LAHORE: The efficiency of travel, transportation and logistics sectors as a whole is one of the poorest in all the industries and this may be because of the lax attitude of operators towards accountability.
The low efficiency causes frequent delays in flights and transportation and delivery of shipments. Leadership of an organisation determines its health through direction, accountability, coordination, control, external orientation, innovation, motivation and values. To shift an organisation towards high performance, the leadership should assess the mindset and behaviors that impact performance and benchmark the existing organisational health with other public and private sector companies. This type of leadership and bench marking is absent in Pakistan.
The major problem in the travel, transport and logistics companies is the absence of accountability of the workers. As service providers the employees of these sectors should have the understanding of what is expected of them by the service seekers. They should possess the power to exercise authority, and take responsibility for delivering results.
Accountability is an important dimension of the organisational health. Companies that do better are those where accountability is better.
In travel, transportation and logistics sectors, the amount of capital involved is very high as it involves not only the movement of people but also goods. The operators in this sector are also service providers in a sense that they transship goods on behalf of the service seeker to ensure that they reach destination in minimum time.
Employees in travel and transportation play a crucial role in reducing costs, ensuring safe delivery, increasing efficiency and retaining the customers by providing them better satisfaction than others.
This is the reason that there is a more need for accountable-employees in this sector. Without accountability, the employees may not be able to stand up to the challenges of attaining customer satisfaction.
The workforce in this sector in Pakistan lacks education, and is accustomed to old inefficient ways. The employees are not explicitly briefed about their specific roles.
Another problem is the comradeship developed among the employees of this sector that reacts sharply to any action taken against an employee in the same way as a formal union does.
The companies in travel, transport and logistics sector should pay attention to better management practices that promote accountability.
The role of each employ should be clearly defined, and whenever possible it should be ensured that the employees are taken onboard.
The performance of travel and transportation companies in Pakistan is slightly better in private sector than the public sector. It is not up to the desired level.
Trains frequently get late and so do the flights of Pakistan International Airlines. There is no guarantee of goods reaching destination anywhere in Pakistan on schedule through goods transport train. Even in the private sector, the passenger trains operated by a private company get frequently late though with less frequency as compared to the trains operated by Railways. Similarly, the private airlines operating in Pakistan are not as punctual as the international airlines.