Organisations Learning and Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Organisations Learning and Development - Essay Example To help employees acquire these capabilities and to hone their existing skills, many organisations are investing heavily on learning and developmental activities, which will help in achieving changing organisational objectives. Learning and developmental activities are also employed to motivate and retain skilled and experienced employees, which will not only enhance organisational capabilities but also save costs. The present discussion is based on organisational learning and development at UK-based B&Q, a leader in do-it-yourself retail home improvement sector. B&Q is the biggest home improvement retailer in the United Kingdom and have maximum customers than any other retailer in this sector. B&Q offers more than 40,000 do-it-yourself (DIY) products, which certainly requires highly talented and skilled staff that prepares such diverse products. B&Q employs more than 25000 full time employees in their retail stores in the UK. Started in 1969 by Richard Block and David Quayle, this s tore has about 321 stores in the UK and more than 50 stores in Ireland and other countries. Apart from numerous other awards and recognitions, B&Q has been winning the Gallup Great Workplace award in 2010 for four consecutive years for highest employee engagement and productivity in the world. This exemplary performance of B&Q is credited to its employees’ contribution, which is supported and promoted by workplace policies and practices followed at B&Q. B&Q’s main office is located at Southampton, and is referred to as Store Support Office, from where their HR function provides specific learning and developmental opportunities and support to its employees in different locations. Their HR team works closely with organisation development team to improve performance through identifying, shaping and supporting initiatives meant for employee learning and development (About B&Q, n.d). Argyris (1999) emphasizes that contemporary management views effective organisational strat egy as that which promotes continual development of new understandings, models, and practices; this management aspect is referred to as organisational learning. From this perspective, organisational learning is one of the crucial tasks in strategic management. Organisations that encourage creativity, employee empowerment and involvement require employees to be continually learning and developing new skills and competencies that can help in their performance and contribution; this is more crucial for organisations that produce innovative products and services. Moreover, for employee empowerment to be effective, employees must have the knowledge and skills to make logical and correct business decisions. Although employees come with some learning through education and prior experience, learning at organisation should continue for many reasons. Workplace learning helps in maintaining high motivation and enthusiasm of the employees. This is demonstrated in statement made by Glendinning, the Business Services Manager in Finance department of B&Q: ‘It is a big part of my job to always be thinking ahead, to be able to analyse my current performance, to be a good team manager and of course to hit my sales targets. B&Q are a great support in getting

Fast Food Restaurants Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Fast Food Restaurants - Assignment Example Therefore, in Fast Food restaurants industry, customer loyalty is built, earned and retained with the following components; Product quality, Product attributes, Brand name, Store environment (relates to customer experience with the restaurant and restaurant's ambiance), Service quality, Price, Promotion, Trust and Satisfaction. In this industry, a loyal customer means the person who avail's a restaurant's services, is highly satisfied with them, has a pleasant customer experience with the place, trusts the restaurant to provide high quality good food, considers product/service attributes to be excellent, considers the product/service quality as high, considers price to be worth the product/service offering, rates promotional activities to be highly attractive and goes for the brand name created by the restaurant, like McDonalds (Nezakati, 13). For fast food firms, customer loyalty is when a particular customer revisits their restaurant again and again and repurchases their service. M oreover, these are the customers who visit the restaurant very frequently, for instance a customer who eats at the restaurant twice every week. They are happy customers who give a positive feedback when asked about the food and they give generous tips to the waiters. Customer loyalty is measured by the revenue generated from a particular customer, a regular customer whose name every waiter would know or who could be recognized by face (Rehman et.al., 1-2). For customers, customer loyalty is the high level of satisfaction they receive from dining in a fast food restaurant. For them, customer loyalty is a product of high quality product/service that completely fulfills the customer expectations and satisfy their preferences or needs. For customers, to be a loyal consumer of a fast food restaurant's food, it is essential for the restaurant to provide them with a complete service experience. The ambiance of the place must be pleasant and enjoyable. Food must be of high quality and most importantly it must be hygienic and worth every penny they pay for it. The service must be prompt and efficient as customers do not like to wait a lot when it comes to food and restaurant staff must be hospitable and helpful since many at times customers ask for suggestions from the staff as to what they should order and what is the best dish they serve. So in a nutshell, for customers to be loyal they must be provided a high quality food service as for customers, customer loyalty is what an organization earns from the absolute satisfaction of a customer. It is all about meeting customer expectations and living up to them (Rehman et.al., 1-2). To be more specific, companies and customers define customer loyalty by dividing it into two types; attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty. Attitudinal loyalty is a state of mind a customer is in which displays a positive preferential attitude of the customer towards a company's products/services. It simply depends on the customers' liking , if they like a certain brand, like in this case if they love McDonalds, they will even pay a premium price to buy the product compared to its lower priced competitor, for instance KFC in this case. Behavioral loyalty is simply dependent on the customer's conduct without any consideration of their attitude or preference.