OFFICE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE USING MYSTERY SHOPPING. Dr. R. ANGAYARKANNI* *Assistant Professor,

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1 OFFICE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE USING MYSTERY SHOPPING Dr. R. ANGAYARKANNI* *Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce, Faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM University Kattankulathur, Tamilnadu, India. Mobile: Mail ID: ANAND SHANKAR RAJA. M ** **Research scholar, Department of Commerce, Faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM University Kattankulathur, Tamilnadu, India.Mobile: Mail ID: anandshankarrajabbm@gmail.com anand_shankarmanivannan@srmuniv.edu.in ABSTRACT Office is regarded as an important part of an organization. The very existence of an organization necessitates the presence of an office. Whether it is a Government institution, a business house or an educational institution, office plays a pivotal role for its functioning because a well managed office helps management to plan its operation intelligently and to put them in action competently. Without an efficient office, the business activities cannot be carried on systematically. Office managers serve a critical role in your company. They make sure that day-to-day operations run smoothly so that others in the business can perform their jobs effectively. Hiring effective staff is vital for an office manager who is responsible for smooth organizational operations. The same time on the other hand it becomes difficult for the office manager to watch each and every staff who works in the office scenario. Thus at some point of time he pushes himself to appoint spy to notice what is happening in the real office scape. This spying action is known as mystery assignment using mystery shoppers to observe on various dimensions and thus it depends on marketing research thus market research contributes towards office management. The paper throws light on how mystery shopping helps office managers to administrate efficiently and effectively. Key Words: Office management, employee spying, Mystery shopping 977

2 INTRODUCTION The purpose of an office is mainly to provide the services of communication and record. Each record and bit of communication has a great impact on the final goal achievement. An office in fact, a processing medium. In addition it is responsible for directing and co-coordinating the various activities of the organization. It is like the brain in the human body which is responsible and mainsprings in a watch and a central directing force. Spying on employees is necessary today in large part because technology has raised the risk that workers will goof off or do something that leaves a company vulnerable to lawsuits. Office managers can give each employee an oral warning for the first inappropriate work and twice a written warning..employees are "usually embarrassed and humiliated, and thus they can t be fired. This is a real great challenge for the office manager to direct and guide each and every employee working in the office to manage the big firm. Office managers typically work under pressure, particularly in a larger organization. Effective hiring alleviates excess stress on the office manager. Handling staffing problems creates additional stress for office managers. Appropriate, skilled employees take the burden off the office manager, who controls many of the company s operational processes. The ultimate impact is seen on the firms profit when the office is not under proper administration. Thus all these stress has motivated many managers to appoint spy employees in the office scenario to observe the real happenings. Understanding the office happenings is a crucial business activity for any manager or business executive. Some companies hire professionals to track their employees and assess the office landscape on a regular basis. But it doesn't always have to be a complicated, timeconsuming, and expensive process particularly given the new wealth of data that can be assembled using externals for short span assignments. By investing even a small amount of time, businesses of any size can develop a framework for making employee assessments, gather intelligence on office activities rivals, and understand how to run a better office environment. One way of looking at the different types of benchmarking is to look at the various levels of activity undertaken and setting up a perfect office and administrating activities is a real strong benchmark. This type of benchmarking requires a very light touch and helps companies establish in a holistic way of establishing which processes are worthy of detailed consideration. Tools aimed at this level take a broad look across the company 978

3 covering financial, hard management and often Business Excellence areas in order to establish priorities against an existing business research. Thus research has become a prime activity for office managers to succeed in administrating the huge employee force. The first decision to make about competitive research is whether to gather it in-house or go outside and hire a professional firm or consultant. The benefits of hiring a consultant include that they may have more expertise in intelligence gathering about the employees being among the school of other employee in the normal office scenario.. External consultants have probably done hundreds if not thousands of analyses which cannot be done by a normal business house or internal market research personnel. Conversely, the challenge of hiring an outside consultant is that sometimes it's difficult getting senior managers to clearly enunciate what they want to know and then listen to the results of the research. The managers thus appoint their own employees as spy agents to notice the real happenings in the office environment. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Office management is a part of the overall administration of the business since the elements of office management are totally dependent on the overall profitability position of the firm. Employees working in achieving these goals have to be monitored on regular basis and must be directed in the right way to connect the individual goals with the overall goals of the organization. Though the manager tries to draw and implement various strategies he needs some effective tool to monitor the real happenings in the office scenario. Mystery shopping being an effective marketing research tool can be made the best use of by the office managers to scale the pinnacle of success. The study intends to identify how mystery shopping can help in office management and intends to suggest the managers to take up this tool. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY To identify the common elements between office management and mystery shopping and to establish a link between them To suggest in general to the office managers to make use of this effective tool to manage office activities in a successful way LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY The study has not been tested empirically 979

4 The study considers only elements of office management and has not concentrated on other aspects LITERATURE REVIEW Literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge and or methodological approaches on a particular topic. A well structured literature review is characterized by logical flows of ideas, current and relevant reference with consistent, appropriate referencing style, proper use of terminology and un-biased comprehensive view of previous research. Tamer Mohamed Atef (2012) the study concentrated on hospitality operations and aimed in measuring the quality of services and products delivered to their customers, several methods are used along with mystery shopping as a service measuring instrument. The study concentrated in determining the customers experience and evaluate hotel services and products and to propose a mystery shopper interactive scoring observations using a checklist model. The study concluded that mystery shopping is the best measuring tool, that uses industry professionals to evaluate the products and services offered by hospitality operations through living the actual guest experience and engaging in normal guest - staff encounters and interactions, leading to final evaluations to be reported to concerned management in order to improve the overall performance. Beck and Miao (2003) investigated how mystery shopper programme are conducted in the USA and hotel senior management perceptions of the effectiveness of the scheme in assessing service quality. The outcome of the study showed that manager s perception of the effectiveness of the program put the soft attributes on the top and hard attributes at the middle. They even found that senior mangers welcomed the program more than their staff. The researchers suggested that managers will use mystery shopping as a diagnostic tool to assess the service encounter more than as a motivational tool. JOHNATHAN YERBY (2013) Maintaining a safe and efficient workplace requires organizations to keep a watchful eye on employee activities, which could pose harm to others or create liability for the company. One way for a company to maintain efficiency and lower liability is for the employer to monitor its employees. Monitoring, however, is only the first step. Employees must be educated about monitoring so that they can understand the lack of 980

5 privacy that currently exists at work. The status of employee monitoring may change if laws tailor to the always-changing computer technology - but employee monitoring will not go away. CONCEPTUAL FRAME WORK This conceptual frame work developed by the researchers relates elements of office management with mystery shopping and clearly defines how mystery shopping helps towards an effective office management. ELEMETNS OF OFFICE MANAGEMENT PURPOSE The manager of the organization has to be much aware to take correct actions and decisions to ensure effectiveness of the work force being done. The determination of purpose provides direction and guidelines to all the employees to act effectively connecting their individual goal with the overall goal of the organization. ENVIRONMENT The office environment refers to the physical environment within the office frame work. The environmental factors are never isolated they keep on changing. Thus it becomes vital for each and every employee to change according to the trend. MEANS Means are the tools which help to perform the day to day office activities. The correct follow up of technologies; using appropriate methods contribute towards effective and efficient office management PERSONNEL The effectiveness of the office management depends upon the employees who connect their individual goals with the over ll goals of the organization. No matter though machines are employed human machines are the basic needy resource. 981

6 Frame work

7 ELEMENTS OF OFFICE MANAGEMENT INTERPRETATION FOR THE FRAME WORK The ultimate aim and goal of an office management is to assist the office activities or the base line activities in managing a huge establishment most efficiently and economically. Regardless the size and nature of the organization each and every establishment needs a sound office management to deal with the daily transactions and to maintain appropriate records. The office manager and the team guided by him works very hard in the office environment changing and updating themselves to the external and the internal factors to connect their individual goals with the overall goal of the organization. The below model frame work clearly explains how various elements of office management are important to achieve the overall goal of the organization. ELEMENTS OF MYSTERY SHOPPING PURPOSE The purpose of the office management is to guide the employees and to direct them in the right way to ensure success. Mystery shopping helps a manager to spy the real happenings in the office scenario which will help him to rectify the defective work done by the employees. Thus the purpose of mystery shopping in effective office management is to act as an instrument to guide policies and procedures to scale the pinnacles of success. ENVIRONMENT The manager cannot be a watchdog all the time looking into each and every office activity. Thus mystery shopping helps to observe what is really happening in the office environment. Various internal and external factors and forces influencing the employee behavior in the office scenario is properly administrated. Thus to monitor the environment mystery shopping is an effective tool. MEANS The methods of doing a task are important that when it is followed in a routine way it does not affect the dependent sub-task. The employees may sometime deviate from performing the routine task which may have some negative implications. Thus mystery shopping helps helps to monitor such deviations and helps the manager to take appropriate decisions which may 983

8 help to chain up the routine task ensuring completion of work within the stipulated time frame. PERSONNEL Employees being the most valuable assets have to be screened on regular time to tap the idle workers who deviate from the regular office activities. This concept of mystery shopping helps to observe employees on various aspects and to report the same to the manager so that appropriate actions are taken to streamline the office activities. 984

9 Frame work

10 MYSTERY SHOPPING IN OFFICE MANAGEMENT Mystery shopping being a unique market research tool is used by many business houses to observe the real business scenario. From the scratches of store observation till the effective strategy formulation mystery shopping this tool has contributed in large amount and has helped the real world business administrators to scale the pinnacles of success. Office management being the base work for managing the huge establishment can make use of this unique tool to ensure things are done properly by the human assets who are responsible to connect their individual goals with the overall goals of the organization. Managers now use this tool to improvise on their administration traits. The above model frame work intends to throw light on how mystery shopping has positive implications on effective and efficient office management. CONCLUSION Office is regarded as an important part of an organization. The very existence of an organization necessitates the presence of an office. Whether it is a Government institution, a business house or an educational institution, office plays a pivotal role for its functioning because a well managed office helps management to plan its operation intelligently and to put them in action competently. Though the manager tries to draw and implement various strategies he needs some effective tool to monitor the real happenings in the office scenario. Mystery shopping being an effective marketing research tool can be made the best use of by the office managers to scale the pinnacle of success. Office management being the base work for managing the huge establishment can make use of this unique tool to ensure things are done properly by the human assets who are responsible to connect their individual goals with the overall goals of the organization. REFERENCE BECK and MIAO (2003) Mystery shopping in lodging properties as a measurement of service quality, journal of quality assurance in hospitality and tourism,4(1/12);1-21. TAMER MOHAMED ATEF; the mystery demystified: a mystery shopper's experience with hotel services and products; an international 986

11 multidisciplinary journal of tourism volume 7, number 1, spring-summer 2012, pp Online Journal of Applied Knowledge Management, A Publication of the International Institute for Applied Knowledge Management, Volume 1, Issue2, 2013, Legal and ethical issues of employee monitoring BOOKS FOR REFERENCE Office management RK Chopra Principles of Office Management- Dr. R.C. Bhatia Administrative Office Management, Complete Course- Pattie Gibson Office management: principles and practice- William Henry Leffingwell 987