Executive Summary
This report is based on Burger Emperor, a gourmet burger restaurant that established in Melbourne 5 years ago, known for their fresh ingredients, updated menus and high quality of customer service. The owners of Burger Emperor were Jack and Jill Ski who focused on collaboration and motivation in the organization and they made Burger Emperor successful. Donjacks, which is one of the best fast food companies offered the owners of Burger Emperor a good price to take over their company. Donjacks took over Burger Emperor and promised the staffs of Burger Emperor that they will not change anything within 6 months. Matthew Gummer was appointed as the Chief Advisor to monitor Burger Emperor’s performance. However, after six months, Matthew was leading Burger Emperor towards the direction of low cost and increases profits by following the steps of Donjacks. The menu, kitchen equipment, training programs and staffs, everything had changed. Jason Roche, Burger Emperor’s restaurant manager who had previously worked there noticed the changes and he was unhappy with it.
Burger Emperor is failing where the sales decreases, customers complain, high rate of staff turnover and workplace accidents increases. The assumption made is that Donjacks and Burger Emperor are both successful companies initially, but when Donjacks tried to lead Burger Emperor to a different direction, Burger Emperor is failing due to a few problems which are the ineffective implementation of scientific management principle, improper managerial actions taken and improper application of goal setting theory. Donjacks’ CEO realized the failure and he took actions.
The purpose of this report is to identify the problems faced by Burger Emperor and to make recommendations which are supported by theories. The recommendations for Burger Emperor are feedforward control reintroducing food preparation process and Herzberg’s theory of providing intrinsic factors.
1.0 Problem Identification and Analysis
1.1 Ineffective Implementation of Scientific Management Principles
The major problem of Burger Emperor is the ineffective implementation of scientific management principles. There are 4 principles of scientific management and only two of them will be focussed.
The second principle is to scientifically select workers with skills and abilities that match each job and train them in the most efficient ways to accomplish tasks (Taylor, 1964). Kai-Ping, Jane, Sheng Chung, and Mei-Jug, (2013) supported Taylor’s principle by stated that a successful organization depends on their selection of staffs. Burger Emperor chose the low cost, inexperienced university students with busy schedule. Burger Emperor showed a poor selection of staff where the staffs often could not follow the shifts allocated, the restaurant could not operate well. Taylor (1964) suggested company should focus on training employees instead of letting them figuring their own way supporting his own third principle. The in-store training programs of Burger Emperor were cancelled and they were replaced by the online training program. Workers were assumed that they were not well-trained as they did not perform well during peak period and the staffs’ services were complained by the customers. The customers were unhappy as they need to wait for a long queue during peak hours. Burger Emperor lose its reputation where it used to receive the best customer service awards but their services quality decreases, customer’s lost confidence on Burger Emperor and turned against them.
The third principle is ensuring cooperation through incentives, and provide the work environment that reinforces optimal work results in a scientific manner (Taylor & Kai-Ping et al., 1964 & 2013). Blake and Moseley (2010) supported Taylor’s principle saying that only monetary incentives motivate workers. Nandanwar, Surnis and Nandanwar (2010) argued that non-monetary incentives also produced a positive and satisfying results. Burger Emperor was acting contradictory to the principles by not providing non-monetary incentives and reduced monetary incentives. Burger Emperor which previously offered monetary incentives performed better as compared to when it reduced, this supported Blake’s statement where monetary incentives increase staffs’ productivity. Besides, the theft, workplace accident and violence issues were occurring frequently in store. This shows that Burger Emperor providing an insecure environment for the workers . The productivity of workers fall leads to the profit of the company fall.
1.2 Improper Managerial Actions Taken
One of the major problems faced by Burger Emperor is the improper managerial actions taken. There are are 3 steps of controlling and only the last steps will be focussed in this report (Nowosielski, 2014).
Nowosielski, (2014) suggested the first step is performance measurement, second step is where the managers compare performance with standards and the third step is taking managerial actions. Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulter (2015) furthered evaluated that the third step is where managers take actions by correcting performance, not doing anything or analysing the standard. Zecheru (2014) stated managers should apply corrective measures when the standard is not being achieved or something extraordinary occurs. The manager chose to not doing anything after a customer complaint to him that there was a cockroach in the food, the manager showed no response and being rude to him. This was clearly out of standard because Australia Food Safety Standard , Chapter 3 (2017) stated the food are not allowed to contain any pest as it’s considered illegal.
Burger Emperor ignored the issue where the theft cases in the restaurant became more serious where the staff’s personal items were constantly being stolen. Burger Emperor needs to eliminate these unwanted risks by taking corrective actions but they were doing nothing. Corrective action is the actions taken to eliminate the reoccurrence of an uncertainty situation, risk or unwanted effects (Zecheru ,2014). Mullakhmetov, (2015) argued that different situation required different actions taken by the managers. Burger Emperor did not take corrective actions respectively to any of the incidents mentioned above. The customers were complaining on the quality of food and tend to walk away from Burger Emperor which caused the decrease in sales. This proved that the managers were taking the wrong actions because this was not what they want it to happen, rather this was not the expected performance.
1.3 Ineffective Application of Goal Setting Theory
One of the major problems of Burger Emperor is the ineffective application of goal setting theory.
Goals setting ensures the right direction for the staffs and leads to effective management decisions and actions by forming standard against actual performance (Locke and Latham, 2002). Martin, McNally, and Taggar, (2016) furthered evaluate that it is difficult for Burger Emperor’s staffs to self-evaluate if their goals set by the managers are unclear, this will decrease the work efficiency. This comes up with the assumption where the only goal that the staffs knew was “low costs, increase profit” which was not a practical and clear goal for the first-line management team (Martin et al. ,2016). It affects the management decision of Burger Emperor and company’s performance.
Burger Emperor did not have consistent goals; the initial goal was all about customer satisfaction and job satisfaction of staffs. However, Burger Emperor’s goals was changed after Donjacks took over, the goal was low cost and to increase profit. The goals were contradicting between each other that confused the staffs and managers, goals must be consistent to ensure a positive outcome (Locke and Latham, 2002).
2.0 Statement of Key Problems
The major problems faced by Burger Emperor are:
2.1 Ineffective Implementation of Scientific Management Principle
2.2 Improper Managerial Actions Taken
These problems are chosen and need to be solved as soon as possible due to a few reasons. Scientific Management Principle enables a company to work more efficiently and effectively to achieve a company’s goals. The ineffective implementation of scientific management theory will cause Burger Emperor to not reach its targeted goals. The improper managerial actions taken by Burger Emperor causing the problems that occur could not be solved as the actions taken was incorrect. The number of problems will increase if this is not solved immediately.
3.0 Generation and Evaluation of a Range of Alternative Solutions
3.1 Improper Implementation of Scientific Management
3.1.1 Hiring the right staff
The applicants must fill in a form with their background details, working experience and time available. The managers must interview the future applicants of Burger Emperor by confirming the details filled in are true to hire them. This solution is further evaluated that it could enable Burger Emperor to choose staffs beforehand to determine if they are suitable for the roles available and produce the optimal result by having the right staff for the right roles. Besides, Burger Emperor could avoid the risk of theft issues or workplace accidents as the background of the staffs are well-identified that they are free of criminal records. However, it is a highly difficult task for the managers as they must go through every single applicant in detail to produce effective results.
3.1.2 Election of Best Crew of the Month internally
The manager will supervise the staff’s performance every week to justify their performance according to their customer service quality and performance during peak hours to select one of the best staffs at the end of the month. The staff who performs the best will be awarded as best crew of the month in each store, their names and pictures will be on the board of each store at the end of each month, if their names appear more than 5 times a year they will receive a certificate and they have higher chance to be promoted. This is further evaluated that the staff will be motivated to complete their task efficiently and effectively to achieve the award and getting a higher position with higher pay. However, too much of attention on this award will leads to competition and rivalry between the staffs which ruin the relationship and cooperation between them and decreases the productivity. This solution is to provide incentives among staffs.
3.2 Improper Actions taken by Manager
3.2.1 Daily Check List for Food Management
The managers are given a list consists of the requirements which are to make sure the humidity of kitchen area, the food is placed in the cool room, the temperature of the cool room is suitable for the ingredients, and the kitchen equipment are cleaned regularly. The managers have to check it every morning before store opens, during afternoon and at night before the peak period to ensure the food and kitchen is in good condition. This solution is further evaluated where the food and kitchen condition is always under control as the managers can immediately take actions if he finds out that the food is expired or there is pests in the kitchen as the managers check the list 3 times a day. However, the risk of this solution is that it required high discipline and responsibility of the managers, where they are not allowed to slack off.
3.2.2 Installation of Surveillance Camera
Burger Emperor should install the surveillance camera near the cash register and the place where staffs put their personal items as these two places are the place where stealing issues frequently occur in Burger Emperor. The installation of surveillance camera will prevent the theft issues to happen again even if it does the managers would be able to identify the theft through the camera and at least take actions against them. This will also enable the managers to easily monitor the restaurant’s situation through the cameras and actions immediately when something extraordinary occurs. However, this might cause pressure among the staffs as they feel like being under surveillance all the time and they will feel uncomfortable under that environment. It will also cost Burger Emperor a huge amount of money as they have a total of 10 stores across Australia.
3.2.3 Reintroducing Food Preparation Process
All the staffs and managers learn through the food preparation process from preparing until the last step which is serving it to the customers where they are taught by the more experienced staff in Burger Emperor that they had previously made high quality burgers with no customer’s complaints. The staffs and managers are taught on how to ensure the freshness of the food, how to check if the food is spoilt and they should inform the head office if they find pests in the kitchen area and eliminate all the affected ingredients. The staffs and managers are required to keep in mind all the steps after they learnt to be applied in the workplace daily. When there’s no error in the food preparation process, the food served will be high quality and there will be no food safety issue that will happen again. However, Burger Emperor must recruit back the old staffs that have already work for years to ensure this solution works effectively. All the staffs and managers must stay back after the shops close once every week as this could be done more effectively with no customers in store.
4.0 Recommendation
4.1 Herzberg’s theory on intrinsic factors
Election of Best Crew of the Month is recommended because this is a form of motivation that maximizes productivity of staffs with low costs. Taylor’s Scientific Management Third Principle stated the incentives provided for the staff is to motivate them and produce optimal results in the organization. This could be further explained by Herzberg’s theory where intrinsic factors are motivators that motivate people to be productive. (Herzberg, Mausner & Snyderman, 1959). Election of Best Crew of the Month is a motivator where it boosts the staffs’ self-esteem, achievement and growth with organization (Rahim and Daud,2013). Nandanwar et al. (2010) stated that non-monetary rewards positively associate with employee’s motivation supporting this solution where Burger Emperor must set up a ‘Best Crew of the Month’ board in store where the best crew’s name and picture will be placed on the board. The best crew is identified and justified by the managers throughout the month on the customer service standard and their performance during peak periods. The board will be hanging in each store. A thanks-giving ceremony will be held annually where the staffs who maintain on the board more than 5 times will receive a certificate and they have high chance to be promoted. This is related to the Taylor’s third principle as the purpose of providing incentives is to motivate staffs and produce optimal result.
4.2 Feedforward control of reintroducing food preparation process
Food preparation process need to be focused by Burger Emperor and this is the recommended solution. The food preparation process is the input variable that affects the output, food to be served to the customers, if the input variable is monitored zero upset output will be produced (Nandong,2015). Burger Emperor’s staffs must be taught the food preparation process again. The staffs will be taught by the old staffs on how to remain the freshness of food, what actions to be taken where there is a pest in the food to ensure high quality, zero error food being served. The key to feedforward controls is taking managerial action before a problem occurs where managers to prevent problems, rather than having to correct them later after the damage (Robbins et al., 2015). The food is prepared and checked beforehand before it is served to the customers. This is also a form of corrective actions taken by Burger Emperor where it corrects the problem by preventing it to happen again. Thus, it increases the quality and standard of the food.