HR Strategy Report for Mango Indian Restaurant in Nelson

Your Assessment Task

Critically evaluate various theories, approaches, current perspectives and trends in the human resource management field.

Critically evaluate how human resource management contributes to organisational performance and competitive advantage.

You are to prepare a report as a HR Consultant for a SME in Nelson by the name of Mango Indian Restaurant on 227, Hardy Street, Nelson. The case scenario for the restaurant is given below:  

The Mango is an Indian and Malaysian fusion cuisine restaurant. It has 3 branches located at Richmond, Nelson and Blenheim. The management may propose to open their fourth branch at Motueka based on the HR report recommendation.  The management has approached you to prepare a report for them on present and future HR strategic policies which the organisation should focus on to maintain a competitive advantage.  

In 2018, the company had stagnant growth which they feel may be due to lack of motivation, weak internal environment and culture. This has raised concerns that the organisation may not be able to keep pace with the disruptive changes in the external environment.  The management of Mango organisation have watched a Boeing Corporation video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjsOOCVQJVE ) and have learnt that at one time Boeing would produce 40 planes per month.  

Due to increase in competition they realised they needed to increase production. Boeing brought suitable changes to their HR strategy and have succeeded in 

producing 60 planes a month. The main body part arrives by train and the team takes just 18 hours to assemble the plane comprising 1.2 million parts. The Boeing management feels that their HR strategy has been a game changer.  It created a

positive environment, motivation, and team work which allowed it to achieve the goal. The rest is history. In the background the Boeing HR strategies worked silently like a catalyst to review and identify the barriers and made suitable adjustments in aligning the HR goals with the organisational goals. They looked into every functional area of the Boeing Corporation and made changes in every segment including - matching model, recruitment and selection area, Induction and training, remuneration, performance appraisal, and health and safety areas. The strategy developed should positively impact the health and safety compliance, improving capacity, capability and engagement.  

The management of Mango wants you to do something similar. They have 2 senior chefs who are supported by 4 assistant chefs. The senior chefs report to the the CEO and some of the directors.  The CEO is a relative of one of the directors. His rigid approach with lack of flexibility and openness has led to dissatisfaction among the Chef team.

Report Objective

One of the highly competent senior chef was pinched by the competitor by the name of “Indian Cafe” which is few blocks away from Mango. The outgoing senior chef has taken along at least 10% of the new and old clientele of the Mango restaurant over to the competitor. The grapevine indicates that the outgoing chef felt that the menu was rigidly standardised and does not offer scope to new customers to order something outside the menu. Most of the time the customised demand of the clients could not be met as the Chef team was prevented from obliging by the CEO.

This has made many customers unhappy and jump the queue and shift to competitors a few blocks away. Once the customer had requested an extra hot dish. The simple request of the customer was not complied making the customer annoyed and unhappy. To resolve the situation a pickle was given to the customer to calm him down. This is an example of what some staff believes has led to stagnant growth in business and no growth in remuneration.  The management of Mango feels that HR policies and process should have detected the grievances of the outgoing chef and should have taken steps to retain the highly talented chef. At present, the HR policies are being handled in an informal and common-sense

manner by the Accountant who is over burdened with responsibilities. The Mango management wants you to review the entire current HR policies and procedures and revamp it completely so that the company retains good talent and offers a positive and motivating environment - just as in the case of the Boeing Corporation.  

The Mango management expect Nelson market to grow 10% per year in Asian cuisine and wants to have at least 3% share of the market.        

Notes  

1. You are to identify the HR problems and barriers which need to be resolved within the Mango organisation.   
2. You are to investigate and evaluate various theories, approaches, perceptions and trends in the HR field as presented in the textbook, journals, online, so on against the benchmark of good practices set by Boeing and other companies globally and in New Zealand such as Spark, Air New Zealand and others.   

• You are also required to evaluate the HR contribution, based on theory and concepts learnt in HR, to reflect how it can improve organisational performance and improve competitive advantage.  

Based on the report submitted by you, the Mango management will consider and award you a further contract to prepare a Project of designing and formulating HR strategy for implementation.   

The total submission should comprise 4000 words (+/-10%, not including appendices, citations and references).  You must cite and reference any models, frameworks, concepts, and terminology that you have encountered in the course material, in your textbook, or sourced elsewhere.  Any assumptions you make are to be stated as such and you are to explain why you consider them to be realistic assumptions.     

APA referencing guidelines are to be followed, and evidence of wide reading is expected for an assignment at this level, i.e. a minimum of five authoritative sources to be acceptable, including the textbook.  For more information, please refer to the ‘Marking rubric’ on Moodle.