Develop Equitable Reward Structures: A Case Study for The Melting Pot Restaurant

Background on The Melting Pot Restaurant

Case study

This case study should now be familiar to you.  It will be the basis for most the questions in your final assignment task. 

Carefully read the following information and when requested, refer back to this case study to answer questions

You have recently taken the opportunity to join an exciting New Zealand ‘start-up operation’ for a franchise called The Melting Pot Restaurant.  A colleague you have worked with in the past (Pippa Jones) has bought the New Zealand rights to the franchise.  It has been extremely successful in the United States of America and is currently developing franchise operations within 8 other countries as well as New Zealand. 

The Melting Pot is a unique fondue restaurant that offers a fully customizable menu. Customers pick and choose their own courses, sauces, and cooking styles. There are several different cheese fondues, salads, entrées, and chocolate fondues to choose from. It specializes in a relaxed atmosphere with exceptional service.  

Market research has shown this to be a very good profile fit for New Zealand eating audiences, so instead of taking the approach to open one small restaurant at time, Pippa has made the choice to open 4 restaurants across Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton and New Plymouth within the next 6 – 12 months.  It means a huge amount of work needs to be done.  The staff are being hired, premises are being found and things are moving quickly. 

Pippa has not only bought the franchise but has also taken on the role of CEO.  You have agreed to the role of Operations and HR Director for the New Zealand team.  You will be responsible for all training, health and safety and other human resource responsibilities along with the operational requirements.

Develop equitable reward structures from a given set of data and develop a base pay structure

In your early discussions with Pippa, you have agreed that to create the atmosphere you wish for at The Melting Pot you will need to have an attractive remuneration and reward structure.  You feel that if you get this right you will have motivated staff, encourage a loyal customer base, and reduce costs of the higher staff turnover often found in the hospitality business.

As the search for future employees has begun, you now need to put in place job evaluation schemes, make decisions on base pay structures and what benefits, variable and performance-based pay and rewards you will put in place for the teams. 

1. Outline the basic principles of job evaluation, including criticisms of the approach, to ensure that you have a clear understanding of the task you are about to complete.  
2. You are required to build a remuneration structure to present to the CEO, write a discussion paper, with clear recommendations and next steps.

3.Using the points method, you have allocated points based on:

• Work related knowledge and skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Working demands
• Problem solving
• Responsibilities for leadership