Harvard Style in Education - Essay Example

Task Large organizations usually employ people in support services in order to make sure that the organization carries out its operation smoothly. These people are not actively involved in the preparation of goods or services that the organization is providing, but instead they have the responsibility to provide services to direct labor or the organization’s main functional departments in order to make sure that these functions are carried out without any hindrance or stoppage. Like other organizations, support staff is necessary for the functioning of any educational institution, such as colleges and school. These people are not involved in teaching, which is the main service of the education institution, but instead they look after administration, maintenance and provide services to main employees such as teachers etc. From my research, I can conclude that any educational institution would require personnel in the following support areas. A library is a necessity of any organization and I have found that hiring the librarian or library assistant is one of the most important jobs in colleges and other educational institutions. It is considered as a support job, because the purpose of education institutions is not to provide books to the students, but to impart education. Hence, this will be considered as a support job. The other area where support staff is required is the maintenance. There are plenty of support jobs available in maintenance. Here a cleaner, a janitor and a technician will be need for the cleanliness of the building and in order to make sure that all the electrical equipments such as projectors work well. Many colleges and universities are opening up on-campus finance offices. As a result of this, a number of support jobs have become available. A cashiers, finance head and finance assistance have also become common support jobs. These are some of the support jobs that many universities and colleges are hiring these days and have become common in the job market. In accordance to our need, I will try to fill some of the vacant jobs in our university, to make sure that we run with complete efficiency. (Job Rapido, 2010) TASK 2: The project plan that I am going to use in order to make the functioning of my university more effective, I will create a project plan for project control and successful implementation. Some people argue that excellence in execution is perhaps the most important part of any project. On the contrary, I believe that project control is equally as important in order to make sure that you finish before deadline and complete the job with the given finances. (Daft, 1994). My project will answer the following questions: Why: The purpose of the project is to increase the efficiency of support services and to reduce absenteeism and to increase the quality of work. For this, I need to make sure that right people are performing the right job. I need to hire three more people in various departments with the given budget and given time frame of 30 days. What: The major work that will be performed is to establish a support service team and it will be ensured that right people are given the right job. Who: Here the responsibilities will be divided and distributed to personnel. Any core competency that we lack is going to be fulfilled by hiring three more people in different departments. The plan or schedule of how I will go about achieving my targets is given below: When: We will finish streamlining our team in thirty days. However, the project will be divided into three parts of 10 days each. In the first part all the duties will be recognized that the college expects us to perform. Then we are going to look at the current staff and core-competencies that we need. After this, we are going hire people to make sure that right people are hired, after which the duties and roles will be divided among people. TASK 3: I would try to organize my staff in the matrix structure rather than the functional structure. The basic difference here will be that instead of diving workers on the basis of their skills, we will divide them on the basis of different projects that will be undertaken by the college. I will be heading the department and taking reports from three departmental heads and secretaries to Dean and Business Mangers. Departmental heads will take reports from department secretaries. All the positions and responsibilities have been divided keeping in mind that the support services suffer from a lot of employee absenteeism. Furthermore, I have tried to improve the overall management structure is designed in such a way that it improves the overall management control. The reason for having two people at each position is to provide cover for unscheduled investment. Similarly, since there are a lot of management levels, career progression will be easier as people will able to take small position jumps in the organization and this way people will be motivated to work hard for career progression and promotion. Three new appointees added to the support are two technicians and a peon. This will help the support services to provide services more efficiently and will make sure that overall organizational operations are carried out smoothly. LINES OF RESPONSIBILITY IN ADMIN DEPARTMENT: In the administration department, there are five administrative assistant who will divide responsibilities to people in the administration department. Two administrative heads will be taking report from the supervisor. One administrative assistant will be responsible for making sure that the senior receptionist and other two receptionists. The other administrative assistant will be responsible for Reprographics and he will be controlling the Reprographic assistant. LINES OF RESPONSIBILITY IN FINANCE DEPARTMENT: In the finance department, one finance assistant will be controlling purchase officer, whereas the other will be working as a cashier. He will take the responsibility of finance assistant if the other finance assistant is absent and vice versa. LINES OF RESPONSIBILITY IN MAINTAINENCE DEPARTMENT: . In the maintenance department, a supervisor will be controlling and directing the activities of technicians. This is the outlook of our support service department. (Robbins and Judge, 2004). TASK 4: MEETING: The best way to communicate these changes to the staff is by holding a meeting and telling them directly that these changes are imperative for effective functioning of the support services. The employees will also be given a chance for feedback. They will be allowed to question and recommend changes. The reason why this is important is to maintain employee’s trust, who will otherwise feel that they are not trusted and this would not encourage them to follow organization citizenship behavior. Another problem that would occur is that employee may not be able to give their best effort if they think that the decision is imposed upon them. Therefore, it is very necessary to effectively communicate with them the changes that the support services department is deciding to introduce. Written Form: Another way employees could be told about these changes is by sending them a copy of copy of new organizational chart. This will help them to understand the changes effectively and they will know who reports to whom. This again is important, because otherwise there would be no positive synergy and hence the department will not be as efficient as it could be. Another way of communicating the changes to the staff is through letters. This is important because written communication can be referred to in the future and is a source of permanent record. However, if they are informed of this via written communication, the message may be misunderstood; resulting in conflict of interest between various people and department and hence once again yielding lower performance and disruptive competition between employees are department. So, it is indeed really important to send them this message via written communication. Another problem that may occur, if the message is not communicate effectively is that many employees may leave their jobs. They will think that their peers are made their boss. This can lead to employee turnover which could be a big problem that our support services might face if the message is not communicated effectively. (Drucker, 1998). TASK 5: 1) Establishing a Budget Setting Committee: This committee will consist of members from all concerned departments before a final decision about the budget is made. Each member will raise concerns of his department, if that person finds any discrepancy between overall and departmental budget. This will make sure that master budgets are in line with the departmental budgets. This would also allow setting up of as realistic budget as possible. 2) Departmental Budgets: The other option could be setting up of departmental budget first before setting up master budget. This would take into account the thinking of all the concerned departments before the overall master budget is made. 3) Departmental Goals and Responsibilities: There should be specific goals for each department and organization as a whole. All the departments should be asked to achieve their goals. The budget draw should be such that it enables all the departments achieve their goals. Similarly, the goals should be such that they allow the college to meet its overall organization goal. This would automatically help the firm into setting realistic budgets that will be acceptable to all the departments and the CEOs of the organization. 4) Experienced People: The people who are making these budgets should be people who do have knowledge about the departments, their shortcomings and their core-competencies. They should also be aware of organization objective. These people would be able to make budgets acceptable to both organization as a whole and al the departments. 5) Supervisory Control: There should be more supervisory control and implementation of standard cost system in the firm. The automatic system will automatically report any over-absorption of costs to the finance manager and he would be able to address the situation on the spot. (Koontz, 2000) Task 6 1) Standard Costing: Standard Costing System should be introduced. This could be done in excel and could do automatic calculations of whether the cost is over-absorbed or under-absorbed. 2) The reporting system should be automated and should prepare constant reports to be given to the finance manager. A good accounting program such as Peach Tree could be used here. 3) Attendance System could be automated and any employee utilizing more than the allowed number absences, will be sent an automated emails, that if they are absent for another day, strict disciplinary action will be taken against them. The software used here could be any good email client such as Microsoft Outlook. 4) A network chatting program could be used to increase departmental cohesion. Any instant messaging system could be used for that such as Blackberry Messenger. (Fulmer, 1995) 5) Management control could be increased by using CCTV technology. The software used here could be any program that supports webcam such as CCTV CAD. 6) Employees should also be kept fully informed about all the developments in the firm. For that, a blogging service could be used or intranets portals could also be used. 7) All the expenditure should be itemized into separate expenses overheads such as Computer A, B and C etc. If expenditure on any computer is higher, the technicians should be asked why it is so. This will increase the managements control over subordinates. Excel could be used for this purpose. 8) Library Management system could be automated and students could be allowed to request or issue a book through online management system. For this, any database software such as MySQL can be used. 9) Finance department could use I.T to maintain online student accounts. This will help the students to view how much account is payable by them. For this purpose, Excel spreadsheet could be used. 10) Reprographic could be automated using CorelDraw. This would increase the reputation of the College and better banners and logos could be drawn. This will enhance the college’s reputation. (Stimpson and Borrington, 2002) References: 1. Richard L. Daft.(1994). Management 4th Edition. The Dryden Publishing. 2. Peter Drucker. (1998).“An Introduction View of Management”. Hamper’s College Press 3. Robert Fulmer. (1995).“The New Management” 4th Edition. McGraw Hill 4. Stephen Robbins and Timothy Judge. Organizational Behavior. Prentice 5. Peter Stimpson and Borrington. (2002) .Business Studies. Oxford University Press 6. Harald Koontz. (2000). Management” 9th Edition, McGraw Hill 7. Job Rapido. (2010). College Support Staff Jobs in Birmingham. Retrieved 25 July 2010. http://www.jobrapido.co.uk/?q=college%20support%20staff%20birmingham%20(bartley%20green) Read More