WORKPLACE CHALLENGE MANDATE 2008/9 - 2010/11
The Workplace Challenge achieves its mandate through:
Collaboration between employers and workers
· Facilitating constructive dialogue between government, business and labour to improve economic performance and productivity at industry level, and
· Enhancing the capacity of stakeholders so as to make change happen.
Improving workplace practices
· Piloting improvement in activities aimed at transforming the workplace by implementing improved operating practices (striving for best operating practices and world-class competitiveness);
Sharing and disseminating processes and lessons
· Sharing information and lessons learnt from participating firms and other interested parties.
1. VISION, MISSION AND VALUES
dti’s Vision is a transformed and adaptive economy that is characterised by a higher level of economic growth that generates employment and reduces levels of inequality. The long-term, ten-year goal of dti is to generate growth, employment and equity.
Linked to the dti’s vision, the Workplace Challenge Programme’s Vision is to:
Improve productivity and competitiveness of South African firms in the economy, with a special emphasis on the Manufacturing Sector.
Our Mission is to:
Facilitate collaboration between management and labour as well as implement best operating practices in enterprises in order to encourage the development of people, create a culture of continuous improvement resulting in improved business performance and establishment of Manufacturing Centres.
Service Quality
Leadership
Teamwork
Proactive
Communicative
Authoritative
2. THE WORKPLACE CHALLENGE STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
In support of the Workplace Challenge’s Vision and Mission, the strategic objectives of the programme are:
• Constructive workplace relations;
• Improving workplace practices;
• Facilitating the establishment of new Manufacturing Centres;
• Establishment of Model Companies to disseminate processes and lessons
• Facilitating the implementation and investment in R & D; and
• Skills Development.
The Workplace Challenge programme realises its objectives through a process of facilitation, capacity building, assisting enterprises to implement improved operating practices and share their experiences and researching and disseminating lessons on Best Operating Practices and World-Class competitiveness. The products, services and offerings are:
3.1 Constructive Workplace Relations:
Objective 1: Workplace collaboration between employers and workers:
• The intention is to improve the productivity and competitiveness of enterprises through collaboration between employers and workers on issues such as developing common goals, implementing improvements that lead to world-class competitiveness and best operating practices, sharing of productivity gains, as well as engendering collaboration between companies involved in similar processes.
• Facilitate constructive dialogue between social partners, managers and workers and participating enterprises on improving productivity and competitiveness at the workplace (KPI - number of companies nurtured)
• Develop the capacity of employers and workers to jointly participate in the programme (KPI - number of capacity building workshops).
Objective 2: Develop Change Facilitators in change-management processes:
• Train and coach Change Facilitators in change-management processes (KPI - number of Change Facilitators trained and coached in world-class competitiveness and BOP modules)
• Provide practical opportunities for Change Facilitators to develop their change-management skills (KPI - number of enterprises facilitated by Change Facilitators)
• Provide a platform for training that will result in Change Facilitators obtaining their Certificate in Productivity.
3.2 Improving Workplace Practices:
Objective 1: Improve workplace practices in South African enterprises to improve productivity and competitiveness:
This objective will depend on the clustering approach or networking that has proven to be successfully used by competition to South African companies. Efficient value-chains are often a result of active networks based on some form of agreement. Networks are when firms work together to create economic value. This happens through aligning company or corporate level strategies to shape an internally consistent network level strategy. Such a network, or multi-company, level strategy can involve anywhere between two and thousands of companies. The developed strategy must fit with the demands in the relevant environment.
• Pilot workplace transformation in clusters of between 5 and 8 enterprises - each striving for best operating practices and world-class competitiveness (KPI - number of participating Clusters):
o Focus on simultaneous improvement of quality, speed, cost and morale
o Establish close links with customers and suppliers
o Drive both linear and non-linear improvement initiatives
o Eliminate all forms of waste and make value flow
o Implement leadership practices that promote teamwork, participation, continuous learning and flexibility.
• Establish Workplace Challenge User Groups (KPI - number of established User Groups)
• Develop prescriptive material for workplace transformation e.g. Workplace Transformation Toolkit, technical write-ups, Show and Tell and plant visits, published book and case studies, research results (KPI’s - Workplace Transformation Toolkit developed and number of subsequent world-class competitiveness (WCC) self-assessments by enterprises)
• Establish a process of accreditation and awards for enterprises achieving world-class competitiveness (KPI’s - diagnostic audit for accreditation and award purposes developed and number of subsequent enterprises formally audited for accreditation).
• Designing and implementing performance-based incentive schemes such as productivity gain-sharing and Employee Ownership.
3.3 Facilitating the establishment of new Manufacturing Centres:
Objective: Supporting the expansion of Industrialisation in the Economy
• Facilitating research, design and implementation of Manufacturing Centres which whose ownership will be targeted towards the previously disadvantage groups.
• Implementation of continuous improvement principles and process in the new Manufacturing Centres.
3.4 Establishing Model Companies to enhance competitiveness through the diffusion of new processes and lessons learned:
Objective: Provide a Proven Model for Productivity and Competitiveness improvement within South African companies
• Monitor and facilitate ongoing improvement based on speed, cost, quality, and moral to ensure that companies do not stagnate after completion of workplace challenge modules.
• The model company programme will contribute to manufacturing excellence through demonstrating to other companies, e.g., ways for the best use of equipments; adequate training of human capital; best planning and application of knowledge for optimal production; cost control to ensure profitability and sharing of proceeds; setting out optimal ways for carrying out operations; and planning to avoid bottlenecks.
3.5 Facilitating the Implementation and Investment in R&D:
Objective 1: Research world-class competitiveness and Best Operating Practices and evaluate the impact of the Workplace Challenge:
• Explore and document Best International Practices and lessons eg develop an international network/hub, international study tours, workshops for Guru’s, International Show and Tell (KPI’s - international information hub developed and number of subsequent study missions and “show and tells”)
• Support research by academia on the Workplace Challenge and influence curricula of learning institutions on world-class competitiveness and Best Operating Practices (KPI’s - number of workshops with academia to establish research topics and number of research papers reviewed)
• Ongoing evaluation of the impact of the Workplace Challenge programme (KPI’s - number of recorded success stories and evaluation of impact of the programme on Clusters).
Objective 2: Share and disseminate processes, experiences and lessons:
• Clusters are formed to provide a basis for benchmarking in relation to standards, quality assurance, accreditation, and metrology. These clusters will be organised into Industrial benchmarking clubs within the next two to three years from relationships that have formed among participating enterprises of the Workplace Challenge clusters and User Groups.
• Collate and package Workplace Challenge processes, experiences and lessons e.g. video footage, photographs and written case studies (KPI - number of Workplace Challenge themes collated and packaged for dissemination)
• Create national awareness through different types of media, website, seminars, presentations and printed media i.e. communicate the results of research, experiences and lessons (KPI - communication campaign to put Workplace Challenge on the “minds and lips” of industry).
3.6 Skills Development:
Objective: Support industrialisation process by providing of adequate numbers of graduates in tertiary technical fields such as science and engineering.
• Skills development process will be implemented in the form of both the off-site and on-site training. User-groups and Clusters in an After-care stage (also playing a role of Benchmarking clubs) will adopt or form a partnership with a nearby FET college to develop critical and scarce skills that the companies require.
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