A jointly implemented change program provided this Real Estate company with a new Management Control System with clearer goals, roles and responsibilities.
Background
A company administrating more than 30,000 apartments wanted to improve its service and customer (i.e. tenant) satisfaction but also wished to reduce stress for its 300 employees.
Historically, decisions within the company were taken on an individual basis, which made it difficult to achieve uniform management and control of customer service and benefit. Mantec were asked to conduct a pre-study to determine how this situation could be improved.
The pre-study showed:
- unclear roles and responsibilities: what should be done and how?
- shortages in daily planning and prioritisation: when should things be done?
- shortages in the Management Control System: who should carry out goal deployment and follow-up, and when?
As a result of these weaknesses leadership suffered; it was hard for supervisors to follow-up and take corrective actions. This in turn led to stress amongst collaborators; they didn’t know what was expected from them because they received no feedback. The company and Mantec therefore entered into a joint project aimed at eliminating these deficiencies.
Implementation
The project was divided into three sub-projects: routines, planning, and management control system. Initially these were piloted in one business area before being rolled out to the other areas.
More than 70 routines were developed in teams with collaborators and managers. The routines were widely circulated for comment to users, management and unions.
A common template for a weekly plan in Outlook was developed to improve effectiveness by facilitating planning and prioritisation. This was easily synchronised with mobile phones, which gave the plan excellent visibility throughout the organisation.
A new model for resource planning including workload distribution and surplus resources in case of absence was developed.
Critical success factors and key performance indicators were derived from the overall objectives on customer satisfaction. These were incorporated into the management control system “Kundvisaren” (i.e. client monitor) and embedded within the organisation by conducting workshops.
Results
The main benefits to the client of following through on the change programme jointly developed with Mantec have been:
- goals, roles and responsibilities are clearer throughout the organisation;
- there is a greater awareness that daily work tasks and resources can be planned for, and that preventive work results in better focus and prioritisation. This gives improved visibility which in turn enables improved management of client deliveries;
- follow-up is conducted more frequently, resulting in a better dialogue to solve problems and identify improvement activities; and
- overall, a more structured way of working has led to reduced stress for employees while at the same time increasing customer satisfaction.
