The HR Consultant Essay Example for Free

The HR Consultant Essay Introduction Texas Roadhouse is a chain restaurant throughout the United States. There are approximately 340 locations in over 46 states, and they are quickly expanding. Its menu specializes in steaks and ribs, as well as adding a western atmosphere for guests to enjoy. In the restaurant business, there are many different positions held by a variety of different people. There are cooks, dish washers, bus boys, hostesses, bartenders, servers, and also nightly management. On average each night, there are approximately 19 servers, 6 bus boys, 6 hostesses, 3 bartenders, and large amount of kitchen staff. All of these different positions are crucial in the nightly success of the company. Without any of these positions, the restaurant would not be able to run as smoothly. Objectives of The study In this report we are trying to find out the way to increase efficiency and effectiveness of the restaurant using five models:- 1) Self-Efficacy Model 2) LMX Model 3) Job Characteristics Model 4) Goal Setting Model Strategic Mapping Using Models Self-Efficacy Model The term self-efficacy is used to describe an individual’s perception of how competent they find themselves and their abilities to achieve complex tasks. People with strong self-efficacy are more likely to accept more responsibility and accept more challenging tasks. They also believe that no obstacles can get in the way from stopping them achieve their goals. Individuals with low self-efficacy are more apt to looking as difficult tasks as intimidating and do not believe they that are capable of achieving personal success. Overall, self-efficacy plays an important role in influencing the tasks that people perform and how well they perform them. The most important factor that is impacting through self-efficacy is persistence. This is found important because the higher the person perceives themselves on the scale, the more persistent that they will be with performing a complex task. Analysis and Recommendations as per Self Efficacy model Self-efficacy is something that is important in any organization. However, it is important at Texas Roadhouse to hire individuals who have a High level of self-efficacy so that employee perceives themselves capable of achieving many complex tasks. This could prove to be an issue within the organization because individuals could become bored or feel not challenged by the tasks designated in their position, which could lead to frustration for the employees and employer. Hence, Challenging tasks should be given to such individuals. 1) The individuals with moderate level of self-efficacy provides opportunity for the organization to designate tasks to that are challenging but also still attainable. It is good to hire large no. of employees in this category. There were three individuals who scored close to the lower end of the self-efficacy scale. 2) The individuals with low self-efficacy can pose a problem for Texas Roadhouse as they might hinder the productivity and success of the organization. Hence, in order to ensure more confident and driven individuals, Texas Roadhouse could moderately delegate more difficult tasks to these individuals in order to boost their confidence and the way they perceive themselves. Also, they could provide more positive feedback in their jobs and reinforce that the individual is doing well at their job. 2) Leader-Member Exchange The leader-member exchange (LMX) is a model that suggests that leaders develop different relationships with each of their subordinates through a series of work-related transactions. There are two important groups to consider that a subordinate may fall under depending on which phase they fit into. The in group is defined as a low number of subordinates with high LMX relationships. The second group is known as the out group in which the number of subordinates is large and contains relatively low level LMX relationships. Employees who find themselves in the out-group are likely to face high job turnover. This should be important to all management because high turnover is a very large investment for the organization. The level of LMX has a significant relationship to subordinates satisfaction with their manager. Employees with low-quality LMX are more likely to become dissatisfied, less motivated, and more prone to quitting. Whereas employees with high level LMX are likely to be satisfied with their work, more motivated, and committed to staying and contributing to the organization. LMX has three critical components which are mutual affection, contribution to work activities, and professional respect. When a subordinate has high mutual affection for a superior, the subordinate likes the superior as a person and will often come to the superior’s defense if attacked. High contribution to work activities comes into play when a subordinate goes above and beyond their job description to help the superior out. High Professional Respect is when the superior admires the subordinate’s knowledge and competence of the job. Analysis and Recommendation as per LMX 1) The Texas Roadhouse management does take steps to increase the mutual affection score of its staff else they will likely to enter the realm of the out group which could potentially lead to the employee leaving the organization because Why stay at an organization if you’re not happy with your manager? 2) One way management can increase the mutual affection is to take a more active role and listen to the complaints of the employees and to take the time to establish supportive and trusting relationships with the employees. 3) Another suggestion might be to engage the staff in team building activities and icebreakers. We can conclude that the superiors and managers of Texas Roadhouse are not providing proper support to their staff and needs to make a drastic change soon because the organization as a whole could be affected. 4) Some possible solutions include taking the time to reassess what kind of support is needed for staff. One way to do this is anonymous comment cards. Have all the employees fill out comment cards anonymously and identify specific instances where an employee failed to receive support. This must be down anonymously by the employer because the employee might be unwilling to respond for fear of termination. 5) The manager may have a tendency to interact with other employees in an unprofessional manner. The manager can decrease this perception by keeping to policy or by adjusting his/her interactions in front of employees. 6) Management needs to do a better job of developing better relationships with its employees. Some improvement strategies include the use of assertive communication, appropriate communication openness, and constructive feedback with all of the subordinates. Job Characteristics Model The job characteristics model has to do with the idea of increasing the amounts of five job characteristics: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback in a job. Skill variety can be defined as the degree to which a job requires an assortment of skills in order for an employee to carry out the task at hand. Task identity is the extent to which a job requires an employee to complete a task from beginning to end with a visible, tangible outcome. Task significance is the extent to which an employee perceives the job as having an impact on the lives of other individuals, if it makes a difference in society, within or outside of the organization. Autonomy is the level to which a job provides empowerment and discretion to an employee by choosing their own way to complete and schedule a task. Job feedback is the clear information about how effective an employee’s performance is. The different levels of these five job characteristics affect three important psychological states. The first, to experience meaningfulness of the tasks performed, second, to experience personal responsibility for results of the task at hand, and last is the knowledge of the results of task performance. If all three psychological states are positive, strong work motivation based on self-generated rewards is triggered. If they are in the negative zone, meaning the job is not meaningful, lacks responsibility or feedback, the job is incomplete, which does not strongly motivate an employee. This model can be related to Texas Roadhouse since it looks into how well an employee has the opportunity to be motivated to work in the restaurant. It highlights the areas that need work in the restaurant and what the employees enjoy or dislike about working there. It also demonstrates which employees are content with working there for a while and which view it as a stepping stone towards another opp ortunity that has not yet befallen upon them. Analysis and Recommendations as per Job Characteristic Model 1) The model demonstrates a need for change in the structure of Texas Roadhouse in order to increase their employee’s motivation to continue their work there. Generally, there are two main approaches recommended to superiors for designing/redesigning jobs which are vertical loading and the formation of natural work teams. Vertical loading is when tasks that were considered reserved for management level staff are delegated to all employees. It includes the power to set schedules, decide work methods, breaks, and seek solutions to their own problems. Natural work teams combines individual jobs into a unit which are logical and meaningful including geographic location, types of business, organizational, alphabetical or numerical, customer groups. If Texas Roadhouse implemented vertical loading into their structure and gave their employees the opportunity to decide their own breaks and more flexible schedules, it could aid in their desire to maintain their positions at the restaurant. Most of the employees are pretty satisfied with the way things are run at Texas Roadhouse, however, according to the data, one of the biggest issues the employees have with Texas Roadhouse is the lack of variety, out of twenty surveys; eleven scored less than a four on the scale. The employees also feel that they do not have the opportunity to see projects through to completion which affects their task identity characteristic. This can be fixed with a simple solution, which is to allow employees to complete a task before assigning them another. Goal Setting Model Goal setting is a very integral part of any job. Whether you are attempting to better yourself or complete a project, setting goals is one of the most helpful tools to assist you throughout the process. Goal setting can definitely help a business such as Texas Roadhouse in raising their standards for employees which will end up helping the bottom line. The goal setting model that we used for our survey seems to have a big impact on job performance. According to the model, if employees felt good about the goals they set, they were better at their jobs. Five essential pieces must come together in order for the managers to gain benefits of a goal setting program. The first piece is that the person must be knowledgeable about the topic of the specified goal and have the sufficient capacity to attain the goal. The second step is that the person must be committed to the goal, especially if the goal is difficult. The third step is that people need feedback on their goals. According to the text, employees will raise their performance because they are afraid they will have past performance. The forth step is that complex tasks must be broken up into simpler more short term goals so that the goals can be attained. It is stated in the text that employees are more responsive when they know about their progress. The fifth and final piece is to have a situation constraint. One of the most important aspects of a leader is to ensure that employees have the resources to attain their goals and to help eliminate any troubles that may lie in the way. Now to discuss some of the benefits that goal setting can have on performance. One of the consequences of goal setting is that it motivates individuals to achieve high performance. Some of the benefits stem from developing difficult goals. When it comes to Texas Roadhouse, such goal setting can be setting goals for a certain dollar amount each table waited on per person. The benefits can be such as encouraging people to develop action plans to reach a goal, focusing people’s attention on goal-relevant action, and encouraging people to develop action plans to reach these goals. Having such goal setting systems in place, you will have to be able to adequately reward your employees. Such reward systems could be like the high-performance work system which is used to describe a well-established method of motivation with new technology that links pay and performance. This isn’t very easy to do, especially when considering the many factors. Such factors could ask questions such as, do you reward individually or as a team. Analysis and Recommendation as per Goal Setting Model Going through a few of the steps that go into goal setting and based on the results provided from the study, we have developed some recommendations for the restaurant. The first recommendation is to put groups of waiters and hostesses into teams in order to create an atmosphere of meritocracy. When there are teams, it’s easier to have tasks done and team members will have the mentality of â€Å"if I scratch your back you scratch mine.† Going along with more of the recommendations through the analysis of the process of effective goal setting, a proper high performance work reward system must be put into place in order to motivate employees. Our recommendation for the work reward system is a system that rewards waitresses on the amount of money per person that they serve. So for example if a team earns on average $15 per customer and another team earns $20 per customer, we reward the team with the $20 per customer with a bonus on top of their normal tips. To further develop their goals, we can get input for the teams on how they would like to improve the model because it is stated that the more input the employees feel like they are giving, the more they would buy into the program. To improve on that, we would also make the goals a little bit more challenging. For example we could expect a higher dollar amount per customer over last month. For example a ten percent increase could be viable. The last of our recommendations is to give each employee a step by step plan on how to achieve their goals and to give them a monthly review. These recommendations would help Texas Roadhouse by improving their trust between one another, their individual and team goals by giving them more input which leads to more buy-in and lastly, it helps them raise their revenue by setting higher goals for each customer. Works Cited Bernardin, H. John, Joyce E. A. Russell. Human Resource Management: An Experiential Approach. McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2013.