Competencies, Roles and Responsibilities of Lead Assessors

Any organisation that opts for energy audits, Display of Energy Certificates and Green Deal Assessments needs a lead assessor to review the chosen ESOS compliance routes. The Derivative provides that energy audits should be carried out independently by qualified and accredited experts. Additionally, these audits should be implemented as well as supervised by independent authorities under the national legislation.

Lead assessors undertake several roles in ESOS assessments. He or she is the one responsible to take the lead of the entire assessment team, prepare the plan, conduct the meetings and submit the formal report to governing authorities. Nevertheless, selecting an appropriate lead assessor is an important element that every organisation should carefully consider.

Competencies Requirements of Lead Assessors

Lead assessors should be knowledgeable enough with in-depth expertise in carrying out energy efficiency assessment. They should also possess foundational, functional and technical competencies to deliver the task effectively. Likewise, consider the assessors? sector experiences, familiarity with your business? technologies and properties, and accreditation with prescribed standards.

As you choose your lead assessor, contemplate on the skills and qualifications that would give your organisation benefits.

Roles and Responsibilities of Lead Assessors

The business organisation is responsible for the overall legal ESOS compliance. Moreover, here are some of the roles and responsibilities that lead assessors should assume in ESOS assessments.

The lead assessor agrees on the audit methodologies that the organisation would undergo in new audits. He or she agrees with the ESOS participant regarding the audit timetable, sampling approach and visits required. It is also the lead assessor?s role to identify the opportunities on energy saving and assist in calculating the cost savings from the measures taken. During the ESOS audits, the lead assessor determines the energy use profiles, presents the recommendations and reviews the entire assessment as a whole. Furthermore, he or she should maintain the evidence pack of the ESOS to uphold the audit’s credibility, its findings and recommendations.

Finding Lead Assessors

Energy and environment professionals would only be able to demonstrate their expertise as lead assessors upon registering in a professional body accredited by the Environment Agency. Any business that needs a lead assessor is advised to check on the EA?s website to see the details of approved registers.

Lead assessors can either be in-house experts or external professionals. However, they should be able to provide proof of membership as an approved register to take the role of a lead assessor. If the organisation has an internal lead assessor, the company should then take the final ESOS assessment to two board-level directors that would sign the formal report.

Indeed, the lead assessor is an organisation’s partner when it comes to delivering great results. With good professional conduct and excellent management of an assessment team, the lead assessor can help achieve breakthrough energy efficiency strategies. More than anything else, the organisation will benefit from maximum energy savings opportunities ahead. Thus, every qualified business enterprise should invest in finding the best lead assessor to guide them towards success.

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A Business Case for Sharing

We blogged about sharing services in a decentralised business context recently, and explained why we think why these should be IT-Based for speedy delivery. This is not to say that all shared services projects worldwide have been resounding successes. This is often down to the lack of a solid business case up front. We decided to lay out the logic behind this process.

Management Overview ? The overview includes a clear definition of why the current situation is unacceptable, the anticipated benefits of sharing, and an implementation plan were it to go ahead. The project should not proceed until the stakeholders have considered and agreed on this.

Alternatives Considered ? The next stage is to get closer to the other options in order to determine whether an alternative might perhaps be preferable. Substitutes for shared services are often doing nothing, improving the current method, and outsourcing the service to a third party.

The Bottom Line in Business ? Sharing services comes at an initial cost of infrastructure changes, and the impact on human capital (the latter deserves its own blog). The following need careful consideration from the financial angle:

Numbers to Work Through

Manpower to design and roll the project out in parallel with the existing organisation.

Capital for creating facilities at the central point including civil works, furniture and equipment and IT infrastructure.

The costs of travel, feeding and accommodation. These can be significant depending on the time that implementation takes.

The opportunity loss of diverting key staff – and the cost of temporary replacements – if appointing line staff to the project team.

Crystal-clear project metrics including (a) the direct, realisable savings (b) the medium and long-term effects on profit and (c) where to deploy the savings

Risk Management

Shared services projects don’t go equally smoothly, although planning should reduce the risk to manageable levels. Nonetheless it is important to imagine potential snags, decide how to mitigate them and what the cost might be.

We believe in implementing shared services on a pilot basis in the business unit that eventually provides them. We recommend building these out to other branches only when new processes are working smoothly.

Moving On From a Decision

We recommend you revisit your management overview, the logic behind it, the assumptions you made, and the costs and benefits you envisage before deciding to go ahead

The final step in proving a business case is doable should be fleshing out your roadmap into a detailed operations plan with dependencies on a spreadsheet.

What is work force management?

For organisations to ensure they provide the right service. In order to do they need to assign the right employees with the right skills to the right job at the right time to meet demand.

Workforce Management Background

Workforce management (WFM) is a strategy used by companies to increase their efficiency and performance. It entails all activities aimed at maintaining a steady output, such as human resource management, forecasting, field service management, budgeting, scheduling, performance and training management, analytics, recruitment and data collection.

Workforce management utilizes a unique set of performance enhancing tools and software to bolster corporate management, workers, and other categories of managers and supervisors in the manufacturing team, distribution, transportation, and retail operators. This is sometimes called HRM systems, or part of ERP systems, or workforce asset management.

Unlike the conventional outlay that only needed staff scheduling to improve time management, workforce management is now all-inclusive and demand-oriented to optimize staff scheduling. Apart from focusing on demand-orientation and optimization, workforce management also incorporates:

Estimating the workload and resource utilisation
Job scheduling
Management of working times and accounts
Monitoring the process of workforce management

Each task should be clearly defined and performed efficiently based on set engineering standards and methods of optimizing each task as much as possible. Out of this framework and demand based forecasts, workers are scheduled and given tasks, performance measured, give feedback, and incentives computed and paid.

Workforce management is an entire scheme aimed at building the capacity of workers, increase productivity and client relations, and where possible reduce labour costs.

What is Mobile Workforce Management (MWM)

Mobile workforce management (MWM) is a software-based service used to oversee employees outside of the institution?s premises; MWM sometimes refers to the field teams. Mobile workforce management encompasses all activities done to monitor and schedule the field workforce.

The entire process includes procurement, management and using mobile devices, applications and computer software. Related support services like tracking, logging, dispatch, productivity management, and other types of communication are also to make it efficient.

Companies do not have the same needs and MWM firms need to fine-tune their software and devices to sufficiently bridge this gap. Some providers are suited only to a specific type of company because of specialization, like managing the electric grid. This experience makes the MWM company suited to provide applications that are relevant to the company for them to continue operating smoothly and efficiently.

With the increase in mobile devices, applications, secured wireless networks and virtual desktop, there comes a stream of opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and other ventures. Nevertheless, a mobile workforce needs better controls, security and support, as well as a functioning mobile workforce management strategy.

MMS (managed mobility services) is often used interchangeably with MWM, but they should not be confused. MWM is related to software and applications used by mobile and computer devices to manage on-field work while MMS focuses on enterprises, and is like a way of keeping in touch with the company, other employees, and linking the mobile while at work to servers and the database.

Benefits of Mobile Workforce Management

MWM allows the utilization of technology to drive productivity. Here are the top five advantages of MWM..

Customer focused. The customer is the backbone of any business. The team needs to keep in touch with up-to-date information about every interaction. In the end, better client relation makes sure that the customer is always happy.
Information has the power to build or destroy. A cloud-based system is easier to manage and can help with collection of data which is used to make business decisions. This can help cut costs, increase the workforce support, and identify areas where polishing needs to be done.
Improved efficiency. Mobile workforce management is majorly used in taskforce allocation. If the company adopts a cloud-based work force management system, allocation is done automatically saving a lot of time.
Increased revenue. Each business seeks to maximize the profit. With cloud-based mobile workforce management some operations like task management, data analysis, customer communication, reporting, and performance monitoring can be automated. This reduces the costs incurred for multiple applications and saves time.
Ease of communication. Communication is vital. Constant communication with customers drives sales rates and everyone loves that. Quick communication will help customers solve their problems faster and get instant feedback.

Additional WFM benefits

Other WFM benefits are:

Operations are made efficient as all complex processes are automated.
Employers learn more about worker engagement, productivity and attendance, allowing them to modify training, coaching and processes aimed at streamlining performance.
Automation and easy manipulation of data to improve HR, productivity and slash administrative costs.
It increases employee productivity by reducing absenteeism and late arrivals.
Boosts the morale of employees by encouraging transparency and facilitating manager-employee communication.
WFM analyzes market and schedule requirements to pick the right employee with the best set of skills for a certain task.

Companies which embrace workforce management and mobile workforce management have a higher operational efficiency. They have lower operational costs and limit manual work as much as possible

Introduction to Matrix Management

A leader is responsible to empower his people and get the best out of them. Yet an organisational structure can either help or hamper performance. Worst, it can make or break success.

Looking at the fast-changing world of the global economy, whatsoever slows up and obstructs decision-making is a challenge. Hierarchical management is rather unattractive and functional silos are unlikable. Instead, employees desire to create teams equipped with flexibility, cooperation and coordination.

Recognising that companies have both vertical and horizontal chains of command, the matrix model is created. The concept of this principle lies in the ability to manage the collaboration of people across various functions and achieve strategic objectives through key projects.

Consider this scenario:

Ian is a sales executive of a company. His role is to sell a new product under the supervision of a product manager. The manager is expert about the product and she is accountable to coordinate the people across the organisation, making sure the product is achieved.

Moreover, Ian also reports to the sales manager who oversees his overall performance, monitors his pay and benefits and guides his personal development.

Complicated it may seem but this set-up is common to companies that seek to maximise the effect of expert product managers, without compromising the function of the staffing overhead in control of the organisation. This is a successful approach to management known as Matrix Management.

Matrix Management Defined

Matrix management is a type of organisational management wherein employees of similar skills are shared for work assignments. Simply stated, it is a structure in which the workforce reports to multiple managers of different roles.

For example, a team of engineers work under the supervision of their department head, which is the engineering manager. However, the same people from the engineering department may be assigned to other projects where they report to the project manager. Thus, while working on a designated project, each engineer has to work under various managers to accomplish the job.

Historical Background

Although some critics say that matrix management was first adopted in the Second World War, its origins can be traced more reliably to the US space programme of the 1960’s when President Kennedy has drawn his vision of putting a man on the moon. In order to accomplish the objective, NASA revolutionised its approach on the project leading to the consequent birth of ?matrix organisation?. This strategic method facilitated the energy, creativity and decision-making to triumph the grand vision.

In the 1970’s, matrix organisation received huge attention as the only new form of organisation in the twentieth century. In fact it was applied by Digital Equipment, Xerox, and Citibank. Despite its initial success, the enthusiasm of corporations with regards to matrix organisation declined in the 1980’s, largely because it was complex.

Furthermore, the drive for motivating people to work creatively and flexibly has only strengthened. And by the 1990’s, the evolution of matrix management geared towards creation and empowerment of virtual teams that focused on customer service and speedy delivery.

Although all forms of matrix has loopholes and flaws, research says that until today, matrix management is still the leading approach used by companies to achieve organisational goals.