Part A - Help desk

You have just been appointed as the new Facilities Manager at High Definition Advertising Agency.  High Definition Advertising Agency does the advertising and marketing for a number of high profile clients that include banks and car manufacturers. High Definition Agency has a  Head Office in Johannesburg.  HDAA employs about 400 staff. Staff are young and demanding. There is a high staff turnover.

One of the first things you realise is that there is no Central Service Point for the organisation. You are amazed that the FM department knows about breakdowns, repairs etc and you don't know how the service providers know what work to do.  You advise the Managing Director that  a CSP must be established immediately. She doesn't seem to be too fazed about having a CSP or not and says that you must prepare a proposal for the Executive Committee to consider at their next meeting. Because she is the MD she always gets what she wants and doesn't really understand that ordinary staff struggle to get basic services from the FM department.

Part B - Communication

As the new Facilities Manager at High Definition Agency you also decide to interview a number of your new colleagues to see what their perception is of the Facilities Management department.  Although High Definition Agency has only been in this building  for 5 years the Head Office seems rundown and "tired". To your dismay your interviews go badly. Staff are very negative about your department and they say that their complaints in the past seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Some staff say they are discriminated against because only friends of the facilities management staff ever get what they ask for.  One person even tells you a gory story about a road rage incident in the parking lot over allocation of parking bays.

The Financial Manager says that the Facilities Management department is over budget and does not seem to know what they are responsible for. He says that cost recovery from user departments is never adhered to and he says although he's asked no-one seems to know what anything costs.

You realise that you very quickly need to put in a model for service delivery that you can explain to your staff and your customers (the employees) in the company.

Because you have to present the CSP to the Executive Committee you decide to present the new way that the FM department is going to run to them at the same time.

To make sure that everyone understands the process you also decide to draw a flowchart so that there is absolutely no confusion. You also need to make sure that your staff understand what customer service is and that bad service, discrimination and non-adherence to the rules won't be tolerated.

Because your staff seem to be incompetent you identify all the potential bottlenecks in the system and suggest possible solutions.

You also put a plan together for how you are going to communicate the service offerings and the new way of doing things to your staff, the employees and the Executive Committee.

Put together the documentation that you are going to require for training and communication to your facilities management department , the communication strategy for the general employees of the company and what you will be presenting to the Executive Committee.

Your proposal must include:

• motivation why you want to establish a CSP
• what services are to be provided by the CSP
• will you run the CSP yourself or will you outsource it and why ?
• what are the technology requirements including software etc
• how will you staff the CSP - number of staff, skills and characteristics
• how will you ensure that customer service is maintained and continually improved?
• how will you manage the performance of your staff?
• provide a diagram of how the CSP process, logging calls etc will look
• implementation plan for establishing the CSP and time lines
• what is your communication strategy

1. How will you tell people about the CSP and get them to use it?

2. How will you will you find out what you customers want from you?

3. How will you get buy in from your customers and the FM department staff on the new way of doing things?

Your documentation must not exceed 9 pages. (Arial 12 point size, single spacing)