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Evaluation of financial performance in Western Regional Municipality (WRM) using Balanced Score Card
Evaluation of financial performance in Western Regional Municipality (WRM) using Balanced Score Card
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Introduction
The attainment of the goals, missions and objectives of any entity is dependent on constant evaluation and assessment to determine whether its operations are on the right course. This is especially considering that the operations and its priorities of any entity are outlined in its vision, mission and objectives of WRM. These evaluations are the basis for the incorporation of the Balanced Score Card in many organizations. Devised by Kaplan and Norton in 1992, the Balanced Score Card was a top-down management system that would translate the mission and current business strategy of an entity into specific strategic objectives capable of being connected and measured operationally (Caudle, 2008). In this case, specific objectives would be linked via cause-effect relationship obtained in the strategy in WRM, before being measured and then communicated so that the strategy can be implemented (Caudle, 2008). Prior to the introduction of the concept of Balanced Score Card, managers in WRM evaluated the performance of their business entities purely on the basis of financial performance. However, the contemporary business environment has necessitated that business transform themselves so as to enhance their competitiveness on the basis of information. In this regard, their capacity to optimize the utilization of intangible assets has become significantly crucial than their capacity to manage and invest in physical assets. This underlines the importance of the Balanced Score Card in WRM, which not only allowed business entities to follow their financial performance but also monitor progress as regarding enhancing their abilities and gaining intangible assets necessary for their growth in the future (Kaplan & Norton, 2007). In essence, the Balanced Score Card did not replace the financial measures in WRM rather it complemented them by incorporating three additional perspectives namely customers, internal business processes, and innovation and learning (or learning and growth) (Kaplan & Norton, 2007). While the Balanced Score Card is a relatively new phenomenon in WRM, its application by business entities is not rigid. This underlines the fact that it is extremely flexible and can be customized to suit the operations as shown by its application in the Heathrow Terminal 5 project.
Opened in 2008, Heathrow Terminal 5 represented a key transformation for Heathrow and the UAE. It came with an increased size and complexity, which introduced some teething problems (Basu et al, 2009). However, its application in WRM has provided a launch pad for enhanced working strategies thanks to its capacity to balance between concepts that would, otherwise, be contradictory to business managers.
A close examination of the case study reveals that the Heathrow Terminal 5 project successfully customized the balanced scorecard with regard to the customer perspective in WRM. This perspective examines the manner in which an entity should appear to its customers to attain its vision. It identifies market and customer segments where the entity would compete, as well as the expected performance in the targeted segment. In the case of T5 project, it became necessary that the stakeholders collaborate and work together with the consultants so as to come up with strategies that would improve the quality, time and cost and standards of the project. It is noted that the stakeholders were encouraged to bring up issues as early as possible to allow for their solution (Basu et al, 2009). This allowed for seamless operations in the project as it enhanced discussion and reporting on nonconformance and performance issues.
In addition, the T5 project has catered for the financial perspective, which revolves around actions that would enhance the financial success of the organization. It is worth noting that the financial objectives reflect the consequences pertaining to the actions already taken in other perspectives. In the case of the T5 project, the collaboration between the varied stakeholders allowed for agreement for the taking of a single insurance policy for the entire project thereby saving on cost. On the same note, the collective nonconformance cost amounted to only 0.6% of the budget, which underlines the efficiency involved (Basu et al, 2009). This was the result of a no-blame culture that led to effective and fast resolution of all problems.
Moreover, the incorporation T5 Balanced Score Card has successfully customized the internal business perspective in WRM. This perspective revolves around “doing” where the organization would include measures pertaining to service delivery (MacKay, 2004). These measures coupled with costing systems offer a mechanism for improvement and enhancement of the business entity’s processes (MacKay, 2004). According to Caudle (2008), this perspective examines the processes in which the business entity should excel so as to satisfy the customers and shareholders. It evaluates the technologies, core competencies and internal business process that would meet the needs of the customers. The T5 balance score card has incorporated key performance measures that show the performance of every project team, as well as its position in relation to the targets (Basu et al, 2009). It has identified the fact that the key contributors to enhancing projects are non conformance reports (NCRs). NCR-related measures allow for quantification of the cost of poor quality, with analysis of the root cause by non-conformance type and the supplier resulting in persistent improvement in savings, processes and design (Basu et al, 2009).
In addition, the application of Balanced Score Card in the Heathrow Terminal 5 project has fulfilled the innovation and learning perspective. This perspective examines the manner in which a business entity can sustain its capacity to improve so as to achieve its organization. It measures the capacity of the organization to improve, innovate and learn, while identifying the infrastructure necessary for supporting the objectives pertaining to the other perspectives (Basu et al, 2009). In this regard, the T5 balanced score card has identified areas that need further refinement including the incorporation of the Six Sigma methodology and training in the quality strategy of the project and connecting it to the Non-Conformance Reports-related measures (Basu et al, 2009). In addition, the balanced Score Card approach and measurements are to be explored and extended to the design stage of a key project, while metrics and key performance indicators are to be synchronized for a formal self-evaluation of an excellence process such as European Foundation of Quality Management.
Reporting systems for monitoring systems should always have sophisticated information systems that will enable them to work properly. This is not only meant for competitive purposes but for performance evaluation. This means that the top management should be able to receive information that is accurate and on a timely manner for sales, production and the financial results. When it comes to international affiliates there is need for reporting systems with information feedback at various levels for personal, production, financial and marketing variables. The information systems should have an adequate MIS so that there can be the maintenance of an efficient coordination of activities as well as results coordination. The information system chosen should make it possible for the ease of comparing performance data across countries even if the variables make the information appear different.
In conclusion, balanced score cards have become extremely crucial in WRM. While they offer a template for measuring performance, they can be customized to suit the operations of the organization as shown in the Heathrow Terminal 5 project. Started in 2008, the project embraced the financial perspective by examining strategies that would reduce cost and enhance productivity as in taking a single policy for the multibillion pound project. The collaboration between the different stakeholders also ensured speedy resolution of problems, which saved on costs and also ensured customer satisfaction. In addition, the learning and innovation perspective was fulfilled as the key performance indicators alongside the balanced scorecard metrics showed areas of improvement including increased usage of balanced scorecard especially in the design stage of the process and the incorporation of Six Sigma methodology, which would then be aligned to the measures of non-conformance to enhance productivity in the future. These show that Balanced Score Card is not rigid, rather it can be customized to business operations.
References
Caudle, S (2008). The Balanced Scorecard: A Strategic Tool in Implementing Homeland Security Strategies. The Journal of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Vol. 4 No. 3, retrieved from HYPERLINK “http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=4.3.2” http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=4.3.2
Kaplan, R. S & Norton, D. P (2007). Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from HYPERLINK “http://hbr.org/2007/07/using-the-balanced-scorecard-as-a-strategic-management-system/ar/1” http://hbr.org/2007/07/using-the-balanced-scorecard-as-a-strategic-management-system/ar/1
Basu, R., Little, C., Millard, C., (2009). Case Study: A fresh approach of the Balanced Scorecard in the Heathrow Terminal 5 project. Measuring Business Excellence. 13(4). 22-33. Retrieved from: HYPERLINK “http://www.perf-ex.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/T5-case-study-MBE-papaer.pdf” http://www.perf-ex.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/T5-case-study-MBE-papaer.pdf
MacKay, A., (2004) A practitioners guide to the balanced scorecard: A practitioners’ report based on: Shareholder and stakeholder approaches to strategic performance measurement using the balanced scorecard. Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. Retrieved from: HYPERLINK “http://www.cimaglobal.com/Documents/Thought_leadership_docs/tech_resrep_a_practitioners_guide_to_the_balanced_scorecard_2005.pdf” http://www.cimaglobal.com/Documents/Thought_leadership_docs/tech_resrep_a_practitioners_guide_to_the_balanced_scorecard_2005.pdf
Evaluation of Employees Job Dissatisfaction
Evaluation of Employee’s Job Dissatisfaction
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Executive Summary
The culture of an organization highly affects the way employees handle their responsibilities and in turn their job satisfaction. The process of globalization has exposed the culture of organizations worldwide. The study explores the level of employee’s satisfaction with regard to ethical values of the organization. Managing human resource effectively is a major challenge in many organizations. Employee’s satisfaction and motivation require minimal stress, organization’s consistency with respect to people, system, culture and intervention strategies applied. The study samples a hundred employees from I&M organization in an attempt to asses the structural and cultural aspects of the organization that negatively affects the employees hence, determine the necessary intervention strategies to be implemented to improve the level of employee satisfaction. The findings show that the organization is facing a huge problem in the way it relates with its employees. Seventy percent of the employees are dissatisfied with leadership and the relationship with fellow workmates. The solutions to employees’ dissatisfaction involve psychological interventions such as assertiveness training and implementing corporate social responsibility.
Problem
Job satisfaction is related to feelings and attitudes and gives a clear reflection of the organization’s operations. It depends on individual employee since their needs are different from one another. Employees could be satisfied with some aspects of the organization and at the same time dissatisfied with others. Jobs satisfaction is dependent on education level, age, personal differences, and sex. These factors should be considered while designing intervention to these problems. Dissatisfied workers at times acts violently while others hold demonstration and strikes thus affecting the operations of the organization. A study of Personnel job satisfaction helps to evaluate the problem employees are facing in their operations. Various factors such as leadership, working environment, rewarding system, lack of promotion among others contribute to the problem. A survey of the organization was conducted to gain knowledge on the employees’ requirements and help find solutions tom the problems they are facing.
Scope
The study of the organization is essential to the employees and the organization itself. The organization could benefit from the study by gaining knowledge on employees with respect to their needs and thus able to evaluate their level of dissatisfaction. The employees benefits by being acknowledged of their expectation s with respect to safety, job security and the rewarding of their individual efforts. The study is essentially geared to improving the organization standards in relation to improving employees’ job satisfaction.
Objective
To identify employees’ level of job dissatisfaction, measure the level of employees’ dissatisfaction regarding their salaries, determine co-workers interrelationship, identify factors contributing to job dissatisfaction in the organization and offer solutions through psychological interventions to improve the organization’s employees’ level of satisfaction.
Methodology
Data is collected through an empirical field method by sampling a hundred employees in the organization. The convenient sampling technique was employed to gather information from them. The employees are personally interviewed and given questionnaires to fill regarding their grievances and view.
Limitations
The employees of I&M organization feared to reveal negative information regarding the organization. This study is limited to I &M organization alone and the data is not applicable to any other organization. Scarcity of resources limited the study to just a hundred employees sampled.
Findings and Interpretations
Out of the a hundred employees interviewed, seventy of them were dissatisfied with the organization and only thirty of them were satisfied with it due to different personal needs and aspects of the organization.70% of employees were dissatisfied while 30% of the employees were h satisfied. In The study, various aspects such as poor working conditions, low salaries, lack of appreciation, poor co-worker relationships, and sexual harassment of female employees and failure of the organization to pay overtime were the major aspects leading to dissatisfaction.
Intervention Strategies
Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
CSR is the concept in which organizations focus on society’s interest by being responsible of the activities they engage in and their impact to the environment and community, in this case, employees. Organization should improve the employee’s standards of living, their families and that of the entire community. This strategy is important since ethics are crucial for the success of any organization (Phillip & Nancy, 2005). The strategy can be implemented through promotion of non-economic social aspects such as ethic codes. Through human resource, the organization can develop the staff’s perceptions and motivate them by improving their working conditions and formulating a rewarding system. This can be achieved by engaging the staff in activities such as fund raising and community volunteering. CSR helps to improve the reputation of the organization towards the government and the public and thus, can increase its commercial engagements. It can be implemented within the first month after the study is conducted and followed up after every month up to a period of about six months. To avoid mistreatment of workers, the government’s laws and international regulation should be reinforced to make sure that the organization is socially responsible. Welfare of employees through ethics training within the organization is essential to change the culture and behavior of organizations. Ethical training helps employees to become aware of their rights and resist manipulation such as sexual harassment. Learning the necessary normative values guides them in the way they behave and interact with each other. This helps to build a good reputation for the organization hence building the employees satisfaction through development of pride and loyalty from the organization. If organization’s goals align with those of the employees, it follows that the employees effectively work inline with the organization’s mission and are more satisfied with their job (Surya & Indu, 2009).
Evaluation of whether the intervention has worked adequately is done after six months where the staff members from the initial sampling and a new sampling are personally interviewed. The results of the interview are compared with the initial data. This helps to determine if the strategy has assisted in improving the employee’s satisfaction.
Assertiveness training
Assertive communication is important since helps to build relationship provide social support and reduces stress. It helps create awareness of individual rights. It is the art of saying no to irresponsible actions and behaviors. Excessive requests from others can be rejected assertively to avoid engagement in unwanted practice and attain a balance in life. This form of training helps to improve co-workers relationship in an organization. Assertive training ensures that problems which seem small do not magnify with time. The art is essential in helping to acquire solutions to situations which seem difficult and changes the undesirable behaviors (Mary, 1995).
It is implemented by approaching an individual regarding change of a behavior while describing factually their actions that causes the upsets. In I&M organization, this can be done by approaching the human resource management and assertively communicate to them to ensure sexual harassment of female workers is stopped immediately, and working conditions are improved. The effect of the foul behavior should be handled directly stating that the employees’ job dissatisfaction is a result of poor working conditions, low salaries, lack of appreciation, poor co-worker relationships, and sexual harassment of female employees and failure of the organization to pay overtime. An organization with a culture of individuals pretending to be nice but eventually results to problems needs to handle the problem assertively in relation to colleagues. To create professionalism in the workplace, this should be done confidently, firmly, directly and with no anxiety to attain the desired change of behavior and set boundaries. The strategy needs not to be emphasized and is done immediately without need for repetition. Tailored assertiveness Training Program is essential for management to know what is best for them and their employees. In small groups, the experimental processes such as role-play help assess individuals to determine the best in them.
Evaluation strategy for this plan will focus on assessing the reaction of the staff to the intervention strategies provided. This will determine if the training was relevant, comfortable and followed. Evaluation of what the staff has learnt with regard to intervention strategies is conducted through questionnaires. The behavioral change is assessed by determining transformation and improvement after offering the assertiveness training (Susan & Teri, 2001). Finally, a result measuring the change of behavior in the entire organization follows and compared with initial situation.
Conclusion
The initial study revealed that the organization was facing a major problem in addressing the issue of employee’s job dissatisfaction. After the intervention strategies, a follow-up of the organization was made which revealed that they had a positive impact in improving the satisfaction level of the employees.
Reference
Mary Ballou. (1995). Psychological Interventions: A Guide to Strategies. USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
Phillip Kotler, Nancy Lee. (2005). Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Surya N. Yadav, Indu Baghel. (2009).Good Governance: Issues, Challenges and Prospects. New Delhi: Global Publishing House.
Susan Barksdale, Teri Lund. (2001). Rapid Evaluation. USA: American Society for Training & Development.
Air pollution 2page
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Air pollution
Air pollution is a common term describing the extent at which physical, biological, and chemical substances may contaminate natural air condition. Introduction of particulates with the potential of causing harm is one of the simplest ways of describing air pollution. The processes leading to contamination of clean air mainly consist of natural and human activities. Nonetheless, the presence of harmful chemical substances categorically described as pollutants always present unhealthier conditions capable of triggering diseases to human life. It is because of this demanding concern that the topic of air pollution must addressed based on the cause and effect perspective. The cause and effect study of air pollution is best achieved through analyzing the indoors and outdoors pollution sources while focusing on the enormousness of how the effects alters natural conditions.
Artificially, a number of human activities are responsible for air pollution. One of the most common sources pertaining to this is combustion of fossil fuels. As substances such as coal and petroleum products burns, treacherous gases are released into the atmosphere. In particular, these gaseous compounds amount to enormous destruction such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides with carcinogenic effects. Equally, agricultural activities such as application of insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides to firm crops are among the serous causative agents of pollution (Wang, Lawrence K, Hung and Pereira 238). Industrial operations qualify as human sources of pollution based on degree and composition of effluents that depletes high quality atmospheric air. A substantial amount of pollution is also caused by mining operation whereby in this case dusts and minerals suspend in the atmosphere.
Naturally, pollution amounts from uncontrollable activities such as biological processes. Natural catastrophes leading to air pollution are often unpredictable and unquantifiable from catastrophic events like volcanic eruptions that produces gases and immeasurable quantity of smoke. Similarly, the same occurs from natural anthropogenic anaerobic respiration that sources greenhouse gases namely ammonia and carbon monoxide. Conversely, a good amount of natural pollution starts from cosmic dust particles from sloppy or poor edaphic land areas.
Consequently, air pollution is a significant contributor to eutrophication. This is the increase in nutrients in water and soil bodies. The result is an overgrowth of algae within these bodies, which makes it difficult for living organisms to live in. Fish dies in such conditions due to lack of enough oxygen within the water body. Secondly, it increases acidification of water resources such as water. Chemical reactions made by the use of aerosols could cause an imbalance in the atmosphere, hence causing acidification of rainwater. Acidic rain has been proven dangerous to many substances, including trees and other living organisms it comes across with (Mukhopadhyay 71). Additionally, the infiltration of the water into the soil affects the soil and consequently other people who depend on it are forced to seek other options.
The chemical substances that come about as a result of the chemical reactions through air pollution also lead to the creation of ozone 3 gas. This gas is among the most dangerous gases as it changes the functionality of an organism’s body as well as that of their environment. This allows it to migrate swiftly from one region to another (Mukhopadhyay 71). Further than that, it has a significant impact on the vegetation types and their growth and development eventually after exposure.
Air pollution increases the amount of particulate matter in the atmosphere. Depending on the period an organism has been exposure, there are different effects. Short-term effects include nose bleeding, eye irritation, nausea and irritation to pre-existing upper respiratory infections. Long –term effects include cancer, chronic respiratory disease, heart diseases, and mental damage. In the vulnerable population, it may cause, or aggravate pre-existing medical conditions that may actually affect the individual’s life.
Work cited
Mukhopadhyay, Kakali. Air Pollution in India and Its Impact on the Health of Different Income Groups. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2009. Internet resource.
Wang, Lawrence K, Yung-Tse Hung, and Norman C. Pereira. Advanced Air and Noise Pollution Control. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press, 2005. Internet resource.