Multinational Companies’ Keys to Success

Introduction

Globalization has dramatically changed the way multinational companies view incentive as a means of increasing competitiveness in different industries. Multinational companies have now chosen to implement best practices in order to gain competitive advantage over their main competitors in the industry. A comprehensive best practice must take into account factors such as human, business, community, and infrastructure issues. Furthermore, best practice should enable companies to compare themselves with rivals coupled with introducing effective key performance indicators.

Such tools enable multinational companies to not only plan, but also encourage comparison with peers against business objectives. In essence, companies should introduce the best practice policy that takes into account extraordinary events such as bombs and earthquakes in order to have a competitive edge by motivating employees. Employees are vital to the success of any business. In order to remain competitive, a comprehensive best policy must ensure that the employees’ needs are met adequately.

In most cases, employees are in a position to see areas of improvement within the company. Therefore, best policy that will create competitive edge must involve employees in developing creative ways of improving the organization. The comprehensive best practice must extend across all areas of an organization. These areas include training, managing knowledge, unexpected events, and conflict management. This paper develops a best practice by formulating a comprehensive policy for competitive advantage.

Sanitation policy

The company’s safety program establishes the best code of conduct in key areas of sanitation in order to improve hygiene. Introducing a well-written and easy-to-understand good hygiene practices will help minimize the risk of injury due to contamination. Employees are expected to do the following

Every employee must wear clean outer garments that protect against any possible physical contamination from packaging materials. Moreover, employee shoes must be made of leather and no open shoes will be allowed inside manufacturing premises.

• All employees must wash their hands before and after returning from lunch break and restroom and at any other time when their hands might have been contaminated.
• All gloves must be cleaned before and after use or at any other time when they might have been contaminated. Gloves must be made up of impermeable material to avoid any physical contact.
• Any employee with a treatable infectious disease that demonstrates itself in the form of wounds or boils shall not be allowed to work in the manufacturing department where he/she can potentially be contaminated by packaging materials or manufacturing ingredients.

Benefits of comprehensive sanitation policy

• Ensure safety of employees and outsiders who visit the premise.
• Ensures that the employees maintain proper hygiene to avoid contamination with packaging goods

Eating and drinking policies

The organization has to ensure the safety of all workers as they eat and drink their meals within the organization. All employees must do the following

• No employee shall be allowed to take food or beverage inside the manufacturing premise in order to avoid contamination.
• No one is allowed to store food or snacks in cabinet or company refrigerators where chemicals are stored to avoid toxicity.
• All employees shall take their lunch inside the dining rooms tables.

Conflict management policy

The company’s policy requires all stakeholders to avoid any potential conflict where necessary. It also requires all stakeholders to identify or disclose any areas of potential conflict. The company has a primary responsibility to do the following

• Identify the conflict of duties and individual interest that might contravene the organizational goals. Managers and supervisors should ensure that they have identified and monitored existing and potential conflicts.
• If a conflict is identified, it should be assessed critically and those involved should be encouraged to resolve their differences prudently.

Benefit of a comprehensive conflict management policy

• It boosts employee morale, thus increasing productivity in the end.
• It minimizes interdepartmental conflicts thereby ensuring production and operation moves smoothly without disruptions.

Educating employee on effective conflict management policy

As per the company’s policy regulations, all managers and directors must undergo annual training seminars, which are designed to ensure that they understand their primary duty of identifying and resolving any perceived conflict within the organization. Moreover, the training seminars allow supervisors, who are in direct contact with employees, to identify and avoid any potential conflict that might hinder organizational performance.

The company should establish a conflict investigation committee, which is responsible for the following

• Establishing a whistleblower platform to report unethical behaviors such as corruption, fraud, and deliberate breach of policies within the organization
• Helping conflicting parties to resolve their differences amicably
• Assessing the seriousness of conflicts and determining whether the involved parties can resolve their differences adequately or they should be reported to the board for appropriate action.

Online team

The organization should ensure effective management of online teams in order to achieve set goals and objectives. All members must adhere to the following,

• All employees must provide their contacts to ensure that team members can easily reach them.
• No one is allowed to discuss personal matters on the company’s online platform.
• All employees must use the smart sheet to document and upload task online while using their mobile phones.

Security

The organization has the obligation to safeguard and provide a secure working environment. These policies intend to ensure that adequate security measures are in place to prevent unlawful acts that can endanger the safety of company property.

• Departmental heads will be in charge of distributing keys
• Only authorized persons shall open doors and retain the keys
• Keys must be returned to the customer care desk every day before leaving the premise
• All employees must use their access code when opening doors.
• All doors must be locked and key returned to departmental heads every day.

Disaster management

The organization should take swift action and manage disaster to minimize potential damages. All Staff, board members, and customers who experience emergencies listed below must follow the emergency evacuation procedure. These events include

• Fire
• Hostage by terrorists
• Bomb threats
• Earthquake
• Radiation spill

  • Staff member, board member, and customers who experience the above incidences within the business premise should immediately inform departmental heads. In the absence of the departmental heads, they should immediately inform the branch manager.
  • Whenever the above incidences occur, every employee, board member, and customer must fill in a critical incident report, which includes the member(s) who notified the incident. Secondly, full details of the person(s) directly affected by the incident.
  • The branch manager in conjunction with departmental heads shall assess the impact of the incident on the said person(s) before taking the appropriate action. If necessary, the branch manager shall organize a risk assessment meeting to determine the following
• The degree of damage caused to the said person(s).
• Contacting the affected person’s family members
• Liaising with disaster management organizations
• If need be, the person(s) indirectly involved, but not affected by the incident shall be required to go through counseling

Where appropriate, the company shall offer support to the family or person(s) directly affected in form of

1. Helping the affected family to obtain death certificate
2. Participating in repatriation, funeral, and hospital bills

The meeting shall do the following,

1. Recommend and document quality improvement procedure to minimize potential loss in future.
2. Ensure relevant people have been counseled and debriefed if necessary

Benefits of disaster management policy

1. Facilitate and promote diverse skills by allowing employees and the organization to undertake risk management activities together.
2. Promote a robust disaster management culture that facilitates the coordination of diverse disaster management approach.

Encouraging in-house team policies

Teamwork is a fundamental principle of the company, and thus all employees are encouraged to have a sense of identity within the organization by belonging to a group. In order to encourage team sharing, managers must do the following

• Ensure that all employees belong to a group by ascertaining that communication is not only open, but also specifies organizational and teamwork objectives clearly. Managers should encourage team sharing by,

  • Ensuring that team members are viewed as unique in order to create openness in a team
  • Identifying team goals and objectives by creating clarity to all members
  • Cultivating a culture of shared values where employees feel that they belong to a group that understands their unique needs and characteristic.

Emergency evacuation policy

The company is concerned about employee’s safety, and thus it has taken precautionary measure in case of fire emergency. An evacuation policy has been formulated to ensure swift response to fire outbreaks. The following guidelines must be followed during evacuation

• Open windows to ensure that smoke from the building finds it way out.
• Employees should first feel the door with their backhand before opening to detect heat.
• Employees should stay low since heat and smoke go up to avoid suffocating.
• No one should use the elevator.

Benefit of fire emergency evacuation polices

• Ensure the workers’ safety during an emergency in order to minimize damage and casualties.
• In order to train workers on how to handle fire outbreak within the organization and safely means off evacuating building under fire.

Rational of comprehensive best practice policy in multinational industries

According to Borders (2014), successful governance must operate at different levels within an organization. This comprehensive best practice has the potential to use employees, as they are the best asset that an organization can use to gain competitive advantage. Encouraging teamwork and knowledge sharing ensures that a company harnesses innovative and creative ways of improving product design.

Through teamwork, employees have the capacity to develop internal innovation, since they are in direct contact with customers who usually propose changes in a product line. Therefore, small changes in a product can be the beginning of dramatic success in that product line. For example, Starbuck Corporation encourages employees to propose changes that can be made in order to improve operation. Keller (2008) notes that after the employees’ proposals were integrated in product design, Starbucks increased sales by 12 per cent in 2010.

Digital platforms enhance sharing between branches. Consequently, the methodology used to solve complex challenges in one branch can be used to solve similar challenges in another branch. According to Meredith (2013), sharing information can be an effective way of saving costs and encouraging operational efficiency. In the future, the company’s best policy will harness creativity in the organization through information sharing. This move will improve the employees’ morale and save costs through operation efficiency. If this policy is not applied comprehensively, operational costs will rise due to inefficiency in production occasioned by the lack of knowledge and motivation.

Conclusion

Comprehensive best practice ensures that multinational organizations operate effectively by reducing operational costs. Encouraging multinational organizations to share information creates an enabling environment for knowledge sharing. Consequently, employees can resolve convoluted challenges effectively by using creative ways established in other branches. This move saves time and cost by ensuring that operations run effectively.

References

Borders, D. (2014). Best Practices in Clinical Supervision: Another Step in Delineating Effective Supervision Practice. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 68(2), 151-162.

Chaudhary, H. (2005). Knowledge management for competitive advantage: changing the world through knowledge. New Delhi, India: Excel Books.

Colisto, N. (2012). The CIO playbook strategies and best practices for IT leaders to deliver value. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Dembowski, F. (2013). The roles of benchmarking, best practices & innovation in organizational effectiveness. International Journal of Organizational Innovation, 5(3), 6-20.

Keller, K. (2008). Best practice cases in branding: lessons from the world’s strongest brands. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice-Hall.

Meredith, B. (2013). Still MIA: Comprehensive Retirement Income Best Practices for the Mid-Market. Journal of Financial Planning, 26(4), 32-34.