Innovation Ways of Water Corporation for Serving the Produce Products - Assignment Example

Water Corporation Name: Affiliate Institution: Executive Summary For an organization to ensure its sustainability, it has to innovate. It is difficult for an organization to remain sustainable in terms of business and operational activities without innovation. Everything from products to processes has to be innovated. Water Corporation is a very important government owned company serving the Western Australia region. The company makes sure that it innovates in order to better serve all the citizens in Western Australia region. This paper discusses the ways in which Water Corporation has been using innovation to serve the produce products and services that enable it to serve the people making it one of the most successful companies. The paper has also examined ways in which Water Corporation has been engaging with the Aboriginal communities. However, the company has been experiencing some challenges arising from lack of adequate funding. The introductory part of this paper is dedicated to providing the company’s background. The body of this paper is dedicated to discussing the innovativeness of the company that has made it become one of the most important service companies in Western Australia. Finally, the paper concludes by discussing the main points discussed in this report and offers suggestions for further discussion and research. Company’s Profile: Water Corporation Water Corporation is a company providing water services to the citizens in the western part of Australia. Water Corporation serves a total of 2 million customers and has approximately 30,000 key stakeholders. The company was founded in 1996 with an aim of restructuring the water industry in Western Australia. Some of the activities of Water Corporation include main water supply schemes, wastewater systems, irrigation, and drainage. Water Corporation’s IWSS is a scheme that serves over 1.5 million people across Perth with 279 billion litres (Water Corporation, 2013). IWSS represents the largest scheme under Water Corporation. Water supplied under this scheme is collected from groundwater (46 percent), surface water (31 percent), and desalinated seawater (23 percent) (Water Corporation, 2013). There is a total of 109 wastewater treatment plants operated by Water Corporation across Western Australia. The largest percentage of this wastewater is collected and treated in Perth metropolitan area in three treatment plants, including Subiaco, Beenyup, and Woodman Point. In future, Water Corporation has to continue innovating new ways of collecting and treating wastewater to take care of the rapidly increasing Perth population. Recently, Water Corporation has showed its interest to increase its capacity to serve the people of Perth by starting the Alkimos Wastewater Treatment Plant in the North of Perth in 2011. Most of the recycled water is used for agriculture and supply of public open spaces. There are notable steps that the company has made to enable it to efficiently use water. One of the issues that play a major role in Water Corporation is the issues of Aboriginal people. Water Corporation has for a long time established strong relationship with the Aboriginal community by engaging them in sustainable development. Water Corporation is a responsible company because in all its initiatives it commits itself to environmental preservation thus fulfilling the international environmental agenda. One of the major developments that have enabled Water Corporation to enhance its sustainability status is the ability gained from the recently developed Water Scores which monitors the whole water system. There is no other water company that has been able to use this technology across Australia. This innovative product was developed specifically for Water Corporation of Western Australia. It plays an important role in evaluation, monitoring, and reporting the performance of the water system including all the running projects as well as alliances within the engineering industry. Water Scores Monitoring System was developed by NGIS Studio and it represents one of the most innovative applications in the water industry in Australia. The application borrows from the Australian Business Excellence Framework (NGIS, 2016). It conducts assessment against 150 benchmarks across 6 categories of sustainability, including environmental, economic, and social, governance, stakeholder, and ethical criteria. The role of this application is to offer comparison of the performance of Water Corporation’s engineering industry alliances and other major capital projects across the six categories mentioned earlier. Water Corporation receives reports on the projects and alliances in terms of graphs via dynamic radar graphs. Consequently, the system administrator manages to control all the aspects of the water system enabled by the Water Scores system. Alliances and water contracting has become a major part in the infrastructure delivery strategy of Water Corporation. The two components enable the company to access private industry resources and skills based on a shared rewards and risks. Water is a necessity that people cannot do without, and such a way of doing the business of water has brought in the aspects of sustainability in the business of Water Corporation. Through such an enabler, Water Corporation manages to improve its business outcomes, including adequately satisfying its stakeholders, business partners, stakeholders, and the community within which the company has located its business (Water Corporation, 2011). To achieve best results in water business, it is important to keep on measuring performance and the Water Scores system has enabled the Water Corporation to achieve this goal. Earlier in 2016, the Perth region was almost experiencing water shortages and the Water Corporation had to seek permission from Western Australia’s water regulator to increase its groundwater take. The company was requesting to be allowed to take an additional 10 billion liters of groundwater from the Gnangara aquifer thus increasing the total amount of liters taken from the Gnangara aquifer to 13.5 billion liters. However, the company emphasizes that it has initiatives to pump more water into Perth’s aquifers from its sewage recycling project once it comes to completion in December 2016 (Water Corporation, 2015). The company has made this move to avoid tougher restrictions being imposed on it by the WA’s regulators and also to enable it increase supplies amid one of the worst droughts to hit Perth. Water Corporation’s Cross-Cultural Engagement Considering and including the place of human beings in the environment sustainability is very important and has been emphasized (Bond, Saunders & Howitt, 2010). Sustainable development is one of the key determinants of organization’s success. Sustainable development has become one of the dominant themes and important factors in environmental governance. The Water Corporation of WA has built its relationship with the Aboriginal people based on mutual respect and understanding. The company has shown its dedication and commitment to raising understanding and awareness of Aboriginal culture. To achieve its goal for the Aboriginal community, the Water Corporation has implemented the Aboriginal Employment Strategy and recruitment standard. In 2014, the company received recognition for being a leader in employing Aboriginal people and being selected as one of the companies in the Best Recruitment Strategy category. The Water Corporation reconciles its partnership with the Aboriginal communities by enhancing their employment opportunities, and working with their businesses and communities. Also, the company promotes mutual respect, cultural recognition, and acknowledging the past while moving towards future success. The company has emphasized that the success of its business is dependent on the Aboriginal communities thus making these communities some of the most important stakeholders in Water Corporation’s business. There are other ways in which the company shows its commitment to the Aboriginal communities, including permanently flowing the Aboriginal flag at the Water Corporation’s head office in Leederville (Water Corporation, 2015). In May 2015, the company had 2884 employees among whom 67 were from Aboriginal communities. The Aboriginal communities highly value their connection with their country. As such, the Water Corporation trains and offers job opportunities to people who are always willing to work within their own community. Therefore, this opportunity is very attractive to the Aboriginal people across Australia. In 2015, the Water Corporation launched an education program dubbed “Water in Aboriginal Culture” targeting the rest of the Australian communities with an aim of educating them about the importance of water in the Aboriginal culture. The Aboriginal have continued to hold water as one of the most important commodities in their culture. This program is aimed at engaging the Aboriginal community with other cultures in Australia via water. This program is also aimed at supporting the Australian cross-curriculum priority which is mandatory for all schools in Australia. The Water Corporation emphasizes that it will continue to be committed to the welfare of the Aboriginal people and respect their values especially those related to water. The Water Corporation has surpassed the companies that do not offer opportunities to the Aboriginal people. Many companies have previously declined working with and employing with Aboriginal people (Short & Harris, 2012). Innovations One of the innovations and the most attractive for the Water Corporation of WA has been the Water Scores which has been discussed earlier. The Water Corporation has employed very experienced engineers who play a very important role in innovation. These engineers are also involved in research and development in order to come up with innovative methods that will uplift the company status. The company has given senior engineering positions to people who are highly experienced – the ones who have the capacity of enhancing knowledge and supporting new idea development by offering resources and opportunities. These engineers are the ones who have elevated the company to its current status via their innovativeness. Facilitators/Challenges to Innovation One of the factors posing significant challenges for Water Corporation and the one that is hindering innovativeness in the company is the lack of enough funds. This means that the company has to cut down its spending. This cut-down includes limiting the workforce on research and projects. An increase in funding can enable the company to enhance its innovative initiatives and provide more avenues for the company to brainstorm where new ideas can be developed. In all water projects, developing a continuous sustainable water source is a challenging thing. Water Corporation has been engaging in establishing a sustainable water program for 50 years (Water Corporation, 2009). To achieve this aim, Water Corporation engages in projects such as groundwater injection and forest thinning. These projects require a lot of workforce and lack of funds limits the workforce that the company can use. Maintenance of experienced engineers and workforce requires that the company have enough funds to pay the high salaries that these employees need. Also, development of software such as Water Score requires the company to outsource. The company cannot adequately outsource the state-of-the-art systems without enough funds. Therefore, the government needs to inject more funds to the Water Corporation to enable it achieve most of its goals. Another major challenge that the Water Corporation is facing is the restrictions imposed by water regulators on water suppliers. There is a percentage to which the company is supposed to draw from the available water aquifers. As it has been indicated earlier in the paper, the Perth population has been rapidly increasing and so does the need for water. As a result, the Water Corporation has to continue increasing its capability to supply the population with water. Most of the water companies have been denying students an opportunity to undertake their practical studies in them. The available companies cannot manage to accommodate all the students that require opportunities to undertake their practical studies. The Water Corporation has been offering opportunities to students who wish to undertake their practical studies in the company. However, the Water Corporation cannot be able to accommodate all the students that want to take their studies in the company. This poses a limitation to these students something that they find very challenging to the learning process. Recommendations As it has been emphasized in the previous section, it sometimes proves very difficult for a student to choose the company in which he/she will undertake his/her practical study. Nevertheless, it is important for the students to select the organizations in which to undertake their practical studies. The students have to make sure that their choice companies can work cooperatively with their universities of study. Therefore, students have to expose themselves to all the organizations that they can relate their studies with. As such, they will be able to understand the processes, approaches, and protocols of the company. Conclusions Innovativeness is very important to an organization because it is one of the factors that determine the sustainability of an organization. Over a period of 50 years, the Water Corporation has engaged in innovative projects which have contributed to elevating the company to its current status. Some of its Water Corporation innovative projects include the Water Scores project. The company has also been emphasizing and ensuring that it engages the Aboriginal community with the rest of communities in Australia. As has been emphasized earlier in the paper, the Aboriginal people view water as one of the things that hold an important part in their culture and traditions. Consequently, the Water Corporation has found a community which it can relate with. A combination of innovativeness with cross-cultural engagement has contributed to the success of the company. By recycling and treating water, the company has been able to ensure continuous supply of water across Perth. The company has several water treatment plants across Western Australia and these sources enable it to supply the population in Western Australia. For example, the Mundaring water treatment plant ensures sustainability of water supply to around 100,000 people in Mundaring and Kalgoorlie. The Water Corporation has over the years received numerous awards for its extraordinary service to the people of Western Australia. An increase in funding from the Government can help boost the services the Water Corporation provides to the people of Perth and Western Australia. This funding will help the company engage in research and development and this will help the company innovate new methods and applications to enable it serve the people of Perth and Western Australia. References Bond, J., Morrison-Saunders, A., and Howitt, R. (2010). Sustainability Assessment: Pluralism, Practice, and Progress. New York: Routledge NGIS. (2009). Water Scores Monitoring System, Water Corporation of WA. Retrieved from http://ngis.com.au/water-scores-monitoring-system-water-corporation-of-wa/ Short, T. and Harris, R. (2012). Workforce Development: Strategies and Practices. New York: Springer Science. Water Corporation. (2009). Water Corporation. Retrieved from http://www.watercorporation.com.au/-/media/files/about-us/planning-for-the-future/water-forever-50-year-plan-summary.pdf Water Corporation. (2015). Water Corporation Reconciliation Action Plan (2015-2018). Reconciliation Action Plan. Retrieved from https://www.watercorporation.com.au/-/media/files/about-us/aboriginal-people-and-communities/reconciliation-action-plan-2015-18.pdf Read More