Delicious Bakery or Challenges and Contingency - Case Study Example

Delicious bakery- challenges and contingency Name Institution Every organization has its share of challenges and hurdles to jump along the way as it conducts its operations (Milgrom & Roberts,1995,p.180). The way the organization deals with these challenges and contingencies is what defines whether the company will succeed or fail. This section of the paper will look at the challenges and contingency that the organization of choice here has gone through and the various effects these have created in the organization. From the previous discussion, Delicious bakery has been optimized and analyzed following some basic levels. These are competition, hierarchy, product differentiation and organization branding. This paper will focus its attention onto a specific challenge and through this challenge, a number of factors will be looked into. These are effects of the challenge, the Outcome brought about by this challenge, the actions taken by the management of the organization o mitigate the effects of the challenge and the opportunities this challenge presents to this organization. Through careful planning and taking the right action at the right time, it will be observed that even a challenge could be reversed and made into an opportunity to change. This is the beauty of dynamism in organizations. It all requires a little courage, some commitment and absolute belief in the process. The challenge faced by Delicious bakery Delicious bakery has undergone a serious upheaval when one of the lead staff decided to quit the organization and took with him key resources with him. The resources that the staff took with him was other skilled staff, immense knowledge of the working of baking as well as an image of the organization. There are various ripple effects that were associated with this challenge as the following paragraphs highlight. Effects of the challenge There are several effects that will be associated with this challenge as discussed in the following sentences. It will be found that most of these effects are related in one way or the other. Low production Perhaps this is the most immediate effect that resulted from the exit of the lead staff and the resources that he carried with him. In such a labor-intensive field, the reliance on the skills of the employees forms almost 80%. Most of the products that are produced in this market rely heavily on the expertise of the personnel. Cake making is hard to do using machinery as the personnel are needed in every stage to ensure that these cakes come out in different varieties, tastes and even color. The use of machinery in the process of mixing the ingredients, forming dough and even cutting will also require the presence of personnel. In the case of a business like Delicious bakery, where they have walk in clients who come to the establishment and eat from there, the use of personnel is very vital as customers must have a direct interaction with the staff as they serve them. Once the staff quit, production went down almost immediately because people who were supposed to bake the cakes and serve the clients were not there anymore. Overworking of remaining staff Adjoined to the first point discussed in the preceding paragraph, the staff who were left in the bakery after the lead staff quit were left with no option but to work extra hard to ensure that the gap left by the others had been filled up. This was done so as to ensure that the production level was still maintained. However, the downside of this is that these employees end up getting over worked and fatigued. Employees in a business when tired do not deliver quality service. They are slow, short tempered and do not take caution to adhere to details. For this reason, the general quality of service declines. In this industry and in such a competitive field of bakery, quality customer service could mean a turning point in making a difference in the volume of sales. Low staff morale When employees are overworked, their morale goes down (Jarillo,1988, p.34). Most times, even if these employees get compensation for working overtime, their psyche to work is reduced and their production cannot be compared to that of other people who work optimally. With the quit of staff, the staff morale hit an all time low. Every person who remained in the business had to work even harder to ensure that the goals of the business were still accomplished. However, most of these people re-evaluated their reasons for working in the organization and most of them were beginning to question themselves wondering whether they too should have followed the other staff and quit. This definitely reduces the morale of the staff greatly. Loss of skills and expertise It is stated in the challenge description that the staff who quit were the lead staff in the bakery. The implication is that the staff who remained in the bakery may not be as qualified. This raises the issue of doubt of their competency. Are they qualified enough to compete with other people in this market? Will they be able to handle the pressure resulting from the departure of the more competent staff? The answer was no. many of these employees found that it was quite a hassle trying to cope with increased pressure as most of them relied on the guidance of the lead staff who quit. If not checked quickly, this could precipitate into the failure of the business venture. Tendency to quit This point is tied to the preceding points. These employees who are left in the company and overworked, low morale and without much expertise, feel too pressurized and most of them just walk away in the footsteps of the others. They feel that they are not duly qualified to be able to handle the kind of pressure associated with the job and the demands of the business by themselves. For this reason, tendencies to quit are quite high. The staff turnover increases immediately. People feel that they can just walk away when they are not in a position to take care of the business demands. Outcomes of the challenge Following the challenge and the effects brought about by the same as has been discussed above, a number of outcomes could be identified. These outcomes can only be bad as they relate very much to the effect of the challenge and from the preceding discussion, the effects have been observed to be mostly negative in nature. The outcomes resulting from these effects have been discussed in the following paragraphs. It should be noted that most of these outcomes relate to organizational changes that result from the challenge. Reorganization of roles As an immediate management decision to fill the gaps create by the departure of the lead staff, roles in the bakery had to be completely reorganized. The reorganization of roles implies that people would have to be trusted to undertake some roles, not because they are duly qualified for the same, but as a form of contingency to prevent the organization form falling apart (Koch, 1996, p. 337). With this in mind, many employees still left at the company found themselves doing jobs that were not in their job description. For instance, a supervisor was mandated to assist in the serving of clients when the bakery became too many and the other staff members were overwhelmed by work. Others found themselves doing multiple works. Lets create a scenario in this: assume that staff A used to do 1, 2,3 tasks in the bakery. Staff B did 4,5 and staff C did 6,7 and 8. Now, staff A, who is among the lead staff left. It is up to staff B and C to cover up for the gap created by the departure of staff A. In this connection, they find that they may share the tasks for staff A. staff B would now be tasked with duties 4, 5 and additional 1 and 2. Staff C would take his original duties 6, 7, 8 and add, task 3 to the profile. Others would get promoted so that they could cover the gaps left by the departure of their managers. Increased competition It is to be assumed that the lead staff who quit the Delicious bakery went forth to establish their own businesses. Moreover, chances are that they go forth to establish businesses that are along the same lines in bakery as the Delicious bakery. The implication is that the competition for the business will go up. It is important to remember that these are the same staff who had contributed largely to make Delicious bakery a success in the past. Now with their exit, they are out to form a competing business. They could form one of the most dominant rivals of the delicious bakery. Redefining marketing strategy Because of the increase in competition resulting from the rivalry, the delicious bakery had to redesign and redefine their marketing strategies. There are a number of reasons that brought about this outcome. These are; the staff who quit were very instrumental in designing the goals and the objectives of the organization when they were working there. This means that they know very well of all the goals of this organization and they also know about the various strategies that the organization had put in place to ensure that these goals were achieved. And now they are rivals. Chances would be that they would use this knowledge they have to ensure that they achieve a competitive advantage over the Delicious bakery. Therefore, this becomes one of the major reasons as to why the organization should redefine its strategies and reinvent new ways of making sure that they achieve their goals despite this challenge. Organizational hierarchy disturbed The redefinition of the roles following the exit of the lead staff will only lead into the disturbing of the organizational hierarchy. In every organization, there is a very clear set up of how things should be run, who should do what, who reports to who and with the reorganization, this hierarchy is disturbed (Grunberg et al 2008, p. 217). To bring sanity to this hierarchy again may take some time and the organization would take quite some time before going back to the original position it was in before the staff quit. Culture intolerance Many organizations have it in their policy to have the policy of culture tolerance. Cultural tolerance is important in ensuring the growth of a business. People should be able to work together irrespective of their color, race, creed or cultural inclinations (Parker, 2000, p.2). People need to be able to work with their employees for the attainment of the organizational goals. After staff quit, it became hard for these employees to work together because of increased pressure. People were short tempered and they were not able to offer tolerance to the cultural inclinations of their colleagues. The tolerance reduces drastically and this could prove to be very hazardous to the meeting of the goals and objectives of the organization. There are two levels of culture tolerance, or for the purposes of this particular case, cultural intolerance. These are explicit as well as implicit cultural levels. The explicit culture intolerance shows the outward intolerance that people have over others based on the way these people behave, talk, dress or go about their private affairs. The implicit level of culture shows the inward and underlying beliefs and values that people have pertaining to the way they perceive other people. If people cannot tolerate the uniqueness of the culture of their colleagues, then it becomes almost impossible to work together. Moreover, if people cannot be able to work together, they are definitely not going to be able to fulfill the dreams and goals of the organization. Mitigation actions The above discussion has shown the underside of the challenge that was the quit of lead staff from the Delicious bakery. The effects of the challenge have been discussed as well as the outcomes that result from these effects. This raises another avenue of discussion; what can be done to mitigate this? What are the contingency plans that could be applied here to mitigate these effects and change the outcome of the challenge for the better? This is discussed in the following paragraphs. Enhancing channels of communication Communication or lack of rather, could be one of the major reasons that led to the lead staff quitting. Communication is a very important concept in many organizations. Without any forms of communication or the communication breakdown, companies could collapse (Beneria, 2013, p.12). Communication on a vertical level scale is very important. If there is a communication breakdown here, chances are that the employees would not be able to interact with each other and with the management. The first step would be to enhance these channels and ensure that there is a smooth flow of communication both on a vertical scale as well as on a horizontal scale so that everybody would work towards the fulfillment of the organization’s goals and objectives. Complaint handling amongst employees Every organization is faced by clients who have for one reason or the other, the need to complain about something they feel they are not comfortable within the organization (Morgan & Spicer, 2009, p.3). In this case, the customers are internal. The internal customer should be treated with equal importance as the external customer. Complaints among employees in the bakery should be handled with utmost urgency, pragmatism and professionalism. Managers should be able to listen to both sides before they make a certain decision. This could make the difference between the way these employees relate and it could save the future of the company. Employee participation in decision making The fact that an organization creates goals and objectives and wishes to have these goals fulfilled on a team work basis, it’s only fair that they engage the employees in the process of decision making. Engaging the employees in creation of goals and objectives of the organization makes them feel appreciated and they are enthusiastic in bringing these goals to fulfillment. They feel that they are part of the process, so they go ahead and own the process and work hard towards the overall fulfillment of the objective. This could prevent many of them from leaving the organization as they feel that their own individual contribution is very much appreciated. Good remuneration One aspect that makes employee want to leave an organization is because they feel discontent about the kind of pay they receive versus the kind of work they do. In view of this, people feel the need to go out and seek greener pastures and this results into employee turnover. For this bakery, the only best thing for it to do is to ensure that they give their employees a good remuneration and a good working condition. People will feel motivated to work when the company they work for gives them a good remuneration by the standards of the industry. Good pay encourages people to worker harder and better and it also raises the image of the company. Raise staff morale Most staff leave an organization to go and work in another place mainly because of many reasons but the main one would be the loss of morale. Morale loss could be brought about by many factors leading to dissatisfaction and turnover. It is important to raise the morale of the employees as this will ensure that they work towards fulfillment of their goals. This could be done in a number of ways including good pay, creation of avenue for career development and conducting team building activities Opportunities presented by this challenge Sometimes opportunities come in the disguise of challenges and it is up to the management of the organization to be able to look on the positive side and bring out the best in a certain challenge. In this paper, the challenge of staff quitting has been observed from the discussion as being disturbing but at the same time, these challenges could be rounded to become a good factor for the organization. This could lead into creation of opportunities as this section analyses. Product differentiation Delicious bakery will recognize that with the lead staff quitting, they would need to offer products that are unique to the market so that they could maintain their competitive advantage. Differentiating products implies that the bakery will be able to offer something extra to the market and this shows that they will have fighting chance. Illumination onto the strengths and weaknesses of the business When the lead staff quit, the management of the company is given the chance, albeit involuntarily, to sit down and take a look into the structures of the organization and point out the areas of their strengths as well as their weak ones. This will give them a chance to develop their strengths better and work on their weak areas. The result will be a more solid organizational structure that adopts a culture that promotes professionalism and hard work. Enhance capacity of the other employees The employees who remained in the bakery show that they had some level of loyalty to the business. for this reason, the desert of the others only gives the management of the bakery the chance to enhance the capacity and growth of these employees. This will make the employees feel more appreciated and with career paths that have the capacity to grow. This will enable them to work harder to achieve the lost ground and fulfill the goals of the bakery. Increase and expansion into new product lines Apart from differentiation of products so that they could keep the clientele, the bakery is presented with an opportunity to expand into other forms of product lines. The basic one would be the inclusion of delivery services to the clients at no extra costs. People will appreciate this additional customer services and they will remain loyal to the establishment. Enhancement of customer service As mentioned in the introductory part of this discussion, the bakery operates in an environment whose survival is reliant on customer service as much as they rely on customer service. To be able to maintain the clientele, the customer service must be upgraded. And with staff quitting, it is only better to enhance the volumes and quality of customer service the bakery gives their clients so that these clients could feel even more appreciated. 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