People issue: Managing service employees The importance of service personnel: Service personnel are an important source of product

differentiation. It is often challenging for service organization to differentiate itself from other similar organizations in the benefit bundle it offers and its delivery system. Despite the strategic importance of personnel, it often seems that personnel, customers, and the service firm itself are in pursuit of different goals representing the classic confrontation between marketing, Human resource, and operations. Inevitably, clashes occur that have profound long term effects on how customers view the organization and how the service providers view customers in subsequent transactions. Service personnel as boundary spanners The various parts played by contact personnel who perform dual functions of interacting with the firms external environment and internal organization. Boundary spanning personnel have two main functions; Information Transfer Representation Boundary personnel of Apollo Hospital are the doctors, nurses, staffs, receptionists and guards. They collect information from the external environment and feed it back into the Hospital and they communicate with the environment on behalf of the hospital. They are also the hospitals personal representative. Range of Boundary Spanning Personnel Subordinate service roles: The parts played by personnel who work in firms where customers purchase decisions are entirely discretionary. Apollo Hospital has such personnel like guards, drivers, receptionist etc. Professional service roles: The parts played by personnel who have a status independent of their place in an organization due to their professional qualifications. Apollo hospital also has such professional like administrative officers, doctors, lab technicians etc.

Sources of conflict in boundary spanning roles Person / role conflicts: A bad fit between an individuals self perception and the specific role a person must play in an organization. Apollo Hospital faces role conflicts raced by physicians, nurses and administrators, physicians, for example function as agents for the individual patient, their own specialists, their profession, their staff, their institution and their community as well as in the role of individual practitioners,. The physicians obligations to these individuals and group and their obligations to themselves are periodically in conflict (defined as inter-role conflict). The nurse is frequently caught between multiple lines of authority. The administrator often functions in a boundary role, between nurse and physicians, two physicians, patients and the employee and soon.

Survey findings: From the survey we have found that 60% employees job fitness level is good and 40% is moderate.

Organization / client conflicts: Disagreement that arises when a customer requests service that violate the rules of the organization. Apollo Hospital has not been immune from conflict with consumers. Patients have very little view in hospital matters, so it is seemed that they desire one that go beyond organizations rule. We suspect that is largely due to their faith in the professionals ability in decided what is best for them. Consumers activities apparently do not see current activities of hospital governing boards as an effective voice for the client. A lack of clearly defined community service goals is an underlying factor inclient-hospital conflict. The hospital financial statement,

for example, is one of the few easily understood measurements available to trustees and administrators and it usually stresses institutional as opposed to patient goals. Conflict or competition between hospitals is evident from the major problems, such as comprehensive health planning, designed to reduce it. However, three appears to be little comprisal research into the seriousness, underlying sources, or measurable effects of such conflict. It can be assumed that the displacement of community service goads by institutional goals would have important consequences, since what is best for a particular hospital is not always best for the community it serves. Survey Findings:

From the survey we found that 80% patients expect services that dont fall within hospitals rule and 20% expect according to hospitals rule. Interclient conflicts: Disagreement between clients that arise because of the number of clients who influence one anothers experience.

Survey Findings:

We found that 60% patients influence one anothers regarding service experience and 40 % patients dont influence.

The Importance of HR for service firms 1. Equal Opportunity Employer: Apollo Hospitals Dhaka is an equal opportunity employer for recruiting and selecting quality employees. 2. Training & Development: Apollo Hospitals Dhaka provides adequate training and development facilities to employees to effectively perform current and future jobs (i.e. CME, CNE, MDP, Fire & Safety Awareness, Infection Control, and Customer Service Excellence). 3. Compensation & Benefit: Apollo Hospitals Dhaka ensures competitive salary & benefit packages for the employees. 4. Motivational Programs: Apollo Hospitals Dhaka always tries to maintain a congenial working environment where employees will feel better and contribute more to the success of the organization. It arranges various motivational programs (e.g. Day Out, Movie Night, Talent Show, New Year Celebration, Cultural Evening) to maintain congenial environment.

5. Information Sharing: The authority of Apollo Hospitals Dhaka communicates with employees about what is happening in the organization, including company goals and expectations as well as what is going to happen in the firm. These efforts assist employees to perform better in their roles. 6. Objective Based Performance Management System: Regular and rigorous measurement of how well employees can perform and the use of that information to ensure that job performance meets standards and leads to improve performance over time. 7. Internship Program: Apollo Hospitals Dhaka provides Internship opportunity to the graduates (Medical and Non-Medical) of local and international arena. 8. Employee Relations: Apollo Hospitals Dhaka ensures environment where employers and employees can have successful relationship with each other. It also ensures proper condition of employee health-safety and environment.

Empowerment and Enfranchisement Empowerment: Giving discretion to front line personnel to meet the needs of consumers creatively. Apollo Hospitals Dhaka aims to keep all its patients fully satisfied, even during odd hours, because its patients and their attendants are the most important assets of the hospital. To ensure that all the operational activities of the hospital are running smoothly in the odd hours of night and on holidays, it has dedicated Duty Manager who ensures that both patients and doctors receive the proper support and coordination. The Duty Manager performs a variety of work which keeps the hospital running smoothly, ensuring right and timely patient service. The major activities are listed below:

Enquiring about all the security staff, as well as other hospital staff, to make sure that all the stations are ready to serve patients and to provide support to the doctors on duty.

Addressing all major hand-over issues received from the day time in-charge which may need to be resolved at night.

Performing regular and spot-check of all service care units with a fantastic team comprised of Duty Manager, Nursing Supervisor, Housekeeping Supervisor, and Security Supervisor. Maintenance of high service standards are ensured by this team through their routine visits together to every ward and floor.

Enquiring about the need of any patient and trying to solve them. Any patient or visitor complaints are proactively dealt with. Recording all the incidences that require attention of the management and subsequent support. Dealing with urgent calls and situations from the emergency, intensive care unit (ICU) or wards by providing necessary support for both the internal and external customers.

From the graph we can see that 33% employees have high decision making authority in the workplace. On the other hand, 50% have moderate and 17% have low decision making authority. Enfranchisement: Empowerment coupled with a performance based on compensation method.

Levels of Empowerment Suggestion involvement: Low - level empowerment that allows employees to recommend suggestions for improvement of the firms operations. Now-a-days the

health care environment is becoming increasingly competitive and the concern about ways to increase employee participation is growing. Hospitals have been forced to seek additional and alternative sources of revenue because of escalating health care costs. So Apollo Hospital is turning to employee suggestion programs as a key part of their management approach. True participation in employee suggestion programs requires an environment that recognizes the expertise of the participants and allows open interaction among people. In today's tightly constrained environment of health care, such participation is essential in order to engage qualified persons in activities that allow involvement and commitment. "Employee involvement programs are among the best ways to attain total quality and aim for continuous improvement.

Sugges tion involvem ent

Do not involved 10%

Yes no

Involved 90%

From the graph we can see that 90% employees are involved in suggestion involvement and 2% do not. Quality circles: Empowerment involving small groups of employees from various departments in the firm who use brainstorming sessions to generate additional improvement suggestions. Apollo Hospitals pharmacy department's experience with a quality circle program is described. The quality circle is a type of participative management where a group of employees within a department voluntarily meets on a regular basis to identify and research departmental problems and formulate alternative solutions for management. The pharmacy department formed one of the first five circles at the hospital. Each circle meets for one hour weekly on hospital time. The pharmacy quality circle includes three staff pharmacists, two support staff, and a pharmacy

supervisor who serves as the leader. Through brainstorming sessions, the circle has identified problems within the department. The circle collects data to help define the problems, and specific solutions are presented to management. Among the solutions recommended have been: assigning a clerk as a receptionist at the pharmacy front window so that the pharmacist would not be interrupted; widening the front window to accommodate separate lines for inpatient and outpatient prescriptions; and instituting a double-ticket procedure to help retrieve employee prescriptions. Management accepted and instituted all of the circle's proposals. The quality circle has been a successful management tool in this pharmacy department.

Attendance in brainstorming session

Attendance 45% Non-attendance, 55%

yes no

The number of employees attend in brainstorming session is 45%. On the other hand, 55% employees do not attend in the session. Job Involvement: Allows employees to examine the content of their own jobs and to define their role within the organization. Employees of Apollo Hospital believe in being forearmed to deal with their service problems and knowing what's important to improve the organization, they are a part of hospitals community.

Discuss problems openly with your peers around the world without getting into company specifics. Access to years of such problem discussion data and business material is at your finger tips. All resources created by our members are available to everyone at no cost.

High Involvement: Allows employees to eventually learn to manage themselves, utilizing extensive training and employee control of the reward allocation decisions. High-involvement work processes are at the heart of the current interest in highperformance work systems. However, in situations where pressures to work longer hours are higher, where employees feel overloaded and where managers place stronger demands on personal time, employees are likely to experience greater dissatisfaction with their jobs, higher stress and fatigue, and greater worklife imbalance. Increasing the availability of worklife balance policies for employees was not found to ameliorate these relationships. The study implies that organizations that can foster smarter working without undue pressures to work harder are likely to enhance employee well-being.

The Service-Profit Chain (Diagram)

People issue: Managing service consumers

Managing consumer waits: Principle 1: Unoccupied waits feel longer than occupied waits: As we know that Unoccupied waits feel longer than the occupied waits, Apollo Hospital Gives special concentration in this area. In their waiting room they supply all the materials like daily newspapers, Famous Magazines, Television etc that make the consumers feel more comfortable. In this way Apollo successfully manages consumer waits by occupying their valuable time. Principle 2: Preprocess waits feel longer than in-process waits Post process waits feel longest of all : In Apollo Hospital, there are more than 500 qualified doctors who are always trying to make the work faster to reduce the consumers waiting time. They also have enough

service staffs who convey the messages to the consumers that their service procedure has started. Regarding the post process waiting, Apollo dont have any issue that can make the consumer feel awful. They give the bill right after the treatment has completed and consumers have different options for paying the bill which makes the post process waiting more easier. Principle 3: Anxiety makes the wait seem longer: Hospital is a place where people fell the anxiety for their own health or for their beloved people. Although its not possible to remove the anxiety completely of a waiting consumer, Apollo gave a little try. They have monitors in front of the operation theater so that the patients relatives can see the whole process and ensure themselves which can reduce the consumers Anxiety and make the wait seem shorter. Principle 4: Uncertain waits are longer than known, finite Waits: The most profound source of anxiety in waiting is how long the wait will be. For example, if a patient in a waiting room is told that the doctor will be delayed thirty minutes, he experiences an initial annoyance but then relaxes into an acceptance of the inevitability of the wait. However, if the patient is told the doctor will be free soon which is uncertain, he spends the whole time in a state of nervous anticipation. Apollo knows that uncertain waits never gives people a happy feeling and for that reason they always try to give proper and correct finite information to the consumers. Principle 6: Unfair waits are longer than equitable waits: In many waiting situations, there is no visible order to the waiting line. In situations such as waiting for Apollo hospital the level of anxiety demonstrated is high, and the group waiting is less a queue than a mob. Instead of being able to relax, each individual remains in a state of nervousness about whether their priority in the line is being . Principle 7: The more valuable the service, the longer the consumer will wait:

Principle 8:Solo Waits are longer than Group waits-

Managing uncooperative customers Egocentric edgar- The types of customer who places his or her needs above all other customers and service personnel. Bad-mouth Betty- The types of customer who becomes loud ,crude, and abusive to service personnel and other customer alike. Hysterical Harold- The type of customer who reverts to screaming and tantruns to make his or her point. Dictatorial Dick The types of customers who assumes superiority over all personnel and management. Freeloading Freda- The types of customers who uses tricksor verbal abuse to acquire service without paying. Hellish Thoughts-When dealing with customer from hell it is difficult for employees not to talk these sorts of confrontations personally.

CRM management- A smart software for Apollo hospitals and health care organizations which is designed to integrate the different information systems existing in these organizations into one single efficient system. This solution solves the problems inherent in a network of multiple programs and can integrate almost any type of services, systems, departments, clinic, processes, data, communication, etc. that exist in a hospital. Its design can even handle non-medical services or functions like security, maintenance, etc. It is modular and highly scalable. It is a web-based software and all its functions can be accessed with a common web browser. Thus, there is no need for special user interface software. All program modules are processed on the server side. Module updates and extensions do not require changes on the browsers thus there are no network interruptions and downtimes. Its design supports multiple server configurations to distribute traffic and improve speed and efficiency.
Benefits:

Management can easily track any equipment Counting the number of available resources Checking out the warranty and date expiration of specific items Get the notion of required number of accessories in next business march Global access from anywhere

Features:

Patient, Doctors and Nurse Management System Pathology Management System Pharmacy Management System

Ambulatory & Blood Bank Laundry and Dietary Both Online and Offline Automated Data Backup

Coding- Apollo has Advanced Hospital Medical Coding Online Program and CCS
Test Preparation Training Program will prepare you to take the American Health Information Management Association's (AHIMA) official certification exam to become a Certified Coding Specialist (CCS). This program covers advanced ICD-9 medical coding procedures and will help you meet the challenge of today's changing standards while learning and improving your coding skills. This online certificate program is offered in partnership with major colleges, universities, and other accredited education providers.

Routing Apollo has Automated Clearing House electronic payments system. The Apollo ACH system was designed as an affordable alternative to paper based payments like checks. Each Routing number in the system defines an end address as to where the funds will be delivered. Banks can and do apply for one or many routing numbers to facilitate their needs. They might use one routing number for internal transfer of funds between branches and another to deliver funds to their processor(s). Still other routing numbers might be used for their customers/clients. If you are unsure as to which routing number to use please use the phone number provided to call your banking institution to make sure you're using the correct one. Targeting- Apollo hospital facilities maintenance and engineering can be a risky line of work. Managers, supervisors, and front-line technicians are well-aware of the on-thejob hazards that await technicians each day as they perform their duties on electrical systems and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment, as well as in confined spaces and on rooftops. But workers in health care facilities face an added layer of danger to their safety. They risk infection while working in areas with sick patients, and they risk physical injury

while handling, transporting and disposing of the many chemicals that move through hospitals, nursing homes and medical offices. And those are just two examples of the many risks workers face. Now, as scrutiny grows on the impact facilities have on the environment as well as on occupants a change is taking place. Industry groups and health care executives, along with maintenance and engineering managers, are revisiting the way front-line workers carry out their daily activities in an effort to lower the risks and make workers healthier and safer. We put people in the position of fixing these problems, so we have to take care to protect them properly, Apollo hospital management says . Apollo hospital mentioned, One important way to improve patient safety in our hospitals is to reduce the number of roommates that patients are exposed to during their hospital stay. Especially in acute care hospitals, where the risks are highest, we need to change our room configurations as much as current resources will allow, and strive to design and build new hospital facilities with entirely private rooms.
Sharing -

The study authors believe that it is apparently economical in the long run to construct more private rooms owing to the elevated expenses of treating patients with superbugs. Also if it is not possible to transform the multi-bed rooms into private rooms due to the designing, four-bed rooms can be converted in two-bed semi-privates rooms. Also, semi-privates rooms in high-risk regions could be transformed into private rooms.