6th Feb 2014 – LPM – Module 2: Support Team Mr Jamali
Second lesson Support team. Today topic covered on
organizational structured – purpose, goal and objectives. It gives me a better
understanding of how a company structured, the characteristic of the
organisaton , it defines and limits the behaviours of members.
There is one interesting topic or should I say a point about
“Conflict Tolerance”. It describes how well an organization deals with
arguments and clashes; are staffs encouraged to air grievances and difference
openly. Today topic also touches the SMART Plan (Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Realistic and Time-based) I remembered my experienced working with an enterprise in tourism
industry.
As an experienced staff in the front office and has a handful of
foreign talent working closely with us – one thing that was a big headache to us
was the conflict among the staff at the front counter –“Lateness”. We are the
main ferry operator to an island thus we could not make the effort to delay our
ferry or worst still to call the Master to hold the ferry, as a minute delay
caused monies. I was given the task to rectify and solve this problem of staff
coming late to work thus contribute to lesser check-in counter for passenger
and this will then lead to delay in immigration clearance and soon affect
the ferry departure time and arrival in the island itself.
I was referred by my
superior to be in the Focus Group for this project. It took weeks of
brainstormed and days of self-observation and monitoring. When we finally, came
up with a solution - We done up two big frame slightly bigger than size of A4 paper, one which we
named it “Star of the Month – I am Officially Famous” and we hang it at our counter floor and one to “Wall of
Shame” we placed in our pantry area – it not our intentioned to shame any of the staff but we had to be
harsh as at that point of time as this issue was among the crucial one.
Our emphasized was more to boost the morale of the staff
then to shame anyone, the frames recognized and appreciates the effort made by
staff who was always progressing and showed their effort at work. A small token
of appreciations was given to the ‘Star of the month’ for their good progress
and to top it all appointed as Ambassador in the ferry for the following month.
Initially, I was the sudden enemy of my colleagues and a
lot of rumours was heard about resigning, biased and definitely unhappiness BUT
the management loved it. It was put on trial for a period of times till the
management decided to let the idea stay. From then on the ferry departure had
improve significantly or no complain from the ferry Master being called to hold
the ferry except for unforeseen circumstances of the tourist or guest
themselves with the customs. This had also lead to profitability to the organization and I had
also seen the increase of customer satisfaction in view of many positive
feedbacks and staffs showed more initiative to exceed customer needs and wants.
The ‘S.M.A.R.T’ plan that our focus group implemented was
indeed a successful one. I was told the frames are still in practice even
though majority of us in the focus group was no longer with the company. I too learned a very useful lesson during class in LPM that is by understanding the issue and taking positive action, I can help solve the problem and I can transform the office a place where I really want to be
