Problem
The Chilly Burger Joint
When Steve Parella opened the Chilly Burger Joint in the United Kingdom in early 2012, many people flocked to its doors to taste their signature burgers, which they had been advertising very heavily on TV. Their slogan was, "Live the Chilly Experience." People lined up for hours to buy a burger from the restaurant. However, after an extraordinary success in the first year, the store reported a drop of 30% in revenues by the end of the second year. This was mainly due to the poor customer service at the store. Customers were often handled by unprofessional employees with a careless attitude. Disgruntled employees barely greeted their customers and were visibly annoyed when customers demanded a change in their order. In addition, tables were often left uncleaned for the next customer, and during peak times some untrained employees over-cooked the fries. Steve decided to have a meeting with his store manager. The store manager complained that there were no job descriptions for the employees to understand their requirements accurately, and this issue had further complicated employee recruitment and training efforts. Steve saw this as an attempt by the manager to cover for his management mistakes.
Not knowing what to do exactly, Steve scrambled to fix the situation by turning to an HR consultant. The consultant said that the job descriptions are critically needed and that Steve needs to hire a job analyst for this task. Steve rejected the advice and believed that it was unnecessary to incur the extra time and costs necessary to do the job descriptions, and hence decided to replace the store manager instead. The store revenues kept deteriorating sharply, however. After four years of opening, Steve Parella finally decided that it was to time to shut down.
Task
• Should Steve have taken the consultant's advice and prepared job descriptions? Do you think the store's losses are the fault of the store manager or due to the absence of job descriptions?
• If you were a job analyst, which method would you employ to conduct the job analysis at CBJ? Why?