Read the following case studies and address each question and/or task for each case study.
The partners who own Green Tour Excursions where you work as Duty Manager have decided to reappraise the operations of the Fraser Island Tours which operates 5 vehicles and drivers who also take on the role as tour guides. The partners say there are too many potential legal issues and complaints from customers and as a result the bottom line of the business is suffering. They say the average turnover has decreased by 15 % and custom likely will be lost to other operators although comparative tours have the same cost for this day tour.
The itinerary which was in place for the current 1 day island wilderness trip included:
- CentralStation including Wanggoolba Creek boardwalk
- LakeMcKenzie – a swim in crystal clear waters and pristine white
- Seventy-FiveMile Beach
- EliCreek – swim or float in the clear waters
- Maheno Shipwreck - take a photo stop at the rusting wreck of the Maheno washed ashore during an out-of-season cyclone in 1935
- ThePinnacles Coloured Sands – learn of the Butchulla legends surrounding
2. Show what consultative process was used to allow for procedures and systems (including rosters new or amended service provisions) to be adjusted. Show that in this area, quality assurances can be given so that customers will not be affected and indicate the time frame involved in your changes
3. List the measures taken to ensure functional clean vehicles, and prevention of hygiene issues
4. In your new plan, you must show the delegation process that will be involved. Will you need new job specifications to be written? If so, how many?
6. Describe how day-to-day operations will not be negatively affected with your proposed changes
(The document HR manual template may be referenced for this case study)
1. What appears to be the nature of complaint here?
2. Which procedure should be followed to receive a complaint like the one from Elena?
3. Write a standard operating procedure that can be used to investigate a complaint, including actions for e.g. EEO and sexual harassment matters.
4. Which legal responsibilities do have in your capacity as a manger in this instance?
During the 4 week period the hotel had 12 complaints related to delays in meal service, 16 complaints relating to poor or average quality of meals. A brief conversation with sous-chef and head chef have indicated that the access to and lack of capacity of some equipment are some of the main issues they are facing.
In front of-house (F&B) the same staff has been rostered on the periodic schedule as usual, and staff does not think there are any issues.
1. Provide a systematic approach for areas you will investigate
The food and beverages are in line with using local produce and following trends, however you have noticed that due to the large number of part-time employment of students and, it seems, lack of direction from the departmental supervisors, products and services are always different. Not that there have been any substantial complaints, however beverages are presented differently at different times, food presentation varies and it looks portion sizes are not uniform, and the rooms are made up and arranged differently depending who is in charge and on duty, accordingly.
1. Provide suggestions for a system that can be effectively developed and implemented for each department and explain in detail what this entails for each department. Your approach must include delegation at the appropriate levels.
2. What are the implications for all existing staff as a result and how will you provide for overcoming these?
Quality of services is the key to the maintenance of the current clients and attraction of other clients. More often, the customers remember not only the beautiful sceneries they saw but also how they were treated during the tour. This, therefore, means that Green Tour Excursion must provide high-quality services at all the time. The issues raised by the tour partner are of utmost importance and thus must investigate and solved immediately. Addressing the issues starts by going to the root of each issue and suggesting how to solve the problem best. This report provides a feasible solution to the problems experienced by clients during the tour.
Vehicle breakdown due to low fuel falls is the worst experience ever for people on tour. Solving this commence by, monitoring the work hours of the tour guide followed by drivers operation assessment. Foremost, the work hours can be followed by making it mandatory for the drivers and tour guides to check-in and out at the office every time they report or whenever they leave work in the evening. This will ensure that only people on duty report and no one covers up for another. The drivers would be required to report on every health break they take and miles made before the breaks. This helps to identify the efficiency of every driver on tour. Each four wheel vehicle will be provided with driver and co-driver to ensure that not one driver is overworked. From this, issues such exhaustion that would make the drivers forget to refuel would be highly omitted. Every staff would be provided with their co-helper just in case of any emergency. The problem associated with this new adjustment would be cost implication on the tour company. This decision would implement after agreement from all the partners (Slack, 2015). The products used to offer services to the customers would be procured from certified companies in advance and large quantities that would attract a discount. This would ensure adherence to the quality assurance requirements. Hygiene issues are solved by taking the vehicles for washing every evening after they leave the tour. This is done at the garage to ensure the vehicles are served and refuelled such that there will not be any issues with air condition again. The new plan involves reminding all the staff of their job specification and informing them of the new provision of the customer feedback forms that would be used to evaluate them. Before this, they would all be taken training to ensure they are fully equipped to carry out their duties. The budget for this training would be an estimate of $10 for each staff in a day. In 5 days this would translate to $ 50.
This appears to be a sexual harassment case. This procedure for this complaint begins by informing the offender that his behaviour is offensive. If the behaviour persists, then Elena is at liberty to tell her supervisor. If the director does not take any action, the Elena can contact any other senior manager in the organization. The management approached must solve the case failure of which the case would be taken to a court of law for justice. The decision would be made based on the codes of ethics that govern the staff behaviour in an organization.
Standard operating procedure for investigating the complaint.
- Take no assumptions of guilt
- Advise the possible results of the investigation being done
- Perform separate interviews for the parties concerned.
- Conduct separate interview of all the witnesses
- Document the interviews and the investigation
- Interview the alleged harasser in seclusion and inform them of their charges while listening and recording details.
- Minimum disclosure of information is ensured.
- Decide on the appropriate action based on the collected pieces of evidence.
Action taken must meet the needs of the business. Moreover, it must be ethically informed.
As a manager, the legal responsibility of investigating the complaint is mandated upon me. Moreover, I have a legal duty to determine who is guilty and who is not. For this reason, I act as the jury of the case presented (Marchington et al., 2016).
The department that would be investigated in this case includes the cooking department where the issues to be examined would be the kind of ingredients used, equipment available and how long it takes for a meal to be ready. An inventory check of all the items used in the kitchen would be done to assess their availability to every staff in the department. This would then be followed by the service department. During the investigation, an inventory of all the available items available for use by this department would be done. The size of the equipment and their working conditions would also be assessed. In the beverage service area, I would conduct an investigation on the type of the drinks used, time spent to prepare each beverage and also consumers’ expectations. This process would be done by the management of each department, the sous chef and a few staff selected from each department. This would ensure that the solution arrived at is all-inclusive.
Each department should provide a thorough orientation program for each new entrant. The orientation program should be such that each department has the longest-serving staff mandated to perform the duty. This would mean that all employees in each department have been trained to do the same work. Therefore, same quality would be realized in each department. On the other hand, quality assessment forms should be provided to get to analyse everyone performance. This would ensure that every staff works to meet the standards set to qualify for staff appraisal which would sometimes result in a promotion to new positions. Moreover, to achieve quality, the well-trained staff should be responsible for the recipe of each food prepared. The students should undergo training and mandated to be serving. The existing staff would therefore not be relieved so much since they would be training the new employees most of the time (Zurich, 2017).
Zurich, L.B., 2017. Service Operations and Management.
Slack, N., 2015. Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Marchington, M., Wilkinson, A., Donnelly, R. and Kynighou, A., 2016. Human resource management at work. Kogan Page Publishers.
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