Question

The restaurant business is always in flux, with workers coming and going in a revolving-door fashion. This is true even of high-end concepts like Barcelona Restaurant Group, a collection of seven wine and tapas bars located in Connecticut and Atlanta, Georgia.

At Barcelona, life is all about authentic cuisine, exceptional service, and a great time. The restaurant group offers eclectic Spanish cuisine with an authentic ambience that recalls a neighborhood eatery in Milan or Rio de Janeiro. At Barcelona, wait staff are friendly, and chefs are known to create personalized dishes that impress regulars. Barcelona’s flavorful tapas are infused with olive oil, lemon, and smoky paprika, and the comprehensive wine list features top vintages from Spain, Portugal, and vineyards around the world.

It takes the right mix of people to deliver this upscale culinary experience, and that’s a job for Barcelona COO Scott Lawton. “Human resources is one of the most important things we do in our business,” says Lawton. “This is a transient business, so people are constantly moving. The minute you stop looking for talent you’re actually sliding backwards—so, we’re always hiring.”

For anyone who has waited tables, restaurant turnover is a familiar experience. Cooks, servers, and bussers have short careers in most establishments; managers typically stick around longer. But Barcelona has exceptionally high standards for service, and this requires letting go employees who aren’t up to snuff. “In the three years I’ve worked here, only one or two managers has quit,” Lawton states. However, we’ve turned over probably 60 to 70 percent of all management in the past three years, and that’s because we were not afraid to let people go. We demand a certain level of quality, and we’re continuously raising the bar on our expectations.”

With so much talent revolving through the organization, Lawton integrates recruitment into daily operations. The restaurant keeps want ads running at all times, and managers conduct interviews each and every day. The process is highly strategic. According to Barcelona’s operations chief, smart restaurant managers can hire their way out of problems simply by selecting the right people. “We can train people all day,” Lawton states, “but we can’t train happy people with good attitudes—we can’t train that into people.” Lawton instructs managers to hire the right people with the right work attitudes.

Judging an applicant’s work attitudes is no easy task, however. To ensure that Barcelona finds the right employees, Lawton uses a three-stage recruitment process. First, leaders conduct 20-minute interviews with dozens of candidates.

Next, applicants are sent on “a shop”—an assignment during which candidates spend $100 dollars at a Barcelona restaurant and write an essay about the event. For applicants who survive the first two stages of the selection process, there is one final assessment: “the trail.” At Barcelona, the trail acts as a kind of test drive in which job candidates command the floor, interact with wait staff and customers, and demonstrate job skills. Approximately one-fourth of the candidates who go on a trail can expect to be hired.

At the end of the day, according to Scott Lawton, people either possess the necessary intelligence and skills to run a restaurant or they don’t. The industry doesn’t have much time for learning curves, and the success or failure of any establishment depends on the performance of competent self-motivated employees.

No one knows this more than Lawton. “For any company that is involved in customer service,” states the restaurant veteran, “the most important thing you can do is have the right people in front of your customers.”

Respond to the follow Questions in an essay format

a. List the three main activities of human resource management (HRM) and identify which activity is examined at length.

b. Of the various steps in Barcelona’s employee selection process, the job interview is the most brief. Do you agree with the company’s approach to interviewing? Why or why not?

c.Identify Barcelona’s three-stage process for matching job applicants with its organizational objectives and explain how each stage reveals the fit between job applicants and the needs of the restaurant.

Answer 1

a.HRM is an important department in any industrty and business. The main activities of HRM are recruitment process, training process,health and safety. HRM is also a back bone of the company as they decide as to what job the hire individual has to do. In this the training process takes the lead role after hiring the person. Because the training process gives the individual to learn the skills required to do the trask in a given peroid of time.This allows the staff to learn and develop. For this purpose the management hires a skillful training person to train the staff in order to improve the business as it is the individual persons efffort that puts benefit to the company.

b. The companies approch of interviewing is best in order to search the right kind of person as the interview process involves various steps in selection both in and on the job interview which can clearly rectify the skills of the interviewee. By this process the company can identify the right person who is suitable for the job.

c. The restaurant can easily implement various stages such as training with on the job process with training with a professional persons who can guide and train them as required by the resturant management. The management can put the hired person on a probation peroid for one month or more to analysis the staff and grade them depending upon the performance and pay them as per the performance so they can be more proactive in their job assigned.