Commentary: Focus SMRT’s recovery on dealing with delays and disruptions decisively
SMRT’s efforts to address the tunnel flooding incident are laudable but the company should focus on productive ways to manage future delays and disruptions, says NUS Business School’s Dr Nitin Pangarkar
By Nitin Pangarkar
15 Nov 2017 06:30AM (Updated: 15 Nov 2017 06:40AM)
SINGAPORE: Recently, SMRT has come under criticism for issues ranging from train disruptions late last week leaving commuters angry over the lack of official announcements about the impending delays, to the more serious matter about the falsification of maintenance records by some of its employees that led to the MRT tunnel flooding in early October.
It seems neither commuters nor SMRT staff can catch a break.
While the company’s woes have been analysed from a variety of perspectives, many commentators have focused narrowly on specific issues such as the amnesty offered to staff to come clean and report gaps in processes, and the tunnel flooding incident.
Few have offered constructive suggestions on what SMRT management can do about its more problematic and pervasive challenge of dealing with seemingly more frequent delays and disruptions more decisively.
Having studied the responses of several other organisations such as Johnson and Johnson, BP and Singapore Airlines that have gone through crises, there are some guiding principles that may be instructive for SMRT management, in my opinion.
1. FOCUS ON CONTROLLABLE ASPECTS IN SHORT TERM
One of the first tasks of SMRT management should be to avoid knee-jerk reactions.
It is easy to paint with a broad brush and talk about broken culture. Not only is such talk demoralising for staff but it may also be inaccurate - after all, SMRT has received high praise from global surveys for its operational efficiency and service standards for many years.
SMRT’s internal communications bears repeating the key message that SMRT has a responsibility to provide safe and reliable transportation and any future breaches jeopardising safety or reliability will be dealt with in the strictest manner, with the concerned employees being held accountable.
But a more productive course of action is for SMRT management to determine whether the cheating incident was a localised break in culture or an organisation-wide malaise, and focus their recovery accordingly.
In doing so, the management also needs to make a distinction between factors that are controllable in the short run versus those that can be fixed only in the long run. Ageing equipment can cause breakdowns but that equipment can be replaced or upgraded only in the medium term since the service has to keep operating, posing constraints on quick replacement.
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