Discussion Question 1
All these areas linked and supported each other. For USPS, most important performance goals of “Voice of the Employee” were develop employee proficiencies for their assigned tasks in the workplace that did not exist, and develop capabilities to do sophisticated complement planning. (USPS, 1997, p. 21) USPS acknowledged employees were driving force for continuous improvement and anticipated the needs for employee proficiency measurement and complement planning to be bottom-line business-oriented, and in order to achieve them, the organization had a responsibility to create a workplace environment that was characterized by respect for employees, which was illustrated most clearly by the concern for safety. (USPS, 1997, p. 21) In addition, USPS wanted to improve relationships between the management and employees, and created a dialogue between them. The dialogue was characterized by encouraging both the management and employees to work together to face common challenges of growing competition and increasing customer demands, and better appreciate their mutual interests. USPS believed that throughout these efforts, there will be a cultural change and improvement in productivity, which in turn support “Voice of the Business” in the organization.
Major performance goals of USPS’s “Voice of the Business” included control costs through reengineering, decreasing rework and cycle time, process management, and substituting capital for labor, achieve productivity gains, and use pricing as a competitive tool while keeping rate increases below rate of inflation. (USPS, 1997, p. 22) The organization’s fundamental focus of its VOB was to generate more net income, and controlling costs was a means to support the net income improvement. USPS also wanted to ensure the net income was based on fundamentally sound and improving postal economics, so it used “Total