Solution for the Training2work Organization - Case Study Example

Introduction The aim of this report is to formulate a solution for the Training2work organization, which is involved in the provision of the training as well as short courses across so many industries. As the senior human resource manager from CQ University’s people and culture, I was requested by the CEO of the organization to study the dilemma facing the organization, which is actually the main cause of the ineffectiveness and inefficiency in its delivery of services to the customers. The organization has been involved in a number of ventures all for improving the services offered by the organization. They believe it will increase their student numbers and place them at number one in their region and become the training organization of choice. Training2Work prides itself on their highly skilled workers in each Division. They have very specialized staff dedicated to particular roles, within Training, Marketing and Sales, respectively. All work done in each division must be approved by the Senior Manager of each division and Senior Managers attribute this type of control to their success. The problems and solutions The organization according to the history as well as the information gathered has been facing a number of shortcomings, which are the main cause of its decreased performance. This means that there must be a solution to settle the conflicts like a situation whereby all three managers leave the meeting annoyed and blaming the others. One of the ways of avoiding the same conflict in the future is by having some weekly departmental meeting. The reason for the meeting is to ensure that any issues that have risen will be dealt with during that meeting before they reach to the level of conflict. The organization will set up a new department called public customer care. This department will ensure it receives all complains as well as the suggestions from the customers. By doing that, the organization will be in position to deal with all the needs of the customers promptly by ensuring the departments involved are informed on what they need to do in good time (Thompson & Martin, 2005). Some of the main shortcomings that I have identified include the poorly developed website of the organization, which provides minimal information about the organization. The information that is left out is very vital as far as the marketing of the organization’s services is concerned to the customers. Since the organization has employed very well the 4Ps yet there is a gap, then other ways must be employed to improve the strategy of service marketing because if marketers pay extra attention to all what the consumers need or want then, marketers will definitely make products similar to the ones already in existence. This is because consumers normally go for the products they know and not for the ones they possibly not know. For example, they might say that they want a smaller phone, but would not ask for one that includes a Palm Pilot or Voice Recognition. It is the marketer’s job to go beyond what customers say they want. This means that still as they come up with that small phone, they must put other things into consideration like getting a phone that has many and better features. The concept of marketing assumes that the consumers have clear goals and pursue them rationally. This is not true because they are buffeted in most cases by all kind of forces. It is evident that, many respond to hyped products and stories around them. Therefore, for the marketers to be effective, they need skills, which go beyond APIC (analysis, planning, implementation and control). Marketers need to be able to create new realities, dramas, artificial scarcities and celebrations among others. The marketers should also consider the needs of the customers. This means that there should be a research carried out in the area of service provision to be able to establish what the customers need. The need depends on the gap that other marketers have not filled. In other words, the marketers must be in a position to give the consumers what they have not been given. For example, a product like a Toyota Prado car may be in existence in the market. However, the marketer must go to extend of checking out what that particular make of a car does not have and then introduce such in the market. It could be that the latest model in that town does not have the alarm system or rather the ant robbery system. In that case, the marketer needs to introduce such kind of a car. This means that with that kind of knowledge he or she will be in a position to come up with an objective that will be aimed at filling that particular gap or rather solving that problem. The marketer should also be able to look at the corporate vision. This means that the corporate leader must have a definite vision to where the organization he is heading. The marketing department then must be able to look at the vision closely and decide what marketing objectives to set to achieve the corporate vision (Peter, 2007). This is very important to ensure that all the activities that are being carried out by the marketing department are fully supported by the employees in the other department like the manufacturing. If the marketing department follows that vision of the corporation then it means they will be able to not only fulfil the objectives of the corporation but also the needs of the customers as they set their goals. The marketing objectives must also be formulated depending on the financial objectives of the organization. This will enable the department know the marketing measurements There is also another problem with the staff whereby each of them feels their department is better than the other hence some internal conflict. It is very dangerous for some departments to see others as being inferior. Staffs also feel that as they have specialized training in their division, they would not have the right skills to apply for a transfer to another division. There must be proper utilization of the organizational theories, which are very important tools as far as the management, and accountability of any organization is concerned. This is because they are the ones that determine the behaviours to be expected in a certain organization (Becker & Huselid, 2006). Another very important fact is that the help insetting goals and objectives of the organization. Despite the fact that they are very important tools, no single theory can be applied on its own to yield effective results because challenges are also arising on daily basis and one of the best ways for overcoming them is through practicing some of the management theories and functions. It is very evident that most of the organizations experiences problems of scale because they are they are based on the formal rules as well as the issue of hierarchy offices. Another problem is as described by the following organizational cultural practice whereby Training2work has a Training Division that plans and develops new courses and makes incremental changes to all courses they plan to deliver that semester. This division has designed their own forms and computer System to hold all the information they require about their courses. This division has a Senior Training Manager who reports directly to the CEO. The Senior Training Manager supervises the Product Development Manager (PDM). The PDM supervises 60 Trainers and the Administration Co-coordinator who in turn supervises 20 administrative staff. Once the courses are developed and approved by the Senior Manager, the course information is then uploaded into the Course Development System (CDS). The course information can sometimes be comprehensive, other times it is incomplete, as the administration staff have to rely on the busy trainers to give them the course details or they are waiting on courses to be approved. Sometimes the administration staff is still inputting many courses into the database, after the beginning of the Semester. The solution lies on the development of a marketing strategy for the organization. This is because it is the means by which the organization uses as its framework for making decisions as well as securing its approval and support, it provides the means by which an organization gets a detailed plan to run its activities, it acts as a way of advertising the business to the world for the purposes of informing, involving and motivating. It is a way of assisting in performance monitoring and benchmarking is the means by which the organization stimulates change as well as it is the building block used for initiating the next needed plan for the organization as well as the integration of departments. This is because in any organization it is very important as far as the performance, customers or consumer satisfaction, goal and objectives achievements as well as the ensuring the organization is very effective and efficient in all that it is doing. The structure of leadership is also another problem this is because The Marketing Division has a Senior Manager, who reports directly to the CEO. The Marketing Manager supervises ten marketing staff. The Training Division then gives the Marketing Manager a list of courses for the semester. The marketing team updates ISMs and promotes the courses through other mediums. Once the information is uploaded from the Training Division, the TACS officer inputs this information into the Training and Course Sales Database (TACS). TACS is the in house database used to provide potential students with information about their course or choice. The Sales Division has a Senior Manager, who reports directly to the CEO. The Sales manager also supervises the TACS officer and twenty customer service staff. The customer service staff process customer enquiries, face to face, by phone and respond to web enquiries. The sales staffs sometimes have many email enquiries, in their inboxes as face-to-face and phone customers are a priority for the division. The CEO invested a considerable sum of money into the new Internet Sales Manager system and is very concerned that the student numbers have not increased at all. The CEO calls his senior staff to a meeting in to explain why their Marketing approach is no good and why “Sales People” are not getting Sales! He also questions if their products are developed into contemporary training courses that appeal to Industry and the public. This problem can be solved by reviewing the organizational structure in terms of leadership (Salder & Craig, 2003). Another big problem is the way in which knowledge management is handled in the organization. This is because of the following scenario. The Senior Training Manager advises that he has done his job and has developed 20 new courses this Semester! The Marketing Manager is adamant that they have conducted an extensive marketing campaign! The Sales Manager explains that they have many customers enquire about courses. Many customers are leave without making a commitment, as they do not have enough information about the course to make a decision. For example, sales staffs do not know the exact dates and times the courses are running. The Sales Manager says that the Training Division does not provide enough information. The Senior Training Manager refutes this claim and states that there is plenty of information given to inform what the course is about, and even what jobs they could obtain after completion. He states that Sales are not doing a good enough job! The CEO demands that student numbers increase and they had better get their divisions in order. In today’s economic status, any organization that has to thrive greatly must have a great deal of knowledge management. The process of knowledge management entails the different strategies, methods, practices and ways that have been laid by a particular organization to represent, create, identify and distribute as well as adopt to the experiences and insights observed in the organization on the process of its running (Hill & Jones, 2007). Theses insights enable the organization management to come up with the way forward as far as the improvement of the organization operations is concerned. It has been discovered that many of the organization fundamental are changing at a very great and alarming rate. There is a significant change in the intangibles as well as the tangibles assets which are the core areas all these organizations are deriving their competitive power. Knowledge management in any kind of business is very important because it is one of the ways through which any business can attain business excellence. There are number of factors that still lead to a slow knowledge sharing and management in the organizations. They include increase in the turbulence level, growth in the globalization, dispersion geographically and finally the localized movement. There is need for increase in the area of business knowledge sharing. This means that there is need for involving the employees in the process of knowledge sharing through involving them in meeting sharing the objectives of the business (Paauwe, 2009). Knowledge sharing at each level f the organization is the best tool to enable the business work better. Apart from the businesses focusing on competition with their rivals, it is also very important for it to think beyond the existence problems and try to improve the company’s ways of operations by ensuring that the employees are getting the knowledge they need especially on what is happening in the market at that particular point. This is where the issue of knowledge management comes in. There are a number of advantages of sharing knowledge in an organization, which are as follows. It leads to improved level of creativity at a personal level hence leading to the creation of a room for innovation It leads the organization to a point of realizing economy of scale and so lowering the production costs. It ensures the company maintains consistency in terms of the quality of its services and products. It also enables the organization or the business repeating the mistakes it had committed. Improves responsiveness in terms of competition Improves the business’s process of decision making The following are the strategies for knowledge management 1. Setting up a committee for the purpose of knowledge management. This is a group of people that will be bale to review all the laid down issues and carry out further research to affirm the truth of the matter. The following are the duties of the committees a. To come up with a proper approach as the best tool for promoting knowledge management in the organization b. To give proper support as well as initiate learning, practice and communication c. To offer training to the employees on the issues of knowledge management as well as expose them to the experience of the same. 2. To come up with a strategy that transforms knowledge management into the context of business. This is whereby the committees or rather the people responsible draw a framework that will accommodate knowledge management in the form of the kind of the business the company is involved in. it entails a. Creation of knowledge especially the new areas that are coming up to ensure the organization are up to date with the new technology. b. Assimilation or dissemination of the knowledge through connecting the consumers, the employees and the other stakeholders to get to share information, learn from it and then transfer the knowledge to each other. c. Exploitation of the knowledge. This involves the maximum use of the knowledge gained in the process of making decision, solving problems, planning of scenarios and finally the creation of value of the products in the market. d. Review of knowledge. This is whereby the company must ensure all the processes towards knowledge management are business oriented so that the issue of profitability is not forgotten. 3. Alignment of the value adding and knowledge processes with all of the strategic objectives. There is a very important connection between the cycle of knowledge and the cycle of strategy (Hill & Jones, 2007). The strategy for the organization is to be the best organization in the whole world. This means that there is a need to measure the gap that currently exists between the efforts the company is putting to achieve it and the effort that the company must put. The gap that is realized must be transformed in terms of knowledge management. This means that new ways of introducing the knowledge in the form of a business strategy. 4. Sharing of knowledge, motivation and convergence of learning The knowledge locus and knowledge level are very important factors as far as effectiveness of knowledge management is concerned (Hill & Jones, 2007). There is a need for the structuring of knowledge management in such a way that it will encourage motivation of the workers to share their experiences for the purposes of convergence learning. Conclusion There is a very great connection between the management of the human resource and the level of organizational performance. This has been clearly been brought out by the work done by Paauwe. Therefore, different ways of human resource management are very instrumental in ensuring the performance of the organization is improved. Theses ways are however not sufficient, this is whereby the issue of other variables comes in. one of the most important is the strategy of the implementation in terms of effectiveness and efficiency (Paauwe, 2009). Paauwe also expressed his feeling of the need for providing an adaptable environment and flexibility for the workers to ensure that they can freely work and achieve their targets. In addition, it is very important to have good relationships in the organization to ensure there is a level of trustworthy that is reached in the organization through knowledge management and better marketing strategies. References Becker, B. and Huselid, M. 2006. Strategic Human Resource Management: Where do we go from here? Journal of Management, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 898-926. Hill, C. & Jones, G. 2007. Strategic Management: An Integrated Approach, 8th Ed. California: Cengage Learning. Paauwe, J. 2009. HRM and Performance: Achievements, Methodological Issues and Prospects. Journal of Management Studies: Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 129-142. Peter, F. 2007. The practice of management. New York: John Wiley & sons. Salder, P., & Craig, J., 2003. Strategic management, 2nd Ed. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Thompson, J. & Martin, F., 2005. Strategic management: awareness and change, 5th Ed. California: Cengage Learning EMEA. Read More