OIC.Ltd.Investigation of organising process.

1. REPORT

Introduction:

Office & Industrial Cleaners Ltd was founded in 1982 by Frank McEwen. In over 30 years-period the company built up a large client base in the greater Dublin area. The business usually focuses on the long-term and short-term accomplishments.

One of the OIC's strategic approaches to obtaining a strong client base is to attract, train and retain high calibre staff.

With its head office based in Dublin 11, OIC employs Management Team of six (2 Head Managers, 2 Department Managers, Administration Officer and Accountant) and working force of over 500 people. The company splits onto two departments: Office Cleaning Department and Industrial Cleaning Department. Management Team reports on regular basis to two head mangers.

 Terms of Reference:

1. To investigate implemented organising process in work environment of OIC, Ltd through all five steps:

·      division of labours;

·      delegation of authority;

·      departmentalisation;

·      span of control;

·      co-ordination;

2. Examine the efficiency of organisational structures and accomplishment of company's goals.

3. To make appropriate recommendations.

Methodology

In order to compile information for this work the following techniques were involved:

1.   Company's handbook, service and condition of employment and issues records were examined;

2.   Managers of industrial and office departments were interviewed face to face.

3.   The staff of 10 members from both industrial and office departments were interviewed.

Note: Two visits were paid to Office & Industrial Cleaners, Ltd, which is located at Rosemount Business Park, Dublin 11. The dates were mutually agreed with the head manager. These were: 12/12/12 and 20/12/12. Upon both travels to the Business Park, I carried out face-to-face conversations, which lasted approximately 2 hours per day (10 - 25min with each supervisor or manager)

           Two types of questionnaires were introduced to the employees. Questionnaire I, concentrated on the responsibilities of the management team, was handed over to all managers and supervisors, where Questionnaire II, concentrated on the performance of the Operatives was emailed to the staff of 20 Cleaning Technicians, who willingly agreed to co-operate with this research. All names were kept off the record. The questionnaires were emailed on December 14, 2012. Only 13 technicians replied back. 

           All references and information collected as a result of face-to-face conversations and email responds was viewed by the head manager A and verbally approved for disclosing on December 22, 2012.

Findings

Upon my both visits to the head office and conducting face-to-face conversations with the managers and supervisors as well as relying onto the email responds received from Cleaning Technicians (CTs) it was found, that:

1. On entering a contract the managers initially examine plans and duties poorly and superficially determine the work activities necessary to accomplish contract. "Quantity needed to perform work often excesses the time given for cleaning" (Manager B). The above mentioned leads to a loss of efficiency and limited effectiveness of Operatives and CTs performing their cleaning works.

2. Division of labour on entering a contract is done unevenly that leads to frustration among Operatives and CTs;

3. While the contracts served, there are no continuous examinations of accomplished work and duties. As Supervisor A stated: "Number of tasks may increase" while the time of work remains the same. Such submission of new errands by organisation-client results in confusion among employees and changes in priority of carried out works (the tasks that haven’t been previously listed on the contract now become an essential part of the everyday routine hence CT becomes confused with regard to what he/she should perform first);

4.  Managers do not assign tasks to CTs individually, at the same time not giving them the correct amount of authority to accomplish work (according to CT A), so employers have responsibility for the tasks, outcomes but little authority;

5. There is no or very poor monitoring of employees' performance, which with excessive delegation of authority (in some cases) leads to deterioration in quality of work and violation of working hours;

6. All questioned managers explained that some employees accept authority but forget about responsibility and accountability. "Sometimes they even are impossible to accept delegation of authority" as stated supervisor C. This may cause disbalance in supply process of cleaning staff;

7. As one of the CTs stated: "there is lack of communication between supervisor and operative" meaning that there is no direct or particular scheme of reporting about performed tasks and contracts. Chain of commands is broken and very often employees do not know who should report to whom. All this results in misunderstanding between levels of the organisation as well as in violation of cleaning staff supply. To explain this Manager B stated that most tasks are delegated and reported "informally by a mobile phone";

8. Despite the fact that the organisation consists of only two departments: industrial cleaning and office cleaning departments, communication between them is week . Managers rely merely on their departments' employees. Such relationship sometimes causes difficulties in covering sick people or those who are on holidays;

9. Span of control within the organisations is very wide that with absence of well established sets of Standard Operating Procedures causes misunderstanding between managers and employees. Managers do not know subordinates personally. It was also mentioned by one of the CTs that often managers do not know if a selected individual possesses the skills and capabilities needed to complete the task (based on the respond of CT G).

10. There is a lack of informal groups within OIC, ltd which expresses in poor formal communication and understanding between employee and manager;

11. In question 5 of questionnaire II, over a half of CTs had mentioned that the constant changes of managers, particularly supervisors, have a bad impact onto operatives. "they come and leave" expressed his negative respond one of the CTs, meaning that a new manager on joining the company needs some time to learn employee's profile, meanwhile those CTs who have some difficulties with performing one or another task have to do those task after all (in a case when CT has some health implication with his/her back and cannot perform lifting operations, however because new manager is not yet aware of this, the manager still assigns CT to perform this type of work)

12. Section 1g of The company Handbook, where it explains matter on remuneration, there is no mentioning of reward system that could be implemented among the personnel of the company .

Recommendations

Based on gathered information concerning the issues that rise within OIC, ltd I would advise the following:

1. Entering any contract managers must carefully examine place and duties and determine the work activities for every contract. Also they must carry out examination of all already existing contracts;

2. Managers should provide a clear division of labour, splitting the job equally or proportionally to working hours before the first visit by CT to the cleaning site;

3. They should control changes and additions to existing contracts. For instance extending working hours if necessary or reducing quantity of the required works that has to be performed ;

4. They should clearly explain tasks to employees, giving them a certain amount of authority to accomplish the work;

5. Mangers should determine the horizontal (co-ordinating) hierarchy of relationships between them and the staff;

6. They need to meet all subordinates personally. Monitoring of all performing employees must be carried out immediately and managers have to keep to exiting schedule of monitoring;

7. The managers need to make sure that employees know that they are ultimately responsible for conducting specific task. Managers also should ensure that employees accept responsibility and know that they are accountable for their work and activities at the cleaning site;

8. They should develop and arrange clear and easy system of reporting and communication with employees in order to improve the process of delivering the ordered cleaning staff in time as well as be aware of any done or not done job;

9.   Managers should provide rewarding scheme to CTs and operatives for successful outcomes;

10.                        They should encourage appearance of informal groups within the organisation in order to spread the information among all CTs and Operatives in a faster way.

Conclusion

It would be advised for the head managers to:

·         Narrow the span of control;

·         Appoint at least two new managers, one for each department;

·         Provide and encourage more close relationship between departments;

·         Develop a system so to retain the employees of management team, with the same reduce implications with regard to relationship between manager and a worker.

2. DESIGNNG & EMPLEMENTING SYSTEM

Based on the OIC, Ltd handbook the company enters the contract in the following way:

·      Managers examine information about the organisation-client (concerning the cleaning demands, working hours, etc);

·      They give all gathered information to the head managers who decide whether to proceed with entering the contract or not.

Also, based on the compiled report within OIC, ltd (see above) there was designed, documented and implemented procedure to deal with the management issues described in the report.

System Implementation

Firstly, in order to relieve pressure on managers as well as to narrow span of control I would recommend the company to hire two more managers, one for each department. Secondly I would recommend introduce the developed system (outlined above) to all mangers as soon as possible.

During the first few weeks the newly hired managers should enter a contract under the supervision of more experienced colleagues in order to develop confidence and skill on practice. Having a potential contract ready for negotiation managers must carefully examine conditions of work and time proposed by organisation-client. Also OIC must check next points:

·         To be sure that the business, they are entering in a contract with, is registered in the state;

·         Ways of payment;

·         To find out what is the exact service, which OIC will proved for client (managers of both organisations should be sure that they are talking about the same type and quantity of work);

·         To specify exact time, frames for delivery of the service, procedure and time for correcting a service mistake if such one will occur;

·         To specify who will be doing the service and their credentials.

If all points are agreed, managers should pass the contact to head managers in order to acquaint and sign it. If some disagreements arise about the contract the managers should negotiate such issues as: quantity of work (if some part of work can be cancelled) and frequency of work (if some work can be done evenly) and so on.

When issues are solved head managers get the contract to sign it. If there are still some disagreements the contracts should be suspended.

Once the company enters the contract, managers should introduce employed personnel to the contractor, split work in equal parts between employees, explaining tasks to CTs personally.

Next task for the manager is to delegate employee in order to save some time and provide maximum flexibility in meeting customer needs;

If the employees accept responsibility, they should be given authority and freedom to contribute ideas and their jobs in a best possible way. If not, their work should be frequently monitored. As the contact comes to an end or at the end of calendar year all succeeded CTs and Operatives should be rewarded according to their productivity work and level of their independence; how well they made their decisions and how well they responded to problems throughout a year.

Employees who had working issues during contract will have to pass specific trainings in order to increase their productivity.

Organising must be a carefully worked out and applied process. Therefore in order to maintain designed and implemented procedure to be effective, it should be reconsidered and amended at the end of every year on the basis of new appeared issues and changes in the business.

Management Skills Demonstration

By implementing and using the mentioned above system, the management of OIC will demonstrate:

·         Ability to work on their own initiative and be able to work under pressure when they negotiate contracts;

·         Be able to work as a part of a team when it comes to inter-department relationship;

·         Communication skills with customers and employees by doing monitoring of work;

·         Flexibility, reliability and punctuality on meeting client, doing work monitoring;

The system applied by the OIC management will gain:

·         respect of employees (because everyone wants to be known and heard);

·         respect of current or potential clients (because they have flexibility and desire to negotiate contracts and skills to defend their interest, when it is required);

·         sympathy because of the scheduled monitoring, which shows the company and its managers are interested in the contract.

As a result of all proposed above actions I believe OIC, Ltd will become more compatible among the other cleaning companies within the Dublin area as well as it will increase its sales rates.