Business Plan:
How to increase staff engagement with their work at the Warehouse, Botany Downs branch
Problem identification
Employee engagement at the warehouse, Botany Downs branch, has been very low. The employees seem to have low morale to work and there is a general sense of despair among them. Markedly, employee engage is supposed to be critical for the survival of an organization. It is one of the ways to increase productivity level among employees. However, employee engagement at the warehouse is below the benchmark. This is in relation to almost every key issue including the general operations at the warehouse. Every functional activity that takes place at the warehouse is at risk because of the low morale among employees. Before, workers at the warehouse were generally productive and all functions of the warehouse were successful.
Project plan and scope
The goals and objective of the project will focus on ensuring that worker morale is revived at the warehouse. The employees will have to be engaged in their work in order to yield more result aimed at the overall goals and objectives of the organization. The project also intends to enhance the ability of workers and employees at the ware house to perform their job effectively.
First the project intends to establish that indeed there is a problem of low employee morale at the warehouse and that the employees are disengaged. This will be achieved through extensive research that will be conducted. The research needs to point out the exact reasons why the workers at the warehouse have been disengaged. A time scale of one week will be used to conduct the much needed research. It will take the use of survey tool to collect all the information needed to establish the reasons why employee engagement at the warehouse is low.
After conducting this research, the project will begin implementation of its recommendations. It is expected that some of the recommendations will require outside consultancy in order to be implemented effectively. The time scale needed to complete the project may be six months. This is because bringing back a positive culture within an organization requires a lot of time. It is a process that is very engaging and the various business functions within the warehouse will have to work together. The project will require outside consultants to work together with the human resource team within the organization.
Even though not yet established, some of the reasons why there is disengagement of staff at the ware house could be speculated from an observatory angle. For instance, many new staff members at the ware house might have had unrealistic expectations. The kind of job they expected may not have been what they found. It may seem as though some of them were deliberately misguided when they were being interviewed. The other problem deals with increased workload and imbalance between the work and life. Some of the staff may seem to complain that the work load is too much to bear and that they may not be able to balance their personal life with their work.
Most importantly, loss of trust and confidence for their supervisors, senior managers and leaders is a problem that needs to be taken under serious consideration. It also appears as though the employees have lacked confidence for their leaders. The main reason for this could be the lack of proper and effective communication between the leaders and staff members. Finally, the issue of growth and advancement opportunities can also be a reason for the low employee disengagement at the warehouse. If employees do not get opportunities for their career development and growth, their morale will definitely be affected and this will lead to low productivity.
The project will therefore look at all these issues and come up with solutions that will help bring back worker engagement at the warehouse. The project budget will include the cost of research to establish the problem, the cost of external consultations, and the cost training the people who will be directly involved in the project. The project will rely on the human resource team to assist with the implementation of the recommendation. It is assumed that human resource personnel are trained to create an organization culture that is aligned to the overall strategic goals of an organization. To minimize the cost of training, human resource personnel will be of great use.
Project deliverable will include: research findings the problems causing employee disengagement at the warehouse, and reports on recommendation of how to bring a solution to the problem.
Problem solving model to be used
The problem solving model to be used for this project will focus on identification of certain key areas that are likely to bring the much needed change at the warehouse. Some of these key areas include communication mechanism within the warehouse, human resource policies, and compensation and reward policies within the warehouse. Most of the problem will directly fall under these areas and therefore creating a solution to the problems will require a review or reformation of policies.
Research methods and process
The project intends to conduct risk assessment in order to identify and mitigate the risks that are involved with the project. The assessment will be done before commencement of the project and also continuously throughout the entire project. The reason for this is that there are certain assumptions that can be made in the course of the project that will be costly and consequently lead to failure of the project. All the activities of the project will be subjected to risk assessment to ascertain the risks involved and come up with proper strategies for mitigating the risks. For instance, a larger team working on the project is associated with high risks. Also the idea of external consultancy will be very costly and the risks involved will be high. But this does not mean that such options will not be utilized. They will only be utilized if proper strategic means of mitigating the risks is identified. Considering all the assumptions made in this project, it may be necessary to be flexible so that if it may be necessary to change plan based on the development of the project, it may be easy respond appropriately.
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