The relationship between the Virgin Trains vision and culture

If organization wants to go in clear and smooth manner, it should make a vision for future targets. Basically visions make a linkage between specific targets and objectives and core values. This linkage help the organization and suggests the ways that how business can be run for achieving the targets.

The mission statement shows the basic purpose of the organization for existence in society. Whereas the vision is for the future, it tells where the organization is going.

For example, it is the belief of Virgin Trains to provide high quality rail services at very economical cost. The vision of Virgin Trains is It is our utmost effort to be most reliable, secure, profitable and consistent train service and offer services in such climate where people do not fear about the company and look it with respectable service.

The above vision is clear because:

Values and standards of the company are well defined

Target profitability is clearly defined

The relationship between organization and employees is established and it motivates the honesty and value different views.

Vision and organisational culture

The organization’s culture and vision are very close to each other. The culture can be defined as the ways of behaving and understanding shared by a group of people. This show that how managers are working, how subordinates treat them and how subordinates are treated by them, how they establish procedures for customer satisfaction, system and procedures for the organization etc. the organizational culture can be changes in a more clear and positive way by establishing a clear vision. The culture in the Virgin Trains is very good because it give first priority to its customers and stakeholders and their experiences. The management of Virgin Train thinks that the best vision can be established by sharing views of employees, and thinks that organization is dispersed widely at different regions, employees know the needs and wants of customers so changes in business are necessary and should be implemented one location individually according to the customer’s satisfaction.

The employees of the Virgin Trains which deal with customers have technical skills as well as knowledge of business for making the change. The approaches adopted by management for encouraging employees to get involve in the operations of the company are:

They ask questions for understanding

Give challenging tasks and ideas

The suggest better ways when any disagreement arises

For the customer’s satisfaction and involvement of the employees the Virgin Train is trying to redesign the structure and changes in services in offices and trains.

Purpose of the vision

The profit making is the primary objective of every organization. So the basic objective of Virgin Trains is also to become profitable organization. For achieving this objective to make the profit the organizations should satisfy the customers who use their services and facilities every time. The other way to achieve the objective is employees should provide the high class services to the customers. So most of the organizations has change old styles of running the organization and adopted ways in which customers can be given first priority.

The system and ways of working in Virgin Trains motivate the employee, encourage the employees give opportunity to employee to communicate with customers, remain in touch with customers. In this way they can be a part in improving customers experience in using their services and also know the ways in which the operational performance can be improved. In this regard the behaviour of managers with employees should be good and they should ask for suggestion from employees in order to improve the business conditions.

Customer focus

The employees of Virgin Train adopt those strategies which focus on customers. The structure of the organization motivate the employees (who are in direct touch and who play the linking role in the organization) for communicating and design the strategies for organization.

Regular “priorities meetings” are held by groups of staff across the regions to identify best practices, share concerns and discuss what the priorities should be.

Feedback from customers identifies the priorities and includes issues such as what menu options should be on trains or what ticket options are available in stations. Managers then take these ideas and support workers to improve the services they provide. This develops good relationships and increases employee confidence that managers will follow up on ideas and feedback from front-line workers.

Workshops

It was asked to every employee to attend three days workshop volutarirly in order to promote the vision of the company. It was aim of that workshop to train employees how to entertain the feedback. It was clear messaging for all employees that how their leadership is expecting to see the help Virgin Trains people.

The workshop achieved purpose of providing a learning atmosphere to every one, in that workshop every one shared his ideas openly.

All employees from top to bottom attended this. It helped the organization to bring to gather ot all level of employees to listen and learn their view points.

In this workshop every one came to know what actually change is, how to bring changes and what is felt when change is brought in the organization. What things are required while implementing change in the organization?

In this work shop every one discussed the importance of vision and their action regarding that vision. They also knew how their actions could lead towards attainment of the objectives of the company.

After attending this work shop people became capable to explore the ideas in their work place that they learnt in that work shop.

By tying up the organization with its vision, it must follow to implement better system at every place. It was observed in the Virgin Trains vision that their human resource activities were performed in just the way that was stated in the vision. And these all thing are helpful for the organization and they create a culture.

As it was observed by many people that Virgin Trains was focusing its employees especially it was offering rewards to those who performed at extra ordinary level.

Positive behaviours

With the passage of time work patterns get changed and they were not only the work is done by employees but it also focused how this work is done by employees. For example, Virgin Trains might focus on customer feedback how they perceive the services of the Virgin Trans and in the light of the opinion received from them they decide their action to continue.

From your knowledge of change management, what influence do you believe that the culture of the organisation has on the change management of the company?

Advance philosophies of operation are useful only when they are rehearsal. The culture of the organization is needed to be assessed all the times so that the deviation in the working culture can be observed and entrenched to meet the organizational goals. The aim behind the developing of new working culture and environment is not only to meet the people it should also help in achieving all organizational goals including financial and nonfinancial very efficiently and successfully. Changing working culture and environment is a continuous procedure.

Important performance indicators

Formulating the main execution indicators is helpful for an organization in evaluating the performance. This evaluation of achievements helps in determining the performance of an organization on the road map to its goals a firm can determine how it is proceeding towards the attainment of goals. The indicators used by the training experts are comprise of the following elements:

Decreasing the level of illness

Downsizing the number of employees

Doing good in consumer contentment ratings

Downing the criticism correspondence

Virgin trains is getting better in every field their employees are good enough in confronting the management decisions proposed to them and this practice help the company to hoard and generate funds. Decrease in cost is the most effective outcome of implanting the new ideas

Through ticket to Huddersfield is the model of implementation of the strategy which is conceived and implemented by the team of Manchester division employees. In the past practices passengers had to another ticket for the second phase of their traveling while changing their train coaches on the station. Virgin trains observed the passengers need and enable their employees to make a decision and formulate a strategy to facilitate the customers by issuing a new ticket. It is now helping them to generate more profits.  

Virgin trains have goodwill of superior and technologically advanced in customer care.  The organization is trying to develop a competitive edge over its competitors on the continuous basis. The important factor for the attainment of this goal is allow the employees in the decision making and value their suggestions in this regard.

Customers have access to the employees therefore employees are in good touch with the customers their views in decisions making and improvement programs are of more weight.  Virgin trains allowed employees participation and amendment in the existing polices and procedures the management appreciates and supports their employees to improve the existing structure and admire new ideas. This vision has helped in achieving employee participation and job satisfaction and improved customer relationship and satisfaction ultimately an improved business is witnessed as a result of this.

Aim behind this is to provide knowledge and become an essential part of the decision making procedures and the culture of industry considering the overall system and complete life cycles approaches. This can be predicted that the ideology is required to be unbiased to attain a sustainable transfer scheme that contributes to the success of the organization, welfare of the public and fitness of the globe. The virgin trains are held responsible for the approval and application of these philosophies in the company

Consumer determined: set in the customs where customers are compassionate about the train services where they are most favorable in travelling by the railway and create a good customer relationship

Making railways accessible; make the railway system easy accessible and most reasonably priced and wide ranging for the massed with the help of fast information availability.

Facilitate customers with sideways traveling: jointly work with all transportation options available to facilitate customers with incorporated and easy accessible means of transportation system.

Be an attractive organization to work with; value support and build up an assorted labor force, encourage the welfare dynamically deem and tackle the upcoming challenges of the universal workforce

Decreasing the ecological collision; manage the operations and business in a way that does not effect the environment minimizes the harmful impacts and increases the benefits for the environment

Carbon smart: carbon smart is programmes which engage initiatives to have a reduced carbon emission over a long term with the help of improved energy efficiency, fewer carbon power sources, latest technology and support modal shift, which ensures carbon efficient journey by helping others.

Energy wise: here the strategy is to optimize rail’s efficiency of energy consumption for traction and non-traction use.

Supporting the economy; in supporting the economy the enhancement of the productivity and competitiveness is to be achieved at national and regional level of UK, by providing reliable passenger and cargo services and by helping the accumulation and stimulation of economic revival.

Optimising the railway; optimizing the railway is meant to achieve the maximum capability of the railway system and to work on strengths to present the transport system which is reliable and gives good value of money.

Being transparent; being transparent is an initiative started to develop a culture of transparency and accountability of decision making and to assess, supervise and report publicly the progress towards sustainability.

Critically evaluate the contributions of the company’s organisation structure to the achievement and change process of the company, considering the complex nature of the industry.

The owners of this company are Sir Richard Branson who owns a majority 51% stake in the business, and Stagecoach plc, who possesses the remaining 49%. The leading role is played by Sir Richard Branson but operations are carried out by Stagecoach plc. It is combined effort of these two organizations to manage this business to run Virgin Train independently, for that purpose they have selected separate board of directors named with Virgin Rail Group. They are running these two types of Franchise. Their team has consisted a CEO, Director who looks after commercial activities and two other managing directors. This is operated with the name of Virgin Trains.

In Virgin Train, quantity of working employees is 4700 and out of which 2900 is on train staff. It has approximately 1000 drivers and 1800 other crew this includes first class coach stewards and shop manager. Different training programs are conducted in order to ensure that their employees deal with the customer in effective way. All drivers are also trained.

It has a center that provides computer training and this system is equipped with work station that is connected with strong network. That helps train drivers to learn many things and provide environment to practice accordingly. They need driver on continuous basis. Their driver training has consisted on 10 drivers initially and duration of this training is one year.

When train travels a train manager is responsible to take care of the accommodation fo passenger, he is also responsible to check out whether passengers have purchased tickets or not. They also check that passengers are feeling comfort to travel in their train. In order to get refreshed they have made available a shop where passenger can purchase different eatable things, beverages that can refresh their minds.

What strategy or strategies do you think the company has adopted in the management of the change process in the organisation and how effective has the strategy been?

You can enable your organization to work at its best with the help of energizing leadership, which uses the best of the high performance management ideas and is supported by the useful organization structure and work processes.

Organizational success is not limited to only to the hiring of the talented people. If the workplace is not designed perfectly, then the best and hardworking employees will not be able to give their full potential in these circumstances.

The decrease in productivity and employee morale is often caused by the poor organization design.

The organization and work processes may need improvement, if the following four important signs start to appear:

Employees switching from the organization is very high (especially of your most talented people)

Productively of the employees is very low

Customers make more complaints

Profits get lower

The results the organization get is due to the fact that they are perfectly designed to achieve those results. Likewise, organization design structure and process are to be evaluated and modified if you want different results from the business.

The concept of the organization design is not totally unknown; it may have been referred to you as:

Focus on open system design,

Focus on socio-technical systems design,

Develop such system that can assist in high performance work systems

TQM (Total quality management)

Focus on such management who should be participative and

Changing the processes

It is not important that what name you give to the design of the organization. But what matters here is that the change you want is, is pursued orderly and moreover you have a leadership team with a long-term commitment to follow through, even when it is not easy to function. At times you may choose an organization design model and sometimes you don’t but one thing is for sure that to influence your business performance, you should be making design choices more frequently.