Introduction.

In the market environment today, organizations are striving to attain a competitive advantage through streamlining their human resource. Therefore, effective people management is essential in most companies since employees are treated as valuable assets that contribute to the performance of the organization (Singh & Gupta, 2016, pg. 3). According to research, overwhelming evidence points out that the effectiveness by which an organization engages, involve, motivate, develop or manage the contribution of employees working in an organization may be a determinant of how excellent the organizations may perform. For instance, having a skilled workforce creates a professional work culture that allows the workforce to feel motivated hence ensuring more success or performance. Besides, employee behavior plays a major role in the performance of an organization (Miller, 2016, pg. 23). BUNI travel can therefore employ various tools and techniques to reshape its people management function hence allowing the business focus on improving motivation and organizational performance more effectively.

Tools and techniques will help improve organizational performance.

In improving performance in any organization, various tools and techniques are employed. This process is known as performance management and may involve the reporting, managing and measuring the progress that boosts the improvement of performance both at corporate and individual levels. In BUNI travels, the various techniques and tools that may help boosts organizational performance in the company include;

Key performance indicators and metrics.

KPI’s are crucial tools that evaluate and measure how well individuals, business units or companies are performing in relation to their objectives and strategic goals. However, the primary function of KPI’s is not generally to measure performance but to drive better decision making and data-driven performance conversations (Anand, and Grover, 2015, pg. 137). In many instances, organizations blindly adopt widely accepted KPI’s but preferably do not experience any change or positive outcome. This is because the KPI’s are mostly overlooked as forms of communication. KPI’s may therefore be important in improving performance in BUNI travel since the company may be able to identify various problems that may need attention. In addition, the KPI’s may provide a clear picture of where the company may need to be in the near future hence allowing the company to make wise decisions that ensure the company meets its vision and objectives.

Performance appraisals.

Performance appraisals are commonly used alongside KPIs since they are crucial when it comes to improving performance in organizations. This tool is regarded as powerful in aligning individual objectives with the strategic aims of an organization (DeNisi, and Gonzalez, 2017, pg. 68). Performance appraisals systems may help improve performance in BUNI travel since the system has a list of benefits. One, performance appraisal motivates employees to be the best and most competitive. For instance, BUNI can design a merit-based competition system which allows the best performers to acquire better benefits packages and pay. On the other hand, lazy employees may also be penalized. Two, performance appraisals promote the self-development of employees. BUNI travels can identify areas of improvement for its employees or ways to create training programs that may improve the employees’ skills.

Three, identifying underperformers is easy, and therefore, an organization may decide whether to let go or improve the underperformers. This is crucial in ensuring both the present and future performance of an organization. Lastly, performance appraisals provide a structured process by which the management and employees can discuss, clarify expectations as well as identify problems hence planning for the future (DeNisi, and Gonzalez, 2017, pg. 71). Therefore, both the employee and management are able to set both long-term and short-term goals and objectives. However, to ensure the effectiveness of this tool in BUNI travel, the appraisal process must be a fair, honest, and regular. This is because appraisals can also be powerful de-motivators that may lead to the decline of performance in organizations.

Reward and recognition programs.

            Having a motivated workforce is considered an essential prerequisite for organizational success both in the effective implementation of improvement programs and operational excellence in the daily organizational efforts. In the case employees in an organization feel that good performance is unrewarded and unrecognized, the motivation to work plummets hence causing people to disengage from the company’s overall vision and mission (Fisher, 2015, pg. 43). Therefore, adopting reward and recognition programs may be crucial in improving performance in BUNI travels. The reward and recognition programs may take different forms. One, we have to pay for performance. This may include end of year raises where high performers are allocated larger raises as compared to low performers.

Two, profit sharing. This includes a system where a portion of employee pay is tied to organizational performance. Therefore, this means employee actions are tied to the organization results, and so as to earn more, an employee may be motivated to increase his or her performance. Three, an employee of the month. This refers to the recognition of the best employee in terms of results. This form of recognition may influence other employees to work harder so as to achieve the same status (Fisher, 2015, pg. 47). Lastly, we have suggestion systems. This system allows employees to suggest/ contribute ideas that may improve organizational performance and earn rewards if the ideas that are implemented in the organization.

Performance management frameworks.

Balanced scorecard is a well-known and popular management framework in most organizations (Giannoukou, and Beneki, 2018, pg. 177). Balanced score cards assists organizations in the following ways; clarifying and communicating an organization’s objectives and priorities, monitoring progress by evaluating and measuring to what extent objectives and priorities are being delivered, and lastly, managing and defining actions that ensure organizational initiatives are in course to deliver the strategic objectives and business priorities (Giannoukou, and Beneki, 2018, pg. 181). BUNI travels can incorporate this tool since it is useful in tying strategy to various measures of organizations action. The various measures of success that BUNI travels may need to focus on its balanced scorecards include; measures of satisfaction, financial measures, internal operations, and human resources development and systems.

Personal developments plan.

            A personal development plan refers to an action plan that is built on the awareness and reflection of each individual’s needs and performance (Mone, and London, 2018, pg. 33). This then leads to the development of goals for future actions and performance that influence/ support personal development. Employing PDPs in BUNI travels is crucial since the company can understand and identify specific development and training needs hence creating a plan for meeting the needs. In addition, PDPs are crucial since they assist individuals set out actions they want to take as well how they want to achieve growth. This allows employees to feel more connected to the organization (Mone, and London, 2018, pg. 53). Creating PDPs is regarded as an essential part of creating high-performance cultures at every single level of a company and therefore, attaining high collective performance becomes achievable.

Role of employee wellbeing in improving motivation and performance.

Employee wellbeing has become an issue of high concern since most organizations have realized that healthy and satisfied employees contribute highly to organizational performance than other employees (Krishantha, 2018, pg. 26). This means that employee wellbeing has a considerate impact on the endurance and performance of an organization in various ways. Employee wellbeing covers the overall quality of an employee’s functioning at work and experience. In addition, employee wellbeing includes financial, emotional, health and physical strengths. These dimensions are interrelated meaning that employers can make their workplaces the best place to work as well as maximize performance and motivation if employee wellbeing is actively sustained (Guest, 2017, pg. 27). Employee wellbeing can be evaluated in regards to three dimensions.  

One, we have the psychological approach which defines wellbeing in regards to functioning and subjective experience. In this approach, employee happiness acts as the interconnecting aspect in relation to the wellbeing of employees. Physiological wellbeing is more focused on the subjective experience of human beings. According to psychologists, psychological wellbeing is divided into two components: eudemonic and hedonic. To begin with, the hedonic component is involved with feelings of individual judgments and balance of negative and positive thoughts or with the subjective experiences of pleasure (Krishantha, 2018, pg. 29). Job satisfaction is defined in relation to employee subjective judgments regarding their employment situations. This means that their performance is directly proportionate to their state of happiness. Secondly, on the eudemonic component, the focus is more on the realization and fulfillment of potential human. This means that employee feelings of purpose and fulfillment in their efforts are key in determining the level of motivation and performance.

Two, we have a physical approach which defines wellbeing in regards to functioning and bodily health. Physical wellbeing is studied in terms of both subjective experiences and physiological measures of bodily health (Krishantha, 2018, pg. 30). Organizational researchers have reviewed the link between employee physical health and work in three ways. They include; work can be a source of stress, work is a source of benefits that either indirectly or directly allows for the acquiring of healthcare and lastly, work is a likely source of disease or injury. In the work environment, work intensification, heavy workload, and stress are regarded as common issues concerned with the job environment. These factors influence an employee’s health hence affecting the physical wellbeing. Therefore, unsatisfied and unhealthy employees contribute to low organizational productivity as compared to healthy employees (Franco-Santos, and Doherty, 2017, pg. 2321).

Three, we have a social approach which defines wellbeing in regards to functioning and relational experience. Relationships define the connection between the employer and employees of an organization. Social wellbeing may consist of terms such as reciprocity, conviction, incorporation, social support, harmonization, collaboration, and leader-member exchange. Social wellbeing is more focused on relations with other people while physical and psychological wellbeing are focused on individual employees (Krishantha, 2018, pg. 30). A majority of relationships in organizations may also strain organizational performance in one way or another. However, a positive and healthy relationship in an organization reduces stress hence improving organizational performance. In addition, the connectivity of employee relationship also promotes more motivation to increase work output hence contributing to organizational performance.

Importance of external factors on managing people.

External factors affect the day-to-day operations of human resource management. For instance, the passing of new legislations related to managing employees may have an immediate effect on a company and therefore, developing a well-designed strategy for evaluating external factors that may affect human resources is crucial (Noe et al., 2017, pg. 46). The importance of evaluating the factors is dependent on each of the factors. To begin with, we have government regulations. The introduction of new compliance standards may bring pressure to an organization since the standards may influence various processes of the HR department. They include; compensation, training, hiring, and termination.

Secondly, we have economic conditions. This factor may influence the ability of an organization to hire anyone since it affects the talent pool (Noe et al., 2017, pg. 57). Therefore, it is important to evaluate this factor so as to ensure it can be handled in harsh environments. Thirdly, we have technological advancements. This factor is also important when it comes to managing people since when new technologies are adopted, the HR department may determine ways to downsize its workforce for the purpose of saving money.

Conclusion and recommendations.

Organizational performance is closely tied to people management. This means organizations can adopt various tools and techniques in which they can boost/ improve their performance. In attaining the performance, two of the techniques and tools that I believe may be of greater advantage for BUNI travels is both the reward and recognition programs and performance management frameworks. For instance, rewards and recognition programs affect employee behavior since the tool gives employee motivation to work beyond normal expectation so as to receive a reward or earn a status among other employees. On the other hand, performance management frameworks such as balanced scorecards are crucial in clarifying and communicating an organization’s objectives and priorities which allows employees to buy into the vision and mission of the organization. In addition, employee wellbeing translates to the organization’s performance since employee fulfillment or satisfaction is directly related to the output they bring forth.

References

Anand, N. and Grover, N., 2015. Measuring retail supply chain performance: Theoretical model using key performance indicators (KPIs). Benchmarking: An International Journal, 22(1), pp.135-166.
DeNisi, A.S. and Gonzalez, J.A., 2017. Design performance appraisal systems to improve performance. The Blackwell Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behaviour, pp.63-75.
Fisher, J.G., 2015. Strategic Reward and Recognition: Improving employee performance through non-monetary incentives. Kogan Page Publishers. pp. 12-56.
Franco-Santos, M. and Doherty, N., 2017. Performance management and well-being: a close look at the changing nature of the UK higher education workplace. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 28(16), pp.2319-2350.
Giannoukou, I. and Beneki, C. C. (2018) ‘Towards sustainability performance management system of tourism enterprises: a tourism sustainable balanced scorecard framework’, International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, 17(2/3), pp. 175–196. doi: 10.1504/IJGENVI.2018.10012360.
Guest, D.E., 2017. Human resource management and employee well‐being: Towards a new analytic framework. Human Resource Management Journal, 27(1), pp.22-38.
Krishantha, P. (2018). Employee Wellbeing – Effectiveness on Motivation and Organization Performance. International Journal of Advancements in Research & Technology, Volume 7, Issue 7. pp. 23-34. ISSN 2278-7763.
Miller, B.A., 2016. Assessing organizational performance in higher education. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 23-32.

Mone, E.M. and London, M., 2018. Employee engagement through effective performance management: A practical guide for managers. Routledge. pp. 31-99.
Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B. and Wright, P.M., 2017. Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education. pp. 12-67.
Singh, S., & Gupta, V. (2016). Organizational performance research in India: A review and future research agenda. In G. Misra (Ed.) The Sixth Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) Survey of Psychology in India. New Delhi: Oxford Publishing. pp. 2-53.

Appendix.

PESTLE analysis of BUNI travels.

1. Political factors.

With the increase in terrorist attacks, more countries are developing more strict regulations that may portray a challenge for BUNI travels in the future. In addition, the fear of traveling in those areas may increase hence decreasing the demand for travel in major regions of the world.

1. Economic factors.

With the fluctuation in the world currency exchange rate, BUNI travels may encounter various problems with establishing persistent and fair price structures for its customers. In addition, with the increasing costs of natural resources including oil, the cost of air travel may increase hence affecting the normal costing of air travel.

1. Social factors.

In the near future, customer behavior may become more demanding in terms of prices, destinations, and customized offers. In addition, the busy schedules of people may place more emphasis on leisure rather than vacations. This means for a touring company such as BUNI travels, finding new ways to satisfy customer desires and needs may be the way to go.

1. Technology.

The emergence of new technologies has increased the speed of transactions as well as the reduction of costs. This means that BUNI travels may have to continually adapt new technologies in its business operations so as to continually create value for its customers and remain competitive in the future.

• Environmental.

Since the environment is unpredictable, it may become difficult to control any environmentally associated factors. For instance, in countries which are the leading destination for travelers, any environmental disaster may affect BUNI travels customer base and sales hence reducing the profitability of the company.

• Legal.

Governments are in the process of creating various regulations in order to protect customers. This means that travel companies may have to be responsible for their travelers. This may be catastrophic for BUNI travels in case this does not go as planned hence inflicting huge losses in the company.