Organisation: Transport Sydney Trains
Job Title: Stations Customer Manager
Word Limit: 4000 character max pp
Strong leadership and influencing skills
As demonstrated by my career history, I have an extensive leadership background managing multiple teams of varying skill sets and responsibilities in business operational delivery. In my current position in Station Management with Sydney Trains, this experience confirms my ability to manage others in environments such as large-scale events and venues. Along with possessing communication and interpersonal skills, I engage others with influence, build, and maintain relationships with stakeholders. These skills have been developed throughout my career achievement, spanning twenty years. I have proven leadership ability across a wide scope of managerial accountabilities. During which, I have specialised in frontline and strategic functions of dynamic and complex customer-based operational environments with large geographically dispersed teams.
Possessing a resilient character and commitment to delivery of high-quality customer service, is best confirmed throughout my tenure as a manager of high-profile public spaces that throughout the day, have thousands of customers in attendance. Success in my position as Operations Manager for Century Venues required a keen eye for detail and my dedication to risk management and safety. Under my direction in this position, I achieved a significant reduction in incident rates by abiding by operational standards and processes. Additionally, under my leadership I was able to positively influence techniques that delivered good results.
My leadership skills are verified by my strong belief in influencing by example and building trust and mutual respect within my teams. Maintaining a strong commitment to organisational codes of conduct and values, I have promoted and role modelled behaviour consistent with these standards to inspire and engage my colleagues. Initiative, versatility, professionalism and ethical conduct are vital in my career success to date. As a collaborative team member, I work in a professional manner at all times to uphold the ethics and code of conduct with all stakeholders, team members and members of the community to meet organisational objectives.
Throughout my career with Sydney Trains as Level 3 Station Duty Manager, I exhibit personal standards of integrity, initiative, sound judgement and flexibility, as well as displaying my ability to represent a personal standard of influence within the team. I am wholly committed to role modelling the fair and equitable treatment of both staff and stakeholders, so that the integrity of Sydney Trains is upheld. By doing so, my workplace remains a safe environment that stimulates optimum output.
Of most recent mention, within my current employment at Sydney Trains, it was identified that I had the potential as a future leader. Senior management was committed to a development program, which included invitations to act as Station Customer Manager and attending management group planning days. Following my invitation to attend this planning day exposed me to the complexities of management roles within Sydney Trains, and it confirmed that I did indeed possess the essential skills to be positive addition in driving a supportive environment with quality results in customer service from my teams.
Within my career history, I have ensured a practice of open communication, leading by example and effectively providing honest and constructive feedback to promote a productive and satisfied team. I have done this through proactive management and identifying and driving cultural change that with over 50 security operatives, during my term with Century Venues. I manifested these attributes across multiple venues, including with external contractors from enforcement such as bouncers. Utilising my leadership and influencing skills ensured the business adapted to a changing market, one demanding customer satisfaction, repeat business and a customer-service focus.
Proven management capability
Delivering a strong commitment to clearly and influentially articulate a vision, I encourage and support others while building valued and trusting relationships with them, which is validated within my career history. Possessing the ability to plan and organise myself and others, I ensure the completion of tasks and manage and support others to succeed in their roles. Team success is built on not only commitment shown by members but also my ability to apply process and procedure in achieving compliance. Shown in my previous positions is the capacity to comprehend issues surrounding sustainability in resource use.
Within previous management positions, I have demonstrated a high record of driving performance and productivity through the ability to think strategically, engage and influence, manage performance and innovative development frameworks. Within my tenure as Operations Manager at Century Venues, I manifested proven leadership and human resource capabilities in a wide range of positions and industry sectors. Under my direction, I recruited teams that ranged from 10 to 50 staff over multiple sites. For these consistent high-performing teams, I received praise and acknowledgement of my management capabilities. In my position as Operations Manager, I was accountable under multiple regulatory licences. Therefore, active monitoring of capabilities within my team and of myself was regularly performed to ensure compliance, confidence and safe work practice, which was critical to business obligations.
Showing a commitment to building a positive team by promoting collective achievement and contributions, I promote the development and achievement of group objectives by supporting a respectful culture. To achieve this requires actively listening to and seeking out opinions and ideas from others for a collaborative and positive team. Proven ability to manage, supervise and provide leadership to various team sizes, I have demonstrated a capacity to provide leadership to the development and implementation of strategies to successfully deal with contemporary issues. Displaying sound business acumen, my experience encompasses incorporating financial and budget management, including full profit and loss responsibility. I perform these tasks for multiple business units in preparing operating expenses, procurement and the reporting of operational performance to monthly executive meetings, which are required under my accountabilities in management positions.
Confirmed during my tenure as Operations Manager of Century Venues, I held full financial accountability for four mid-sized entertainment venues and the operational budget for a number of large events, one was The Sydney Comedy and Sound Waves music Festival, which exceeded two million dollars in cash revenue from food and beverages sales over a two-day period. A key achievement in this position that demonstrates my management capability was successfully planning and steering cultural change from enforcement to a customer-centric focused model for security teams in high-risk environments. This was carried out whilst protecting multiple high-volume revenue streams, the safety of customers and strict adherence to regulatory compliance.
As an accomplished team leader, I have a proven record of accomplishment in people and business management in a variety of settings and an exhibited commitment to excellence through application of continuous quality improvement, innovation and best practice principles. I am a people and task-oriented individual with the ability to build strong relationships with both my clients and colleagues. Additionally, I display strong vision to achieve successful outcomes for clients and colleagues. This vision has included successful corporate strategy sessions and innovative ideas. These unique capabilities would be a major asset to a company seeking to increase turnover and client satisfaction.
Proven ability to drive and deliver business transformation and culture change in a highly unionised environment
With a proven ability to regulate my own behaviour, I thoroughly comprehend organisational structure and culture while acting appropriately in the execution of duties. This has seen my accomplishment in building trusting relationships to drive and deliver business and cultural changes. Considered by peers and management alike as a change champion, I have managed the success of driving innovation through knowledge and embracement of technology advances. By way of sound research and business plan developments, I have stimulated commercial efficiency and business transformations in unionised environments. Possessing an ability to show capability with negotiation, I proactively identify various potential outcomes and consequences, in turn present persuasive arguments and win concessions, whilst maintaining solid business relationships.
Having the opportunity to demonstrate my capabilities at supporting the strategic direction of my employer, I present as a person with proactive leadership qualities. I have demonstrated the support of transformational change during my tenure with Sydney Trains, often with a challenging range of stakeholders. Confronting resistance from long-term staff and peers, I have drawn on my commitment and influential methodology to achieve a ‘Station of the Month’ award within my first three months of employment at Hurstville station. This key achievement with Sydney Trains was recognised by Howard Collins and received special mention at the ‘SDM Leadership Forum’ by previous Customer Service General Manager Liz Ward.
Throughout my working career, I have endeavoured to support the purpose and strategic direction of employers. The best example of my ability to drive business transformation was in my role as Operations Manager for Century Venues. During this, my position involved being responsible for close to 100 security operatives across multiple locations. There was a requirement to drive a cultural change within security operations from a pre-existing enforcement style to a customer satisfaction model. Achievement was obtained through my dedication of strategic planning, proactive leadership and performance management.
Another key example of supporting business transformation is currently within Sydney Trains. In an atmosphere that is fear-driven, it is critical to work with teams providing transparency of the drivers promoting change. To accomplish the business objective that will create positive public perception whilst protecting both revenue and customer safety, I took the initiative and proactive approach to the strategic direction of customer experience not enforcement. This required education of staff on the changing marketing drivers on customer satisfaction. After analysing information from multiple sources and identifying risks, I delivered my recommendations to the Managing Director that included significant change within both human resource and financial forecasting. By actively promoting vision to staff in a clear and concise manner with influential language, I was able to foster achievable goals and expectations, encouraging a ‘One Team’ value across multiple sites and stakeholders.
At the heart of business transformation, I have supported in my career to date, the desire to promote services that meet the needs of service users while increasing efficiency. A central element of the service and culture transformation success is leadership maturity, to which is at the forefront of my professional approach. Personally, supporting both a unionised and non-unionised work environment, I acquire results such as, transformative changes in organisation, services, culture and relationships, and social expectations regarding the quality of service delivery, openness, accountability and opportunities for participation.
Demonstrated experience in driving customer service improvement initiatives
Having undertaken training in specialist customer service has encouraged my leadership style and as a customer-service specialist for over 20 years, I have led both small and large teams to exceed customer expectations, generate ongoing business and create positive experiences. I display a commitment to quality client service and valuing, the supplying of accurate and timely information, which has seen my success in relating to people from diverse backgrounds.
Over the course of my working life, I have sought to build great customer service skills. In a number of my positions, I have been trusted with the opportunity to undertake training in customer relations and conflict resolution, thriving with the opportunity to learn more. I am happiest when I am dealing with customers and I am confident that I can handle any situation that arises.
Whilst working at Century Venues in an Operations Manager position, I created and drove numerous strategies that significantly improved the service provided to customers. These improvements were bought about through understanding customer needs, creating a customer-centric culture, inspiring, and enabling my teams to deliver the business vision. These initiatives have encompassed service delivery of frontline staff in operational environments, embracing technology to improve efficiency and the changing of operating hours to better suit customers.
Joining Sydney Trains over two years ago as one of the first external Level 3 Station Duty Managers, I gained invaluable understanding of our customers and staff, including the wide scope of challenges they experience delivering the key IV performance indicators of Customer Service, Customer Information and Cleanliness. It is this understanding combined with my experience that provides me with a unique foundation to significantly contribute to strategic and business planning activities and the design and implementation of a range of programs targeted at improvement. I have embraced the recent introduction of ‘The Customer Service Model’ and Performance Management processes, both formal and informal, and for this reason as recently as July 2015, my ability was recognised with the opportunity to act in a Stations Customer Manager role.
All positions I have held within my career, have focused on listening and understanding others and adapting language and communication skills to suit certain situations. I am able to adapt to a wide range of requests from different people. As an Operations Manager with Century Venues, I was regularly exposed to aggressive customers, people with disabilities and diverse cultural backgrounds. I approached these customers with concern and empathy and always attempted to provide concise and easy-to-understand information, in line with policy decisions and rulings. This skill was acknowledged by management and was key to my success within in this role. My ability to listen, understand and adapt to an audience can be validated by my extensive work history in customer-focused positions.
Possessing the knowledge from my career, I understand that business success depends entirely on customer satisfaction. Part of operating efficiently is working together as a team, whether that is real teams or just a sense of teamwork that encourages people to strive toward excellence. The core values that I promoted during my tenure of Operations Manager at Century Venues, is that if you can satisfy the needs of your prospects, they will become customers that will lead to revenue improvement. Also, if you satisfy the needs of your existing customers, they will continue to purchase your products and services, thus sustaining your revenues. Finally, I emphasised that you must be able to operate efficiently so that the revenues generated are greater than your costs of doing business. This understanding has seen recognition and promotion throughout my career.
Proven problem solving ability, and business acumen
Displaying confidence and competent analytical thinking skills, I have a proven ability to work within complex frameworks. This has developed strong business acumen that I pride myself on. In all of my positions within my career to date, I have shown capability to not only analyse but also prioritise elevated levels of information and convert objectives into actions. Possessing the aptitude to prioritise problems and gather the right information to analyse, has resulted in the recognition of identifying symptoms and causes to reach best conclusions for all parties affected.
For over 10 years I project managed small and large-scale events within the public arena. I possess in-depth knowledge of up-to-date policy, particularly in relation to sponsorships. Demonstrating sharp business awareness and experience, I am able to incorporate financial and budget management, including full profit and loss responsibility for multiple business units, preparation of operating expenses, procurement and the reporting of operational performance to monthly executive meetings. It was during my tenure as Operations Manager of Century Venues, where I held full financial accountability for four mid-sized entertainment venues and the operational budget for a number of large events such as, The Sydney Comedy and Sound Waves music Festival, which exceeded two million dollars in cash revenue from food and beverages sales over a two-day period.
Demonstrated within the Operations Manager role at Century Venues, I manifested ability to deliver on the creation of contracts and specific instructions regarding acceptable performance actions for compliance, in line with the governing regulations, and incident reports for management and insurance purposes. Confirmation of my capabilities to engage with a wide range of stakeholders to influence and develop relationships, has been demonstrated by my experience, spanning more than 20 years in frontline management, customer service, senior coordinator, team leadership and emergency service roles. These abilities are highlighted by my recent opportunity to act in the Stations Customer Manager role with Sydney Trains.
It was during my time within Ambulance Service of New South Wales as a Control Centre Officer, that provided me with not only keen problem solving skills but also emphasised the importance of making key decisions in high-pressure environments with critical time constraints. A key achievement whilst performing my responsibilities within this position was the successful deployment, backfilling and management of more than 100 Ambulance and Police resources in the rescue of a collapsing crane. This was a critical high-risk situation that drew on my ability to remain calm and work within multiple contracts to problem solve a high-demand situation.
Resilient and achievement orientated, I possess the ability to remain calm and objective when working under pressure. It is essential in my business behaviour to maintain confidentiality and be professional when solving difficult problems. Demonstration of my commitment to undertaking routine problem solving and troubleshooting activities on a regular basis is consistently shown during my tenure with Sydney Trains. Possessing a keen eye for detail, I understand how processes work, how to quickly and efficiently resolve problems through process analysis and systematic thinking. I always endeavour to find and implement a resolution that is beneficial to both the organisation and stakeholders involved. As can be verified throughout my career, it has been my responsibility to understand culture and its impact on organisational policies and processes. This is essential when providing innovative solutions to complex problems.
Proven ability to hold direct reports to account for performance and coach direct reports to build a culture of accountability and success
Throughout my career, I have assumed a high level of responsibility that has demanded exceptional communication skills, and superior supervision of staff and management. My experience has shown that to best build a culture of success, all team members, both up and down the ladder, need to be accountable on measureable performance. Measures that I have proven successful in my previous management roles have been to organise and facilitate staff training and meetings, providing accessible current safety and operational manuals to keep staff educated regarding company policies and procedures, together with safe work practices.
Most recently, it was through the introduction of key performance indicators (KPIs) and milestones, that I developed the framework that effectively steered a cultural change by identifying ‘knowledge gaps’ of specific business units, individuals and/or locations. By supporting staff during this challenging transition and providing innovative development opportunities such as, one-on-one coaching, training and mentoring programs, I achieved the cooperation and involvement of the majority of staff who ultimately drove the culture change success.
Possessing the ability to recognise the different working styles of individuals has allowed me the successful management of performance and best practice approach to coaching and mentoring staff. Demonstrating myself to be an active team member and leader, I have been instrumental in contributing to exceptional teams working with a track history of cultivating relationships and removing obstacles to build trust and generate and enhance productivity, achieving improved workplace communication and team relationships. My ability to build and sustain effective work relationships, is clearly demonstrated during my employment at Century Venues as Operations Manager. During this 10-year period, I managed, mentored, led and supervised a team of over 100 staff, by being involved in the daily operating schedule of the business, the development of effective staff communication procedures, and overseeing teamwork and productivity.
By fostering an atmosphere that was free of blame, I encouraged people to speak in a culture of open communication. The results of this, was the achievement of a culture that welcomed accountability and success. With recent introductions of performance management processes at Sydney Trains, I have, as the Station Duty Manager, embraced this culture change to accountability and utilised my current management to conduct attendance management meetings with the responsibility of managing any areas of development.
As a proactive leader, staff champion and peer coach, I maximise every opportunity to mentor station staff, many of which are long-term employees. Possessing extensive experience, I introduce new methods of communication and interaction skills, which will influence customers, reduce conflict escalation and improve customer satisfaction levels. Passionate in driving the ‘One Team’ approach, I lead a culture of change within Sydney Trains to influence transport officers to improve performance standards in order to deliver business objectives.
As an experienced manager, I understand that the development of staff is imperative in the retention of professionals, ensuring all staff receive appropriate training and support in their tasks in line with service and professional development planning. In my role as Operations Manager with Century Venues, I was responsible for developing and conducting training programs for a cross-section of skilled staff across the business, including administrative and reception personnel, security officers and event staff. Whilst involved in staff orientation and induction, I carefully define the requirements of the staff member’s position, providing clear direction, setting and recording goals and milestones and identifying training requirements.
Demonstrated communication and interpersonal skills to engage with, influence and build and maintain relationships with stakeholders
Currently, as one of the few external candidates to enter Sydney Trains at a Station Duty Manager level, I successfully adapted the way I communicated to influence staff behaviour and build productive relationships with teams. With a workforce that is concerned about job security during an arduous reform process and staffing reviews by ability to engage, I influence and build lasting relationships have been an essential and continuous part of my position.
It was early in my 20-year career whilst working directly for the executives of Drake International and LJ Hooker, I was provided the opportunity to formally develop in areas of communication and influence without direct authority. Other development topics provided me with high-profile mentors and tools for success. Throughout my career, I have used effective communication and interpersonal skills to influence and build relationships in both my personal and professional achievements.
From a combination of my natural ability and the skills obtained from these development opportunities, I have successfully engaged with hundreds of clients providing finance and real estate advice. In doing so, I obtained over $100,000 in sponsorship and marketing investment, steered community-based committees to obtain broadcasting licenses and sourced clients for my public safety consultancy business. Demonstrating this ability across a wide scope of roles in both the public and private sectors, are in my past and present roles as Operations Manager Century Venues, Station Duty Manager with Sydney Trains and Triple Zero Officer with the Ambulance Service of NSW.
As Operations Manager for Century Venues, I managed multiple venues and festivals attracting over 1,000,000,000 customers each year. As the first line of contact for the business, I actively engaged and developed relationships with potential hirers, artist management and providers of both services and products. These were drawn from all sections of the community, cultural backgrounds and included high-profile artists, community groups, media organisations and multinational companies seeking exposure into the Australian market
Having the ability to engage with a wide range of stakeholders, I am able to influence and develop productive relationships. This is demonstrated by my more than 20 years of experience in frontline management, customer service, senior coordinator, team leadership and emergency service roles highlighted by my recent opportunity to act in the Stations Customer Manager role with Sydney Trains. In my current role as a Level 3 Station Duty Manager for Sydney Trains, I use these skills influencing staff behaviour and building mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders. For example, when working at Hurstville Station I engage effectively with customers, who are predominantly of a non-English speaking background, communicate with station staff, line managers and emergency services. I also work cooperatively with the Centre Management of the retail precinct of the station.
In my venue management roles at Roadhouse and Century Venues, I was the first line of contact for the businesses and actively engaged and developed relationships with potential hirers and their performers and crews. In these roles, I wrote contracts and specific instructions regarding acceptable performance actions for compliance with the governing regulations, and incident reports for management and insurance purposes.
Answering 000 emergency calls for the Ambulance Service of NSW, daily tested my communication skills since usually they were highly stressful and emotional occasions. There I was required to engage with and build an immediate relationship, and influence the caller to accurately obtain the needed information to confirm the location, in order to protect the safety of responding paramedics and activate the level of response required to provide the necessary care.
