multiple key components. When assessing employee engagement in your company, keep these factors in mind.
• Determine the outcome of the engagement.
A survey question that depicts the behaviours or sentiments of an engaged employee is referred to as an engagement outcome. These questions are used to gauge feelings of organisational pride, commitment, and advocacy.
The current condition of employee engagement within the firm might be revealed through outcomes. For example: “I recommend this organization as a good place to work”.
These entries don’t specify which actions should be taken. Instead, they set goals that companies should keep or enhance.
• Determine what matters most to your staff.
Engagement drivers are survey questions that can be used to evaluate employee engagement levels. Employees are frequently asked to rate their feelings about:
-Teamwork
-Trust in leadership and co-workers
-Career development
-Communication and change management
-Confidence in the future
-Individual needs like pay
-Value and recognition
All factors influence engagement, but some have a greater impact than others. Make sure your survey covers a wide range of issues that could influence someone’s participation.
“I know I will get recognised if I contribute to the organization’s success,” for example.
The answers to this question reveal how much a company values and recognises its personnel. Drivers assist organisations in determining what factors influence engagement so that the appropriate strategies may be implemented to boost it.
• Conduct an analysis of the drivers
A drivers study determines which factors have the greatest influence on your company. You might determine from a drivers analysis that employees who rate a certain driver favourably are more likely to be engaged.
Understanding what drives engagement in your organisation, identifying weak areas within your top drivers, and implementing programmes aimed at enhancing those drivers is the best strategy.
• Create a method for constant listening
Valid and actionable survey results require a frequent survey cadence. But how often should you conduct staff surveys?
According to research, a yearly employee engagement survey is more effective than less frequent measurements. However, habits and preferences evolve with time.
As a result, companies may need to conduct surveys more frequently and in different methods in order to gather all employee perspectives. Pulse surveys can be used to delve deeper into engagement outcomes or to obtain real-time feedback on any pressing issue. Add lifecycle surveys to track employee perceptions at important points in their careers.
Your insights will aid you in making better decisions and tactics that have an influence on employees.
Getting Insights and Creating Metrics
We must work with a number of essential metrics after taking the time to collect and calculate them. We need to build measurements that support employee engagement in the places where it will have the most impact.
We can prepare a full analysis on a quarterly basis as strategic partners with management: We can delve into recruiting and HR data in it. For the management team’s quarterly business review, we can emphasise developments and trends. We also make sure that executives may see the monthly data in a convenient dashboard at a glance.
Employee engagement indicators can also used by your team to establish annual plan and semi-annual OKRs. We can come up with theories on where we should focus our efforts in the Candidate and Employee Journeys. This allows you to move quickly even in the event of unplanned changes.
Course Manual 10: Gaining Managerial Commitment
Managerial commitment is described as the act of engaging in and maintaining behaviours that assist others in achieving a common goal.
According to Gallup, managers are responsible for at least 70% of the variation in employee engagement levels across business units. As a result of this variation, global employee engagement is at an all-time low. In two large-scale Gallup investigations published in 2012, barely 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and only 13% of people worldwide are engaged. Worse, these low figures had barely changed in 12 years, implying that the vast majority of people around the world are failing to learn and contribute at work.
Over the last two decades, Gallup has investigated the performance of hundreds of organisations and assessed the engagement of 27 million employees and more than 2.5 million work units. They discovered executives grappling with the enigma of why performance varies from one workgroup to the next, regardless of industry, size, or location. In most firms, performance measures fluctuate wildly and unnecessarily, due in part to a lack of consistency in how people are handled. Leaders are irritated by this “noise” because unpredictability leads to significant inefficiencies in execution.
Executives can cut through the noise by focusing on the most important metrics. Customer metrics; improved profitability, productivity, and quality (fewer defects); lower turnover; less absenteeism and shrinkage (i.e., theft); and fewer safety incidents were all discovered to be linked to employee engagement at the business unit level. Everything improves when a corporation regularly enhances employee engagement levels across all business units.
To achieve this, businesses should make it a policy to require that every team in their workforce has a great manager. After all, human nature itself is at the source of performance variability. Individuals on teams have various demands in terms of morale, motivation, and clarity, all of which lead to varying levels of performance. They can only be maximised by outstanding management.
Great managers have the following talents:
• They inspire every single employee to take action and engage employees with a compelling goal and vision.
• They are self-assured and able to overcome adversity and obstacles to achieve their goals.
• They foster a culture of open and transparent accountability.
• They establish connections based on trust, open communication, and complete transparency.
• They base their decisions on production rather than politics.
Very few individuals are capable of meeting all five of these managerial needs. Most managers wind up with employees that are either uninterested in their work or, in the worst-case scenario, are committed to spreading their negativity to co-workers and clients. Companies who can double their rate of engaged employees and increase their number of competent managers earn 147 percent more per share on average than their competitors.
When an employee has a strong feeling of engagement, they believe in the company’s heart and future vision (both professionally and personally), they understand the organization’s goals, they feel like they belong, and they are well respected and compensated for their job.
This is likely to result in increased productivity, engagement, dedication, and morale, as well as fewer absences and a higher likelihood of an employee remaining with the company for a longer amount of time. Given the increasingly competitive nature of the global supply chain, this is critical for businesses to retain their finest employees.
Effective Leadership Skills
It is critical for leaders and management to build effective leadership abilities that result in a motivating work culture and engaged employees, regardless of the size of the firm. It’s also critical that leadership cultivates the appropriate kind of involvement, rather than the kind that will disappear in six months.
For work and team culture, leadership should bring and embody the following five qualities:
1. Candor
Honest relationships are the finest relationships we can have, and leadership must set the tone for a collaborative and open work culture. “Candor is essential to creating ethical, trustworthy cultures,” Laura Rittenhouse says in a recent podcast, and “leaders who choose to communicate candidly are those who have the courage to shine light into dark places.” Employees with a sense of belonging to their organisation and meaningful dialogues benefit from candor.
When candor is developed, it allows for other crucial leadership qualities to emerge, such as trust, feedback, and more collaborative cultures, all of which are beneficial to employee engagement.
2. Trust
Leaders must instil trust in their staff in addition to clearer communication and openness. There’s a reason you employed the people you did, so don’t be afraid to put them in circumstances where they can learn and grow. In both professional relationships and business, trust includes a level of transparency. Organizations should aim to achieve the proper balance between too little and too much transparency in their corporate culture, which will assist to enhance employee engagement in the long run. When trust begins at the top, it sets the tone for the rest of the organisation.
3. Career development
Having career development plans with employees is the key to improving employee retention. Leadership must meet with employees one-on-one to learn about their career objectives and where they would want to see themselves within the organisation. Take the time to build up individual career development plans with employees and check in on them on a frequent basis to see how they’re progressing. Employees are more engaged when they can see and work toward their professional ambitions.
4. Feedback
Employees require frequent feedback at work, especially when exceptional work is done, in addition to career advancement. It not only gives employees direction, but it also motivates them to produce better work in the future. Feedback is widely regarded to be crucial not only to employee motivation and performance but also to job satisfaction, according to a German study.
Furthermore, incorporating feedback into leadership can provide employees with a useful resource, resulting in a more collaborative culture.
5. Recognition
Finally, leaders must take the time to express genuine gratitude to their personnel. Recognition should not be viewed as a duty, but rather as something that the leadership truly believes in and takes the time to personalise, emotionalize, and implement. Employers should look beyond tangible gifts to find simple ways to express their gratitude for the work that is being done. It might range from a simple email to a segment of time cut out of weekly meetings to recognise outstanding performance.
Overall, leadership has a direct impact on employee engagement, so it’s critical that management incorporates these five characteristics into their job and workplace culture.
Ensuring that Employee Engagement Aids in the Achievement of a Company’s Objectives
Managers must ensure that employee engagement methods are linked to the achievement of the company’s goals. Employee engagement, in fact, should be viewed as a means to an end rather than a goal in and of itself. As a result, managers must first determine the company’s primary aim, as employee involvement is ineffective unless it is linked to the organization’s objectives (Mintzberg 1998, 48).
Furthermore, supervisors should always offer to teach employees about the company or organisation. This is because employees may be influenced to make inappropriate suggestions due to a lack of information about how a company operates. Employee engagement programmes are more likely to deliver positive results if employees are aware and empowered (Tammy 2003, 94).
The impact of management commitments on employee behaviour: a field study by the American Society of safety engineers
Employee-led behavioural safety measures can help reduce organisational injury rates dramatically in a short period of time. However, management must continue to show their support in a visible manner, as it is unclear when and to what extent this will have the desired effect on performance.
Using a behavioural checklist to gauge managerial commitment on a regular basis has various advantages: First, employees will be more motivated to improve if they can perceive that management is sincere in their desire to support safety measures. Managers can develop goals to boost their employees’ levels of commitment and provide themselves with the necessary feedback to improve their performance.
Second, to strengthen managerial accountability for safety, the commitment data should be used as part of an annual performance review system. Employee safety behaviour was influenced by each level of management in an independent and cumulative manner. Senior management commitment played a primary role in shaping employee behaviours and a secondary role by shaping lower management behaviour that intent impacted on employee behaviour.
A commitment must be compatible with the manager’s personal principles and past actions in order to succeed
Managers must personally commit to the essential obligations, or they must step aside. It’s tough to change an organization’s ethos, but it’s practically impossible to change a person’s ethos. Individuals and organisations are defined by their commitments. They both allow and restrict. They maintain a sense of continuity over time. They shape who we are. In the end, understanding the connection between personal ethos and professional devotion is what permits competent managers to become great leaders.
Course Manual 11: The High-Performance Model
Do you recall the last time you worked on a high-performing team or in a high-performing organisation?
The majority of supply chain and business experts say they’ve only worked in this atmosphere a few times in their careers. When you’re in an HPO, you’ll notice a culture of coordination and results that exceed expectations. High-performing teams have the following characteristics, according to business experts:
– You obtain exceptional outcomes — much better than planned
– Everyone on the team contributes fully
– Everyone is empowered to perform his or her best.
– The team makes use of each member’s fundamental abilities.
– Everyone puts forth a great deal of effort and thinks beyond the box.
– Team members and leaders make it possible for work to be enjoyable.
– The group creates a safe environment in which people may share and expand on their ideas.
These qualities were critical to great performance in the 1980s, when most teams were made up of Baby Boomers, and they are even more important today. According to the Global Supply Chain Institute’s (GSCI) high performance organisation (HPO) research, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have a higher expectation of an overall positive company culture. The worker generational change is a major trend that benchmark supply chains are embracing.
How can supply chain organisations foster a culture that values high-performing teams? The process begins with High Performance Leadership, which dates back to the 1980s. supply chain and business Leaders must model HPO culture, not just by adopting new behaviours such as adaptability, emotional intelligence, and diplomacy, but also by avoiding leadership practises that diminish employee engagement, inclusiveness, and empowerment. To encourage smart risk-taking and agility, leadership must anticipate the resources people require and create a comfortable environment for them to openly communicate failures and lessons learned.
Leadership alone, however, is insufficient to create a high-performance culture. In order to inspire change from the bottom up, organisations must create principles and best practises. Since HPO’s inception in the 1980s, two major HPO best practises have been tying employees’ work to corporate goals:
1. 100% Employee Engagement
2. Accelerating People Development
What does “100% Employee Engagement” imply?
Long lists of rules, intense supervision, various and specialised job descriptions, and time-based advancement were all part of supply chain cultures in the 1980s. Early HPO renewals that addressed these problems established processes centred on collaboration, corporate values, and skill-based promotion. ‘100 percent engagement’ used to happen in brief spurts at the individual level, with an expectation of high performance on a specific team by coming up with a cost-cutting concept or assisting with a safety initiative.
In today’s benchmark supply chains, every employee is expected to contribute to the organization’s full capacity. At least one significant contribution to business progress is a major component of every employee’s personal development plan in these firms. The days of making a small contribution to business improvement as part of a team are long gone. Everyone is now focused on constant personal improvement as well as team improvement.
How do you accelerate the development of people?
Accelerating People Development focused on establishing, operating, and sustaining specific abilities as well as expanding multiple talents across all team members during the original organisational renewal that gave birth to HPO. In today’s benchmark firms, the emphasis on personnel development has evolved considerably.
Maintaining excellent performance requires a team that can adapt to changing market demands and quick technological advancements. Best-in-class HPOs devote substantial time and resources to attracting and retaining the best workers, as well as continuing to grow and develop them. The scope of this training, retraining, and upskilling encompasses the entire workforce.
A high level of employee ownership distinguishes outstanding people-development systems. These businesses plan and track progress against business- and employee-driven skill development using comprehensive skill matrices. This strategy supports faster talent development, addresses performance opportunities in an objective and fair manner, and allows the individual to seek personal growth when it is data-driven, recorded, and rewarded. These businesses think that constant learning throughout one’s career is critical to both personal and business success.
Innovative training and development methodologies serve the demand for tailored, on-demand training. Knowledge is being acquired, stored, and shared in new ways. The earlier “tribal knowledge” sharing practises are being replaced by digital knowledge sharing. Employees can get training whenever they choose, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, thanks to a digital medium. Employees may problem-solve and acquire exposure to a wider range of experiences more quickly and in team-based settings thanks to new technology like Virtual Reality (VR) and remote sensors. Leading firms also calculate their learning programmes’ return on investment and hold technology and training providers accountable for employee skill development and learning levels.
A supply chain’s core principles help to develop a high-performing culture
Ensure that the message is heard across the supply chain, from the CEO down to the warehouse and distribution hubs, to develop a high-performance culture that is aligned with your core values. Many indicators, such as greater productivity and improved employee morale, can be used to demonstrate the value of a strong high-performance culture.
Creating your company’s fundamental principles, however, is merely the first step. You’ll also need to figure out how to successfully communicate those principles to all levels of management and employees. You risk a collapse in your corporate culture if you don’t put an explicit focus on communication.
Finding the correct technique to communicate these values throughout your supply chain company can make all the difference, depending on the size and organisational structure of your company. Here are some ideas on how your company might start building a high-performance culture and implementing these key values:
1. Model core values from the top down
The most effective strategy to reinforce your company’s core values is for them to be modelled in conduct and communication from the top down through all levels of operations. These values should be demonstrated in everyday activity, even if it’s as simple as a warehouse manager cleaning up trash rather than walking by it.
2. Include core values as part of the hiring process
When you introduce your company’s high-performance culture and core values at the onset, you have the opportunity to emphasise the importance of these principles, ensuring that your new hire is on board with them right away. Core values are a vital part of a company’s “WHY,” and repeating them while training someone on the “HOW” will underline how closely the two go together.
3. Offer company-wide training
This is possibly one of the most successful methods for instilling a consistent message in a company’s culture. Integrating the core values into a specialised training programme is also a wonderful method to demonstrate your staff that you’re serious about them and to ensure that the message is received.
4. Values should be prominently displayed in the workplace
Your fundamental values will remain top-of-mind for employees if they are consistently displayed throughout the warehouse. Company value descriptions and supporting behaviours will create a visual depiction of the company’s vision and the expectations placed on each employee.
5. Assess employee involvement and commitment to the Core Values
Culture is observable and quantifiable. In a supply chain setting, culture becomes a differentiator between high-performing warehouse operations and those that keep things the same. You may create realistic performance plans that resonate with your staff by measuring how each employee’s individual performance reflects your company’s key values. People feel a sense of obligation to perform when they are aligned and engaged. What better approach to emphasise the importance of your company’s values and culture than to incorporate it into the performance management process?
There are also a variety of other innovative ways to promote your core values throughout the organisation, such as creating movies, going on retreats, or organising incentive-based competitions to reward employees who best represent and show your core values. But, in the end, it’s all about aligning your people with your company’s values, assessing that alignment, and ensuring that leadership across the business supports the behaviour through communications.
High Performance Engagement is a fundamentally different approach
Management’s purpose in traditional organisations is to solve problems and instruct individuals on what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Employees in a high-performance, high-engagement organisation are given the duty, authority, and power to solve their own problems, with management serving as a resource to assist them in achieving that performance. People own the performance this way, and they have a far stronger level of commitment as a result. Rather than just executing their job, they are continuously employing their discretionary effort and judgement. As a result, there is a significant improvement in performance.
Captain David Marquet’s genuine story, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, perfectly encapsulates the contrast between a traditional method and a high-performance, high-engagement approach.
Captain Marquet spent 28 years in the US submarine fleet. He concluded the typical leadership technique of “take control, give orders” wouldn’t work after being assigned to command the nuclear-powered submarine USS Santa Fe, which was then ranked worst in retention and operational standing. By addressing the crew as leaders rather than followers and sharing rather than demanding authority, he “turned his ship around.” The Santa Fe went from “worst to first” as a result of this strategy, with the highest retention and operational ratings in the navy.
Stephen Covey writes in the foreword:
“We are in the middle of one of the most profound shifts in human history, where the primary work of mankind is moving from the Industrial Age of “control” to the Knowledge Worker Age of “release.”
“Our world’s bright future will be built by people who have discovered that leadership is the enabling art. It is the art of releasing human talent and potential.”
It can be difficult to effectively communicate your fundamental values throughout your supply chain, but it is possible with the right technique.
Course Manual 12: Committing to the Work
Employee engagement is a hot topic among corporate executives. Employee engagement is important for organizations to boost motivation, passion, and buy-in to their overall goals, objectives, and strategy. The general agreement, based on studies conducted since the 1990s, is that an effective employee engagement program will boost work performance and the bottom line of the organization. Over time, this work has culminated in today’s employment engagement ideas and insights.
William Kahn, a psychologist who was interested in studying the aspects involved in people engagement, was one of the first scholars to identify the concept of employee engagement.
Kahn wrote Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement (Academy of Management Journal, December 1990, Vol. 3, no. 4, pp 692-724), after conducting research to test the hypothesis that people can bring different levels of themselves to work, and that those levels affect their work experiences and thus their performance.
Kahn recognized three primary characteristics of employee engagement in his research: physical, cognitive, and emotional.
Emotional engagement
This is founded on the emotional bond that exists between employees and their employers. A strong relationship will necessitate the firm learning how to foster a sense of belonging at work, encouraging employees to trust and believe in the company’s values and mission. Positive interpersonal relations, group dynamics, and management styles, according to Kahn, are examples of activities that make people feel safe and trusted.
Khan connected three psychological factors (feeling safe, meaningfulness, and having enough energy and resources) to the three aspects of involvement in his research (physical, cognitive and emotional). In summary, he believed that engaging people across all three dimensions would make them feel safe in their responsibilities, believe that their efforts were worthwhile, and believe that their physical and mental efforts would be supported.
Emotional Drivers of Employee Engagement
So, let’s take a look at some of the emotional factors that contribute to employee engagement. Here are eight emotional drives that leaders should use to generate engaged people, in no particular order:
1. Pride: Employees are more ready to engage when they are proud of their work and believe it contributes to the company’s success. They will feel valued and have a sense of pride and eagerness to contribute if they work for a firm with a solid reputation based on trust and integrity, and they believe the job they perform provides value to their consumers. Is their work something they’d brag about to their friends? What does it mean to be a part of your company for your employees? Is it a source of pride for them to work for you? Is your company contributing to the cause?
2. Recognition: Everyone appreciates a kind word and being complimented on a job well done. Customers, managers, and coworkers – it doesn’t matter who says anything great about our job, we all feel good. As a result, show interest in your staff and acknowledge their efforts. When it’s appropriate, express your gratitude and show that you care about their well-being. Make sure that positive feedback from consumers is passed on to everyone who contributed to the positive experience — not just the employees on the front lines who are explicitly praised. When was the last time you complimented an employee on their work? Is recognition a conscious element of your company’s culture?
3. Interesting Work: Employees are more engaged when they work in an environment that is fascinating and challenging on a daily basis. Offer initiatives that will assist your personnel grow and enhance their talents to keep them challenged. Are your employee’s abilities and skills a good fit for the job they do? A disengaged employee is one who is bored.
4. Personal Development: Employees want to feel that they are progressing in their jobs, in addition to having engaging work. It will be difficult for a person to engage and perform at a high level if they know they will remain in the same position in 5 years without the opportunity to improve. Allow your employees to learn and grow their talents year after year through training, coaching, and internal development initiatives. What possibilities do you provide for your staff to broaden their responsibilities and abilities? Are they looking at this employment as a stepping stone to other options inside the company, or are they stuck?
5. Clarity: Employees are more engaged when they are clear about the organization’s goal and mission, understand their role, and perceive the link between their work and the company’s performance. Provide clear expectations and job responsibilities so that your staff are aware of how their work contributes to the company’s objectives. Do your employees understand their role in the larger picture and how it affects overall performance? Do they have a clear understanding of what constitutes exceptional performance in their position?
6. A Positive Work Setting: Employees who work in a positive environment perform better. A person’s willingness to engage is strongly influenced by being surrounded by good, encouraging coworkers. Personal interactions inside the organization help strengthen emotional bonds and foster a deeper sense of team and dedication than when workers view their workplace as just a place to go to work. Is your company’s work environment one that encourages employees to be engaged and productive? Do you have any activities in the works that will help you create a team environment focused on personal connections with your coworkers? If not, what can you do to make your workplace a better place to work?
7. Managerial Relationship: Even in a pleasant work environment, a manager’s willingness to be engaged can make or break an employee’s willingness to be engaged. A terrible manager can ruin a positive work environment, while a great manager can make a bad one acceptable. Better yet, outstanding leaders in excellent workplaces triumph overall. Positive work environments are created by great managers that cultivate good relationships with their staff. Do your bosses pay attention to their employees’ input and make personal ties with them? Do your bosses and front-line employees get along well? What can you do to strengthen the relationship between your employees and their bosses?
8. A Voice: Employees are more likely to engage if they are given a voice and a platform to be heard, particularly when it comes to departmental strategy and challenges. Do you provide your employees a voice and the opportunity to provide feedback on their work?
If you pay attention to these emotional factors, you’ll see that they cover all of the bases. Organizations that are devoted to having engaged employees recognize that it is a never-ending process. Hopefully, thinking about these emotional drivers will keep you on the correct track — but never feel like you’re ready to cross them off the list.
Committing to the Work and the Company
Some experts define commitment as both a willingness to stick with a plan and an unwillingness to modify it, typically due to a sense of obligation to stay with it. People are committed to a variety of entities at the same time, including economic, educational, familial, political, and religious institutions. They also prove their loyalty to specific people, such as their spouses, children, parents, and siblings, as well as their employers, coworkers, bosses, and customers. Commitment manifests itself in a variety of ways.
People, for example, commit time and energy to their work obligations as well as their family, personal, communal, and spiritual obligations. People frequently experience and express favorable feelings toward an entity or someone to whom they have made a commitment, so commitment also has an emotional component. Finally, there is a rational component to commitment: most people intentionally choose to make promises, then thoughtfully plan and carry out the actions necessary to fulfill them.
Most people establish commitments with the intention of reciprocation since they demand an expenditure of time, mental and emotional energy. People believe they will receive something of value in return for their commitment, such as favors, affection, presents, attention, products, money, and property. Employees and employers have long had an unspoken agreement in the workplace: in exchange for workers’ devotion, organizations would provide benefits such as stable positions and fair wages.
The intensity of a commitment is influenced by reciprocity. The commitment erodes when an entity or individual to whom someone has made a promise fails to fulfill the expected transaction. Over the last 25 years, dramatic shifts in the global economy have had enormous ramifications for employer-employee commitment and reciprocity—and hence for employee engagement. Increasing global competitiveness, scarce and expensive resources, high labor expenses, consumer demands for ever-better quality, and investor pressures for higher returns on equity, for example, have all driven firms to restructure. Restructuring has resulted in workforce cutbacks and the elimination of managerial layers in several companies.
Although restructuring helps businesses compete, it has disrupted the old psychological job “contract” and its reciprocity expectations. Employees have recognized that they can no longer rely on working for a single firm for the whole of their careers in order to retire. Workers have felt less devotion to their companies as a result of lower expectations of reciprocity. Many firms are striving to create successful techniques for renewing employees’ commitment and hence energizing their involvement after breaking both legal and psychological employment commitments.
Leaders who concentrate on fostering a culture that combines these emotional motivations will improve not only their organization’s culture, but also their employees’ overall attitude, commitment, and performance.
Workshop Exercises
Buy-in & Commitment Exercises
01. Supply Chain Obstacles: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
03. Bottom-Up Accountability : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
04. Standardized Goal-Setting: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
05. Online Learning and Development: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
06. Benefits of Engagement: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
07. Improving Workforce Engagement: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
08. Strategic Customer Behavior: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
09. Measuring Engagement: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
11. The High-Performance Model: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
12. Committing to the Work: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
SWOT & MOST Analysis Exercises
01. Undertake a detailed SWOT Analysis in order to identify your department’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats in relation to each of the 12 Buy-in & Commitment processes featured above. Undertake this task together with your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
02. Develop a detailed MOST Analysis in order to establish your department’s: Mission; Objectives; Strategies and Tasks in relation to Buy-in & Commitment. Undertake this task together with all of your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
Project Studies
Project Study (Part 1) – Customer Service
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 2) – E-Business
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 3) – Finance
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 4) – Globalization
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 5) – Human Resources
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 6) – Information Technology
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 7) – Legal
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 8) – Management
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 9) – Marketing
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 10) – Production
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 11) – Logistics
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 12) – Education
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Global Supply Chain Development process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Buy-in & Commitment
02. Efficient Cross-Department Communication
03. Bottom-Up Accountability
04. Standardized Goal-Setting
05. Online Learning and Development
06. Benefits of Engagement
07. Improving Workforce Engagement
08. Strategic Customer Behavior
09. Measuring Engagement
10. Gaining Managerial Commitment
11. The High-Performance Model
12. Committing to the Work
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Program Benefits
Management
- Performance Improvement
- Productivity Improvement
- Stakeholder Management
- Globalization Process
- Decentralized Approach
- International Engagement
- Strategic Alliances
- International Distribution
- Lean Management
- Project Management
Production
- Process Improvement
- Improved Options
- Logistics Management
- Procurement Excellence
- Supply-Chain Globalization
- Outsourcing Optimization
- Insourcing Optimization
- Lean Process
- Productivity Improvement
- Distribution Enhancement
Globalization
- Business Partnering
- Global Process
- Mergers Acquisitions
- Cost Reduction
- Product Improvement
- Quality Management
- Process Decentralization
- Supply-Chain Globalization
- Return On Investment
- Competitive Improvement
Client Telephone Conference (CTC)
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