Managing Employees within National Car Rental of Bahrain - Report Example

Development and Management of Employees at National Car Rental, Bahrain Table of Contents Introduction 3 2.Identification of Training Needs 3 2 Individual Level 3 2.2.Organisation Level 4 3.Linkages of Staff Absenteeism 5 3.1.Employee Motivation 5 3.2.Personal Development 6 4.Work-Life Balance 6 5.Remote Working 7 6.Coaching and Mentoring 7 7.Performance Evaluation 8 8.Staff Appraisal 8 9.Conclusion 9 References 10 1. Introduction National Car Rental (National), being a multinational car rental organisation is operational in more than 3200 locations spread in an excess of 80 nations across the globe, through a massive fleet comprising 350000 vehicles. Through its official website the company claims that “When you rent a National car you can be sure that you will receive the same top quality reliable car rental service that our international customers have enjoyed for over 60 years” (National-a, 2006), thereby conveying its capability to deliver hassle-free experience as well as undertaking stupendous customer care. Quite understandably, the company has become a long-standing choice for individual as well as corporate customers. Given that the company has to maintain an efficient customer interface through its employee base, the aim of this report is to evaluate the development and management of the people within the organisation. Attempts will be made to identify the training needs at the individual as well as organisational level, and correlate the element of staff absenteeism with employee motivation and personal development. Subsequently, efforts will also be made to cover the areas of work-life balance, remote working, and coaching and mentoring. Finally, performance evaluation and staff appraisal will be discussed. 2. Identification of Training Needs 2.1. Individual Level The online customer survey form of National reveals one vital aspect that its employees should mandatorily possess and that is an outstanding customer focus. The employees are expected give details of all the charges to the customers and send confirmatory messages to them after reservations are made. They are also required to deal with the customers as soon as they arrive (National-b, 2006). Therefore the areas wherein an extensive training needs analysis (TNA) is required are: (1) knowledge about the cars as well as their specifications, (2) interpersonal communication skills, (3) efficient interaction with customers, (4) conformation with company policies, and (5) problem solving. However, owing to the volume of operations at National, the company should incorporate the provision for cross-training in its training and development policy in order to inculcate multi-skilling (Armstrong, 2002). 2.2. Organisation Level At the organisational level, the group dynamics of employees should be assessed to identify behavioural trends that deviate from the company policies. Organisational level TNA being a holistic tool to evaluate the overall efficiency of the company, the customer feedback form should be heavily relied upon and the data must be utilised to locate the areas of weakness. National should also employ cross-functional teams (or problem-solving groups) owing to the fact that “they are valuable sources of information on where training needs may be occurring” (Wilson, 1999). Moreover, employees’ inclination towards smoking and alcohols should be assessed and restricted to an extent that no one should consume liquor when on duty and people may only smoke during stipulated breaks. 3. Linkages of Staff Absenteeism 3.1. Employee Motivation Figure 1: Interrelationship between Absenteeism and Organisational Value Chain (Source: Jonker & Eskildsen, 2009) Absenteeism is one of the problem areas that most of the organisations attempt to eliminate in order to optimise their operational efficiency and well as profitability. However, studies have revealed that “employee absenteeism is strongly related to employee satisfaction & motivation and especially the cooperation and compensation parts of employee satisfaction” (Jonker & Eskildsen, 2009). Hence, National must ensure that its employees are sufficiently motivated, in order to reduce the phenomenon of absenteeism. While training and development will be helpful in building competence among employees, financial compensation will add further fillip to their morale as well as commitment. 3.2. Personal Development It has been observed that “when an employee is recognised as an equal contributor to a business’s growth – generated through clear objectives, communication, appraisal, and personal development – the impact will often largely reduce absenteeism and lateness” (Belanger, 2009). Being primarily a service provider, the most important assets of National – apart from its cars – are its employees. Hence, the company should make serious attempts to enhance the personal development of its employees through processes such as individual competency analysis and individual development planning (Holbeche, 2009). Personal development also augments employee motivation and in turn enhances their job satisfaction as well as performance. 4. Work-Life Balance The nature of National’s business necessitates its employees to be sufficiently flexible in terms of their work-hours and hence they have to work either during day or night, or both. It may so happen that such schedules may often take a toll on their health as well as personal life. It goes beyond saying that extreme levels of professional ‘flexibility’ may in the long turn result in deep-seated dissatisfaction owing to which employees may become averse to work and run low on motivation. It has been propounded in the context of the modern business organisations that they should nurture family-friendly arrangements “in order to retain the skills and experience of valued employees” (Mary Coussey & Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2000). Perhaps, National should also adopt such a measure to ensure that its employees retain their enthusiasm. For this, the management should maintain efficient communication within the organisation and above all it must realise that “work-life policies need to be fair and equitable to all” (Clutterbuck, 2003). 5. Remote Working The fact that National has a global presence, calls for remote working. It has been observed that transnational virtual teams as well as conventional telecommuters “engage in remote working either across continents or from a home-office” (Basole, 2008). Owing to the fact that “remote workers will be working from fixed arrangements and will therefore typically be available through ordinary desktop communications such as email and telephone” (Basole, 2008), National may implement it throughout its global operations to enhance connectivity among branches as well as employees located in different countries. This will not only increase the efficiency of operations, but will also enhance knowledge sharing among the staff. 6. Coaching and Mentoring Coaching and mentoring are popular human resource tools that aim at enhancing the efficiency of employees. According to Stone (2007), “coaching is the process by which individuals gain the skills, abilities, and knowledge they need to develop themselves professionally and become more effective in their jobs” (Stone, 2007). It has also been argued that “coaching is an interactive process through which managers and supervisors aim to solve performance problems or develop employee capabilities” (Luecke & Harvard Business School, 2004). Therefore it is implied that coaching is a top-down process that benefits the employees. However, in the context to mentoring it has been said that when performed in the correct way, it “can motivate not only the employees but also others on the staff or in the organisation as a whole” (Stone, 2007). Hence, the management at National must train capable supervisors and encourage the employees to engage in these activities to bring about holistic developments – both at individual as well as the organisational level. 7. Performance Evaluation Performance evaluation, in the context of any organisation, should be conducted at regular intervals, for the purposes that include “determining if the goals and objectives of programs are valid and if they are effective and efficient in producing desired results internal and external to the program and organisation” (Guerra-López, 2008). The methods of evaluating organisational performance may be objective-based or customer-oriented. Organisations may also decide upon other models that are centred on return on investment (ROI) or a collective evaluation of “content, inputs, process, and products” (Guerra-López, 2008) – commonly known as the CIPP model, etc. Based on the nature and span of National’s business, it must take into consideration the feedback from its customers and couple it with region wise ROI, in order to evaluate its business performance. 8. Staff Appraisal It has been rightly said that “the purposes of staff appraisal are manifold, but the main thing is that both the employer and the employee should be satisfied; the employer should be satisfied that the employee is functioning well in terms of the needs of the organisation; the employees should be satisfied that the employer and the organisation are looking after their needs” (Hunt, 2005). This process is generally centralised and it aims at evaluating the yearly performance of the employees across different cadres as well as departments. Although there is a wide variety of appraisal techniques such as the graphic rating scale, behaviourally anchored rating scale (BARS), critical incidents, management by objectives (MBO) (Brody, 2005), etc. it may be suggested that National should adopt the 360° appraisal because of the fact that “the system is more comprehensive in that responses are gathered from multiple perspectives” (Bohlander & Snell, 2009), and moreover it harmonises total quality management (TQM) programmes by giving emphasis to internal/external customers as well as teams. Another vital aspect of this method is that the feedback that is gathered from peers may enhance the self-development of employees. 9. Conclusion During the course of the research that had been undertaken while writing this report, it has been found that National Car Rental, which is a renowned car rental company, has a massive global operation across the world and its success is attributed to the flawless services that it provides to its customers through an efficient employee base. However, owing to the acute competition that characterises the globalised business arena, the company should develop and manage its employees in such a way that they feel motivated to continue their association with it and perform optimally for its success. Suggestions have been made throughout the report as to how the company should identify the training needs of the employees and reduce absenteeism through motivation as well as personal development. In the context of the nature and span of its business the areas of work-life balance, remote working, coaching and mentoring, performance evaluation, and staff appraisal have also been covered. References 1. Armstrong, M. 2002. Employee Reward. 3rd ed. CIPD Publishing. 2. Basole, C. R. 2008. Enterprise Mobility: Applications, Technologies and Strategies. IOS Press. 3. Belanger, A. 2009. The Million Dollar You Handbook. Innovation in Workplace Management. 4. Bohlander, G. & Snell, S. 2009. Managing Human Resources. 15th ed. Cengage Learning. 5. Brody, R. 2005. Effectively Managing Human Service Organizations. 3rd ed. SAGE. 6. Clutterbuck, D. 2003. Managing the Work-Life Balance. CIPD Publishing. 7. Coussey, M. & Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. 2000. Getting The Right Work-Life Balance: Implementing Family-Friendly Practices. CIPD Publishing. 8. Guerra-López, J. I. 2008. Performance Evaluation: Proven Approaches for Improving Program and Organizational Performance. John Wiley and Sons. 9. Holbeche, L. 2009. Aligning Human Resources and Business Strategy. 2nd ed. Butterworth-Heinemann. 10. Hunt, N. 2005. Conducting Staff Appraisals: How To Set Up A Review System That Will Ensure Fair And Effective Appraisal And Improve Individual Performance And Organisational Results. 5th ed. How to Books Ltd. 11. Jonker, J. & Eskildsen, J. 2009. Management Models for the Future. Springer. 12. Luecke, R. & Harvard Business School. 2004. Coaching and Mentoring: How to Develop Top Talent and Achieve Stronger Performance. Harvard Business Press. 13. National-a. 2006. About Us. [Online]. Available at: http://www.national-me.com/html/best-car-rental-deals.php [Accessed on May 20, 2010]. 14. National-b. 2006. Customer Survey. [Online]. Available at: http://www.national-me.com/html/surveyForm.php [Accessed on May 20, 2010]. 15. Stone, M. F. 2007. Coaching, Counselling & Mentoring: How to Choose & Use the Right Technique to Boost Employee Performance. 2nd ed. AMACOM. 16. Wilson, P. J. 1999. Human Resource Development: Learning & Training for Individuals & Organizations. Kogan Page Publishers. Read More