PRE 844– WORK SYSTEMS

DESIGN, MEASUREMENT AND

ANTHROPOLOGY

Assignment

Valentine Obomhele Sule

PGENG 8600402
PRE 844 – WORK SYSTEMS DESIGN MEASUREMENT AND
ANTHROPOLOGY

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Question One

i. Can an employer or employee quit his / her job at will discuss?

ii. What factors would you consider in determining the salary structure of an
organization?

Question Two

i. Do you agree that an organization must be customer based to succeed?

Discuss.

ii. Discuss how individual productivity can affect an organization’s

productivity?

Question Three

i. How does a worker’s attitude influence his work output?

ii. What influence does a worker’s personal life style have on his work
productivity?

Question Four

i. in the eyes of world leaders, the Nigerian Government has lost his credibility
because of an epidemic rampant corruption among government officials.
Corruption from the Government has a negative impact on the workers
because they don’t trust the Government. Is there enough trust among the
Employees themselves in the Public sector sufficient for them to build the
required confidence to enhance productivity? Discuss.

ii. Discuss the controversy between job satisfaction, life satisfaction and job
performance.

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Question One

i. Can an employer or employee quit his / her job at will discuss?

Answer

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Why do employers recruit persons to work? In the spirit of capitalism,
people are recruited to turn around the investments of the employer for his
common good. In so doing, the employer recruits the employee under certain
conditions which they both enter an agreement by signing off that they both
understand the grounds which they must remain together. Where this is not
feasible, they terminate the agreement they both enter and go their separate
ways.

The labour law sanctifies that an employer can ask his employee to quit in
the event of an offence such as stealing or punishable offence tantamount to
a sack or termination of appointment by giving him a fair hearing in the
form of a query. In cases where the Union plays a crucial role in the
recruitment of employee, collective bargaining plays a major determinant in
the fate of the employee.

Employers can seek redress in the event where an employee quits his job
without following the due procedure as recognized by Labour courts, the
Trade Union or the Federal Government though the Federal Ministry of
Labour and Productivity.

There are certain circumstances that the Union have made the employer to
restructure its board (ownership) in the case of a liability corporations.
Where the owners of a company violates the laws that sets up a company,
the Union can on behalf of its colleagues protest the continuance of the
employer and ensure that the persons that make up the board are restructured
after the Union have been able to establish their case in the presence of the
Shareholders during their General Meeting.

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The Board of Directors in their own right can vote out any erring Director
and replace with another Director. The composition of the Board can be
altered to suit the strategic purpose

In the case of an “At-will employment”, a term used in U.S. labor law for
contractual relationships in which an employee can be dismissed by an
employer for any reason (that is, without having to establish a "just cause"
for termination), and without warning.1 When an employee is acknowledged
as being hired "at will", courts deny the employee any claim for loss
resulting from the dismissal. The rule is justified by its proponents on the
basis that an employee may be similarly entitled to leave his or her job
without reason or warning.2 In contrast, the practice is seen as unjust by
those who view the employment relationship as characterized by inequality
of bargaining power.3

At-will employment is generally described as follows: "any hiring is

presumed to be 'at will'; that is, the employer is free to discharge individuals
'for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all,' and the employee is equally
free to quit, strike, or otherwise cease work."4 In an October 2000 decision
largely reaffirming employers' rights under the at-will doctrine, the Supreme
Court of California explained:

[A]n employer may terminate its employees at will, for any or no reason …
the employer may act peremptorily, arbitrarily, or inconsistently, without
providing specific protections such as prior warning, fair procedures,
objective evaluation, or preferential reassignment… The mere existence of
an employment relationship affords no expectation, protectable by law that

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employment will continue, or will end only on certain conditions, unless the
parties have actually adopted such terms.5

At-will employment disclaimers are a staple of employee handbooks in the

United States. It is common for employers to define what at-will
employment means, explain that an employee’s at-will status cannot be
changed except in a writing signed by the company president (or chief
executive), and require that an employee sign an acknowledgment of his or
her at-will status.6 However, the National Labor Relations Board has
opposed as unlawful the practice of including in such disclaimers language
declaring that the at-will nature of the employment cannot be changed
without the written consent of senior management. 7

Since employees like to be in control of their lives, they think they can quit
an employer any time it suits them. But woe to the employer who feels the
same way about terminating employees. Somehow employees think
employers cannot freely dismiss employees but employees can dismiss
employers as they choose.

As it turns out, there is more legal mutuality in the relationship than

employees would like. They also have to be careful about quitting
employers. Employers have historically been reluctant to pursue former
employees who leave them in a lurch without adequate notice. That is
changing as they invest significantly in selection and training and much
work is highly specialized. Usually, employers can and will think ‘good
riddance’ to disloyal workers and find replacement ones rather quickly. They
rarely pursue employees who quit them. But this is changing.

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This article considers what obligations the employee has to the employer
when he or she quits. Does an employee need to provide notice? If so, how
much notice must the employee provide to avoid liability for breach of the
employment contract?

In Quitting an employment, there are rules governing it as stipulated in the

legislation and common law.8
LABOUR RELATIONS CODES

Labour relations legislation sets out the framework for unions and
management to negotiate a collective agreement which governs the working
relationship between employees and employer. Quitting the relationship by
employer or employee is often regulated in the collective agreement, which
is enforceable by grievance and ultimately arbitration.

EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS CODES

The approximately two-thirds of employees who are not part of a labour

union enjoy an array of minimum employment protections, as well as a few
legal duties, in employment standards legislation.

Alberta’s Employment Standards Code, RSA 2000, c E-9, (Part 2, Division

8) is typical. It covers the subject of termination of employment by both
employee (quitting or resignation) and by the employer (dismissal).

Section 58 states that to terminate employment an employee must give the

employer a written notice of termination of at least one week if the employee
has been employed between three months to two years, or at least two weeks
if the employee has been employed for longer than two years. The
approximately two-thirds of employees who are not part of a labour union
enjoy an array of minimum employment protections, as well as a few legal
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duties, in employment standards legislation. This short written notice of
quitting is not onerous for most employees, yet many still quit on shorter
notice, including no notice when they choose to never return to work.

Even then, section 58 notice is not required if: there is an established

practice in the industry to give less quitting notice;

 the employee is quitting for personal health or safety reasons;

 the job has become impossible for the employee to perform due to causes
beyond the employee’s control;

 the employee is temporarily laid off or does not have work due to a strike
or lockout at the job site; or

 the employee is quitting due to the employer’s denial of his or her legal
minimum rights.

For probationary employees working their first three months, no quitting

notice is legally required.

It is natural for an employer to resent a quitting employee. The employer

may think ‘well, if you are going to quit anyway, why not just go now?’
Firing workers who are quitting is how vindictive employers demonstrate
their ultimate power over employees.

The legislation also addresses that scenario. Section 59 says once an

employee gives proper minimum notice and the employer wants to dismiss

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that employee sooner, the employer must still pay the employee salary to the
end of the employee’s notice period.

To discourage employers’ retaliation in this way, if the employee gave

longer than minimum notice, and the employer asks her to leave before then,
the employee is entitled to the much longer notice (or damages in lieu) that
the employer would have needed to furnish in order to dismiss that
employee.

Another way for employers to retaliate against quitting employees is to

reduce their wages or hours (or any other term) after the quitting notice has
been received. Section 61 also prohibits this. The employer, however, can
still give full termination pay or terminate for a legitimate reason. A written
quitting notice has no effect if somehow the quitting employee continues to
work for the same employer after the stipulated quitting date.

COMMON LAW

It is very important to remember that these statutory notice periods are the
legal minimum. Occasionally, employer and employee may have contracted
to be bound by this minimum legal notice, but most often they will not have
made any such agreement. In many circumstances, employees will be
expected to provide the employer with more notice of quitting. This is
called reasonable notice.

A fundamental principle of contract interpretation is that if there is no

endpoint to the contract, it may be brought to an end by either party giving
reasonable notice to the other party of that intention. It is very important to
remember that these statutory notice periods are the legal minimum. The

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courts have held that quitting employees generally need to give less notice to
employers than employers need in order to dismiss employees.

In most cases, an employee’s reasonable notice of quitting will be longer

than the minimum statutory notice set out in section 58. The difficulty now
lies in prescribing how much quitting notice should be, because that depends
on several factors.

Today workers in highly complex jobs are more indispensable; harder to

replace. How much time would an employer need to find a suitable
replacement employee? This is the standard of what reasonable notice ought
to be given. It includes:

 the nature of the work;

 the experience and seniority of the worker;
 availability of replacements; and
 the time it takes to train new employees to a satisfactory level.

In the 1992 case of Tree Savers International Ltd. v. Savoy, 1992 CanLII
2828 (AB CA), although the employee had provided the two-week minimum
period of notice, the Alberta Court of Appeal found that 18 months (or
$146,200 in lieu) was appropriate reasonable notice.

In Bradley v. Carleton Electric Ltd., 1998 CanLII 7140 the Ontario Court of
Appeal determined three months of quitting notice should have been
rendered by a key employee who resigned after 18 months on the job.
Perhaps the most famous case is GasTOPS Ltd. v. Forsyth, 2012 ONCA
134. Four employees were ordered to pay nearly $20 million in damages to
the employer for breaching fiduciary duty, soliciting existing employees and

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business from the employer, and quitting without reasonable notice, which
was determined to be 10 to 12 months.

CONCLUSION
Employers have historically been reluctant to pursue former employees who
leave them in a lurch without adequate notice. That is changing as they
invest significantly in selection and training and much work is highly
specialized. Statutory minimum quitting notice triggers protection for the
departing employee. Employees should also consider the employer’s
interests, as well as their own reputation, when departing. As far as possible
in the circumstances, they should supply generous and reasonable quitting
notice.

REFERENCES

1. Shepherd, J. (2011): Firing At Will: A Manager's Guide. Apress

Media, pp 3 – 4.

2. Epstein, R. (1984): In Defense of the Contract at Will, 57 U. Chi. L.

Rev. 947.

3. Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 (1915) (Holmes, J., dissenting).

4. Rothstein, M. A.; Knapp A. S. & Liebman, L. (1987): Cases and

Materials on Employment Law, New York: Foundation Press, pg 738.

5. Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc., 24 Cal. 4th 317, 8 P.3d 1089, 100 Cal.
Rptr. 2d 352 (2000).

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 6. Spruill, P. (2011): NLRB Attacks Employment At-Will Disclaimers.
The National Law Review. Retrieved September 1, 2012.

7. Gerber, N. & Eisenberg (2012): Labor Law: NLRB finds standard at-
will employment provisions unlawful. The National Law Review.
Retrieved October 2, 2014.

8. Bowal, P. and Moore, S. (2015): Quitting and Giving Notice: What

Employees Need to Know, May 7, 2015.

Question One

ii. What factors would you consider in determining the salary structure of
an organization?

Answer

The following factors should be taken into consideration in determining

wage and salary structure of workers:

a. LABOUR UNIONS

The labour unions attempt to work and influence the wages primarily by
regulating or affecting the supply of labour. The unions exert their influence
for a higher wage and allowances through collective bargaining with the
representatives of the management.

If they fail in their attempt to raise the wage and other allowances through
collective bargaining, they resort to strike and other methods where by the

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 supply of labour is restricted. This exerts a kind of influence on the
employees to concerned test partially the demands of the labour unions.

b. PERSONAL PERCEPTION OF WAGE

Whether the wage is adequate and equitable depends not only upon the
amount that is paid but also upon the perceptions and the views of the
recipients of the wage. Even though the wage is above the going wage rate
in the community if it is lower than that of fellow worker deemed inferior, it
will be regarded as inequitable in the eyes of the recipients of the wage. A
man’s perception of the equity of his wage will undoubtedly affect his
behaviour in joining and continuing in the organisation.

c. COST OF LIVING

Another important factor affecting the wage is the cost of living adjustments
of wages. This approach tends to vary money wage depending upon the
variations in the cost of living index following rise or fall in the general
price level and consumer price index. It is an essential ingredient of long
term labour contracts unless provision is made to reopen the wage clause
periodically.

There are measurement problems both in ascertaining productivity and cost

of living increases. This problem may lead to lack of understanding and
unanimity on the part of the management and the workers.

d. GOVERNMENT LEGISLATION

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 The laws passed and the labour policies formed by the Government have an
important influence on wages and salaries paid by the employees. Wages
and salaries can’t be fixed below the level prescribed by the government.
The laws on minimum wages, hours of work, equal pay for equal work,
payment of dearness and other allowances, payment of bonus, etc. have been
enacted and enforced to bring about a measure of fairness in compensating
the working class.

e. ABILITY TO PAY

Labour unions have often demanded an increase in wages on the basis that
the firm is prosperous and able to pay. However, the fundamental
determinants of the wage rate for the individual firm emanate for supply and
demand. If the firm is marginal and cannot afford to pay competitive rates,
its employees will generally leave it for better paying jobs. However, this
adjustment is neither immediate nor perfect because of problems of labour
immobility and lack of perfect knowledge of alternatives. If the firm is
highly successful, there is little need to pay for more than the competitive
rates to obtain personnel.

f. SUPPLY AND DEMAND

As stated earlier, the wage is a price for the services rendered by a worker or
employee. The firm desires these services, and it must pay a price that will
bring forth the supply, which is controlled by the individual worker or by a
group of workers acting together through their unions. The practical result of
the operation of this law of supply and demand is the creation of “going-
wage rate”.

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 It is not practicable to draw demand and supply curves for each job in an
organisation even though, theoretically, a separate curve exists for each job.
But, in general, if anything works to decrease the supply of labour such as
restriction by a particular labour union, there will be a tendency to increase
the wage. The reverse of each situation is likely to result in a decrease in
employee wage, provided other factors, such is those discussed below, do
not intervene.

g. PRODUCTIVITY

Increasingly there is a trend towards gearing wage increases to productivity

increases. Productivity is the key factor in the operations of a company.
High wages and low costs are possible only when productivity increases
appreciably. The above factors exercise a kind of general influence on wage
rates. In addition, there are several factors which do affect the individual
difference in wage rates.

h. LOCATION

Geography plays an astounding role in pay rates, and can make as much as a
100% difference in offers (jobs in Des Moines don’t pay as well as those in
New York City, San Francisco, or Chicago, in large part because of cost of
living differentials). Don’t think that the highest dollar amount is always the
best pay: you must also consider the cost of living when determining how
much a salary is really worth.

i. EMPLOYER INDUSTRY/MARKET FOCUS

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 This sets the overall stage for everything, because it reflects the market in
which the employer operates. Industries with vigorous, active, and profitable
markets – think luxury goods, medical equipment, energy production, or
smartphones for example – are going to pay much better than industries with
slow, inactive, or unprofitable markets – think non-profits, education, or
food services, for example. Simply put, those industries that are growing and
making money will pay more than those that are static or shrinking and not
making money.

j. STABILITY OF EMPLOYMENT

Stable employment relationships can help an economy by ensuring a steady

and growing purchasing power and stimulating consumer demand.

If, on the other hand, a system of social protection is developed whereby the
burden of dismissal is shared among workers and employers, the negative
effect of an economic downturn can be mitigated.

Zenith Bank in Nigeria had to cut salaries of their workers in order to keep
their jobs rather than throw them in the unemployment market.

k. PROFITS OR SURPLUS EARNED BY THE ORGANISATION

During the time of prosperity, employers pay high wages to carry on

profitable operations and because of their increased ability to pay. But
during a period of depression, wages are cut because funds are not available.
Marginal firms and non-profit organizations (like hospitals and educational
institutions) pay relatively low wages because of low or no profit. If the
demand for certain skills is high and the supply is low, the result is a rise in
the price to be paid for these skills. When prolonged and acute, these labor-
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 market pressures probably force most organizations to “reclassify hard-to-
fill jobs at a higher level” than that suggested by the job evaluation.

l. THE STATE OF ECONOMY

The state of economy also influences the wage and salary-fixation. Wage
rates will he different in a stable economy than in a depressed economy. In a
depressed economy, there may be increase in supply of labour and this
results in the fixation of lower wage rates.

m. INFLATION
Increase in the prices of commodities and decrease in value of the money is
called as inflation. The causes of inflation are many which are raising costs,
fall in the currency value in international markets, raising taxes by
government and stagnation in the development of economy, etc. In India
year 2012, due to the inflation nearly 22 listed companies had increased
salary of its employees ranging between 12% to 27% compared to last year.
Example Reliance Industries Ltd had paid nearly13% increase in salaries to
its employees compared to last year salaries and HDFC (Housing
Development Finance Corporation) Bank had paid nearly 21% increase in
salaries to its employees compared to last year salaries.

The most important factors which affect the individual differences in wage rates
are:

a. JOB CLASSIFICATION/ RATING/ PAY GRADE

Most organizations work with HR or compensation professionals to set

salary ranges for the positions they seek to fill. Some organizations are more

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 flexible than others when it comes to going outside such ranges, but these
ranges basically define the pay scale that comes with any given position to
be filled.

b. JOB EXPERIENCE

The closer your documented experience comes to the kinds of skills and
knowledge an employer is seeking to acquire, the higher your offer will go
within the range that comes with the job. Extraordinary experience might
lead to out-of-range pay, but it might also lead them not to make an offer
because of over-qualification.

c. SALARY HISTORY

What you were making in your last several positions sets the floor for what
you will make in your next job, both for good and for ill. This is an area
where those seeking a career change may find themselves “over-
compensated” and ineligible for positions they seek because of prior salaries
earned.

d. EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

Most jobs come with baseline education requirements, but those who exceed
them can expect to be compensated more than those who don’t. That said,
the institution that conferred your degree(s) matters, as does how recently
they were earned. But those with Master’s degrees usually make more than
those with Bachelor’s, while those with advanced degrees (PhD, JD, MD,
and so forth) make the most overall.
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e. CERTIFICATIONS HELD

If a certification is relevant to your position, a current credential can boost

pay. For those competing for new positions or promotions, certifications can
help hiring managers differentiate between the good ones and the great ones.
Some organizations recognize and compensate for IT certification directly
and explicitly; the majority takes credentials into account but their role in
salary calculations is seldom transparent.

f. DEMONSTRABLE SOFT SKILLS

The best employees are those with track records or overt accomplishments
(see next item) that attest to their ability to write and speak well, and to
manage themselves and other people, as well as complex projects.
Certifications like the Project Management Professional (PMP) can play in
here, but a well-documented track record is key to demonstrating good
development of soft skills.

g. PUBLICATIONS, HONORS, AWARDS

Those who have published in their fields, or who have earned honors or
awards from professional societies or associations can offer additional proof
of skills, knowledge, and professional accomplishments. This can also help
differentiate between good, great or job promotion candidates. This value is
mostly in terms of prestige, however, and may not make big differences in
salary.

h. WORKER’S CAPACITY AND AGE

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 Some organizations do pay some individuals based on their potential. Young
managers are paid more because of their potential to perform even if they are
short of experience

i. HAZARDS INVOLVED IN WORK

Operational hazards in the workplace determine what workers earn. A

worker who works offshore earns more than a worker who is is onshore in
the office despite they work for the same organization. The hazards in the
offshore increases the risk taking on the job compared to what is obtainable
onshore. The higher the risk, the higher the pay.

j. PROMOTION POSSIBILITIES

A highflier has a lot of ability and a strong wish to be successful and is

therefore expected to achieve a lot: High-flyers in the industry typically earn
25 percent more than their colleagues. In other words, two employees may
be doing the same job but they do not earn the same salary because of the
differences in their future expectations.

Question Two

Do you agree that an organization must be customer based to succeed?

Discuss.

Answer

The first essence of business is to create a customer. Every business that fails to
satisfy its customer is heading for failure. The reason being that the customer

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determines whether a business would be a going concern or not. It is the
willingness of a customer to pay that converts economic resources into something
else. (Drucker, 1974).

A Customer Focused organization is one where decisions about the product are
made based on aligning customer needs and wants with the overall goals of the
organization. Customer feedback via surveys, customer service emails, Tweets,
blogs and more in-depth qualitative research are golden nuggets in these
organizations.

WHY CUSTOMERS ARE IMPORTANT

Customers are the most important people for any organisation. They are the
resource upon which the success of the business depends. When thinking about the
importance of customers it is useful to remember the following points:

1. Repeat business is the backbone of selling. It helps to provide revenue and

certainty for the business.

2. Organisations are dependent upon their customers. If they do not develop

customer loyalty and satisfaction, they could lose their customers.

3. Without customers the organisation would not exist.

4. The purpose of the organisation is to fulfill the needs of the customers.

5. The customer makes it possible to achieve business aims.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

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Customer satisfaction is at the heart of the selling process. One estimate is that it
costs five times as much to attract new customers as it does to keep an existing
one. The relationship between the customer and the organisation is, therefore, an
important one.

Building customer relationships can be seen as moving up a ladder. At the top rung
of the ladder are your loyal customers (advocates).

The ladder consists of four main rungs (with 4 being the highest):

 4 - Advocates
 3 - Regular customers
 2 - Occassional users
 1 - One-off purchasers

The extent to which customers move up the ladder depends on how well they are
treated by the organisation. Well focused sales methods and attention to individual
detail is likely to encourage customers to move up the ladder.

The Times 100 focuses on organisations which illustrate excellence in building

relationships with customers over time such as Argos, which spends a lot of
energy, and time on finding out what customers want. Other organisations like
Nestle and Cadbury Schweppes place great store on building strong links with all
their stakeholder groupings and with their customers through extensive market
research.

THE 10 STRATEGY TENETS FOR DEVELOPING A CUSTOMER-

DRIVEN WORKFORCE

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Turning a customer service strategy into reality is a key challenge for
organizations. Today, most senior managers realise that customer service is the
competitive strategic weapon but achieving this is sometimes a major
challenge. Organizations are their people, and developing a customer-driven
workforce has to be the key role of customer service leaders and managers… so
how can they do this?

Peter Drucker famously said: “The purpose of business is to create and keep
customers,” so every business needs to organise its service delivery system around
the needs of its customers. This means firstly designing a customer service strategy
that will put customers at the heart of your business. Senior managers need to ask
themselves, “Are we doing everything we can to create the best possible
experience for our customers?” Perhaps some senior managers assume that
because their marketing departments communicate that the organisation’s service
delivery “exceeds customer expectations,” that they actually do. I call this
corporate arrogance! It is suicidal for businesses.

Your people are the ones to leave a first impression - and a lasting impression - on
your customers. They also intimately understand customers’ frustrations and they
often know how issues can be resolved, but are not empowered to make the
necessary changes.

In the UK we are now predominantly a service economy, so we increasingly need

high performance people to keep our customers loyal. Poor customer service is
costing UK business’s £15.3bn per year as customers defect! Companies that
increase customer interaction investments during a recession can improve profit
margins, sales and market share over complacent competitors. It is critical for
organisations to retain every customer and maximise their lifetime value.

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Institute of Customer Service research shows that organisations with a reputation
for service excellence have on average a 24% higher net profit margin than same-
sector rivals who do not have the same standing – and they can achieve up to 71%
more profit per employee. Are businesses listening?

Let’s assume there are still many organisations out there that still do not know how
to establish a strong customer base, so what do they have to do? Lets get customer-
centric and here are my ten key components, tried and tested, which will help
organisations get started.

COMPONENTS OF CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY

1. Customer insight – Get to know your customers and understand what they
expect from you. How many organisations conduct mystery shopper
activities for themselves? Where they do it can be scary but
enlightening. Get to know your internal customers too - your
workforce. Customer service managers need to focus on all their customers
consistently and there are many ways of gathering customer
intelligence. This does not mean the odd customer satisfaction survey, which
I am personally not in favour of; not because most organisations disregard
the feedback or do not interpret them properly, but because many
organisations create them with a primary intention of achieving good results!
They sometimes only ask the questions that will highlight their good
practices.

Also, where satisfaction surveys are concerned doesn’t the customer

experience depend a lot on customer expectations in the first place? Easyjet
might score highly because we have low expectations, but we might score
British Airways lower because we have high expectations. Organisations

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 need more reliable methods of evaluating the customer experience and they
need their people to make this happen. I really believe that before you decide
what your customer service strategy should be you need to talk to your
customers and your people, your internal customers, before you put pen to
paper.

For instance, Portman Building Society’s top executives travelled the length
and breadth of the country to speak to their customers and their staff to
identify what was important to them and what needed to be in place to
satisfy all their requirements. When they analysed all the information they
developed their customer service strategy, created new service standards and
then went back on the road to communicate their new vision to employees
and customers alike. Absolutely the right way to go which is why they
proved to be a great acquisition.

2. Create the service vision or service personality – This is an identifiable

set of service characteristics that define how an organisation service
proposition is different from that of its competitors. Some organisations
have their own credo, others have a service promise or a customer charter
but whatever method you have of communicating your service standards to
your customers it is important to make sure those promises are achievable
and shared by all teams in the organisation.

3. Develop a customer service strategy - This determines the overall direction

of the organisation, and, in particular, how the organisation will go about
delivering customer service excellence. This is a high level plan that
communicates to everyone involved with the organisation how it will
develop relationships with its customers, in order to maximise customer

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 satisfaction and customer loyalty, and achieve business success. It is
commonly used to prevent non-aligned and disjointed activities between
departments and drives everyone towards the same service goals. It includes
a service/operational plan to ensure the strategic objectives are met and this
should be shared with employees as everyone is going on the same
journey. Communication is key; if you do not keep your people informed,
rumours and gossip spread fast which can lead to negativity and once
embedded it is hard to eliminate.

4. Build an appropriate customer service framework - A learning and

development framework will help identify how the organisation is going to
go about delivering service excellence. Reward and recognition, celebrating
success are key motivators for employees so use them to deliver your service
strategy. Customer service performance will improve when organisations
provide support through valued reward and recognition systems. This level
of recognition results in higher levels of employee satisfaction which
translates into better customer service for your customers.

5. Deploy executive service leaders and managers who will become the
organization’s service champions - Service leaders and managers can
make or break an organization’s values; a leader who successfully creates a
customer-focused culture will have a huge impact on business success
through employee retention and customer loyalty. Ensure that your leaders
and managers have the right skills, dedication and passionate about service
excellence, customer focused and are results-driven. Leaders should possess
a strong business acumen, be strategic, but lead by example, inspiring trust
and embedding a no-blame culture within the organisation. Critically, they
must encourage positive teamwork.
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6. Recruit high-performance, intelligent and well-motivated people with a
'can-do attitude' - You want people with a customer-focused mindset. Once
in place, develop their knowledge and skills for delivering service excellence
against competencies that are customer focused – good communication
skills, tolerance, empathy, good judgement and the ability to interpret
service issues and respond appropriately according to the organisations
rules.

7. Create innovative products and services with the support of all your
people - Inspire your organisation to develop a culture of continuous
improvement and innovation for the benefit of your customers. Employee
suggestion schemes have helped many organisations implement change
which has improved service delivery for customers but even those
organisations that have the answers today cannot assume they know what
their customers will want tomorrow. Customer’s expectations have become
demands and successful organisations will already be anticipating
customer’s demands tomorrow to stay ahead of the competition.

8. Design and implement customer-centric processes that make purchasing

easy for customers - Processes should be seamless, designed from the
customers’ viewpoint and be consistently reviewed to make transactions
simple and stress free. This includes making it easy for customers to
complain, remember complainants are your most loyal ambassadors if their
complaints are handled professionally. Organizations seldom achieve
competitive advantage through their technology and processes alone; it may
add value but only if there is a parallel investment in their people who have
to work with the technology to assist customers.
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8. Create performance metrics so that the organisation can routinely and
accurately assess its effectiveness for customers - Use appropriate tools,
proven methods, for measuring your customer satisfaction, remember that
customer service as a whole includes a wide range of specific service
characteristics and there are many touch points where customer transactions
take place. It is important to check on customers` perceptions of your service
levels at each of these touch points and compare the results with what
actually takes place. In other words, identifying your gaps!

10. Manage customer relationships - Products and service alone will not
develop relationships with customers. The organisation must deliver
something of value to ensure loyalty. Loyalty is created when you provide a
level of service that exceeds expectations and which delights your
customers. Managing customer relationships is about establishing,
maintaining and enhancing relationships with customers for mutual benefit.
This takes us back to the beginning, to learning more and more about our
customers in order to deliver what they expect. If your people can be
encouraged, not only to deliver the promise, but also to go the extra mile,
this goes a long way towards sustaining a fantastic relationship with your
customers. You will reap the rewards in loyalty, increased reputation and
business success. I must emphasize at this point that although CRM is a term
given to the management of customer relationships in high volume
consumer services its prime objective is to collect data from different
departments to enable the tracking and analysis of customer’s transactions
and trends. Although particularly valuable it does not replace the personal
touch.
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 By successfully implementing all these components you will begin to create
a customer-focused culture. There is no quick fix, but eventually you will
influence the behaviours of all your people so that when new recruits join
the organisation the service culture dictates: “This is the way we do things
around here”. The customer determines what Best Practice is and they
expect the highest possible service, the most innovative products at the right
price and they want them now.

To achieve service excellence organisations must make excellent service a

priority and ensure that their service leaders and customer service managers
possess the necessary skills to support all customer facing teams, whether
front-of-house or back office; they should all interact in a carefully designed
way to ensure that the customer has a fantastic experience with your
organisation.

It is no longer appropriate to simply focus on product and/or

services. Instead, organisations must truly understand the emotional
interactions between their team leaders and mangers, employees and
customers, because this is what determines whether an organisation achieves
business success or not.

ii. Discuss how individual productivity can affect an organization’s

productivity?

Answer

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Productivity at the organization level is a measure of how well the customer
is satisfied. Drawing an inference from this, productivity could be said to be
a good measure of how well a company is doing. This is a plausible reason
why the production line received a lot of attention because it was relatively
easy to analyze and measure.

Productivity can be separated into two factors: Performance and Financial

(Moore, 1978). Individual performance is based on what is produced by a
worker over a given period of time. For instance, suppose in a plastic cup
factory, worker A produces 2000 units of cups in a month. The total
production in that organization is the aggregation of the individual
production in that month. Supposing the workers decided to improve on
their production and Worker A as case study increases his production to
2,500 units of cups per day, it therefore means that an increment of 500 units
(25% increase) has been added to the organization. Also financial
productivity could be seen in the value of the output rather than the quantity
of the output. If the same worker who produced 2,000 units of cups reduced
the number of scraps generated during production drastically, by giving
attention to quality, the financial value he would have generated at the end
of the day would soar.

Sardana and Vrat (1987) asserts that productivity should be measured with
the following objectives borne in mind: to identify potential improvements;
to decide how to reallocate resources; to determine how well previously
established goals have been set.

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Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. It is a ratio of
actual output (production) to what is required to produce it (inputs).
Productivity is measured as a total output per one unit of a total input.
Control managers in a given organization are concerned with maximizing
productivity through process-oriented observations and improvements.

For businesses, productivity growth is important because providing more

goods and services to consumers translates to higher profits. As productivity
increases, an organization can turn resources into revenues, paying
stakeholders and retaining cash flows for future growth and expansion.
Productivity leads to competitiveness and potentially competitive
advantages. (Boundless, 2016)

Adam Smith traced productivity in his book, An Inquiry into the Nature and
Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), and he stressed that the essence of
industrialism is to ensure that division of labour represents a quantitative
increase in productivity (Rosenberg, N., 1993).

The specialization and concentration of the workers on their single subtasks

often leads to greater skill and greater productivity on their particular
subtasks than would be achieved by the same number of workers each
carrying out the original broad task.

The importance of matching skills with equipment – usually in the context

of an organization cannot be over-emphasized. For example, Adam Smith
propounded that the making of pins is broken down into a number of stages
– one making the head, another the body, each using different equipment.

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Similarly, a large number of skills with suitable equipment is required in the
building of a ship.

Smith's insight suggests that the huge increases in productivity obtainable

from technology or technological progress are possible because human and
physical capital are matched, usually in an organization.

It has been observed that some workers are more talented than others, and
that even smart ones were often unmotivated because they are made to
perform repetitive tasks and as a result they work at very slow rate. This
slow rate of work has been observed in many industries and many countries
and has been called by various terms, including "soldiering",(Smith, Adam
1776), a term that reflects the way conscripts may approach following
orders. The idea of job enrichment and job enlargement came into force to
give the workers sense of belonging in the management of affairs of the
organization and to also expand his scope of work horizontally so that he is
allowed to express himself better on the job respectively.

To further forestall the issue of soldiering which will not increase the
productivity of the worker and the productivity of the organization, it would
be worthy to emphasize that workers have a vested interest in their own
well-being, and do not benefit from working above the defined rate of work
when it will not increase their remuneration.

It becomes necessary to emphasize that each employee's compensation must

be linked to their output, so that their productivity would go up. (Taylor,
Frederick., 1911). Thus compensation plans such as piece rates, bonus
sharing, target achievement bonus would go a long way increasing the

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compensation of the worker thereby making him to contribute significantly
to the productivity of the organization.

We should recognize the fact that differences exists between workers, and
the need to select the right person for the right job is pivotal.

When workers are motivated by giving them frequent breaks and good pay
for good work (Rosenberg, 2014) there is a high tendency that their
productivity would soar

However, some less intelligent workers exists that must be closely managed
and supervised so that they can work efficiently at their tasks and also
bringing out the productivity in them. (Taylor, Frederick, 1911).

Attending to the individual workers’ needs and not just the needs of the
whole would improve the productivity of the individual worker. The human
relations school of management evolved in the 1930s to complement rather
than replace scientific management, with Taylorism determining the
organisation of the work process, and human relations helping to adapt the
workers to the new procedures.(Marx, Karl 1844)

Productivity can only be effective and sustained in an organization if the

workers benefited from the profits they generated by virtue of their inputs on
the job. Where owners / manager take advantage of all the profits generated
without realizing that the productivity of the workers is so needed for the
organization to be productive have caused breakdown of the system through
strikes and embezzlement (Taylor, Frederick, 1911).

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Workers are necessarily human: they have personal needs and interpersonal
friction, and they face very real difficulties introduced when jobs become so
efficient that they have no time to relax, and so rigid that they have no
permission to innovate.

REFERENCES

1. Boundless. “The Importance of Productivity.” Boundless

Management. Boundless, 26 May. 2016. Retrieved 21 Nov. 2016 from
https://www.boundless.com/management/textbooks/boundless-
management-textbook/control-8/managing-productivity-67/the-
importance-of-productivity-336-3912/

2. Marx. K. (1884): Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844,

First Manuscript, in T.B. Bottomore, Karl Marx Early Writings, C.A.
Watts and Co. Ltd., London, 1963, p. 72

3. Moore, (1978).: Knowledge Worker Productivity Measurement,

Chapter 4, p12.

4. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2016-11-02.

5. Rosenberg, N, (2014). "Babbage: pioneer economist by Nathan

Rosenberg". Retrieved 28 March 2014.

6. Rosenberg, Nathan (1993). Exploring the Black Box: Technology,

economics and history. Cambridge University Press. pp. 25, 27–32,
37–8. ISBN 0 521 459559.

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7. Sardana and Vrat (1987): Knowledge Worker Productivity
Measurement Chapter 4, p12.

8. Smith, A., (1776)): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations (1776).

9. Taylor, F. W. (1903): Shop Management, New York, NY, USA:

American Society of Mechanical Engineers, OCLC 2365572. "Shop
Management" began as an address by Taylor to a meeting of the
ASME, which published it in pamphlet form. The link here takes the
reader to a 1912 republication by Harper & Brothers. Also available
from Project Gutenberg.

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