Operational Planning - are you up there with the best?

In 2009 this was the area that received the highest score of any of the steps.

This is not surprising as operational planning can be perceived as the engine driving the business towards it strategic goal of exceeding customer expectations.

Hospitality Assured clients all have to be strong in this area but what makes them exceptional? A perusal of the top scorer assessments leads to the following conclusions.

1.  Excellence of communication to employees as to their roles and what is expected of them from the moment of their appointment to their ongoing and daily responsibilities e.g. through daily/weekly meetings as required and use of all available technology to ensure that for example night staff not present for meetings are fully informed. Handover procedures will be meticulous.
    
2. Excellence in administration with details of daily, weekly and monthly events being available for individuals, teams or departments as required. Where changes are being made to these they should available as soon as notified to the operator, which of course ties in with communication, as mentioned above.
    
   
3. All relevant staff are aware of the identity of key partners in the supply process and undertake monitoring and review of their performance against the operator target
    
   
4. Clarity as to how staffing requirements will be dealt with on a day to day basis.   This means having a keen understanding of capacity management i.e. can available staff deal with swift increases to customer numbers. While it is obvious those businesses with multi-skilled staff always have a key advantage when dealing with unforeseen circumstances, it is sometimes ignored.
    
   
5. Involvement of employees in the offer being made to the customer i.e. that they have sampled the product or service on offer as part of their induction and/or training or when for example the offer changes e.g. menus or room specifications.
    
   
6. Involvement of employees in the operational requirements of delivering all business plan targets that are impacted by their area of operation e.g. waste management or energy saving initiatives
   
   
7. Contingency planning is well defined and all relevant staff have the necessary authority to initiate the implementation as appropriate this is of course particularly pertinent for multi site operations.

Of course we expect all Hospitality Assured customers to be aware of and practicing these 7 steps to pain free service delivery instinctively but hopefully an occasional reminder does not go amiss.

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