Managing Operational Improvement Occupational Health Psychology

Question: Discuss about theManaging Operational Improvement for Occupational Health Psychology. Answer: Introduction The goal of every organisation is to maximise its profits and establish itself as a well renowned company of its sector. It is likely that organisations bring about changes in their policies and regulations for fulfilling this objective. The strategic planning guidelines to make the necessary changes are likely to start with Adjust your Attitude. This may include three suggestions which are discussed in the subsequent sections. Firstly, every organisation must encourage its staff to cultivate the seven habits of highly effective people described by Dr Stephen Covey (Kumar 2014). The first habit is being proactive where one gains the ability to control ones environment. This will give an employee higher level of confidence. The other habit is to begin personal leadership. Every employee in the organisation must concentrate on the relevant activities that will prevent an individual from distractions and lead towards aims. The third habit refers to personal management where an employee must cultivate habit of organising and implementing activities which are in line with the professional goals. Staying more focused on daily targets will eventually improve employees performance. The ultimate result would be better productivity, in terms of quality and quantity. The fourth habit is to think win-win which refers to interpersonal leadership. Employee performance depends on the cooperative efforts with others. Emplo yee may not have job satisfaction if he or she has confrontation of win-or-lose. The fifth habit is to seek first to understand and then to be understood. This is a powerful communication skill that will help an employee to maintain positive relationship in all aspects of life. The sixth habit refers to cultivating habit of creative cooperation. Employee must observe potential and contributions made by others which will in turn motivate him or her to deliver similar results. The seventh habit refers to self renewal which enables an employee to grow spiritually, physically, mentally, socially and emotionally. In short the seven habits refer to personal fulfilment and stay highly motivated that will help an employee to deliver best performance in the organization and enhance job satisfaction. Dobre (2013) has commented that all organisations have the desire to be successful even though the current market is highly competitive. The companies, whether big or small strive to retain the e mployees as they acknowledge their influence on the organisation and their role in the organisation. For achieving the goals and objective, organisations must develop strategies for investing in human capital. Motivation is a key tool that reinforces human behaviours and it is this motivation that acts as the driving force behind satisfaction of all needs. Secondly every organisation must make the employees feel valued and important for the organisation. If employees do not get the opportunity to use their unique skills and abilities or do not find financial stability in their profession they are dissatisfied and frustrated due to demotivation and lack of interest to perform. Therefore, providing regular training, implementing rewards and recognition scheme may help an employee fell secured in their job and find career advancing opportunities. These steps give an individual with both personal and professional benefits. Eventually, it will encourage the employees to perform better in their role and highly contribute towards the organisational goals (Keim et al. 2014). Thirdly, an organisational leader is responsible to bring people together, motivate and develop a new team. Thus, by being open to new ideas one can profoundly impact on the individual contributor (McShane and Von Glinow 2011). Creativity can be fostered by a great idea that can make everything better. Encouraging new ideas from the team members will make an employee feel recognised and build confidence. Eventually, the employees will effectively and efficiently execute their role. This strategy will help employees to do their job in their own way giving them a sense of empowerment and accountability within the team. It helps build strong working relationships with employees and trust in the organisation. Consequently, they will deliver high performance. A leader can prevent politics in the business to hinder his success by being open to new ideas. This section is the personal reflection on managing operational improvement. The reflection is based on knowledge and concept gained by working on the given assignments, classroom discussions and literature review. I have developed important insights into the concept of operations strategy and operations performance. It is evident from the literature review that the fundamental element to strategic success is operations excellence. I have learnt the difference between the operations strategy and the operations management. The strategic plan sets a direction for the organisation. The operations strategy helps devise long term goals and objectives and various strategies to achieve them. On the other hand the operations management refers to settings objectives for regular or immediate operations and for implementing larger strategic objectives (Slack 2015). The assignment has broadened my concept and helped me realise that the both are closely related. If I would start my own business I will start the planning process with a broad vision. This would encompass all aspects of utilising a strong strategic management plan for setting the functioning of the business on the right tracks. The lessons lea rnt regarding alignment between strategic management and operations management would be implemented carefully. I have always wondered why companies like Amazon, Google are successful in every aspects while some companies struggle to achieve their basic goals. Operational strategy is vital for all organisations from all sectors. It contributes to strategic management of the operations at all levels. For example it can reduce the cost of producing products by efficient transformation of input into output or increase revenue by providing outstanding customer satisfaction (Krajewski et al. 2013). In addition operational management helps reduce risk while providing the basis for future innovation. This contributes to success of the company. I found the bottom up perspective more advantageous than the top-down perspective. It helps to modularise the design of the product. The reasons for this are multi-faceted. Firstly, one can replace manual processes with early automation. Development of custom adapters is fostered in the early phases. Moreover, the organisation can broaden identity management skills. The idea of updating one part of the product without interfering with the design of the main body of the product is applied everywhere. The idea cleared my curiosity that how giant industry like TESCO or Coca Cola, Apple implement high level strategic decision making. It is the concept of emergent strategies that is playing role (Brown et al. 2013). On gaining the knowledge of difference between the operational and strategic objectives I will be able to convert the overarching vision into concrete tasks. I agree with the paper of Ross (2015) that says that the usefulness of strategic objectives is only obtained when it is translated into the operational objectives. By developing presentations on the operations strategy I have learnt how it is influenced by the market requirements that are quality, dependability, speed, flexibility and cost. It is true that the operational experience gives emergent sense of what should be the correct strategy. The assignment has developed my knowledge on how market requirements change over time and how it leads to change in the perspectives. Both the customers and the competitors influence the market positioning. Based on how the competitors have positioned themselves one can determine the strategy to enter the same market (Hedman 2016). This used to appear complicate to me initially however now I am acquainted with various strategies by which one can flourish in similar business well established by others in same market. The important concept of segmentation comes into limelight in this regard. Market segmentation is the process of dividing a business market into sub groups of consumers based on some kind of shared characteristics. This is used to ensure the specification of the price and the product and way of promotion and how to be channelled to customers to satisfy them. This also demands good operational capability of servicing that particular market better (Brown et al. 2013). I was always confused by the popularity of similar products of different brands in the same market. However, understanding the relationship between the operations strategy and performance objectives has given deeper insights into the management process. Setting performance objectives such as targeting broad conference market with chance of higher growth and margin was convincing and resolved my confusion. Other things include ability to differentiate their brand or products from other brands selling similar products. Differentiation may include good presentation advice, high customisation of product, innovative design, fast and reliable supply and the need of prioritising high-quality technical aspects and dependability (Hedman 2016). Establishing business is not enough as it will not be successful if the employees do not perform well. The goal of every organisation is to improve employee performance and satisfaction. In my own business organization I would strive to cultivate the seven habits of highly effective people described by Dr Stephen Covey. Once I master the seven habits I will also be able to encourage the employees to adapt the same. I would provide training opportunities for the employees to read, listen and adopt the seven habits so that they can deliver high performance (Ba et al. 2016). Also as I suggested that every organisation must make the employees feel secure in their jobs, I would implement the same in my professional life. I would introduce the rewards and recognition and scheme to make the employees feel secured in the job. It will encourage the employees to perform better in their role and highly contribute towards the organisational goals (Keim et al. 2014). I have also liked the idea of being open to new ideas. It not only has the benefits in the personal life but also in the professional life. I believe that the creativity can be fostered by a great idea that can make everything better. The same thing can be applied in business as well. As an organisational leader I will fulfil my responsibility to bring people together, motivate and develop them for betterment of the organisation (Talk 2016). I will prevent the business politics by being open to new ideas. In conclusion I would implement strategic planning as DNA for my organisation to achieve success and survival in tough competitive market. The assignment has broaden my knowledge in the area of business management using operation strategy and operation performance. References Ba, B.H., Prins, C. and Prodhon, C., 2016. Models for optimization and performance evaluation of biomass supply chains: An Operations Research perspective.Renewable Energy,87, pp.977-989. Brown, S., Bessant, J.R. and Lamming, R., 2013.Strategic operations management. Routledge. Dobre, O.I., 2013. Employee motivation and organizational performance.Journal of Management and Socio-Economic, (1). Hedman, R., 2016.Capturing the Operational Improvement Potential of Production Systems(Doctoral dissertation, Chalmers University of Technology). Keim, A.C., Landis, R.S., Pierce, C.A. and Earnest, D.R., 2014. Why do employees worry about their jobs? A meta-analytic review of predictors of job insecurity.Journal of Occupational Health Psychology,19(3), p.269. Krajewski, L.J., Ritzman, L.P. and Malhotra, M.K., 2013.Operations management: Processes and supply chains(Vol. 1). New York: Pearson. Kumar, A., 2014. Arun Kumar, Authority on Dr. Stephen Covey's" The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People".Global Journal of Enterprise Information System,6(2), pp.105-105. McShane, S. and Von Glinow, M., 2011.M: Organizational behavior. Irwin/McGraw-Hill. Ross, D.F., 2015. Crafting Business and Supply Chain Strategies. InDistribution Planning and Control(pp. 83-140). Springer US. Slack, N., 2015.Operations strategy. John Wiley Sons, Ltd. Talk, O.M., 2016. Operations management. https://business.smu.edu.sg/sites/business.smu.edu.sg/files/business/OperationsManagement/OM%20Major%20Talk%20AY2016_17.pdf