NU 12 - 1 - by Marta Fretheim - Professionalism by store staff

Dear Professor,

Here is my first NU 12:

NU 12

Professionalism – New work, methods, practice: Efficiency

Why?

As I came to the Philippines one thing stroke me, things take time. There is a lot of staff in all the stores still buying something really takes a lot of time. The efficiency of each staff seems to bee very low. A lot of them are walking around looking at their nails and talking to their colleagues, though the service is good something is not right. As I enter a store there's almost always someone approaching me within a few minutes, asking if I need help, this is good, I feel well taken care off. But then I end up standing somewhere in a line for up to 15 to 30 minutes, either it is waiting for them to find a product or it is standing in line to pay. To me this is a waste of time and there is a potential for improvement.

What?

So I understand things are different here in the Philippines, but I still think efficiency is a really important matter. The resources seem to be there, there is more than enough staff, but a little reorganization could make a huge difference. Also the staff mindsets would have to be somewhat changed. The main focus of the staff should be to keep the customer satisfied, time is money and most people would not want to spend hours in shop to get their daily supplies.

How?

To make the shopping and service more efficient I would suggest conducting reorganization as well as staff training. By reorganization I mean that the staff have more tasks, so they would be able to handle for instance both the cashier and stocking up products. This way you can easily move staff around and where it's more needed.

There would also be necessary with a change of mindset. It has to be clear to the staff what their task is and what is acceptable and not. So when a customer is waiting the staff will do everything to resolve the problem even if it's not in their original department. So that they at all times knows the importance of their different work tasks. At the supermarket this would mean during the busiest hours there's more staff leave their normal tasks to serve the cashiers. 3

By Marta Fretheim