Fy003 Portfolio And Reflective Account Assessment Answers

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Answer:

Introduction 

Organizations achieve their objectives through the engagement of the employees and   the raw materials. Employee productivity simply refers to the ability of an individual to effectively perform a given task using available resources to have an optimum output or results(Dial 2017,p.25). Inadequate input of employees tends to lead underperformance of the organizations leading to failure; therefore, all organizations have to strategize better ways of improving the employees’ productivity aiming to make the organization productive.

Dove is the international UK based personal care brand that was funded in 1957 by the Lever Brothers majorly to produce beauty soaps. Currently, the brand under Unilever has expanded to create a wide range of products in different countries across the world, such as anti-aspirants, body lotions, hair care, and skin care among many others (https://www.dove.com/

). Dove brand is ranked as the fourth leading deodorant brand in the world based on sales, and this is as a result of the input and output of the employees. However, according to the CEO, the company aims at becoming the best in the world, and therefore, it has to do all the major competitors such Nivea, Rexona among others. The principal aim of this article is to determine the significant ways in which the company can achieve the objective through improving the employees’ productivity that will eventually translate into the entire performance of the organization.

Literature Survey  

The employee is the principal compensate of every organization and commonly refers to the person hired to render services to the organization in exchange for monetary compensation(Terry 2014,p.1). Therefore, every organization depends on the performance/productivity of each employee to achieve the target. Performance can be defined as the output needed for the achievement of a specific objective and entails what task is done, how the job is done and what has been achieved.

Conversely, employee productivity refers to the output in respective to the inputs per person concerning a specific time frame (Malik,Aswan & Majeed 2016,p.564). Therefore, it means to the number of goods and services produced with the amount of the resource used and is measured through the following method:

Productivity= (quantity of services produced/ amount of resources used) x 100%

Since productivity relates to the amount of work created within a specific period, and it also refers to the ability of an individual to produce a standardized amount of product and services, then the term can also be related to the performance (Oryitz 2018, p.64).

Dove brand entails different categories of jobs such as the manufacturing, transportation, marketing and promotion, human resources among others that have to interrelate to facilitate the achievement of the objectives. These activities are performed by the employees who have different skills of production, different level of motivation and dedication, different communication styles and cultural background (Venclova 2013, p.26). All these factors tend to affect the performance of an individual and the entire team, and therefore, needs proper strategy and management.

Ways of improving the employee performance 

In every human resource management of an organization, human resource is the significant aspect that needs utilization for the achievement of the objective. The resource, therefore, requires effective and efficient management, and this can only be achieved and improved through fostering performance management (David 2013, p.446). Performances management is defined as the process of creating a work environment which enables employees to have the best of their capabilities throughout the whole working system.  Effective performance management ensures that the organizations have a healthy work environment, effective performance plans, selection of appropriate staffs and precise measurements of employees’ performance. Performance management system entails:

1.    Development of clear job descriptions,
2.    Use of the proper selection process to recruit employees,

III. A proper negotiation of requirements,

1.    Accomplishment based performance standard, measures and outcomes
2.    Conduction of practical training and coaching system
3.    Designing of effective performance recognition and reward system

VII.    Provision and promotional of career development opportunities for the employees

Dove’s Productivity Strategies

As indicated, Dove brands performance has been of great that has enabled it to be ranked as the fourth best deodorant in the world regarding sales. Before embarking on how the company can improve the performances of the employees, we first need to know how the company has managed to make their employees and the organization to perform in the world ranking. The excellent performances of the company are attributed to some factors such as: personal and team performance, incentives and various funs organised by the management. (Jie et al. 2017).Dove brand recognizes own achievement as the most crucial aspect of the organization performance.  The company invests time and effort in encouraging every employee to build their talents and capabilities through Performance and Development Planning (PDP) and the Performance-Based –Reward (Waheed &aim 2015, p.1211). Through PBR, the company has created a winning culture, whereby the employees are encouraged to have full growth to their potential, hence enhancing the deliverance of the tasks.

Team building 

The company encourages team building and team productivity through various ways such as determine the capability of the team in fulfilling the targets, learn the satisfaction of the employees being part of the team and the capacity of the team in adopting proposed changes to increase the performance(Ulrich 2017,p.146). The company has managed to instil the sense of team spirit and the harmony existence among the employees leading to proper coordination of the operations from the production to the sales units across various countries. The management encourages educational training programs to enhance and remind the employees of their responsibility as an individual and as a team (Costa,Passos & Bakker 2014,p.418). The team spirit is strengthened through the organizations of various activities such as field trips, end year’s party among many others.

Incentives 

Dove Company offers their employees’ attractive incentives whenever the goals are met such as optimum sales in a year. The provision of the incentives tends to motivate the performance of employees which influence the productivity of the organization at large. According to Cerasoli,Nicklin and Nassrelgrgawi (2016,p.786) motivation is a way of educating the employees to direct the efforts and interest towards the organizational activities leading to commitment and acceptance of the responsibilities and roles of the employees. Lack of efforts and interest leads to a high rate of the absentees, turnover, sick leave, grievances, and strikes hence the performance drops (Avelar et al. 2016, p.42).  The right incentives provided tend to create goodwill between the employee and the company, as the employees realize their worth in the company. Through this, the employees do not think of leaving another company instead concentrate on improving and attaining the personal and the organizational objectives (Marini 2017, p.190).

The company also have enhanced the employee productivity through the adoption of new and suitable technological machines such as soap chips making a machine, soap mixer machine, soap roller machine, soap circular cutting machine among others. The hardware, software and the brain ware combined to ease the production process hence enhancing the total output of each employee.

However, the sales recently dropped following accusation of racism by the customers: the viral ad that showed a black woman in brown t-shirt immediately changing into a white woman contracted attention of many activists, who challenged the advert as discriminative. This was interpreted that a “dirty black woman “was cleansed into a “white woman” and made a large number of customers not to buy the products. The human error is attributed to the sales and marketing staffs that developed the ad, with an aim to increase the performance of the brand; however, it got a bad reception demoralizing the staffs.

Performance  Appraisal

As indicated above, performance management aims at optimizing the outcome of every employee and the organization as a whole.  This has well been carried out by the dove brand, however, needs some appraisal to achieve the primary objective of being the best in the world regarding sales and product provisions. Thus, performance appraisal is a critical aspect of the every HRM since it enables the periodic and impartial rating of employee’s output regarding the current and future tasks (Mulvaney 2017, 91). Performance appraisal simply refers to the constant review of the employee’s job productivity rate and the overall contribution to the organization. Traditionally, the Performance appraisal involved documentation and communication of the productivity rate between the employees and the supervisors: a process known as the informal approach where bookkeeping was lesser activity than the current one (Younyoung & Junghee 2018, p.1104). However, currently, the process has been formalized with numerous developments and changes to include the book and record keeping of the employee's productivity rate for future review, guidance and to offer a gradual improvement on the productivity.

Uses of Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal is used majorly for three purposes, and these can be adopted by dove brand to facilitate the improvement of employee performance:  first is used as the foundation of reward allocation such as promotion, salary increment, and other rewards (Morgan 2014, p.12). These systems and rewards lead to motivation and ignition of employees to improve on the productivity rate.

Secondly, used as a way of identification of employees weakness and determination of the areas of development. Through the performance appraisal, Dove tends to identify the employee's talents and the potentials thereby, help the management to determine individuals that can be assigned more responsibility and promoted to the higher level of management such as supervisors, assistant manager, and line manager among others.

Lastly, is used as a selection and development program as it differentiated satisfactory performers from the unsatisfactory performers. The excellent performers identified are always rewarded following productivity, to maintain and ignite them to increase their rate of production and the entire organization.

On the other hand, the poor performers tend to receive wage cut deprivations of facilities services, dismissal or lower rate of incentives than others. These will encourage them to do better to receive the same amount as the colleagues, eventually improving their productivity rate. Through this, the company will be able to carry out the performance evaluation of every employee, set the possible standard and guide each to achieve the specified targets. For example, the company sales and promotions staffs might be required to have certain optimum sales per day or month, and through various training and coaching on customer’s attraction, they will have the capability to achieve this.

Conclusions  

The literature review indicates that Employees are the basis of every organization and therefore, the output of each affects the performance of the entire organization. The productivity of an individual, therefore, needs to be enhanced through various process and methods, majorly known as the performance management and performance appraisal process. These ensure that the employees are well motivated to increase their output with the available resources to have a maximum output of the entire organization. Factors affecting productivity include incentives, training and team building. Incentives tend to encourage the employees to attain the set goals to receive the suggested rewards and incentives, hence increasing the productivity of each and the entire organization. Through the team building, employees are capable of helping one another to achieve the goal as a unit while through the use of suitable technological machines; the company also have enhanced the employee productivity.

To ensure that the productivity is improved and maintained, Dove Brand needs to apply the appraisal steps that are: development of clear  job descriptions, use of the appropriate selection process to recruit employees, proper negotiation of requirements, accomplishment-based performance standard, measures and outcomes conduction of practical training and coaching system designing of effective performance recognition and reward system and provision and promotional of career development opportunities for the employees.

Recommendations for Further Work 

Several researchers have stress on ways of improving the productivity of employees and the organizations; however, small proportions of studies have worked on those specific ways in-depth such as how employee engagement leads to productivity improvement. The future research should entail the exploration of employee engagement at different levels such as primarily in the sales department that is the basis of the Dove Brand human capital, to determine the impacts and how it can be improved.   

Glossary  

Employee a person hired to render services to the organization in exchange for monetary compensation

Employee productivity refers to the output in respective to the inputs per person concerning a specific time frame.

Employee performance refers to the output needed for the achievement of a specific objective and entails what task is done, how the job is done and what has been achieved.

Performance management refers to the process of creating a work environment which enables employees to have the best of their capabilities throughout the whole working system.

Performance appraisal refers to the constant review of the employee’s job productivity rate and the overall contribution to the organization

Reference List  

Avelar Ferreira, C, Teixeira Reis Neto, M, Wasner Vasconcelos, F, & Quiroga Souki, G 2016, 'Motivation And Rewards To Health Professionals', Gestao & Planejamento, 17, 1, pp. 41-58, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

Cerasoli, C, Nicklin, J, & Nassrelgrgawi, A 2016, 'Performance, incentives, and needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness: a meta-analysis', Motivation & Emotion, 40, 6, pp. 781-813, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

Costa, P, Passos, A, & Bakker, A 2014, 'Team work engagement: A model of emergence', Journal Of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 87, 2, pp. 414-436, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 September 2018.

David, EM 2013, 'Examining the Role of Narrative Performance Appraisal Comments on Performance', Human Performance, 26, 5, pp. 430-450, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 September 2018.

Dial, C 2017, 'The Social Field of Safety Performance: Building Transformative Bonds', Professional Safety, 62, 11, p. 25, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

https://www.dove.com/

Jie, T, Min-Shi, L, & Wen-Bin, L 2017, 'How Workplace Fun Influences Employees' Performance: The Role Of Person-Organization Value Congruence', Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 45, 11, pp. 1787-1801, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

Malik, S, Awan, A, & Majeed, S 2016, 'Impact Of Management Support And Training Of It Employees On Productivity Of An Organization: Evidences From Textile Sector In Pakistan', Science International, 28, 1, pp. 563-569, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

Marini, G 2017, 'New promotion patterns in Italian universities: Less seniority and more productivity? Data from ASN', Higher Education (00181560), 73, 2, pp. 189-205, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

Morgan, S 2014, 'How to deal with appraisal', Emergency Nurse, 22, 4, p. 12, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

Mulvaney, M 2017, 'Performance Appraisals in Public Parks and Recreation: A Study of Employees' Short and Longer Term Attitudes Toward the Appraisal System', Journal Of Park & Recreation Administration, 35, 2, pp. 86-107, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

Orvitz, K 2018, 'STEP UP: Employee Safety, Wellness & Productivity in the Workplace', Professional Safety, 63, 6, p. 64, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

Terry, PE 2014, 'Editor's Desk: The Performance Issue', American Journal Of Health Promotion, 28, 5, p. TAHP-1, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.

Ulrich, B 2017, 'Using Teams to Improve and Performance', Nephrology Nursing Journal, 44, 2, pp. 141-152, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 September 2018.

Venclová  G 2013, 'Identification of Employee Performance Appraisal Methods in Agricultural Organizations', Journal Of Competitiveness, 5, 2, pp. 20-36, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2018.