3 For over 10 years a hotel group had been developing self-managed improvement groups within its hotels.

At one hotel reception desk, staff became concerned about the amount of time the reception desk was left unattended. To investigate this, the staff began keeping track of the reasons they were spending time away from the desk and for how long each absence kept them away. Everyone knew that reception desk staff often had to leave their post to help or give service to a guest. However, no one could agree what was the main cause of absence. Collecting the information was itself not easy because the staff had to keep records without affecting customer service. After three months the data were presented in the form of a Pareto diagram, which is shown in Table 12.4 . It came as a surprise to reception staff and hotel management that making photocopies for guests was the main reason for absence. Fortunately, this was easily remedied by moving the photocopier to a room adjacent to the reception area, enabling staff to keep a check on the reception desk while they were making copies.

(a) Do you think it was wise to spend so much time on examining this particular issue? Isn’t it a trivial issue?

(b) Should this information be used to reflect improvement priorities? In other words, was the group correct to put priority on avoiding absence through photocopying, and should its next priority be to look at the time spent checking files in the back office?