Question One
First, customer loyalty is not only an essential aspect in the improvement of profitability levels but also a critical in measuring the quality of the market. It is forcefully crucial for any organization to develop and implement systems to facilitate the management of customer loyalty. At Choice Bank, the Manager of the Sales Division, Susan Caplan, seems to have sidelined this factor by concentrating on new customers. Going for new customers undermines the maintenance of loyalty with existing customers. Equally related is to customer loyalty is the need to quantify customer satisfaction. Customers tend to be more loyal when their needs are satisfied as compared to situations of reduced customer satisfaction. This can be related to the era of Bob Washington, the Director of Sales and Marketing Division at Choice Bank, whereby majority of customers reported high levels of customer satisfaction. Third, employee loyalty and employee satisfaction is also another critical factor that must be capitalized in many organizations. The Service Profit Model has clearly outlined the ways and advantages associated with employee satisfaction and employee loyalty in driving growth and profitability within the organization. The needs and employees at Choice Bank seems less satisfied as evidenced from claims from a section of employees regarding the behavior of Susan Caplan, who they find to be too demanding and unapproachable. Interestingly, Choice Bank has a high rate of employee loyalty given that employees have strong rapport with each other, high levels of education, and an average experience of eight years.
Another essential factor within the Service Profit Model is the need for establishing strong internal drives to address different factors within the working environment. An essential internal quality is one that contributes positively to the satisfaction of employee needs and value. Internal quality entails the satisfaction of all the dimensions of employee needs and feelings and eventually transforming into value. Speaking of leadership, the deteriorated sales revenue, and performance at Choice Bank can largely be attributed to the change in leadership relations among employees at Choice Bank. According to the Service Profit Model, leadership determines the level of success within the service chain. This entails spending more time with customers and employees in order to enhance the strength of the corporate culture. Leaders must be willing to display a sense of willingness and as well demonstrate the ability to listen to the needs of employees and customers. The advantages of good leadership are evident at Choice Bank and this can be drawn from the achievements of Bob Washington during his 25-year tenure at Choice Bank. His casual and friendly type of leadership enabled to develop personal relationships with employees and customers as well. He totally committed himself to ensure that sales targets and other performance.
Finally yet importantly, there is the need to relate management aspects with individual links within the service-profit chain. Sadly, few organizations have managed to achieve the feat that is critical in the development comprehensive strategies and hence, the establishment of competitive advantage. For instance, the development of strong individual links, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction at Choice Bank is only possible through the establishment strong organizational links with the service-chain management. Increased revenue generating capability and huge sales volume at Choice Bank can be achieved with the realization of the need to increase concern on both the soft and hard values of the management. The current management at Choice Bank must quantify the benefits associated with investment in people, customers, and employee and in turn, helps companies to determine the factors that drive sales and profitability. This should guide members of the sales team to develop strategies that will guide the process of defining loyal customers, customer profitability, customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, and ways of improving the internal quality control.
Question Two
Job satisfaction and employee motivation are some of the essential factors that are necessary for facilitating the realization of organizational goals and objectives. High employee satisfaction and employee motivation characterizes an organizational situation whereby employees are fully committed to their jobs and will work harder to ensure that the organization achieves all the objectives stipulated under its strategic plan. Citing the situation at Choice Bank, the level of employee motivation and/or job satisfaction for sales representatives can be said to be moderately high. For instance, a large percentage of sales representatives and individuals of the marketing force managed to obtain the highest rate of bonuses are realizable within the company. Out of the 100 employees, 80 of them received the highest monetary bonus. Receiving such a reward is only possible with employees who are dedicated to their jobs and those that are satisfied with whatever they are doing. Equally, the sales employees at Choice Bank have strong rapports with each other and they tent similar personality traits. As such, they exhibit high levels of self-reliance, independence, and sociability. Additionally, the employees have formed strong informal groups that enable them to socialize with each other during working hours. Such characteristics can only be found with employees who are committed and satisfied to their jobs.
Another measure that can be used assessing and evaluating the levels of employee motivation and job satisfaction can be evidenced from the success and commitment of Bob Washington, the current Director of Sales and Marketing Division. During his 25-year experience at the company, Bob has studied the nature of managing employees using the friendly style that has enabled him to develop personal relationships. Interestingly, not only did Bob Washington manage to know each employee by name but also went to the extent taking note of additional factors such as the birthdates and family backgrounds of employees. Speaking on the need to voice their concerns, the employees of Choice Bank are more motivated and willing to work with cooperative leaders. Employees are willing to approach their leaders and voice their concerns or ideas. For instance, most of Employee at Choice Bank perceived the management style of Susan Caplan as being overly demanding and as well, argued that Susan Caplan was unapproachable. Employees at the organization prefer managers with approachable leadership styles and those who are capable of getting in touch with their needs and feelings.
On the other hand, the deteriorated sales for the company over the past three years can be attributed to the change in the management style that did not coincide with the needs and aspirations of the employees. Employees might have gradually developed a sense of less job satisfaction or they might have become less motivated. Therefore, Choice Bank needs to study and implement measures that are geared towards the improvement of employee motivation.
Question Three
Even at the best of circumstances and organizational control measures, personality differences play a critical in enhancing relationships between the management and staff members. An individual’s personality characterizes the manner of conducting oneself at different situations and it is defined by emotions, feelings, and thinking patterns. In any given organization, personality is essential factor in defining the behavior of employees or the management staff at favorable or unfavorable situations in relation to their jobs.
According to Myer’s ‘Big Five’ Model of describing personality traits, five personality elements are critical in influencing the personality behaviors of employees within an organization. The five personality dimensions include Agreeableness, Openness to experience, and stability in emotions, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. In regard to the situation at Choice Bank, Extraversion can be related the type of comfort employees and managers derive from relationships. For instance, Bob Washington, and Jack Tayler can be said to exhibit extrovertive relationships judging from the sociable and gregarious personalities. They lead through influence and are willing to associate with workers and employees. This led to the development of warm and cordial relationships among employees and the management at Choice Bank.
Equally important is the dimension of agreeableness, which determines the propensity of workers and management staff to defer with their fellow workmates and employees. Similarly, Bob Washington, and Jack Tayler depicted high levels of agreeableness leading to the development of cooperativeness. On the other hand, the dimension of emotional stability entails the ability of individuals to withstand different levels of stress depending on the prevailing situation. Despite the unapproachable and rather demanding nature of Susan Caplan, employees at Choice Bank have managed to realize high performance targets. Conscientiousness at Choice Bank can be related to the presence of high reliability measures and this is depicted by the high levels of motivation among workers. Majority of sales staff personalities and their management counterparts are organized, persistent, and responsible on matters relating to the realization of organizational goals and objectives. Finally, the openness to experience represents the last dimension of personality traits under the Myer’s Big Five Model and can be related to the prevailing situation at Choice Bank through the prevalence of diverse fascinations and range of interests among the members of the management and employees. Majority of them are willing to adopt new strategies that enable them to realize their goals and objectives.
Question Four
EQ (emotional intelligence quotient), is always an important component in employees performance and management. It refers to the set of competences in individual, demonstrating the capacity to reorganize her/his moods, impulses and behaviors, as well as managing them to the best depending on the prevailing situation. There are numerous intelligence competencies, which have demonstrated to contribute on workplace achievement, in relation to cognitive ability, personality traits, and technical skill.
In fact, the ability to handle stress and manage feelings is an important aspect of emotional intelligence; it helps in achievement of organizational goals and skills. A lot of studies demonstrate that the ability to stressful situation in an organization, predicted sales as well as profits.
Undoubtedly, EQ is significant in management and employees performance. This is so because it trains an individual to balance between work and personal life. In this case, it is a measure of intensity to which personal and work activities are prioritized in order to maintain equal consideration of both. It has being observed, in an organization, high rating from the managers are associated to emotional intelligence of empathy, impulse control and social responsibility.
In every organization, challenges and crisis come up especially in the process of attaining organizational goals. During this period, EQ directs employees and management toward composure and straightforwardness; this skill instills calmness in times of recovery and crisis. Additionally, EQ competencies add value to performance in the organization by mending and building relationships.
Emotional intelligence captures numerous key competencies issues that affect organizational performance, either directly or indirectly. It helps maintaining and creation of appropriate and accommodative environment for serviced delivery. Certainly, this aspect suggests that individuals in work place vary in their capability to manage, regulate, and process information related to emotions. By and large, EQ competences leads to development of psychological and social self-image, that guides the employees and managers towards observing values, expectations, needs, beliefs, and goals of the organization.
Certainly, emotional intelligence adds value to the organizational goal achievement, by helping employees to develop interpersonal awareness. In this scenario, employees and managers take time in reflect on their importance and relevance in the organization. The training, improves self-awareness, by developing habit responsiveness among the employees and the mangers
Generally, developing emotional intelligence (EQ) competencies adds value employees and management performance in association with the company’s goal. This value is added through development of self-awareness, managing emotion, and self-control, personal motivation, as well as empathy development. The entire process of EQ can be achieved through training and working daily within personal scope.
Question Five
What kind of reward systems and recognition exist for performance
It is evident that the business environment is becoming more competitive than in the recent past. Therefore, the main objective of business organizations is to promote production of high quality products as well as services, but at the same time reducing the cost of production. One of the ways in which an organization can attain this objective is by implementing a reward system as well as recognizing the employees. Within the context of Choice Bank, various employee-rewarding systems have been implemented to improve their performance. For instance, the performance of the sales persons is evaluated from time to time, precisely on an annual basis. Depending on their performance, in addition to their annual salary, these employees are entitled to a given amount of bonus. The last eight employees are entitled to the maximum monetary bonus. Moreover, employees are highly respected within Choice Bank. For instance, the Director of Sales and marketing Division, Bob Washington is very friendly with the employees and he always tries to know each and every employee on personal grounds. This kind of recognition boosts the morale of the employees towards improving their performance.
Another aspect of recognizing the importance of employees in any organization is by involving them in the decision making process, more especially on matters that affects them directly. Choice Bank’s decision-making model takes into consideration the views of the employees. For instance, Susan Caplan, the Division Manager, involves her team members in every decision that she makes. She is constantly in touch with her team members, via memos that she issues on a weekly basis. At the end of every meeting, she is always ready open for any suggestions from the employees on the issues that they would like to be considered. Although some of the employees feel that she is too demanding, her approach of managing the employees, her style of management plays a considerable role in relationship building among the employees themselves as well as the employees and the management.
Why these systems do are adequate or inadequate for maximizing employee performance effectiveness
The type of rewarding system used in Choice Bank plays a pivotal role as far as the general performance of the organization is concerned. For instance, the evaluation process ensures that the performance of these employees is up to the expected standards. Additionally, the bonus motivated the employees to work harder and achieve more so that that could be rewarded with a higher percentage of the bonus. Moreover, to some extent the bonus system forms one of the bases of promoting job satisfaction among the employees.
The type of management that used in this organization promotes the morale of the employees. By involving them in most of the decisions that are made in the organization, the employees develop a sense of belonging or rather identify themselves with the organization. According to studies that have been undertaken by various human resource scholars as well as practitioners, employee recognition with an organization plays a very crucial role in employee motivation. It has also been noted that there is a positive correlation between high motivation and performance of the employees. Based on this analysis, it is evident that this kind of rewarding and recognition system is adequate in improving the performance of the employees in specific, as well as that of the organization in general.
