Paper Example on Southeastern Mills: Creating a High-Performance Workplace

Introduction

Behind any continuous improvement initiative, there is the elusive goal of a high-performance workplace (HPWP). Every corporate enterprise looks forward to improving its performance to ensure business success. Southeastern Mills, just like any company, is determined to improve its projects and thus stressed on employee involvement and commitment to the creation of an organizational culture rather than control. By so doing, the company tries to build high levels of trust, loyalty, and performance in its workforce. Therefore, this work focuses on evaluating the seven elements of SEM in its philosophy of HPWP and their contributions to the success of the business and building a centralized process-improvement management system.

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How do the elements of the High-performance workplace (HPWP) system at Southeastern Mills (SEM) reinforce one another and contribute to the company's success? What benefits do these elements add?

The HPWP system elements at South-eastern Mills act as reinforcements and make them work to the best of their abilities. To start with, the power of positive assumptions at the workplace has lasting effects on the employees and their work. This reinforces the employees in such a way that they can trust their colleagues and themselves too. When workers at all levels have this element in mind, there is no doubt they will have confidence in what they are doing, their peers, and managers. The mutual trust and respect the employees have towards one another builds a lasting relationship between them and thus can perform their duties to the best of their abilities, knowing they got each other's back at the workplace. More so, in case of an issue arising between themselves or needs to be addressed by senior management, there will be a clear and respectable manner in which the problems will be articulated so that they do not cripple the operations of the company. This is because the employers and employees have trust in each other and treat each of them as adults able to make the right decisions at all times.

Identifying and eliminating any negatives in the way of employees ensures that they get all their energies on the right job at the correct times. The workers will be focused to make sure the day set objectives are met as there are no impending issues in line. This reinforces the employees, and makes them look forward to coming to work, derive satisfaction from their job. Training employees, as the fifth element, is fundamental to any company that demands quality outcomes from its corkers. SEM's training of its workers not only reinforces them but also ensures increased productivity and fewer chances of making errors in line of duty. The imparting of technical, leadership and team skills in employees ensure that that they have a feeling of job security and satisfaction. The more satisfied employee and the higher is his morale, the more he will contribute to the success of a company and the lesser the chances of employee absenteeism and turnover. Therefore, training sharpens capabilities, knowledge, and skills for the employers doing a given piece of work. It moulds the reasoning of workers and enhances their performance (Juneja, 2019).

When workers are engaged in two-way communication with their seniors, trust is built, and many of them get satisfaction at the workplace. The results from such a communication structure have a long-lasting impact on an organization and bring about understanding and mutual trust between parties involved. Once employees are given the right tools and equipment, and above all, trusted to work with integrity without close and every time supervision, they work towards the success of the company. Their involvement in the company's operations directly boosts their morale to operate as there is that direct connection between them and the company's needs.

Successful employee retention is any company's goal. Paying employees competitive wages and benefits shows that the company cares for them, and they are viewed as assets of the entity (Half, 2019). With this, the workers will work towards the success of the organization and to the best of their abilities. An excellent salary and remuneration policy in a company shows that it is committed to its employees, and in a way, it acts as a tremendous incentive to the employees. A company that sees employees as an appreciating asset has the best compensation and other employee policies that attract and retain the best quality of workers. When workers join an institution, they may start as a cost to the company (Half, 2019). Still, as the company grows, the satisfied employees that enjoy doing their work become valuable in the organization over time.

What advice do you have regarding the two primary options for building a more centralized process- improvement management system?

Selecting employees and deploying them for Lean or Six Sigma certification training outside of SEM and then growing company capabilities and the internal application would be a favorable option. The sending of a few employees to Lean/Six Sigma would lead to them; earning some best practices, identify best improvement practices, and coming, create a competitive atmosphere in the company. When the employees undertake a few projects at Six Sigma and come back to their workplace, they will have valuable information that will encourage discussions that provoke new thoughts and actions that lead to customer satisfaction (Gosnik & Hohnjec, 2015). At its best, the data the employees sent will come with will help the company to evaluate and prioritize improvement opportunities.

The projects undertaken by the team will have an impact on SEM to speak the same language as far as an improvement management system is concerned. This will more now put the company on a competitive edge above other companies and thus the most preferred by suppliers and customers. The employees will have to dig down into performance gaps to unmask areas of improvement, develop a standardized set of process-improvement management systems and ignite a culture and mind of continued improvement geared towards cost reduction and customer satisfaction increment. Because of what SEM has been built on in the past, and the elements that it has thrived on, it would be easy to train the rest of the workforce and undertake other projects by the employees who attended the Lean/Six Sigma training.

The workers at the company are already a happy lot because of the philosophies that the organization rides on. Owing to this fact, the workers would be more than ready to take on new challenges for the best interest of the company that they work for. The employees that received training from Six Sigma certification and training will come and train others on how to build a more centralized process improvement management system. The culture already taught in the staff at the company, where they hold open discussions and have respect for each other regardless of their rank will catapult the training and accelerate the projects led by the already trained workers (Hadi-Vencheh & Yousefi, 2017). This is because the workers are already happy at the organization and work to the best of their abilities; thus, they would look forward to any project that will make a firm improve further to greater success.

Selecting and integrating a Lean/Sex Sigma consultant group to work for six to twelve months with the senior leaders, managers, and employees to guide the development for process improvement capabilities and applications may not be appropriate. The process seems long and thus may be costly to the company. It may be tedious to integrate the SEM Lean/Six Sigma implementation framework since there already existing SEM HPWP culture may require cautious integration with the Six Sigma and close monitoring of initiated projects to realize results in the end. The intent of this would be not to interfere with a culture that took so long to stand and work for the company.

If selecting and integrating a Lean/ Six Sigma consultant group is the route chosen, what criteria for selecting a consultant should guide the process-improvement team? If deploying selected employees for lean or Six Sigma certification training is determined, how should it be structured and managed?

The criteria for selecting a consult originate from the needs of the process -improvement team. The team will have a long list of demands to address when selecting the consultant. But on that list, there are common factors that will not miss, for instance, Industry experience, reputation and brand cache, and how much the consultant will be asking (Gosnik & Hohnjec, 2015. The most important factors, however, may include the core values shared. The team needs to choose a consultant who shares common core values with the company. Ant business partnership starts with the core values, and this should apply to even selecting a firm to lead the company in a particular project.

The process-improvement team should look for a consultant that truly understands how the company functions. This will give the consultant the insights to perform their functions in a way that complements the well-being of the company, not complicating it (Gosnik & Hohnjec, 2015). Another criterion can be based on those consultant firms that apply what they say in their work. A lean/ six sigma consultant who preach what they practice is reliable, accountable, and trustworthy (Mone & London, 2018). This makes them proactive and responsible such that they will give the team a piece of mind that the intended projects are on track and within the budget.

If deploying selected employees for Lean or Six Sigma certification training, the company will start by identifying the project selection and approval criteria for the process- improvement system. Resource allocation, in terms of human resources to be trained, has to be selected. This should be done proportionately selecting workers from all cadres of employees who will be prepared to head and staff project teams. The training then should consider the technical, personal, and team skills and abilities that are necessary by each of the group's trainees. The training may be structured to first begin at the top management so that they understand the vision of the Six Sigma approach and its effect on company growth and expansion so that it is linked to the company's business goals. The training relies on data analysis. Collecting and analyzing information is critical such that they aid the company in determining the projects it selects for improvement with the capita allocated for the selected projects. This structure needs to be clear in such a way that the employees selected for training after the exercise will come back and start and lead their team in given project improvements.

Prepare a written description for either the eighth element (similar to the descriptions on page 2 and page 3 of the case? Or as a set of points arguing against an eighth element.

Setting high expectations was the eighth element of the HPWP. When the company set high expectations for its workers and provided them with the correct tools, training, and other resources, they performed to the best of their abilities. When the bar is set high, the workers will try hard to achieve their goal, thus working towards the success of the company (Ogbonnaya & Valizade, 2016). The company, on its part, needs to recognize the efforts made by these workers by rewarding them. Huang et al. (2016) argue that this will create a high-performance culture that takes advantage of employees who love to go to work. The workers that meet the high set bars in their practice will ensure that the long-standing...