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Communicate, then follow-up

Dr Chamaree Chuapetcharasopon, medical director of Bumrungrad Hospital.

Being the first woman medical director of Bangkok's well-known Bumrungrad International Hospital, Chamaree Chuapetcharasopon admits her job is a challenge.

As well as ensuring that the hospital's staff of 3,000 fully understand the principles and direction of the hospital and act accordingly, Chamaree must manage a pool of 1,000 physicians, when only 208 of them work on a full-time basis.

"Physicians are not like ordinary employees. When they're not satisfied, they simply walk away from the hospital. Likewise, our patients, if they're not satisfied with the physicians, they walk out," she said.

So Bumrungrad views its physicians more like customers and partners than employees.

However, like other businesses, Bumrungrad prospers by offering the best of services to its customers, and in the case of a hospital, that means curing its patients of disease and illness.

"Our core business is curing our patients," Chamaree confirms. Therefore, Bumrungrad's first priority is attracting the best doctors. It has an aggressive recruitment process that includes checks and rechecks of physicians' medical expertise and treatment records, to make sure it has quality personnel.

Then, after successfully recruiting high-calibre physicians, it is keen to ensure that they provide good services - and this requires good communication.

"Sometimes, if we have to call 1,000 doctors, we do it," she said.

 Bumrungrad's management places great importance on internal communications. The hospital's chief executive will sometimes hold a "town hall" meeting four times a day in order to deliver direct messages to all staff who work on different shifts.

The road to full communication has not been paved with roses. Initially, the hospital had difficulty convincing doctors to commit to the hospital's service-quality policy. Every new physician joining Bumrungrad has to attend an orientation course to learn the hospital's expectations of his or her services. After this, it has a follow-up system to monitor whether the physician lives up to this commitment.

Nurses are the "detectors" that help Bumrungrad to monitor whether doctors are providing treatment services according to the hospital's standards. When there is any doubt, nurses have to submit "incident reports", Chamaree said.

"Initially, physicians felt discomfort with this kind of auditing. But we told them it would assist their development. As well, receiving an incident report is better than getting a court notice," she said, adding that the follow-up system was very important.

"Many companies only communicate and then let things go," she said.

Chamaree believes that women are generally regarded as being more meticulous than men and this helps them to work well in providing services.

"As an X-ray physician, I see every detail," she said.

Motherhood is our advantage

Pratana Manomaiphiboon, group chief financial officer of Minor International.

Minor International (Mint) has an almost bewildering array of businesses, ranging from its service-industry roots with 25 major hotels and resorts located in about ten countries and its restaurant franchises including The Pizza Company, Swensen's, Sizzler, Dairy Queen, and Burger King, to cosmetics and fashion products companies.

In the eyes of the group's chief financial officer, Pratana Manomaiphiboon, the challenge is ensuring that more than 20,000 staff can deliver the high level of services required. This is made doubly difficult by the fact that 90 per cent of the 10,000 people employed by the Minor Food Group, which operates all of the group's restaurants, are part-timers.

"In a restaurant, the manager may be the only permanent employee," she said.

The turnover rate for part-time staff is 100 per cent, since most of them are students who quit when they graduate or when they change universities.

Therefore, training plays a crucial role at Mint, in the group's drive to achieve the service standards demanded by customers. With its "train the trainer" programme, restaurant managers are equipped with the skills to train their staff, Pratana said.

The hotel business, on the other hand, is an oddly different world where staff permanence is a distinct advantage.

"We explored the part-time [employment] option because it offered better cost-control," Pratana said. "But the trial was not successful because hotel staff must have the capacity to remember their guests."

With its vast operation covering more than 1,000 restaurant outlets and 25 hotels, both within Thailand and overseas, keeping up with technology and maintaining process control are business necessities.

Mint employs marketing intelligence firm ACNielsen to conduct "mystery shopper" visits to all of its restaurants and spas every month.

"We spend a huge sum on this service," Pratana said. "It is also important to design the questionnaire correctly. For example, if you receive 95 per cent scores on two or three consecutive occasions, you know it's time to change the questionnaire, because that result tells you it's too easy."

Pratana said constant improvements - such as changing the questionnaires - were a normal part of a service businesses.

"For instance, giving welcome drinks at hotels and resorts has become nothing special. You can't afford to get stuck on what should be your "wow!" services," she said.

Mint also conducts what it calls an "associates opinion survey", in which staff are asked to state opinions on their bosses and colleagues every year, as a means of checking the "internal temperature".

Pratana said Thai women were expected to carry high responsibility from the time they were old enough to cook food, cut the nails and take care of their parents and brothers. Therefore, Thai women executives are highly responsible. They are also caring and sensible towards their subordinates.

"Men are more logical. We can use our advantage, as women, to assimilate and constantly chat with our staff. We have an edge because we're more talkative than men, who usually don't like to explain things," Pratana said. "We can use our motherhood to talk and teach. We can coach the staff better than men."

Leadership 'secrets'

Vilasinee Puddhikarant, executive vice president for customer service and management, Advanced Info Service.

Vilasinee Puddhikarant's "leadership secrets" begin with setting out a corporate vision and then articulating it into the minds of her staff.

"We have to articulate what we're doing and why we're doing it. A vision written on the paper is useless. It must be in the employees' blood," said the executive vice president for customer service and management for AIS, Thailand's biggest mobile phone operator.

Her second "secret" is passion.

"Passion drives energy and enthusiasm, brings out creative power, encourages self-improvement and inspires your people," she said.

The third element is focus. Whatever she does, Vilasinee must know why she's doing it and what her objectives are.

"I'm a results-oriented boss. I usually set strategies which must be delivered. The results are then evaluated and we continue on a "cycle of improvement," she said.

Fourth is teamwork. In a big organisation like AIS, which has about 8,700 staff, nothing can be achieved by just one person.

The final "secret" element is being a role model. Vilasinee believes that leaders must "walk the walk" and be "genuine", in their approach.

"If we have a vision for our organisation, then we must begin from ourselves," she said.

pichaya@nationgroup.com