Operational Plan
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Operational Plan
Introduction
The operational plan describes the business in detail. This describes the organization’s objectives, processes, goals and timelines. Having an operational plan assists the investors, management, and employees in analyzing their performance tactics and deadlines. The plan provides an outline of various steps to follow in completing the business’ mission. Thus, the plan should answer who, what, where, when and how questions regarding the organization’s performance. Additionally, having a clear goal and objective leads to the completion of the operational plan, thus impacting performance positively. These objectives must be specific, measurable, realistic, timely and attainable. This discussion describes an organization of choice’s context and its operational plan towards attaining its performance goals and objectives.
Organizational Summary Overview
The Happy Club Travel Agency is a hospitality type of business. It majors in business and commercial travelling, which depicts both business travels and travelling for leisure. It is a well-performing medium-sized business as it is still establishing. It contains up to 68 employees in various departments, thus ensuring the agency’s operations are efficiently executed. The company has an excellent track record of performance. It deals with finding better deals to both business and leisure travellers, depending on their preferences. This influences better lending and investment decisions. Happy Club offers diverse product and services to its clients during the travelling period and arrival at the destinations.
Its primary product includes accommodation. Happy Club often finds the most affordable and comfortable hotels for the clients to reside in during their stay for business or leisure. Clients often provide positive feedback on their accommodation, thus an indication of proper product provision. Secondly, it offers efficient air travel and car hire services to clients. Also, the agency provides foreign exchange services, making it easier for the clients to use their money in different locations. The agency further offers travel insurance to the customers and medical pack in cases of injuries or sudden ill-health. This is strategic in ensuring the clients are contented with their health being catered for. Further, the agency offers packaged tours and beautiful travel bags and wallets for the clients to keep their items safely.
Happy Club organization offers various services to its customers. This includes the airport services whereby the agency ensures the clients are well treated, cleared, and their luggage is safely kept. The agency safeguards the payment plans for the services offered by making it affordable for clients. It also integrates with the airlines and car hire businesses to ensure 24-hour emergency services are available for the clients. This improves the clients’ confidence in their wellbeing being prioritized. The agency delivers documents to clients safely, offers incentive travel services and manages the group and the conferences. Lastly, where necessary, the agency assists with the processing of visas and passports.
Organizational Chart for Happy Place Travel Agency
The organizational chart provides a summary of the various positions and lines for communication and authority. These structures out the company’s policies and responsibilities following the leadership disseminated. The structure is crucial for proper information flow. Happy Club travel agency has adapted a flat organization structure. The flat structure has few or no management levels between management and subordinates. Being a medium-sized organization, the agency has few levels of management to offer necessary supervision.
Besides, this eliminates excessive management layers while elevating the coordination prospect. Thus, less supervision among employees indicates the trust in them to perform their tasks responsibly (Clement, 2019). Happy Place highly involves employees in the decision-making process regarding performance and setting goals. Lastly, the flat structure allows for improved communication speed among the workforce. The figure below highlights the organizational chart for Happy Place Travel Agency:
The agency’s CEO occupies the top position and had the direct authority to the organization. The CEO directly interacts with the middle management, which includes the travel, finance, medical and human resource managers. The managers share information amongst them and with the subordinates. The flat structure allows for flexible information flow, improved problem-solving and participative teamwork. The travel management department controls administration activities regarding travelling policies. It manages the travelling context; locally and internationally.
The human resource deals with controlling the travellers’ profiles, safeguarding their documents and offering customer support. This ensures the relations are efficient and customers are satisfied by services offered. The finance position deals with controlling the expenditure and revenue of the agency. It ensures efficient financial reporting is done, and there are enough cost management tools. The medical department positions deal with providing emergency services and any health-related care to the customers while on travel.
Happy Place Vision, Mission and Values
According to Dumitraşcu and Feleagă (2019), the vision statement defines the potential future of an organization. This analyzes what the organization will become and does not provide precise targets. It is an inspirational statement to attract quality investment and support from key stakeholders. Happy Place agency’s vision statement is “To be a trusted travel agency that respects and fulfils clients’ travel expectations.” A vision statement must be clear and concise.
Further, the mission statement describes the organization’s uniqueness within the industry it operates through defining its business and goals. It is more specific than the vision, thus depicting how the stakeholders’ needs will be gratified (Dumitraşcu & Feleagă, 2019). Happy Place’s mission is “To provide our clientele with improved travel experiences while addressing their travel needs and preferences to attain customer satisfaction.”
The value statement defines how the members of the company are to behave. Thus, it provides a decision-making guideline (Dumitraşcu & Feleagă, 2019). Happy Place has five major values it uses, and they include; purposeful, integrity, collaborative, futuristic, and passionate. Being purposeful allows for Happy Place to embrace change and foster creativity in its operations. Collaborative approach depicts the organization working as a team, thus fostering positive energy. Integrity value allows the agency to do right, be open and foster transparency with customers. Lastly, being futuristic and passionate enable the agency to give their best towards being the best agency in future.
Basic Planning Process
Organizational planning provides a roadmap for the company towards being productive and staying competitive. The planning process entails five major phases which form the performance cycle. The first phase includes the development of a strategic plan which allows for expansion of awareness on the current agency state. This entails setting up the big picture goals that are aligned with the mission, vision, and values (Behmer & Jochem, 2019). Secondly, it includes translating the strategic plan into a tactical plan. This entails setting up measurable and time-sensitive goals for every team, thus elevating performance potentials. Further, it helps in establishing outcome statements for the organization.
The third step includes creating an operational plan which entails analyzing the daily performance process and establishing a working outline for employees to use. This further describes the premising component useful in determining how the organization will build its action statement (Bryson, 2018). Fourthly, it is the execution of the plans developed by putting operational plans into action. It determines the course of action to utilize in moving the organization to the desired position. This incorporates previous phases into implementing the performance plans regarding the travelling factor. Lastly, it is the monitoring and assessing the plan and its progress. This determines if tactical plans are meeting set goals and the necessary adjustments to be made (Neis, Pereira & Maccari, 2017).
Influence of Management Levels on Planning Process
The top-level management, which includes the Happy Place CEO, will influence the planning process by laying the various policies and objectives. This will be considered during the planning process. The CEO will be accountable for strategic planning and aligning different business individuals, including managers, into executing them. Also, the CEO will implement a proper communication system within and outside the organization (Schaefer & Guenther, 2016).
The middle-level management will be responsible for influencing planning process execution. They will be accountable to the CEO on planning process performance. The level will influence the process by implementing the plan following the agency’s policies and directives. Lastly, it will organize the subordinates into various plan activities execution. The low-level management will influence the planning process through overseeing and directing the plan’s performance. They will help in solving potential challenges arising from plan execution.
Quality, Productivity, and Profitability Elements in the Planning Process
Quality helps in defining the flawlessness of the process and measures the product’s potential excellence. This represents what the travel agency’s main goals and objectives are. Such is based on the services the clients will receive and the level of revenue the organization will attain following the travels. The productivity element is crucial in defining the planning process’ potential output and determining the input required for its productivity. It influences management to regulate the necessary resources to produce the expected process’ outcomes. The profitability element illustrates the agency’s performance quality and achievement of planning process’ goals. This will analyze if the agency will attain benefits following its services and hence future performance stability.
Relationship between HR Planning Activities and Overall Organizational Strategy
Human Relation planning focuses on identifying the organization’s competency needs. This is so to fulfil its potential goals and attain the right people to help execute various organizational activities. Regarding the overall corporate strategy, HR planning will assist the company in achieving its performance goals. The main goal includes productivity and increased profitability. Thus, various HR planning activities will motivate the workforce in achieving organizational strategies. It assists in defining competencies needed for the organizational goals achievement, task delegation, and assessment of overall performance.
Further, HR planning provides a linkage between HRM and overall organizational strategy. This relates to the development of already existing talent competencies in the organization or hiring new individuals with the required competencies. Thus, the planning activities and organization strategies allow for continued evaluation and improvement of diverse needs for both existing and new human resources. The HR planning activities related to overall organizational strategy are through systematic forecasting and determining the organization’s future. This includes management and employees’ efficient inclusion in performance and fulfilment of their needs, thus improving performance.
Philosophy of Management
Organizational management defines the provision of direction in the performance of its various activities. The philosophy of management examines the aspect of leadership to assist in productivity. Thus, it is a moral compass that provides direction and inspiration of team members. Higher levels of consistency in applying the philosophical factors lead to a potential improvement in building a team (Tsang, 2016). This will motivate employees to thrive and perform their tasks beyond management’s expectations. Philosophy of management illustrates how managers view and communicate with their subordinates. It affects their behavioural factors through motivation.
Douglas MacGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y is a crucial illustration of diverse employees in an organization. This impacts organizational management in determining motivating factors in various types of employees (Miswanto, 2020). It enables managers to analyze their employees, thus creating self-awareness on how to deal with them. An organization’s performance is often based on how leaders treat their subordinates. Therefore, understanding who the employees are, their thinking process, and reactions will enable management to treat them positively (Blok, 2019). Philosophy of management allows the administration to feel confident of their leading style, make better decisions, and offer employees more clarified expectations.
How Organizational Structure Fosters a Positive Work Environment
An efficient organizational structure provides three significant functional contexts that foster a positive working environment. These entail governance, programs, and administration. Governance aspect describes the leading factor that is crucial in motivating employees to be productive. This examines having an excellent and clear communication system and practices. Therefore, to improve the agency’s working environment, management must provide clarity of information with their subordinates (Gonzalez, 2020). Also, the establishment of an open-door policy will foster trust and provision of feedback regarding the travel experiences and what needs improvement. It also entails listening and being open to ideas for better travel service provision.
Programs factor describes the provision of initiatives that impact the agency’s employees’ productivity. Such includes implementing appreciation programs like public recognition, training and development, and incentives. It also includes avoidance of public criticism and spreading happiness through effective coaching. Thus, these programs offer employees the motivation to doing better, especially in a collaborative manner. It also indicates that management is paying attention to work well done (Warrick, 2017). Lastly, the administration factor provides a positive working environment through the provision of work requirements. It also includes implementation of the celebration of wins and special occasions, thus marking the importance of subordinates.
Types and Steps of Control
The control process of an organization describes essential steps implemented to ensure every business activity attains its goals. The significant steps of control begin with the establishment of goals and standards. This provides a direct course of action towards the achievement of business goals. Clarity of plans leads to an improved investment of focus by the employees. Secondly, it includes the measurement of actual organizational performance against standards and goals provided. This defines the analysis of performance through comparison of potential and actual performance, thus leading to better productivity plan’s monitoring and evaluation. Thirdly, it includes the taking corrective action helps prevent potential losses, and such includes effective policies. Lastly, it includes doing a follow-up on the disciplinary actions taken for any adjustments before concluding.
Various types of control include feed-forward, preventive/concurrent, and feedback controls. Feed-forward control focuses on the future performance directives of an organization. It helps in detecting and anticipating any problem before their occurrence hence allowing for corrective actions actively and aggressively. It can either be a therapeutic or diagnostic form of control. The preventive/concurrent form of control includes acting on the process while in progress and not after its completion. This allows for corrections and adjustments to be made immediately a need arises. The feedback type of control is futuristic and allows corrections to be made after the act has occurred. It focuses on the results of a process.
Conclusion
An operational plan is an essential tool for an organization. It provides efficient steps for the company to follow in its performance facets. The plan includes the description of the organization, and majorly focuses on the products and services the company offers. The main aim is to attain customer satisfaction, profitability, and performance stability. Besides, the organizational chart provides a preview of various positions in the company and the responsibilities attached to them. For an organization to be productive, it must understand its vision, mission and values as they offer a direction in which the company is headed. Further, the planning process, organizational structure and control process ensures the organization efficiently performs hence attaining more profitability.
References
Behmer, F. J., & Jochem, R. (2019). Organizational planning for quality management in the digital age. Business Process Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-12-2018-0365
Blok, V. (2019). What Is (Business) Management? Laying the Ground for a Philosophy of Management. Philosophy of Management, 1-17.
Bryson, J. M. (2018). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement. John Wiley & Sons.
Clement, F. H. (2019). Tall or Flat? Examining The Relationship Between Organizational Structure and Turnover Intention (Doctoral dissertation, Azusa Pacific University).
DUMITRAŞCU, M., & FELEAGĂ, L. (2019). Mission, Vision, and Values of Organizations, the Catalysts of Corporate Social Responsibility. Audit financial, 17(153).
Gonzalez, D. (2020). Leadership in the Public Sector: The Role of Employee Motivation and Worker Productivity.
Miswanto, M. (2020). The Development of Management Theory in Business Organizations, an Overview of the Science Philosophy Perspective. Inovbiz: Jurnal Inovasi Bisnis, 8(1), 77-85.
Neis, D. F., Pereira, M. F., & Maccari, E. A. (2017). The strategic planning process and organizational structure: Impacts, confluence and similarities. BBR. Brazilian Business Review, 14(5), 479-492. https://doi.org/10.15728/bbr.2017.14.5.2
Schaefer, T., & Guenther, T. (2016). Exploring strategic planning outcomes: the influential role of top versus middle management participation. Journal of Management Control, 27(2-3), 205-249.
Tsang, E. W. (2016). The philosophy of management research. Taylor & Francis.
Warrick, D. D. (2017). What leaders need to know about organizational culture. Business Horizons, 60(3), 395-404.