Coffee City Ltd - Increasing the Number and Quality of Applicants - Case Study Example

Coffee City Case Study Name Institution Course Date Introduction Coffee City Ltd is a chain of restaurants with 42 outlets both in town as well as across the cities of Midlands and South East UK. Its huge success has been greatly attributed by its unique range of coffees and teas as well as the top quality cakes that have been created and endorsed by a celebrity chef who at the same time owns stake in the company. On the other hand, the company has been facing a number of challenges such as the lack of a recruitment process. This issue might cause under development and an eventual failure of the company because the time that is put in assessing the capability of a good fit to a role is immensely reduced. This eventually results to a reduction in productivity of the employees since they need even more time to build their skills (Shafique, 2012). Furthermore, due to the higher rate of labour turnover compared to industry average within the company, the company faces a lot of desperation to fill in employee gaps which leads to recruitment of employees who may not fit the job description. This may result to a drop in performance of the company as well as low employee retention since they may not fit into the job assigned to them. In addition, with regard to their managerial positions, the company faces a lot of problems getting a proper replacement to their own managers. This comes as a huge problem since they may experience a number of incidences where there is no manager overseeing the employees (Shafique, 2012). Therefore, during this time, the company might experience losses as well as poor performance since there is a lack of a sense in terms of assignment of duties. In addition, it would greatly reduce employee motivation which subsequently results in a lower financial performance. Additionally, the company also experiences poor customer services. Poor customer service within a company can negatively impact a business since the customers feel that their needs aren’t appropriately met. Therefore, the company is bound to experience a decline in word-of-mouth sales since customers will not recommend their products and services to their fellows. Furthermore, there will be a considerable decline in repeat customers since their needs go unmet and thus they aren’t satisfied. Also, the business may cease to exist because since customers dislike rude and unfriendly staff members. Moreover, the company is planning to expand with at least 60 more outlets before sorting out some of their issues. This would eventually lead to occurrence of losses since they are already facing issues within the company yet they want to expand their outlets. Increasing the Number and Quality of applicants Coffee City Limited need to increase the quality and quantity of applicants by using several challenges. The company can use their marketing and branding to charm the type of applicants they want. The best marketing and job opening is always that which target specific audience. Therefore, Coffee City Limited can advertise job openings and place information where the targeted candidates can see it. For instance, the company can use television advertising as research suggests that it is a medium where most people watch. Doing this will increase the number of applicants for job openings in the company. The company should generally, expand the medium they use to announce job openings. They should also use the magazine and newspaper advertisement since many people have reading habits (Shafique, 2012). Wording is also key; what is said makes a huge difference. If it is said that the company is seeking only people with specific backgrounds and qualifications, it will improve the quality of applicants (Gueutal and Stone, 2005). The company’s website should be worded in such a way that is attractive to people who have the qualifications needed to apply. In addition, apart from refining job posting approaches, in order to improve quality and quantity of job applicants, the company should create relationships and referrals in order to ensure recruitment success. Referrals are said to be the best strategy that produces the highest volume and quality of employees (Gueutal and Stone, 2005). Therefore, Coffee City Limited should adapt referrals strategy. The company should search for the top past referrers and seek for direct referrals for expedited jobs. It has been witnessed that top performers make high-quality referrals. Coffee City Company should also use technology in their recruitment and hiring process. There are various talent management tools that are available for purchase which can increase the quality and the number of applicants for a job posting. Asking for a resume is considered to attract a large number of unqualified applicants. An alternative way is to ask candidates to offer basic information about their qualifications and general background (Shafique, 2012). There are several email programs and newsletter distribution programs that the company can use to let candidates apply for job and know where they stand. These tools offer automatic bounce-back email distributed to candidates who apply for any job openings. This will increase the number of quality candidates. Identifying and Developing Employees with Potential and Talent There are many ways Coffee City Company can identify and develop employees with great potential and talent. One way of doing this is creating a pay-for-performance culture (Finney, 2008). The pay for performance initiative will enable managers gain access to information needed to reward high performing employees. Some information for employees’ reward includes management performance feedback, review data and goal attainment among others. This allows the management to rational and fair decisions, thereby avoiding unjust and improper employee’s compensation. The company can use employees’ assessments to motivate and develop their employees and enable the reach their full potential. Addressing each employee’s needs and wants will develop a highly motivated workforce that will contribute to the success of the organisation. By measuring and identifying the important factors that differentiate between success and failure in the organisation will enable the company identify high achievers and allow the employees utilize their talents without any restrictions. In addition, another way of developing high potential employees is through the alignment of employees goals with corporate strategy. The best talent development plan is aligned with the corporate strategy and overall business needs (Finney, 2008). Goal alignment clarifies the roles of employees in an organisation and demonstrates the values of the employees. Therefore, Coffee City Limited should engage their employees through goal alignment which will enable the company create greater employees commitment to achieving high job performance. In order to achieve goal alignment, the company should communicate its strategic business values and goals to the employees. This will create a greater employee ownership and will enhance their work potential. One of the most important things for Coffee City Limited to do in order to develop and identify talents is the establishment of development culture. The company should make talent development a priority. For instance, one-on-one coaching of employees by the management can be essential and can make a big impact on the employees’ performance (Finney, 2008). Training is an important aspect of development culture. There are different training methods that can be used by Coffee City Limited in order to increase employee engagement and knowledge. An example of training method is experience-based training through job rotation. Employees should go through a number of job series so as to gain knowledge and understanding. This method is often successful in small organizations than in large organizations. Therefore, it will be effective in the company. Team training is another training method that involves the process whereby teams are empowered to enhance decision making, skills and knowledge, problem-solving and productivity. Team training enhances cohesiveness among people, motivates a team and facilitates relationship building. Team building method will develop talent in the organisation and will give employees higher potential for success (Finney, 2008). Succession Management of Outlet Managers Coffee City Ltd can effectively manage outlets for outlet managers by being objective and fair when it comes to managing succession. When it comes to putting individuals into classes such as these, it is significant to perform it objectively by considering every employment laws. In addition, the company can manage succession of outlet managers by recognizing various methods that can be used to attain as well as retain individuals who are critical to success (Munro, 2005). Also, the company should develop a strategy to find out what the organization intends to meet as their current and their future demands in terms of their business plans. Additionally, Coffee City Ltd ought to establish operations that can measure competence of the managers and their duties. These operations should also be used by the company to establish desirable approaches in order to deal with employees who no longer fit into the organization’s requirements. Furthermore, managers within Coffee City Ltd should never get the thought that employees don’t want to move forward and develop themselves. Therefore, in order to effectively manage succession within the company, the managers ought to keenly check whether the employees are performing to their expectations. Therefore, if an employee is showing very good records in terms of their employment history, the managers within the company ought to support any of their decisions only if they are valid and shouldn’t drive them into developing towards a promotion (Rothwell, 2010). In addition, such managers should respect the individual choices of the employees regardless of their choices. For instance, whether they would like to remain in the same position no matter how productive they are. Furthermore, if a staff member within Coffee City Ltd wishes to build up in a manner that will improve both the role as well as the organization at large, the company should come up with a development plan to facilitate such actions. Additionally, it is important to handle individuals who are eager and passionate to develop and grow even if they do not possess the necessary skills, knowledge, potential and behaviour to move forward at the current time. Therefore, Coffee City Ltd managers ought to explain vividly to their employees how their skills and knowledge differ completely to those employees who are high performers. Also, the managers within the company should establish areas where the staff members need to progress within the organization (Rothwell, 2010). Also, they should work with their staff members to develop a professional development plan which will assist them to function towards getting the necessary skills, behaviours as well as knowledge which they require to move forward. Costing of Proposal In order for the implementation of the proposals to be possible there is a need for capital, human resources, management support etc. capital resources are important in implementing these plans. The specific needs of proposed changes often govern the financial requirement. In Coffee City Limited, the financial planning must accommodate all the proposals made. For instance, it would cost the company a huge sum of money to improve the volume as well as the quality of job applicants. This is so because the company will have to hire human resource personnel to assess the applicants who will be on a payroll. In addition, for the company to improve the performance of their employees, it has to invest in the pay-for-performance initiatives which will require a reasonable amount of funds in order to be effective. As mentioned earlier, in order to develop and identify talent and high potential employees, the company needs to initiate a training program into their curriculum. Doing so would require a huge sum of capital to implement. For instance, the company needs to hire training experts or assign employees into various training and development programs. However, in costing of proposal, there are some considerations that should be made in effect to the changes. One important factor to be considered is the budget. The company should first put aside some specific amount of capital to be used for the implementation of the proposal. This is important since doing so will prevent the occurrence of a financial crisis of the company. Another factor is financial flexibility. Financial flexibility is the company’s ability to raise funds in their desperate times. Coffee City Ltd does not face challenges when raising capital during times of high sales and earnings, however, raising capital in bad times is very hard. Therefore, the company should set aside capital required for the proposals during good times and the ability of the company to raise money is high. This will prevent debts and misuse of capital. Conclusion To sum up, Coffee City Ltd is a restaurant located across the cities of Midlands and South East UK. The company has faced a number of issues which include: the lack of a proper recruitment process and human resource procedures in place for managers and staff members; difficulty in recruiting new or replacement outlet managers and also strategizing to open almost 60 outlets over the next coming 24 months. Furthermore, the company faces poor customer service that is unfriendly to the customers. Due to these problems, the company is bound to experience poor financial performance due to the lack of employee motivation. Furthermore, the company might experience huge losses due to over investing in 6o more outlets yet they are faced with managerial issues. In addition, due to the issues mentioned above, the company might lose most of their return customers from their poor customer services. Additionally, the company can conduct succession management of outlet managers by being objective and fair when it comes to managing succession. Moreover, managers ought to keenly check whether the employees are performing to their expectations. Additionally, the company can increase the potential of their employees by introducing training and development programs as well as pay-for-performance culture. References Finney, M. (2008). Building high-performance people and organizations. Westport, Conn: Praeger. Gueutal, H. & Stone, D. (2005). The brave new world of eHR: human resources management in the digital age. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Munro, A. (2005). Practical succession management: how to future-proof your organisation. Aldershot, Hants, England Burlington, VT: Gower. Rothwell, W. (2010). Effective succession planning : ensuring leadership continuity and building talent from within. New York: AMACOM. Shafique O. (2012). Recruitment in the 21st Century, Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 4(2), 887-901 Read More