Critically discuss the work and skills involved in front-line jobs and Essay

Critically discuss the work and skills involved in front-line jobs and the extent to which these skills are controlled - Essay Example They are associated with the daily operations of a company and have direct contact with the money making process of the company. Some examples of front line workers include the assembly worker, bank tellers, and workers servicing in the service industry. Skills of frontline workers are crucial to the success of an organization. Skills in people can be improved upon by imparting training to them. The key concept of skill has been explained in the human capital theory by Schultz. According to the human capital theory, the productivity of workers can increase manifold if they are imparted useful knowledge and skills. This will inevitably lead to increase in their future earnings and future income. This theory rests on the importance of firm-specific training. The paper will focus on skills needed at work in lieu of front line workers. The paper will discuss the work and skills involved in front-line jobs and the extent to which these skills are controlled. Various theories and counter t heories and evidence will be presented from literature to support the argument. The crux of the argument would revolve around the importance of training and using measures like performance appraisals to build on skills needed for front line workers. Skills Skills have been increasingly debated world over. According to many critics this term is very popular amongst most managers, policy makers and academic circles in precarious and amorphous ways to the point that today it comes close to meaning everything yet nothing. Spenners study on skills shows that there used to be a unanimous consensus that skills comprise of two main elements. These are job complexity and job discretion. Job complexity implies the simplicity and difficulty associated with doing a particular job. Task discretion refers to the extent to which decision making power is given to the job holder. Does the worker have enough latitude to choose from a wide range of techniques in solving a problem or does he have to pa ss on the problem to an expert worker or does he have to ask a supervisor?. It is said the greater the latitude the job holder has, the higher skilled is the job. (Tett , 1991) An important aspect of skilled jobs that has been debated over and over again is the proxies which are used to measure skills and the kind of competencies that they measures. The most popular modes of skill assessment have been requirement qualifications and the level of training needed to inculcate those skills. These are partial measures of skill assessment. Skills and their control has often been a crucial aspect of debates in policy circles and academia. These debates have varied from skills related to people working in the manufacturing sector to people associated with the service sector. These could be home care assistants, the nurses, the retail store workers, the call center workers and the job centre work. However work on service sector related skills and has often raised eyebrows by analysts. Some a nalysts feel that the neglect should not be treated as astonishing and shocking as the same principles apply equally from manufacturing related workers to services related workers and from knowledge work to services. (Salgado, 1999) Recently conducted surveys by the Institute of Employment studies and MoRI denote that the major areas of deficiencies in the skills of front line workers are in communication skills. According to the survey, this skill deficiency leaps across the board

ENTERPRICE RESOURCE PLANNING Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

ENTERPRICE RESOURCE PLANNING - Research Paper Example The intention of this study is an information requirements determination as core and very major as one of the major interactive activities in system development. Organizations now compete in the global marketplace with the use of technology and communications. No matter what industry type or what the size of the company is, the right choice of tools will help the company in organizing expenses, analyzing sales, responding to customers, manufacturers, suppliers and partners. The risk of a schedule flaw in system management is of great importance. Scheduling is the process of arranging the events of the project in given time ranges. Risk of this occurring can be high only when the developer concentrates on a particular process more than the others. This could result to non-completion, poor product due to hurried process, and ignoring of some crucial procedures in the product’s scope. The probability of this happening is a 2, kind of a low rating, given the involvement of a super visor that will help the developer keep up to the schedule. Resource allocation is one of the trickiest ventures in any given project. The major resources that could be required in the student projects is travelling to and fro the respectable institutions, and maybe paying up for some services such as SMS servers and hosting services. The risk for this is 4, quite a high probability given the financial situation that students stand. The developer might later realize that the specifications given or found are not exactly comprehensive. Refiguring or restructuring the design to match new specifications is quite tricky. The probability for this happening is 5, given the probability of requirement inflation, usually another risk. This is the worst risk that could be expected in any project, as it would combine each of the other risks as aforementioned. This could only thus be possible if the other risks have a high probability of happening. The probability could thus be the average of e ach of the other risks. This would result with the inadequacy of the Software Requirement Specifications document, usually done after the requirements of a given system have been analyzed. The developer might later realize that the design or rather system requires additional requirements for better functionality. This automatically alters the design and thus schedule. The probability fo