Question 1. Below figure 1 shows a typical 'meet and greet' service in a local theme park in Hong Kong. Recently, a new character is introduced to the theme park. It is highly welcomed by the visitors, including adults, teenagers and kids but the head is bigger in size (but not in weight) than the other characters. Due to the outbreak of the covid-19, it is difficult to let different staff to "act" for different characters like before. It means that once a staff is assigned to act a character, he needs to act on a prolonged basis during the covid-19 period. One staff has complained as he thinks that the "head" of the new character assigned to him is heavier than the others. He is a new staff who did not act for the other characters before. EXITHO Figure 1 (A) If you are the service operations manager of the theme park, what is your response to the staff? (A) If you are the service operations manager of the theme park, what is your response to the staff? (B) A new senior staff is reported with the problem too. He suggests that it is important to promote employee discretion in order to increase customer satisfaction. He suggests that staff could arrange by themselves, after a random initial arrangement by the manager. Staff could change the character by themselves freely if they want to do so. Some staff strongly disagree with this suggestion and prefer a weekly rotational assignment. They said that it is also easier for cleaning process in view of the covid-19 potential hazard. If you are also one of the senior staff, will you support the staff, and why? (C) Ideally, certain level of employee discretion could bring benefit to the company and flexibility to staff in daily operations. What is A, B, C and D in below figure 2? Type of employee discretion Routine Creative Fluid (empowered) Facilitating D Organisation style Leadership style Directive Rigid B (imposed) Low High Perceived individual employee discretion Figure 2. Employee discretion analytical diagram. (D) The generic direction of the theme park is to remove most of the procedures and move from complaint to adaptive approach in order to increase customer satisfaction. However, social distance needs to be kept in view of the potential hazard of covid-19. Staff suggests that there should be big glasses separating them from customers totally. The suggestion is under consideration by the top management as service quality needs to be considered as well. What should be considered? (E) Other than taking photo with the characters, customers in the theme park like to play with different attractions, e.g., the roller coaster. However, it is difficult to ensure the seats (include the handrail of each seat) are fully cleaned with limited cleaning time (e.g., 1-2 mins) after each ride. However, if the cleaning time is too long, customers will need to wait for longer time. One of the senior staff, Moon suggests that cleaning limited to the handrail. She thinks that is good enough as customers usually touch the handrail only. However, another senior staff, Sunny does not agree. Three months before, he has been recovered from the covid-19 totally. He thinks that the cleaning process should be a complete one. Moreover, all the customers should be offered with a plastic raincoat, a plastic face shield and a pair of plastic surgery glove before they sit on the roller coaster. He does not want to have anyone going through the painful covid-19 experience. Moon understands his feeling, but she disagrees with his too conservative suggestion with the reasons of the potential prolonged waiting time, higher cost and lower customer satisfaction. If you are a management trainee who is newly hired by the theme park, and assigned by the CEO of the theme park to make a suggestion to the cleaning process, what will be your suggestion, and why