Managing Leading People - Free Essay Example

Introduction In modern society, in which the workplace has been characterized as challenging, fast-paced, changing constantly and often influenced by the external environment (john); workplace stress has become more common and been the topic that generated a lot of attention and debates. This type of stress has been commonly found in many countries. According to (Huffi), Work Stress Survey has found that over 80% of American felt stressful at work, which was a surprisingly high number. Workplace stress can cause significant detrimental effects to the employees, which potentially leads to high financial costs for organizations. It is the role of the managers and the leaders to understand the reasons to workplace stress of employees, and ways to resolve the problems. Thus, this essay is served as a guidance and consultation for leaders and managers of modern organization on reducing workplace stress of employees; comprising of three main parts: Workplace stress definition and symptoms, causes of workplace stress, and finally the managers and leaderà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s roles in reducing workplace stress. Definition and Symptoms 1. What is Workplace Stress? In order to find solutions to reduce workplace stress, it is important to explore the meaning of workplace stress. Workplace stress is also called as work-related stress, occupational stress or job stress. According to (hse), workplace stress is the negative physical and emotional reactions that people have due to certain demands placed on them at work. Because the employees are unable to deal with these demands, workplace stress occurs. Rather than being an illness, stress is physical and mental state. Nonetheless, when employees feel excessively stressful for a long time, they might suffer from serious physical and mental illness. The concept of workplace stress, challenge and pressure at work are often misunderstood. First of all, challenges at work are positive as it energizes employees both physically and mentally, which motivates them to try, learn and master their jobs (cdc). When employees overcome challenges, they feel satisfaction and relaxation. Thus, challenge can be se en as an important factor for productive work. Similarly, pressure can be a motivating factor since it has the effects of pushing employees to work effectively. Nonetheless, when there is too much pressure, it becomes stress for employees to perform well. In other words, workplace stress is a natural reaction from employees due to excessive pressure at work. 2. Workplace Stress Symptoms There are numerous symptoms of workplace stress, which can be categorized into four groups: Psychological symptoms, emotional symptoms, physical symptoms and behavioral symptoms (bupa). Firstly, in terms of psychological symptoms, the employees facing workplace stress when they have certain difficulties at work and they feel that they are unable to deal with them. They can also feel disappointed with themselves, or feel that they are lacking confidence. They find it difficult to be focused at work, or even lost their commitment and motivation for the work. Secondly, with regards to emotional symptoms, employees might experience depression and other negative feelings. They might have excessive emotional reactions, such as becoming too sensitive towards a normal issue or being tearful. They might also be easy to get annoyed and irritable. They might also feel overwhelmed at work and experience swings in mood. Thirdly, regarding physical symptoms, employees who get too stress ful are likely to suffer from pain such as joint pain, back pain, chest pain, shoulder pain, neck pain and headache. Some illness might be occurred like indigestion, constipation and diarrhea. Fourthly, when it comes to behavioral symptoms, the employees who suffer from stress might eat significantly less or more, sleeping too little or too much, isolating themselves from other people, including their co-workers, which denotes signs of social isolation. Worse, they might even try to relax in some harmful ways such as smoking too much, drinking alcohol or even taking some illegal drugs. Thus, some of the symptoms of the suffering employees can be seen by other employees and their bosses; however, a lot of them can only be experienced by the suffering employees, without the notice of others, especially when they try to hide them. Causes of Workplace Stress There are six main reasons that lead to the state where employees suffer from stress at work; they can be shortly called as demand, control, support, relationships, role, change and physical environment (hse). These reasons are also referred to as stressors. Firstly, demands imply the demands that are placed on employees to perform the job while satisfying certain requirements or achieving certain standards, which makes them feel unable to meet these demand or cope with them. For example, the stress can be caused by the demand that employees need to meet unreasonable deadlines, demanding them to overwork or achieve unreasonable performance standards; or it might due to the fact that employees is doing the unsuitable jobs where they have insufficient skills, knowledge and experience to satisfy the job demands, thus, making them stressed. Secondly, control means when employees do not have a chance to raise their opinions and speak about their concerns, and their opinions are likel y to be neglected at work. This potentially makes employees feel disregard and experience irritation or depression, which are the symptoms of stress. Thirdly, support implies the situation where employees receive insufficient support at work, due to the companyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s lack of procedures set to resolve problems, or the lack of support from their co-workers and bosses; making employees exert excessive effort to think of ways to handle and deal with the problems themselves. Fourthly, relationships denote negative relationships that employees have at work, such as the appearance of too much competition between employees at the same level, harassment, bullying at work à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" trying to cause problems to a particular employeeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s performance and other types of conflicts between employees. Fifthly, role is about the level of understanding and certainties employees have towards the roles and responsibilities of the job. When the roles and responsi bilities are unclearly indicated, employees potentially feel lack of direction, uncertain and do not know how to perform. Sixthly, change is when employees are subject to excessive changes within a short amount of time. This change might come from the whole organizational change, or the change placed on employees by their co-workers or superior employees such as insecurity in jobs. Lastly, stress may occur due to the physical environment at the workplace. The workplace might be too overcrowding, noisy; there may appear the risks towards employeesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ health and safety, and ergonomic problems (Medi). Dangers of Workplace Stress Financial costs Workplace stress has been a huge concern for employers and employees in many countries, such as Australia, America, Britain and Canada, due to its detrimental effects as well as the financial costs it has on the employees and the organizations. Specifically, stress at the workplace significantly reduces employeesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ productivity through rising absenteeism and presenteeism à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" the situation where employees still go to work; however, due to their illness or diseases suffered by stress, they are unable to perform the job as effectively and efficiently as demands (Medibank). This creates direct financial costs on the organization or the employer. According by Medibank-commissioned research, in Australia, unhealthy employees are three times less productive than healthy employees. Moreover, the unhealthy employees also take nine times more sick leaves compared to the healthy employees. Furthermore, almost USD 26 billion dollars are costs each year in Aust ralia due to presenteeism. Also due to presenteeism, an average of six working days in terms of of productivity is lost every year. Medibank-commissioned research also found that in total, presenteeism and absenteeism due to workplace stress cost the economy of Australia almost USD 15 billion every year, and cost employers in Australia over USD 10 billion every year. In America, the situation is even worse as stress at the workplace cost American organizations over USD 300 billion annually regarding absenteeism, health costs and low performance. It was reported that about 30% of workers in America suffered from occasional stress, creating rising health care costs, absenteeism, disability periods, poor productivity and even job turnover. (UML) has provided some surprising statistics as workplace stress led to 40% of turnover, unhealthy employeesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ health expenditure appear 50% larger than that of healthy employees. Absenteeism in large organizations costs averagely over USD 3.5 billion annually. https://www.johncoxon.com.au/documents/workplace_stress.pdf https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/10/work-stress-jobs-americans_n_3053428.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/99-101/#c https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/furtheradvice/signsandsymptoms.htm https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/furtheradvice/causesofstress.htm https://www.uml.edu/Research/Centers/CPH-NEW/stress-at-work/financial-costs.aspx https://www.medibank.com.au/client/documents/pdfs/the-cost-of-workplace-stress.pdf

E-Marketing Strategy Pennine Hotel - Free Essay Example

E-Marketing Strategy Pennine Hotel 1.0 Introduction Internet marketing is the practice of marketing goods and services electronically over the internet (Chaffey, 2003:45-46).   As the capabilities of both technology and the internet have expanded it has become easier to market directly and indirectly to a wide market demographic in a cost effective and efficient manner.   According to Kasper et al â€Å"internet marketing ties together the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales,† (2006:209).   Internet marketing also differs from more traditional marketing approaches in that it relies far more heavily on the placement of media throughout the process of engagement with the potential customer, utilising techniques such as banner-ads and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to raise the prominence of the organisation in question. This report will focus on the development of an e-marketing strategy for the Pennine Manor Hotel in Outlane, an established country ho use hotel which would benefit from enhanced e-marketing to attract a wider range and greater number of visitors for both leisure and business purposes.   Currently the hotel has no website of its won and relies on meta-crawlers to publicise it such as the AA hotel guide.   Therefore this report will analyse the current activities at the hotel in terms of e-marketing and suggest a range of improvements to increase visitor numbers and revenue. . 2.0 Background and Scope The Pennine Manor Hotel in Outlane is an established country house hotel listed in the AA Good Hotel Guide with a modest 3-star rating.   Described by the AA as â€Å"an attractive stone built hotel which enjoys magnificent views over the valley†, the hotel is popular with tourists and business users alike for its conference facilities in a panoramic location.   However, despite advertising that it has the latest conference facilities available the hotel itself does not have its own website or direct e-commerce facilities and instead relies on meta-crawlers and other 3rd party websites with free advertising to market the hotel in a media context. This presents three significant challenges.   Firstly it now makes the hotel appear unprofessional if they cannot market themselves appropriately (Brassington and Pettitt, 2006:78-79) secondly, by relying on third parties to marketing them the hotel has no control of the image which is portrayed (Avlonitis and Indounas, 200 5:47-57) and thirdly, it also give the hotel very limited ability to monitor and measure the success of their e-marketing channel (Gummesson, 2008:116-119).   In short it makes the e-marketing element of their overall marketing strategy appear as an afterthought and not as an integrated marketing channel or a tactical approach to marketing and improving the perception of the hotel.   Thus, the following section of this report will comprise of a situational analysis using suitable marketing frameworks to establish an operating platform for improvement. 3.0 Situation analysis 3.1 PESTLE POLITICAL From a political perspective, there are no direct issues which the hotel must respond to, however in the wider context they must be aware that as the UK economy looks set to fall into a double-dip recession they must consider how they can market their way through such challenging times when businesses and leisure visitors alike cut either their marketing budget or their discretionary spend ECONOMIC Economically as the real value of money in the UK is falling and it would appear as if the economy is at genuine risk of stagflation, then the hotel must consider how to spend their own marketing budget wisely to attract a range of guests to the hotel.   This will be necessary if they are to survive the predicted period of austerity in the UK economy. SOCIAL Socially as UK disposable income falls for most families, the hotel will have to consider how they can market the hotel effectively to a far wider range of potential guests from overseas.   It is clear that the UK domestic or â€Å"staycation† market is unlikely to be lively in 2011. TECHNOLGICAL With technology becoming increasingly powerful and cost effective there is virtually no excuse for not operating a website, nor even operating a skeleton Customer Relationship Management system to keep track of past customers and to consider how to segment the market to attract new guests to the hotel. LEGAL Legally the hotel must apprise themselves of legislation relating to e-commerce and security such as data protection and encryption of sensitive customer details.   Any e-commerce facilities they operate must be able to handle credit card transactions in a secure manner. ENVIRONMENTAL One of the many benefits of e-marketing is the fact that it is extremely environmentally friendly as it does not require costly or environmentally damaging printing and distribution requirements of more traditional marketing methods. 3.2 SWOT STRENGTHS The hotel has several strengths, such as its excellent location which is both rural yet easily accessible.   It also has an excellent reputation which it should use as part of its marketing campaign.   It is clear that the hotel has repeat custom and therefore this offers an excellent opportunity for direct and customised e-marketing to encourage regular customers to return. OPPORTUNITIES There are several opportunities available to the hotel, not least of which is that in a challenging market those businesses which market themselves strongly are far more likely to attract custom in difficult times.   By operating ahead of their competition in the immediate locality and contacting other businesses who may require their facilities directly this could be an ideal way to attract more commercial guests. WEAKNESSES The hotel has left itself exposed in marketing terms by failing to act proactively with regard to its own website or e-commerce facilities.   This makes the hotel seem â€Å"behind the times† and less attractive to commercial customers, thus they are missing an ideal opportunity to market effectively and directly to many potential customers. THREATS The hotel faces direct competition from other similar hotels within a 30 mile radius, although none have the AA recognition or star rating of the Pennine Hotel.   Moreover, with the UK economy in its current challenge conditions they must look to market more creatively both domestically and in foreign markets if they are to widen their potential market. 4.0 Objectives Having established that the Pennine Hotel is well positioned within the market, but failing to market itself effectively against its competitors it is necessary to set out a series of e-marketing objectives using the SMART principle (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based).   These objectives are set out below and encompass strategic, tactical and operational objectives. Conduct an in-depth competitor analysis to establish the strengths and weaknesses of competitors within a 30 mile radius.   Use this information to develop and implement an immediate to medium term strategic direction for the Pennine Hotel which targets the gaps in the market.   The plan is to be designed within 3 months and the objectives to be implemented in full within 6 months.   The plan should be designed to increase guest occupancy by 20% within 6 months. In line with the strategic objectives conduct a full market analysis which focuses on market segmentation and customer n eeds.   Create a targeted marketing plan which utilises e-marketing channels to directly address the needs of commercial, domestic and foreign visitors, further segmented by repeat and new custom.   Establish a range of packages or options which meet the needs of the customers and establish advertising within 2 months to be implemented in full within 4 months.   Use metrics to track the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns (Zeithaml et al, 2009:136-141). Design and launch a website which meets the generic needs of all current and potential guests.   This should be themed to showcase the best attributes of the hotel and also designed so as to appeal to both domestic and commercial visitors (eg highlighting contemporary bedrooms and exceptional conference facilities).   Website prototype to be created within one month and launched within two months, and the website is to support full e-commerce facilities and have tracking capability to monitor hits to the website a nd length of browse time on each page (McDonald and Payne, 2006:321-333). 5.0 Strategy According to Grunroos brand awareness â€Å"is a marketing concept that measures consumers knowledge of a brands existence. At the aggregate (brand) level, it refers to the proportion of consumers who know of the brand,† (2007:118).   For the Pennine Hotel it is clear that there is limited brand awareness outside of their immediate geography due to their limited marketing tactics.   Thus, the following strategy is proposed to raise immediate market and brand awareness via e-marketing channels. Given that the Pennine Hotel is not part of an existing hotel chain which can leverage core brand equity, it is recommended that the hotel seek to dramatically increase awareness through their own website which pushes them to the top of search engine rankings in their own right, and simultaneously seek reciprocal partnership arrangements with links from mutually beneficial sites which will also raise brand awareness and appeal to a wider market. Although it is acknowledged th at this may create some initial resource challenges in terms of building the links to partner businesses and also building the website, research by academics such as Chaffey (2006) has demonstrated that effective websites generate their own return on investment extremely quickly.   As it is also clear that currently the hotel has no means to generate a website without expert assistance (otherwise it would already be in existence), then they should look to obtain the services of web-design expert who has previously built sites for other hotels.   This knowledge will enable the Pennine hotel to benefit from the designers previous experience whilst adding their own touches to the website (Chaffey, 2006). 6.0 Tactics With regard to the actual design of the website which is estimated to take one moth under the plans outlined above, a paper prototyping approach has been adopted with sample images as guidelines from other competitor websites included in appendix 1 (Snyder, 2003).   Given that resources in terms of marketing budget are likely to be constrained for the Pennine Hotel, then paper prototyping is a quick and easy method of sketching out what would be appropriate as a website.   Moreover, once the site has been built and is fully operational the use of metrics to track customer browsing experiences will offer guides as to how to shape the website to appeal to a wide range of potential guests.   As observed by Snyder, (2003) website design is not an exact science and it will require tweaks and adjustment until it fully reflects the needs of the hotel.   Moreover, the website design must reflect the hotel brand and must also be easy to navigate and browse.   The wireframe sketch is demonstrated below. 7.0 Action Having established that a website marketing strategy is required will full e-commerce capability the next phase of the process is to design the website in conjunction with market analysis.   This will ensure that the website meets not only the needs of the Pennine Hotel in terms of showcasing its capabilities, but also that any gaps in the market are fulfilled in terms of facilities that guests may require.   Examples of this include exceptional bedroom facilities, conference locations, spa treatments or convenience to local amenities such as walks or historic attractions.   By highlighting the available facilities on the website and also carefully wording the website so that it scores highly on search engine optimisation this will ensure that the website will serve its desired purpose (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2010:214-216). Within the overall strategic objectives of the Pennine Hotel e-marketing plan it has been determined that the website design and implementation are of imm ediate priority as the hotel seeks to market through difficult financial times, and also to position itself within the market place as the leading hotel in the area in terms of facilities.   Therefore the first action is to seek out a suitably qualified and experienced website designer with experience in the specific area of hotel website design so that the Pennine hotel can benefit from his or her knowledge and experience in this area (Strauss et al, 2008). 8.0 Control The final issue to consider is one of monitoring and control.   This has been touched upon previously in section 5 above, however it is of critical importance to establish and implement a tracking plan which will permit the management team at the Pennine Hotel to establish which elements of the website are the most popular or successful in terms of hits and browsing times.   If the website has been carefully designed and is easy to navigate it is then a simple matter to add or remove content to ensure that the website remains fresh and at the top of SEO listings.   This should also be checked with reference to very short customer service questionnaires which can be raised as pop-ups on the website.   This information will be particularly valuable to the Pennine Hotel in establishing the effectiveness of the website. With regard to metrics these must adopt a two-phase approach; One strand to concentrate on tracking the effectiveness of the website, and the other to match this against any changes to the website and corresponding uplift or downturn in occupancy or revenue.   It is important to recognise that there will be seasonality in demand and thus the longer the tracker can run for, the more effective and useful it will be.   An outline 6 month tracker plan is laid out below. Design and apply index tools which will track and monitor up to 50,000 hits per month. Establish visitor tracking and block IP addresses of Pennine Hotel employees, Send automatic reports of usage to nominated emails, Track SSL, Track user-defined actions, Perform ration conversion analysis 9.0 References Avlonitis, G. Indounas K. (2005) Pricing objectives and pricing methods in the service sector Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 19, No.1, pp.47-57. Brassington. F., Pettitt, S., (2006) Principles of Marketing Financial Times/ Prentice Hall; 5th edition Chaffey, D., (2006) Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice Financial Times/ Prentice Hall; 3 edition Chaffey, D., (2003) E-Business and E-Commerce Financial Times/ Prentice Hall; 2 edition Grunroos, C., (2007), Service Management and Marketing, 3 rd Edition, John Wiley Sons, Ltd. Gummesson, E., (2008) Total Relationship Marketing, 3rd ed, Elsevier. Kasper, H., van Helsdingen, P. and Gabbott, M. (2006) Services Marketing Management: A strategic perspective, 2nd Edition, John Wiley and Sons Lovelock, C. and Wirtz, J. (2010) Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy, 7th Edition, Pearson. McDonald, M. and Payne, A. (2006) Marketing Plans for Service Businesses, 2nd Edition, Elsevier . Snyder, Carolyn (2003). Paper Prototyping: the fast and easy way to design and refine user interfaces. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann. Strauss, J., Frost, R., El-Ansary, A., (2008) E-Marketing Prentice Hall; 5 edition Zeithaml, V., Bitner, M.J. and Gremler (2009) Services Marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm, 5th Edition, McGraw-Hill.