Mission statement and organiational goals of my work placement, Barnsley Premier Leisure

I have always had a passion for sport and one of my career aims is to become a manager in either sport, recreation or leisure. I currently work part-time as a lifeguard a Worksop Leisure Centre which i am also using as my work placement.

 Worksop Leisure Centre is located in a small town of Worksop and is only a small leisure facility with its main aims being to provide its community and people with opportunities to participate in sport, recreation and leisure activities at an affordable price. The centre was knocked down, rebuilt and re-opened to the public in 2008, but its most recent development was in April of 2010, where the rights to run the a leisure business within the premises of WLC were bought by a private leisure company named BPL (Barnsley Premier Leisure) to try and maximise the centres potential. according to BPL's website they are:

“Barnsley Premier Leisure (BPL) is a charitable company limited by guarantee. We are a registered charity, established in 1999 to provide sporting and leisure opportunities for local communities.  As we are a genuine not-for-profit, social enterprise, any surplus we generate is re-invested into the facilities and services we provide”.

http://www.themetrodome.co.uk/infoPage.jsp?categoryName=About%20BPL

In this modern day many businesses choose to use mission statements and organisational goals to set out the meaning of their business in an attractive manner, in a hope to put on show what they  supposedly want to achieve, where as the organisational goals are in charge of telling everyone how the business aims to do this.

 According to Mullins (2007),

A mission statement “sets an organisations purpose, guiding values and principles and the way in which it intends to achieve its objectives, while recognising the interests of other stakeholders”.

 BPL’s mission statement and organisational goals are:

‘Working together to enrich lives through enjoyable sport and leisure choices for all’.

1.    Improving our service.

2.    Encouraging health and well-being.

3.    Engaging with local communities.

4.    Engaging with young people.

5.    Developing our business.

6.    Developing our people.

7.    Managing our environment.

As you can see above, BPL’s mission statement and organisational goals include managing their environment and making an effort to engage with their local communities. These, like a lot of other business all sound very well, but what matters most is whether companies such as BPL are in fact putting these mission statements and organisational goals in to use and proving that not only can they create these wonderful ideas but they can in actual fact, put them into practice to benefit the business, making customers, stakeholders and anyone who is involved with the business believe that they are for real and that the mission statements and organisational goals are not just marketing  waffle (which for many people is what they are understandably misconstrued as).

Perrin and Tavakoli (1977) are also concerned with the way in which items such as mission statements are banded about and believe:

“The picture will remain gloomy while managers and consultants believe that creating a mission statement is synonymous with creating a sense of mission. You only create the latter if your mission statement is understood, believed and acted upon by a majority of organisation members”.

In other words mission statements aren’t of any worth if employees do not take them seriously and relate their actions and efforts within the work place towards achieving what is stated in the mission statement or organisational goals. Without this, mission statements become statements about what the business hopes it might be and not what it is.

So my question to you is, are mission statements and organisational goals excellent aids in motivating and empowering employees whilst showing customers what they really want to achieve, or are they just statements and goals  designed as a marketing ploy, aimed at making the company look good with no actual real drive or belief behind them?

References

Anon, About us (n.d.) [online] Available from http://www.themetrodome.co.uk/infoPage.jsp?categoryName=About%20BPL  [accessed 22^nd October 2011].

Mullins. L. J. (2007), Management and Organisational Behaviour, Pg 535, Pitman Publishing Imprint: Great Britain.

Perrin. L, and Tavakoli, I. ‘Mission Impossible Without Commitment’, Professional Manager, pg 14-15.