Question

6+ sentences minimum. I will give you thumb up!

• What is the purpose of a continuous improvement program? What role does HRM play in assisting continuing improvements? In your opinion, how critical is it for an organization to prioritize (or not) these processes? Name two factors that benefit the employer and two factors that may be seen as non-beneficial to employees.

Answer 1

quote "Continuous improvement is defined as an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes". unquote

The purpose of a continuous improvement program is to increase efficiencies, reduce wastages which leads to a reduction in overall costs and will improve the quality of the product, process, or service. This helps generate a competitive advantage as the company can sell a better quality product at lower prices and increase the company’s market share.

Human resource management (HRM) supports the quality improvement efforts by providing training the team members, motivating them, and creating incentive schemes to encourage innovation and continuous improvement. First, the HRM will initiate training for the manpower to implement new systems and initiate new processes. Second, they support the team members by motivating them to continuously focus on finding new and better ways to improve the processes and to maximize the utilization of the resources. Thirdly HRM will support by creating incentive programs which reward the innovators and the team members who put in extra effort to improve the efficiency levels or who come up with ideas to improve the processes, product or services to reduce costs and improve systems. For Example, lean production systems like six sigma and five methods are inculcated into the production systems to improve the efficiency levels. The training is initiated by the HRM team.

It is very critical to focus on continuous improvement programs. As any improvement will result in improving efficiencies, reducing wastage, reducing errors, and simplifying the processes.

The two factors which benefit the employer are reduced cost of production, minimizing wastage of resources, and optimizing the use of the resources. These factors result in cost-saving and give the employer a competitive advantage. The reduction in overall costs will help the employer to reduce the selling price and will lead to generating higher sales and getting a larger share of the market place.

The factors which are not beneficial for employees are first that companies might introduce machinery to replace employees to make systems more efficient this will lead to the removal of workers or reducing the number of workers required to complete the activity. The second negative factor for employees is might be continuously monitored and told to reduce the use of the resources and minimize wastage. It can cause additional stress factor for the employees. As they are pressurized to continuously improve efficiency levels.

To conclude continuous improvement programs are critical to gain a competitive advantage. It is also important to optimize the utilization of resources and systems to maximize efficiency levels.