Keys to Success in Multinational Companies

MGT 501

Week 6 Assignment 2

All success companies in the world have a comprehensive best practice policy list geared towards managing existing knowledge and any new knowledge as they become viable. These practices help the company to thrive even in the worst places therefore, ensuring success. For a company to expand into other countries and be considered multinational there is no other way other than having a comprehensive best practice policy. In this paper I will develop a comprehensive best practice policy for Estela Children Products (Blakemore, 1998). Estela is a company based in the United States and deals in the manufacture of children’s products such as clothing and toys (Jenkins, 2002). The company wishes to expand to other countries worldwide and supply all the children with their products and the best practice will comprise of the following sanitation, eating and drinking, conflict resolution, in-house teams, online teams, security and emergency evacuation procedures.

Sanitation

It is the right of every employee to have access to better sanitation and clean water. It is the goal of the company to provide assurance to the public that it is in compliance with the federal, state and local regulations and guidelines (Blakemore, 1998).The following policies will be upheld and implemented in within the company to ensure that it meets its goals. Firstly, all food, raw or prepared and other food related services at public events in the company and must be acquired through licensed food and food service provider.

Also it is will be the policy of the company to ensure that there is clean drinking water for all its employees. For that reason there will be clean water dispensers on every department and offices to ensure that all the employees have access to clean drinking water. The company recognizes the value to the community and to the nation to recycle resources. It is committed to natural resources and preventing pollution (Jenkins, 2002). The recycling program collects used plastics and plastic products and uses them to manufacture toys for children. General waste or refuse from the company will discard by disposal in the normal trash or recycled.

Finally, all employees have a right to clean toilet facilities and hand washing facilities. It is the policy of the company to ensure that clean toilet facilities are available for employees and visitors (Althaus, Bridgman, & Davis, 2007). This will be in accordance to OSHA’s sanitation standard 1 where the timely access is the goal of the standard. There will be no rules imposed on to how much time must be spent on the toilet facilities because the company understands that individuals vary in their need to use the facilities. For example pregnant women, women with stress incontinence and men with prostatic hypertrophy need to urinate more frequently. The company will have 12 toilet facilities with water closets to be provided when there are 111-150 employees.

Eating or drinking:

The company recognizes that employees spend long hours within their working stations and therefore, the company allows some food and beverages within its environs but not in the machine rooms. The machine rooms are dangerous and there are chemical that could be toxic to the human body and therefore, food will not be allowed in those areas.

Covered beverages and small, contained snacks are permitted in offices with the following exception; computer working station and stack areas near books. This is in order to reduce the chances of pouring liquids on the computers which can cause them not to work well and therefore, bring some losses (Althaus, Bridgman, & Davis, 2007). Exposed plates of food, as well as cluttered, sweet-smelling foods such as pizza and other takeout meals, are acceptable only in the lounge and there will be enough of them to suit all the employees. It is also important to remind all that unattended food and beverages will be subject to being disposed of.

Conflict resolution

Problems, misunderstandings and frustrations may arise in the workplace and therefore, it is Estela’s intent to be approachable to its employees and their distresses. A worker who is antagonized with a problem may use the process described below to bring resolution or simplify his or her concerns. The determination of this policy is to deliver a speedy, operative and unfailingly applied method for a nonsupervisory worker to present his or her concerns to the administration and have those concerns resolved within the company without involving the third party (Althaus, Bridgman, & Davis, 2007).

Procedure: Step 1

The first steps are discussing the issue with the supervisor. Employees who have problems should bring their issues and concerns to the immediate supervisor who will schedule a meeting to discuss the problem that gave rise to the problem and give a solution within five working days from the time the incident was reported (Jenkins, 2002).

Step 2

If the dialogue with the immediate supervisor does not decide the problem and the solution to the common pleasure of the employee and the supervisor, or if the supervisor does not answer back to the issue, the worker may submit a written grievance to the employee’s manager or the section head (Paquette, 2002). The Human Resource department will help the employees write their complaints. The employee’s manager or the section head should forward a copy of the grievance to the Human Resource department. The grievance letter should contain the information on the incident and the date it occurred and also it should give the suggestions on ways to resolve the problem. Upon receiving the letter the section head should arrange a meeting and provide solution to the problem within five working days after receiving the letter.

Step 3

If the worker is dissatisfied with the decision made by the manager, he or she may, within five working days, appeal this decision in writing to the Human Resource department. The Human Resource department will schedule a meeting and directly involve the parties in conflict and facilitate a solution that will benefit both parties (Blakemore, 1998). The decision of the human resource department will be final and must be respected by all parties.

In house teams:

The company will have a minimum of 2 meetings every week to ensure that all is going to plan. The number of scribes shall not be limited; they will be as many as the job for them is. The appointed leaders will be as many as the departments. There will be the overall leader who is the head of the whole company and its branches. The branches will also have their leaders but they all answer to the main leader situated at the headquarters (Howard, 2005).

Online team:

The online team must have at least two contacts associated with it, one of whom must be a regular full time employee of the company. The administration should also notify the rest of the employees and the public just in case the contacts changes. The online team will work in shifts because this is a multinational company and there is a time difference according to the part of the world the caller is (Jenkins, 2002). This is so that, all calls can be received the customers queries answered any time they need assistance. The online team employees will work in shifts of 6 hours.

Security:

Security is very important in that the company must ensure the safety of its employees where they work, live and where they travel to on a business trip. It is the policy of the company to ensure that the working environment is safe for the employees. For this reason the company will hire a security team that will always take care of the property and scan the visitors who visit the premises. The place will be under 24 hours CCTV camera surveillance to boost security.

Emergency evacuation procedures:

It is the company’s policy to conduct fire drills once every year. Communications will entail having a fire alarm system and unit heat detector must be connected directly to a chief dispatch and upon activation, will communicate the alarm to the Fire Department. Important information such as name, location of emergency, type of emergency and people injured must be given when reporting incidents by telephone using 911 (Blakemore, 1998). All the exits must be accessible and must be kept clean and clear off destructions.

Also there is a security desk number that will be given to all employees to call when there is an emergency (Paquette, 2002).This will be the first procedure in case of an emergency and the next procedure is to remain calm and follow the instructions of the security officer. Evacuation of the building through the exits will be done in case alarms go on. The buildings will be fitted with an audio alert system where people will receive instructions on how to evacuate the building without hurting each other to reduce the probability of getting hurt.

Benefits of creating such policies:

The key benefits of providing such policies are to ensure there is order within the company. Written policies and procedures offer the structure for a company’s complete operation (Blakemore, 1998). They offer flawless direction for workers as well as understandings into company beliefs, philosophies, values and virtuous principles. Human resources specialists typically formulate policy guides, which are disseminated to workers and used for coordination and training.

Policies also help in the recruitment so that the company can find the right people with the right skills for the job who will ensure the company moves forward. Policies also regulate how the employees are hired to ensure that the company complies with Employment Acts and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Howard, 2005).

Major ramifications if policies are not created:

Without policies there is no order for operation. The company will be incurring losses because of very many reasons. One of the reasons is that employees will be operating on their own terms, what they feel is right and sometimes they will not care and therefore, this may cause loss of profits. Without policies employees will lack a code of conduct and some will smoke, dress inappropriately and do all sorts of unwanted behavior in workplace and this will affect the company’s performance. There will be lack of respect and lack of authority (Paquette, 2002).

Policies regarding company’s property such as internet if not put in place will lead to misuse of the internet and rude employees may use it to send unnecessary emails to other employees. Federal and local laws will not be followed and other acts like the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will be violated all the times. All these may lead to the closure of the company.

Significant ways in which the best practices policy will contribute towards the long term sustainability:

On sanitation, it will make sure that employees do not waste time looking for clean toilet facilities or using their salaries to purchase clean bottled water. Having clean toilet facilities ensures that the employees are comfortable and this will boost how they work and moreover, save time (Blakemore, 1998). On having clean water for drinking, they will save the little money, instead of buying bottled water. Eating and drinking policies will reduce the chances of having food poisoning cases within the working environment putting the company in a safer place.

Conflict resolution policies will ensure that employees are in good terms with each other and their supervisors. This allows them time to concentrate on their work and therefore, making the company performs better (Paquette, 2002). Online teams will ensure that all customers’ need are met on a 24 hour basis, there is no time that they will find our lines out of service. Security will assure the employees are safe and therefore, concentrate on their work and finally emergency evacuation procedures will ensure that there are few victims or no victims in case of an incident like earthquake, fire or robbery.

Best practices policy that provides a competitive advantage over other international companies:

These policies will provide a competitive advantage in that new recruits will all want to work for the company because of the excellent policies that are being implemented. No employee would love to work where they are not guaranteed of their safety and at Estela the safety of the employees come first. The company ensures that the employees are safe even when they are sent on business trips to other countries (Blakemore, 1998). Apart from safety, there is comfort, toilet facilities are a major problem to may organizations but to Estela, the company has converted that threat to an opportunity and its bearing fruits. The company experiences a lower turnover rate and at the same time the human resource receives a lot of application letters. Also the recycling policy ensures that the company saves cost for acquiring raw materials.

A company that uses best practices policy is Walmart stores since it has over 1.4 million employees serving over 200 million people per week in 15 different countries. To keep all these employees satisfied and the 200 million customers to come back every week requires strong and excellent policies.

Conclusion:

Policies are important in ensuring the success of a company and without them the company lacks the philosophy on which it has to operate on and that means that they have no vision and mission (Jenkins, 2002). Today our links to the world through trade, travel, technology, and communications are very important to our economy and our economic prosperity, just as the prosperity of other nations depends on the openness of U.S. markets and trade.

References:

Blakemore, K., (1998). Social Policy: an Introduction. Wiley and sons.

Althaus, C., Bridgman, P.& Davis, G., (2007). The Australian Policy Handbook (4th ed.). Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Müller, P., &Surel, Y., (1998). L’analyse des politiquespubliques (in French). Paris: Montchrestien.

Paquette, L., (2002). Analyzing National and International Policy.Rowman Littlefield.

Howard, C., (2005). “The Policy Cycle: a Model of Post-Machiavellian Policy Making?” The Australian Journal of Public Administration,

Jenkins, W., (2002). Policy Analysis: A Political and Organizational Perspective. London: Martin Robertson.